Month: June 2019

If you are among those who thought that the scooter market sounded a little overhyped and overcrowded, we’ve gotten wind of a deal that could point to some impending consolidation. The on-demand scooter business Bird has agreed to acquire Scoot, a smaller two-wheeled mobility startup, sources tell TechCrunch.

The stage of the negotiations is not clear although from what our sources tell us, it sounds like the deal is not closed. Contacted for a response, both Scoot and Bird said they declined to comment on speculation.

If accurate, it would be far from a merger of equals. Scoot was last valued at around $71 million, having raised about $47 million in equity funding to date from Scout Ventures, Vision Ridge Partners, angel investor Joanne Wilson and more.

Bird is significantly larger. Led by chief executive officer Travis VanderZanden, earlier this year the company was working on a round of financing reportedly worth $300 million at a $2.3 billion valuation. We’ve been able to confirm that this round has now closed, although we don’t yet know the final amount or who the investors are. (Backers of Bird include Sequoia, Index, Charles River Ventures, Tusk Ventures, Upfront Ventures and dozens more.) Scoot would be Bird’s first full acquisition.

Scooting toward consolidation

It’s still very early days in the scooter market in terms of consumer adoption, but that hasn’t stopped people from launching a lot of startups and raising funding to capitalise on what many believe will be a big opportunity longer term.

That promise is made bigger by the regulatory structure of the scooter market. Similar to their approach to bikes, many cities restrict the number of licenses they give out to companies to run on-street, hourly scooter services. Winning a license can give a company a near-monopoly on building a business in that city.

It also means that a combination between two companies whose geographic footprints do not overlap becomes a much cheaper and faster way of instantly creating a bigger business.

Notably, Scoot has a license to operate a pick-up/drop-off street service in the key market of San Francisco — where it competes with Skip, the only other licensed operator in the city. (Note: Bird last month did start up business again in SF, but only for the less popular offer of monthly rentals.)

What’s more, the two startups do not have any overlap in the rest of their footprints. Scoot is active in Barcelona, Spain and Santiago, Chile. Bird, on the other hand, has launched in about 100 cities spanning the U.S. and Europe, but its list does not include any of the cities where Scoot has rolled out its service.

Bird announced its new, two-seated electric vehicle earlier this week

On the vehicle front, the story is a little different. The two are providing, more or less, the same kinds of vehicles. Scoot has built out a network focused primarily on electric push scooters, seated scooters and electric bikes. Bird, meanwhile, has mostly built its service around electric push scooters, but just yesterday the company debuted its first seated vehicle to expand into a new product class.

Bird acquiring Scoot will help the two achieve better economies of scale in terms of vehicle purchasing power and device R&D.

It also helps them compete against the big boys. The market for scooters and other two-wheeled vehicles (collectively termed “micro-mobility”) is still a relatively new one, but Lyft and Uber have also waded in early to establish market share, as part of their own strategies to position themselves as the go-to platforms for any and all transportation needs.

Bird buying Scoot is one likely M&A move, but it’s not the only one.

Sources have told TechCrunch that an Uber acquisition of Skip (the other provider in SF) could also be in the works. Skip, much like Scoot, is another small player in the e-scooter market. To date, it has secured $31 million in venture capital funding from Initialized Capital, Accel and others.

Uber is already an active acquirer in the area of mico-mobility. If you remember, it acquired JUMP Bikes for $200 million in April 2018.

Uber’s acquisition of JUMP wasn’t surprising. In January 2018, the ride-hailing giant partnered with JUMP to launch Uber Bike, which lets Uber riders book JUMP bikes via the Uber app.

Other acquisitions in the nascent micro-mobility space include Lyft’s purchase of Motivate, a deal announced roughly one year ago. Motivate, the oldest and largest electric bike-share company in North America, did not disclose terms of the deal, though reports indicated it was asking for at least $250 million.

Bird — founded in 2017 — has yet to announce any acquisitions, although a spokesperson for the company said there have been quiet acqui-hires before now.

