Year: 2020

Apple is said to be developing its own competitors to popular over-ear noise-cancelling headphones like those made by Bose and Sony, Bloomberg reports, but with similar technology on board to that used in the AirPod and AirPod Pro lines. These headphones would also include a design with interchangeable parts that would allow some modification with customizable accessories for specific uses like workouts and long-term wear, for instance.

The prototype designs of the new headphones, which are set to potentially be released some time later this year (though timing is clearly up in the air as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, and Apple’s general tendency to move things around depending on other factors), are said to feature a “retro look” by Bloomberg, and include oval ear cups which connect directly to thin arms that extend to the headband. The swappable parts include the ear pads and headband cushion, both of which are said to attach to the headphone frame using magnetic connectors.

These will support Siri on board, along with active noise cancellation and touch controls, but most importantly for iOS and Mac users, they’ll also feature the simple connection across multiple devices that are featured on AirPods and some of Apple’s Beats line of headphones.

Apple has already released Beats over- and on-ear headphone models with AirPod-like features, including cross-connectivity, and that feature onboard noise cancellation. The Bloomberg report doesn’t seem to indicate these new models would be Beats-branded, however, and their customization features would also be new in terms of Apple’s available existing options.

Bloomberg also previously reported that Apple was working on a smaller HomePod speaker as part of its forthcoming product lineup, and a new FCC filing made public this week could indicate the impending release of a success to its PowerBeats Pro fully wireless in-ear sport headphones.

Food-related and delivery tech businesses have been seeing a huge wave of customer demand in the last few weeks as people on lockdown turn to them to buy necessary supplies (see also: the big funding round for meal kit delivery service Gousto announced earlier today). But that rising tide has not lifted all boats. Many restaurants have had to shut down, and those trying to stay open have had to reconsider how they run their businesses (and if it’s even worth the effort at all).

And that’s having a subsequent impact in turn on those who supply restaurants, which are also finding out that they need to reconsider and adapt what they do, too. Today, a Berlin-based startup called Choco, which has built ordering software for restaurants and their suppliers, is announcing $30.2 million in fresh funding led by Coatue Management, with participation also from Bessemer Venture Partners, Atlantic Labs, Target Global and Greyhound. The funding puts Choco’s valuation at just under $250 million, Daniel Khachab, Choco’s CEO and founder, said in an interview.

He added that the startup plans to use the funds to continue building out its technology and customer base, as well as to adapt to the current market with more initiatives to help its customers stay in business (more on that below) across the 17 markets where it operates, which include Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, and the United States.

The funding is notable not just because of the big names of the backers. Coatue is a prolific investor that has put money into the the biggest startups of our time, including Uber, Instacart, DoorDash and RebelFoods (and that’s just looking at a small selection of startups adjacent to Choco’s business; the wider list has a lot of breadth). It’s also notable because of the timing.

It was less than six months ago that Choco raised its Series A of $33.5 million, and even though it is only getting officially announced today, Khachab said this round actually “shortly before all this hit,” he said, referring to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“This was an opportunistic raise because we wanted to work with Coatue and Dan Rose,” the former Amazon and Facebook exec who is now chairman of Coatue. “We were able to partner on great terms.” Indeed, the company was valued at just over $100 million in its Series A according to PitchBook data, representing a doubling of its valuation. While it wasn’t strictly needed for the company, “it enables us to expand more geographically, to focus on Europe and the US, and offer more functionality,” he added. “it also means that we have more financial stability in a crisis.”

That crisis has indeed hit the restaurant industry that Choco serves with its food tech hard. While those that were already running strong delivery or takeout businesses are likely forging ahead, others have had to rethink and consider how they could fit their services into that model.

More generally, however, there’s been a large shift in the wider economy: many people are losing their jobs, or are worried about losing them; others are worried about catching the virus. All of this means that while some delivery of food is thriving, there is a counterbalance of belt tightening and considerably less take-out, ready-made food.

