Author: azeeadmin

Intel subsidiary Mobileye and rental car giant Sixt SE plan to launch a robotaxi service in Munich next year, the CEOs of the two companies announced Tuesday during the IAA Mobility show in Germany.

The robotaxi service is leveraging all of Intel’s, and more specifically Mobileye’s, assets that have been in development or purchased in recent years, including the $900 million acquisition in 2020 of Moovit, an Israeli startup that analyzes urban traffic patterns and provides transportation recommendations with a focus on public transit.

Through the partnership, riders will be able to access the robotaxi service via the Moovit app. The service will also be offered through Sixt’s mobility ONE app, which gives customers the ability hail a ride, rent, share or subscribe to vehicles.

Intel and Mobileye plan to scale the service across Germany and into other European countries later this decade. The companies chose Germany, a country where Mobileye is already testing its autonomous vehicle technology, because of a recently enacted law that permits driverless vehicles on public roads,. Mobileye robotaxis are expected to begin early-rider testing on Munich streets in 2022. The fleet will then move from test to commercial operations upon regulatory approval.

“Germany has shown global leadership toward a future of autonomous mobility by expediting crucial AV legislation,” Intel CEO Gelsinger said Tuesday at IAA.  “Our ability to begin robotaxi operations in Munich next year would not be possible without this new law.”

During the IAA keynote, Mobileye also unveiled the vehicles branded with MoovitAV and SIXT. These vehicles, which are equipped with Mobileye’s self-driving system, will be produced in volume and used for the robotaxi service in Germany, the companies said.

While Mobileye is perhaps best known for supplying automakers with computer vision technology that powers advanced driver assistance systems — a business that generated nearly $967 million in sales last year — the company has also been developing automated vehicle technology.

The self-driving system, now branded as Mobileye Drive, is made up of a system-on-chip based compute, redundant sensing subsystems based on camera, radar and lidar technology, its REM mapping system and a rules-based Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS) driving policy. Mobileye’s REM mapping system essentially crowdsources data by tapping into more than 1 million vehicles equipped with its tech to build high-definition maps that can be used to support in ADAS and autonomous driving systems.

That data is not video or images but compressed text that collects about 10 kilobits per kilometer. Mobileye has agreements with six OEMs, including BMW, Nissan and Volkswagen, to collect that data on vehicles equipped with the EyeQ4 chip, which is used to power the advanced driver assistance system. On fleet vehicles, Mobileye collects data from an after-market product it sells to commercial operators.

HoneyBee, a startup that aims to help companies provide access to financial support for their employees, announced today it has raised $5.7 million in equity in a round led by FFVC.

Resolute Ventures, Afore Capital, Rebalance Capital, K50 and Financial Venture Studio also participated in the financing, along with two-time NBA all-star Baron Davis.

HoneyBee has also secured a $100 million debt facility from CIM, an institutional impact investment manager that provides debt capital for innovation that lends to underserved communities. 

The Los Angeles-based Certified B Corp describes itself as a B2B financial technology company that is on a mission to give employees — and their families — free access to financial support in the workplace as a benefit. That support could come in the form of employer-sponsored “no-cost rainy day funds” and on-demand financial therapy with the goal of “creating a healthier workforce environment.”

Or put even more simply, HoneyBee aims to give HR and DEI leaders that say they are committed to creating an equitable and inclusive culture a way to provide access to financial tools and education to help improve their employees’ financial health.

CEO and co-founder Ennie Lim said she was inspired to start HoneyBee after suffering financial setbacks after her own divorce several years ago.

“My credit was negatively impacted to the point where I found myself unable to get access to any affordable credit,” she recalls. “I wish I had done a lot of things differently, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I was embarrassed to ask for help.”

The experience helped Lim realize the importance of feeling in control of your financial life.

“It affects your self-esteem, happiness, and personal relationships and it made me want to help others take control of theirs,” she said.

Lim teamed up with Benny Yiu and Max Zschoch in 2017 to build HoneyBee with that goal in mind.

“We are solving a massive economic disparity and we’re leveling the playing field in the workplace by reducing the financial literacy gap and providing access to credit to people that need it most,” Lim said. “It’s important to acknowledge that people come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. The varying levels of financial illiteracy is an issue we can no longer ignore.”