It was itself the subject of acquisition rumors for several months in 2018, too. Prior to Uber filing to go public in what was one of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings of the decade, many expected it to shell out cash for either Bird or Lime. From what we know, Uber was in discussions to acquire Bird, but ultimately it wasn’t able to meet Bird’s steep asking price.

BMW Group and Jaguar Land Rover have agreed to partner on the development of future electric vehicles, the latest in a string of collaborations between automakers to bring advanced, and often expensive technology to the mass market.

The two automakers confirmed Wednesday the collaboration, which they said is central to the industry’s transition from traditional internal combustion-powered cars and trucks to vehicles that are autonomous, connected, electric and can be shared.

BMW and Jaguar say they plan to take advantage of efficiencies and cost savings gained from shared research and development and production planning as well as economies of scale from joint procurement across the supply chain.

A JLR spokesperson would comment on specific details about the plans, when asked if Jaguar will stick with the architecture it created for its first all-electric vehicle, the I-Pace. JLR would only say the collaboration will support future Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles.

The BMW-Jaguar collaboration follows numerous other alliances, development partnerships and even proposed tie-ups between automakers hoping to share resources, technical acumen and costs. For instance, Volkswagen and Ford Motor Co. are working together to build commercial vans. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is the most recent example. FCA proposed in May merging its business with Renault that would have created the third largest global automaker with 8.7 million in annual vehicle sales. Fiat Chrysler has since withdrawn that offer, according to a report from the WSJ.

BMW and Jaguar have made their fair share of partnerships in recent months, notably an agreement to merge urban mobility services with Daimler into a single holding company back in March 2018 with a 50 percent stake each. The two companies, which plan to invest $1.1 billion (€1 billion) to foster these urban mobility services over the coming years, said they would unify their services under five categories by creating five joint ventures — Reach Now, Charge Now, Park Now, Free Now and Share Now

Under the BMW-Jaguar agreement, a team of engineers from both companies will work on next-generation electric drive units. The tech, namely the EDUs, will then be manufactured in each automaker’s respective factories. Jaguar will use its Wolverhampton-based Engine Manufacturing Centre (EMC), which the company has designated for its global electric drive program.

Jaguar also has a history of partnerships. The company partnered with self-driving vehicle company Waymo to supply it with I-Pace vehicles. The automaker also has a partnership with Magna, which manufactures the I-Pace.

From dark mode in iOS 13 to a redesigned user interface in tvOS to the dismantling of iTunes to the coming of iPadOS, Apple made a slew of announcements at its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday in San Jose. And accessibility was there in full force.

Accessibility, as it always does, plays a significant role in not only the conference itself — the sessions, labs and get-togethers all are mainstays of the week — but also in the software Apple shows off. Of particular interest this year is Apple’s Voice Control feature, available for macOS Catalina and iOS 13 devices, which allows users to control their Macs and iPhones using only the sound of their voices. In fact, it’s so compelling Apple decided to make it a banner feature worthy of precious slide space during Craig Federighi’s onstage presentation.

After the keynote concluded, I had an opportunity to sit down with Sarah Herrlinger, director of Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives at Apple, to talk more in-depth about Voice Control, as well as some other notable accessibility features coming to Apple’s platforms in 2019.

“One of the things that’s been really cool this year is the [accessibility] team has been firing on [all] cylinders across the board,“ Herrlinger said. “There’s something in each operating system and things for a lot of different types of use cases.”

Hello, computer

Although much of the conversation around what Apple announced revolves around iPadOS and Project Catalyst, based on what I’m hearing on podcasts and seeing in my Twitter timeline, Voice Control definitely is a crown jewel too. Nearly everyone has praised not only the engineering that went into developing it, but also the fact that Apple continues to lead the industry at making accessibility a first-class citizen. Myke Hurley said it best on the Upgrade podcast following the event, the weekly show he co-hosts with Jason Snell, when he said Voice Control is something Apple doesn’t have to do. They do it, he said, because it’s the right thing to do for every user. Put another way, Apple works so tirelessly on accessibility not for “the bloody ROI,” to paraphrase Tim Cook.

