Year: 2020

Rocket launch startup Astra, which had been attempting to claim DARPA’s prize for successful demonstration of flexible space launch capabilities until earlier this month, will not be moving forward with an attempted flight of its launch vehicle this week as planned. The company’s “One of Three” rocket ran into an “anomaly” during pre-launch testing in preparation for its flight this week, and the schedule for a make-up launch are currently is currently up in the air.

“Astra’s launch vehicle “One of Three” suffered an anomaly following an otherwise successful day of testing in Kodiak in preparation for a launch this week,” explained Astra CEO and founder Chris Kemp via email. “Fortunately, our own hardware was the only thing harmed, and our team is already hard at work to determine the root cause so that we can improve the vehicle’s design. As a result of yesterday’s anomaly we will no longer be attempting a launch this week. We do intend to attempt another launch from Kodiak once conditions with coronavirus improve and we have resolved the cause of yesterday’s incident.”

Astra’s launches are set to take off from Kodiak Launch Complex, which is located a the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska. The company had challenges with weather conditions leading up to its attempts to win the $2 million DARPA prize, the deadline for each expired at the beginning of March, but the anomaly yesterday had to do with the vehicle hardware itself, and not external conditions. Local news additionally reported this morning that while the emergency response triggered by the anomaly had ended, the “areas is still hazardous and should be avoided” according to Alaska Aerospace CEO Mark Lester.

Kemp also cited the current coronavirus crisis in his statement to TechCrunch, and while that doesn’t look like it contributed to any technical issues, the ongoing global pandemic definitely seems likely to impact any attempted work that would involve repairs or rescheduling the launch at this time.

A new annual survey taken before the current COVID-19 crisis led to restrictions of movement in much of the U.S. suggests good news for Amazon, Facebook’s dominance unthreatened and continued growth in podcasting.

Edison Research and Triton Digital released their annual Infinite Dial survey last week, compiling data on consumers’ use of smart speakers, podcasts, music streaming and social media from 1,500 people (aged 12 and older) to compare year-over-year changes. Here are a few interesting findings:

Voice assistants and smart speakers

Sixty-two percent said they use a voice-based virtual assistant, most commonly via a phone or a computer. There has been a lot written about interactive voice as the next major medium for human-computer interaction after mobile phones, so it’s noteworthy to see that use of the technology is still associated with personal computing devices rather than hands-free smart speakers placed in the surrounding environment.

Smart speaker ownership did increase to 27% of respondents, up from 24% in 2019, even though respondents owned an average 2.2 speakers. In fact, the cohort that owned three or more speakers increased from one-quarter to one-third of owners in just a year, with Amazon Alexa continuing to dominate market share.

Web browser Brave is expanding its cryptocurrency features with an integration with cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Brave users will be able to buy, trade and receive crypto assets directly on the new tab page.

In addition to a particular focus on privacy, Brave has been playing around with cryptocurrencies for a while. The company launched its own cryptocurrency, the Basic Attention Token (BAT).

Partner websites receive BAT every month based on the amount of time you spend browsing those websites. Users can also receive BAT if you choose to view Brave ads on the new tab page or in your notifications.

In an upcoming release, Brave will support many other cryptocurrencies beyond BAT, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and others. When you open a new tab, there will be a new Binance -branded widget below the Brave Rewards widget. It integrates directly with Binance.com and Binance.us in the U.S.

By default, if you don’t interact with the widget, Brave doesn’t load any data from Binance’s server. It isn’t just a web embed — it’s a native widget that takes advantage of Binance’s API. Of course, when you connect Brave to your Binance account, your browser will fetch data from your Binance account so that you can view your balances and addresses for instance.

If cryptocurrencies aren’t your thing or if you believe web browsers are designed to browse the web, you can disable the widget entirely in the browser settings.

You can try out the new widget in Brave’s nightly release. The stable version will be released at some point in April.

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

The public markets are in turmoil as the economic impact of COVID-19 comes into focus; however, it is less clear what the impact of the changing value of public companies today will have on the valuations of private firms.

Startup valuations are impacted by a host of factors, one of which is the value of their public comparables (comps); if public comps lose value, private startup comps tend to earn lower valuations. This leads us to a key question: Are the stock market’s recent declines impacting the value of private startups?

To get an answer, TechCrunch spoke with Phil Haslett, the chief revenue officer at EquityZen. Haslett is a founder at the company, which helps owners of stock in private startups sell their shares to interested buyers. We were curious if there was a noticeable impact on prices so far and how demand might be shifting on both sides of its marketplace.

Public prices, private values

A new Sydney-based non-profit volunteer organization called RapidWard launches this week, with a focus on getting critical medical supplies from producers in China to healthcare professionals, doctors, hospitals and governments worldwide who need them. The group, founded by serial entrepreneur and advisor Milton Zhou, has ample supply chain experience and recognized the need for a solution that focused on establishing distribution pathways that eschew markups in order to make supplies available at-cost.

