Month: September 2020

Panasonic is adding another production line to the massive factory it operates with Tesla in Nevada, an expansion that will increase battery cell capacity by 10%.

The Sparks facility, dubbed Gigafactory 1, is the centerpiece of Tesla’s plan to expand global battery capacity and reduce the cost of electric vehicles. Panasonic has been its most important partner in that project, which based on a recent agreement should last until at least 2023.

Tesla and Panasonic initially planned for the Gigafactory to have the capacity to produce 35 gigawatt hours of batteries each year. That goal was achieved with 13 production lines. This latest expansion, which was first reported by the Reno Gazette Journal and confirmed by TechCrunch, will add a fourteenth line.

Panasonic said the additional line with create the need to add 100 more jobs at the Gigafactory.

Construction has already started on the project, Panasonic told TechCrunch. As Panasonic adds this new line it will also continue to install new technology for the “2170” lithium-ion cells it produces and supplies to Tesla, a change that will improve energy density by 5% from the current cell and reduces costly cobalt content. Panasonic is upgrading its all 13 battery cell lines with production. The new technology will allow for continued improvement with energy density expected to improve by 20% over five years.

The increase in energy density in the cells means that Tesla will theoretically see the same gains in its packs, which in turn should improve the battery range in its Model 3 and Model Y.  The 2170 cells are used in the Model 3 and its newest vehicle, the Model Y. The reduction in cobalt content, a rare chemical element that is expensive and has social and environmental costs, could also help reduce the price of the cells.

Disrupt 2020 is mere days away, but we’ve added pre-Disrupt events to help startup founders up their game, increase their ROI and drive their business forward. What’s next on the agenda?

If you’re a founder with big ideas, get ready for a rare opportunity designed to help you fund your startup dreams. Thursday, September 10th at 10am PT / 1pm ET, IFundWomen, the go-to marketplace for women-owned businesses, will lead a three part workshop. The topic: Leveraging Online Fundraising for Your Business.

Note: Anyone with a Disrupt ticket can attend. Navigate to the Event Agenda section on the CrunchMatch homepage to register. 

“The financial system chronically underserving women is not a new phenomenon. Last year, female-founded companies raised just 2.7 percent of the venture capital pie. For founders of color, that figure is less than 1 percent. According to DigitalUndivided, Black-founded companies have raised just .06 percent of the $424.7 billion of total tech venture funding since 2009.” — Julia Steele, Director of Marketing and Communications, IFundWomen.

IFundWomen aims to change the disheartening numbers game by, according to Steele, “working tirelessly to expand access to capital for women-owned businesses so they can launch and scale more successful, lucrative businesses.”

What can you expect from Thursday’s event? Have a look at the agenda.

Part 1: The Funding Journey Overview (15 minutes)

How you can leverage the different funding options for your business (crowdfunding, grants, raising venture capital).

Part 2: Funding Options for Women Entrepreneurs Deep Dive (45 minutes)

Attendees can select from three different sessions to learn more about the funding option that is most applicable to their stage.

• Crowdfunding: Alternative funding options are critical for women entrepreneurs. This session is for early-stage entrepreneurs who are just trying to prove demand and get their businesses off the ground.
• Grants: Another great alternative funding option for women entrepreneurs who have some revenue and are interested in accessing grants as a debt-free funding option.
• Venture Capital: How women entrepreneurs can approach the VC space.

Part 3: Virtual 1:1 Speed Networking (30 minutes: three 10-minute sessions)

A strong network is a key component of any strong fundraising effort. Use this time to connect with other entrepreneurs and build relationships.

IFundWomen hosts Leveraging Online Fundraising for Your Business Thursday, September 10th at 10am PT / 1pm ET. The workshop takes place on CrunchMatch. You can register here.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to explore your funding options, expand your business network and maximize your Disrupt 2020 experience. It’s a win-win-win!

IFundWomen is the go-to funding marketplace for women-owned businesses and the people who want to support them, providing access to capital, coaching, and connections critical to launching and growing sustainable businesses.

