Year: 2018

Planck Re, a startup that wants to simplify insurance underwriting with artificial intelligence, announced today that it has raised a $12 million Series A. The funding was led by Arbor Ventures, with participation from Viola FinTech and Eight Roads. Co-founder and CEO Elad Tsur tells TechCrunch that the capital will be used to expand Planck Re’s product line into more segments, including retail, contractors, IT and manufacturing, and grow its research and development team in Israel and North American sales team.

The Tel Aviv and New York-based startup plans to focus first on its business in the United States, where it has already launched pilot programs with several insurance carriers. Tsur says that Planck Re’s clients generall use it to help underwrite insurance for small to medium-sized businesses, including business owner policies, which cover property and liability risks, and workers’ compensation.

Founded in 2016 by Tsur, Amir Cohen and David Schapiro, Planck Re poses its technology as a more efficient and accurate alternative to the lengthy risk assessment questionnaire insurers ask clients to fill out. Its platform crawls the Internet for publicly available data, including images, text, videos, social media profiles and public records, to build profiles of SMBs seeking insurance coverage. Then it analyzes that data to help carriers figure out their potential risk.

Before launching Planck Re, Tsur and Cohen founded Bluetail, a data mining startup that was acquired by Salesforce in 2012, where it served as the base technology for Salesforce Einstein. Schapiro was previously CEO of financial analytics company Earnix.

There are already a handful of startups, including SoftBank-backed Lemonade, Trōv, Cover, Hippo and Swyfft, that use algorithms to make picking and buying insurance policies easier for consumers, but AI-based underwriting is still a nascent category. One example is Flyreel, which focuses on underwriting property insurance and recently signed a deal with Microsoft to accelerate its go-to-market strategy.

Tsur says Planck Re is developing more dedicated algorithms to meet the evolving needs of insurance providers. For example, many underwriters now want to know if clients in photography use aerial imaging equipment, so Planck Re’s imaging process capabilities automatically check images for that information.

He adds that being able to automate underwriting enables carriers to find new distribution channels, including allowing customers to apply for insurance online without needing to fill out any forms. Planck Re also continues to monitor and underwrite policies, which means if a customer’s risk profile changes, insurers can react quickly.

In a statement, Arbor Ventures vice president and head of Israel Lior Simon said “We are excited to partner with Planck Re and the driven, entrepreneurial team. Insurance companies are thirsty for actionable data, to assess risk, gain real time insights and enhance customer understanding. Planck Re aims to empower them through a streamlined digital approach, which we believe will truly alter the insurance industry.”

People have long wondered if one of Amazon’s goals in video and advertising — two key areas in Amazon’s media strategy — ultimately would be to bring the two together, with Amazon-powered ads running in video streams also served by Amazon. A job ad in the UK appears to indicate that the company might be gearing up for such a play. According to the ad, company is currently hiring for someone to lead its efforts in free-to-air TV and advertising in Europe.

Free-to-air TV refers to the range of ad-supported (or TV license-supported) TV channels that you can access through a digital TV tuner, satellite or cable without paying anything to receive them.

The advertisement for the job when it was posted four weeks ago was titled, “Head of Free to Air TV & Advertising.” Yesterday, after people started noticing it (and what it implied about Amazon’s plans) Amazon appeared to change it to a slightly more muddled “Head of Prime Video Channels Free To Air TV & Advertising TV Partner Channels.” Then this morning, as we started asking questions, the title appeared to change again, to “Head of Prime Video Partner Channels” — without any reference to free-to-view or advertising. All the ads had the same job ID number.

This is notable because currently it appears that Amazon does not have any free-to-air channels on its UK service (and an Amazon spokesperson would not directly answer me on this point and declined to provide a comment on the record for this story), and it’s also gearing up to have some free significant sports content on its platform, in the form of Premier League football matches.

Amazon’s current Prime Video offerings in the UK include films and TV shows it picks up by way of licensing deals with third parties; Amazon original content; and a selection of livestreamed broadcast channels (which include HBO, Showtime and Starz for now, Discovery and Eurosport in the UK, as part of Amazon Channels, launched in March 2017). We’ve also heard it has been eyeing up buying at least one commerce-minded broadcaster outright. Globally, Prime Video is live in 200 countries worldwide.

But as with its TV streams in the US, the TV streams in the Channels list are focused on premium subscriptions, where users have to pay extra fees, on top of their Prime subscriptions, to get the extra channels.