Zhou, Australian-born founder of Chinese descent who leads Australian sustainable energy company Maoneng as CEO, has been following the coronavirus pandemic and the impact its had in terms of incurring panic buying and hoarding behaviour for much-needed medical equipment. Through existing personal connections, Zhou says that he has access to a factory in China that produces a type of test kit used broadly in that nation’s efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19 (and approved by its equivalent of the FDA).

These kits can produce results in just 15 minutes, using a serological assay that looks for the presence of antibodies in a patient’s bloodstream. This differs from the PCR type of test that is currently in use in the U.S., which looks for the presence of viral DNA in patient mucus samples collected via swab. While the serological test can’t detect COVID-19 during the incubation period, it is reliable once symptoms begin to present, and could help greatly with in-situ diagnostic efforts for patients already presenting with known indicators – freeing up PCR tests for broader use, including asymptomatic screening.

These kits can be provided in volumes of 70,000 per day by RapidWard’s suppliers, the company says, and will be available at the cost of production and shipping of $12 per test. Zhou said that RapidWard is also sourcing lab-free 15-minute saliva-based tests that are in use in both Korea and China, and that can be supplied at a volume of up to 20 units per day.

RapidWard’s supplies also include disposable N95 masks that meet the standards of the FDA and the National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health, and its partners can produce them (to FDA specs) at a volume of up to 100,000 per day. As with the tests, RapidWard’s focus is on sourcing and supplying these at-cost, without any markups or profits for the organization itself.

Right now, the company is focused on working with and supplying official health organizations and governments in need, but it does have a means for individuals to sign up to register interest, since it plans on offering equipment directly to consumers should supply ever catch up to a point where it’s meeting critical health professional demand and that becomes possible.

RapidWard is encouraging any government or medical institution in need of supplies to get in touch. Even if it can’t provision directly, Zhou says they’re interested in working with these parties to sort out supply chains in China wherever they’re able.

Reliance Jio, a three-and-a-half-year-old subsidiary of India’s most valued firm Reliance Industries, may have attracted the attention of an American giant: Facebook.

The social conglomerate is in talks to acquire a 10% stake in Indian telecom operator, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. The size of the deal, the paper said, was in “multi-billion dollars.”

Analysts at Bernstein valued Jio at over $60 billion.

Reliance Jio, which began its commercial operation in the second half of 2016, upended the local telecom market by offering bulk of 4G data and free voice calls for six months.

Now you can scroll Instagram together with friends, turning a typically isolating, passive experience into something more social and active. Today Instagram launched Co-Watching, which lets friends on a video chat or group video chat browse through feed posts one user has Liked or Saved, or that Instagram recommends.

Co-Watching could let people ooh, ahh, joke, and talk about Instagram’s content instead of just consuming it solo and maybe posting it to a chat thread so friends can do the same. That could lead to long usage sessions, incentivize users to collect a great depository of Saved posts to share, and spur more video calls that drag people into the app. TechCrunch first reported Instagram was testing Co-Watching a year ago, so we’ll see if it managed to work out the technical and privacy questions of operating the feature.

The launch comes alongside other COVID-19 responses from Instagram that include:

-Showing a shared Instagram Story featuring all the posts from you network that include the “Stay Home” sticker

-Adding Story stickers that remind people to wash their hands or keep their distance from others

-Adding coronavirus educational info to the top of results for related searches

-Removing unofficial COVID-19 accounts from recommendations, as well as virus related content from Explore if it doesn’t come from a credible health organization

-Expanding the donation sticker to more countries so people can search for and ask friends for contributions to relevant non-profits

These updates build on Instagram’s efforts from two weeks ago which included putting COVID-19 prevention tips atop the feed, listing official health organizations atop search results, and demoting the reach of coronavirus-related content rated false by fact checkers.

But Co-Watching will remain a powerful feature long after the quarantines and social distancing end. The ability to co-view content while browsing social networks has already made screensharing app Squad popular. When Squad launched in January 2019, I suggested that “With Facebook and Snap already sniffing around Squad, it’s quite possible they’ll try to copy it.” Facebook tested a Watch Together feature for viewing Facebook Watch videos inside Messenger back in April. And now here we are with Instagram.

The question is whether Squad’s first-mover advantage and option to screenshare from any app will let it hold its own, or if Instagram Co-Watching will just popularize the concept and send users searching for more flexible options like Squad. “Everyone knows that the content flooding our feeds is a filtered version of reality” Squad CEO Esther Crawford told me. “The real and interesting stuff goes down in DMs because people are more authentic when they’re 1:1 or in small group conversations.”

With Co-Watching Instagram users can spill the tea and gossip about posts live and unfiltered over video chat. When people launch a video chat from the Direct inbox or a chat thread, they’ll see a “Posts” button that launches Co-Watching. They’ll be able to pick from their Liked, Saved, or Explore feeds and then reveal it to the video chat, with everyone’s windows lined up beneath the post.

