Year: 2019

Tencent has finally come out of a prolonged freeze on game approvals as Beijing granted licenses to two of its mobile games this month.

According to a notice published by China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television on January 24, Tencent is one of nearly 200 games assigned licenses in January.

That’s big news for the Shenzhen-based firm which has seen its share price plummet in the past months because the licensing halt crippled its ability to generate gaming revenues. Tencent is best known for its immensely popular WeChat messenger, but gaming makes up a bulk of its earnings.

China resumed its game approval process in December after a nine-month hiatus during which it worked to reshuffle its main regulating bodies for games. However, it left Tencent, the country’s biggest game publisher, and runner-up NetEase off its first batch of approved titles. NetEase also scored its first post-freeze license this month.

Despite the thawing, industry experts warn that approving will come at a much slower rate than before as regulators look to more closely monitor game contents, putting the burden on game developers and publishers to decipher new industry rules.

“The size of the gaming company does not matter. It matters how fast the company can be adapting to the new set of rules and guidelines,” Shenzhen-based game consultant Ilya Gutov told TechCrunch in December.

More to come

Jigsaw, the cybersecurity-focused division owned by Google parent Alphabet, is now allowing political organizations in Europe to sign up for its anti-web-flooding technology for free.

Until now, the free-to-use technology designed to protect political campaigns and websites against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks — dubbed Project Shield — was only available to news sites and journalists, human rights sites and elections monitoring sites in the U.S.

Now, Jigsaw is extending those protections to European political operators ahead of contentious parliamentary elections later this year.

The anti-DDoS technology aims to protect websites and services from being pummeled with tons of junk internet traffic from multiple sources at once. It protects against several types of DDoS attacks — and not just the traditional layer 3 or 4 protocol-based attacks but also the more powerful layer 7 attacks that involve large volume, often thanks to DNS amplification.

By caching a website, the technology absorbs a lot of the malicious traffic, and filtering harmful traffic keeps sites running.

Jigsaw’s move comes at a time when highly anticipated elections are expected to adjust political powers across the continent — particularly in what’s left of the European Union, after the controversial British departure from the EU, known as “Brexit.” Anti-political actors and nation-state hackers have long worked hard in Europe to disrupt elections and sow discord in an effort to discredit results.

Some have outright launched flooding attacks to down websites at a time when they’re most needed.

In the last year alone, several flooding attacks left critical websites downed for hours and longer. Election sites from Tennessee to the Czech Republic were downed in an effort to disrupt the voting process.

Project Shield said it’s offering the service for free to all European political organizations and campaigns, said Jigsaw’s Dan Keyserling in an email to TechCrunch. That’s in contrast to existing providers, like Cloudflare, that sell DDoS protection.

“The spread of DDoS attacks is a global issue,” said Keyserling. “Just scanning the news showed us it is a growing problem.”

Singapore’s digital fintech companies are attracting investor attention and dollars in 2019. Fresh from Singapore Life — a digital-only insurer — raising $33 million across two recently closed rounds, so Credit Culture, a digital loan specialist — has banked SG$40 million ($29.5 million) ahead of its imminent launch.

Credit Culture has raised its capital from Malaysia’s RCE Capital Berhad in a deal that allows the investor to potentially take a stake of up 30 percent in the startup. Its investment is via five-year bonds that are secured with the loan receivables from Credit Culture and include granted call options for taking that stake — in other words: this isn’t your regular startup deal.

RCE Capital Berhad said in a filing that Credit Culture has already raised SG$4 million ($2.9 million) via a seed investment, and it appears that it is financially set ahead of its launch.

“We are currently well-positioned with the recent injection of funds. That being said, we are always open to exploring various options to grow especially for regional expansion,” Credit Culture a representative told TechCrunch in an emailed response.

Founded by former bankers, Credit Culture is set to become one of Singapore’s first digital financial service startups after its parent company, DEY, secured approval to operate a moneylending business as part of a pilot to test online fintech services.

