Month: June 2019

Owlin, a startup we covered all the way back in late 2012, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding. The fundraise follows the fintech company’s pivot from a real-time news alert service to a more comprehensive “AI-based” text and news analytics platform to help financial institutions assess risk.

The new round is led by fintech investor Velocity Capital. The investment will enable Amsterdam-based Owlin to accelerate its growth internationally, especially in the U.K. and the U.S. The company’s international clients include Fitch Ratings, Adyen, Deutsche Bank, ING, and KPMG.

“We started with delivering news signals to dealing room environments with our platform,” Owlin co-founder and CEO Sjoerd Leemhuis recalls. “These are environments that rely on Bloomberg and Reuters. While doing this we gained a lot of spin-off within risk related departments. With regulatory requirements increasing, and banks being forced to work more efficiently, we’ve been especially successful with augmenting “slow data” (e.g. ratings, annual reports and research reports) for assessing credit risk with real-time actionable data”.

Leemhuis says this makes risk-models more accurate and risk departments “more beloved by the regulators”. “Next to this being our true blue ocean, we can also contribute to a more stable and sustainable financial system,” he says. “It’s great to see that rating agencies and regulators are sharing this vision for more data-driven risk management as is evident from our strategic partnership with Fitch Ratings”.

This is seeing Owlin enable 15,000 counter-party risk managers worldwide to track risk events that are not captured by traditional credit risk metrics. “We are adding news and unstructured data to their risk monitoring. In the end, our clients don’t just gain insights, they also gain time,” adds the Owlin CEO.

Meanwhile, Owlin’s Series A isn’t just a lesson in finding market fit but also in tenacity. In the last few years, two of the startup’s initial founders left after the company found itself in the rare situation of its seed-backer going bankrupt. This left Owlin falling back on a bootstrap strategy and being extremely cautious when choosing a next investor. It seems that not all risk is as easy to assess.

Owlin, a startup we covered all the way back in late 2012, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding. The fundraise follows the fintech company’s pivot from a real-time news alert service to a more comprehensive “AI-based” text and news analytics platform to help financial institutions assess risk.

The new round is led by fintech investor Velocity Capital. The investment will enable Amsterdam-based Owlin to accelerate its growth internationally, especially in the U.K. and the U.S. The company’s international clients include Fitch Ratings, Adyen, Deutsche Bank, ING, and KPMG.

“We started with delivering news signals to dealing room environments with our platform,” Owlin co-founder and CEO Sjoerd Leemhuis recalls. “These are environments that rely on Bloomberg and Reuters. While doing this we gained a lot of spin-off within risk related departments. With regulatory requirements increasing, and banks being forced to work more efficiently, we’ve been especially successful with augmenting “slow data” (e.g. ratings, annual reports and research reports) for assessing credit risk with real-time actionable data”.

Leemhuis says this makes risk-models more accurate and risk departments “more beloved by the regulators”. “Next to this being our true blue ocean, we can also contribute to a more stable and sustainable financial system,” he says. “It’s great to see that rating agencies and regulators are sharing this vision for more data-driven risk management as is evident from our strategic partnership with Fitch Ratings”.

This is seeing Owlin enable 15,000 counter-party risk managers worldwide to track risk events that are not captured by traditional credit risk metrics. “We are adding news and unstructured data to their risk monitoring. In the end, our clients don’t just gain insights, they also gain time,” adds the Owlin CEO.

Meanwhile, Owlin’s Series A isn’t just a lesson in finding market fit but also in tenacity. In the last few years, two of the startup’s initial founders left after the company found itself in the rare situation of its seed-backer going bankrupt. This left Owlin falling back on a bootstrap strategy and being extremely cautious when choosing a next investor. It seems that not all risk is as easy to assess.

SoftBank shook up the venture capital world with its unprecedented $100 billion Vision Fund, and the speculation continues around its follow-up.