Up to six people can Co-Watch at once on Instagram, consuming feed photos and videos but not IGTV posts. You can share public posts, or private ones that everyone in the chat are allowed to see. If one participant is blocked from viewing a post, it’s inelligible for Co-Watching.

Co-Watching could finally provide an answer to Instagram’s Time Well Spent problem. Research shows how the real danger in social network overuse is passive content consumption like endless solo feed scrolling. It can inspire envy, poor self-esteem, and leave users deflated, especially if the highlights of everyone else’s lives look more interesting than their own day-to-day reality. But active sharing, commenting, and messaging can have a positive effect on well-being, making people feel like they have a stronger support network.

With Co-Watching, Instagram has found a way to turn the one-player experience into a multi-player game. Especially now with everyone stuck at home and unable to crowd around one person’s phone to gab about what they see, there’s a great need for this new feature. One concern is that it could be used for bullying, with people all making fun of someone’s posts.

But in general, the idea of sifting through cute animal photos, dance tutorials, or epic art could take the focus off of the individuals in a video chat. Not having one’s face as the center of attention could make video chat less performative and exhausting. Instead, Co-Watching could let us do apart what we love to do together: just hang out.

Admit it, even if you’ve never thought about starting a podcast in your life, these last few weeks of isolation have made you consider the possibility. One of the least harmful knock on effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly going to be the launch of A LOT of podcasts. People are bored, stuck at home and hungry to talk and listen to fellow humans.

I wrote a big, long piece about my own experiences yesterday, shifting from in person to online and adopting a live video element.

While I moved beyond the Anchor stage a number of years ago, the app offers a lot for those taking their first step into the brave new world of podcasting. Today, the Spotify-owned platform announced that it will be expanding its Record With Friends remote podcasting feature by way of a 2.0 update.

The latest version of the app, which is presently in beta, provides a simple link for up to four users to join in a conversation. It’s available across a range of different devices accessible via browser. Users start a conversation on their desktop or mobile device via the Anchor app and click the “Invite” button.

Your mileage — and sound quality — will vary, of course, but anything that lowers the barrier entry in the current situation is probably a net positive.

Apple Music is launching a new playlist the company hopes will raise your spirits during these difficult times. On Monday, the service began rolling out a new personalized playlist called “The Get Up! Mix,” which features “happy-making,” sing-alonging music,” says Apple. The playlist can be found on the “For You” tab in the Apple Music app, alongside others, including your “Favorites Mix,” “New Music Mix,” “Chill Mix,” and “Friends Mix.”

And like Apple Music’s other personalized playlists, the new “Get Up! Mix” will update automatically — in this case, it refreshes with new music every Monday.

The playlist of a couple of dozen songs is built using a combination of machine learning and human curation. Algorithms determine what sort of music you may prefer, but the playlist will also be interspersed with high-energy, all-time favorites and a few newer songs selected by Apple Music’s editors.

The end result is a playlist with energetic music — something that could help people who are struggling with cope with stress, anxiety, and depression at a time when we’ve all been cut off from others, stuck indoors, and worried about our collective future. Music won’t solve the problems induced by the COVID-19 health crisis, but it can make you feel better for a time. And we need that.

Personalized playlists have been one of the key factors that allowed Apple Music’s main rival, Spotify, to gain in popularity. But Apple Music has been steadily adding new personalization features of its own to compete.

However, another area where Apple Music lags is offering music to match a mood or activity — like studying or working out, for example. Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, and others already let you choose from a variety of moods and activities when searching for something to listen to.

While Apple Music doesn’t yet have a comprehensive selection on this front, it has now also added a new programmed playlist, the Home Office DJ. As the name suggests, the playlist is designed for those now working from home who were used to having music play in their office. At launch, this playlist includes music from artists like The Weeknd, Post Malone, Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran, and more.

In addition, Apple on Monday launched Live Lyrics on the Mac. The company says it will soon add more to Apple Music including new radio shows, videos, and other playlists.

Wall Street came roaring back Tuesday with all major indices rising on a potential deal between Senate Democrats and Republicans to approve a new stimulus package and suggestions from President Donald Trump that the economy would reopen sooner rather than later.

In a Monday evening press conference from the White House, Trump hinted that emergency orders established to address the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. could be lifted more quickly than most experts recommend.

“It’s going to be  soon,” Trump said. “It’s not going to be three or four months.”

As Trump adjusted expectations for how long the lockdown would last, Senate Republicans and Democrats were inching closer to a new stimulus package that would inject some $2 trillion into the economy.

Taken together, investors responded by pouring money into the markets, sending the Dow up nearly 6%, while the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 both went up over 5% in early morning trading.

One hour into the open here’s the tale of the tape: