Month: September 2020

Two in five people would never invest their money — but those who would are most likely to invest in properties. This is the conclusion of a recent survey by Hargreaves Lansdown, and it shows that unless you invested in the stocks of a few companies like Amazon, PayPal, Apple or Nvidia, real estate has proven to be one of the most reliable investment options.

The last months have seen a global outpouring of cash deposits estimated at around $2 trillion and savvy investors are eager to score the best opportunities. However, is the real estate market well equipped to capture a substantial part of this sum, considering the current context of the pandemic?

The truth is, that COVID-19 has stirred up the long-settled dust on real estate investing. This could paint a bright future with promising – yet different – projects for developers, startups and investors.

1. Tech is giving property investment a new façade

When it comes to digitization, real estate certainly hasn’t been one of the frontrunners. However, this could all change now. COVID-19 has brought novel challenges, and technology has stepped up to offer the solutions.

Yet, in a sense, innovation is competing with time. The longer the pandemic drags on, the higher the chance that digitization initiatives will stick around for the long run. After all, it’s one thing to make short-term fixes by substituting a home viewing with a detailed video, and quite another rolling out an entirely new process that uses drone-supported imagery, satellite viewings and virtual tools to promote an entire portfolio. Either way, it’s clear that the pandemic has pushed real estate toward a cultural change centered around a greater reliance on technology.

This is great news for proptech, a sector that seeks to disrupt and improve the way we buy, rent, sell, design, construct, manage and invest in residential and commercial property. Since 2013, annual investment in U.S. proptech companies has grown at a rate five times that of investment in all U.S. businesses. So, being one of the fastest developing business sectors, proptech will maintain a strong momentum throughout COVID-19, especially when prioritizing products and services that save people time and money.

Along the way, it’s turning to the major technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, including the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), blockchain, virtual and augmented reality, and much more. So, how specifically are property investment processes being affected by this trend?

House viewing and communication

According to João Richard Costa, the director of sales and marketing in a resort in the popular Portuguese region of Algarve, there was an initial bump in sales at the beginning of Q2, but the situation normalized fast — partially thanks to virtual viewings. “We’ve done some sales for people who haven’t even visited. They were happy to move forward on the basis of virtual tours and videos,” he said.

For some realtors, the pandemic was therefore not all that bad. House-bound investors had more time to interact, be it through emails and calls or by consuming content and attending webinars. In such a context, virtual viewings became well-received, inspiring realtors and different platforms to further improve their capabilities and champion seamless user experience.

Research papers come out at far too rapid a rate for anyone to read them all, especially in the field of machine learning, which now affects (and produces papers in) practically every industry and company. This column aims to collect the most relevant recent discoveries and papers, particularly in but not limited to artificial intelligence, and explain why they matter.

This week in Deep Science spans the stars all the way down to human anatomy, with research concerning exoplanets and Mars exploration, as well as understanding the subtlest habits and most hidden parts of the body.

Let’s proceed in order of distance from Earth. First is the confirmation of 50 new exoplanets by researchers at the University of Warwick. It’s important to distinguish this process from discovering exoplanets among the huge volumes of data collected by various satellites. These planets were flagged as candidates but no one has had the chance to say whether the data is conclusive. The team built on previous work that ranked planet candidates from least to most likely, creating a machine learning agent that could make precise statistical assessments and say with conviction, here is a planet.

“A prime example when the additional computational complexity of probabilistic methods pays off significantly,” said the university’s Theo Damoulas. It’s an excellent example of a field where marquee announcements, like the Google-powered discovery of Kepler-90 i, represent only the earliest results rather than a final destination, emphasizing the need for further study.

In our own solar system, we are getting to know our neighbor Mars quite well, though even the Perseverance rover, currently hurtling through the void in the direction of the red planet, is like its predecessors a very resource-limited platform. With a small power budget and years-old radiation-hardened CPUs, there’s only so much in the way of image analysis and other AI-type work it can do locally. But scientists are preparing for when a new generation of more powerful, efficient chips makes it to Mars.

Lucas di Grassi is returning to TechCrunch’s stage, and we’re going to talk racing electric vehicles. Again. Because electric is the future of motoring including motorsports.

