Author: azeeadmin

UK-based smartphone subscription startup Raylo has tucked $11.5 million in Series A funding into its top pocket, led by Octopus Ventures.

The equity round follows a debt raise last year — and brings Raylo’s total raised since being founded back in 2019 to $40M (in equity and debt). Its roster of investors to date also includes the Macquarie Group, Guy Johnson of Carphone Warehouse and the co-founders of Funding Circle.

The new funding will be used to charge up a subscription smartphone play that nudges consumers never to own their own mobile device — but just pay a monthly fee to lease a new or refurbished SIM-free device instead.

Raylo says it’s seen 10x YoY growth of customers and revenues, and plans to plough the Series A into accelerating its growth in the UK — including by doubling its headcount and further developing its tech. And while it suggests it’s entertaining the idea of a future global rollout it remains firmly UK focused for now.

Consumers opting to get the latest smartphone hardware through Raylo will pay a lower cost than the full RRP for a device since they won’t actually own the hardware at the end of the contract.

Environmental considerations aside, that may be an increasingly important consideration, given the inflating price of premium handsets like the top-of-the-range iPhone which has broken $1,000 for a few years now.

Plus the fact that most consumers simply won’t shell out so much for a handset. Leasing and returning offers an alternative way for people to get to use such expensive high-end devices.

With Raylo, the leased mobile is typically returned after the end of the 12 or 24-month contract — with the returned device refurbished for reuse via a second (or third) leased life with another user.

End of life devices are recycled (by partners), per Raylo. So it’s touting a circular model that promotes sustainability via device usage longevity vs the more typical upgrade scenario, via a carrier, where a consumer may just toss their old unused handset into a drawer, wasting its further potential utility.

Albeit, many people do pass on old devices to other family members or even sell or trade them in. But Raylo claims there are an estimated 125M smartphones in unused ‘hibernation’ across the UK. So, the suggestion is, plenty of smartphone users don’t bother ensure their old handset gets a second life.

Raylo reckons each of its subscription leased device can be used by a total of three customers over 6-7 years – which, if achieved, would mean a lifespan that it says is almost 2x longer than the UK average (of 2.31 years).

To further the longevity goal, all the phones it supplies come with a free case and screen protector.

Users also need to weigh up whether they want to shell out for insurance too, though, since they need to make sure they don’t damage the leased handset or risk having to shell out for expensive repairs or a non-return fee. (Raylo sells its own flavor of device insurance to users as an optional extra which slightly bumps up the monthly cost.)

Raylo competes with carriers’ own device subscription plans, of course. But again the claim is it’s cheaper to lease its way — although that’s as it should be since the consumer doesn’t own the hardware at the end of the contract (so won’t automatically have anything of value they could sell or trade in elsewhere).

If a user doesn’t want (or fails) to return a device at the end of the contract they have to pay a non-return fee — which varies depending on the handset hardware and how long they’ve been paying for it. But the fee can stretch to over £600 at the premium end — after 12 months of use of a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G with 512GB of storage or an iPhone 12 Pro Max, for example.

While consumers that want to continue using the same device rather than upgrading after their contract ends can opt to continue paying their usual monthly fees — with payments continuing up to a maximum of 36 months, after which the non-return fee drops to a token £1.

All Raylo’s leased devices come with a 24 month warranty, under which it says it will freely repair faults not related to user damage or accidents, or else supply a replacement device if the handset can’t be fixed.

Commenting on Raylo’s Series A in a statement, Tosin Agbabiaka, early-stage fintech investor at Octopus Ventures, said: “The subscription economy is rapidly transforming the way we access products and services — yet the smartphone, an individual’s most valuable device, is still locked behind a bundled, ownership-based model. This means most people are trapped in a buy-and-dispose cycle, with a steep financial and environmental costs.

“Raylo solves these problems by offering access to premium consumer devices at lower, subscription-based prices, helping to widen access to the latest technology. By repurposing its devices at the end of their cycle, Raylo is also the sustainable choice in this market and has built a product loved by its customers — the opportunity here is massive, and we believe that [co-founders] Karl [Gilbert], Richard [Fulton], and Jinden [Badesha] have the vision and depth of expertise to transform the way we all access our devices.”

A number of refurbished electronics businesses have been attracting investor attention in Europe in recent years where lawmakers are also considering right to repair legislation.