Image Credits: HoneyBee

A study conducted by Washington University in St Louis found that 89% of HoneyBee users are people of color, women, or both. During the pandemic, when the need for its offering was even greater, HoneyBee signed over 60 mid-markets companies as customers and is launching with Fortune 500 companies later this year.

The startup’s user growth grew by 225% during the pandemic and the company says it delivered over $2 million in rainy day funds. Meanwhile, its on-demand financial therapy usage increased by 172% over the prior year.

“Amidst this pandemic, when employers were cutting budgets, furloughing, laying off, reducing hours and salaries, we started to see a shift in their buying behavior to address financial health,” Lim said.

Honeybee’s customers include Alameda County Community Food Bank, DC Central Kitchen, Kate Somerville, Community Catalyst of California, Southwest Water Company, Straus Family Creamery, Asian Art Museum, Pasadena Humane Society and Peachtree Health.

NBA star Baron Davis grew up in South Central Los Angeles with his grandmother and says he believes strongly in the startup’s desire to provide access to affordable credit.

“Financial literacy is a barbed wire for people like me. It is essential for companies to provide equitable access to financial support for their employees,” he wrote via email. “Financial access alleviates stress in the workplace especially when they are working hard to make ends meet to support their family. Providing easy access to money and education will result in a happier, healthier, productive workforce.”

FFVC Partner AJ Plotkin said his firm likes that the structure of the product “solves a serious access problem for customers who need a bridge for short-term, emergency needs, in a way that is not burdensome for the employee or the employer.”

The company plans to use its new capital in part to grow its sales, engineering, and customer success team. 

On October 27, less than two fast-moving months away, we’re hosting TC Sessions: SaaS 2021, our first event focused exclusively on the software-as-a-service ecosystem. SaaS — the de facto business model for B2B and B2C startups and enterprises alike — shows no sign of slowing down.

This is a prime opportunity to hear and learn from the industry’s major players, thought leaders and, frankly, some of the coolest creators around the globe. It’s more than just listening — it’s engaging with speakers during Q&As and networking with founders, CEOs and investors from major companies.

Pro Ka-ching Tip: Want to save $100 on the price of admission? Yeah, you do. Simply buy an early-bird SaaS pass before the prices go up on October 1 at 11:59 pm (PT).

So, let’s get to it. here are just some of the leading voices and companies coming to TC Sessions: SaaS to share their insight, actionable tips and hard-won advice.

Kathy Baxter is the principal architect for the ethical AI practice at Salesforce. She also has more than 20 years under her belt as a software architect. We’re going to tap into her deep expertise for a panel discussion on AI’s growing role in software today, as well as the implications of using AI in your software service as it becomes a mainstream part of the SaaS development process.

Javier Soltero is the VP and GM in charge of Google Workspace, which has significantly more than 2 billion users. Productivity apps like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive are a big part of SaaS, and Soltero joins us for an interview about the role Google Workspace plays in the Google cloud strategy.

Jared Spataro is the corporate VP in charge of Microsoft 365 — arguably one of the most successful SaaS products ever. He was part of the great shift from on prem to the cloud, and he’ll join us to talk about how Microsoft made that move and what it’s done for the company.

Casey Aylward, a principal at Costanoa Ventures, concentrates on early-stage enterprise startups. Kobie Fuller, a partner at Upfront Ventures, focuses on SaaS, AR and VR. Sarah Guo, a partner at Greylock, concentrates on AI, cybersecurity, infrastructure and the future of work. This group of prestigious VCs will panel-up to discuss what they look for when they invest in SaaS startups.

Be sure to check out the TC Sessions: SaaS 2021 agenda — we’ll add more exciting panels, interviews, speaker Q&As and breakout sessions over the next few weeks. Register here to receive updates with the latest additions to the day’s events.

TC Sessions: SaaS is a ripe networking opportunity. Consider this list of just some of the major companies that will be in the house. Whether you’re looking for potential customers, investors, partnerships or some other creative collaboration, you’ll have ample time to network with leaders from the foremost SaaS players.

• Adobe
• CBRE
• FedEx
• McKinsey & Company
• Moody’s Analytics
• SAP
• Shell Ventures
• SONY
• Verizon Ventures

TC Sessions: SaaS 2021, takes place on October 27, and this is your chance to learn from and network with the seriously successful movers, shakers and unicorn makers of the SaaS world. Grab your early bird pass before October 1 at 11:59 pm (PT), and you’ll save $100.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: SaaS 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Jetty, a fintech company which aims to give renters flexibility when paying rent, has raised $23 million in a funding round co-led by Citi and Flourish Ventures.