Since it hasn’t launched yet, there’s not a huge amount to say about the business, but its goal is to offer personal loans to Singapore-based customers using digital channels, so its website and mobile apps. The company plans to vet applicants using a mixture of existing platforms for data, including government initiative like MyInfo, and its own credit-scoring engine for creditworthiness assessment. It will also require face-to-face verification for loans to be granted, it confirmed.

Like Singapore Life and other digital-only ventures, including Hong Kong’s Bowtie, the objective is to pass on cost savings from being a purely online player — i.e. not operating branches and other physical consumer-facing outlets — and make prices fully transparent to applicants.

As you’d expect, Singapore is the initial focus for the company but it is already eying potential market expansions.

“We do have plans to expand to other Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines and Indonesia,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “There is a large potential given the need for personal financing and the large unbanked population segments.”

After days of intermittent blackouts at the order of the Zimbabwe’s Minister of State for National Security, ISPs have restored connectivity through a judicial order issued Monday.  

The cyber-affair adds Zimbabwe to a growing list of African countries—including Cameroon, Congo, and Ethiopia—whose governments have restricted internet expression in recent years.

The debacle demonstrates how easily internet access—a baseline for all tech ecosystems—can be taken away at the hands of the state.  

It also provides another case study for techies and ISPs regaining their cyber rights. Internet and social media are back up in Zimbabwe — at least for now.   

Protests lead to blackout

Similar to net shutdowns around the continent, politics and protests were the catalyst. Shortly after the government announced a dramatic increase in fuel prices on January 12, Zimbabwe’s Congress of Trade Unions called for a national strike.

Web and app blackouts in the Southern African country followed demonstrations that broke out in several cities. A government crackdown ensued with deaths reported.

“That began Monday [January 14]. A few demonstrations around the country become violent…Then on Tuesday morning there was a block on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp,” TechZim CEO Tinashe Nyahasha told TechCrunch on a call from Harare.

On January 15, Zimbabwe’s largest mobile carrier Econet Wireless confirmed via SMS and a message from founder Strive Masiyiwa that it had complied with a directive from the Minister of State for National Security to shutdown internet.

Net access was restored, taken down again, then restored, but social media sites remained blocked through January 21.

Data provided to TechCrunch from Oracle’s Internet Intelligence research unit confirm the net blackouts on January 16 and 18.

VPNs, government response

Throughout the restrictions, many of Zimbabwe’s citizens and techies resorted to VPNs and workarounds to access net and social media, according to Nyahasha.

Throughout the interruption TechZim ran updated stories on ways to bypass the cyber restrictions.

The Zimbabwean government’s response to the net shutdown started with denial—one minister referred to it as a congestion problem on local TV—to presidential spokesperson George Charamba invoking its necessity for national security reasons.

Then President Dambudzo Mnangawa took to Twitter to announce he would skip Davos meetings and return home to address the country’s unrest—a move panned online given his government’s restrictions on citizens using social media.    

The Embassy of Zimbabwe in Washington, DC and Ministry for ICT did not respond to TechCrunch inquiries on the country’s internet and app restrictions.

Court ruling, takeaways

On Monday this week, Zimbabwe’s high court ordered an end to any net restrictions, ruling only the country’s president, not the National Security Minister, could legally block the internet. Econet’s Zimbabwe Chief of Staff Lovemore Nyatsine and sources on the ground confirmed to TechCrunch that net and app access were back up Tuesday.  

Zimbabwe’s internet debacle created yet another obstacle for the country’s tech scene. The 2018 departure of 37–year President Robert Mugabe—a  hero to some and progress impeding dictator to others—sparked hope for the lifting of long-time economic sanctions on Zimbabwe and optimism for its startup scene.

Some of that has been dashed by subsequent political instability and worsening economic conditions since Mugabe’s departure, but not all of it, according to TechZim CEO Tinashe Nyahasha.   

