Month: March 2021

I’m excited for any opportunity to talk about soft robotics. There’s something other-worldly about the world of inflatable robotic bladders. Human beings are wont to develop robotics in their own image. The world of soft robots are something akin to what the technology would be like if it was developed by a sea creature.

Certainly cephalopods like octopi and squid have been a major inspiration for the category, along with other invertebrates. The benefits of the technology is clear. These far less rigid structures are more compliant and are able to squeeze into more places and conform to different shapes. We have seen a number of models deployed for different tasks, including picking and placing fragile products like foodstuffs.

Another major benefit is the safety. As human-robot collaborations increase, companies are looking for ways to ensure that their big, hulking machines don’t accidentally hurt their workers. That appears to be a big part of the inspiration behind this MIT project designed to create robots that can alternate between hard and soft structures.

It’s still very much in the early stages, but the research presents a compelling idea, with a series of cables that help the soft structure become more rigid. The team likens the tech to the muscles in a human arm. When flexed, it becomes much more difficult to move.

New research published by researchers at National University of Singapore and the University of Lincoln (U.K.) in the journal Nature show ocean-inspired soft robots in a seemingly more natural environment: the Marina Trench. The soft structure (this time drawing more direct inspiration from rays) was able to withstand the extreme pressure that comes with being nearly 11,000 meters below the surface of the South China Sea.

Per the team:

This self-powered robot eliminates the requirement for any rigid vessel. To reduce shear stress at the interfaces between electronic components, we decentralize the electronics by increasing the distance between components or separating them from the printed circuit board.

Another entirely different — but equally fascinating — swimming robot comes out of UC San Diego. The 2 cm long fish-shaped robots have platinum tales, which propel through bubbles created by a reaction to the hydrogen peroxide in their petri dishes. After researchers cut the little robots in half or thirds, magnetic interaction makes the pieces “heal” back together. The hope is that such application could be put to use in larger swimming robots, which are frequently made of fragile material.

The big robotics investment of the week is Skydio. Not the first time that sentiment has been uttered, of course. The Series D brings the drone makers total funding up to $340 million, as it expands to additional commercial applications. There’s also the fact that the company is U.S.-based, which likely makes it all the more appealing to investors following DJI’s addition to the DoC’s “entity list” in December.

That was one of those initiatives the Trump administration took on its way out the door. Like a number of recent entity list additions, this will hopefully be scrutinized under the new administration. Thus far, however, it hasn’t appeared to impact DJI’s ability to sell drones in the States, including the new FPV.

I got my hands on the new model this week. It’s an interesting new category the drone giant has only dipped its toes in thus far. The DJI FPV bundles goggles for a first-person flight experience that has largely been the domain of racers and high-end hobbyist models. Given that DJI current controls roughly 70% of the global market, this marks an important moment for the burgeoning category.

SkyMul, meanwhile, is one of the more interesting applications I’ve seen in the drone space for a bit. The startup is one of a deluge of robotics companies in the construction space. Specially, it uses quadcopters for the extremely thankless job of tying rebar.

On the research side of the category, we’ve got these adorable little buggers out of MIT. At 0.6 grams, they weigh roughly the size of a large bumble bee. And unlike previous models, these “cassette tapes with wings” are designed to survive mid-air collisions. Turns out bumble bees tend to crash into each other a bunch while flying. That’s one of those little pieces of nature trivia that make perfect sense when you think about it for a second.

The drones are “are built with soft actuators, made from carbon nanotube-coated rubber cylinders. The actuators elongate when electricity is applied at a rate up to 500 times a second. Doing this causes the wings to beat and the drones to take flight.”

After I posted that article, someone asked if I knew about a “kids’ book about a boy who becomes an insect drone and solves mysteries?” I did not. But I asked the occasionally usual social media platform and it nearly instantly responded with the extremely 70s kids book title, “Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy.” The thirteenth book in a long-running series, the book offered a glimpse into the future of drones. Per a 2014 Medium article:

You control the drone using a keyboard box, a thoroughly funky virtual-reality helmet, and what look like a pair of souped up Nintendo Power Gloves. With head inside the helmet, the pilot sees what the dragonfly sees, and even feels what the dragonfly feels via haptic feedback in the gloves.

In less fun “science fiction predicts the future” news, a follow up from all of the hubbub surrounding Boston Dynamics last week. Once again, the ACLU is weighing in on the matter, as it did when the company debuted footage of a Spot unit in the field with the Massachusetts state PD on our stage a while back.

The org reiterates questions it and others have raised before, including some of the generally ominous images and ideas around weaponized robotics that have been floating around for a long time. Here, however, it combines these with existing conversations around policing, AI and bias:

Viewed narrowly, there’s nothing wrong with using a robot to scout a dangerous location or deliver food to hostages. But communities should take a hard look at expensive, rare-use technologies at a time when the nation is increasingly recognizing the need to invest in solving our social problems in better ways than just empowering police.

There’s a lot to untangle here, but as I said week, it’s a net positive that we’re discussing these things now, while they’re still largely hypothetical. If drones have taught us anything, it’s that technology comes at you fast. I can appreciate that last week’s art instillation was not the framing Boston Dynamics wanted to enter into this conversation — and I do think the company’s an easy target due to its profile and the framing of fiction like Black Mirror.

But having this ongoing conversation is a net positive for robotics, going forward.

Fresh off the termination of its planned merger with Visa, Plaid announced Thursday a new income verification product, which it said is aimed at “improving the lending lifecycle” with payroll data.

Dubbed simply Income, the new product — which is currently in beta — is designed to make it easier for people to verify their income in order to do things like secure loans, qualify for mortgages, rent apartments and lease cars, among other things.

Plaid Income gives lenders — both at fintech companies and financial institutions — verified and permissioned data on the income, employment status and tax liabilities of individual users.

The San Francisco-based company says it has been developing its Payroll product suite for more than a year. Last month, Plaid launched its other product in that suite, Deposit Switch, which is designed to allow people to “quickly” switch their direct deposits to a new or existing bank account by linking their payroll account via Plaid.

Notably, Plaid opted to build out its own income verification offering rather than partner with another fintech.

A spokesperson told TechCrunch via email that the company is “always” looking to provide people with the most holistic view of their financial lives. 

“Over the past few years, we’ve added support for several additional different types of consumer-permissioned data, including liabilities, investments, mortgage data and more,” the spokesperson added. “It’s become clearer that payroll data has huge potential value for enabling new or more streamlined services that help people better manage their financial lives, and we knew we wanted to bring that to market ourselves.”

Historically, the process of providing information so that lenders can verify employment status, income and ability to pay can place a heavy burden on applicants.

“They often need to retrieve and then share multiple documents or PDFs, which then a lender must process and review,” Plaid points out. With Income, the process is streamlined, the fintech infrastructure provider claims.

Using Plaid Link, applicants have the choice to share their payroll information using one of two methods:

• Authenticating using their employer or payroll provider account 
• Uploading payroll documents including paystubs, W2s and supported types of 1099s 

To provide a more “familiar and secure” experience for applicants, Plaid is developing credential-less authentication capabilities. This means that, say, an applicant for a credit card could supply key identifying information to the lender that Plaid would then use to locate his or her income information. Or maybe another bit of explanation of why this matt Also, an applicant will have the chance to review the information they are sharing and opt out of sharing it at any time.

Kate Adamson, product lead at Plaid, said the company views access to payroll data as the next area of opportunity in financial services.

“The past decade of fintech innovation has shown that people can make better financial decisions more easily with better access to and control of their own financial data,” she told TechCrunch.

The income verification space is an increasingly crowded one. Last June, TechCrunch wrote about Pinwheel, an API layer for payroll data that handles everything from income and employee verification to easily switching and managing direct deposit. The company officially came out of stealth last year, announcing that it had raised a $7 million seed round from Josh Kopelman at First Round Capital and Greg Bettinelli at Upfront Ventures.

There’s also Argyle, which is building a “gateway to access employment records.” In October, that startup announced a $20 million Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures. Ironically, Argyle’s name was inspired by Plaid, according to Argyle CEO and co-founder Shmulik Fishman. At the time, he told me that the company intentionally named Argyle after a pattern.

“I’m a huge fan of Plaid, and make no secret about it,” Fishman had said. “Plus, there’s a number of other successful companies such as Stripe and Checkr named after patterns. We went through a list of patterns and polka dots didn’t sound very good. So we settled on Argyle. And ultimately, we want to be the Plaid for employment records.”

This morning Square, a fintech company that serves both individuals and companies, announced that it has purchased a majority stake in Tidal, a music streaming service. The deal, worth some $297 million, will Tidal allow artist-partners to keep their ownership in the music company.