In normal times, Choco’s mission was to build a platform that cut down on the time and effort it takes for a restaurant to liaise with suppliers to order food for service. Typically, it’s an area that was ripe for disruption since even these days a lot of kitchens spend hours on the phone with suppliers, or visiting markets, to amass their stocks.

That inefficiency also created a different kind of inefficiency: that of food waste. Khachab said that in the wider global problem of food waste, restaurants are actually much bigger transgressors that individuals. The ordering platform that Choco has built aims to help restaurants better plan what they need, how much of what they need, and when, to narrow that gap.

(The name Choco, in fact, is a reference to the South American rainforest region that is considered a biodiversity hotspot. Khachab said that the company’s mission and subsequent platform were created with the idea of minimising production and preserving places like these.)

All this was, of course, created in “normal” times before the pandemic outbreak threw many of those restaurants and their suppliers’ business models into disarray.

One of Choco’s solutions has been an interesting twist on its business model: it’s recently started to make it possible for the restaurants that normally order supplies to now continue doing so — giving the suppliers business — while also selling on those supplies direct to their customers — thereby continuing to give themselves some income to supplement whatever takeout business they are also running.

“Restaurants and suppliers are in trouble and consumers are in trouble,” Khachab said. “We are doing this to give them some revenue and consumers can get next-day delivery and restaurant-quality ingredients and other food.” Notably, this is also about keeping Choco’s own sales channels from collapsing: all the profits it makes on this are going back to the restaurants themselves.

The plan will be to keep this in place for as long as our lockdowns continue, although if there is a big enough business out of it, Choco might look to see how to continue it.

“For us this is now a response to the current situation,” he said. “But if we see that suppliers and consumers benefit from it we’ll keep it up.”

“I believe every chef is an artist – the kitchen is their studio and the restaurant is their gallery. Choco’s app removes friction for chefs so they can spend more time on their craft and operate their business more efficiently,” said Rose in a statement. “Especially now in the midst of an existential crisis for restaurants around the world, we need Choco more than ever to rethink the global food supply chain and provide new business models for food suppliers and restaurants alike.”

 

Continuing our coverage of Utah-based startups, this morning we have our second big round of the year from the state. Lucid Software, best known as the parent company of Lucidchart, announced today that it has raised a $52 million Series D.

All that’s interesting enough, but more fun is that the company’s new revenue milestone. Lucid told TechCrunch in an interview with its CEO Karl Sun that it has crossed the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark. Slightly annoyingly, it declined to say when it did so. From prior reporting we know that the firm reached $50 million ARR at some point in 2018. Its growth rate then, if we squint and do half-baked math in our head, looks pretty good.

Recently, fellow Utah-based Podium also raised a new round and crossed the $100 million ARR threshold.

In the same vein of nearly telling us what we want to know, Lucid declined to share a new valuation but noted that the new round pushed its valuation up and that it’s now worth more than $1 billion. Was it worth more than $1 billion the last time it raised? We don’t know, and the company isn’t telling.

Sharing some information is better than none and Lucid is an interesting company, so let’s remind ourselves about what it does, and then talk about why it says it raised less in this Series D than its Series C.

Lucid is a software company with two main products, Lucidchart and Lucidpress . Lucidchart is a cloud software tool that lets users (and teams) build visual data representations like flow charts, org layouts and the like. (Incidentally, while prepping this piece, I found out my partner was a big Lucidchart user during her graduate education.) Lucidpress helps companies build branded materials and content. The two products have helped the company attract around $166 million in capital so far, per Crunchbase and our own calculations.

You’ll notice Lucid raised less ($52 million) in this round than it did in its preceding capital event, a $72 million investment. I asked Sun about it, noting that the two most obvious ways to read the smaller figure was that the company was either in trouble or that it did not need much more money. It’s option two, according to the CEO, who told TechCrunch that Lucid didn’t need to raise thanks to its history of being very capital efficient.

