Year: 2019

Over the summer, Sphero acquired Colorado-educational music startup, Specdrums. The news arrived at a transitional time for the company, which was undergoing substantial growing pains as its line of licensed Disney products failed to catch fire.

Today at CES, the Boulder-based company is finally ready to share the first fruits of that acqusition. After debuting tonight in Vegas, the relaunched Specdrums will be available from Sphero’s site, starting tomorrow.

The kit is designed to teach kids how to play the drums and pick up some STEM learning in the process. It ships with one or two silicon rings ($65 or $100, respectively), with utilize motion and color sensors to create different sounds on various surfaces. They communicate with an app via Bluetooth and can also be interface with MIDI systems.

As for how the music toy/tool teaches STEM/STEAM, here’s Sphero,

“Educators can build a fully integrated tech- to-classroom experience through both STEM and fine arts fundamentals. Research has shown that students who have access to the arts in school have better attendance and improved academic outcomes. Meanwhile, arts and music education has experienced severe budget cuts in schools across the nation. With Specdrums, Sphero will be able to reach even more classrooms across the world to help teachers engage students effectively through hands-on music and STEAM tools.”

The system starts shipping January 19. It will be interesting to see how it ultimately plays into the company’s broader pivot from Star Wats robots to an all education focus.

Withings had a weird couple of years. The company was acquired by Nokia, only to be abandoned and launch again as its own brand late last year. It was a welcome return for a solid  brand in the health space that was cut down too early.

Until now, the reborn company’s releases have largely relegated to upgrades of existing lines. The BPM Core, on the other hand, looks to be one Withings’ most ambitious product offerings to date. The product combines three key pieces of cardiovascular health monitoring: blood pressure, Electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG) and valvular health (a digital stethoscope).

The three-in-one device is designed to look like a standard blood pressure arm cuff, but sports a number of different health sensors, including a pair of electrodes and and a digital microphone. With the press of a button, Withings says it’s capable of detecting all of the above in around a minute and a half.

The system features a built-in battery that can be recharged via microUSB and Bluetooth/WiFi for connecting to a smartphone. A handset isn’t necessary for doing the readings, but it will aggregate all of that information.

“After completing an ECG, the app will provide an assessment of heart activity, saying whether there is a normal heart rate (known as sinus rhythm) or if suspected AFib is present,” Withings says in a release tied to the news. “Incidences of AFib grow with age, but are often asymptomatic or not persistent in the initial stages. The ability to take readings at home, over time and easily share results with cardiologists and physicians between checkups greatly increases the chances of detection. As well as ECG results, all data from the Withings BPM Core, including actual audio recordings of the heart, can be shared with a person‘s medical and caregiving team.”

Withings is currently seeking FDA approval for the system. It’s on-track for a Q2 release, priced at $250.

When Apple added EKG to the Apple Watch for the Series 4, you knew it was only a matter of time before the rest of the industry followed suit. This, however, is a bit of a surprise. The recently resurrected Withings just announced that it will be bringing the heart monitoring tech to its line of hybrid smartwatch.

The company says the Move ECG is “the world’s first analog watch to record an electrocardiogram (on-demand), and I’m not sure anyone can really refute that claim. The watch features a trio of electrodes — two on the rear and one in the bezel (versus the crown with the Apple Watch) — which take a reading in around 30 seconds.

While Withings isn’t the first smartwatch the add the technology, there’s probably a lot said for bringing it to a simpler product with an analog face. I suspect that many users at risk of AFib and other series heart conditions might gravitate toward a more classic design. And Withings has already proven that it’s capable of making some solid devices in that category.

Beyond that, you get the standard array of sleep and fitness tracking, including the on-face dial, which show how close you are to achieving your daily step count. The watch is water resistant up to 50 meters and should get as much as 12 months of battery life.

The Move ECG will be available in Q2, priced at $130.

LG unveiled the LG HomeBrew a few weeks ahead of CES. I’ve seen the device today, and it looks like a gigantic, inconvenient machine.

