Year: 2020

BackboneAI, an early-stage startup that wants to help companies dealing with lots of data, particularly coming from a variety of external sources, announced a $4.7 million seed investment today.

The round was led by Fika Ventures with participation from Boldstart Ventures, Dynamo Ventures, GGV Capital, MetaProp, Spider VC and several other unnamed investors.

Company founder Rob Bailey says he has spent a lot of time in his career watching how data flows in organizations. There are still a myriad of challenges related to moving data between organizations, and that’s what his company is trying to solve. “BackboneAI is an AI platform specifically built for automating data flows within and between companies,” he said.

This could involve any number of scenarios from keeping large, complex data catalogues up-to-date to coordinating the intricate flow of construction materials between companies or content rights management across an entertainment industry.

Bailey says that he spent 18 months talking to companies before he built the product. “What we found is that every company we talked to was, in some way or another, concerned about an absolute flood of data from all these different applications and from all the companies that they’re working with externally,” he explained.

The BackboneAI platform aims to solve a number of problems related to this. For starters, it automates the acquisition of this data, usually from third parties like suppliers, customers, regulatory agencies and so forth. Then it handles ingestion of the data, and finally it takes care of a lot of actual processing from external sources, while mapping it to internal systems like the company ERP system.

As an example, he uses an industrial supply company that may deal with a million SKUs across a couple of dozen divisions. Trying to track that with manual or even legacy systems is difficult. “They take all this product data in [from external suppliers], and then process the information in their own [internal] product catalog, and then finally present that data about those products to hundreds of thousands of customers. It’s an incredibly large and challenging data problem as you’re processing millions and millions of SKUs and orders, and you have to keep that data current on a regular basis,” he explained.

The company is just getting started. It spent 2019 incubating inside of Boldstart Ventures . Today the company has close to 20 employees in New York City, and it has signed its first Fortune 500 customer. Bailey says they have 15 additional Fortune 500 companies in the pipeline. With the seed money, he hopes to build on this initial success.

BackboneAI, an early-stage startup that wants to help companies dealing with lots of data, particularly coming from a variety of external sources, announced a $4.7 million seed investment today.

The round was led by Fika Ventures with participation from Boldstart Ventures, Dynamo Ventures, GGV Capital, MetaProp, Spider VC and several other unnamed investors.

Company founder Rob Bailey says he has spent a lot of time in his career watching how data flows in organizations. There are still a myriad of challenges related to moving data between organizations, and that’s what his company is trying to solve. “BackboneAI is an AI platform specifically built for automating data flows within and between companies,” he said.

This could involve any number of scenarios from keeping large, complex data catalogues up-to-date to coordinating the intricate flow of construction materials between companies or content rights management across an entertainment industry.

Bailey says that he spent 18 months talking to companies before he built the product. “What we found is that every company we talked to was, in some way or another, concerned about an absolute flood of data from all these different applications and from all the companies that they’re working with externally,” he explained.

The BackboneAI platform aims to solve a number of problems related to this. For starters, it automates the acquisition of this data, usually from third parties like suppliers, customers, regulatory agencies and so forth. Then it handles ingestion of the data, and finally it takes care of a lot of actual processing from external sources, while mapping it to internal systems like the company ERP system.

As an example, he uses an industrial supply company that may deal with a million SKUs across a couple of dozen divisions. Trying to track that with manual or even legacy systems is difficult. “They take all this product data in [from external suppliers], and then process the information in their own [internal] product catalog, and then finally present that data about those products to hundreds of thousands of customers. It’s an incredibly large and challenging data problem as you’re processing millions and millions of SKUs and orders, and you have to keep that data current on a regular basis,” he explained.

The company is just getting started. It spent 2019 incubating inside of Boldstart Ventures . Today the company has close to 20 employees in New York City, and it has signed its first Fortune 500 customer. Bailey says they have 15 additional Fortune 500 companies in the pipeline. With the seed money, he hopes to build on this initial success.