Recent fundings in the space include a $335M round for French refurbished device marketplace startup Back Market; a $71m round for Berlin-based Grover‘s subscription electronics business; and a $40.6M round for Finland-based Swappie, which refurbishes and sells secondhand iPhones, to name a few.

It’s been quite the year for crypto capital, what with Coinbase’s blockbuster debut earlier this year in a direct listing and A16Z raising $2.2 billion for its third crypto-focused fund. But as the numbers in this frenetic market continue to skyrocket to dizzying highs, there is an open question for a lot of crypto founders: who exactly can work with me at the earliest possible stage?

That’s the investment thesis of Ash Egan, the current solo GP of Brooklyn-based Acrylic, which today announced a $55 million debut fund that will be focused on what he dubs “inception capital.” Among the LPs who invested are fund-of-funds firm Cendana, known for backing emerging VC managers, Accolade Partners, which launched a blockchain-focused fund-of-funds in 2020, VC firms Accomplice and DCG as well as individuals like Chris Dixon, Marc Andreessen, Jim Pallotta, and others.

Egan, who was formerly a partner at Accomplice and an investor at ConsenSys Ventures, and Converge, has been heavily focused on the crypto space since 2015, backing early winners like Chainalysis, which was valued at $2 billion in March, and BlockFi, which is now worth a pretty healthy $3 billion for the four-year-old company.

He sees an opportunity to be the earliest capital for crypto founders — perhaps even before they have started a company. He wants to “be that first investor in a company or a protocol before they raise those large rounds, even being an outsourced team member,” he said. He says he is focused on “the founders who are taking massive risks, creating entirely new markets, evolving the status quo.”

The firm’s name has a few sources according to Egan. “As a painter, my medium is acrylic,” he said. “It’s a real cool media since it meshes with all other mediums really well.” He also noted that “acrylic is generally painted in layers … and crypto is layers of protocols.” Finally, he feels the name relates to his style of investing. You “can’t just plug in a formula and rely on one kind of strategy,” he said. “Crypto investing is not a science yet, it’s still very much an art.”

While there is some poetry there, the reality of the crypto markets is that they are incredibly subsumed by the huge financial vagaries of the markets on any given today (and let’s be frank, every given minute). Egan wants to focus on longitudinal investing without constantly looking at the daily minutia of ticker prices. “The hope is that at scale, you are in a position where you are in early enough and cycles don’t really matter,” he said. “You want to partner with founders who are not swayed by macro inertia [and who are] building something with a ton of value in both bull and bear markets.”

The firm will invest in both traditional equity as well as tokens, and he sees the firm’s Brooklyn headquarters as a unique asset. “Brooklyn is so well-positioned to be a focal point for this next chapter in crypto given that every company has people in New York or who spend some part of the year here,” he said. “Wall Street is here, media is here… being local is huge.”

So far, the firm has invested in a couple of startups and protocols, including low-cost North American Bitcoin miner US BTC Corp, governance token protocol Automata, smart contract auditing company Arbitrary Execution, decentralized investing network Syndicate Protocol, and two other unannounced investments.

While Egan says he is quite open to projects across the vast universe of crypto, there is one area where he won’t invest today. “One area that I am less excited at this point is generalized Layer 1 smart contract platforms aka your Ethereum killers,” he said. “There are a slew of contenders here including Ethereum, and I think it is very difficult to gain market share if you aren’t already building or in market today as a generalized smart contract platform.”

Right now, Egan is investing solo, but is in the process of building a team, saying that he is interviewing candidates but hasn’t hired. He believes a total focus on crypto will ultimately pay dividends over time. “At scale, you have network effects within the portfolio,” he said. “The portfolio actually works with each other.”

Lacuna Technologies, a startup that helps cities create and enforce transportation policies by building and managing open-source digital tools, has raised $16 million in a Series A round, bringing the company’s total investment to $33.5 million.

Since the startup was founded in 2018, Lacuna has invested in helping cities like Los Angeles, Seattle and Miami build digital twins, or software models of real world cities – including all forms of mobility from delivery to rideshare to drones to regular traffic. City planners and transportation agencies can use these models to monitor the current environment and implement new regulations, as well as run simulations to provide a clearer picture of how certain policies could address congestion, pollution, accessibility and safety.