The fund hasn’t quite closed $100 billion — it is mighty close… — but that hasn’t stopped reports of a sequel from surfacing for the last 18 months. SoftBank has mown through its allocation at speed, dealmaking increased to a record speed in Q1 despite controversy while its hiring has intensified, but the latest chatter suggests that a number of the fund’s key backers are lukewarm at the prospect of a return act.

The Wall Street Journal this weekend reported that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which anchored the Vision Fund with a $45 billion investment (but also provides the controversy), and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are among those that “plan to make limited or no contributions” to the follow-up vehicle.

Sources told the Journal that a key factor is that many of these funds have disintermediated SoftBank to create their own vehicles that make late-stage investments in a more direct way. That cuts out the management fees to third-parties, and it gives the fund managers total control.

One wonders whether the criticism of PIF, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who has been strongly linked with the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of the regime, is part of the equation here. It isn’t mentioned in the report. The Vision Fund’s links to Khashoggi death hasn’t bothered startups offered access to billions, at least those in Asia that TechCrunch has probed over the issue.

SoftBank supremo Masayoshi Son has given the outside world a glimpse at the Vision Fund’s performance, which shows impressive gains on paper, but still the Journal reports that some investors are concerned a lack of transparency. Son pledged to provide a public update on the Vision Fund once per year on SoftBank’s annual earnings day; that’s a move that could provide greater transparency and, in the short term, potentially encourage an IPO for the fund itself, which has been rumored.

The Vision Fund refuted the Journal’s claims, calling them “misleading and even inaccurate.”

In the meanwhile, the Vision continues along at speed. In May alone it backed five ventures: India-based grocery startup Grofers, DoorDash, Germany’s GetYourGuide, lender Greensill Capital and GM Cruise.

SoftBank shook up the venture capital world with its unprecedented $100 billion Vision Fund, and the speculation continues around its follow-up.

The fund hasn’t quite closed $100 billion — it is mighty close… — but that hasn’t stopped reports of a sequel from surfacing for the last 18 months. SoftBank has mown through its allocation at speed, dealmaking increased to a record speed in Q1 despite controversy while its hiring has intensified, but the latest chatter suggests that a number of the fund’s key backers are lukewarm at the prospect of a return act.

The Wall Street Journal this weekend reported that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which anchored the Vision Fund with a $45 billion investment (but also provides the controversy), and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are among those that “plan to make limited or no contributions” to the follow-up vehicle.

Sources told the Journal that a key factor is that many of these funds have disintermediated SoftBank to create their own vehicles that make late-stage investments in a more direct way. That cuts out the management fees to third-parties, and it gives the fund managers total control.

One wonders whether the criticism of PIF, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who has been strongly linked with the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of the regime, is part of the equation here. It isn’t mentioned in the report. The Vision Fund’s links to Khashoggi death hasn’t bothered startups offered access to billions, at least those in Asia that TechCrunch has probed over the issue.

SoftBank supremo Masayoshi Son has given the outside world a glimpse at the Vision Fund’s performance, which shows impressive gains on paper, but still the Journal reports that some investors are concerned a lack of transparency. Son pledged to provide a public update on the Vision Fund once per year on SoftBank’s annual earnings day; that’s a move that could provide greater transparency and, in the short term, potentially encourage an IPO for the fund itself, which has been rumored.

The Vision Fund refuted the Journal’s claims, calling them “misleading and even inaccurate.”

In the meanwhile, the Vision continues along at speed. In May alone it backed five ventures: India-based grocery startup Grofers, DoorDash, Germany’s GetYourGuide, lender Greensill Capital and GM Cruise.

Hon on the heels of being acquired by company builder Finleap, German SME banking upstart Penta has appointed a new CEO.

Marko Wenthin, who previously co-founded solarisBank (the banking-as-a-service used by Penta), is now heading up the company, having replaced outgoing CEO and Penta co-founder Lav Odorović.