The company still has “a fair amount in the bank” from its preceding round, Sun added, but it’s taking a cautious stance in light of the new world it now finds itself in. Capital made sense, Sun said. And since investors “continued to knock on the door saying we want to invest more,” he added, when the company agreed to take on new funds in mid-March, it wasn’t a hard close. The CEO told TechCrunch that his firm could have raised more, but decided to “hold the line” at around $50 million.

Lucid has lots more capital and likely enough runway to get through the impending recession. In more normal times I’d stamp my foot here, asking when we get an S-1. But with the markets in turmoil and an election looming, we’ll ask again next year.

Today’s funding event was led by ICONIQ, which previously invested in the company’s late-2018 Series C worth $72 million. Prior investors Meritech and Spectrum were joined in the round by new investor Utah-based Cross Creek.

A leaked Santander internal memo in 2017 likely set wheels in motion. Reportedly written by the bank’s head of innovation, the missive warned that a large chunk of the Spanish incumbent’s profits were at risk — specifically, those generated via international money transfers – because of the growing success of fintech challengers, such as London-headquartered TransferWise.

Fast-forward three years, and today Santander is launching a standalone money transfer app, presumably in a bid to avoid the trappings of innovator’s dilemma. The new proposition is open to Santander and non-Santander customers and has been developed by a team working largely outside of the bank — a startup within a multi-national corporation, if you will — and has grown to around 50 team members working across Madrid, London, and Brussels.

Dubbed “PagoFX” and launched in the U.K. first, the mobile app lets anyone with a U.K. debit card send money abroad at claimed mid-market FX rates and with a low transparent fee. In addition, it offers “bank-level” security and customer support via in-app chat, web and e-mail.

In a virtual press briefing, Pago’s CMO Victoria Yasinetskaya explained that Pago’s unique positioning is that it effectively offers the best of both worlds: bank level security and trust (the app is co-branded alongside Santander) combined with the price competitiveness, convenience and user experience of a modern fintech solution. The thinking is that a segment of customers still trust an incumbent bank more than a challenger, and therefore a Santander-backed standalone money transfer app will be able to find room in the market.

During the same press briefing, Pago CEO Cedric Menager explained that PagoFX is essentially an open-market version of Santander’s existing international money transfer service “One Pay FX,” which offers competitive international transfers to existing Santander customers in various countries in Europe and the Americas. He also revealed that the Pago team was mainly big tech and fintech in its background, with various team members having worked at companies such as Amazon, PayPal and Intuit, and a number of unnamed startups.

On price, and without doing a forensic comparison, PagoFX looks to be broadly competitive with challengers, though not necessarily the very cheapest, depending on how you value payment method (e.g. card vs bank transfer) or speed.

“Transferring money to the eurozone, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and the Czech Republic is 0.70% of the sent amount. For transfers to the U.S., Poland and Denmark, the fee is 0.80% of sent amount,” explains Pago. (At launch, however, fees are being waived on transactions up to a limit of 3,000 GBP per user to help support customers during the coronavirus crisis).

Cue statement from Ana Botín, Group executive chairman of Banco Santander (who is rumoured to have given the project the green light after being shown a demonstration of TransferWise by her son): “PagoFX makes it possible to transfer money internationally easily, at low cost, and with the security and peace of mind that comes from a regulated entity backed by an international bank. This is a unique proposition and we hope it will help many people and businesses. It draws on our world-class technology and talent to deliver a new and highly relevant service for everyone in the open market”.

Meanwhile, I pinged two U.K. fintech money transfer competitors for comment.

“It’s great to see a large legacy financial institution moving to give customers a better deal as they play catch-up with the fintech sector,” Azimo co-founder and Chairman Michael Kent told me over WhatsApp message. “By improving their product and moving prices closer to ours and other digital players they can finally save their customers money at an uncertain time when everyone is watching the pennies and cents”.

He also pointed out that, as it stands, Pago isn’t the most direct competitor since it doesn’t cover developing and emerging markets, which is Azimo’s main corridor focus.

