Year: 2018

Agtech startup Ceres Imagine which uses computer vision and spectral imaging tech to deliver insights about crops to farmers has closed a new round of funding.

The Oakland-based company has pulled in a $25 million round led by Insight Venture Partners with participation from Romulus Capital. They have raised around $35 million to date.

Since the company closed their Series A, they’ve continued expanding their efforts beyond vineyards and orchards into “row crops” like corn, soybeans and wheat. While those crops may be lower margin by nature, they offer a big opportunity when it comes to scaling up their operations and tackling problems on a bigger scale.

“Our imagery helps farmers cope with a changing world full of challenges such as climate variability, labor shortages, and depressed markets,” said Ceres Imaging CEO Ashwin Madgavkar in a statement.

Unlike many of the other startups looking to provide analysis of farmers’ crops from above, Ceres Imaging isn’t looking to stick their tech onto drones, instead opting for manned airplanes to carry the substantial proprietary equipment and gather the imagery data in a less automated capacity.

This data goes beyond naked eye imagery, gathering spectral data that can deliver insights into the water and nutrient content of the crops. This data ultimately gives customers in the U.S. and Australia insights on how best to fertilize, water and apply pesticides to their crop with data that identifies early warning signs for damage, the company says.

Hot on the heels of Coinbase expanding its crypto fund to U.S.-based investors, the company’s own CEO has unveiled a fund of his own but this time it is focused on philanthropy.

GiveCrypto.org is aiming to raise $10 million by the end of this year — it has already secured $3.5 million — with a view to growing its total pot to $1 billion over the next two years.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he’s been inspired by the Gates Foundation and acts of charity from the crypto community — including Ripple donating millions in XRP to schools, the Pineapple Fund, and OMG giving $1 million to GiveDirectly — all of which he said shows that crypto can have a positive impact worldwide.

“People who invested early in crypto have amassed an enormous amount of wealth in a relatively short amount of time. Yet the reputation of the crypto community has been dominated by images of “bros in Lambos,” whose antics get a lot of attention. This doesn’t represent the best of our community.

“Most people I respect and know in the crypto ecosystem believe we have a responsibility to help this technology reach a much wider audience,” Armstrong, who has personally donated $1 million to GiveCrypto.org, wrote in a post on Medium.

The fund is open for donations at givecrypto.org/donate

The Coinbase chief said the fund will offer a mix of direct-cash transfers and crypto-to-crypto disbursements — as well as ‘hodling’ — to get funds to those who are deemed to need it.

On that subject, Armstrong said that when the time is right, GiveCrypto.org will find trusted local “ambassadors” to handle payments while it may also collaborate with non-profits and develop systems to track the money flow, as organizations like GiveDirectly already do.

A big focus looks to be the unbanked — crypto can reach those outside of traditional financing and cut out the potential for foul play by going direct — but it isn’t yet clear how the recipients of the donations will be selected. But then again the charity fund is still being assembled — on that note, it is currently hiring for an executive director who’ll be involved in making calls like that and shaping the fund.

As the tech world continues to grapple with how best to deal with the growing issue of malicious hacking and other security breaches, a startup that has developed a ratings system to track how well businesses are faring has raised a large growth round to expand its business. BitSight, which provides an ongoing, changing “risk security posture” of some 1,200 organizations, has raised $60 million in a Series D round led by Warburg Pincus, funding that it will use to expand its risk management solutions — specifically in areas like analytics — and overall business development.

This brings the total raised by BitSight to $155 million. Tom Turner, BitSight’s CEO, said the company was not disclosing its valuation with this round, but he hinted that it was ten times more than the company’s valuation at its Series A. That round, according to figures from PitchBook, was at $60 million post-money, meaning that the company is now valued at around $600 million.

Others in this round include Menlo Ventures, GGV Capital and Singtel Innov8, all previous investors.

Security ratings, if you are relatively unfamiliar with them, are just what they sound like: “an objective, continuous, external measure of an organization’s overall cyber security posture,” in the words of Turner.

