Author: azeeadmin

Tesla’s board certified a financial milestone that unlocks the first tranche — worth more than $700 million — of an unprecedented multibillion-dollar pay package for CEO Elon Musk, according a document filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The milestone allows Musk to purchase the first grouping or tranche of nearly 1.69 million shares at a steep discount. Tesla shares closed Thursday at $805.81, putting the value at $775 million. Musk is able to buy those stock options at a price of $350.02 per share.

“As of the date of this proxy statement, one of the 12 tranches under this award has vested and become exercisable, subject to Mr. Musk’s payment of the exercise price of $350.02 per share and the minimum five-year holding period generally applicable to any shares he acquires upon exercise,” the SEC document reads.

The compensation plan approved by shareholders in 2018 consists of 20.3 million stock option awards broken up into 12 tranches of 1.69 million shares. These options will vest in 12 increments if Tesla hits specific milestones on market cap, revenue and adjusted earnings (excluding certain one-time charges such as stock compensation).

When the board and shareholders approved the package, Musk was theoretically able to earn nearly $56 billion if no new shares were issued. However, last year Tesla sold $2.7 billion in shares and convertible bonds.

To access those first tranche of stock options, Tesla’s market value had to reach a six-month average of $100.2 billion and either $20 billion in annual revenue or $1.5 billion in adjusted EBITDA. To meet the next milestone, Tesla’s market cap must increase another $50 billion in value and $35 billion in revenue or $3 billion in adjusted EBITDA.

The board certified the market cap and revenue milestone. The other operational milestone relating to $1.5 billion Adjusted EBITDA has been achieved but is subject to formal certification by the board, , according to the SEC filing.

Image Credits: Screenshot/SEC filing

The board must certify that each milestone has been achieved before Musk can exercise those stock options. To unlock every tranche, Tesla’s market cap will have to reach $650 billion.

Musk has never accepted a salary. Instead, he opted for, the shareholders approved, equity-based compensation plans. In a previous equity compensation plan, Musk was awarded stock options worth about $78 million in 2012 that vested only after Tesla hit production and market value milestones.

The 2018 CEO compensation plan not only ensured Musk would a be part of Tesla for the next decade, it also put an emphasis on market cap and revenue, not necessarily profitability.

Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting is scheduled for July 7, according to the document.

SpaceX has received authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly suborbital missions with its Starship prototype spacecraft, paving the way for test flights at its Boca Chica, Texas site. SpaceX has been hard at work readying its latest Starship prototype for low-altitude, short duration controlled flight tests, and conducted another static engine fire test of the fourth iteration of its in-development spacecraft earlier today.

Officially, the FAA has granted SpaceX permission to conduct what it terms “reusable launch vehicle” missions, which essentially means that the Starship prototype is now cleared to take-off from, and land back at, the launch site SpaceX operates in Boca Chica. The Elon Musk-led space company has already conducted similar tests, but previously used its ‘Starhopper’ early prototype, which was smaller than the planned production Starship, and much more rudimentary in design. It was basically used to prove out the capabilities of the Raptor engine that SpaceX will use to propel Starship, and only for a short hop test using one of those engines.

Since that flight last year, SpaceX has developed multiple iterations of a full-scale prototype of Starship, but thus far they haven’t gotten back to the point where they’re actively flying any of those. In fact, multiple iterations of the Starship prototype have succumbed during pressure testing – though SN4, the version currently being prepared for a test flight, has passed not only pressure tests, but also static test fires of its lone Raptor engine.

The plan now is to fly this one for a short ‘hop’ flight similar to the one conducted by Starhopper, with a maximum altitude of around 500 feet. Should that prove successful, the next version will be loaded with more Raptor engines, and attempt a high altitude test launch. SpaceX is quickly building newer version of Starship in succession even as it proceeds with testing the completed prototypes, in order to hopefully shorten the total timespan of its development.

There’s something of a clock that SpaceX is working against: It was one of three companies that received a contract award from NASA to develop and build a human lander for the agency’s Artemis program to return to the Moon. NASA aims to make that return trip happen by 2024, and while the contract doesn’t necessarily require that each provided have a lander ready in that timeframe, it’s definitely a goal, if only for bragging rights among the three contract awardees.

Edtech is booming, but a short while ago, many companies in the category were struggling to break through as mainstream offerings. Now, it seems like everyone is clamoring to get into the next seed-stage startup that has the phrase “remote learning” on its About page.

And so begins the normal cycle that occurs when a sector gets overheated — boom, bust and a reckoning. While we’re still in the early days of edtech’s revitalization, it isn’t a gold mine all around the world. Today, in the spirit of balance and history, I’ll present three bearish takes I’ve heard on edtech’s future.