There’s a lot to talk about with di Grassi. He’s an outspoken proponent of electric vehicles, previously helping to develop Formula E, push forward the AI racing circuit Roborace, and is now developing an international electric race scooter series. He’s seemingly focused on justifying the benefits of electric vehicles in the name of the environment and acts as a Clear Air Advocate for the UN and is organizing a technology and business event for a zero-carbon future in Latin America called Zero Summit.

Di Grassi is a racer in Formula E and a former champion, taking the podium in 2016. Before racing for the series, he helped develop the vehicles used in Formula E. Now, even with his plate full of other projects, he continues to compete in the electric F1 series.

The last time he spoke at a TechCrunch event, he talked extensively on Roborace’s development and arrival. At the time he was the CEO of Roborace, and now, nearly two years later, Roborace still seems like a far-fetched idea.

Di Grassi teamed up with former F1 driver Alex Wurz for a different racing series involving electric scooters. Called eSkootr Championship, the series is said to feature purpose-built scooters that are capable of speeds up to 100 km/h. The pair, along with motorsport entrepreneur CEO Hrak Sarikissian, and COO Khalil Beschir, an F1 broadcaster and former A1 GP racing driver, hope the series’s lower cost of entry will draw racers from different backgrounds and disciplines.

We hope you can join us at our TC: Sessions Mobility event on October 6 and 7 to hear from di Grassi and other icons trying to change the face of mobility. Tickets are currently on sale and available at an Early Bird rate until September 4th, 11:59 p.m. (PDT).

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

“Dear Sophie” columns are accessible for Extra Crunch subscribers; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie:

Our company is considering sponsoring a job candidate for an EB-1B green card. She currently has an H-1B research position at an American university. How long does the EB-1B process take? What can we do to maximize our chances for approval? Could we sponsor her for more than one green card to improve her chances?

— Passionate in Pleasanton

Dear Passionate,

Thanks for your questions. The situation you describe is complicated, so as always, please consult with an experienced immigration attorney to explore your company’s options in more detail. In a recent podcast, I talk about how tech companies can use the EB-1B green card to attract and retain researchers. In a nutshell, yes, you can hire her, and sponsor her for more than one green card simultaneously. Here’s how.

The time it takes for a candidate to receive an EB-1B green card depends on their country of birth. If your candidate was born in China or India, she faces waiting several years for an EB-1B green card unless she already has a priority date. For candidates born in any other country, the EB-1B green card process could still take close to a year or more even if the I-140 green card petition and I-485 adjustment of status form are filed together or if the I-140 petition is filed with premium processing. Regardless, in order for the candidate to remain in the U.S. to live and to start working for you in the short term while your company pursues an EB-1B green card, your company would need to sponsor her for an H-1B or O-1A in the interim.

Before I go into more detail about the requirements for the EB-1B green card and what it takes to submit a strong EB-1B petition, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Since the candidate works for a university, she likely has a cap-exempt H-1B, which means that the H-1B was not subject to the annual numerical cap and lottery. Unfortunately, a cap-exempt H-1B can only be transferred to another cap-exempt employer, such as another university, a nonprofit, or a government research organization. Your company will need to sponsor the candidate for a new, cap-subject H-1B by registering her for the lottery next March. If the candidate is selected in the lottery and the H-1B petition is approved, the earliest she can start working for you would be Oct. 1, 2021. Alternatively, we can work with you to explore options for alternative cap-exempt H-1Bs that you can get any time of year.

• If the job candidate was born in China or India and her current employer is sponsoring her for a green card, she may be able to retain her priority date, or place in line for a green card, when your company sponsors her for one.

• With limited exceptions, the U.S. has stopped issuing green cards and H-1B visas to individuals outside of the U.S. at least through the end of the year under President Trump’s proclamations, so the candidate should try to remain in legal status in the U.S. without departing.

To sponsor an individual for an EB-1B green card as a private company (and not a university), your company must already employ at least three full-time researchers and show accomplishments in the field of research. Your company must show that the EB-1B candidate has been recognized for exceptional achievement in her or his field of research.

The candidate must have at least three years of research experience and must meet two of the following criteria:

• Has received major prizes or awards for outstanding achievement.
• Belongs to associations that require outstanding achievement.
• Work or research has been written about in professional publications or other major media.
• Has judged the work of others either alone or while serving on a panel.
• Contributed original scientific or scholarly research in their field.
• Authored scholarly books or published articles.