Online advertising is a game of scale, but one attempt to consolidate two competitors to better take on Google and Facebook has fallen apart. Taboola and Outbrain, startups that each provide publishers with ad-based content recommendation platforms, have called off a planned $850 million merger that would have valued the combined company at over $2 billion. The news of the cancellation had been rumoured in the Israeli press, and TechCrunch has now confirmed it with both companies, too.

“We’ve seen changing conditions in the market due to Covid-19, and we decided to terminate the deal,” said a person close to the merger, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s been such a long road, and it’s not great…but walking away is the right move.” We understand that a formal announcement will be made in the next couple of days.

The deal had been years in the making but was only finally pulled together about 11 months ago, in October 2019. However, in the interim, a combination of factors got in the way of it progressing.

The first of those was the global health pandemic. Both Taboola’s and Outbrain’s businesses are based around widgets that they integrate with publishers’ sites, which provide a way for publishers both to recirculate their own content, as well as share it, alongside sponsored content and ads, on other sites that also run the widgets. But in the last eight months, the world of ad-based media has taken a nosedive as many large brands reined in their ad budgets, and that had a knock-on effect on other players within the ecosystem.

And that has impacted financing prospects. The merger between the two was originally intended to have cash and stock components — specifically 30% of the value of Outbrain for $250 million in cash to be paid to Outbrain’s shareholders and employees — but in the contracting market, the financiers who were providing the capital for the cash component stalled. That deal ultimately expired in August, and it didn’t get extended. And then, attempts to convert the deal into an all-stock transaction were unpalatable to Outbrain, we understand. “The cash was a critical factor in the deal,” said a source.

On top of that was what was described to me as a “challenging cultural fit” between the two companies, something that only became more apparent as the closing of the deal dragged on. That again pointed to the cash element of the deal being important: “If you get the cash, you reduce the risk, so without that we grew even more uncomfortable,” the source said.

The third hurdle was ongoing regulatory issues. While it appeared that the US regulators nominally approved the deal, the merger was still being investigated both in the UK and in Israel, investigations that were due to go on for several more months. In the UK, the companies currently do not have any significant competitors, raising antitrust concerns.

The two companies, both founded out of Israel but headquartered in New York, had described their planned deal as a merger, but the combined entity would have been called Taboola, with Taboola’s founder Adam Singolda taking the CEO slot. Both Taboola and Outbrain were profitable going into the deal, each claiming some $1 billion in annual revenues. Taboola has raised some $160 million from investors that include Comcast, Fidelity and Pitango. Outbrain had raised $194 million, with investors including Index, HarbourVest and Lightspeed.

From what we understand, both companies will continue looking at ways that they can continue to grow, even if it’s not as a team. That will include weighing up other strategic acquisitions and other opportunities, since some truisms remain in the worlds of media and advertising. “Scale and reach are critical to being successful in this market,” said our source.

Apple strikes back at Epic Games, Android 11 is here and Microsoft announces a new stripped-down Xbox. This is your Daily Crunch for September 8, 2020.

The big story: Apple files countersuit against Epic

Apple has made the latest move in a legal battle against Epic Games, filing a lawsuit claiming that the company behind Fortnite is in breach of contract.

“Although Epic portrays itself as a modern corporate Robin Hood, in reality it is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that simply wants to pay nothing for the tremendous value it derives from the App Store,” Apple wrote in its suit.

This follows Epic’s attempt in August to avoid Apple’s 30% App Store fee, which led to Apple removing Fortnite and eventually Epic from the App Store. (Accounts tied to Epic’s Unreal game engine have not been removed.) Epic then launched a lawsuit and a PR campaign against Apple, arguing that the company is abusing its market power.

The tech giants

Android 11 has arrived — Android 11 isn’t a radical departure, but there are a number of interesting new user-facing updates that mostly center around messaging, privacy and giving you better control over all of your smart devices.

Microsoft confirms compact, $299 Xbox Series S arriving on November 10 — The Series S is essentially a stripped-down version of the upcoming Series X, without true 4K rendering and with a lot less processing power.

Apple’s next event is September 15 — The event will almost certainly feature the new Apple Watch.

Startups, funding and venture capital

General Motors takes $2 billion stake in electric truck startup Nikola — Through the deal, GM gets 11% ownership in startup Nikola, and will, in turn, produce Nikola’s wild fuel cell pickup truck by the end of 2022.