At a time when businesses have to integrate with third parties and different divisions in their own operations on a regular basis, these ratings give a security officer the ability to track the relative security is of different aspects of the overall operation. “The ratings platform provides them with agility, enabling them to focus their scarce resources to address the biggest risks and conduct data-driven conversations with vendors to enable them to remediate issues quickly, reducing overall risk to the organization,” says Turner. Typical customers include large to mid-sized organizations, and while BitSight doesn’t provide specific names it says the list includes seven of the top 10 cyber insurers, 20 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and three of the top five investment banks, an impressive list.

Others that use these ratings are cyber insurance companies, when devising what kind of rates to charge customers, and also to monitor those customers after they are insured. And they are also used by companies, Turner says, to assess acquisition targets when a company is going through due diligence; or before making investments. The bigger picture is not just to identify security flaws or risks, but to use the data provided by BitSight to work on fixing the problems as well: there are some 100,000 third parties’ services and operations mapped and tracked in its “risk ecosystem.”

It’s a relatively new area of business insight that BitSight credits itself with having devised in 2011 — so in a way it’s not too much of a surprise that it’s the leader in its field. However, there are other competitors that have emerged, such as Security Scorecard, RiskRecon and FICO. 

If you think that “security ratings” sound a little like “credit ratings”, you are not wrong. They are devised, Turner said, “using an approach similar to credit ratings for financial risk,” with external data, user behavior and public disclosures all going into the mix. Scores calculated on a scale of 250-900 with a higher rating indicating better security performance.

Ironically the fall of the latter has helped the rise of the former, with a security rating now helping to form the overall financial profile of a company, given the high costs of fixing a breach — and the impact that can have on a company’s overall valuation (just ask Verizon and Yahoo). “Following the Equifax breach, 95% of the ratings reports sent to a large financial organization were BitSight’s,” Turner said. Those who are BitSight customers can share their vendors’ security rating free of charge and can invite the vendor into the platform to see the prioritized issues to remediate. “As breaches happen, we see an uptick of vendor access reports.”

It’s the increased risk of security breaches and how BitSight might be able to help manage that, or at least make the risk more apparent to the company and those it works with, that attracted investors in this round.

“With ever-increasing security threats, cybersecurity ratings are becoming an important part of leading companies’ cyber-defense. BitSight created the category and is the leader in the security ratings market, with a proven approach and platform to help customers continuously and effectively monitor cyber risk in their business ecosystem,” said Cary Davis, MD of Warburg Pincus, in a statement. “We believe there is tremendous opportunity for BitSight globally, and we look forward to working with Tom and the rest of the talented management team in the company’s next phase of growth.”

Davis will join BitSight’s board of directors with this round.

As the tech world continues to grapple with how best to deal with the growing issue of malicious hacking and other security breaches, a startup that has developed a ratings system to track how well businesses are faring has raised a large growth round to expand its business. BitSight, which provides an ongoing, changing “risk security posture” of some 1,200 organizations, has raised $60 million in a Series D round led by Warburg Pincus, funding that it will use to expand its risk management solutions — specifically in areas like analytics — and overall business development.

This brings the total raised by BitSight to $155 million. Tom Turner, BitSight’s CEO, said the company was not disclosing its valuation with this round, but he hinted that it was ten times more than the company’s valuation at its Series A. That round, according to figures from PitchBook, was at $60 million post-money, meaning that the company is now valued at around $600 million.

Others in this round include Menlo Ventures, GGV Capital and Singtel Innov8, all previous investors.

Security ratings, if you are relatively unfamiliar with them, are just what they sound like: “an objective, continuous, external measure of an organization’s overall cyber security posture,” in the words of Turner.

