Author: azeeadmin

If it seems like everyone you know is moving to Florida these days, there is evidence to back that up. Recent data from LinkedIn published in Axios put Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, and the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area among the top 10 U.S. cities seeing in-migration.

When I relocated from Chicago to Tampa in early 2018, I found myself in a city that countered the stereotypes I’d heard about the state. Since then, I’ve come to appreciate the advantages that came with building my organization in Florida, and I’m often asked how I made the call.

To help you weigh the benefits of relocating your startup to Florida, here are some FAQs I’ve encountered. And if the Sunshine State isn’t on your startup’s shortlist, don’t hesitate to apply these answers to a different destination.

1. What are your company’s needs?

While you may have personal reasons for wanting to relocate to a new state, it’s a good idea to map out your company’s needs as you think through this decision.

Does a move bring you closer to a great pool of talent? Are you looking for a headquarters near a specific material resource or type of infrastructure? Do you need to be local to a target customer base or community?

For example, Florida is a terrific location for companies that stand to benefit from the presence of retired military talent and the prevalence of military bases, which creates a strong market for certain types of tech innovation, including cybersecurity and aviation.

Whatever it is you need to fuel your company’s growth, listing out your company’s requirements will make it easier to compare your needs with what your potential destination has to offer.

2. Which community do you want to be a part of?

If you haven’t found the tech community you’re looking for in your current location, pause to articulate what qualities you’re looking for. With this in mind, you can begin to establish the kinds of local connections you’re hoping to grow before you make any big moves.

I moved to Florida to participate in the diverse tech communities in Tampa and Miami, and I knew I was headed to the right place because I tested the waters before jumping in. As a relative newcomer myself, I’ve found the landscape in Florida to be more open and accessible than in other more established startup hubs, but don’t take my word for it.

If you’re a startup leader who is looking to land in a place with a strong, welcoming network, take the time to reach out to local community leaders and other founders like you. Whether that means sending a tweet to the mayor of Miami or connecting to local startup hubs, these interactions will give you a good sense of the local culture.

Because so many people are migrating down to Florida, we’ve put together a database of recent transplants to make it even easier to connect new residents to the existing tech community.

3. What are the potential benefits of moving your company to Florida?

When I think about what brought me to Florida and why I see other entrepreneurs headed this way, three big things come to mind:

OpenAI is launching a $100 million startup fund, which it calls the OpenAI Startup Fund, though which it and its partners will invest in early-stage AI companies tackling major problems (and productivity). Among those partners and investors in the fund is Microsoft, at whose Build conference OpenAI founder Sam Altman announced the news.

In a prerecorded video, Altman explained that “this is not a typical corporate venture fund. We plan to make big early bets on a relatively small number of companies, probably not more than 10.”

It’s not clear exactly how the $100M will be divided or disbursed, or on what timeline, or whether this is part of a longer program. But it seems to be a limited fund, not just the 2021 round.

Altman did say that they will be looking for companies that are taking on serious issues, like healthcare, climate change, and education, where AI-powered applications or approaches could “benefit all of humanity,” in keeping with OpenAI’s mission statement. But it would also consider productivity improvements as well, presumably like the GPT-3 powered natural language coding Microsoft showed off yesterday.

“We know it’s you, the developers, who can use powerful tools like gpt3 to create ambitious applications that will leave a positive mark on the world,” said Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott in the company’s stream. “Microsoft is thrilled to be able to support this fund.”

Companies selected for funding will receive early access to new OpenAI systems and Azure resources from Microsoft, which hopefully would allow them to spring fully formed and ready to scale from the program. OpenAI would not elaborate on the equity agreement, expectations for startups, other partners, or any further details. It’s entirely possible that the $100M figure is the only thing they’ve actually settled on.

The minimal application process suggests they expect a large number of submissions, but if you want to throw your company into the mix, start prepping your elevator pitch. Part of the application is a one minute video (take note that “Demos, music and effects are not necessary”) that the selection team (the makeup of which OpenAI did not detail) will no doubt watch if a company makes it through the first round of winnowing. Hope you haven’t dismantled that Zoom background just yet.

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

Extra Crunch members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie,

I do recruitment for tech startups. With a surge of VC investing, many startups are urgently hiring.

Which visas offer the quickest options for international talent? Are there any unique strategies that you would recommend we explore?

— Maverick in Milpitas

Dear Maverick,

Thanks for reaching out with your questions! We’re seeing the same urgent hiring demand from startups. In my columns, you’ll find a lot of materials to support you regarding the most common options. However, in a recent podcast episode, I discussed a handful of very specialized — and rarely used — temporary work visas that in most situations offer an expedited way to bring international talent to the United States to live and work. The eligibility requirements for these work visas are very specific, but if any prospective candidates qualify, these visas are great, quick options for the startups you work with.

The quickest option for employers is to hire international talent already in the U.S. because many consulates still remain closed to routine visa processing due to the pandemic. What’s more, travel restrictions have been imposed on India and remain in place for Brazil, the U.K., Ireland, 26 other countries in Europe, China and Iran. However, there are some exceptions in the national interest. As always, I recommend consulting with an experienced immigration attorney.

Here are a few uncommon visas and strategies that can offer quick options for startups to recruit international talent:

TechCrunch Disrupt has always been opportunity central, but that’s never been truer than this year at Disrupt 2021 (September 21-23) — especially for early-stage founders who exhibit in Startup Alley.

Here’s why. Using Hopin — our virtual platform — Startup Alley exhibitors can schedule and host interactive product demos via livestream. Every exhibiting startup receives a company listing — a virtual booth as it were — where you can include a product walk-through video complete with links to your website and social media accounts. But wait, it gets better.

Take advantage of the interactive, live-stream capability and share your screen, host a live demo or a product tutorial — you can even moderate the chat area. Put on your entrepreneurial thinking cap and get creative. Why not use the live stream to host your own Q&A session?

Pro Tip: Before Disrupt even begins, you can combine the power of CrunchMatch, our AI-powered networking platform, and your access to the Disrupt attendee list. Schedule a demo to take place during Disrupt, reach out to your targeted audience using CrunchMatch, and line up those RSVPs in advance.

Maybe you want to establish yourself as a subject matter expert — this is a great way to tap into a hot tech topic, invite interested parties and get the conversation rolling. Whether you want to pitch, educate, sell or inspire, Startup Alley is the place and the platform to get the job done.

What else comes with exhibiting in Startup Alley? We’re so glad you asked,

The founders of every exhibiting startup get two minutes to pitch to TechCrunch staff live in a breakout session — in front of thousands of Disrupt attendees across the globe. It’s not just great practice. You’ll receive invaluable feedback to hone your pitch to prime fundraising perfection.

You might get tapped for a Startup Alley Crawl interview. We’re hosting a one-hour crawl for each business category. TC editors will choose several startups in each category and interview them live on the Disrupt stage.

Don’t forget about the Startup Battlefield Wild Card. Every year, TC editors select two outstanding startups from all the exhibitors. Those Wild Cards get to compete in the epic Startup Battlefield.

One last massive opportunity. All early-stages founders who buy a Startup Alley Pass before before Friday, June 4 at 11:59 pm (PT) are eligible for Startup Alley+. This is a curated, VIP experience designed to offer more growth opportunities. It kicks off in July and by the time Disrupt rolls around in September, you may well be an unstoppable force. Read the details here, and if you want a shot to be one of up to 50 chosen founders, you gotta beat the deadline.

Get creative, take advantage of opportunity central and exhibit in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021. We can’t wait to see what you’ve got!

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

The European Union plans to beef up its response to online disinformation, with the Commission saying today it will step up efforts to combat harmful but not illegal content — including by pushing for smaller digital services and adtech companies to sign up to voluntary rules aimed at tackling the spread of this type of manipulative and often malicious content.

EU lawmakers pointed to risks such as the threat to public health posed by the spread of harmful disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines as driving the need for tougher action.

Concerns about the impacts of online disinformation on democratic processes are another driver, they said.

A new more expansive code of practice on disinformation is now being prepared — and will, they hope, be finalized in September, to be ready for application at the start of next year.

The Commission’s gear change is a fairly public acceptance that the EU’s voluntary code of practice — an approach Brussels has taken since 2018 — has not worked out as hope. And, well, we did warn them.

A push to get the adtech industry on board with demonetizing viral disinformation is certainly overdue.

It’s clear the online disinformation problem hasn’t gone away. Some reports have suggested problematic activity — like social media voter manipulation and computational propaganda — have been getting worse in recent years, rather than better.

However getting visibility into the true scale of the disinformation problem remains a huge challenge given those best placed to know (ad platforms) don’t freely open their systems to external researchers. And that’s something else the Commission would like to change.

Signatories to the EU’s current code of practice on disinformation are:

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, TikTok, Mozilla, DOT Europe (Former EDiMA), the  World  Federation  of Advertisers  (WFA) and its Belgian counterpart, the  Union  of  Belgian  Advertisers  (UBA);  the  European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA), and its national members from France, Poland and the Czech Republic — respectively, Association   des   Agences   Conseils   en   Communication   (AACC), Stowarzyszenie Komunikacji Marketingowej/Ad Artis Art Foundation (SAR), and Asociace Komunikacnich Agentur (AKA); the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB Europe), Kreativitet & Kommunikation, and Goldbach Audience (Switzerland) AG.

EU lawmakers said they want to broaden participation by getting smaller platforms to join, as well as recruiting all the various players in the adtech space whose tools provide the means for monetizing online disinformation.

Commissioners said they want to see the code covering a “whole range” of actors in the online advertising industry (i.e. rather than the current handful).