It’s hard to grasp the size of the device based on photos, but it’s as big as a full-size espresso machine. You’ll need a big counter in your kitchen. But that’s not the issue.

The system uses a set of capsules. There’s a big tube-shaped malt capsule and three tiny Nespresso-shaped capsules for yeast, hop oil and flavoring. All these capsules come in a single box every time you want to start a new batch. But the capsules are not the issue either.

The main issue is that it takes two weeks to brew your beer once you’ve started the process. At the end, you get 5 liters of beer, or around 10 pints. Once you’re done, you need to replace the capsules and wait another two weeks.

Unlike traditional home brewing methods, you can’t start another batch while the machine is still brewing. So you’ll be out of beer quite regularly. Sure, you can buy two machines. Maybe LG should have designed a rackable system so that you can stack them up. But that defeats the purpose of an all-in-once, self-cleaning machine.

It’s unclear how much the machine and capsules are going to cost and if beer tastes any good. We couldn’t try the beer. There will be five different tastes — American IPA, American Pale Ale, English Stout, Belgian-style Witbier and Czech Pilsner.

ClassPass, the five-year-old fitness marketplace startup with $239 million in financing, is acquiring competitor GuavaPass, which was founded by Rob Pachter and Jeffrey Liu in 2015.

ClassPass is in the midst of an expansion sprint, both domestically and internationally. The company is hyper-focused on Asian markets, where GuavaPass had carved out its own place with 75 studio partners across 11 cities, including Abu Dhabi, Bnagkok, Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Mumbai, Shanghai and Singapore.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This is not ClassPass’s first acquisition. In 2014, ClassPass acquired competitor FitMob. But CEO Fritz Lanman says that this is less about competition and more about opportunity.

“The GuavaPass founders reached out to us,” he told TechCrunch. “They said that they were raising more money and had some options developing but that they felt they could continue working on their original mission as a part of ClassPass. They are really missionaries for the space.”

ClassPass will be bringing on about half of the GuavaPass team as part of the acquisition. However, Lanman doesn’t expect to do many acquisitions in the future, saying that “acquisition isn’t a part of the company’s expansion strategy.”

Alongside regularly planned expansion, the acquisition now puts ClassPass in more than 80 markets across the 11 countries, with plans to expand to 50 new cities in 2019.

ASUS just announced the first — but surely not the last — combination router/Alexa smart speaker of the show. The Lyra Voice is a pretty decent looking thing — covered in the sort of fabric design that’s become all rage with smart speakers like the Google Home and the latest iteration of the Echo.

In fact, the product looks a lot more like a speaker than router, with cones one opposite ends of the oblong device. There’s a pair of eight-watt speakers, which can be used to play music via bluetooth or for your standard Alexa commands.

The device features the company’s proprietary AiMesh technology, meaning you can pair it with other ASUS Lyra devices to take care of dead spots in your home. Of course, at $220, it’s a bit more than other systems mesh systems — though this one’s doing double duty.

It’s an interesting emerging category. ASUS certainly isn’t the first company to bring a combo router/smart speaker to the market — Netgear beat the company to it by a couple of months with the Orbi. But it’s a hybrid product that makes sense for those who want an Alexa product in every room of the home.

The Lyra Voice hits retail later this month.

Byton, the China-based electric car startup that made its debut at CES last year, is back to show what the finalized interior of its upcoming M-Byte SUV will look like.

The giant 48-inch wraparound digital dashboard screen that received so much attention is staying. And so is the touchscreen drive tablet located at the center of the steering wheel — although its size and design has changed.

No, Byton didn’t remove anything. It’s adding more.

Byton is adding an 8-inch touch pad between the driver and the front seat passengers on the production model of the M-Byte, executives revealed Monday at the CES 2019 in Las Vegas.

That means the electric vehicle with an estimated range of about 325 miles has one massive screen that takes up the entire dashboard and two touch pads in front — one for the driver and another that’s accessible to the driver and front seat passenger. Then there’s the independent rear-seat entertainment touchscreens for the backseat passengers. There are seven tablets in all.