The financing brings Jetty’s total raised since its 2016 inception to $78 million. Other investors participating in the latest growth round include Credit Ease and K5. Previous backers include Farmers Insurance Group, Khosla and Ribbit Capital, among others.

The 100-person New York City-based startup has come up with a way to help renters make rent on time with an offering that resembles the ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) model that is increasingly used by consumers at the point of sale, online and in person. 

In a nutshell, renters can pay their rent when it’s due and then have up until the 24th of the month to pay the money back to Jetty  — either in a lump sum or via installments. They don’t pay interest charges or late fees, but rather a monthly subscription fee ranging from $15 to $25, depending on the renter’s risk profile. If the renter fails to pay back the money during the agreed upon time, they will not be able to borrow more for the following month.

The monthly fee is “far lower” than any potential late fee if the rent is not paid on time, said co-founder and CEO Mike Rudoy.

“Around 50% of the average renter’s paycheck is going to rent. So this is the largest expense of any renter, on a given month,” he said. “And so you would expect that there would be some type of financial services product that would give them the flexibility that they need to come up with the money on time in such a way that they weren’t penalized.”

The offering is more of a cousin to traditional BNPL, he said, than actual BNPL.

“We will pay the rent on behalf of the renter in full on the first of the month, giving property managers the money they need when they need it,” Rudoy explained. “Renters get 24 days to pay it back on a schedule that suits their needs.”

To launch Jetty Rent, the company partnered with Cortland, a large real estate investment, development and management company, to roll out the offering in beta to residents across a portfolio of properties.

Now, the startup is launching the offering to the public. Jetty Rent is the newest product on the startup’s platform, which also offers “low cost” renters insurance as well as security deposit replacement.

“The mission of the company is to make renting more affordable and flexible,” Rudoy said. “And we are a financial services platform whereby every product that we have launched is meant to both provide value to both property managers as well as renters.”

With the move, Jetty is evolving from being an insurtech to also a lender, said Rudoy. The company is providing the loans through Cross River Bank.

“We are working to bring some additional credit and lending prowess to the business given the fact it has historically been considered an insurtech company,” he told TechCrunch.

The fact that the company offers all three products to property managers gives it a competitive edge, according to Rudoy.

“This makes us different from other financial services companies attacking the same space and problem set,” he told TechCrunch. “We’re the only one that has both a security deposit alternative and flexible rent product under the same roof. It makes the choice to work with us much easier if you’re a property manager, from an integration and onboarding perspective. It means fewer different brands in front of renters as well.”

The renters pay for all the products and the property managers are partners in the distribution of the products.

Currently, the company has agreements with property owners and managers that operate more than 2.2 million rental units across the country. Since starting to build its property partner network in 2017, Jetty has seen 193% average year over growth in contracted units, according to Alex Vlasto, the company’s VP of marketing. Besides Cortland, it also works with AMLI Residential, for example.

Emmalyn Shaw, managing partner of Flourish Ventures, notes that over 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

“Stable housing is a critical component in helping them achieve financial security,” she said.

Jetty, Shaw added, is the only company “that extends beyond a single solution to embed a rich and differentiated set of financial offerings” including rental insurance, security deposit alternatives and now rent flexibility. 

“Through its unique consumer insights, differentiated pricing, increased consumer loyalty, Jetty has achieved a significant competitive advantage,” she wrote via email. “Moreover, their consumer reach through top property management entities like Cortland is unparalleled.”

As of late, other startups that have come up with new technology to make the lives of renters easier have also raised money. Sugar, a startup that aims to turn apartment buildings into “interactive communities,” recently closed on $2.5 million in seed funding.  And, RentCheck, a startup that has built out an automated property inspection platform, recently raised $2.6 million in seed money.

Emulate Inc., a biotech company focused on developing “organ-on-a-chip” technology, closed an $82 million Series E round on Tuesday. This latest round is intended to formulate a massive investment in a “roadmap” for developing model organ systems created to fit drugmakers’ needs and bring the idea of an organ-on-a-chip into use in the lab. 