Silver Lake leads $500 million investment round in Indian online learning giant Byju’s — The round values the Indian online learning platform at $10.8 billion.

Progress snags software automation platform Chef for $220M — Progress, a Boston-area developer tool company, is boosting its offerings in a big way.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

How to respond to a data breach — How a company responds to a data breach can make or break its reputation.

9 proptech investors talk co-living, home offices and other pandemic trends — TechCrunch surveyed nine firms that are writing checks today, and this second installment focuses on the opportunities and risks for startups.

JFrog’s IPO strong initial price range values it ahead of the larger Sumo Logic — The IPO wave continues to crest as a number of well-known technology companies line up to float their equity on American exchanges.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

‘Mulan’ drove Disney+ app downloads up 68% week-over-week, but didn’t beat ‘Hamilton’ — According to early data, the launch helped grow Disney+ mobile installs by 68%, compared with one week prior.

Original Content podcast: ‘Teenage Bounty Hunters’ is more interested in relationships than bounty hunting — Despite the show’s silly name, we ended up surprisingly invested in the characters.

Drew Houston will talk about building a startup and digital transformation during COVID at TechCrunch Disrupt — This is next week!

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Twitter is working to make its real-time Trending section less confusing. Last week, the company announced it would begin pinning a representative tweet that gives more insight about a trend to the trend’s page and promised more changes would soon be underway. Today, the company says it will begin writing headlines and descriptions for some of the trends, too, so you’ll better understand why something is showing up in the Explore tab or when you tap into a trend itself.

Combined, these changes could have made Twitter’s Trending section feel more like a newsreader experience, had they been properly and fully rolled out across the Trends product.

For example, instead of only seeing that the rapper “Travis Scott” is trending at No. 1, as he is as of the time writing, Twitter now explains by way of a headline and short summary that he’s trending because his menu collaboration with McDonald’s has just launched. That’s helpful — especially because a celebrity’s name often trends when they’ve passed away or said something outrageous.

Unfortunately, Twitter’s ability to properly annotate its trends is still lacking, despite its recent updates.

There are a number of trends that will still offer no explanation — in particular, those that are led with a hashtag, like today’s #IJustDontBelieve, where users are tweeting about what they don’t believe by filling in the rest of the tweet with their own opinions. The long hashtag #BTS2ndNo1ONHot100, which is driven by fans of the KPop group, BTS, is also left unannotated. For newcomers unfamiliar with how BTS fans heavily use Twitter or the popularity of Twitter’s fill-the-blank memes, these sorts of trends could be confusing.

In other cases where a trend is unannotated, Twitter lets a news headline do the work of adding context.

Often, several of the top trends will be focused on news items of the day. But instead of a summary and headline provided by Twitter, you’ll find a representative news headline link listed alongside the trend instead.

“Proud Boys,” for example, is the No. 17 trend in the U.S. as of the time of writing. But Twitter only links to an article on the site Daily Beast that references a violent clash between the far-right Proud Boys and protestors. It doesn’t tackle trying to explain why this particular article, detailing one of now many incidents of violence across the U.S., is trending. Users, presumably, are meant to infer that the article itself is getting a lot of attention. But in reality, Twitter users are tweeting a variety of content under the “Proud Boys” trend, including their own videos of violent attacks and standoffs.

In this way, Twitter is doing a disservice by pointing only to a single news article when, people aren’t necessarily talking about the article itself — they’re sharing direct footage of what they witnessed or their opinions about the increasing violence in general.

Twitter, meanwhile, has put its curation team to work to summarize less important news, like a trend about Harry Styles’ new look.

Currently, Twitter’s Trending section in the U.S. features a list of 29 trends, but only around a half dozen have a headline or description written by Twitter, at the moment. 

Twitter had said when announcing the changes last week that the descriptions written by its curation team aim to provide straightforward, clearly sourced context around why something is trending on “some” tweets.

What’s not been clear, however, is how Twitter has been picking and choosing which trends to annotate.