It’s similar to an EB-1A but a little bit easier.

After working with counsel to determine the two qualifying criteria to focus on, make sure your company and the candidate assemble strong, compelling evidence and documentation. Supplement that documentation with letters of endorsement from experts in the candidate’s area of expertise. Keep in mind that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) evaluates the EB-1B petition based on whether sufficient evidence is submitted to support two of the criteria and the quality of the evidence that indicates the candidate is outstanding in their field. As usual, any documents in a foreign language must be translated and certified.

Your company will need to include the job offer letter indicating the intention to employ the candidate in a permanent research position in their field in addition to evidence that your company employs at least three researchers and has achieved accomplishments in the research field. These are usually pretty hefty packages of evidence and documents that attorneys assemble.

As with any application or petition, retain clear guidance because small mistakes on the I-140 green card petition can delay or even derail a case. For example, make sure you use the most recent edition of the necessary forms. Make sure the correct pages are signed in blue or black ink by the appropriate parties, keeping signatures inside the box so it can be scanned. Make sure your company submitted the correct filing fee amounts and premium processing fee, if applicable. Submit the application packet to the correct address and make sure it can be tracked.

To answer your last question, yes, your company can sponsor a candidate for more than one green card to improve the chances of receiving one.

Both the EB-1A green card for individuals with extraordinary ability and EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) for individuals with exceptional ability do not require employers to go through the lengthy PERM labor certification process. However, they have rigorous requirements. Check out this overview on those two green cards and how to prepare.

Three other green card options have less stringent requirements than the EB-1A and EB-2 NIW, but require PERM labor certification:

• EB-2 Green Cards for Members of the Professions Holding Advanced Degrees.
• EB-2 Green Cards for Persons of Exceptional Ability.
• EB-3 Green Cards for Skilled Workers, Professionals, and Other Workers.

For more details on the PERM labor certification process, check out my podcast on the topic.

Let me know how things turn out.

Good luck!

Sophie

Have a question? Ask it here. We reserve the right to edit your submission for clarity and/or space. The information provided in “Dear Sophie” is general information and not legal advice. For more information on the limitations of “Dear Sophie,” please view our full disclaimer here. You can contact Sophie directly at Alcorn Immigration Law.

Sophie’s podcast, Immigration Law for Tech Startups, is available on all major podcast platforms. If you’d like to be a guest, she’s accepting applications!

In the last couple of years, we’ve seen new teams in tech companies emerge that focus on responsible innovation, digital well-being, AI ethics or humane use. Whatever their titles, these individuals are given the task of “leading” ethics at their companies. Whether they’ve been created because of employee pressure, endless negative headlines or the late-flowering realization that considering your company’s impact on society is probably quite important, we should welcome these roles. After all, it’s clear current leaders have struggled to do the right thing, and this work needs dedication and expertise.

But we need to be cautious. The existence of roles like Salesforce’s chief ethics and humane use officer or Facebook’s director of responsible innovation can create the appearance of checking a box that they’ve addressed responsible tech, or the perception that responsibility for ethics is owned by solely them. And that would be a mistake.

After all, as Alix Dunn, the founder of Computer Says Maybe says, “Ethics is a cross-functional challenge. We wouldn’t expect a company to set up a finance department, then tell the rest of the organization, ‘No need to worry about money!’”

Older readers lived through the time when we were, or knew, the only “digital” or “online” person in the company. Our goal was to help others understand how the world was shifting and make sure our companies and partners did the same. We needed them to see that the internet wasn’t a separate thing or a lesser tool, but the lens through which we would engage in many interactions, for better or worse. We knew we’d succeeded when others became digital champions, too.

Just like the early days of digital, ethics can seem complex and remote. Remember thinking, “The internet will never be big enough to disrupt my industry? It can be tempting to assume you need a Ph.D. to debate complex topics like algorithmic bias or exclusion, especially as many of those chief ethics officers have those deep credentials and expertise. Even though tech fancies itself as an industry that welcomes new types of talent and thinking, credentialism is more part of the industry culture than we think – or admit. (If you’re questioning that, just think about how popular it is to put ex-employers in your Twitter biography.)

Unless you work on ethics full time or you’re a product VP, it’s easy to feel that you have no say or no role in your company’s commitment to social responsibility, especially if you’re underrepresented at your company or speaking up puts you at risk.