An organ-on-a-chip is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: it’s a recreation of a human organ (or system of human organs) scaled down into a tiny piece of hardware about the size of a AA battery. That hardware, the so-called “chip,” contains chambers where human cells (like brain cells, the kidney, lung, brain intestine, etc), can be grown. Then the chip can be manipulated to simulate breathing, blood flow through an organ or other mechanical forces that might happen in a human body. 

Ultimately, the chip is supposed to mimic the conditions within a human body, and allow drugmakers to better predict what might happen when a new candidate is introduced. It’s a new model for experiments that could prove critical in the pre-clinical study process. Right now that area of research is dominated by traditional cell- or animal-based models – though Emulate, and other similar companies are hoping to change that paradigm. 

Emulate was founded in 2013 and has, so far, raised about $255 million in funding. This most recent Series E round, led by Northpond Ventures and Perceptive Advisors, is part of Emulate’s plan to invest more heavily in R&D, and create specific organ-on-a-chip applications that they’ve honed in on through conversations with drug companies. So far, Emulate counts 21 major drug companies, including Roche, Genentech, Johnson & Johnson and Gilead Sciences as customers. 

“We researched what pharma is spending their R&D dollars on – particular types of molecules, biologics and so-forth – then we created a roadmap, a series of applications aligned to where big pharma is spending their money” Jim Corbett, the CEO of Emulate tells TechCrunch. 

In January, Emulate announced several new products and services that are part of this roadmap. They include the Emulate brain chip, designed to aid with research into central nervous system disorders (like Alzheimer’s), an immune cell recruitment application that will investigate how the immune system interacts across the lungs, liver, and intestine (using lung-chips, liver-chips, and intestine chips), and a microbiome model integrated into the liver chip. 

Corbett says the company will look to roll out 14 applications over the next two years, seven of which will roll out next year. 

Organs on chips have been around for about a decade. The NIH has launched them into space to study the effects of spaceflight, and has been developing tissue chip testing and validation programs since 2010.

A 2020 review paper in Bioengineering notes the organ-on-a-chip industry was recently valued around $21 million, but could grow to about $220 million by 2025. 

A lot of that growth will depend on the potential for an organ-on-a-chip to disrupt the preclinical side of the drug testing process. And that itself depends a lot on how the FDA views data collected on that platform. 

The specific organ-on-a-chip technology itself doesn’t need to be FDA approved (it’s not a  therapeutic or device), but drug companies will almost certainly seek assurance that the agency is receptive to experiments using organs-on-chips. 

From Corbett’s perspective, he says the FDA has proved “very receptive” to data collected on these platforms. 

There is evidence the company has worked closely with the FDA in the past. In 2020, for instance, Emulate entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), with the FDA. A CRADA agreement allows a non-federal collaborator to provide funding and equipment for a research project conducted at an FDA laboratory. The FDA provides no funding, but does allow for the collaborator to license intellectual property developed during such projects. 

Through this program, Emulate’s lung chips were used in COVID-19 research. The brain chip, liver, and intestine chips were also used for individual research projects. 

FDA collaboration aside there’s also been regulatory movement that could favor companies pursuing organ chips. For instance, the FDA Modernization Act of 2021, introduced in Congress in April, which would allow the FDA to use “alternative testing methods to animal testing” to evaluate safety and efficacy of drugs. The bill specifically includes organs on chips in its definition of a non-clinical test or study.

“If the Modernization Act goes through, it’s clearly spelled out,” says Corbett. 

Still, the field of organ-on-a-chip research is relatively new. Whether or not it will eventually help more drug candidates materialize is still theory. Though, with a new round of funding and a changing regulatory environment, we could have solid answers sooner rather than later. 

Managers are occasionally evaluated by their team’s occupational wellness — the sometimes-hazy calculation that rates employees’ professional and personal contentment. What may not be as commonly tested is the connected concept of employee engagement, which measures how committed employees are to helping their company succeed. While 71% of executives cite employee engagement as essential to their success, a mere 15% of U.S. employees consider themselves engaged.

Unfortunately for employers, when we look through either the contentment or engagement lens, we see a workforce in crisis — upward of 70% of U.S. workers are so unhappy in their roles that they are thinking about and/or actively looking for a new job.

What’s behind all this? Developmental stagnation at work and the opportunity for a better role elsewhere, often defined not merely as one with more pay, but as one presenting a pathway toward personal and professional growth and upward mobility.