Offering free-to-air would be a significant move for the company not only because it would be “free”, but because it would represent a large jumpstart on the amount of content that Amazon presents to its users. Bringing in what are essentially table stakes in TV services, a large range of free channels could be another way of attracting more would-be cord cutters to switch over to Amazon for all of their video and TV interests, rather than using Amazon’s video offerings as a supplement to a core service from another provider.

And that, in turn, could become one more sweetener — alongside the other free video services, the free shipping, and many other perks — for people to pony up for the Prime annual subscription.

Amazon has never disclosed figures for how many viewers it has for its video service, in the UK or elsewhere, but a document leaked earlier this year that said it had 26 million viewers of its video content in early 2017. The company is estimated to be putting $5 billion per year into original content production and licensing content to drive more audience to its platforms, which it ties to its ultimate drive for more shopping on Amazon.

“When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes,” CEO Jeff Bezos has been quoted as saying.

That strategy is also playing out in the UK, where Amazon recently won the rights to stream 20 Premier League football matches in the 2019/2020 season — which it will show to viewers at no extra charge, another twist on the “free to view.”

Amazon has not disclosed the price it paid, but as a point of comparison BT is paying £975 million for 52 live games a season for three years, while Sky is paying £3.75 billion for 128 live games.

Ramping up the amount of streamed, free content on Amazon’s platform will pave the way for the other part of the job Amazon is seeking to fill: advertising.

Currently, Amazon does not sell ads into any of the live streamed channels on its platform although some of them do run ads. However, if Amazon were to scale up the advertising opportunity by way of popular sports content and a wider range of free-to-air channels, suddenly the idea of creating its own TV-based ad network to inject ads into those various streams might be a little more compelling both to Amazon and would-be advertisers.

In the US, Amazon has dipped its toes in the waters by running ads during broadcasts of NFL games it had acquired the rights to broadcast — although by one account advertisers were paying up to $1 million less than Amazon had hoped they would for their packages.

Amazon has been quite gradual in building out its ads business. The company made $4 billion in advertising revenues in 2017, from a variety of services that range from native ads across third-party websites, through to banners on top of the Fire TV landing page and display units that run on Kindle devices. Its ad business is projected to make $9.5 billion in 2018.  Relatively speaking, this is still modest in comparison to Google, which made $95 billion in advertising revenues in 2017.

But while Amazon slowly grows its ads business, it’s also chopping and changing, and it appears that one aim is to focus more on opportunities that speak to more scale for the business overall.

Just last week, we reported that Amazon quietly announced that it would be retiring an ad unit called CPM Ads, one of its earlier efforts in building a display network, which was aimed at smaller websites that were a part of its Associates program.

In what amounts to be an amazingly nefarious bit of malware, hackers have created an exploit that watches 2.3 million high-value crypto wallets and replaces the addresses in the Windows clipboard with an address associated with the hackers. In other words, you could paste your own wallet address – 3BYpmdzASG7S6WrpmrnzJCX3y8kduF6Kmc, for example – and the malware would subtly (or unsubtly) change it to its own private wallet. Because it happens in the clipboard most people wouldn’t notice the change between copying and pasting.

Security researchers at BleepingComputer have found similar hijackers in the wild but this latest version is actively watching valuable wallets and trying grab bitcoin as they enter the accounts. Below is an example of the malware at work.

The malware runs a massive, 83MB DLL file that masquerades as a Direct X service. Inside the DLL is a 2.5 million line text file full of bitcoin addresses. In the above test when cutting and pasting from an HTML page into WordPad you’ll notice that the accounts are subtly modified in each case while leaving the beginning of the address unchanged.

Multiple anti-virus engines are now tagging this DLL as dangerous and you should be safe as long as you keep your virus protection up to date. But, as BleepingComputer notes, the only way to be sure your BTC is safe is to meticulously check each address you paste. They write:

As malware like this runs in the background with no indication that it is even running, is it not easy to spot that you are infected. Therefore it is important to always have a updated antivirus solution installed to protect you from these types of threats.

It is also very important that all cryptocurrency users to double-check any addresses that they are sending cryptocoins to before they actually send them. This way you can spot whether an address has been replaced with a different one than is intended.

In November 2017, PayPal announced it had agreed to sell $5.8 billion in consumer credit receivables to Synchrony Financial, as a part of an expanded relationship between the two companies. That deal has now closed, with Synchrony actually acquiring $7.6 billion in receivables, including PayPal’s U.S. consumer credit portfolio, totaling $6.8 billion at the close, as well as around $0.8 billion in participation interests held by unaffiliated third parties.