At a time when businesses have to integrate with third parties and different divisions in their own operations on a regular basis, these ratings give a security officer the ability to track the relative security is of different aspects of the overall operation. “The ratings platform provides them with agility, enabling them to focus their scarce resources to address the biggest risks and conduct data-driven conversations with vendors to enable them to remediate issues quickly, reducing overall risk to the organization,” says Turner. Typical customers include large to mid-sized organizations, and while BitSight doesn’t provide specific names it says the list includes seven of the top 10 cyber insurers, 20 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and three of the top five investment banks, an impressive list.

Others that use these ratings are cyber insurance companies, when devising what kind of rates to charge customers, and also to monitor those customers after they are insured. And they are also used by companies, Turner says, to assess acquisition targets when a company is going through due diligence; or before making investments. The bigger picture is not just to identify security flaws or risks, but to use the data provided by BitSight to work on fixing the problems as well: there are some 100,000 third parties’ services and operations mapped and tracked in its “risk ecosystem.”

It’s a relatively new area of business insight that BitSight credits itself with having devised in 2011 — so in a way it’s not too much of a surprise that it’s the leader in its field. However, there are other competitors that have emerged, such as Security Scorecard, RiskRecon and FICO. 

If you think that “security ratings” sound a little like “credit ratings”, you are not wrong. They are devised, Turner said, “using an approach similar to credit ratings for financial risk,” with external data, user behavior and public disclosures all going into the mix. Scores calculated on a scale of 250-900 with a higher rating indicating better security performance.

Ironically the fall of the latter has helped the rise of the former, with a security rating now helping to form the overall financial profile of a company, given the high costs of fixing a breach — and the impact that can have on a company’s overall valuation (just ask Verizon and Yahoo). “Following the Equifax breach, 95% of the ratings reports sent to a large financial organization were BitSight’s,” Turner said. Those who are BitSight customers can share their vendors’ security rating free of charge and can invite the vendor into the platform to see the prioritized issues to remediate. “As breaches happen, we see an uptick of vendor access reports.”

It’s the increased risk of security breaches and how BitSight might be able to help manage that, or at least make the risk more apparent to the company and those it works with, that attracted investors in this round.

“With ever-increasing security threats, cybersecurity ratings are becoming an important part of leading companies’ cyber-defense. BitSight created the category and is the leader in the security ratings market, with a proven approach and platform to help customers continuously and effectively monitor cyber risk in their business ecosystem,” said Cary Davis, MD of Warburg Pincus, in a statement. “We believe there is tremendous opportunity for BitSight globally, and we look forward to working with Tom and the rest of the talented management team in the company’s next phase of growth.”

Davis will join BitSight’s board of directors with this round.

If VR on the blockchain is all a bit too disruptive for you to handle, close the tab and carry on you luddite.

High Fidelity, a social VR startup founded by one of Second Life’s original creators has bagged a $35 million Series D led by Blockchain investment firm Galaxy Digital Ventures. Also participating in the round were Breyer Capital, IDG Capital Partners, Vulcan Capital and Blockchain Capital.

The startup is building the framework for a linked universe of user-generated worlds where people can meet up in VR with a backbone that the company’s leadership believes will allow the company to scale quickly once VR hardware catches up with expectations.

Lately, the company has put plenty of resources towards building out the blockchain side of its technology to drive in-game transactions and other aspects of the service. The usage is one of the company key differentiators even as it devotes resources to tech advances surrounding latency, 3D audio and high-detail environments. Of the company’s 60 employees, 7-8 of the engineers are focusing on blockchain tech currently, Rosedale tells me.

Second Life was well-known for its bustling in-game economy built on its Linden currency that still manages to drive a staggering $700 million in peer-to-peer transactions annually according to CEO Phillip Rosedale.

In High Fidelity’s case, blockchain tech means a way for users to actually own the digital goods they’ve purchased, tying their digital goods to a digital persona. Their Digital Asset Registry does this all in a decentralized capacity. The startup has also founded the Virtual Reality Blockchain Alliance (VRBA) a supergroup of early adopter companies that is basically aiming to let users’ avatars move freely between platforms and bring their blockchain-linked purchases with them.