I understand Odorović left Penta last month after it was mutually agreed with new owner Finleap that a CEO with more experience scaling should be brought in. The Penta co-founder remains a shareholder in the SME banking fintech and is thought to be eyeing up his next venture.

Wenthin, who remains on the board of solarisBank according to LinkedIn, stepped down from the banking-as-a-service’s executive team in late 2018 citing “health reasons” and saying that he needed to focus on his recovery. It’s not known what those health issues were, although, regardless, it’s good to see that he’s well-enough to take up a new role as Penta CEO.

Asked to comment on Odorović’s departure, Penta issued the following statement:

“Lav is still part of the shareholders at Penta. His step back from the operational management team was a decision taken by mutual agreement. Lav was the right fit during the building phase of Penta, but by entering a new step of growth, the company faces bigger challenges and needs therefore to position itself differently”.

Penta says that in his new leadership role, Wenthin, who previously spent 16 years at Deutsche Bank, will lead international expansion — next stop Italy — and begin to market the fintech to larger SMEs in addition to its original focus on early-stage startups and other small digital companies. “In the future, the focus will be also on traditional medium-sized companies,” says Penta.

Adds Wenthin in a statement: “I am very much looking forward to my new role at Penta. On the one hand, digital banking for small and medium-sized companies is very important to me, as they are the driver of the economy and I have spent most of my career in this segment. On the other hand, I have known Penta and the team for a long time as successful partners of solarisBank. Penta is the best example of how a very focused banking provider can create real, digital added value for an entire customer segment in cooperation with a banking-as-a-service platform”.

Meanwhile, TechCrunch understands that Odorović’s departure and the appointment of Wenthin isn’t the only recent personnel change within Penta’s leadership team. According to LinkedIn, Aleksandar Orlic, who held the position of CTO, departed the company last month. “We are searching for a new CTO,” said a Penta spokesperson.

Alongside Wenthin, that leaves Penta’s current management team as Jessica Holzbach (Chief Customer Officer), Luka Ivicevic (Chief of Staff), Lukas Zörner (Chief Product Officer (CPO) and Matteo Concas (Chief Marketing Officer).

After a temporary ban, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, commonly known as the IEEE, announced on Monday it has lifted curbs on editors and peer-reviewers that work for Huawei and the Chinese firm’s affiliates.

The reversal is yet another example of the regulatory murkiness in the U.S.-China trade negotiations. In response to the U.S.’s order to bar American companies from conducting businesses with Huawei without government approval, the New York-based scientists’ association last week restricted Huawei and affiliated firms from its peer-review process.

The IEEE said then that the ban should have a “minimal impact” on its members around the world and assured that Huawei was still allowed to submit papers, attend IEEE-hosted conferences and participated in other activities that are open to the public.

The IEEE said it’s revoked the ban on Huawei after consulting the U.S. Department of Commerce on whether the export control restrictions apply to its own publication activities.

“Our initial, more restrictive approach was motivated solely by our desire to protect our volunteers and our members from legal risk. With the clarification received, this risk has been addressed,” the IEEE said in a statement.

The curbs, though short-lived, has sparked a major backlash in the global academic community, with professors from top-tier universities like Zhang Haixia at Peking University resigning from the IEEE boards in protest of the ban.

Five hours after Google publicly announced that it was working to resolve an outage in its Cloud computing network that had taken out a large chunk of Google services as well as Shopify, Snap, Discord and other popular apps, the problem seems to be resolved.

The outage hit everything from the ability to control the temperature in people’s homes and apartments through Google’s Nest to shopping on any service powered by Shopify, to Snapchat and Discord’s social networks.

“The network congestion issue in eastern USA, affecting Google Cloud, G Suite, and YouTube has been resolved for all affected users as of 4:00pm US/Pacific,” the company said in a statement.

“We will conduct an internal investigation of this issue and make appropriate improvements to our systems to help prevent or minimize future recurrence. We will provide a detailed report of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation. This detailed report will contain information regarding SLA credits.”