Byton did decrease the size of the driver tablet, which is at the center of the steering wheel just above the driver airbag, to 7 inches and added some hard buttons.

Adding more to an already splashy and futuristic vehicle is unusual in an automotive world where automakers typically strip out these high-concept items once the vehicle heads production.

There is a reason for all of these screens, Byton says. And that’s a digital cloud platform that the company calls Byton Life, which connects apps and smart devices, and of course, all that data. Each seat will be equipped with facial recognition that recognizes the passenger and driver and delivers personalized information like their schedule and entertainment preferences. It can even take health diagnostics.

The vehicle will also be able to recognize voices of different users and sounds from different directions in the car. So everyone in the car can ask the vehicle to play their own music, for example. 

In North American and European markets, Byton is working with Amazon Alexa to jointly develop voice control. 

Byton is sticking with its rotating front seats that can move inward 12 degrees to make it easier interact and communicate with each other when the vehicle is not in motion. This might seem like an odd feature for a vehicle that will not be fully autonomous. It’s the kind of detail that shows up in a lot of autonomous vehicle design concepts.

The M Byte SUV will not come equipped with a Level 4 system, a designation by SAE International that means the car takes over all of the driving in certain conditions. Instead, it will have come out with Level 2 capabilities, which means the vehicle has combined automated features such as steering and acceleration, but still requires the human driver to remain and ultimately responsible.

The dashboard design has been tweaked as well. It now has hard buttons located in the center along with a driver monitoring system to ensure safety during assisted-driving modes.

Back when Byton first revealed its SUV concept at CES in January 2018, founders Daniel Kirchert, who is president, and CEO Carsten Breitfeld said it was close to what the final production version would look like. It’s about 80% complete, Kirchert told TechCrunch back in August, adding that the prototype has modest changes from the concept, including a slight changes to the height and headlights as well as improvements to the door latches.

The company, which was founded in 2016, now has 1,500 employees and plans to produce the M-Byte by the end of this year.

China-based electric vehicle startup Byton is on track to complete construction of its factory by May, company executives said Sunday at CES 2019 in Las Vegas.

The plant is being constructed in Nanjing, China and will have a capacity to produce 300,000 vehicles per year. The main body of the factory, which includes the stamping, painting, welding, assembly and battery, is currently under construction.  Manufacturing equipment in the factory will be supplied by AIDA Engineering of Japan, and KUKA and DÜRR of Germany. The company is also working with key strategic investors FAW and CATL, and suppliers Bosch, BOE, and Faurecia.

Completing the construction of the plant is just the first step, albeit a big one.

“We have made solid progress in the construction of our Nanjing plant and prototype vehicle testing,” Byton co-founder and president Daniel Kirchert said Sunday. “This is a vital year for Byton and our global team is sparing no efforts to achieve our goal of volume production.”

The company, which was founded by former BMW and Infiniti executives, is planning to debut a production version of its upcoming M-Byte SUV in mid-2019 with mass production to begin at the end of the year. The company is testing its vehicle in China, Europe, and the United States in a lead up to production.

In June, Byton secured a $500 million Series B funding round from investors FAW Group, Tus-Holdings and CATL. The company has raised $850 million as well as loans and subsidies from China.

I mean, this makes sense, I guess. The kitchen has long been a case use manufacturers have pointed for these kinds of smart screens. So why wouldn’t KitchenAid/Whirlpool want in on a little bit of that action?

The simply-named KitchenAid Smart Display is looks like your standard smart screen — taking a few design cues from Lenovo’s product, from the look of it (albeit with some enormous bezels).

The big differentiator here, however, is Yummly, the recipe search engine it acquired two years back. That offering, coupled with Google Assistant, puts recipes and guided cooking techniques at the center of the 10-inch, water resistant display. Beyond that, it’s pretty standard smart screen fare. You can watch YouTube, create shopping lists and control smart home devices from the product.