In a statement given to TechCrunch, Kristo Kaarmann, CEO and co-founder of TransferWise, says: “Banks and brokers have been misleading customers about the true cost of making international payments for decades, advertising transfers as ‘free’ or ‘0% commission’ then adding a high mark-up on the exchange rate. But there are promising signs that PagoFX signals a more transparent approach from Santander. If so, it’s evidence that the transparency and low-prices we’ve been pioneering are on the way to becoming the new industry standard as customers demand a better service”.

Kaarmann also issued a warning to existing Santander customers with regards to the FX rate they are offered within Santander’s existing banking apps. “If it’s necessary to download PagoFX separately to achieve transparency, customers using Santander’s standard service will continue to be short changed,” he says.

His argument is that PagoFX, like One Pay FX before it, will only benefit the most price conscious consumers. “We urge Santander to go a step further and adopt full transparency across all their international money transfer services as the standard, not just on specific products and currency routes,” he adds.

A leaked Santander internal memo in 2017 likely set wheels in motion. Reportedly written by the bank’s head of innovation, the missive warned that a large chunk of the Spanish incumbent’s profits were at risk — specifically, those generated via international money transfers – because of the growing success of fintech challengers, such as London-headquartered TransferWise.

Fast-forward three years, and today Santander is launching a standalone money transfer app, presumably in a bid to avoid the trappings of innovator’s dilemma. The new proposition is open to Santander and non-Santander customers and has been developed by a team working largely outside of the bank — a startup within a multi-national corporation, if you will — and has grown to around 50 team members working across Madrid, London, and Brussels.

Dubbed “PagoFX” and launched in the U.K. first, the mobile app lets anyone with a U.K. debit card send money abroad at claimed mid-market FX rates and with a low transparent fee. In addition, it offers “bank-level” security and customer support via in-app chat, web and e-mail.

In a virtual press briefing, Pago’s CMO Victoria Yasinetskaya explained that Pago’s unique positioning is that it effectively offers the best of both worlds: bank level security and trust (the app is co-branded alongside Santander) combined with the price competitiveness, convenience and user experience of a modern fintech solution. The thinking is that a segment of customers still trust an incumbent bank more than a challenger, and therefore a Santander-backed standalone money transfer app will be able to find room in the market.

During the same press briefing, Pago CEO Cedric Menager explained that PagoFX is essentially an open-market version of Santander’s existing international money transfer service “One Pay FX,” which offers competitive international transfers to existing Santander customers in various countries in Europe and the Americas. He also revealed that the Pago team was mainly big tech and fintech in its background, with various team members having worked at companies such as Amazon, PayPal and Intuit, and a number of unnamed startups.

On price, and without doing a forensic comparison, PagoFX looks to be broadly competitive with challengers, though not necessarily the very cheapest, depending on how you value payment method (e.g. card vs bank transfer) or speed.

“Transferring money to the eurozone, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and the Czech Republic is 0.70% of the sent amount. For transfers to the U.S., Poland and Denmark, the fee is 0.80% of sent amount,” explains Pago. (At launch, however, fees are being waived on transactions up to a limit of 3,000 GBP per user to help support customers during the coronavirus crisis).

Cue statement from Ana Botín, Group executive chairman of Banco Santander (who is rumoured to have given the project the green light after being shown a demonstration of TransferWise by her son): “PagoFX makes it possible to transfer money internationally easily, at low cost, and with the security and peace of mind that comes from a regulated entity backed by an international bank. This is a unique proposition and we hope it will help many people and businesses. It draws on our world-class technology and talent to deliver a new and highly relevant service for everyone in the open market”.

Meanwhile, I pinged two U.K. fintech money transfer competitors for comment.

“It’s great to see a large legacy financial institution moving to give customers a better deal as they play catch-up with the fintech sector,” Azimo co-founder and Chairman Michael Kent told me over WhatsApp message. “By improving their product and moving prices closer to ours and other digital players they can finally save their customers money at an uncertain time when everyone is watching the pennies and cents”.