Even though the networking issue has been resolved, the fact that problems with Google’s cloud services could cause outages for several of the world’s most popular applications underscores how thin cloud coverage can be for modern computing architectures.

Most companies have put their entire backend in the hands of one company and while the benefits outweigh the risks most of the time, it’s worthwhile to at least think about contingency planning.

Modern cloud architectures have slashed the cost of creating new technology businesses, but it also means that companies are typically dependent on one service for their ability to operate.

As the world becomes more networked (especially as internet-enabled devices become more prevalent in the home), it’s going to be more important for companies to have a back-up plan in place in case these services go down.

In short, it’s fine to have a dependency — like storage or computing in the cloud — just as long as companies have a way to account for their dependents.

A Google Cloud outage is currently affecting a number of services in and out of the Google suite including Snap and Discord as well as Google services like Gmail, Nest, and others.

The problem was first reported by East Coast users in the U.S. in the afternoon, but reports from outage monitor DownDetector indicate that more regions may have been affected by the outage.

In a statement posted to its Google Cloud Platform the company said it was experience a multi-region issue with the Google Compute Engine.

“We are experiencing high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA, affecting multiple service in Google Cloud, GSuite, and YouTube. Users may see slow performance or intermittent errors. We believe we have identified the root cause of the congestion and expect to return to a normal service shortly,” the company said in a statement.

The issue isn’t confined to Google’s own applications. Companies that rely on Google Cloud services including, Discord, Snap, and Vimeo are all experiencing outages, according to some users.

YouTube star Kanghua Ren was just handed a 15 month prison sentence and 20,000 euro ($22,300) fine for a January 2017 video.

The video, which generated widespread outrage online, found Ren giving a homeless man in Barcelona repackaged Oreo cookies filled with toothpaste.

“Maybe I’ve gone a bit far, but look at the positive side: This will help him clean his teeth,” the China-born YouTuber (then 19) known as ReSet said in the video. “I think he hasn’t cleaned them since he became poor.”

The 52-year-old man vomited after ingesting the cookies, later telling a paper that he had, “never been treated so poorly while living on the street.”

Ren was given the sentence on Friday, though The New York Times notes that he’ll likely not actually serve any time, given how nonviolent crimes are generally treated in Spanish court. In addition, his YouTube channel and various social media counts were also ordered shut down for five years.

Where are all the biotechnology companies raising these days? We crunched some numbers to arrive at an answer.

Using funding rounds data from Crunchbase, we plotted the count of venture capital funding rounds raised by companies in the fairly expansive biotechnology category in Crunchbase. Click the chart below and you can hover over individual data points to see the number of venture rounds raised in a given metro area between the start of 2018 and late May 2019 (as of publication). Although there are biotechnology companies located throughout the world, we focused here on just the U.S.

Unlike in the software-funding business, where New York City (and its surrounding area) ranks second in overall deal volume, the greater Boston metro area outranks the Big Apple in biotech venture deal volume. The SF Bay Area (which includes both San Francisco and the towns in Silicon Valley north and west of San Jose) outranks Boston in biotech deal volume, but, then again, it’s also a much larger geographic area with a higher density of startups overall.

The bio business model breeds big deals

Crunchbase News recently covered a $120 million round raised by immunotherapy upstart AlloVir. In the software business, a raise that large would be notable; however, in the business of biology, not so much.

Just for reference, the average Series B round raised by U.S. enterprise software startups between 2018 and May 2019 was about $22.7 million. The average Series B for biotech companies from that same time period: just about $40 million on the dot.

Spinning up a cluster of cells at a lab bench is costlier, harder to do and the outcomes of experiments are less certain than the results of implementing a new software framework. Add to that the tremendous cost of performing clinical trials and clearing regulatory hurdles — all before costly sales and marketing campaigns to get treatments in front of doctors and end users — and it’s easy to understand why many biotechnology companies need to raise so much money in the early stages of the startup cycle.