Quizlet’s CEO Matthew Glotzbach says that when students go back to school, the technology that “sticks” during this time of massive experimentation might not be bountiful.

“I think the dividing line there will be there are companies that have been around, that are a little more entrenched, and have good financial runway and can probably survive this cycle,” he said. “They have credibility and will probably get picked [by schools].” The newer companies, he said, might get stuck with adoption because they are at a high degree of risk, and might be giving out free licenses beyond their financial runway right now.

On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order taking aim at the legal shield that internet companies rely on to protect them from liability for user-created content. That law, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is essential to large social platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, the kind of companies the president has long accused, without evidence, of engaging in anti-conservative censorship.

Trump was joined during the signing by Attorney General William Barr, who has previously expressed interest in stripping away or limiting the same legal protections. During the signing, Trump claimed that social media companies have “unchecked power” influenced by their “points of view.” Earlier in the day the president tweeted “This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!”

On Tuesday, Twitter added warning labels to two tweets from the president that made false claims about vote-by-mail systems. The labels, which did not hide the tweets or even actually outright call them false, pointed users toward a fact-checking page. The move enraged the president, who lashed out at the company through tweets, specifically targeting Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity.

The executive order is not yet published, but we examined a draft of it previously that’s likely to bear a close resemblance to the finished copy. Civil rights groups and internet freedom watchdogs denounced the order Thursday, with the co-creator of the law in Trump’s crosshairs dismissing his actions as “plainly illegal.”

This story is developing

On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order taking aim at the legal shield that internet companies rely on to protect them from liability for user-created content. That law, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is essential to large social platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, the kind of companies the president has long accused, without evidence, of engaging in anti-conservative censorship.

Trump was joined during the signing by Attorney General William Barr, who has previously expressed interest in stripping away or limiting the same legal protections. During the signing, Trump claimed that social media companies have “unchecked power” influenced by their “points of view.” Earlier in the day the president tweeted “This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS!”

On Tuesday, Twitter added warning labels to two tweets from the president that made false claims about vote-by-mail systems. The labels, which did not hide the tweets or even actually outright call them false, pointed users toward a fact-checking page. The move enraged the president, who lashed out at the company through tweets, specifically targeting Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of site integrity.

The executive order is not yet published, but we examined a draft of it previously that’s likely to bear a close resemblance to the finished copy. Civil rights groups and internet freedom watchdogs denounced the order Thursday, with the co-creator of the law in Trump’s crosshairs dismissing his actions as “plainly illegal.”

This story is developing

Exposure notification and contact tracing are two related but distinct measures many public health authorities are either considering or already implementing.

Contact tracing is a practice almost as old as epidemiology itself, but today’s technology means the way that we go about tracking the spread of a contagious illness within and between communities is changing very quickly. This presents an opportunity for learning more about the opportunities and challenges presented in extending contact tracing and exposure notification via digital means.

To that end, we’re happy to be working with the COVID-19 Technology Task Force, as well as Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, NYU’s Alliance for Public Interest Technology, Betaworks and Hangar. We’ll be playing host on TC to their live-streamed discussion around contact tracing and exposure notification applications, including demonstrations of some of the cutting-edge products that will be available in the U.S. to tackle these challenging, but crucial, tasks. The day’s events will include a roundtable discussion followed by a series of product demos, and will take place starting at 11 AM EDT (8 AM PDT) on Wednesday, June 3.

Below, we’ve included an agenda of the confirmed speakers and demonstrations for the day so far. Note that this is work in progress, and that more speakers and demos will be added to the day’s slate as we get closer to Wednesday. To RSVP for this free event, check out this link.

11am-1pm EDT: Roundtable Discussion – Hear from researchers, healthcare professionals, and technologists, including:

• Andrew McLaughlin is helping lead the Task Force’s contact tracing/exposure notification initiative. Andrew is the Chairman of Access Now, the former Deputy U.S. CTO for the White House, and the former Director of Global Public Policy at Google.
• Daniel Burka is heading up the COVID-19 response efforts for New York State through Resolve to Save Lives, the not-for-profit organization led by former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.
• Harper Reed is helping lead the Task Force’s contact tracing/exposure notification initiative. Harper is a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, and was the CTO of Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
• Jonathan Jackson is the Founder and CEO at Dimagi, a social enterprise that develops innovative technology solutions for frontline workforces and underserved populations. They have an extensive background in global health and are a leader in mobile health data collection.
• Jonathan Zittrain is a professor of law and computer science, and co-founder of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Jonathan’s work focuses on topics including control of digital property, privacy frameworks, and the roles of intermediaries in Internet architecture.
• Randall Thomas is assisting Resolve to Save Lives and other stakeholders with the New York State response to COVID-19. Randall is the CTO of Geometer, a technology incubator.