Sarah Herrlinger, director of Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives

Herrlinger demoed Voice Control to me, and it works as advertised despite our setting containing a lot of ambient noise. The gist of it is simple enough: You give your MacBook or iMac commands, such as “Open Mail” or “Tell Mary ‘Happy Birthday’ ” in Messages. Beyond the basic syntax, however, there are elements of Voice Control that make dictating to your Mac (or iOS device) easier. For example, Herrlinger explained how you can say “show numbers” in Safari’s Favorites view and little numbers, corresponding to the number of favorites you have, show up beside a website’s favicon. Say TechCrunch is No. 2 in your list of favorites. If the glyph is hard to make out visually, saying “open 2” will prompt Voice Control to launch TechCrunch’s page. Likewise, you can say “show grid” and a grid will appear so you perform actions such as clicking, tapping or pinching-and-zooming.

Herrlinger told me Voice Control, while conceptually fairly straightforward, is designed in such a way to be deep and customizable. Furthermore, Herrlinger added that Apple has put in a ton of work to improve the speech detection system so that it can more adeptly parse users with different types of speech, such as those who stutter. Over time, Voice Control should improve at this.

Of course, the reason for all the excitement over Voice Control is the way it makes computing more accessible. Which is to say, Apple has reached an inflection point with its assistive technologies where someone who can’t physically interact with their computers now has an outlet. To use only your voice to do this used to be the stuff of science fiction, but now it’s more or less reality. There are other tools, like Apple’s own Switch Control, that are in the ballpark, but Voice Control takes it to a whole other level. Apple is putting a stake in the ground — if you can’t touch your computer, just talk to it. For many disabled people, the floodgates just opened. It’s a big deal.

Hover Text is Dynamic Type reimagined

I’ve made my affection for iOS’s Dynamic Type feature known countless times. By the same token, I’ve made my displeasure of its absence on macOS known just as often. Apple heard me.

Another feature Herrlinger was keen to show me was something Apple is calling Hover Text, on macOS. A subset of the already present Zoom functionality, Hover Text sort of reminds me of tooltips in Windows. The “Hover” name stems from the function: place your mouse pointer over a selection of text and you get a bubble with said text enlarged.

Herrlinger told me the feature works system-wide, even in places like the menu bar. And yes, Hover Text is indeed customizable; users have access to a wide variety of fonts and colors to make Hover Text’s “bubbles” their own. Text size can be enlarged up to 128pt, Herrlinger said. What this means is users can play with different permutations of the feature to find which label(s) work best — say, a yellow background with dark blue text set in Helvetica for the highest contrast. The possibilities are virtually endless, a testament to how rich the feature is despite its simplicity.

At a high level, Hover Text strikes me as very much the spirit animal of my beloved Dynamic Type. They’re clearly different features, with clearly defined purposes, but both strive to achieve the same goal in their own ways. Herrlinger told me Apple strives to create software solutions that make sense for the respective platform and the company’s accessibility group believes Hover Text is a shining example. They could’ve, she told me, ported Dynamic Type to the Mac, but found Hover Text accomplished the same goal (enlarging text) in a manner that felt uniquely suited to the operating system.

iOS gains Pointer Support, sort of

As first spotted by the ever-intrepid, master spelunker Steve Troughton-Smith, iOS 13 includes pointer support — as an accessibility feature.

Mouse support lives in the AssistiveTouch menu, the suite of options designed for users with physical motor delays who can’t easily interact with the touchscreen itself. Apple says it works with both USB and Bluetooth mice, although the company doesn’t yet have an official compatibility list. It’s telling how mouse functionality is purposely included as an accessibility feature — meaning, Apple obviously sees its primary value as a discrete assistive tool. Of course, accessibility features have far greater relevance than simply bespoke tools for disabled people. Just look at Troughton-Smith’s tweet for proof.

Still, in my conversation with Herrlinger, she emphasized the point that Apple built pointer support into AssistiveTouch as a feature designed and developed with accessibility in mind. In other words, support for mice and external pointing devices are intended expressly for accessibility’s sake. As usual with Apple products, Herrlinger told me the foundational parts of pointer support date back “a couple years.” This is something they’ve been working on for some time.