With the fresh cash, Lacuna CEO Hugh Martin says the company is focusing on expanding to new markets and building out the applications that can be placed on top of the digital twins, like adjusting freight or delivery curb parking rates to reflect demand or putting a cap on the number of drones allowed down a given street per day. That means first hiring new engineering teams to build digital twins and connect applications in order to help cities get revenue flowing.

“The federal government collects billions of dollars in gasoline taxes, which is largely used to fund departments of transportation at the federal, state and local levels, and that’s headed for zero,” Martin told TechCrunch. “What are we going to do? The gas tax has been a good proxy, but we need to find a new way to effectively monetize the public right of way, as well as get control of it. And I define the public right of way as not just 2D, but 3D. Where are the drones going to fly, where are the aerial taxis going to take off and land and how is the city going to communicate policy to those devices in real time?” 

While cities focus on real world public right of way, including all the street connections, speed limits and parking rules, Martin says new mobility companies like Uber or FedEx are building up digital models of cities and operating their businesses on top, and the city has no way of accessing them. 

“What would be super powerful is if instead of just having the physical world, the city has a digital copy of itself, with digital policies that could then be used by all operators,” said Martin.

Rather than using historical data to plan out cities, Martin says Lacuna’s services have a more operational focus. For example, Waze routes cars based on congestion using its own digital twin. This can cause hundreds of cars to go down a little side street when the highway is clogged up, which might annoy those who live there. If the city had a digital twin, it could assess the width of the street, whether it’s residential or commercial and the speed limit, and put a cap on the number of cars Waze can reroute down that street, thus preserving quality of life for those living on that street. 

“Our objective is to give cities the tools they need so that they can use their authority to make sure that the users of the public right away are compliant with whatever their policy is,” said Martin.

In Los Angeles, for example, Lacuna built a system to help LA manage its scooter fleets back in 2019.

“Venice Beach was a mess, there were scooters all over the boardwalk and the beach and being thrown in the water,” said Martin. “So we helped LA establish a geofence 200 feet off the boardwalk. LA gave scooter operators a two month grace period, but warned them if at the end of those two months, if riders cross that geofence, the city would start lowering the total number of units each operator could have on the streets.”

To ensure observance, the city council rewrote the regulatory language for getting a scooter permit, requiring operators to be compliant with the city’s mobility data specification program, meaning operators would have to transmit and receive information digitally.

“Now, it’s night and day,” he said. “The scooters are all lined up 200 feet away from the boardwalk. And what was amazing for the city is that it was just 15 lines of code. They didn’t have to put a bunch of officers out, put signs up, write tickets.”

This round was led by Xplorer Capital Management, and includes Playground Global, the company’s founding investor. Along with the funding news Lacuna is announcing the addition of Keith Nilsson, MP and co-founder of Xplorer, to the company’s board. 

 

Outbrain, an adtech company that provides clickbait ads below news articles, has raised $200 million in funding — Outbrain didn’t disclose the valuation of the company for this deal. The Baupost Group is investing in the company — it’s a Boston-based hedge fund. Outbrain filed for an initial public offering just last week. Today’s funding round should be the last traditional private investment round before going public.

If you’re not familiar with Outbrain, you may have seen its content recommendation widgets on popular news websites, such as CNN, Le Monde and The Washington Post. They mostly feature sponsored links that lead to third-party websites.

“We are excited to announce this investment from The Baupost Group, who share our vision and commitment for our business, our team and our future prospects” co-CEO David Kostman said in a statement.

Outbrain is often compared with its rival Taboola. While both startups planned to merge at some point, they had to cancel their merger. Taboola already went public after merging with a SPAC — a special purpose acquisition company. Taboola shares started trading last week.

In its IPO filing, Outbrain reported $767 million in revenue for 2020 and $228 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2021 alone. In 2020, Outbrain managed to generate $4.4 million in net income. During Q1 2021, the company reported $10.7 million in net income.

“We proudly lead the recommendation space we created. We have bold plans for the future to continue delivering critical innovation to our premium media partners worldwide and expanding our powerful open web global advertising platform” Outbrain co-CEO Yaron Galai said in a statement.

The advertising market has recovered from the global health pandemic and there has been plenty of initial public offerings during the first half of 2021. Everything seems to be lining up for Taboola and Outbrain, which means it’s time to reach the next level and become public companies.