“There was momentum and talk of people coming home and investing seed money. That’s slowed down…but that momentum is still there. It’s just not as fast as it could have been if the government had lived up to the expectations,” he said.  

Of the current macro-environment for Zimbabwe’s tech sector, “The truth is, it’s bad but it has been much worse,” Tinashe said

With calls for continued protests, Monday’s court ruling is likely not the last word on the internet face-off between the government and Zimbabwe’s ISPs and tech community.

Per the ruling, a decision to restrict net or apps will have to come directly from Zimbabwe’s president, who will weigh the pros and cons.

On a case by case basis, African governments may see the economic and reputational costs of internet shutdowns are exceeding whatever benefits they seek to achieve.

Cameroon’s 2017 shutdown, covered here by TechCrunch, cost businesses millions and spurred international condemnation when local activists created a  #BringBackOurInternet campaign that ultimately succeeded.

In the case of Zimbabwe, global internet rights group Access Now sprung to action, attaching its #KeepItOn hashtag to calls for the country’s government to reopen cyberspace soon after digital interference began.

Further attempts to restrict net and app access in Zimbabwe will likely revive what’s become a somewhat ironic cycle for cyber shutdowns. When governments cut off internet and social media access, citizens still find ways to use internet and social media to stop them.

Twitter is testing a new tag that will make it easier to parse who started a thread. The new feature, which is starting to pop up for some users, makes it easier to find posts from the original tweeter within a thread, but may also help curb (some types of) abuse on the platform, making it easier to distinguish accounts that are masquerading as other tweeters, for instance.

Twitter confirmed the experiment to TechCrunch, noting that the tag has been rolled out to a “small percentage” of iOS and Android users across markets.

“Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. As part of this work, we’re exploring adding more context to discussions by highlighting relevant replies – like those from the original Tweeter,” Twitter’s Director of Product Management Sara Haider told TechCrunch in a statement.

In practice, this will probably be most helpful for situations like distinguishing Elon Musk from the Ethereum-hocking false copies popping up below him, ensuring that users don’t have to read every character of a user’s handle before they can tell if it’s trusted information.

This solution obviously only helps users distinguish the “owner” of the thread they are viewing, but it’s a worthwhile start. As the company verifies more accounts but still allows users to easily change their name or profile picture, this could avert some imitation issues.

One wonders if they could have more easily distinguished the “Original Tweeter” in a more pretty way than by spelling out “Original Tweeter” beneath their handle, but it’s a small rollout and I guess it leaves very little room for interpretation, so whatever.

It’s certainly a small change, but it all plays back into Twitter’s more drastic (beta) plans to introduce changes like color-coded replies that give users more prominent interface cues to gather insights about the threads that they’re surfing through. The same beta app also introduces features like algorithmically-sorted replies and a generally more toned-down UI.

Microsoft’s Bing is down in China, according to users who took to social media beginning Wednesday afternoon to complain and express concerns.

The Seattle-based behemoth has confirmed that its search engine is currently inaccessible in China and is “engaged to determine next steps,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch Thursday morning.

Citing sources, the Financial Times reported (paywalled) on Thursday that China Unicom, a major state-owned telecommunication company, confirmed the government had ordered a block on Bing.

The situation appears to be a DNS (domain name system) corruption, one method for China to block websites through its intricate censor system called the Great Firewall. When a user enters a domain name associated with a banned IP address, the Firewall will corrupt the connection to stop the page from loading.

Several users told TechCrunch they are still able to access Bing by directly visiting its IP address as of Thursday morning.

Bing remained one of the few non-Chinese internet firms that still have their core products up and running in a country where Google and Facebook have long been unavailable. Another rare case is LinkedIn, which runs a filtered version of its social network for professionals and caught flack for bending to local censorship.

Bing also censors its search service for Chinese users, so it would be odd if its inaccessibility turned out to be a case of government clampdown. That said, China appears to be further tightening control over the cyberspace. Case in point, LinkedIn recently started to run strict identity checks on its China-based users.