He also pointed out that, as it stands, Pago isn’t the most direct competitor since it doesn’t cover developing and emerging markets, which is Azimo’s main corridor focus.

In a statement given to TechCrunch, Kristo Kaarmann, CEO and co-founder of TransferWise, says: “Banks and brokers have been misleading customers about the true cost of making international payments for decades, advertising transfers as ‘free’ or ‘0% commission’ then adding a high mark-up on the exchange rate. But there are promising signs that PagoFX signals a more transparent approach from Santander. If so, it’s evidence that the transparency and low-prices we’ve been pioneering are on the way to becoming the new industry standard as customers demand a better service”.

Kaarmann also issued a warning to existing Santander customers with regards to the FX rate they are offered within Santander’s existing banking apps. “If it’s necessary to download PagoFX separately to achieve transparency, customers using Santander’s standard service will continue to be short changed,” he says.

His argument is that PagoFX, like One Pay FX before it, will only benefit the most price conscious consumers. “We urge Santander to go a step further and adopt full transparency across all their international money transfer services as the standard, not just on specific products and currency routes,” he adds.

NoBroker, a Bangalore-based startup that helps those looking to rent or buy an apartment connect directly with property owners, has extended its previous financing round to add $30 million to it.

General Atlantic has invested $30 million in NoBroker’s Series D round, which the startup unveiled in November last year. The round, now closed at $80 million, pushes five-year-old NoBroker’s to-date raise to $151 million, the startup’s founders told TechCrunch.

NoBroker helps people looking to buy or lease an apartment avoid brokers, who charge a significant fee. The startup has expanded to six new cities in the last three months (now serving a dozen cities in total), and has expanded to new categories including gate keeping, moving and packing, helping tenants secure home loans, formulating agreements between tenants and the property owner, and fulfilling furniture and other decor needs.

The most remarkable thing about this fundraising is of course, its timing. In a joint interview, NoBroker’s founders Amit Kumar Agarwal, Akhil Gupta, and Saurabh Garg said the investment is an “endorsement” to the faith General Atlantic, its biggest investor, sees in the startup. The new capital will also give enough runway to NoBroker, they said.

Several prominent investors in India have cautioned startups that they might face additional challenges in raising fresh capital as they enter the “worst” times.

They acknowledged that the demand has weakened in the market, but said they were hopeful that it would bounce back as soon as schools reopen, which sees tens of thousands of families move to different cities each year.

New Delhi ordered a 21-day nationwide lockdown last month — which it has since extended to May 3 — that has restricted people’s movements and closed schools, malls, theatres and other public places.

“Our plan is to keep adding more properties to the platform, and serve more customers,” said Kumar, who serves as the chief executive of NoBroker. “We also want to grow our other services to become a one-stop solution for all of a tenant’s needs and maintain the market leading position,” he said.

These new categories also allow NoBroker to levy a cut of 10 to 20% on leads it generates. One of the areas that the startup has expanded to is society management, which helps people keep a log on visitors and their approval to enter the premises and stay connected with one another.

This service has been adopted by over 2,000 societies that house more than 500,000 residents. NoBroker recently also partnered with BigBasket to help in grocery delivery.

“NoBroker Pay, NoBroker Hood, NoBroker Home Services and several such innovations are deepening the engagement of owners, tenants, buyers and community residents with its platform making it a go-to-destination beyond its core offering of rental and sale transactions,” said Shantanu Rastogi, Managing Director at General Atlantic, in a statement.

NoBroker has more than 3.5 million properties registered on its platform and has served more than 8.5 million individuals.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) beat analyst estimates after reporting its net profit almost doubled in the quarter that ended in March, and said it was hopeful to sustain momentum in the current quarter but slashed its industry and foundry outlook for the year.

The Taiwan-headquartered company, which counts Apple among its clients, reported profit of NT$116.99 billion ($3.9 billion) on $10.31 billion revenue in the quarter that ended on March 31, higher than NT$105.8 billion profit that analysts had estimated (per Refinitive), and up 90.8% from the same period last year.