1pm-2pm EDT: Contact Tracing/Exposure Notification Product Demos – Leading organizations developing applications to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, primarily through contact tracing and exposure notification, will each demo their product. Teams include:

• COVIDSafe
• CoEPI
• Covid Trace
• Novid
• How We Feel
• COVID Near You
• Zero

We’ll have a live stream available on June 3 so you can follow along, as mentioned, but you can also RSVP here to register your interest. It should be a day full of interesting, expert discussion of why there’s a need to extend contact tracing and exposure notification through connected and digital means, as well as the privacy, public health and policy implications such extension necessarily carries with it.

Amazon customers in nearly a dozen more U.S. states are now able to use their SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits to purchase groceries online, the retailer announced on Thursday. The news represents a significant expansion of a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) pilot program introduced in 2019 that aimed to open up online grocery shopping to those on public assistance. This program is even more critical now, as in-store shopping puts consumers at risk of contracting the deadly novel coronavirus. 

To date, participating retailers in the USDA pilot program have included Walmart, Amazon, ShopRite, and other smaller chains.

Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch that the 11 new states that now support using SNAP for online grocery, include those that were added starting last week through today, Thursday, May 28.

The initial expansion of the pilot added New Mexico, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, which all became active last week. On Tuesday of this week, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, and New Jersey rolled out. And today, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Virginia were added as well.

With these new additions, Amazon customers on public assistance can shop online for groceries across a total of 25 U.S. states plus Washington D.C. At checkout, they can pay for groceries using their SNAP EBT.

Including the new states, Amazon now offers the use of SNAP EBT for online grocery in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

However, Amazon is not the only retailer offering online grocery for SNAP EBT customers in these 25 states.

According to the USDA’s website, SNAP users can now order their groceries online through either Amazon or Walmart in these markets.

The site also indicates that Amazon is the only retailer supporting the District of Columbia at present. In addition, ShopRite supports the use of SNAP for online groceries in Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. And Wright’s Markets is participating in the pilot program in Alabama.

The USDA’s website indicates several more states are now in the planning phase so they can add online purchasing as a shopping option soon. These include Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Wyoming.

As part of Amazon’s participation in the USDA program, it not only enabled the use of SNAP EBT as a payment method, it also made its Amazon Fresh service available to SNAP recipients in states where Fresh is available without requiring a Prime membership. And it offered free shipping on both Amazon Fresh and Amazon Pantry orders.

At launch, Amazon had said the USDA pilot program would “dramatically increase access to food for more remote customers.”

However, in the coronavirus era, access to online grocery can be a life-saving measure for some.

The pandemic has complicated access to food for those on SNAP benefits, and for high-risk individuals on SNAP in particular. These consumers now have to risk getting COVID-19 every time they out for groceries themselves. And as more workers become unemployed due to the economic impacts from the pandemic, more people are joining public assistance programs like SNAP. 

In light of the pandemic, the USDA said it would fast-track any state that wanted to join the pilot. California, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, West Virginia, D.C., North Carolina, and Vermont, were just approved in April, for example. In May, the USDA approved Minnesota, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

In under 6 weeks, the USDA has expanded access to the program to a total of 36 states plus D.C., it say, though many are not yet live. When they launch, however, online purchasing for groceries will be available to more than 90% of SNAP participants, the USDA has noted.

You may have heard the news: We’re taking Disrupt virtual. As you would expect, we are taking three of our other events this year virtual, too.

The virtual version of TC Early Stage will retain its focus on giving founders the opportunity to absorb direct, practical knowledge about how to grow and develop their startups.

Early Stage will take place over two days, July 21-22, and leverage the unique capabilities of virtual event platforms to host interactive breakout sessions with top investors, operators and ecosystem experts. You’ll have the opportunity to ask questions and learn from the top minds in fundraising, law, growth marketing, recruiting and many other important key arenas that normally go unexamined. We’ll also host a small number of highly impactful mainstage sessions: Reid Hoffman of Greylock will join us, as well as founders like Dylan Field from Figma and Mariam Naficy of Minted. You can pick up a ticket here.

The virtual edition of TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility will also occur over two days, October 6-7. Last year’s inaugural event was a massive success, bringing together every major player in the mobility startup space. Now, we’re aiming to make it more accessible and valuable to founders, investors and industry watchers. We will host a pitch-off for early-stage mobility companies during the show and talk to some of the most innovative startups and leaders from established tech firms. Stay tuned for more announcements as the date approaches. You can pick up a virtual ticket to the show here.