Square CEO Jack Dorsey used his other company, Twitter, this morning to explain the deal. Dorsey seemed to expect the transaction to generate skepticism – which it definitely has. In his opening message, he asked a rhetorical question: “Why would a music streaming company and a financial services company join forces?!”

Why indeed. Dorsey’s expectation is that his company can replicate the success of Cash App and other Square products in the world of music. Noting that “new ideas are found at the intersection,” Dorsey argued that the confluence of “music and the economy” is one such point of convergence.

The deal also installs musician and businessperson Jay Z on Square’s board.

Some early reaction to the deal has proved negative. It’s not hard to riff on the seeming-strangeness of Square and Tidal as a pair. And Square has made acquisitions in the past that appeared adjacent and failed to stick. The company bought food-delivery service Caviar in 2014 before selling it to DoorDash in 2019, for example; that Square appears to have made a venture-level return on the transaction is immaterial to the focus argument.

But the bull-case for the Square-Tidal tie-up is easy to make as well. The American fintech just spent a minute fraction of a single percent of its market capitalization on the smaller company, and through its choice to let artists keep their stake, has effectively onboarded a host of ambassadors for its brand.

And Dorsey is not wrong that Square did shake up the commerce game for many offline businesses with its original card reader. Why not take a swing at a part of the economy — music — that has migrated from the physical world to the digital in the past few years, much like small businesses in recent quarters?

Square’s business users, it’s “seller ecosystem,” as it likes to call it, are increasingly digital. In its most recent quarterly earnings report, “in-person only” usage is falling as a percentage of seller gross payment volume (GPV), while “online only” and “omnichannel” GPV are taking up the slack.

Square has a known win in its consumer-focused Cash App service, which reached 36 million monthly actives in December of 2020, up from 24 million in the same period one year prior. You can imagine tie-ups between the music company and the youth-skewing Cash App audience. And having Jay Z at the Square boardroom table will hardly make the company less innovative; he may bring fresh perspective.

And then there’s the question of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, a new form of digital asset that have recently become the cause célèbre of the cryptocurrency community. Given that Square has a growing cryptocurrency business via Cash App, and has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into bitcoin itself. If there is space in the market for Square to bring music-based NFTs to its larger consumer user base is an interesting question. If the answer is yes, Square could now be in a leading position to create that market.

Perhaps the Square-Tidal deal won’t generate the future growth that Square imagines. But the deal is cheap, snagging Jay Z as a leader is a win, and it’s hard to win by only playing corporate defense.

SpaceX has launched another batch of its Starlink satellites – the usual complement of 60 of the low Earth orbit spacecraft, which will join the more than 1,000 already making up the existing constellation. This is the fifth launch of Starlink satellites for SpaceX this year, and the 20th overall.

Earlier this year, SpaceX opened up Starlink access to anyone in a current or planned service area via a pre-order reservation system with a refundable up-front deposit. The company aims to continue launches like this one apace throughout 2021 in order to get the constellation to the point where it can serve customers over a much larger portion of the globe. SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell has previously said that the company expects it should have coverage over much of the globe at a constellation size of around 1,200 satellites, but the company has plans to launch more than 30,000 to fully build out its network capacity and speed.

While SpaceX is making good progress on Starlink with its Falcon 9 launcher, it’s also looking ahead to Starship as a key driver of the constellation’s growth. Starship, SpaceX’s next-generation launch vehicle currently under development in South Texas, will be able to deliver 400 Starlink satellites at a time to orbit, and it’s also being designed with full reusability and fast turnaround in mind.

The ability to launch more than six times as many satellites per mission would help SpaceX a lot in terms of the speed with which they can deploy the Starlink network, as well as the overall cost of the endeavor – assuming their cost projections about Starlink’s general affordability are even close to accurate once it becomes a high-volume production rocket. That’s definitely still at least a few years off, but SpaceX did mark a milestone on Wednesday that bodes well for its chances of making that happen.

The company’s latest Starship prototype performed its most successful test launch to date on Wednesday, taking off from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas development site and flying to around 32,000 feet before executing a ‘flop’ maneuver and then reorienting itself for a soft vertical landing. The test rocket also blew up after sitting on the pad for just under 10 minutes, but despite that spectacular ending, the test proved out a lot of the basic engineering work that SpaceX needs to make Starship a reality.