The pandemic has only exacerbated the dissatisfaction of many employees — at varied levels — who feel stuck in unfulfilling jobs, with little guidance on how to advance or pivot in their careers and achieve the dignity of meaningful, impactful work.

This piece aims to deliver a simple action plan for assessing your employees’ engagement level and taking targeted steps to build the kind of committed and reliable workforce necessary to survive and thrive in today’s marketplace.

Common failures in corporate career development efforts

While researching employee retention when building our startup, we identified a number of common and recurring shortcomings in career-development practices — ones that are likely to be familiar to most Fortune 500 companies, as well as scaling, high-growth startups.

We focused on the activities and strategies companies use to align their skills needs with workers’ capabilities and aspirations — specifically, their approach to advancing staff toward jobs deemed both desirable to employees and essential to employers.

We found significant behavioral-design failure points across three main areas: Their strategic framework for employee engagement and advancement; implementation process and templates; and goal setting and rewards.

To understand the companies’ strategic framework, we examined upskilling and tuition reimbursement policies and spend; individualized employee future-fit assessments; tools for employee career pathway modeling and advancement; and early-in-career and diverse-hire career-progression programs.

For implementation processes and templates, we examined onboarding; employee performance and development cycle; manager feedback; and succession planning.

For goal setting and rewards, we examined manager and VP-level goals and rewards connected directly to their activities and performance in developing and advancing employee careers.

Take this employee development survey

Let’s gauge your company’s employee development and engagement efforts. How many of the following can you answer with a “yes”?

1. Has your company run a process to define skills or talent-gaps across organizations in the past two years?
2. As part of such a process, did your company define a role taxonomy for essential roles?
3. Do you have a process and the tools for mapping existing personnel to that taxonomy, whether from within or outside the relevant organization?
   
   

Anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life exposed the personal information of hundreds of job applicants after a website bug allowed anyone to access their resumes, which were stored in an unprotected directory on its website.

A security researcher told TechCrunch that the group’s main website, built largely in WordPress, was not properly protecting the file storage on its website, which it used to store resumes of more than 300 job applicants, as well as other files uploaded to the website. The resumes contained names, phone numbers, addresses, and details of a person’s employment history.

The website bug was fixed over the weekend, a short time after details of the leak were posted on Twitter. The group’s website no longer lists any of the exposed files.

“We are taking action to protect the concerned individuals,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, a spokesperson for Texas Right to Life told TechCrunch, referring to those who “sought and circulated the information.”

When asked, Schwartz would not say if the organization planned on informing those whose personal information was exposed by its security lapse.

Texas Right to Life sparked anger when last week it publicized a “whistleblower” website that encouraged Texas residents to report when someone might be seeking an abortion in violation of the state’s restrictive new abortion law. The law allows anyone to sue someone seeking an abortion, or anyone “aiding and abetting” an abortion after six weeks. That provision has been widely interpreted as targeting doctors who perform these procedures, but also potentially anyone who gets involved, such as contributing money or driving a friend to a clinic.

It didn’t take long for the “whistleblower” website to be flooded with fake tips, memes, and Shrek porn in protest. The site briefly fell offline Thursday, which coincided with an activist releasing an iOS shortcut to help anyone pre-fill the website’s form with fake information.

But by the weekend, GoDaddy, the company hosting the website, told Texas Right to Life that the site violated its terms of service and gave the group 24 hours to find another host. It did — briefly — by way of Epik, a web host that helped other controversial sites like far-right social networks Gab get back online. But that didn’t last long either.

As of Monday, the “whistleblower” website pointed to Texas Right to Life’s main website.

Peanut, a social networking app for women, initially found traction connecting women in the earlier stages of their motherhood journey. But over the years, the network expanded to support women through other life stages. Now, that will include menopause, as well — a life stage that will impact nearly half the world’s population at some point, but where opportunities there are few online communities where women can connect and learn.

“We’ve been thinking about this life stage for a long time, in terms of how it is so underserved,” explains Peanut founder and CEO Michelle Kennedy. “By 2025, there are going to be a billion women who are in menopause at that moment…and yet, when you think about what is there and accessible in terms of community, social [networking], and support — there’s literally nothing,” she says.

The company saw the opportunity in this market by observing what women were already discussing on the app, Kennedy says.