Baidu remains the biggest search engine in China with smaller rival Sogou coming in second. Bing, which some users find is a more pleasant alternative to local options that are usually flooded with ads, is active on 320,000 unique devices monthly, according to third-party research firm iResearch. That’s dwarfed by Baidu’s 466 million and Sogou’s 43 million.

Google told the U.S. Congress in December it had no immediate plans to relaunch its search engine in China but felt “reaching out and giving users more information has a very positive impact.” The Mountain View-based firm shut down its search engine in mainland China back in 2010 under pressure over censorship but also cited cyber attacks as a factor in its decision to leave.

It’s a dark day to work in media. On the heels of news that TechCrunch parent company Verizon Media Group (formerly Oath) would lay off roughly 800 workers, BuzzFeed has announced its own substantial staffing cuts. And though they were anticipated, Gannett also made substantial cuts to newsrooms around the US on Wednesday.

In a memo to employees, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti explained that the layoffs would hit next week, reducing its workforce by 15% or about 250 positions.

“Over the past few months, we’ve done extensive work examining the trends in our business and the evolving economics of the digital platforms,” Peretti said in the memo. “We’ve developed a good understanding of where we can consolidate our teams, focus in on the content that is working, and achieve the right cost structure to support our multi-revenue model.”

Peretti added that he is “confident” that the layoffs would chart a sustainable course of growth for the new media giant — likely one that aims to turn the maturing media company’s revenues into a profit. According to the memo, that means a future in which BuzzFeed could sustain operations without seeking additional rounds of funding.

Between its smaller investments and two huge rounds from NBCUniversal, BuzzFeed has raised $500 million over the last decade. The company last raised $200 million in late 2016 from NBCUniversal, which invested a total of $400 million in the media company. BuzzFeed’s other investors include Andreessen Horowitz, RRE Ventures, Hearst Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.

Though the company cut 100 jobs in 2017, 2019’s layoffs are BuzzFeed’s most substantial to date. The news comes at an uncomfortable time for the website’s employees who will have to wait in limbo until early next week for the axe to come down.

“This will be a tough week for all of us and I realize it will be much worse for the people losing their jobs,” Peretti said. “To them, I want to say thank you, I’m sorry our work together is ending this way, and I hope we get to work together again in the future.

The full memo from Peretti to staff is embedded below.

Hello BuzzFeeders,

I’m writing with sad news: we are doing layoffs at BuzzFeed next week. We will be making a 15% overall reduction in headcount across the company. I’m sending this tonight because I wanted you to hear it from me directly instead of from the press.

Over the past few months, we’ve done extensive work examining the trends in our business and the evolving economics of the digital platforms. We’ve developed a good understanding of where we can consolidate our teams, focus in on the content that is working, and achieve the right cost structure to support our multi-revenue model. We are confident the changes we are making will put us on a firm foundation and allow us to invest and grow sustainably for years to come.

I’m so proud of what our team accomplished over the last year, including diversifying our revenue, and growing our business double digits. Unfortunately, revenue growth by itself isn’t enough to be successful in the long run. The restructuring we are undertaking will reduce our costs and improve our operating model so we can thrive and control our own destiny, without ever needing to raise funding again. These changes will allow us to be the clear winner in the market as the economics of digital media continue to improve.

I’ll share more about our future structure in a few days, but today I want to focus on what will be a difficult week, especially for the people who are leaving the company. These are talented people, friends, and valued colleagues, who’ve made huge contributions to our success, and who’ve done nothing wrong. Even though I’m confident this is the right business decision, it is upsetting and disappointing.

On a personal note, I’ve never thought about my job as “just business.” I care about the people at BuzzFeed more than anything other than my family. This will be a tough week for all of us and I realize it will be much worse for the people losing their jobs. To them, I want to say thank you, I’m sorry our work together is ending this way, and I hope we get to work together again in the future. Our loss will be to the benefit of other organizations where I know you will go on to make formidable contributions.