Starlink is a huge, multi-year effort, so even if Starship is still a few years away from high-volume production and flight, it should still have a significant impact on the project overall. And Starlink, once operational and fully deployed, will require regular maintenance – individual satellites in the network are only really designed to be operational for ups to five years max, with regular replacements required to keep things running smoothly.

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Early Stage is the premier “how-to” event for startup entrepreneurs and investors. You’ll hear firsthand how some of the most successful founders and VCs build their businesses, raise money and manage their portfolios. We’ll cover every aspect of company building: Fundraising, recruiting, sales, legal, PR, marketing and brand building. Each session also has audience participation built-in — there’s ample time included in each for audience questions and discussion.

This morning Hopin, a virtual events platform and video-focused software service, announced that it has closed a $400 million Series C. The new capital values Hopin at $5.65 billion. Both numbers match prior TechCrunch reporting that the company was targeting a $400 million raise at a valuation of between $5 billion and $6 billion.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and General Catalyst (GC) co-led the round, as TechCrunch reported was likely. Prior investor IVP also took part in the round.

For Hopin, the round is another rapid-fire funding event in a string of such transactions. The company has seen scorching revenue growth in recent quarters, reaching $70 million ARR today, its CEO and founder Johnny Boufarhat told TechCrunch in an interview.

As part of the transaction, recent a16z hire Sriram Krishnan will join Hopin’s board. According to Boufarhat, Hopin had hoped to hire Krishnan before he took his job at the venture firm.

Hopin has scaled rapidly from its now-dated $20 million ARR milestone that it announced in Q4 2020. But not all of that growth has been organic. Hopin recently bought StreamYard, a company that brought $27 million worth of ARR to the combined entity. Hopin spent $250 million on that deal, a transaction that was announced in January of this year.

The company has raised $565 million since February of 2020, it said in an email.

According to Boufarhat, Hopin intends to invest heavily in its product and engineering functions. The CEO stressed during a call that he intends to keep his company’s product spend high as a percentage of revenue; TechCrunch’s read of the sentiment is that Hopin has no intention of letting other companies carve into its core market while it solidifies its virtual event service and adds other capabilities.

The StreamYard deal may provide some guidance as to where Hopin is headed. The acquisition brought to Hopin a company that was already in use by some of its own users, but also added a business line to its collection not wholly component to the event work for which Hopin is best-known. Boufarhat told TechCrunch that his company is open to making more acquisitions.

Perhaps we’ll see Hopin extend its reach to other products that fit into its video-first perspective. It certainly has the capital and equity value to buy a plethora of smaller companies.

At $70 million ARR, Hopin is worth around 81x its current annual recurring revenue. When the company last raised, a $125 million round in November of 2020, the company had $20 million in ARR and a valuation of $2.125 billion valuation. At the time the company was worth a little over 106x its ARR. In light of the company’s recent growth, investors in that round now paid a far-smaller 30.4x ARR multiple, contrasting the company’s new revenue mark and its now-dated valuation.

Provided that Hopin can continue its rapid growth, its current ARR multiple could appear closer to norms in a few quarters.

Closing, Hopin does not appear ready to answer the siren-song of the SPAC. Boufarhat told TechCrunch that he receives regular outreach from SPACs, something we’ve heard from a number of late-stage technology CEOs. Hopin’s founder, however, noted that great companies can go public regardless of the market, and that his company intends on being operationally IPO-ready next year. It appears that a more traditional IPO for Hopin could be in the cards for 2022 or 2023.

There has been a rapid proliferation of roll-up companies armed with wallets full of money to consolidate promising smaller merchants that sell on Amazon and other marketplaces, the idea being to create economies of scale to help them sell more effectively and grow. Today, a company that is somewhat doing the opposite — building tools to help Amazon sellers work better on their own — is announcing a big round of funding to keep growing its business.

Jungle Scout, an Austin-based company that builds tools covering services like search and market analytics, inventory management, and sales intelligence for companies selling on Amazon, has picked up $110 million, money that it is using in part to make an acquisition — Downstream Impact, a specialist in Amazon advertising founded by two ex-Amazon execs who did early work on Amazon’s in-house advertising efforts — and in part to continue growing its business.

You may not know the name but Jungle Scout it is quietly huge. It says that its tools impact some $8 billion in Amazon revenue with around 500,000 brands and entrepreneurs already using it. Its data engine ingests search, purchasing, and other information for some 500 million Amazon products, which it then turns into data to help customers sell on Amazon better.