PayPal received approximately $6.9 billion in total consideration at the time of closing.

Both companies’ stocks were up this morning in pre-market trading as a result of the news, with PayPal up 0.7% and Synchrony up .06%.

The two companies have been partners since 2004 to offer PayPal-branded credit cards that allow PayPal users to shop online and in stores. As part of the deal to sell the consumer credit receivables business, the companies have extended their credit card program agreement involving the PayPal Extras Mastercard and the PayPal Cashback Mastercard through 2028.

In addition, Synchrony will now be the exclusive issuer of the PayPal Credit online consumer financing program in the U.S, also through 2028.

While the sale means PayPal loses the interest the loans could generate, it was part of the company’s strategy to free up billions in cash it could use in other ways to grow the business, including in ways that could produce higher returns.

It could use the cash to make acquisitions, for example – something it’s already done, in fact, with the $2.2 billion all-cash acquisition of iZettle in May, and the $400 million in cash acquisition of Hyperwallet in June.

“We’re pleased that we’ve completed the sale of our U.S. consumer credit receivables portfolio,” said Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal, in a statement. “Our agreement with Synchrony accomplishes every goal we set out for our asset light strategy. We look forward to working with Synchrony to double down on our innovative consumer credit experiences for our customers and profitably grow the portfolio over time.”

Synchrony will update the financial impact of the transaction in its second quarter 2018 earnings call.

Light, the company behind the wild L16 camera, is building a smartphone equipped with multiple cameras. According to The Washington Post, the company is prototyping a smartphone with five to nine cameras that’s capable of capturing a 64 megapixel shot.

The entire package is not much thicker than an iPhone X, the Post reports. The additional sensors are said to increase the phone’s low-light performance and depth effects and uses internal processing to stick the image together.

This is the logical end-point for Light. The company introduced the $1,950 L16 camera back in 2015 and starting shipping it in 2017. The camera uses sixteen lenses to capture 52 megapixel imagery. The results are impressive especially when the size of the camera is considered. It’s truly pocketable. Yet in the end, consumers want the convenience of a phone with the power of a dedicated camera.

Light is not alone in building a super cameraphone. Camera maker RED is nearing the release of its smartphone that rocks a modular lens system and can be used as a viewfinder for RED’s cinema cameras. Huawei also just released the P21 Pro that uses three lenses to give the user the best possible option for color, monochrome and zoom. Years ago, Nokia played with high megapixel phones, stuffing a 41 MP sensor in the Lumia 1020 and PureView 808.

Unfortunately addtional details about the Light phone are unavailable. It’s unclear when this phone will be released. We reached out to Light for comment and will update this report with its response.

When we last met UDOO the team was building a powerful Raspberry Pi-based DIY board with a bunch of impressive features including more ports and a better processor. Now the team behind the first units has released the UDOO BOLT, a DIY board that can run “AAA games” thanks to a built-in AMD Ryzen Embedded V1202B 3.2 GHz SoC processor and a Radeon Vega 3 graphics card. The system is also Arduino compatible so you can connect it to your robotics and other electronics projects.

The BOLT, when outfitted with a chunk of RAM, is, according to the creators, “almost twice as powerful as a MacBook Pro 13-inch equipped with an Intel i5 and three times more powerful than a Mac Mini.” Because it is nearly a fully-fledged computer you can stick it into a case and treat it like a mini-workstation with a USB keyboard and mouse and HDMI out to a monitor. The BOLT can drive four monitors at once, two via 4K HDMI and two via USB-C. It runs Linux or Windows.

The team plans on shipping in December 2018. The starter kit costs $298 on Kickstarter and includes a power supply and 4GB of RAM. The 8GB unit with SATA and Wireless costs $409.

Is a DIY board with a massive processor and graphics card a bit of overkill? Absolutely. However, because the system is designed for experimentation and on-the-fly design, you can easily repurpose a board like this for a kiosk, store display, or workstation. Because it is so portable you could slap a few of these on school desks and give the kids powerful computers that run nearly everything you can throw at them. Plus it’s pretty cool to be able to play VR games on a machine the size of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

UDOO has been adding onto the traditional Raspberry Pi/Arduino stack for so long that they’ve become experts at making basic boards much more powerful. Given their earlier models could run drones and control multi-legged robots all while running Android, this new product should be a real treat.