We will be back to you with specifics on the process by Monday at the latest. Thank you all in advance for your compassion and kindness as we go through this process.

Jonah

If your company uses a VPN and/or a mobile device management service to give you access to its intranet and internal web apps, then you know how annoying those are. AWS today launched a new product, Amazon WorkLink,  that promises to make this process significantly easier.

WorkLink is a fully managed service that, for $5 per month and user, allows IT admins to give employees one-click access to internal sites, no matter whether they run on AWS or not.

After installing WorkLink on their phones, employees can then simply use their favorite browser to surf to an internal website (other solutions often force users to use a sub-par proprietary browser). WorkLink the goes to work, securely requests that site and — and that’s the smart part here — a secure WorkLink container converts the site into an interactive vector graphic and sends it back to the phone. Nothing is stored or cached on the phone and AWS says WorkLink knows nothing about personal device activity either. That also means when a device is lost or stolen, there’s no need to try to wipe it remotely because there’s simply no company data on it.

IT can either use a VPN to connect from an AWS Virtual Private Cloud to on-premise servers or use AWS Direct Connect to bypass a VPN solution. The service works with all SAML 2.0 identity providers (which is the majority of identity services used in the enterprise, including the likes of Okta and Ping Identity) and as a fully managed service, it handles scaling and updates in the background.

“When talking with customers, all of them expressed frustration that their workers don’t have an easy and secure way to access internal content, which means that their employees either waste time or don’t bother trying to access content that would make them more productive,” says Peter Hill, Vice President of Productivity Applications at AWS, in today’s announcement. “With Amazon WorkLink, we’re enabling greater workplace productivity for those outside the corporate firewall in a way that IT administrators and security teams are happy with and employees are willing to use.”

WorkLink will work with both Android and iOS, but for the time being, only the iOS app (iOS 12+) is available. For now, it also only works with Safar, with Chrome support coming in the next few weeks. The service is also only available in Europe and North America for now, with additional regions coming later this year.

For the time being, AWS’s cloud archrivals Google and Microsoft don’t offer any services that are quite comparable with WorkLink. Google offers its Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy as a VPN alternative and as part of its BeyondCorp program, though that has a very different focus, while Microsoft offers a number of more traditional mobile device management solutions.

Sunil Nagaraj, who’d studied computer science as an undergrad at UNC Chapel Hill, landed a pretty nice gig after deciding to pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School. He wound up working as a principal for Bessemer Venture Partners, a top-tier venture firm with locations around the world.

Nagaraj helped source a number of deals at the firm over the next six years, too, investments that made him proud, like bets on the identity platform AuthO and the online dating site Zoosk, for example. But he was itching to meet with even younger companies, and he was itching to strike out on his own. So in the summer of 2017, he did, and now, 18 months of so later, Nagaraj says he has finally closed his debut fund with $30 million.

The name of the firm is Ubiquity Ventures, and its focus is on “software beyond the screen,” says Nagaraj, pointing to one investment, New Zealand-based Halter, as an example of what he means. How it works: with the help of a solar-powered, GPS-enabled neck band for cows, Halter’s app allows farmers to remotely guide their herds when it’s time for the animals to milked. Its software also keep the cows out of rivers and drains by creating virtual fences and can detect when cows are in heat or about to give birth, among other things.

We asked Nagaraj last night about leaving Bessemer, and what he has learned that other aspiring VCs – – as well as current VCs who aspire to leave their firms — might learn from his path. Our chat has been edited for length.

TC: You had a plum gig at Bessemer. Why leave it?

SN: I learned everything I know about venture investing from the team at Bessemer, especially from working alongside [partner] David Cowan . . But even though Bessemer’s large fund size and robust team provide enormous support and rigorous processes, that can be the wrong fit for very early seed capital and nascent technical sectors with uncertain outcomes. There are certain things I treasure about my new role that wouldn’t have been possible within any large firm, including spending one day each week coding and nerding out on new technologies.