Honestly, there’s probably not a lot of reason to purchase a KitchenAid-branded device over, say, a standard Google Home Hub — even if you plan to keep it in the kitchen. But hell, if KitchenAid positions them right (Target, Lowe’s and other home/kitchen stores) it can probably move a bunch of these.

Whirlpool is also debuting a new Pro version of Yummly at the show, which brings instructions from pro chefs like Carla Hall, Richard Blais, Jet Tila and Daniel Holzman to the platform.

2018 saw a spate of major cyber attacks including the hacks of British Airways, Facebook and Marriott. Despite growing emphasis on and awareness of cyber threats, large organizations continue experiencing massive data breaches. And as the world becomes increasingly connected (cars and medical devices, among others), attack vectors are evolving and exposures multiply.

The Israeli cybersecurity industry has long been recognized as a hotbed for innovative solutions, and 2018 to be yet another strong year. Early stage companies raised more money than ever before to tackle emerging security threats like protecting the proliferating number of internet-connected devices and enabling blockchain technologies to thrive in more secure environments.

Growing seed rounds chasing greenfield opportunities

In 2018, the total amount of funding for Israeli cybersecurity companies across all stages grew 22 percent year-over-year to $1.03B. This closely matched the funding trends of 2016 and 2017 that each saw 23 percent year-over-year growth in funding amount. At the same time, 2018 saw 66 new companies founded, an increase of 10 percent over 2017, which represented a rebound after a dip last year (60 new companies in 2017 vs. 83 in 2016). Notably, average seed round increased to $3.6M in 2018 from $3.3M in 2017. 2018 marked the fifth consecutive year the size of Israeli cyber seed rounds grew. Since 2014, the average seed round size has increased 80 percent.

With industry growth metrics of Israeli cybersecurity up across the board in 2018, 2017’s dip in new cyber startups appears to have been an outlier. Not only does entrepreneurial interest in cyber look to be on the rise, investor enthusiasm, especially at the early stages, signals a market brimming with opportunity. Growing round sizes are interesting, but more revealing is following where this capital is flowing.

Emerging fields supplanting “traditional” technologies

The top emerging fields among new startups in 2018 included new verticals within IoT security, security for blockchain and cryptocurrencies, cloud-native security and SDP (Software Defined Perimeter). These nascent verticals drew considerably more attention than more “traditional” cyber sectors such as network security, email security and endpoint protection. Of all the emerging sectors, IoT drew the most investment with funding reaching $229.5M across all stages. What makes IoT particularly interesting is its continual branching into various new sub-domains including automotive, drones and medical devices.

Shai Morag, CEO and co-founder of Secdo, an Israeli cybersecurity firm acquired for $100M by Palo Alto Networks in mid-2018, sees these trends accelerating. “Innovation is going to keep happening in these areas for the next few years. We’ll also see innovation in third-party supply-chain risk assessment and management. Another wide-open field for innovation is SMBs. They are an underserved market hungry for full-stack solutions. These emerging fields are where I’m seeing the most excitement.”

Breaking out data on seed round funding into cyber startups targeting emerging vs. traditional markets reveals an even more pronounced growth trend. 2018’s aggressive early stage funding rounds disproportionately focused on companies pursuing emerging fields within cybersecurity. Of the 33 seed rounds raised in 2018, 20 (61 percent) went to companies in emerging fields. Even more striking, the sum of all seed rounds for emerging tech companies in 2018 was $79M, a 76 percent year-over-year increase. The numbers are clear, there is overwhelming investor interest in emerging cyber tech.

For example, the two largest seed funding rounds this year were in the IoT security domain. VDOO, founded by ex-Cyvera entrepreneurs (acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2014 for $200M) and which develops security solutions for IoT vendors, raised an abnormally high seed round of $13M. Toka Cyber has secured $12.5M seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz and others, to develop and expand their IoT cybersecurity platform for governmental agencies. Twistlock, a pioneer developer of cloud-native security solutions raised $33M series C this year. BigID which protects sensitive data in light of GDPR and other privacy regulations raised both A ($14M) and B ($30M) rounds during 2018.