Virtual reality may offer a worthwhile testbed for the often cagey theoretical real-world use cases for blockchain technology, with platform creators having the opportunity to structure a closed environment with blockchain at the heart of its governance.

High Fidelity’s version of the future doesn’t just look different in theory, it’s a little uncanny visually as well. While Facebook Spaces and Microsoft’s AltspaceVR have opted for game-like floating head avatars, High Fidelity has chosen to approach a more realistic design style that seems more closely aligned with the slightly disconcerting avatar style of Second Life.

Linden Labs’ Sansar

Second Life creator Linden Lab, which is also an investor in High Fidelity, has already introduced its own VR play called Sansar. The similarly beta effort loosely integrates various user-created environments into a sort of world wide web of game engine worlds that users can jump between. It isn’t the most polished solution which is fairly in keeping with the company’s assertion that it’s the “WordPress for VR” though there are certainly metaverse ambitions at its core much like with High Fidelity.

For a virtual reality startup that hasn’t talked usage numbers and remains in beta, $70 million is a pretty hefty amount of total funding, especially when they have the looming specter of Facebook investing billions into eating their aspired lunch.

Rosedale acknowledges the challenges, but seems to think that privacy concerns with Facebook are only going to grow more pronounced as more users dive into virtual worlds.

“I believe that when you move into VR, peoples’ concerns about privacy and security and identity are going to be very different than what they are with something like Facebook,” Rosedale told TechCrunch in an interview. So I think that Facebook’s focus on advertising as their revenue model and their focus on centralization of the services certainly creates an opportunity for competition with them and we intend to be in that space.”

Goals are just that, but no one can accuse Rosedale of being conservative in his. He foresees VR reaching an audience of 1 billion over the coming decade and the market for in-game goods in those worlds hitting $1 trillion with High Fidelity leading the way.

If VR on the blockchain is all a bit too disruptive for you to handle, close the tab and carry on you luddite.

High Fidelity, a social VR startup founded by one of Second Life’s original creators has bagged a $35 million Series D led by Blockchain investment firm Galaxy Digital Ventures. Also participating in the round were Breyer Capital, IDG Capital Partners, Vulcan Capital and Blockchain Capital.

The startup is building the framework for a linked universe of user-generated worlds where people can meet up in VR with a backbone that the company’s leadership believes will allow the company to scale quickly once VR hardware catches up with expectations.

Lately, the company has put plenty of resources towards building out the blockchain side of its technology to drive in-game transactions and other aspects of the service. The usage is one of the company key differentiators even as it devotes resources to tech advances surrounding latency, 3D audio and high-detail environments. Of the company’s 60 employees, 7-8 of the engineers are focusing on blockchain tech currently, Rosedale tells me.

Second Life was well-known for its bustling in-game economy built on its Linden currency that still manages to drive a staggering $700 million in peer-to-peer transactions annually according to CEO Phillip Rosedale.

In High Fidelity’s case, blockchain tech means a way for users to actually own the digital goods they’ve purchased, tying their digital goods to a digital persona. Their Digital Asset Registry does this all in a decentralized capacity. The startup has also founded the Virtual Reality Blockchain Alliance (VRBA) a supergroup of early adopter companies that is basically aiming to let users’ avatars move freely between platforms and bring their blockchain-linked purchases with them.

Virtual reality may offer a worthwhile testbed for the often cagey theoretical real-world use cases for blockchain technology, with platform creators having the opportunity to structure a closed environment with blockchain at the heart of its governance.

High Fidelity’s version of the future doesn’t just look different in theory, it’s a little uncanny visually as well. While Facebook Spaces and Microsoft’s AltspaceVR have opted for game-like floating head avatars, High Fidelity has chosen to approach a more realistic design style that seems more closely aligned with the slightly disconcerting avatar style of Second Life.

Linden Labs’ Sansar

Second Life creator Linden Lab, which is also an investor in High Fidelity, has already introduced its own VR play called Sansar. The similarly beta effort loosely integrates various user-created environments into a sort of world wide web of game engine worlds that users can jump between. It isn’t the most polished solution which is fairly in keeping with the company’s assertion that it’s the “WordPress for VR” though there are certainly metaverse ambitions at its core much like with High Fidelity.