TC: What gave you the confidence to bounce?

SN: There’s never a moment where it feels comfortable or rational to jump. Every founder of a startup or VC firm rolls their eyes when they hear someone say “I would jump for the right opportunity” or “I would jump if it made sense.” For me, I was in the midst of uncovering my inner nerd and beginning to see some of my investments take off  and those things, combined with some inspiration from the OG wave of single GP firms — and Manu Kumar at K9 Ventures in particular — got the ball rolling.

TC: Who wrote your first check who was not a family member?

SN: David Cowan. Next was John Hollar, CEO of the Computer History Museum for the last 10 years. (He stepped down last year.) We’ve known each other since 2009, when I arrived in the Valley and launched the Computer History Museum NextGen Board. He was a reference for VCs when I raised venture capital as an entrepreneur in 2010, and his confidence in Ubiquity was critical jump start.

TC: What was the hardest check to land?

SN The hardest capital to raise was institutional capital. Institutional investors like universities and pension funds tend to be savvier and have their pick of the litter, so I feel fortunate to have both categories of investors in my debut fund. Understandably, there are many hurdles to clear on track record, references, and portfolio construction for an institutional investor to commit to a new fund.

TC: You’ve already made nine investments, so presumably you were investing as you were getting your capital commitments. How much of the fund is left?

SN:  Yes, I have been investing since my first closing at the end of September 2017. I can’t say exact numbers, but Ubiquity is on schedule with capital deployment. Levl, which prevents the spoofing of wireless devices, and Eclypsium, which protects software in the real world from malware, were my first two investments; I made both in October 2017.

TC: How many companies do you anticipate funding altogether with this first fund?

SN: 20

TC: What happens if a company like Halter takes off and you want to continue funding it? Is the plan to use SPVs? AngelList?

SN: I have a healthy capital reserve for follow-on funding. After that, my priority is to ensure my LPs have access, likely via SPVs.

TC: Does Ubiquity have a geographic focus?

SN: Two portfolio companies are in the Pacific Northwest, another splits its time between Palo Alto and Israel, three more are in Palo Alto, and two are in Pasadena. Then there’s Halter in New Zealand. It’s not a total accident that zero are in San Francisco itself. My focus on software beyond the screen, deeply technical founders, and reasonable valuations hasn’t uncovered any SF investments so far.

TC: Are you price sensitive? What did you learn about this at Bessemer?

SN: Price matters to anyone buying anything. There’s a pervasive belief that a few companies make up all the returns in the Valley, so you shouldn’t worry about price if you have a winner. This may be true when looking retrospectively, but it’s sloppy thinking to apply when it is impossible to know if your current deal will be one of the massive winners. Also, high prices and pricing a deal to perfection too often results in down rounds and a messy aftermath for founders. My time at Bessemer allowed me to see so many good and bad startup outcomes, where price discipline only helps.

TC: How much traction does a startup need to have to get a check from you?

SN: Zero. I’m looking to back founders who are technical, know their problem space cold, and are going after a problem that fits tightly with Ubiquity’s thesis of software leaping off the screen and into the real world around us. I meet technical experts pre-idea, as well as founders with early products. My investments rarely have revenue when I invest,  but they should by the end of their seed runway.

TC: How much of an ownership stake are you targeting?

SN: Ten to twenty percent.

TC: What’s harder about starting your own firm than you anticipated would be the case?

SN: I wrongly believed that launching a venture firm would be similar to launching a startup. In startup fundraising, VCs are evaluating a specific product/market/customer. They have a very compressed time frame to decide. And they have monthly board meetings to provide regular input and even trigger changes.

With VC firm fundraising, their own investors have no concrete data about the future investments that will eventually populate the fund.  They’re on the receiving end of quarterly updates. And they’re called “limited” partners because they exercise no authority over investment decisions. The two worlds couldn’t be more different. As a result, LPs are charged with a much trickier decision and have a much deeper diligence process to make what amounts to a 10-year commitment.