Virtual TechCrunch Sessions: Space will follow a two-day format as well and will happen on December 16-17, 2020. Join TechCrunch editors for a day of fireside chats and panel discussions with the top investors, founders and technologists forging the future of space. From smallsats to crewed vehicles, space has never been a more exciting opportunity for young companies. We’re here to help dive into this phenomenon in the way that only TechCrunch can. Get your ticket here.

Just like Disrupt, we expect these events to be even bigger and more inclusive than they were in past years. In the programing, we’ll be able to include startups, investors and experts from around the world, and your ability to attend is only limited by your ability to connect to the internet.

See you online soon!

Shortly after its use exploded in the post-office world of COVID-19, Zoom was banned by a variety of private and public actors, including SpaceX and the government of Taiwan. Critics allege its data strategy, particularly its privacy and security measures, were insufficiently robust, especially putting vulnerable populations, like children, at risk. NYC’s Department of Education, for instance, mandated teachers switch to alternative platforms like Microsoft Teams.

This isn’t a problem specific to Zoom. Other technology giants, from Alphabet, Apple to Facebook, have struggled with these strategic data issues, despite wielding armies of lawyers and data engineers, and have overcome them.

To remedy this, data leaders cannot stop at identifying how to improve their revenue-generating functions with data, what the former Chief Data Officer of AIG (one of our co-authors) calls “offensive” data strategy. Data leaders also protect, fight for, and empower their key partners, like users and employees, or promote “defensive” data strategy. Data offense and defense are core to trustworthy data-driven products.

While these data issues apply to most organizations, highly-regulated innovators in industries with large social impact (the “third wave”) must pay special attention. As Steve Case and the World Economic Forum articulate, the next phase of innovation will center on industries that merge the digital and the physical worlds, affecting the most intimate aspects of our lives. As a result, companies that balance insight and trust well, Boston Consulting group predicts, will be the new winners.

Drawing from our work across the public, corporate, and startup worlds, we identify a few “insight killers” — then identify the trustworthy alternative. While trustworthy data strategy should involve end users and other groups outside the company as discussed here, the lessons below focus on the complexities of partnering within organizations, which deserve attention in their own right.

Insight-killer #1: “Data strategy adds no value to my life.”

From the beginning of a data project, a trustworthy data leader asks, “Who are our partners and what prevents them from achieving their goals?” In other words: listen. This question can help identify the unmet needs of the 46% of surveyed technology and business teams who found their data groups have little value to offer them.

Putting this to action is the data leader of one highly-regulated AI health startup — Cognoa — who listened to tensions between its defensive and offensive data functions. Cognoa’s Chief AI Officer identified how healthcare data laws, like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, resulted in friction between his key partners: compliance officers and machine learning engineers. Compliance officers needed to protect end users’ privacy while data and machine learning engineers wanted faster access to data.

To meet these multifaceted goals, Cognoa first scoped down its solution by prioritizing its highest-risk databases. It then connected all of those databases using a single access-and-control layer.

This redesign satisfied its compliance officers because Cognoa’s engineers could then only access health data based on strict policy rules informed by healthcare data regulations. Furthermore, since these rules could be configured and transparently explained without code, it bridged communication gaps between its data and compliance roles. Its engineers were also elated because they no longer had to wait as long to receive privacy-protected copies.

Because its data leader started by listening to the struggles of its two key partners, Cognoa met both its defensive and offensive goals.

How did yesterday’s launch of HBO Max go? We don’t have official numbers from WarnerMedia, but app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower says HBO Max was downloaded by nearly 87,000 new users across Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

That number might seem pretty low compared to other streaming launches — like the 4 million first-day installs for Disney+, or even the 300,000 installs for Quibi.

But keep in mind that HBO Max isn’t an entirely new service, either from a content perspective (it bundles HBO’s library with a wide range of other TV shows and movies) or from an app perspective, since it was released as an update for the existing HBO Now streaming app.

Sensor Tower acknowledged that these numbers do not include people who simply updated their old HBO app, but it offered another way to look at yesterday’s performance: Previously, HBO Now was averaging 16,000 new installs every day, so that’s 71,000 more downloads than normal.

It’s also worth noting that as I write this on Thursday afternoon, HBO Max is currently number two among “free” apps the App Store, behind Zoom but ahead of YouTube, Netflix, TikTok and Disney+.

Sensor Tower estimated that HBO Now and Max have been downloaded by 33 million people since launching in April 2015, compared to 260 million for Netflix, 120 million for Hulu (both Netflix and Hulu were measured starting in January 2014) and 50 million for Disney+.