Although the app had historically skewed towards younger women just getting started with marriages and family, there were a number of women who had undergone surgical or chemically-induced menopause because of something like breast cancer or some other medical condition. This had put them into early or premature menopause, and they began to discuss how that was impacting their life — particularly as younger parents. There were also women who felt like they may have begun to experience menopause but were having their concerns dismissed by their doctors because they were too young. They wanted to talk about their symptoms with others who were going through the same thing. Others, meanwhile, were older and entering menopause, and were in search of community.

Image Credits: Peanut

To address this market, Peanut is expanding with the launch of Peanut Menopause, a dedicated space in the app where women can meet others who are at a similar life stage — whether that’s other premenopausal, menopausal, or postmenopausal women.

Women can join groups, ask questions, and get advice, or even join live audio conversations hosted by experts, through Peanut’s newer live audio rooms feature, Peanut Pods.  And they can use the app’s matchmaking feature to discover other women who are also in their same demographic, where they can chat using messaging or video.

Kennedy notes that the topic of menopause is something women have historically kept quiet about, often suffering in silence due to the lack of resources available to them when it comes on online networking and support groups.

“Men are never going to build this for us, so we have to build it for ourselves,” she says. “We have to build what we want and what we need.”

Image Credits: Peanut

The expansion may bring a broader group of women to Peanut. Today, the average age of the Peanut user is around 32, but the menopause-focused communities may attract women in the 49-plus age demographic, in addition to those who are going through the experience at a younger age, for other reasons.

Unfortunately for Peanut, not all investors see the opportunity in addressing the needs of menopausal women. In fact, on a recent phone call, Kennedy said one investor seemed dismayed about the expansion, noting they had really loved “the younger age demo.” Kennedy said this comment blew her away.

“They are women who are at a stage in their life where they probably have more disposable income,” she said of the new demographic Peanut is now including. “They are more considered users, in many respects. They’re not as flighty. They don’t have 30 apps on their phone, and the ones they have on their phone they’re really invested in. It’s just astonishing to me that someone in the investment community would make a comment like that,” she adds.

Peanut is not yet monetizing its users and doesn’t intend to do so using ads Instead, the company’s plan is to eventually introduce the freemium model where women will pay to unlock a set of premium features — a model that worked well in the dating app industry, where Kennedy has roots as the former deputy CEO at dating app Badoo and an inaugural board member at Bumble.

The feature is the latest in a long line of expansions over the years — including Q&A forums, Peanut Pages, Peanut Groups, and recently, Peanut Pods — that have helped Peanut evolve into an online community that serves over 2 million users. The Peanut app is available as a free download across both iOS and Android, while a preview of its communities are available on the web.

AI is everywhere in tech, and you can bet it will be a vital topic at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 on September 21-23. It’s the driving force behind just about everything from rockets, robotics and customer service to deep science and autonomous vehicles. It’s even changing the game for dystopian fiction writers.

As always, every Disrupt features peerless experts and boundary-pushing visionaries and Disrupt 2021 will not disappoint on that or any other score. With more than 80 interviews, panel discussions, events and breakout sessions — and counting — we’re shining a spotlight on sessions related to AI and robotics.

Get amongst it: Buy your pass today, join thousands of attendees from around the world and get ready to learn about the latest in AI, robotics, rockets and so much more.

Here are just some of the AI and robotics presentations we have on tap. You’ll find the specific days and times listed in the Disrupt 2021 agenda.

A Fictional Future Built with Real AI

A leading mind in AI research and investment and a bold new voice in science fiction collaborate in “AI 2041,” a remarkable new collection of stories imagining a future shaped by technology being built today. Hear Kai-Fu Lee, Sinovation Ventures Chairman and CEO, and author Chen Qiufan (AKA Stanley Chan) discuss the tech that inspired their book and the changes they expect over the next two decades.

Drones, Self-driving Cars and Everything in Between

Pete Buttigieg first came on the scene as a small-town mayor in Indiana. He launched onto the national stage as a presidential candidate for the Democratic party in 2020. He now serves as Secretary of Transportation under the Biden administration and oversees everything from public transport to autonomous vehicle regulation. Hear Secretary Buttigieg’s take on micromobility, the future of cities, drone delivery, autonomous vehicles and more in this fireside chat.

Crafting a Lunar Trajectory in Newspace

Rocket Lab has upgraded its ambitions from building a global launch empire to designing its own spacecraft and visiting the Moon and beyond. Founder and CEO Peter Beck will speak to the challenges and opportunities lying ahead for his fast-growing space and tech outfit.