TC: Anything easier than you’d guessed it would be, striking out on your own?

SN: Having no overhead allows me to focus 100 percent of my time on startups. It is more wonderful than I imagined.

Yesterday, enterprise tech accelerator Alchemist announced a fresh $2.5 million in venture capital funding. Today, it presented its latest cohort of startups, 19 in total, to a jam-packed audience of investors.

Alchemist invests $36,000 in companies with a revenue stream that come from enterprises, not consumers, with a bent toward technical founders. Its 20th cohort included a mental health startup, a construction tech business, a fintech company and more. Here’s a quick look at the startups that just completed its six-month program:

Cruz Foam: Makes compostable packaging “from the ocean for the ocean.” Instead of using finite petroleum-based materials, Cruz Foam transforms waste into a structural foam that is at-home compostable. The startup counts Pepsi among its first customers. Cruz Foam is working with the beverage maker on a sustainable packaging project.

Bobly: Gathers real-time information that helps businesses better understand their customers through a gamified software product.

DeepBench: The MIT tech startup’s software enables companies to create their own network of knowledge experts, with a mission to “unlock the world’s knowledge by reducing the cost of finding and matching experts.”

dumpling: Empowers gig workers to run their own “highly personal” grocery delivery businesses. Dumpling says they make $8 in revenue on each order and is active in 24 states. The startup is led by Nate D’Anna, the former director of corporate development at Cisco.

Ejenta: Allows health providers to remotely monitor patients from their homes using technology developed by NASA intended to monitor astronauts. Ejenta is currently working with health providers across the U.S. Ejenta charges health providers a per patient, per month subscription fee that’s 100 percent reimbursable by Medicare.

IoTrek: Leverages artificial intelligence and IoT to improve the productivity of construction job sites. The startup says it has raised $500,000 in funding so far from European and Indian investors.

AirBoard: Developer of “the world’s most powerful drone” for the agricultural industry. AirBoard’s drone is the size of two Toyota Prius cars and will focus initially on automated agtech pesticide spraying.

Walrus Security: Founded by Michael Walfish, a former professor of computer science at New York University, Walrus Security ensures digital payments are transferred safely. Walrus has already landed backing from some high-profile angels, including Alex Roetter, the former SVP of engineering at Twitter and the president of Kitty Hawk.

Insera Health: Developer of a voice-enabled app that collects a patient’s medical history to improve medical encounters. Insera says this improves the experiences for patients and doctors, with better communication and outcomes.

Laava Tech: Decreasing energy consumption for indoor farmers with proprietary LED lighting and a Light as a Service (LaaS) business model.

Oberon Global: Helps conduct and manage compliant token sales. Oberon provides a secure investor onboarding platform for funds, as well as companies raising money under Regulation D 506(b) and 506(c).

Autify (formerly known as Behivee): Automates software testing with artificial intelligence.

PenguinSmart: Initially focused on the China market, PenguinSmart provides an AI-assist rehab support service for speech and language therapy. The startup is led by Amy Kwok, a speech-language pathologist.

Rosalyn Inc: A proctoring platform that uses AI and computer vision to make exams secure and scalable. The startup says it reduces overhead and lets companies scale up their certification process while reducing fraud.

Gridline AI (formerly known as Solisite): Helps property owners turn roofs from liabilities into assets by reducing roofing costs and generating additional income for commercial real estate.

Tangent: Is using AI to provide high-quality content for marketing campaigns. The AI-enabled platform develops personalized images for the fashion e-commerce industry. Expects $600,000 in revenue by the end of Q4 2019.

Foresight Mental Health: Delivers end-to-end mental healthcare with a tech-enabled platform that develops treatment plans, provides a real-time tracker of symptoms and more. The company plans to open a brick-and-mortar location in San Francisco in 2019.

Bitesize: A B2B messaging platform that lets companies speak directly with customers via SMS.

Digify: A document security service that provides insights and protection to users sharing documents online.