Outbrain, an adtech company that provides clickbait ads below news articles, has raised $200 million in funding — Outbrain didn’t disclose the valuation of the company for this deal. The Baupost Group is investing in the company — it’s a Boston-based hedge fund. Outbrain filed for an initial public offering just last week. Today’s funding round should be the last traditional private investment round before going public.

If you’re not familiar with Outbrain, you may have seen its content recommendation widgets on popular news websites, such as CNN, Le Monde and The Washington Post. They mostly feature sponsored links that lead to third-party websites.

“We are excited to announce this investment from The Baupost Group, who share our vision and commitment for our business, our team and our future prospects” co-CEO David Kostman said in a statement.

Outbrain is often compared with its rival Taboola. While both startups planned to merge at some point, they had to cancel their merger. Taboola already went public after merging with a SPAC — a special purpose acquisition company. Taboola shares started trading last week.

In its IPO filing, Outbrain reported $767 million in revenue for 2020 and $228 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2021 alone. In 2020, Outbrain managed to generate $4.4 million in net income. During Q1 2021, the company reported $10.7 million in net income.

“We proudly lead the recommendation space we created. We have bold plans for the future to continue delivering critical innovation to our premium media partners worldwide and expanding our powerful open web global advertising platform” Outbrain co-CEO Yaron Galai said in a statement.

The advertising market has recovered from the global health pandemic and there has been plenty of initial public offerings during the first half of 2021. Everything seems to be lining up for Taboola and Outbrain, which means it’s time to reach the next level and become public companies.

Nigerian fintech and lending startup Lidya today announced that it has completed its $8.3 million pre-Series B funding round.

Alitheia Capital led the investment via its uMunthu Fund. Other investors that participated include Bamboo Capital Partners, Accion Venture Lab and Flourish Ventures.

In addition to the $1.3 million seed round secured in 2017 and $6.9 million Series A a year later, Lidya has raised a total of $16.5 million.

This investment will see Lidya grow its lending operations for small and medium businesses across its markets.

The idea for Lidya came about in Nigeria when Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin saw the need to offer lending services while at their previous company Africa Courier Express (ACE). ACE was a last-mile e-commerce delivery company that provided logistics services to businesses and consumers.

The founders, who also held founding and executive roles at Jumia Nigeria, noticed that most of the businesses ACE worked with had credit and financing issues. And although options existed, the founders felt these platforms could not adequately cater to their ever-growing needs.

As co-CEOs, the pair launched Lidya as a digital SME lending platform in 2016. On the platform, businesses can create accounts and apply for loans ranging from $500 to $50,000, with decisions made within 24 hours.

Lidya claims to use 100 data points to evaluate each applicant and build a credit score for them to assess credit risk. When the company announced its raise in 2018, it had disbursed 1,500 business loans and was poised to enter new African markets. But it chose Europe instead.

In October 2019, Lidya announced that it had launched new lending operations in Poland and the Czech Republic. But it was not until March and April 2020 the company’s activities in Eastern Europe fully kickstarted. Since then, Lidya claims to have disbursed over $3 million to SMEs in the two countries. To date, the company has disbursed over 25,000 loans and claims to have more than a 90% customer repeat rate. 

So, what was behind the decision to expand to Europe instead of other African markets? “We wanted to build a global business from day one given the size of the problem where there is a $3 trillion credit gap,” CEO Kehinde said to TechCrunch. “We challenged ourselves not to limit ourselves to one market and went through some data before expanding to Europe.”

With this raise, Lidya wants to solidify its presence in the three markets. The investment has also brought a change to the company’s leadership structure. Per a statement released by the company, Eksin has left Lidya to pursue other projects while Kehinde takes over as the sole CEO.

Currently, both European markets represent about 30% of Lidya disbursement volume while the overall default rate is less than 1%. Unlike most lending companies that raise debt financing to fund loans, Lydia uses equity to fund its loan book. Quite the unconventional method, but Kehinde points why the company thought that path was necessary. 

“The idea was for us to show that our algorithms work and that we can disburse money into the market and get it back. Then we can transition to using debt for our lending operations,” the CEO said as the company looks to finalize deals with banks, family offices, and hedge funds in the coming months. This is in addition to the $300,000 line of credit Lidya has secured from Bamboo Capital Partners. 

Lidya began lending in Europe at the height of the pandemic. Kehinde recounts how tough it was for the team, especially in a period that was so unusual.