As the more traditional cybersecurity markets continue to consolidate and mature, prospects dim for “me too” cyber startups. We see that the industry still faces pressing problems in need of innovative solutions. Looming labor shortages, GDPR and other global data privacy legislation and the IoT explosion, are major challenges presenting substantial opportunities to incumbents able to provide relief. Investors and entrepreneurs sense greenfield opportunities on the horizon and are racing to plant their flags before the competition. This new divergent ecosystem is more selective of sophisticated, savvy investors and specialized, seasoned entrepreneurs.

Greenfields, not green founders

In 2018, 60 percent of founders had more than a decade’s worth of experience in the private sector–a 28 percent increase from 2017. The experience of these more seasoned founders came mostly from working in startups either as an executive or as an entrepreneur. Although Israel’s cybersecurity ecosystem relies heavily on the technical training potential entrepreneurs receive during service in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in 2018, the proportion of founders coming straight out of the IDF fell to 2 percent, dropping from 10 percent the year before.

While nearly all Israeli founders leverage the skills and know-how acquired in the IDF’s various technological units, the need for experience from the private sector, either as an executive or an employee, seems to be more prevalent. Larger seed checks and larger ambitions are fuelling this push for more mature, veteran founders. Rising founders are not simply looking to build a novel technology and score a lucrative acquihire exit from an existing giant–they want to push into greenfield territory and stake a market-leading claim all their own.

Amichai Shulman, co-founder & former CTO of Imperva and a Venture Advisor at YL Ventures, gives such founders aiming to “own a market” the following advice: “Make sure you’re able to explain – primarily to yourselves – how your offering and product becomes something bigger than what it inherently is in the beginning. Be able to articulate how you expand (in the future) further into organizations, not just by ‘selling more’ but by solving bigger and more general problems.”

Cyber exits continue to overperform

Beyond general trends, 2018 also had many exciting individual exits. Checkpoint-Dome9 and CyberArk-Vaultive were notable because both acquirer and acquiree were Israeli — a mark of true market maturity. The acquisition of Sygnia by Singaporean holding giant Temasek also was remarkable because it shows that the Israeli cyber market continues to attract new classes and kinds of global strategic players each year. In addition, Thoma Bravo’s  $2.1B acquisition of Israeli cyber firm Imperva made waves throughout the industry.

Tsahy Shapsa, co-founder of Cloudlock, which was acquired by Cisco in 2016 for $293M, reflected on the potential he sees coming from growing global investment. “From an entrepreneurial perspective, there is a constant dilemma between short-/mid-term exits and building a legacy company. As funding floods into Israel from around the world, temptation to sell early only increases. But all these exits have an advantage. They grow the pool of experienced, ‘repeat’ entrepreneurs and set the stage for more legacy companies to originate locally.” Zohar Alon, CEO and co-founder of Dome9 Security, which was acquired by Checkpoint in 2018 for $175M added the following guidance: “Israeli entrepreneurs should establish and maintain a constant communication channel with the local corporate development leaders, same as most do with the VC community focusing on product and go-to-market synergies.”

Israeli cybersecurity maintaining momentum

In 2018, investors became more domain-focused and preferred emerging fields. With traditional cybersecurity consolidating, emerging greenfields signal much stronger potential. Furthermore, growth continued both in cybersecurity startups as well as their fundraising across all stages, indicating rising confidence in the Israeli cybersecurity market.

The 2018 Israeli cybersecurity market boasted an excellent exit climate, highlighted not only by Imperva’s large-scale acquisition but also by the diversity in the types of players in the space. As such, the local cybersecurity market signals its ability to create and nurture large-scale security vendors, thereby attracting variety of both international and local players which continue identifying and capitalizing opportunities in this domain. For 2018, as has been the case for many years past, the state of the cyber nation is strong–and 2019 appears to promise more of the same.