Ethical leaders play a powerful central role in coordinating, setting standards and creating incentives, but they wouldn’t want to be the only ones to own this work, either. Responsibility’s a muscle we build and practice. Doing the right thing isn’t a one-off action, but a commitment to values that inform day-to-day behaviors and decisions.

So we need to create structures that ensure company values are embedded in roles across the board. This could include cementing ethical goals in core company and team OKRs to incentivize each contribution, or ensuring values are centered in job specs and hiring processes. Internal trainings that build knowledge and resilience can help, alongside mechanisms to connect the dots between product and business decisions and the implications those decisions have for individual users and our broader society. Space needs to exist for nuanced conversation and critique that doesn’t require a Ph.D. or “ethics” title but demands an open mind and the ability to listen (our recently released Ethical Explorer is a free tool to help navigate topics like data control or exclusion).

Increasingly, we should see chief ethics officers as champions and educators; just like those early digital leaders, their core function should be to get their teammates bought into this new world. This, in turn, helps workers hold their responsible tech leaders to account in an era of ethics washing.

Together, we come into our power when we ask questions, speak up, demand more and build better. The builders, questioners, makers and ethical leaders coming up in technology firms now will help us to reshape the industry for the better and create the products we deserve.

Twitch is doubling down on making its site more than just a place for live streaming gaming video. Last fall, the Amazon-owned company began testing a new feature called “Watch Parties,” which lets creators stream Amazon Prime Video content to viewers with Amazon Prime. This spring, Twitch opened up Watch Parties to its biggest streaming channels in the U.S., adding support for over 70 movies and TV shows from Prime Video at launch. Today, Twitch says the feature is now available to creators worldwide.

With the global expansion, Twitch streamers can host a Watch Party featuring any title that’s included with a Prime or Prime Video subscription in their region. Of course, if creators are streaming to an international audience, they’ll want to find content everyone can watch. These titles will be identified with a label reading “Broadly Available,” which means most Prime subscribers on Twitch can view the content.

As the content is streamed to viewers, the Twitch streamer’s own webcam will appear in the video player above Chat, so the community can watch how they react. Viewers can also show support for the streamer as they would normally, using features like Bits or subscribing to their channel, for example.

To use the feature, streamers will first need to add the Watch Party Quick Action to Stream Manger, then connect Watch Parties with their own Prime or Prime Video account. When it’s time to stream, they’ll just select the TV show or movie they want to watch, the go live.

The launch comes at a time when co-viewing experiences like this have been on the rise due to the coronavirus pandemic. People staying home under quarantines and lockdown have turned to co-watching to stay connected with family and friends. The browser extension Netflix Party went viral in the early days of the pandemic in the U.S., and since then major streaming services including Prime Video and Hulu have rolled out their own co-watching features, too.

Twitch has also found traction amid the pandemic as a home to more non-gaming content. Musicians, for example, have turned to Twitch to stream to fans. Other areas of its site, like “Just Chatting,” have boomed as well.

Twitch says it’s now working to make Watch Parties available on mobile devices — a feature it expects to launch in the next several months.

Stan Chudnovsky last spoke at Disrupt in 2016, so we’ve got a lot to catch up on.

Chudnovsky remains in charge of Facebook Messenger — his current title is VP of Messenger — so he can tell us more about how the product has evolved at this year’s Disrupt 2020 on September 14-18.

One of the biggest changes has been the launch of Messenger Rooms, a service that allows you to start and join video calls from within Facebook or Messenger (and eventually other Facebook products). The product’s appeal is pretty easy to see in a time of social distancing, but Facebook still has a long way to go if it wants to challenge Zoom.

Meanwhile, we’ve also seen increasing scrutiny about the role that messaging apps can play in spreading hate speech and misinformation. Among Facebook’s apps, WhatsApp has struggled the most visibly with these issues, but Messenger has also been adding tools to help people share accurate information about the COVID-19 pandemic.

On top of all that, we can get general updates on how FB Messenger has been doing during the pandemic, and what the big priorities are moving forward. Chudnovsky might also have some thoughts to share on the messaging landscape, and on the startup world — after all, before joining Facebook, he co-founded startups including Jiff, NFX, Ooga Labs and Wonderhill.