PlayStation Vue, welcome to the price hike party. Sony’s over-the-top TV streaming service is the latest to raise the price of its subscription service, which will now cost $5 more per month across all four tiers. That means Vue’s cheapest plan will now cost $44.99 per month instead of $39.99 per month. The most expensive plan will climb to $79.99 per month.

Remember when we thought streaming TV was a cheaper way to watch? No?

Above: PlayStation Vue’s current prices, before the price increases 

The pricing changes arrived on the same day that AT&T raised the cost of its streaming TV service, DirecTV Now, also by $5 per month.

And both changes follow similar moves by competitors, including the $5 per month increase announced by Sling TV only days ago, and the $5 per month increase announced by YouTube TV in March. That made Sling TV’s core package $25 per month and YouTube TV $40 per month.

According to the PlayStation Vue blog post, the decision to raise prices was attributed to the need to “keep pace with rising business costs and enable us to continue offering a better way to watch the best in live sports, entertainment, and news,” it says.

In reality, it’s clear that the whole market is shifting to a slightly higher price point for streaming TV, especially as the services expand their channel lineups to offer more broadcast stations and networks. However, for consumers, it may make these services a tougher sell – many customers signed up to avoid being nickel-and-dimed by cable TV providers with fees and lineups including channels they didn’t watch, and this is starting to feel the same.

In addition, there is a world of content out there on services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu’s on-demand service that’s far more affordable – and without requiring users to record shows with a “cloud” DVR that sometimes doesn’t even let you fast-forward through the commercials. For those who don’t care about sports or tracking particular shows, the streaming TV services may look less compelling as they become more expensive.

In its announcement, Sony vowed to continue to improve its service with the planned addition of more broadcast stations, content, and other feature enhancements.

PlayStation Vue is one of the older services on the market, but is also one of the smallest with an estimated 670,000 subscribers, far behind Sling TV’s 2.21 million or DirecTV Now’s 1.2 million. Likely, consumers believe – because of its name – a PlayStation is required to use it. But the service can be accessed from almost any device, including mobile phones and tablets, the web, Chromecast, Android TV, Apple TV, Fire TV and Roku.

It offers four different channel lineups, all of which include networks like AMC, CNBC, CNN, Discovery, Disney, ESPN, HGTV, Food Network FX, TLC, TNT, and others. In some areas, broadcasts stations including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC are also available.

The pricing changes will go into effect starting on July 24, 2018, Sony says, and will impact both new and existing subscribers. Current subscribers will see the change reflected on their billing cycle after July 31, 2018. Vue’s standalone channels and add-ons are not affected by the price increases.

Airbnb is testing a new payments feature for hosts, letting them get partially paid out at the time of booking.

This feature isn’t rolling out to everyone just yet, as Airbnb says that this is just a preliminary test to gauge interest. Invited hosts simply opt-in to payout splitting to check out the feature.

Here’s how it works:

Normally, Airbnb hosts are paid 24 hours after their guest’s scheduled check-in time. With the new payouts test, hosts who have been invited and opt in will receive 50 percent of their cash three days after the guest has booked their stay, and the other half will be received 24 hours after check-in time.

For their trouble, Airbnb is taking a 1 percent fee of the booking subtotal for early payouts.

As per usual, hosts can opt out of early payouts at any time by making the change in their Payout Preferences.

If a booking is cancelled after an early payout has been received, the amount will be deducted from the host’s next booking.

This comes on the heels of Airbnb’s announcement in February to add new tiers and types of lodging to the platform, including boutique hotels and B&Bs. Airbnb classifies hosts with more than six listings on the platform as Professional Hosts, and early payouts are one way that Airbnb can help these hosts grow their business.

However, in certain housing-constrained markets like NYC, professional hosts aren’t necessarily welcome. In May, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer released a report saying that Airbnb’s presence in NYC is driving up the cost of rent for full-time residents. The company and the Comptroller’s office went back and forth over the veracity of the report, but NYC isn’t the only market worried about the folks who make Airbnb their full-time job.

In 2017, the WSJ reported on a study surveying 100 of the largest metro areas in the U.S. which found that a 10 percent increase in Airbnb listings leads to a 0.39 percent increase in rent and a 0.64 percent increase in house prices. That may sound small, but rental prices typically climbed by 2.2% per year without Airbnb, according to one of the survey’s authors. So Airbnb is accelerating the rate at which rental prices rise.

This very argument and the ensuing spats have led Airbnb to cut SF listings (almost in half) following the city’s kick-off of new short term rental laws. And new, stricter laws may be coming to NYC.