To Apple, Herrlinger said, pointer support — which is supported on both iOS 13 and iPadOS — is a feature they felt needed to exist because the accessibility team recognized the need for it. There’s a whole class of users, she told me, who literally cannot access their devices without some other device, like a mouse or joystick. Hence, the team embarked on their mission to accommodate those users. When I asked why build pointer support into a touch-based operating system, Herrlinger was unequivocal in her answer: it serves a need in the accessibility community. “This is not your old desktop cursor as the primary input method,” she said.

The reality is, it’s not your secondary choice, either. The bottom line is that, while Apple loves the idea of accessibility features being adopted by the mainstream, pointer support in iOS 13 and iPadOS really isn’t the conventional PC input mechanism at all. In this case, it’s a niche feature that should suit a niche use case; it’s not supposed to represent the milestone of iPad’s productivity growth that many think it could be. Maybe that changes over time, but for now, it’s the new Mac Pro of software: not for everyone, not even for most people.

That said, a crucial point should be made here: people without disabilities will use this feature, regardless of its actual intended utility, and Apple recognizes that. No one will stop you from plugging a mouse into your iPad Pro. It’s no different from someone using Magnifier to get up close on a finely printed restaurant menu or using Type to Siri in order to quietly give commands in a Messages-like environment.

“Accessibility features can benefit more than the original community they were designed to support,” Herrlinger said. “For example, many people find value in closed captions. Our goal is to engineer for specific use cases so that we continue to bring the power of our devices to more people.”

It’s important, though, to take this feature in context. Users should be cognizant of the fact this implementation of pointer support is not meant to drastically alter the primary user input landscape of iPad in any way. That is the broader point Apple is trying to make here, and it’s a good one.

Why is an adtech startup going after the flooring industry?

That was my big question when I got on the phone with AdHawk CEO Todd Saunders and COO Dan Pratt. The company announced earlier this week that it’s raised a $13 million Series B round of funding in conjunction with the launch of a new website, FlooringStores.

“We look at AdHawk as the umbrella company,” Saunders explained. “Our core is a digital marketing company that’s built very strong machine learning. Now FloorForce is the brand we’re using to go after with the flooring vertical.”

FloorForce is actually a recent AdHawk acquisition, offering a variety of digital services for flooring companies — not just AdHawk’s specialty of Facebook and Google advertising, but also website building, reputation management and chatbots. FlooringStores, meanwhile, is the consumer-facing side of the business, a website where homeowners looking for flooring services can browse different providers

Saunders said FloorForce’s potential customer base includes the 20,000 independent flooring companies in the United states, all in an industry that, in his words, “hasn’t been touched by technology.”

Pratt added, “The vast majority of these retailers need to be convinced why … websites are important — or if they have one, it was built in 1997, which is obviously a really bad experience for consumers. In the same conversation where we’re pitching these websites for our retailers, we’re talking to them about other opportunities, like chatbots, and the universe of what is possible for these folks is magnified by 10x.”

Ultimately, Saunders and Pratt said they’re hoping to take a similar approach and expand into other home service verticals, all while taking advantage of the consumer data gathered through AdHawk and FloorForce.

AdHawk’s Series B was led by Entrée Capital, with participation from Table Management, Accomplice and others. The startup has now raised a total of $17.7 million, and Pratt said it’s been growing quickly — going from 30 employees a year ago to more than 100 currently, with the aim of approaching a headcount of 200 by the end of the year.

Uber (NYSE: UBER) closed up 5 percent Wednesday at $45 per share, trading for the first time since its May 10 debut at its initial public offering price.

The boost comes one day after the quiet period for the dozens of investment banks that underwrote Uber’s IPO came to an end. Which is to say, Uber’s stock price is trading up now that several buy ratings and positive analyst reports were released this week.