Jungle Scout began life in 2015 focusing primarily on providing optimizing search tools for sellers solely on Amazon — if you didn’t guess that already by the “Jungle” and “Scout” in its name. Tools for improving business on Amazon still make up the bulk of its business, with its functionality covering not just Amazon.com but nine other regional Amazons. But now, the startup is slowly starting to expand its services beyond it. That could include Google Shopping, Facebook’s many social platforms, and more — whichever marketplace platforms consumers happen to be using.

“We are starting with Walmart.com, which will be live in near future,” CEO Greg Mercer said in an interview, “and the vision is to expand beyond that. We’re bullish on the future of Amazon, but if we think beyond that, my prediction would be that besides those platforms where people primarily go to purchase things, there are places where consumers spend their time — such as Google or social channels like Instagram — that could be other areas where we could provide tools to sell through.” 

Summit Partners, the venture capital and private equity firm, is the primary investor in this funding round, with Mercer himself also contributing. It’s not clear how much Jungle Scout has raised to date: PitchBook notes that Summit had backed it previously, in 2017, at an undisclosed sum and valuation. We’ve asked for more detail on this and will update as and when we look more. Valuation is also not being disclosed.

You might notice that in the first paragraph of this story I mentioned that Jungle Scout is “somewhat” taking a different approach to the roll-up companies, companies like Thrasio, SellerX, Branded, Heyday, Heroes, Perch, Berlin Brands Group, and doubtless others that are raising giant sums of money to source, and then partner with or buy up, third party sellers.

Jungle Scout does indeed provide a valuable service to Amazon retailers who are leveraging the giant’s FBA platform to manage a range of services like inventory, shipping and marketing (in the form of appearing on Amazon to sell things), and who want to remain independent and not be “rolled up.”

However, that’s not actually the full story. Mercer tells me that his company also provides its technology as a white label service to most of the big roll-up players — which of these, he did not note — and so you might also say that even if third-party merchants are not working directly with Jungle Scout, they might well end up doing so indirectly.

The opportunity for building out more tools to address the Amazon economy is a massive one. As we’ve pointed out before, it is estimated that the number of third-party sellers on Amazon currently stands around 5 million, a number that appears to be growing exponentially at the moment, with more than 1 million sellers joining the platform last year. That includes not just smaller retailers who are looking to extend their consumer touch-points, but also increasingly a number of big brands that are now looking at how they can leverage Amazon better to sell directly to consumers on the platform, rather than via third-party merchants. 

Within that, advertising remains a huge and growing part of the equation.

If you are an Amazon user, you’ll notice that ads search pages have been growing in number over the years (these are the sponsored results that come up at the top of searches you might make for a product), and so you will be unsurprised to know that advertising, as a result, is really growing fast for Amazon itself.

Ads alone accounted for $21.5 billion in annual revenue for Amazon in 2020, up 66% year-over-year.

Connor Folley, Downstream’s CEO who co-founded the company with another ex-Amazonian, Salim Hamed (who is Downstream’s CTO), told me that ads “within the walls of Amazon itself” still make up the majority of that figure, although it will continue to invest in areas like its DSP to expand beyond its own ecosystem. That makes it somewhat of a dark horse in the world of advertising, which up to now has been more concerned with the rise of Facebook among “new” players.

“The explosive growth of Amazon advertising over the last five years has surpassed many people’s expectations,” he said. “It might be a $50 billion dollar platform by 2023 — and much bigger than Facebook.”

While there are a lot of companies out there building tools and alternatives for sellers to get a better grip to sell on Amazon, the attraction here has been in part the size of Jungle Scout and its prescience in building this market in the first place.

“Jungle Scout was one of the first companies to identify the opportunity to provide SaaS-based tools to help businesses and brands expand their ecommerce footprints on Amazon and beyond, and the company has built on this leadership position over the last several years,” said Neil Roseman, Technologist-in-Residence at Summit Partners and Jungle Scout Board Director, in a statement.

It’s a strong vote of confidence when you consider that Roseman himself is also an ex-Amazonian, having been its VP of technology between 1998 and 2007 working on marketplace technology among other things. “We believe Jungle Scout’s technology is robust and highly scalable, designed to help a company to grow as the Amazon third-party selling ecosystem has expanded. We believe the addition of Downstream Impact will add to this product and engineering strength, and we are thrilled to be a part of the company’s growth journey.”