Demo Derby: How startups are disrupting the status quo with innovative data analytics, AI and modern app development

Startups need to move quickly and focus limited resources on areas where they can differentiate. In this fast-paced session, learn from startups and Google Cloud experts — like Dave Elliott, developer advocacy Lead, AI — how you can leverage Google technologies to serve customers better and get to market more quickly. In a series of short demos, see how innovative startups and Google experts have used Google compute, storage, networking and AI technologies to ‘disrupt’ the status quo. Presented by Google Cloud.

Humanizing AI: How Brands Are Revolutionizing Customer Experience in an Increasingly Digital World

Empathy deficit is the largest imminent threat to a businesses’ growth, but there’s hope. Humanized AI is allowing brands to create empathetic customer experiences by offering uniquely personal interactions with digital people. But what is empathy, really? And how can it help brands and storytellers better connect with their audiences in a cookie-less world? Soul Machines’ co-founder and CBO Greg Cross explains how embracing AI could be just the competitive advantage that your brand needs. Presented by Soul Machines.

The New Human and Planetary Health Pioneers

Mammoth Biosciences, co-founded by Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna and Trevor Martin, is the industry’s first CRISPR platform company. It has already delivered a breakthrough Covid test and has inked partnerships for novel CRISPR diagnostics, therapeutics and biomanufacturing with leading healthcare companies. NotCo, founded by Matias Muchnick, is combining artificial intelligence and deep science to re-invent the food industry, starting with a milk alternative product with many more to come. Hear about the founder journey from these breakout companies and tips for scaling your business. Presented by Mayfield.

So You Want to Build a Space Business?

The space industry is changing faster than ever, with new technologies and lower launch costs democratizing access to space and driving a new era of innovation. The opportunities to build the next great business are seemingly endless, but space can be a difficult and unforgiving place, especially for those new to the domain. This session will feature practical insights and advice from experienced space leaders for entrepreneurs looking to get their business off the ground.

Korea Pavilion Pitch Session

We present the 13 pioneering Korean companies that will enrich our lives with their innovative edge. The companies specialize in various technologies including Green Tech, AR/VR, 3D Display, AI & Big Data, and Cybersecurity. Don’t miss your chance to catch a glimpse of ingenuity from the technology powerhouse. Presented by KOTRA.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place on September 21-23. Buy your pass today and learn about the latest trends and developments in AI and robotics.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

As developers look for ways to simplify how they create software, serverless solutions, which enable them to write code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure required to run their applications, is becoming increasingly popular. DigitalOcean announced today that it is enhancing its existing offering in this area with the acquisition of serverless startup Nimbella. The companies did not share the terms of the deal.

With Nimbella, the company is getting a platform for building serverless applications that is built on the open source container orchestration platform, Kubernetes and Apache OpenWhisk, which is itself an open source serverless development platform.

DigitalOcean CEO Yancey Spruill, who took over two years ago, refers to Nimbella’s capabilities as Function as a Service with the goal being to simplify serverless development in an open source context for its target customers.”Serverless kinds of capabilities are taking a whole level of the infrastructure burden away from developers and businesses and we absorb that. We’ll allow our customers to have more configurability around the tools, which just removes burdens for them and allows them to go faster,” he said.

In practical terms, Nimbella CEO Anshu Agarwal says that means they are providing a specific set of tools to build sophisticated serverless applications and connect to other DigitalOcean services. “The capabilities that we will be adding to DigitalOcean portfolio are a fast solution, a function as a service solution that also integrates with the underlying DigitalOcean services [like] managed databases, storage and other services that make it make it easier for a developer to develop full applications, not just addressing events, but doing things which are completely stateless,” Agarwal explained.

Spruill said that this wasn’t the company’s first foray into serverless. That began last year when it offered its initial serverless tooling, but it wanted to build on its current offering and Nimbella fit the bill.

DigitalOcean is a cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service provider, aiming at individual developers, startups and SMBs. While DigitalOcean’s $318 million 2020 revenue was a fraction of the $129 billion cloud market, it is proof that there is still money to be made even with a small slice of that market.

The companies did not discuss the terms of the deal, the number of employees involved or even the title that Agarwal would have when the deal closed, but the plan is to fully integrate Nimbella into the DigitalOcean portfolio and eventually make it a DigitalOcean-branded product some time in the first half of next year.