Uber Advanced Technologies Group has resumed testing autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, two years after the company scaled back its testing program following a fatal crash in Arizona that killed a pedestrian.

Uber’s self-driving vehicle unit is tiptoeing back into testing its autonomous vehicle technology on public roads.

Uber ATG ended all testing on public roads after one of its vehicles struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. Uber ATG was testing its self-driving vehicles in the Phoenix area, Toronto, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. At the time, the company let go all 100 of its self-driving car operators in Pittsburgh and San Francisco and rumors circulated that the company wanted to sell its self-driving unit.

Uber ATG resumed in December 2018 on-road testing of its self-driving vehicles in Pittsburgh, following the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s decision to authorize the company to put its autonomous vehicles on public roads.

The company will initially limit testing in San Francisco to a few weeks with two Volvo XC90 vehicles equipped with Uber’s self-driving system. Testing on public roads started Tuesday and will only be conducted during daylight hours, according to Uber. Each vehicle will be staffed by a safety driver.

Uber ATG received a permit last month from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the department that regulates autonomous vehicle testing on public roads in the state. The company said at the time that it didn’t have immediate plans to put its autonomous vehicles on public roads in San Francisco. One month later, it’s now back on the road, albeit in a limited fashion.

“We are excited to resume autonomous testing in Uber’s home city this week. Our testing area will be limited in scope to start, but we look forward to scaling up our efforts in the months ahead and learning from the difficult but informative road conditions that the Bay Area has to offer,” an Uber spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Uber is now testing in Dallas, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington D.C.

Uber Advanced Technologies Group has resumed testing autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, two years after the company scaled back its testing program following a fatal crash in Arizona that killed a pedestrian.

Uber’s self-driving vehicle unit is tiptoeing back into testing its autonomous vehicle technology on public roads.

Uber ATG ended all testing on public roads after one of its vehicles struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. Uber ATG was testing its self-driving vehicles in the Phoenix area, Toronto, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. At the time, the company let go all 100 of its self-driving car operators in Pittsburgh and San Francisco and rumors circulated that the company wanted to sell its self-driving unit.

Uber ATG resumed in December 2018 on-road testing of its self-driving vehicles in Pittsburgh, following the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s decision to authorize the company to put its autonomous vehicles on public roads.

The company will initially limit testing in San Francisco to a few weeks with two Volvo XC90 vehicles equipped with Uber’s self-driving system. Testing on public roads started Tuesday and will only be conducted during daylight hours, according to Uber. Each vehicle will be staffed by a safety driver.

Uber ATG received a permit last month from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the department that regulates autonomous vehicle testing on public roads in the state. The company said at the time that it didn’t have immediate plans to put its autonomous vehicles on public roads in San Francisco. One month later, it’s now back on the road, albeit in a limited fashion.

“We are excited to resume autonomous testing in Uber’s home city this week. Our testing area will be limited in scope to start, but we look forward to scaling up our efforts in the months ahead and learning from the difficult but informative road conditions that the Bay Area has to offer,” an Uber spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Uber is now testing in Dallas, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington D.C.

Mike Hudack, the former CTO of Deliveroo and most recently a founding partner at London venture capital firm Blossom Capital, has quietly joined joined Monzo as the challenger bank’s new Chief Product Officer.

TechCrunch understands that Hudack had previously been advising Monzo on a part-time basis for the past 11 months, while simultaneously working part-time at Blossom. He has now quit the VC firm, founded by Ophelia Brown, to take up the full-time CPO position and become part of the fast-growing bank’s leadership team.

(Noteworthy, Blossom has now lost two founding members of its investment team since launching two years ago. Like Hudack, former Uber China executive Candice Lo was previously listed on the Blossom Capital website as a co-founder and partner, but left in February 2019).

Prior to Blossom Capital, Hudack spent almost two and a half years at Deliveroo — joining in September 2016 — as the takeout marketplace and delivery company’s CTO (and CPO) where he was responsible for product, engineering, design and growth, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Before that, the experienced operator worked at Facebook for close to four and a half years, both in London and Menlo Park. His most recent role at the social networking behemoth was Director of Product Management, quitting in May 2016.