The Q1 profit is also 0.8% higher than Q4 2019, but the revenue dropped by a 2.1% during the period. The world’s largest contract chipmaker said its net profit margin in the quarter was 37.7% and operating margin 41.4%.

Many analysts were keenly watching TSMC’s earnings today to evaluate how the coronavirus crisis is impacting product demand. Apple, which will report its quarterly earnings later this month, said earlier this year that it did not expect to meet its revenue guidance in Q1.

A closer look at TSMC’s earnings today shows that the revenue it clocked from smartphones dropped by 9%. Research firm IDC estimates that smartphone shipment will declined 2.3% to 1.3 billion units this year. TSMC makes chips for a range of other equipments including laptops and home devices.

Another concern looming on TSMC’s performance is tied to Huawei, which based on estimates, accounts for nearly 10% of Taiwan’s company’s revenue. The U.S. could impose restrictions on TSMC and others that would prevent them from selling to the Chinese company.

Wendell Huang, VP and Chief Financial Officer of TSMC, did not address these concerns, but said the company expects revenue in Q2 to be “flattish ” — which is still impressive as several analysts have substantially slashed their Q2 estimates.

On a conference call with reporters, the company’s executives, however, pared back their growth outlook for the year citing weakening demand due to the coronavirus pandemic, and also slashed their industry and foundry outlook.

Thermal imaging wearables used in China to detect COVID-19 symptoms could soon be deployed in the U.S.

Hangzhou based AI startup Rokid is in talks with several companies to sell its T1 glasses in America, according to Rokid’s U.S. Director Liang Guan.

Rokid is among a wave of Chinese companies creating technology to address the coronavirus pandemic, which has dealt a blow to the country’s economy. 

Per info Guan provided, Rokid’s T1 thermal glasses use an infrared sensor to detect the temperatures of up to 200 people within two minutes from up to three meters away. The devices carry a Qualcomm CPU, 12 megapixel camera and offer augmented reality features — for hands free voice controls — to record live photos and videos.

The Chinese startup (with a San Francisco office) plans B2B sales of its wearable devices in the U.S. to assist businesses, hospitals and law enforcement with COVID-19 detection, according to Guan.

Rokid is also offering IoT and software solutions for facial recognition and data management, as part of its T1 packages.

The company is working on deals with U.S. hospitals and local municipalities to deliver shipments of the smart glasses, but could not disclose names due to confidentiality agreements.

One commercial venture that could use the thermal imaging wearables is California based e-commerce company Weee!.

The online grocer is evaluating Rokid’s T1 glasses to monitor temperatures of its warehouse employees throughout the day, Weee! founder Larry Liu confirmed to TechCrunch via email.

On procedures to manage those who exhibit COVID-19 related symptoms, that’s something for end-users to determine, according to Rokid. “The clients can do the follow-up action, such as giving them a mask or asking to work from home,” Guan said.

The T1 glasses connect via USB and can be set up for IoT capabilities for commercial clients to sync to their own platforms. The product could capture the attention of U.S. regulators, which have become increasingly wary of Chinese tech firms’ handling of American citizen data. Rokid says it doesn’t collect info from the T1 glasses directly.

“Regarding this module…we do not take any data to the cloud. For customers, privacy is very important to them. The data measurement is stored locally,” according to Guan.

Founded in 2014 by Eric Wong and Mingming Zhu, Rokid raised $100 million at the Series B level in 2018. The business focuses primarily on developing AI and AR tech for applications from manufacturing to gaming, but developed the T1 glasses in response to China’s COVID-19 outbreak.

The goal was to provide businesses and authorities a thermal imaging detection tool that is wearable, compact, mobile and more effective than the common options.

Large scanning stations, such as those used in some airports, have drawbacks in not being easily portable and handheld devices — with infrared thermometers — pose risks.

“You have to point them to people’s foreheads…you need to be really close, it’s not wearable and you’re not practicing social distancing to use those,” Guang said.