“It is difficult enough to attempt to launch in two new countries but try doing that remotely,” he said. “We’re so decentralized. We had operations in Nigeria, and we were launching in Eastern Europe remotely, making sure the puzzle stays together. The team really stepped up. Everyone doubled down on the mission and we came out of the year without having any deterioration.”

The CEO adds, “Now the focus is to get back to gear. We want to be able to do 5x what we’ve done historically by this time next year. If we do that, we’ll be successful, and our customers will be successful as well.”

Lydia will grow out its teams in Lagos, Prague and Warsaw and use a portion of the funds to support lines of credit.

Speaking on the investment, Alitheia Capital co-founder and managing director said, “Lidya is tackling the fundamental challenge of providing access to credit for dynamic small and growing businesses that otherwise have limited options for financing working capital to scale their businesses in Africa and Europe. Alitheia Capital and Goodwell are  pleased to be backing a team whose mission aligns with our objective of driving growth  and social impact by enabling access and inclusion to finance and financial services.”

It’s quite rare to see expansion moves from Nigerian or African startups to Europe. An exception to that might be South African startups who frequently open offices in the U.K. and the Netherlands. Kehinde relishes the company’s achievement so far, having gained some foothold in both the Czech Republic and Poland. He says there is more to expect from the five-year-old digital lender.

“We’re really excited about the fact that we started in Nigeria and now our product is live in two European countries. Typically people come into Nigeria from other parts of the world but we’ve gone from Nigeria to other parts. We’re proud of the traction we’ve gotten in our push to build the biggest finance house for SMEs in our markets.”

Nigerian fintech and lending startup Lidya today announced that it has completed its $8.3 million pre-Series B funding round.

Alitheia Capital led the investment via its uMunthu Fund. Other investors that participated include Bamboo Capital Partners, Accion Venture Lab and Flourish Ventures.

In addition to the $1.3 million seed round secured in 2017 and $6.9 million Series A a year later, Lidya has raised a total of $16.5 million.

This investment will see Lidya grow its lending operations for small and medium businesses across its markets.

The idea for Lidya came about in Nigeria when Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin saw the need to offer lending services while at their previous company Africa Courier Express (ACE). ACE was a last-mile e-commerce delivery company that provided logistics services to businesses and consumers.

The founders, who also held founding and executive roles at Jumia Nigeria, noticed that most of the businesses ACE worked with had credit and financing issues. And although options existed, the founders felt these platforms could not adequately cater to their ever-growing needs.

As co-CEOs, the pair launched Lidya as a digital SME lending platform in 2016. On the platform, businesses can create accounts and apply for loans ranging from $500 to $50,000, with decisions made within 24 hours.

Lidya claims to use 100 data points to evaluate each applicant and build a credit score for them to assess credit risk. When the company announced its raise in 2018, it had disbursed 1,500 business loans and was poised to enter new African markets. But it chose Europe instead.

In October 2019, Lidya announced that it had launched new lending operations in Poland and the Czech Republic. But it was not until March and April 2020 the company’s activities in Eastern Europe fully kickstarted. Since then, Lidya claims to have disbursed over $3 million to SMEs in the two countries. To date, the company has disbursed over 25,000 loans and claims to have more than a 90% customer repeat rate. 

So, what was behind the decision to expand to Europe instead of other African markets? “We wanted to build a global business from day one given the size of the problem where there is a $3 trillion credit gap,” CEO Kehinde said to TechCrunch. “We challenged ourselves not to limit ourselves to one market and went through some data before expanding to Europe.”

With this raise, Lidya wants to solidify its presence in the three markets. The investment has also brought a change to the company’s leadership structure. Per a statement released by the company, Eksin has left Lidya to pursue other projects while Kehinde takes over as the sole CEO.

Currently, both European markets represent about 30% of Lidya disbursement volume while the overall default rate is less than 1%. Unlike most lending companies that raise debt financing to fund loans, Lydia uses equity to fund its loan book. Quite the unconventional method, but Kehinde points why the company thought that path was necessary. 

“The idea was for us to show that our algorithms work and that we can disburse money into the market and get it back. Then we can transition to using debt for our lending operations,” the CEO said as the company looks to finalize deals with banks, family offices, and hedge funds in the coming months. This is in addition to the $300,000 line of credit Lidya has secured from Bamboo Capital Partners. 

Lidya began lending in Europe at the height of the pandemic. Kehinde recounts how tough it was for the team, especially in a period that was so unusual.