Airbnb says that it works with its communities to stay on the right side of the law, but that professionally managed properties are integral in markets where tourism is a huge part of the economy.

“For decades, vacation rentals and professionally managed properties have been the backbone of the economy in vacation destinations like beach and ski towns and we welcome these types of listings in these types of communities,” said an Airbnb spokesperson. “Trials like these are one way we work to support our community. In some places, usually urban destinations, there can be rules around hosting multiple listings. We always want Airbnb to be a positive force in local communities and we make it clear to hosts that they need to follow these rules.”

The payouts test is geared towards professional hosts, but is being spread via an invite basis to both pro hosts and regular hosts.

Trov, the on-demand personal property insurance service, is launching in the U.S., the company announced today.

Trov’s first port of call in the U.S. will be Arizona. The service is already available to customers in the UK and Australia who have signed up to insure items one million times since the company first launched its business.

A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on how many individuals have signed up for the service or how much they’ve spent on the policies.

Munich Re is serving as Trov’s underwriting partner in the U.S. (and the rest of the world) and the company said it would look to roll out across the rest of the country over the course of the year.

As part of the rollout, Trov is introducing a new service that will cut a customer’s premium payment as the object they’re insuring depreciates in value. The insurer makes these adjustments by comparing the item insured with the retail replacement value of a similar, newer item.

In addition to its geographic expansion, the company is also expanding the types of items it’ll insure, from consumer electronics and photography gear to sports and musical equipment.

Trov’s insurance policy is already approved in 44 states and the personal property product is actually the company’s second service for the U.S. market.

Earlier this year the company launched Trov Mobility in partnership with Waymo, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of Alphabet (which owns Google). That product protects passengers in Waymo’s self-driving car service — which is preparing for launch later this year.

Insurance has been a hot business for startup investors with companies like Cover launching with a similar, on-demand offering already operating in the U.S. Other competitors include companies like Lemonade and Hippo, which both offer homeowners or renters insurance for a modern home — including insurance for electronics, photography equipment and other possessions.

If you’re looking for a way to launch your pre-Series A startup to the world, there’s no better platform for that than TechCrunch’s premier startup-pitch competition, Startup Battlefield. And now, for the first time ever, founders of early-stage startups across the Middle East and North Africa can take advantage of that awesome launch pad.

You read that right. Thanks to our sponsor, Facebook, we’ll be in Beirut on October 3 for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018. Think your startup has what it takes to win it all? Applications are now open, so apply today for your chance to join us in Lebanon at the Beirut Digital District.

Here’s what you need to know about competing in Startup Battlefield MENA. Before we can consider your startup, it must meet certain eligibility requirements. Let’s get these pesky details out of the way and then move on to what Battlefield competitors will experience.

To be considered for Startup Battlefield MENA 2018, you must:

• Have an early-stage company in “launch” stage
• Be headquartered in one of these eligible countries: Algeria, Armenia, Bahrain, Egypt, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, Yemen
• Have a fully working product/beta reasonably close to, or in, production
• Have received limited press or publicity to date
• Have no known intellectual property conflicts
• Apply by July 17, 2018, at 5 p.m. PST

Now then, let’s get on with the exciting stuff.

TechCrunch editors, highly experienced in all things related to Startup Battlefield, will vet the applications and choose 15 pre-Series A startups to compete. Each competing team receives top-notch pitch coaching from our editors — at no charge — so they’ll be primed and ready come the big day.

Teams have six minutes to pitch their company and present a product demo to the Startup Battlefield judges, who then follow up with hard-hitting questions. All of this nerve-wracking action takes place in front of a live, enthusiastic audience filled with startup fans, investors, tech founders and media outlets. Out of these teams, they’ll select five to go onto present in a finals round.

A new panel of fresh judges will confer on these final five startups and then select one to become “The Middle East and North Africa’s Most Promising Startup,” whose founders will take home a US$25,000 no-equity cash prize. They also win an expense-paid trip for two to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019 (assuming the company still qualifies to compete at the time).

Even teams that don’t win the big prize will still benefit from participating. You can’t find better media and investor exposure, and each team automatically becomes part of the Startup Battlefield alumni network — nearly 750 companies that have collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits. Talk about a networking opportunity.

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018 takes place on October 3, at the Beirut Digital District Nassif Yazigi, Lebanon. The July 17 deadline’s approaching, and it’ll be here before you know it, so apply today. We can’t wait to see you there!