Rokid pivoted to create the T1 glasses shortly after COVID-19 broke out in China in late 2019. Other Chinese tech startups that have joined the virus-fighting mission include face recognition giant SenseTime — which has installed thermal imaging systems at railway stations across China — and its close rival Megvii, which has set up similar thermal solutions in supermarkets.

On Rokid’s motivations, “At the time we thought something like this can really help the frontline people still working,” Guang said.

The startup’s engineering team developed the T1 product in just under two months. In China, Rokid’s smart glasses have been used by national parks staff, in schools and by national authorities to screen for COVID-19 symptoms.

Temperature detectors have their limitation, however, as research has shown that more than half of China’s COVID-19 patients did not have a fever when admitted to hospital.

The growth rate of China’s coronavirus cases — which peaked to 83,306 and led to 3,345 deaths — has declined and parts of the country have begun to reopen from lockdown. There is still debate, however, about the veracity of data coming out of China on COVID-19. That led to a row between the White House and World Health Organization, which ultimately saw President Trump halt U.S. contributions to the global body this week.

As COVID-19 cases and related deaths continue to rise in the U.S., technological innovation will become central to the health response and finding some new normal for personal mobility and economic activity. That will certainly bring fresh facets to the common tech conundrums — namely measuring efficacy and balancing benefits with personal privacy.

For its part, Rokid already has new features for its T1 thermal smart glasses in the works. The Chinese startup plans to upgrade the device to take multiple temperature readings simultaneously for up to four people at a time.

“That’s not on the market yet, but we will release this very soon as an update,” said Rokid’s U.S. Director Liang Guan .

Thermal imaging wearables used in China to detect COVID-19 symptoms could soon be deployed in the U.S.

Hangzhou based AI startup Rokid is in talks with several companies to sell its T1 glasses in America, according to Rokid’s U.S. Director Liang Guan.

Rokid is among a wave of Chinese companies creating technology to address the coronavirus pandemic, which has dealt a blow to the country’s economy. 

Per info Guan provided, Rokid’s T1 thermal glasses use an infrared sensor to detect the temperatures of up to 200 people within two minutes from up to three meters away. The devices carry a Qualcomm CPU, 12 megapixel camera and offer augmented reality features — for hands free voice controls — to record live photos and videos.

The Chinese startup (with a San Francisco office) plans B2B sales of its wearable devices in the U.S. to assist businesses, hospitals and law enforcement with COVID-19 detection, according to Guan.

Rokid is also offering IoT and software solutions for facial recognition and data management, as part of its T1 packages.

The company is working on deals with U.S. hospitals and local municipalities to deliver shipments of the smart glasses, but could not disclose names due to confidentiality agreements.

One commercial venture that could use the thermal imaging wearables is California based e-commerce company Weee!.

The online grocer is evaluating Rokid’s T1 glasses to monitor temperatures of its warehouse employees throughout the day, Weee! founder Larry Liu confirmed to TechCrunch via email.

On procedures to manage those who exhibit COVID-19 related symptoms, that’s something for end-users to determine, according to Rokid. “The clients can do the follow-up action, such as giving them a mask or asking to work from home,” Guan said.

The T1 glasses connect via USB and can be set up for IoT capabilities for commercial clients to sync to their own platforms. The product could capture the attention of U.S. regulators, which have become increasingly wary of Chinese tech firms’ handling of American citizen data. Rokid says it doesn’t collect info from the T1 glasses directly.

“Regarding this module…we do not take any data to the cloud. For customers, privacy is very important to them. The data measurement is stored locally,” according to Guan.

Founded in 2014 by Eric Wong and Mingming Zhu, Rokid raised $100 million at the Series B level in 2018. The business focuses primarily on developing AI and AR tech for applications from manufacturing to gaming, but developed the T1 glasses in response to China’s COVID-19 outbreak.

The goal was to provide businesses and authorities a thermal imaging detection tool that is wearable, compact, mobile and more effective than the common options.

Large scanning stations, such as those used in some airports, have drawbacks in not being easily portable and handheld devices — with infrared thermometers — pose risks.