Uber raised $8.1 billion in its early May float, achieving an initial market cap of roughly $70 billion. Uber’s IPO was deemed a failure by many, after its share price failed to pop on its first day of trading, opening at a meager $42 apiece. Uber was previously valued at $72 billion by venture capitalists after raising billions of dollars in equity funding in a 10-year period.

In the last four weeks, Uber’s stock price has remained relatively stable, however, hovering between $40 and $43 per share.

In his first analyst note on the company, Raymond James analyst Justin Patterson wrote that Uber would be a leader in the “offline era,” and gave it a $50 price target.

“In contrast to traditional Internet companies, Uber is a digital app powering offline behavior,’ Patterson said, per CNBC. “This elevates cost in the early years, but arguably creates a more defensible long-term position.”

Uber, additionally, released its first-ever earnings report last week, disclosing losses of $1 billion in the first quarter of 2019 on revenue of $3.1 billion. The numbers came in as expected, with analysts anticipating an adjusted net loss per share of 76 cents on earnings of about $3.1 billion.

“Earlier this month we took the important step of becoming a public company, and we are now focused on executing our strategy to become a one-stop shop for local transportation and commerce,” Uber chief Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement regarding the company’s earnings. “In the first quarter, engagement across our platform was higher than ever, with an average of 17 million trips per day and an annualized gross bookings run-rate of $59 billion.”

YouTube has made the weakest, least courageous response to mass backlash regarding it’s ruling yesterday that right-wing personality Steven Crowder’s racist and homophobic attacks on Vox writer Carlos Maza didn’t violate its policies. Now YouTube says it’s demonetized Crowder’s channel because his “pattern of egregious actions has harmed the broader community”…but it will restore Crowder’s ability to earn a cut of YouTube ad revenue as long as he removes the link in his videos/channel to his offensive merchandise shop. Specifically, Crowder’s shop sells [Warning: disturbing language not condoned by TechCrunch]: “Socialism is for f*gs”.

That essentially means that Crowder’s consistent attacks on Maza are condoned by YouTube and it will continue to earn money off of them. T-shirts were not the problem here, targeted harassment is. And Crowder can still promote his merchandise shop within his videos, or link to his website that in turn links to his shop.

YouTube needs to completely rethink its approach to policy and enforcement here. Otherwise it’s likely to embolden harassers and bigots across the Internet.

Google has employed its network of street view vehicles to also measure street-level air quality in recent years, through an initiative it calls ‘Project Air View.’ Today, it’s making more of the resulting data from that ongoing initiative available to scientists and researcher organizations. The company is releasing an updated version of its air quality data set that includes information collected with partner Aclima’s environmental sensors gathered between 2017 and 2018.

The combined data cache new includes info from the SF Bay and San Joaquin valley area originally starting in 2016, along with the additional two years’ worth of data for those areas as well as for other parts of California, and other major cities including Houston, Salt Lake City, Copenhagen, London and Amsterdam.

All told, Google’s mapping data set for air quality now includes info covering over 140,000 miles and 7,000 hours of combined driving time spanning 2016 through 2018. That’s a significant base upon which to build a study of the trajectory of air quality changes over time, and Google plans to not only continue this program, but expand it with additional coverage for more cities globally, including in Asia, Africa and South America.

Amazon is serious about robotics. For most other companies, the technology may still feel like some distant novelty, but the ecommerce giant has already begun to deploy robotics systems en masse. Robotics VP Brad Porter noted on stage today at the Re:MARS conference in Las Vegas the the company has deployed 200,000 robotics drives globally.

Earlier this year, it noted that it has more than 100,000 robotics systems deployed across roughly 25 fulfillment centers here in the States, a number that includes both its own homegrown systems and third-parties. We captured both on a recent trip to the company’s massive Staten Island fulfillment center, though Amazon’s own Kiva-based systems clearly form the heart of the operation.

This morning, Amazon announced a pair of new robots, Xanthus and Pegasus. It noted at the event that it already has 800 of the latter, a warehouse package delivery robot, deployed in U.S. fulfillment centers.