Wipro said on Thursday it has reached an agreement to buy 20-year-old British tech consultancy firm Capco for $1.45 billion as the major Indian software exporter looks to win customers in Europe and Asia.

The Indian firm, which identifies U.S. as its biggest market, said the two companies share “complimentary business models” and expects the deal to close by the end of June.

London-headquartered Capco’s clients include “many marquee names” in the global financial services industry including “Boards and C-Suites” in the banking, capital markets, wealth and asset management and insurance sectors, the Indian firm said in a filing (PDF) to the stock exchange in the country.

Privately-held firm Capco, which employs about 5,000 people and had raised about $80 million from investors 20 years ago, is “widely acknowledged for its deep domain and consulting expertise, risk and regulatory offerings and thought leadership around key industry technology challenges and opportunities. In addition, Capco services clients in the energy and commodities trading sector,” the two firms said in a joint press release.

“Together, we can deliver high-end consulting and technology transformations, and operations offerings to our clients. Wipro and Capco share complimentary business models and core guiding values, and I am certain that our new Capco colleagues will be proud to call Wipro home,” said Thierry Delaporte, CEO and Managing Director of Wipro, who assumed the top role last year.

This is a developing story. More to follow…

Apple is facing another antitrust investigation in Europe into how it operates the iOS App Store.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced today that it’s opened an investigation following a number of complaints from developers alleging unfair terms and as a result of its own work in the digital sector.

“The CMA’s investigation will consider whether Apple has a dominant position in connection with the distribution of apps on Apple devices in the UK — and, if so, whether Apple imposes unfair or anti-competitive terms on developers using the App Store, ultimately resulting in users having less choice or paying higher prices for apps and add-ons,” it wrote in a press release.

“This is only the beginning of the investigation and no decision has yet been made on whether Apple is breaking the law,” it added.

In a statement, Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA, also said: “Millions of us use apps every day to check the weather, play a game or order a takeaway. So, complaints that Apple is using its market position to set terms which are unfair or may restrict competition and choice — potentially causing customers to lose out when buying and using apps – warrant careful scrutiny.”

An Apple spokesperson sent us this statement in response to the CMA action:

We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place for customers to download the apps they love and a great business opportunity for developers everywhere. In the UK alone, the iOS app economy supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, and any developer with a great idea is able to reach Apple customers around the world.

We believe in thriving and competitive markets where any great idea can flourish. The App Store has been an engine of success for app developers, in part because of the rigorous standards we have in place — applied fairly and equally to all developers — to protect customers from malware and to prevent rampant data collection without their consent. We look forward to working with the UK Competition and Markets Authority to explain how our guidelines for privacy, security and content have made the App Store a trusted marketplace for both consumers and developers.

The European Union already has an open antitrust investigation into a number of elements of Apple’s business — after announcing a probe of the App Store and the iPhone maker’s payment offering, Apple Pay, last summer.

US lawmakers have also been questioning Apple as part of a major antitrust probe into big tech. And a bill has just advanced in Arizona that aims to force both Apple and Google to allow third party payment options in their smartphone stores.

The EU’s Apple investigation, meanwhile, remains ongoing. The video games publisher Epic Games — which has been engaged in a vicious public battle with Apple over what it decries as Cupertino’s unfair ‘tax’ on developers — recently sought to join the EU’s case by filing a complaint with the European Commission last month.

Epic also previously filed the same complaint in the UK — so it’s one of the unhappy developers the CMA cites.

With the UK now outside the European Union (post-Brexit), the CMA looks set to take on a more prominent role as a regional regulator. It’s free to investigate the same issues as the Commission (whereas under EU rules national regulators are supposed to avoid duplicating effort). So if it can move faster than the bloc’s competition commission it may have the opportunity to mould the standards that apply to tech giants. (Although the CMA said today that it “continues to coordinate closely” with the Commission and other agencies to tackle what it described as “global concerns”.)

Last fall the UK also announced a plan to establish a pro-competition regulation regime aimed at tackling the market power of big tech.

That followed a major market study of online platforms and digital advertising carried out by the CMA and the regulator published its advice to the government on shaping that regime in December. “As the CMA works with the government on these proposals – which will complement its current enforcement powers – the CMA will continue to use its existing powers to their fullest extent in order to protect competition in these areas,” it said today.