“You have to point them to people’s foreheads…you need to be really close, it’s not wearable and you’re not practicing social distancing to use those,” Guang said.

Rokid pivoted to create the T1 glasses shortly after COVID-19 broke out in China in late 2019. Other Chinese tech startups that have joined the virus-fighting mission include face recognition giant SenseTime — which has installed thermal imaging systems at railway stations across China — and its close rival Megvii, which has set up similar thermal solutions in supermarkets.

On Rokid’s motivations, “At the time we thought something like this can really help the frontline people still working,” Guang said.

The startup’s engineering team developed the T1 product in just under two months. In China, Rokid’s smart glasses have been used by national parks staff, in schools and by national authorities to screen for COVID-19 symptoms.

Temperature detectors have their limitation, however, as research has shown that more than half of China’s COVID-19 patients did not have a fever when admitted to hospital.

The growth rate of China’s coronavirus cases — which peaked to 83,306 and led to 3,345 deaths — has declined and parts of the country have begun to reopen from lockdown. There is still debate, however, about the veracity of data coming out of China on COVID-19. That led to a row between the White House and World Health Organization, which ultimately saw President Trump halt U.S. contributions to the global body this week.

As COVID-19 cases and related deaths continue to rise in the U.S., technological innovation will become central to the health response and finding some new normal for personal mobility and economic activity. That will certainly bring fresh facets to the common tech conundrums — namely measuring efficacy and balancing benefits with personal privacy.

For its part, Rokid already has new features for its T1 thermal smart glasses in the works. The Chinese startup plans to upgrade the device to take multiple temperature readings simultaneously for up to four people at a time.

“That’s not on the market yet, but we will release this very soon as an update,” said Rokid’s U.S. Director Liang Guan .

Sprout.ai, an insurtech incubated at London’s Imperial College that is applying AI to insurance claims,, has raised $2.5 million in additional seed funding. Leading the round is Amadeus Capital Partners, with participation from Playfair Capital, and Techstars.

Founded in 2018, Sprout.ai has developed AI-based software that it says enables insurance claims to be settled within “just 24 hours”. Specifically, it uses natural language processing and optical character recognition to understand unstructured insurance claim data, and then combines this with real-time external data such as weather, geolocation, business and medication information, to automate claims or escalate them for further human analysis.

“Our mission is to enable insurers to pay out successful claims inside 24 hours,” Sprout.ai co-founder and CEO Niels Thone tells me. “Currently the average claims settlement time in the U.K. is 25 days. This is mainly caused by a lack of information at the start of the claims journey and a lot of manual touch points throughout the journey. This causes two problems: bad customer experiences and high operational costs for claims teams”.

To remedy this, insurance companies can plug their existing systems into Sprout.ai’s “Contextual AI” solution, which provides what Thone says is a much more complete data capture at the start of the claims process, and then is able to automatically validate incoming claims and predict the next necessary steps in the process.

This sees the big bulk of claims sent straight through for processing, resulting in them being settled in record time. “This way claim handlers only have to focus on the really complex claims, where their specialised skill set is actually needed,” says the Sprout.ai CEO.

“The secret lies in accessing the underlying unstructured data, such as pdfs, images, documents, etc.,” he adds. “This is where all the actual ‘data gold’ or, as we call it, ‘data sprouts’ lie, so it’s pertinent that you have the means to extract and structure this data as well as leverage it for further claims verification. Sprout.ai has developed proprietary algorithms in both the OCR and NLP fields to enable very accurate and fast extraction of this underlying data”.

Asked about Sprout.ai’s revenue model, Thone says the insurtech operates via a transactional model, whereby it charges a fee per claim processed. “The fee is volume dependent, which means that the more claims we process for a client, the cheaper the price per claim becomes,” he explains.

Meanwhile, Sprout.ai, which was previously called BlockClaim, says it will use the investment to further build out its data science and engineering team, and expand its sales operations. The U.K. startup is also making plans for U.S. expansion.