For a virtual reality startup that hasn’t talked usage numbers and remains in beta, $70 million is a pretty hefty amount of total funding, especially when they have the looming specter of Facebook investing billions into eating their aspired lunch.

Rosedale acknowledges the challenges, but seems to think that privacy concerns with Facebook are only going to grow more pronounced as more users dive into virtual worlds.

“I believe that when you move into VR, peoples’ concerns about privacy and security and identity are going to be very different than what they are with something like Facebook,” Rosedale told TechCrunch in an interview. So I think that Facebook’s focus on advertising as their revenue model and their focus on centralization of the services certainly creates an opportunity for competition with them and we intend to be in that space.”

Goals are just that, but no one can accuse Rosedale of being conservative in his. He foresees VR reaching an audience of 1 billion over the coming decade and the market for in-game goods in those worlds hitting $1 trillion with High Fidelity leading the way.

Messaging app firm Line has confirmed it will launch a cryptocurrency exchange called BitBox next month.

The company said back in January that it planned to enter the crypto space with an exchange, but today it said that the BitBox service won’t be available for users in the U.S. and Japan — that’s presumably down to regulatory uncertainty.

What it will include, however, is support for trading 30 tokens — Line is only revealing big names like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin so far — and a 0.1 percent trading fee. Line said it has picked the tokens following “an extensive screening process” which saw an internal commitment asses what on the market represents “the most reliable and safest trading [options] for users.”

Bitbox will be available worldwide and in 15 languages. It isn’t yet clear whether it will include an option to buy or sell tokens using fiat — a key ramp to getting new money into crypto — or whether this will just be token-to-token trading.

Line has around 200 million monthly active users and it has expanded into adjacent services such as taxis on-demand, music streaming, mobile payment and more, so this foray could represent a step towards accepting crypto for its other services in the future. But the exclusion of U.S. and Japan-based users is a major caveat.

Japan is Line’s largest market for revenue and users, so by excluding the country, it is severely limiting the potential impact that Bitbox can have.

Nonetheless, the company is need of something fresh to revitalize its business in the wake of increasing competition from Facebook, which operates WhatsApp and Messenger, the world’s most popular messaging apps with over one billion monthly users each.

Prior its $1.1 billion U.S.-Japan IPO in 2016, Line had targeted a global audience via its messaging service — which pioneered the concept of stickers — and a connected games business. Its international expansion didn’t go according to plan, however, and the company refocused efforts on its four core markets of Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia, which account for 168 million of its active users.

In those markets, it offers a range of localized services that include video streaming, manga cartoons, shopping, ride-hailing and other on-demand services. Last year, it began to sell smart hardware and AI to offer its own cartoony alternative to Amazon’s Echo range and Google Home devices. In some markets, it also offers a Line-branded mobile phone/data service.

There’s plenty of pressure, however. Facebook’s global popularity makes Messenger an option for most internet users on the planet while the company is busy in other areas. WhatsApp recently moved into business solutions that allow companies to correspond with users via its service, and it is tipped to add payments soon. CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to look into whether Facebook can make use of blockchain technology and earlier this year he set up a dedicated division that is headed by David Marcus, the ex-lead for Messenger and former CEO of PayPal.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

Messaging app firm Line has confirmed it will launch a cryptocurrency exchange called BitBox next month.

The company said back in January that it planned to enter the crypto space with an exchange, but today it said that the BitBox service won’t be available for users in the U.S. and Japan — that’s presumably down to regulatory uncertainty.

What it will include, however, is support for trading 30 tokens — Line is only revealing big names like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin so far — and a 0.1 percent trading fee. Line said it has picked the tokens following “an extensive screening process” which saw an internal commitment asses what on the market represents “the most reliable and safest trading [options] for users.”