“Our ongoing examination into digital markets has already uncovered some worrying trends,” Coscelli added. “We know that businesses, as well as consumers, may suffer real harm if anti-competitive practices by big tech go unchecked. That’s why we’re pressing on with setting up the new Digital Markets Unit and launching new investigations wherever we have grounds to do so.”

In other recent actions scrutinizing tech giants the CMA has opened an investigation into Google’s plan to phase out third party tracking cookies and launched an inquiry into Uber’s planned acquisition of UK SaaS maker Autocab.

 

China’s relaxation of its one-child restriction has not delivered the population targets set by its policy planners. In 2019, the birth rate in China slumped to a seven-decade low, which experts attribute to changes in social attitudes, skyrocketing living costs as well as a demanding work culture.

One way to fix China’s demographic crisis is to lighten mothers’ burden, said Ding Lei, founder and CEO of NetEase, the second-biggest gaming company in China which also runs a popular music streaming service.

Ding made the proposal at China’s annual parliament session this week, comprising the meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). Each spring, delegates from a wide range of backgrounds, including political elites and tech billionaires, gather in Beijing for the legislative meetings informally known as the “two sessions.”

Ding is a member of the CPPCC, which includes other tech bosses like Tencent’s Pony Ma, Xiaomi’s Lei Jun and Baidu’s Robin Li. Ding suggested efforts should be directed to address costly childbearing, short maternity leave, an undersupply of children’s healthcare, an underdeveloped childcare system and other “practical pain points” to take burdens off women’s shoulders.

Ding further advocated for shared parental leave “at one’s discretion” to “give men more responsibilities in parenting.” The country, he argued, should bear women’s reproductive costs and the number of nursery facilities should be increased.

Most provinces in China have introduced paternity leave in recent years, but the length and implementation efforts vary across regions. In Guangdong, home to NetEase and Tencent, fathers are entitled to up to 15 days of paid paternity leave. Shanghai, on the other hand, falls on the lower end of the spectrum with 10 days.

But some experts argue the one-week average for fathers is far from enough to liberate new mothers, who receive a minimum of 98 days of paid maternity leave but could get more depending on where they reside. NetEase’s family leave policy is in line with national and regional regulations, a company representative told TechCrunch.

Occasionally, China’s tech giants disclose or give hints about their gender ratio. In 2019, 35% of NetEase’s 20,000 employees were women, the company says, and about 25% of its top management were female in the year. Online travel agent Ctrip, which prides itself on benefits for female employees, said in 2018 that over 60% of its staff were female. Jack Ma, a frequent speaker at female leadership forums, pledged in 2019 that females must make up more than 33% of Alibaba staff.

Food delivery start-up Deliveroo has today confirmed its £8bn ($11bn) stock market floatation in London, something which was on the cards previously.

The eight-year-old company will use the “dual-class” innovation which has been introduced to the London Stock Exchange by the UK government in a bid to keep UK companies from being lured over to the NASDAQ, as well as attract continental European listings.

The listing will be on the London Stock Exchange’s “premium” segment. Dual-class shares are popular in the US – where it is used by companies such as Facebook and Alphabet – because it allows founders to take a longer view of strategy and retain more control of their companies during decisions such as mergers and acquisitions.

Will Shu, CEO of Deliveroo, said in a statement: “Deliveroo was born in London. This is where I founded the company and delivered our first order. London is a great place to live, work, do business and eat. That’s why I’m so proud and excited about a potential listing here.”

Deliveroo’s business has boomed during pandemic-related lockdowns – it posted six-months of consecutive profits throughout this period – and now plans to expand.

Although Deliveroo’s listing came comes just a day after the British government gave the green light to recommendations for the dual-class shares, Deliveroo’s listing was always expected to be in London, given it’s UK base, so this news looks to have a political tinge attached to it. Indeed, the press release was handily issued with a supportive statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Claudia Arney, Chair of Deliveroo, said: “The time-limited dual-class structure would provide Will and his team with the certainty needed to execute against their ambitious growth plan to become the definitive online food company.”

Deliveroo’s plans include expanding its ‘ghost’ kitchens; on-demand grocery; extending its Plus subscription service; and offering its Signature service to restaurants, which allows customers to order delivery via a restaurants’ own website.

The multibillion-pound IPO will be a shot in the arm for The City after Amsterdam overtook London as Europe’s largest share trading center in January, post-Brexit.

Deliveroo pegged a $7 billion valuation in January after raising $180 million from investors.