Twitter, in theory, could have provided a lot more context around its trends, if it had invested more heavily in the product. There are third-party Twitter API partners that can generate data like when a trend is breaking, the velocity and number of tweets it’s seeing, the social sentiment around the trend, the location tweets are being generated from, and much more. But this sort of data isn’t available directly on Twitter.

Asked why only some of its trends have Twitter-provided explanations, a Twitter spokesperson explained that Twitter will annotate only those trends it believes needs the extra information.

“If a trend is particularly confusing and a lot of people are talking about it, it may get a pinned Tweet or a description,” the spokesperson says. That means Twitter is making editorial decisions to provide less context at times when it’s needed the most.

If, for example, a majority of tweets about a protest were either in support of or in horror of said event, Twitter’s ability to contextual that trend with data would be incredibly useful. But it’s not taking on those sorts of difficult challenges, it seems.

The spokesperson added that Twitter hopes to add more context to more trends over time.

 

 

Twitter is working to make its real-time Trending section less confusing. Last week, the company announced it would begin pinning a representative tweet that gives more insight about a trend to the trend’s page and promised more changes would soon be underway. Today, the company says it will begin writing headlines and descriptions for some of the trends, too, so you’ll better understand why something is showing up in the Explore tab or when you tap into a trend itself.

Combined, these changes could have made Twitter’s Trending section feel more like a newsreader experience, had they been properly and fully rolled out across the Trends product.

For example, instead of only seeing that the rapper “Travis Scott” is trending at No. 1, as he is as of the time writing, Twitter now explains by way of a headline and short summary that he’s trending because his menu collaboration with McDonald’s has just launched. That’s helpful — especially because a celebrity’s name often trends when they’ve passed away or said something outrageous.

Unfortunately, Twitter’s ability to properly annotate its trends is still lacking, despite its recent updates.

There are a number of trends that will still offer no explanation — in particular, those that are led with a hashtag, like today’s #IJustDontBelieve, where users are tweeting about what they don’t believe by filling in the rest of the tweet with their own opinions. The long hashtag #BTS2ndNo1ONHot100, which is driven by fans of the KPop group, BTS, is also left unannotated. For newcomers unfamiliar with how BTS fans heavily use Twitter or the popularity of Twitter’s fill-the-blank memes, these sorts of trends could be confusing.

In other cases where a trend is unannotated, Twitter lets a news headline do the work of adding context.

Often, several of the top trends will be focused on news items of the day. But instead of a summary and headline provided by Twitter, you’ll find a representative news headline link listed alongside the trend instead.

“Proud Boys,” for example, is the No. 17 trend in the U.S. as of the time of writing. But Twitter only links to an article on the site Daily Beast that references a violent clash between the far-right Proud Boys and protestors. It doesn’t tackle trying to explain why this particular article, detailing one of now many incidents of violence across the U.S., is trending. Users, presumably, are meant to infer that the article itself is getting a lot of attention. But in reality, Twitter users are tweeting a variety of content under the “Proud Boys” trend, including their own videos of violent attacks and standoffs.

In this way, Twitter is doing a disservice by pointing only to a single news article when, people aren’t necessarily talking about the article itself — they’re sharing direct footage of what they witnessed or their opinions about the increasing violence in general.

Twitter, meanwhile, has put its curation team to work to summarize less important news, like a trend about Harry Styles’ new look.

Currently, Twitter’s Trending section in the U.S. features a list of 29 trends, but only around a half dozen have a headline or description written by Twitter, at the moment. 

Twitter had said when announcing the changes last week that the descriptions written by its curation team aim to provide straightforward, clearly sourced context around why something is trending on “some” tweets.

What’s not been clear, however, is how Twitter has been picking and choosing which trends to annotate.

Twitter, in theory, could have provided a lot more context around its trends, if it had invested more heavily in the product. There are third-party Twitter API partners that can generate data like when a trend is breaking, the velocity and number of tweets it’s seeing, the social sentiment around the trend, the location tweets are being generated from, and much more. But this sort of data isn’t available directly on Twitter.

Asked why only some of its trends have Twitter-provided explanations, a Twitter spokesperson explained that Twitter will annotate only those trends it believes needs the extra information.