Along with a brief stint as a VC, Hudack has also done a startup of his own. He was co-founder and CEO of Blip.tv, the New York-based media platform acquired by the Walt Disney Company.

Meanwhile, in separate news, TechCrunch has learned that Monzo is gearing up to launch its business banking product more widely, which could happen as early as next week. Plans are still subject to change — as Monzo is wont to do — but according to sources the new offering will consist of a free and paid version. The latter is likely to provide additional features such as accounting software integrations, multi-user accounts, and possibly in-app invoicing.

Adtech giant Criteo is under investigation by the French data protection watchdog, the CNIL, following a complaint filed by privacy rights campaign group Privacy International.

“I can confirm that the CNIL has opened up an investigation into Criteo . We are in the trial phase, so we can’t communicate at this stage,” a CNIL spokesperson told us.

Privacy International has been campaigning for more than a year for European data protection agencies to investigate several adtech players and data brokers involved in programmatic advertising.

Yesterday it said the French regulator has finally opened a probe of Criteo.

“CNIL’s confirmation that they are investigating Criteo is important and we warmly welcome it,” it said in the  statement. “The AdTech ecosystem is based on vast privacy infringements, exploiting people’s data on a daily basis. Whether its through deceptive consent banners or by infesting mental health websites these companies enable a surveillance environment where all you moves online are tracked to profile and target you, with little space to contest.”

We’ve reached out to Criteo for comment.

Back in November 2018, a few months after Europe’s updated data protection framework (GDPR) came into force, Privacy International filed complaints against a number of companies operating in the space — including Criteo.

A subsequent investigation by the rights group last year also found adtech trackers on mental health websites sharing sensitive user data for ad targeting purposes.

Last May Ireland’s Data Protection Commission also opened a formal investigation into Quantcast, following Privacy International’s complaint and a swathe of separate GDPR complaints targeting the real-time bidding (RTB) process involved in programmatic advertising.

The crux of the RTB complaints is that the process is inherently insecure since it entails the leaky broadcasting of people’s personal data with no way for it to be controlled once it’s out there vs GDPR’s requirement for personal data to be processed securely.

In June the UK’s Information Commission’s Office also fired a warning shot at the behavioral ad industry — saying it had “systemic concerns” about the compliance of RTB. Although the regulator has so far failed to take any enforcement action, despite issuing another blog post last December in which it discussed the “industry problem” with lawfulness — preferring instead to encourage adtech to reform itself. (Relevant: Google announcing it will phase out support for third party cookies.)

In its 2018 adtech complaint, Privacy International called for France’s CNIL, the UK’s ICO and Ireland’s DPC to investigate Criteo, Quantcast and a third company called Tapad — arguing their processing of Internet users’ data (including special category personal data) has no lawful basis, neither fulfilling GDPR’s requirements for consent nor legitimate interest.

Privacy International’s complaint argued that additional GDPR principles — including transparency, fairness, purpose limitation, data minimisation, accuracy and integrity and confidently — were also not being fulfilled; and called for further investigation to ascertain compliance with other legal rights and safeguards GDPR gives Europeans over their personal data, including the right to information; access; rights related to automated decision making and profiling; data protection and by design and default; and data protection impact assessments.

In specific complaints against Criteo, Privacy International raised concerns about its Shopper Graph tool, which is used to predict real-time product interest, and which Criteo has touted as having data on nearly three-quarters of the worlds’ shoppers, fed by cross-device online tracking of people’s digital activity which is not limited to cookies and gets supplemented by offline data; and its Dynamic Retargeting tool, which enables the retargeting of tracked shoppers with behaviorally targeted ads via Criteo sharing data with scores of ‘partners’ including publishers and ad exchanges involved in the RTB process to auction online ad slots.