Learn more about the future of messaging at our all-virtual Disrupt 2020, which runs from September 14-18. Get your front row seat to see this panel live with a Disrupt Digital Pro Pass or a Digital Startup Alley Exhibitor Package. We’re excited to see you there.

Peer Medical has a big mission. After his father died of lung cancer, serial entrepreneur Ed Spiegel vowed to create a better way for lung cancer patients to deal with their disease. The startup has so far raised a $1.2M seed funding round for its ground-breaking approach and is onboarding patients at a rate of knots.

Peer Medical allows lung cancer patients to anonymously share their treatments with each other. This helps survivors find others like them and see which treatments and procedures work best. Users can search by biomarker, stage, age, or gender and review verified treatments and journeys of similar patients.

The funding round was led by Amsterdam-based ‘Partners in Equity’ (PiE), best known for investing seed capital into Adyen the Dutch payments unicorn; and London’s Seedcamp, alongside Angel investors. Peer Medical is now able to sign up patients’ electronic health records inside a minute. Its advisers include Dr. David Jablons, Head of Thoracic Oncology at UCSF, and Dr. Geoffrey Ginsburg, Head of Applied Genomics and Precision Medicine at Duke University .

Spiegel’s RentMineOnline was one of the first-ever ‘share economy’ startups to appear 10 years ago, and also Seedcamp’s first investment, and its first exit.

Indeed, the idea for Peer Medical came to Spiegel 10 years ago as the sole care-giver during his father’s three-year battle with lung cancer.

Spiegal told me he came up with the idea after meeting a buddy of his from his college who had also seen his father pass away from lung cancer. Comparing notes, Spiegal realized he could have had so much more information if they’ve been able to share treatment information.

“It’s like: ‘God I wish I would have known that back then!’. It’s just such a terrible experience. Unfortunately for me, I lived the experience, but I could have really used a sort of ‘electronic caregiver’ essentially to help my Dad through it.”

Participating in online forums, Spiegel found patients willing to help but realized the need for a centralized, searchable database that contained the knowledge these people possessed. There were over 1.7 million new cancer cases diagnosed in the US last year alone. The information for the patients is often disorganized, incomplete, or out of date. Medical record portability is growing in adoption and will be crucial in aiding treatments.

“It’s a little like you as a driver using Waze to crowdsource information from other drivers to get to the perfect route because you’re learning from all the other people,” commented Spiegal. “The future is certainly electronic health records, although it’s still kind of like using a credit card in 1999 online, it’s coming in a big way. You will have your records, and wonder ‘who else is just like me?’”

There are already big players making it happen such as Apple Health, and online hospital portal growth driven by companies like Epic and Cerner.

Peer Medical doesn’t really have ‘competitors’ in the traditional sense, other than Facebook support groups for patients, which are not anonymous and chaotic, and Google searches. PatientsLikeMe, founded in the early 2000s, doesn’t leverage the medical records aspect and sold in 2019 to United Health Care for 2017 after raising $100M.

Commenting, Reshma Sohoni, co-founder of Seedcamp said: “Ed was a part of Seedcamp’s first cohort of companies and returned our first successful exit. We’re thrilled to back Ed and his team for a second time and bring what we hope will be another successful venture to our portfolio. Unfortunately, I’ve also lost a parent to cancer and can relate to how important a tool like this can be to navigate such difficult times. We really like that the patient retains anonymity but is still able to learn from others.”

Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Seedcamp Managing Partner added: “At Seedcamp, this is exactly the type of community that we like to invest in. People, in this case, patients and caregivers, bound together by a common goal to fight cancer. We’re thrilled to help Ed and the Peer Medical team build this community that pools verified and anonymized medical records and uses them to optimize individual treatment paths.”

RentMineOnline, which did referrals for apartments on Facebook, was successfully sold to a publicly-traded property management software firm, Real Page (NASDAQ: RP).

A few weeks back, TechCrunch wrote about how Ramp, a corporate credit card startup with a focus on cost control, had added expense management software on top of its company plastic business. Closing out our piece, I wondered if “cards aren’t de facto commoditized by this point,” given the sheer number of companies that are willing to either underwrite, or supply corporate and consumer plastic.

One company in particular agreed with the sentiment, namely Airbase, which we last covered in March when it added $23.5 million to its Series A round, albeit at around triple the valuation of its earlier Series A tranche.