“If a trend is particularly confusing and a lot of people are talking about it, it may get a pinned Tweet or a description,” the spokesperson says. That means Twitter is making editorial decisions to provide less context at times when it’s needed the most.

If, for example, a majority of tweets about a protest were either in support of or in horror of said event, Twitter’s ability to contextual that trend with data would be incredibly useful. But it’s not taking on those sorts of difficult challenges, it seems.

The spokesperson added that Twitter hopes to add more context to more trends over time.

 

 

After months of teasers and announcements, Lucid Motors will finally reveal its first all-electric luxury sedan, the Air, during a live stream on September 9. But of course, the day before the big reveal, a little bit of news has trickled out.

Lucid Motors has previously alluded that it will offer a high-end variant of the Air. That flagship variant, called the Dream, is expected to cost $169,000 (or $161,500 after federal tax credits are accounted for), according to a report by Bloomberg. The report said Lucid will produce a Grand Touring variant that will be priced in the low $130,000s after federal tax credits, as well as a sub-$100,000 Touring model.

TechCrunch has learned there will be a fourth and cheaper base model priced under $80,000. It’s unclear just how much cheaper the base version of the Air will be or when it will be available; automakers often start producing their most expensive models first. If Lucid follows that strategy, the base version won’t be available until late 2021 or 2022.

A base model Air priced under $80,000 would put it in direct competition with the Tesla Model S. The base Tesla Model S has a range of 402 miles and costs $74,990. Lucid Motors has previously disclosed that Air has an estimated U.S. EPA range of 517 miles, although it’s possible that the base model will have a lower range. If the EPA validates that range, the Air would blow past every other EV on the road today, including Tesla. And if the base model has a range above 400 miles, it could further dampen sales of the Tesla Model S. Most of Tesla’s sales come from the Model 3.

Lucid has already disclosed a number of other details about its upcoming electric sedan, including that it is capable of a 9.9-second quarter mile, making it faster than most production cars on the market. But what might be more attractive to prospective customers is the vehicle’s advanced driver assistance system, which is designed to support hands-free driving on highways.

Earlier this summer, Lucid revealed that the Air will be loaded with 32 sensors, a driver-monitoring system and an Ethernet-based architecture for its advanced driver assistance system, which it calls DreamDrive. The total number isn’t what matters. The type and location — and of course, the software — does. So far, Lucid has just provided details on the hardware.

The Air will come with one lidar, radar, cameras and ultrasonic sensors. Lidar — the light detection and ranging radar that measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world around the car — is a noteworthy inclusion. The sensor is typically used on autonomous vehicles, not the production cars, trucks and SUVs that consumers will buy and drive. Lucid said its long-range lidar sensor will be placed in the front of the vehicle.

Lucid has previously said it will produce the Air at its new Arizona factory in early 2021, about three months later than expected due to a slowdown caused by COVID-19. Construction resumed in early June at its factory in Casa Grande, Arizona. At the time, the company said it was on target to complete phase one this year. Lucid Motors has also restarted vehicle development work at its California facility, which was briefly delayed due to shelter-in-place orders.

A graphic video of a man committing suicide spread across TikTok early this week, and the company is still working to remove it. Originating on Facebook Live, the clip was uploaded onto TikTok over the weekend and began to take root in users’ algorithmic recommendations.

While the video first made the jump from Facebook in full, some TikTok users have now spliced it into unrelated videos so that other people view the clip without intending to when it pops up on the “For You” page. On TikTok, the For You page serves as the front page of the app, feeding users a stream of content tailored just for them.

“On Sunday night, clips of a suicide that had originally been livestreamed on Facebook circulated on other platforms, including TikTok,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement. “Our systems, together with our moderation teams, have been detecting and removing these clips for violating our policies against content that displays, praises, glorifies, or promotes suicide. ”

TikTok will ban any account that makes multiple attempts to upload the clip. The company expressed appreciation for community members taking action to report it and spread the word and reminded users that mental health hotlines are available within the app and the company’s safety hub. The situation is a particularly disturbing strain of trolling, as surprising users of all ages with an extremely graphic video could result in very real mental health consequences for the anyone who ends up viewing it.