At the time of the original complaint Privacy International said Criteo told it it was relying on consent to track individuals obtained via its advertising (and publisher) partners — who, per GDPR, would need to obtain informed, specific and freely given consent up-front before dropping any tracking cookies (or other tracer technologies) — as well as claiming a legal base known as legitimate interest, saying it believed this was a valid ground so that it could comply with its contractual obligations toward its clients and partners.

However legitimate interests requires a balancing test to be carried out to consider impacts on the individual’s interests, as part of a wider assessment process to determine whether it can be applied.

It’s Privacy International’s contention that legitimate interest is not a valid legal basis in this case.

Now the CNIL will look in detail at Criteo’s data processing to determine whether or not there are GDPR violations. If it finds breaches of the law, the regulation allows for monetary penalties to be issued that can scale as high as 4% of a company’s global turnover. EU data protection agencies can also order changes to how data is processed.

Commenting on the CNIL’s investigation of Criteo’s business, Dr Lukasz Olejnik, an independent privacy researcher and consultant whose research on the privacy implications of RTB predates all the aforementioned complaints told us: “I am not surprised with the investigation as in Real-Time Bidding transparency and consent were always very problematic and at best non-obvious. I don’t know how retrospective consent could be reconciled.”

“It is rather beyond doubt that a thorough privacy impact assessment (data protection impact assessment) had to be conducted for many aspects of such systems or its uses, so this particular angle of the complaint should not controversial,” Olejnik added.

“My long views on Real-Time Bidding is that it was not a technology created with particular focus on security and privacy. As a transformative technology in the long-term it also contributed to broader issues like the dissemination of harmful content like political disinformation.”

The CNIL probe certainly adds to Criteo’s business woes, with the company reporting declining revenue last year and predicting more to come in 2020. More aggressive moves by browser makers to bake in tracker blocking is clearly having an impact on its core business.

In a recent interview with Digiday CEO Megan Clarken talked about wanting to broaden the range of services it offers to advertisers and reduce its reliance on its traditional retargeting.

Criteo has also been investing heavily in artificial intelligence in recent years — ploughing in $23M in 2018 to open an AI lab in Paris.

A newly discovered malware campaign suggests that hackers have themselves become the targets of other hackers, who are infecting and repackaging popular hacking tools with malware.

Cybereason’s Amit Serper found that the attackers in this years-long campaign are taking existing hacking tools — some of which are designed to exfiltrate data from a database through to cracks and product key generators that unlock full versions of trial software — and injecting a powerful remote-access trojan. When the tools are opened, the hackers gain full access to the target’s computer.

Serper said the attackers are “baiting” other hackers by posting the repackaged tools on hacking forums.

But it’s not just a case of hackers targeting other hackers, Serper told TechCrunch. These maliciously repackaged tools are not only opening a backdoor to the hacker’s systems, but also any system that the hacker has already breached.

“If hackers are targeting you or your business and they are using these trojanized tools it means that whoever is hacking the hackers will have access to your assets as well,” Serper said.

That includes offensive security researchers working on red team engagements, he said.

Serper found that these as-yet-unknown attackers are injecting and repackaging the hacking tools with njRat, a powerful trojan, which gives the attacker full access to the target’s desktop, including files, passwords, and even access to their webcam and microphone. The trojan dates back to at least 2013 when it was used frequently against targets in the Middle East. njRat often spreads through phishing emails and infected flash drives, but more recently hackers have injected the malware on dormant or insecure websites in an effort to evade detection. In 2017, hackers used this same tactic to host malware on the website for the so-called Islamic State’s propaganda unit.

Serper found the attackers were using that same website-hacking technique to host njRat in this most recent campaign.

According to his findings, the attackers compromised several websites — unbeknownst to their owners — to host hundreds of njRat malware samples, as well as the infrastructure used by the attackers to command and control the malware. Serper said that the process of injecting the njRat trojan into the hacking tools occurs almost daily and may be automated, suggesting that the attacks are run largely without direct human interaction.

It’s unclear for what reason this campaign exists or who is behind it.

BMW will not bring the iX3, the automaker’s first electric crossover, to the U.S., the latest automaker to shift its EV strategy to Europe and China.