“It is difficult enough to attempt to launch in two new countries but try doing that remotely,” he said. “We’re so decentralized. We had operations in Nigeria, and we were launching in Eastern Europe remotely, making sure the puzzle stays together. The team really stepped up. Everyone doubled down on the mission and we came out of the year without having any deterioration.”

The CEO adds, “Now the focus is to get back to gear. We want to be able to do 5x what we’ve done historically by this time next year. If we do that, we’ll be successful, and our customers will be successful as well.”

Lydia will grow out its teams in Lagos, Prague and Warsaw and use a portion of the funds to support lines of credit.

Speaking on the investment, Alitheia Capital co-founder and managing director said, “Lidya is tackling the fundamental challenge of providing access to credit for dynamic small and growing businesses that otherwise have limited options for financing working capital to scale their businesses in Africa and Europe. Alitheia Capital and Goodwell are  pleased to be backing a team whose mission aligns with our objective of driving growth  and social impact by enabling access and inclusion to finance and financial services.”

It’s quite rare to see expansion moves from Nigerian or African startups to Europe. An exception to that might be South African startups who frequently open offices in the U.K. and the Netherlands. Kehinde relishes the company’s achievement so far, having gained some foothold in both the Czech Republic and Poland. He says there is more to expect from the five-year-old digital lender.

“We’re really excited about the fact that we started in Nigeria and now our product is live in two European countries. Typically people come into Nigeria from other parts of the world but we’ve gone from Nigeria to other parts. We’re proud of the traction we’ve gotten in our push to build the biggest finance house for SMEs in our markets.”

Planet, which operates a network of around 200 satellites that provides Earth imaging, as well as analytics of the data derived from that observation, is going public in a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) dMY Technology Group IV. The deal has a post-transaction equity value of $2.8 billion, and will provide Planet with $545 million in cash balance at close, including $345 million from dMY IV’s contribution, and a $200 million PIPE provided by BlackRock-managed funds, Koch Strategic Platforms, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures and Google.

After a bit of a lull, Planet is now the second significant private space company this week to take the SPAC route to public markets. Both are in the business of Earth observation, though Satellogic, which announced its own SPAC merger on Tuesday, operates on a much smaller scale at the moment. Planet, founded in 2010, has raised around $374 million to date, and operates the largest Earth imaging satellite constellation in operation.

The company’s mission has been to transform the way Earth imaging data is collected and provided to commercial interests here on Earth. Planet’s network can provide a complete scan of all of the Earth’s landmass on a daily basis, and it offers that to customers “via a Bloomer-like terminal for Earth data,” as Planet founder and CEO Wiill Marshall puts it. Access is provided on a subscription basis, and Planet says it generated over $100 million in revenue during its most recent fiscal year, which ended in January.

Planet intends to use the funds resulting from the merger in part to pay down its existing debt, and also to fund its existing operations and “support new and existing growth initiatives.” The aim to to complete the merger sometime later this year, at which point the combined entity will trade under the ticker “PL” on the NYSE.

Planet, which operates a network of around 200 satellites that provides Earth imaging, as well as analytics of the data derived from that observation, is going public in a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) dMY Technology Group IV. The deal has a post-transaction equity value of $2.8 billion, and will provide Planet with $545 million in cash balance at close, including $345 million from dMY IV’s contribution, and a $200 million PIPE provided by BlackRock-managed funds, Koch Strategic Platforms, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures and Google.

After a bit of a lull, Planet is now the second significant private space company this week to take the SPAC route to public markets. Both are in the business of Earth observation, though Satellogic, which announced its own SPAC merger on Tuesday, operates on a much smaller scale at the moment. Planet, founded in 2010, has raised around $374 million to date, and operates the largest Earth imaging satellite constellation in operation.

The company’s mission has been to transform the way Earth imaging data is collected and provided to commercial interests here on Earth. Planet’s network can provide a complete scan of all of the Earth’s landmass on a daily basis, and it offers that to customers “via a Bloomer-like terminal for Earth data,” as Planet founder and CEO Wiill Marshall puts it. Access is provided on a subscription basis, and Planet says it generated over $100 million in revenue during its most recent fiscal year, which ended in January.

Planet intends to use the funds resulting from the merger in part to pay down its existing debt, and also to fund its existing operations and “support new and existing growth initiatives.” The aim to to complete the merger sometime later this year, at which point the combined entity will trade under the ticker “PL” on the NYSE.