CEO Thejo Kote tells TechCrunch that cards are enablers to software, instead of the main event themselves. The CEO wants to build corporate spend software, not a corporate card business.

Airbase offers corporate cards and a SaaS suite of financial tooling to support corporate accounting departments and employees alike. While the startup does collect revenues from interchange — card-providers gets a tiny slice of transactions that occur on cards they hands out — the majority of its revenues come from its recurring software incomes, it told TechCrunch.

It’s a reasonable perspective, as with the increasing popularity of virtual cards, it’s likely that ‘credit cards’ will become more digital spend points than physical goods that you carry on your person in short order. At that point what will differentiate one set of digital plastic from another? Perhaps the software that is wrapped around it.

Cards as a gateway to software is actually a neat business model, as Airbase gets to make money from both products. A bit like how some SaaS companies are adding payments support in house to add another revenue stream, interchange incomes are a secondary income for Airbase, which Kote considers a B2B SaaS business first.

That doesn’t mean that Airbase isn’t seeing its spend-related revenues grow. According to Kote, Airbase users spent 500% as much in Q2 2020 as they did in Q2 2019, for example. But, at the same time, in the four quarters ending July 31, 2020, Airbase saw its annual recurring revenue (ARR) expand 280%, though the company does count interchange in that figure which some may find a controversial inclusion. The startup also claimed a net retention rate of 126% in the “first two quarters of 2020.” (Ramp has also seen rising spend results, as has Finix, to provide another reference point.)

So things are going well for Airbase, at least in growth terms.

Airbase has plans to keep building its software stack to subsume (support?) more and more of a company’s spend into its product. A more central spend-and-control suite could save some companies time, perhaps making accounting smoother and quicker. And, of course, it would also make Airbase stickier inside of its customers, and thus less likely to see either SaaS or interchange churn.

Fintech at one point meant accessing your bank account information online. Then it meant doing more banking online than in person. Later came waves of spending services and online investing tools. Most recently we’ve seen banking and investing remade digitally, with fees falling and accessibility rising, at least in theory.

So it’s perhaps not surprising that corporate cards are next to be reimagined, with players like Ramp, Brex, Airbase and others trying to figure out what the future of corporate spend looks like, and how best to get as much of the market for themselves as possible. Let’s see who wins.

Zume pulled the plug on its robotic pizza wing earlier this year. A lot goes into making a decision like that — particularly for a company whose robotic dreams were a press darling for a while there. But its own inabilities to get the math right shouldn’t necessarily be taken as an indication of a lack of interest in food automation.

Of course, until another startup fully demonstrates that potential, the Zume story will almost invariably be a preamble for any other company looking to automate the process of pizza making. XRobotics, which launches today, is looking to play a role in helping to change that narrative with a new device designed to replace the traditional pizza make lines.

The form factor is a differentiator. Zume, of course, was heavily invested in food trucks, with much of its value prop tied to an AI system designed to get the vehicles to the right place at the right time, in order to meet demand. There are also a number of companies invested in vending machines/kiosks — a popular play for food robotics in general.

XRobotics’ offering resembles an industrial 3D printer, in terms of size and form factor. The employee inserts the dough onto a tray, chooses the toppings from a connected tablet and the machine goes to work. The tray spins around to ensure the equal distribution of sauce, cheese and toppings.

Each machine is capable of topping multiple pizza simultaneously, with up to 150 per hour. The machine currently supports more than 20 toppings and a variety of different sizes. The parts are easily swappable for quick maintenance and the whole thing can be cleaned in around 15 minutes.

It’s a nice looking piece of machinery, to be sure, but fo me one of the most compelling things about the sales pitch here is its lack of flash. So many food robotics companies are invested in the spectacle as a major selling point. In other words, getting people to use your product based on the novelty of having a pizza made by a robot. That’s nice the first couple of times, but then what? XRobotics, on the other hand, is designed to operate a thankless job behind the scenes — helping companies ease the burden of high volume restaurants.

The SOSV/HAX -backed company says it’s already fielded more than 400 pre-orders for the machines, with plans to deploy to more than 50 locations early next year. It’s also in the process of closing a pre-seed round. Interest in the company has no doubt been enhanced during the COVID-19 crisis, as restaurants have experienced staffing shortages and are looking toward methods of food preparation that can reduce the risk of spread.