BMW told Automotive News, the first media outlet to report the change, that at this time, it doesn’t have plans to bring iX3 to the U.S. market. The change is notable because the iX3 is based off of the X3, the most popular BMW model in the U.S.

The BMW iX3, which will be manufactured in China, is scheduled to come to market in the first half of 2021.

BMW unveiled the iX3 concept at the Auto China 2018 show in Beijing. The automaker is targeting the U.S., Europe and China for its broader EV strategy. However, the realities of the U.S. market, where automakers with the exception of Tesla have faced a tepid response to EVs, mixed with stricter emissions regulations in Europe, are now hitting home for BMW.

BMW isn’t the only automaker to pull back plans to bring upcoming electric vehicles to the U.S. Mercedes-Benz has delayed the U.S. launch of the electric EQC SUV by a year. The EQC is now scheduled to come to the U.S. in 2021.

Volkswagen has also tweaked its sales strategy for its upcoming ID electric lineup.  The company will keep its compact hatchback, the ID. 3, out of the U.S. Instead, VW plans to bring the ID. 4, (otherwise known as the ID. Crozz) to the U.S., although even this vehicle will first launch in Europe.

As Stanford, Princeton, Columbia and others shutter classrooms to limit the coronavirus outbreak, college educators around the country are clambering to move their classes online. 

At the same time, tech companies that enable remote learning are finding a surge in usage and signups. Zoom Video Communications, a videoconferencing company, has been crushing it in the stock market, and Duolingo, a language teaching app, has had 100% user growth in the past month in China, citing school closures as one factor. 

But Kristin Lynn Sainani, an associate professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford, has a fair warning to those making the shift: scrappiness has its setbacks. 

“[The transition to online] is not going to be well planned when you’re doing it to get your class done tomorrow,” said Sainani, who has been teaching online classes since 2013. “At this point, professors are going to scramble to do the best they can.”

As the outbreak spreads and universities respond, can edtech startups help legacy institutions rapidly adopt online teaching services? And perhaps more tellingly, can they do so in a seamless way? 

Just a few hours after the markets closed the books on one of its worst trading days since the dawn of the financial crisis, President Donald Trump and members of the coronavirus task force took to the podium in the White House press briefing room to tease an economic stimulus package in an effort to stabilize shaky markets.

In a brief statement before the press corps, the president hinted at a possible payroll tax cut and emergency support for businesses looking to guarantee that hourly workers are protected from job loss and lost wages as social distancing becomes recommended practice in response to the spread of COVID-19.

“We’re going to be talking about hourly wage earners getting help so that they can be in a position where they’re not going to miss a paycheck,” the president said. “So that they don’t get penalized for something that’s not their fault.”

Trump intends to speak with representatives of the Small Business Administration to create potential loans for small businesses affected by response efforts from federal, state and local governments.

“This is about providing proper tools and liquidity to get through the next few months,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, at the briefing.

The president left the podium without responding to reporters’ questions about whether he had been tested for COVID-19, after reports surfaced earlier today that several members of Congress who had met with the president had been exposed to the disease last week at a gathering of national conservative leadership.

Vice President Mike Pence then outlined the latest steps from the U.S. government to respond to the spread of the disease while emphasizing most Americans’ risk of contracting the disease remained low.

“The risk of contracting the coronavirus to the American public remains low and the risk of serious disease also remains low,” the vice president said yet again. 

Meanwhile, the American private health industry is working overtime to develop vaccines, treatments and diagnostic testing tools to buttress the work being done in national laboratories.

As more private tools come to market, the question will be who will ultimately foot the bill for treatment of the disease as it spreads.

Some epidemiologists contend that the U.S. remains unprepared for the severity of the disease’s spread, and that even a good scenario means that millions of Americans will be sickened and need some sort of consultation or care.

The government’s response to stabilize markets follows the advice laid out in a series of policy suggestions from the International Monetary Fund and advocated by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, who has returned to the private sector as a managing director of the venture capital firm NEA.