Porter attempted to nip any questions about job loss in the bud at the show. “While these robots provide a critical function in our buildings, we are not automating away all the work,” he told the crowd. “In that same timeframe, we have added over 300,000 full time jobs around the world.”

Amazon notes that its robotic palletizers have stacked more than two billion totes. But the company is clearly looking to push things even furthers, as it works to make one-day delivery standard for Prime users. Such a move will no doubt have an impact on warehouse workers who have already been under strain from current working conditions. As it fields negative press around these sorts of jobs, Amazon is clearly looking to use robotics to help alleviate some of the burden.

ICYMI: As Peloton files for IPO, can its live fitness gamification model extend to other verticals?

Peloton confidentially filed for its IPO today, and the juggernaut fitness company is positioned to be one of the most interesting consumer debuts in the upcoming IPO season now that Uber has cleared the hurdle.

Extra Crunch’s media columnist Eric Peckham interviewed Zwift CEO Eric Min last month about the live video model that Peloton pioneered, and explored whether ‘Peloton for X’ is the next wave of consumers startups. If you missed it, be sure to read it now.

Which type of funding is actually best for your business?

Fundraising is hard. We explored how to generate FOMO among VCs in Eric’s column last week, but this week, we wanted to explore the routes to funding a startup, and whether venture capital is even the right option.

E3 2019 is shaping up to be a bit of an in-between year. Nintendo Switch sales have finally started slowing, but the company’s a ways off from its next-generation console. Microsoft and Sony will be offering info on theirs soon, but we likely won’t be seeing much — especially from the latter, which has opted to sit out this show altogether.

Still, there will be plenty to see next week in Los Angeles. Here’s what we expect so far.

Microsoft: Google, of all companies, made the biggest splash at GDC back in March, announcing Stadia, its live-streaming gaming service. Look for Microsoft to hit back this week, with a lot more information surrounding its competitor, Project xCloud. We have even fewer details about Microsoft’s offering, though the company has compared it to music streaming services like Spotify.

We could get a glimpse of some next-generation hardware at the event, as well, though that’s likely to amount to little more than a brief sneak peek. We will, however, be getting a good look at Gears 5, the latest entry in one of the console’s most beloved franchises. The new title, which debuted onstage this time last year, is expected to be a major departure for the series.

Speaking of beloved franchises, look for some gameplay time with Halo: Infinite. So far, we’ve got little info on the Xbox/Windows 10 title beyond a mysterious trailer. Look for more than a dozen titles in all, including Age of Empires and a new Fable.

Nintendo: With a June 28 release date, there won’t be many surprises left for Super Mario Maker 2 by the time E3 rolls around. Pokémon Sword / Shield, too, will also be pretty well-highlighted ahead of the show. The upcoming Animal Crossing Switch title seems like a pretty good bet. Also be on the lookout for Luigi’s Mansion 3, Fire Emblem Three Houses and the Switch version of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.

Sony: Nothing.

Seriously, nothing.

We know the PlayStation 5 is just around the corner. E3 would be a great time to offer some insight into the company’s next-generation console, but Sony has opted to sit this one out instead. The gaming giant’s absence will loom large over the event, leaving Microsoft as the only member of the big three with an actual in-person press conference, after years of Nintendo Treehouses.

E3 has traditionally been a show that’s ebbed and flowed more than most, but the gaming giant’s decision will no doubt leave many wondering whether the event has lost some of its relevance in the age of doing everything online.

Publishers: Marvel’s Avengers is going to be a huge one from RPG stalwarts Square Enix. We’ve heard very little about the eagerly awaited title. A since-removed event synopsis described the Marvel game as, “an epic action-adventure that combines cinematic storytelling with continuous single-player and co-operative gameplay.” The game will be sharing a stage with the upcoming Final Fantasy VII remake.

As for Ubisoft, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Rainbow Six Siege and Tom Clancy’s The Division are all on tap. Doom Eternal and Wolfenstein: Youngblood are the big titles for Bethesda this year, plus Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76 updates.

The show kicks off Sunday with Microsoft’s press conference. TechCrunch will be there all week.