Facial recognition has been one of the more conflicted applications of artificial intelligence in the wider world: using computer vision to detect faces and subsequent identities of people has raised numerous questions about privacy, data protection, and the ethics underpinning the purposes of the work, and even the systems themselves. But on the other hand, it’s being adopted widely in a wide variety of use cases. Now one of the more controversial, but also successful, startups in the field has closed a big round of funding.

AnyVision — an Israeli startup that has built AI-based techniques to identify people by their faces, but also related tech such as temperature checks to detect higher temperatures in a crowd — has raised $235 million in funding, the company has confirmed.

This Series C, one of the bigger rounds for an AI startup, is being co-led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 and Eldridge Industries, with previous investors also participating. (They are not named but the list includes Robert Bosch GmbH, Qualcomm Ventures and Lightspeed.) The company is not disclosing its valuation but we are asking. However, it has to be a sizable hike for the company, which had previously raised around $116 million, according to PitchBook, and has racked up a big list of customers since its last round in 2020.

Worth noting, too, that AnyVision’s CEO Avi Golan is a former operating partner at SoftBank’s investment arm.

AnyVision said the funding will be used to continue developing its SDKs, specifically to work in edge computing devices — smart cameras, body cameras, and chips that will be used in other devices — to increase the performance and speed of its systems.

Its systems, meanwhile, are used in video surveillance, watchlist alerts, and scenarios where an organization is looking to monitor crowds and control them, for example to keep track of numbers, to analyse dwell times in retail environments, or to flag illegal or dangerous behavior.

“AnyVision’s innovations in Recognition AI helped transform passive cameras into proactive security systems and empowered organizations take a more holistic view to advanced security threats,” Golan said in a statement in the investment announcement. “The Access Point AI platform is designed to protect people, places, and privacy while simultaneously reducing costs, power, bandwidth, and operational complexity.”

You may recognize the name AnyVision because of how much it has been in the press.

The startup was the subject of a report in 2019 that alleged that its technology was being quietly used by the Israeli government to run surveillance on Palestinians in the West Bank.

The company denied it, but the story quickly turned into a huge stain on its reputation, while also adding more scrutiny overall to the field of facial recognition.

That led to Microsoft, which had invested in AnyVision via its M12 venture arm, to run a full audit of the investment and its position on facial recognition investments overall. Ultimately, Microsoft divested its stake and pledged not to invest in further technology like it.

Since then, AnyVision has been working hard to spin itself as the “ethical” player in this space, acknowledging that there is a lot of work and shortcomings in the bigger market of facial recognition. But controversy has continued to court the company.

A report from Reuters in April of this year highlighted just how many companies were using AnyVision’s technology today, ranging from hospitals like Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles to major retailers like Macy’s and energy giant BP. AnyVision’s connections to power go beyond simply having big customers: it also turns out that the White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, once served as a communications consultant to the startup.

Then, a report published just yesterday in The Markup, combed through various public records for AnyVision, including a user guidebook from 2019, which also painted a pretty damning picture of just how much information the company can collect, and what it has been working on. (One pilot, and subsequent report resulting from it, involved tracking children in a school district in Texas: AnyVision collected 5,000 student photos and ran more than 164,000 detections in just seven days.)

There are other cases where you might imagine, however, that AnyVision’s technology might be deemed helpful or useful, maybe even welcomed. Its ability to detect temperatures, for example, and identify who may have been in contact with high-temperature people, could go a long way towards controlling less obvious cases of Covid-19, for example, helping contain the virus at mass events, providing a safeguard to enable those events to go ahead.

And to be completely clear, AnyVision is not the only company building and deploying this technology, nor the only one coming under scrutiny. Another, the U.S. company Clearview AI, is used by thousands of governments and law enforcement agencies, but earlier this year it was deemed “illegal” by Canadian privacy authorities.

Indeed, it seems that the story is not complete, either in terms of how these technologies will develop, how they will be used, and how the public comes to view them. For now, the traction AnyVision has had, even despite the controversy and ethical questions, seems to have swayed SoftBank.

“The visual recognition market is nascent but has large potential in the Western world,” said Anthony Doeh, a partner for SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement. “We have witnessed the transformative power of AI, biometrics and edge computing in other categories, and believe AnyVision is uniquely placed to redefine physical environment analytics across numerous industries.”