Bitbox will be available worldwide and in 15 languages. It isn’t yet clear whether it will include an option to buy or sell tokens using fiat — a key ramp to getting new money into crypto — or whether this will just be token-to-token trading.

Line has around 200 million monthly active users and it has expanded into adjacent services such as taxis on-demand, music streaming, mobile payment and more, so this foray could represent a step towards accepting crypto for its other services in the future. But the exclusion of U.S. and Japan-based users is a major caveat.

Japan is Line’s largest market for revenue and users, so by excluding the country, it is severely limiting the potential impact that Bitbox can have.

Nonetheless, the company is need of something fresh to revitalize its business in the wake of increasing competition from Facebook, which operates WhatsApp and Messenger, the world’s most popular messaging apps with over one billion monthly users each.

Prior its $1.1 billion U.S.-Japan IPO in 2016, Line had targeted a global audience via its messaging service — which pioneered the concept of stickers — and a connected games business. Its international expansion didn’t go according to plan, however, and the company refocused efforts on its four core markets of Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia, which account for 168 million of its active users.

In those markets, it offers a range of localized services that include video streaming, manga cartoons, shopping, ride-hailing and other on-demand services. Last year, it began to sell smart hardware and AI to offer its own cartoony alternative to Amazon’s Echo range and Google Home devices. In some markets, it also offers a Line-branded mobile phone/data service.

There’s plenty of pressure, however. Facebook’s global popularity makes Messenger an option for most internet users on the planet while the company is busy in other areas. WhatsApp recently moved into business solutions that allow companies to correspond with users via its service, and it is tipped to add payments soon. CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to look into whether Facebook can make use of blockchain technology and earlier this year he set up a dedicated division that is headed by David Marcus, the ex-lead for Messenger and former CEO of PayPal.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

What3words, a startup that has divided the entire world into 57 trillion 3-by-3 meter squares and assigned three words to each one, has disclosed three new investors all from the automotive world.

What3words announced Thursday that the venture arm of China’s largest auto group SAIC Motor, Formula 1 champion Nico Rosberg, and audio and navigation systems company Alpine Electronics have invested in the London-based company. Existing investor Intel Capital also participated in the round.

The latest funding round will be used to expand into new markets and product developments.

The investment, which was not disclosed, illustrates interest in the industry for technology that simplifies the user experience in cars, can be easily used with voice commands, and prepares companies for the age of autonomous vehicles. Since, the addressing system gives a unique three-word combination to a location it fixes a major flaw with a lot of voice-operated navigation systems: duplicate street names.

The company has assigned these 57 trillion squares a unique three-word name using an algorithm that has a vocabulary of 25,000 words. The system, which anyone can use via the what3words app, is available in more than a dozen languages. For instance, if you want to meet a friend in a specific corner of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, you can send the three-word address prices.slippery.traps. An Airbnb host might use a three word address to direct a guest to a tricky entrance. Someday, riders might be able to say or type in a three-word address to direct a self-driving car to drop them off a specific entrance at a large sports arena.

“This fund raise cements the direction this company is going,” What3words CEO Chris Sheldrick told TechCrunch. “Which is how, in the future, we are going to tell cars and devices and voice assistants where we’re going.”

Earlier this year, what3words disclosed that Daimler had taken 10% stake in the company. Daimler’s stake and these recently revealed investors are all part of its Series C funding round.

The company’s novel global addressing system has been integrated into in Mercedes’ new infotainment and navigation system—called the Mercedes-Benz User Experience or MBUX. The MBUX debuted on the new Mercedes A-Class, a hatchback that went on sale outside the U.S. in the spring. A sedan variant of the A-Class will come to the U.S. market in late 2018.

TomTom also announced plans last month to integrate what3words into its mapping and navigation products in the second half of this year. TomTom supplies its automotive navigation and traffic technology to car manufacturers, including Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, Alfa Romeo, Citroën and Peugeot.

The company is in talks with other automakers and suppliers to get what3words integrated into vehicle infotainment systems.