Graphic scenes of violence, sometimes broadcast live, have plagued social networks over the years and no solution has proven effective at keeping those videos from an audience. After a gunman broadcast a mass shooting at a New Zealand mosque last year, Facebook disallowed previous platform rule breakers from using Facebook Live. That rule change was not enough to stop the user from livestreaming his own death last month.

TikTok’s community moved to police itself as the video circulated, issuing warnings to followers to stay vigilant for the clip, which begins by showing a man with long hair and a beard on the phone seated at a desk. To play it safe, it’s not a bad idea to take a break from watching anything from users you don’t know until TikTok manages to thoroughly remove the disturbing clip from the platform.

If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. International resources are available here.

DNX Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on early-stage B2B startups in Japan and the United States, announced today that it has closed a new $315 million fund. This is DNX’s third flagship fund and along with supplementary annexed funds, brings its total managed so far to $567 million.

Founded in 2011, with offices in San Mateo, California and Tokyo, Japan, DNX has invested in more than 100 startups to date, and has thirteen exits under its belt. The firm, a member of the Draper Venture Network, focuses on cloud and enterprise software, cybersecurity, edge computing, sales and marketing automation, finance and retail. The companies it invests in are usually raising “seed plus” or Series A funding and DNX’s typical check size ranges from $1 million to $5 million, depending on the startup’s stage, managing director Q Motiwala told TechCrunch.

DNX isn’t disclosing the names of its third fund’s limited partners, but Motiwala said it includes more than 30 LPs, including financial institutions, banks and large conglomerates. DNX began working on the fund last year, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Motiwala says DNX is optimistic about the outlook for B2B startups, because past macroeconomic crises, including the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2001 dot-com burst, showed founders continue innovating as they figure out how to make their businesses more efficient while building urgently-needed solutions.

For example, DNX has always focused on sectors like cloud computing, cybersecurity, edge computing and robotics, but the COVID-19 pandemic has made those technologies even more relevant. For example, the massive upsurge in remote work means that companies need to adapt their tech infrastructure, while robots like the ones developed by Diligent Robotics, a DNX portfolio company, can help hospitals cope with with nursing shortages.

“Our overall theme has always been the digitization of traditional industries like construction, transportation or healthcare, and we’ve always been interested in how to make the reach to the customer much better, so sales and marketing automation, for example,” said Motiwala. “Then the last piece of this is, how do you make society or businesses function better through automation, and those might take things like robotics and other technology.”

The differences and similarities between U.S. and Japanese B2B startups

One of the reasons DNX was founded nine years ago was because “Japan has very strong spending on enterprise,” Motiwala said. The firm launched with offices in the U.S. and Japan and has continued to focus on B2B while growing the size of its funds. The firm’s debut fund was $40 million and its second one, announced in 2016, was more than $170 million. Motiwala said the $315 million DNX raised for its third fund was more than the firm expected.

U.S. B2B startups tend to think about global expansion at an earlier stage than their Japanese counterparts, but that has started to change, he said, and many Japanese B2B companies launch with an eye on expanding into different countries. Instead of the U.S. or Europe, however, they tend to focus on Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, or Taiwan. Another difference is that U.S. startups make heavier initial investments in their technology or IP, while in Japan, companies focus on getting to revenue and breaking even earlier. Motiwala said this might be because the Japanese venture capital ecosystem is smaller than in the U.S., but that attitude is also changing.

Examples of DNX portfolio companies that have successfully entered new countries include Cylance, a U.S. company that develops antivirus software using machine learning and predictive math modeling to protect devices from malware. DNX helped Cylance establish operations in Europe and Japan. On the Japan side, software testing company Shift, an investment from DNX’s first fund, has done “phenomenally well” in Southeast Asia, Motiwala said.

In terms of going global, DNX doesn’t push its portfolio companies, but encourages them to expand when the timing is right, especially if a U.S. startup wants to enter Japan, or vice versa. “We like to use the fact that we have teams in both regions. What we’ve seen more is the U.S. companies entering channel partnerships for Japanese distribution,” Motiwala said. “It has been more difficult to show the same thing to Japanese companies, but at the same time what we’ve realized is that instead of saying they should come into the U.S., they’ve done amazing stuff going into the Philippines or Singapore.”