It’s certainly notable that the digital advertising industry body Internet Advertising Bureau is not on that list. (We’ve reached out to the IAB Europe to ask if it’s planning to join the code and will update this report with any response.)

In its press release today the Commission also said it wants platforms and adtech players to exchange information on disinformation ads that have been refused by one of them — so there can be a more coordinate response to shut out bad actors.

As for those who are signed up already, the Commission’s report card on their performance was bleak.

Speaking during a press conference, internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said that only one of the five platform signatories to the code has “really” lived up to its commitments — which was presumably a reference to the first five tech giants in the above list (aka: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and TikTok).

Breton demurred on doing an explicit name-and-shame of the four others — who he said have not “at all” done what was expected of them — saying it’s not the Commission’s place to do that.

Rather he said people should decide among themselves which of the platform giants that signed up to the code have failed to live up to their commitments. (Signatories since 2018 have pledged to take action to disrupt ad revenues of accounts and websites that spread disinformation; to enhance transparency around political and issue-based ads; tackle fake accounts and online bots; to empower consumers to report disinformation and access different news sources while improving the visibility and discoverability of authoritative content; and to empower the research community so outside experts can help monitor online disinformation through privacy-compliant access to platform data.)

Frankly it’s hard to imagine who from the above list of five tech giants might actually be meeting the Commission’s bar. (Microsoft perhaps, on account of its relatively modest social activity vs the others.)

Safe to say, there’s been a lot of more hot air (in the form of selective PR) on the charged topic of disinformation vs hard accountability from the major social platforms over the past three years.

So it’s perhaps no accident that Facebook chose today to puff up its historical efforts to combat what it refers to as “influence operations” — aka “coordinated efforts to manipulate or corrupt public debate for a strategic goal” — by publishing what it couches as a “threat report” detailing what it’s done in this area between 2017 and 2000.

Influence ops refer to online activity that may be being conducted by hostile foreign governments or by malicious agents seeking, in this case, to use Facebook’s ad tools as a mass manipulation tool — perhaps to try to skew an election result or influence the shape of looming regulations. And Facebook’s ‘threat report’ states that the tech giant took down and publicly reported only 150 such operations over the report period.

Yet as we know from Facebook whistleblower Sophie Zhang, the scale of the problem of mass malicious manipulation activity on Facebook’s platform is vast and its response to it is both under-resourced and PR-led. (A memo written by the former Facebook data scientist, covered by BuzzFeed last year, detailed a lack of institutional support for her work and how takedowns of influence operations could almost immediately respawn — without Facebook doing anything.)

NB: If it’s Facebook’s “broader enforcement against deceptive tactics that do not rise to the level of [Coordinate Inauthentic Behavior]” that you’re looking for, rather than efforts against ‘influence operations’, it has a whole other report for that — the Inauthentic Behavior Report! — because of course Facebook gets to mark its own homework when it comes to tackling fake activity, and shapes its own level of transparency since there are no legally binding reporting rules on disinformation.

Legally binding rules on handling online disinformation aren’t in the EU’s pipeline either — but commissioners said today that they wanted a beefed up and “more binding” code.

They do have some levers to pull here via a wider package of digital reforms that’s coming (aka the Digital Services Act).

The DSA will bring in legally binding rules for how platforms handle illegal content and they intend the tougher disinformation code to plug into that (in the form of what they call a “co-regulatory backstop for the measures that will be included in the revised and strengthened Code”).

It still won’t be legally binding but it may earn compliant platforms wider DSA ‘credit’. So it looks like disinformation-muck-spreaders’ arms are set to be twisted in a pincer regulatory move by making sure this stuff is looped into the legally binding DSA.

Still, Brussels maintains that it does not want to legislate around disinformation.

The risks are that a centralized approach might smell like censorship — and it sounds keen to avoid that charge at all costs.

The digital regulation packages the EU has put forward since the 2019 collage took up its mandate aim generally to increase transparency, safety and accountability online, its values and transparency commissioner, Vera Jourova, said today.

Breton also said that now is the “right time” to deepen obligations under the disinformation code — with the DSA incoming — and also to give the platforms time to adapt (and involve themselves in discussions on shaping additional obligations).

In another interesting remark he also talked about regulators needing to “be able to audit platforms” — in order to be able to “check what is happening with the algorithms that push these practices”. Though quite how audit powers can be made to fit with a voluntary, non-legally binding code of practice remains to be seen.

Discussing areas where the current code has fallen short Jourova pointed to inconsistencies of application across different EU Member States and languages.

She also said the Commission is keen for the beefed up code to do more to enable and empower users to act when they see something dodgy online — such as by providing users with tools to flag problem content.

Platforms should also provide users with the ability to appeal disinformation content takedowns (to avoid the risk of opinions being incorrectly removed).

The focus for the code would be on tackling false “facts not opinions”, she emphasized, saying the Commission wants platforms to “embed fact-checking into their systems” and for the code to work towards a “decentralized care of facts”.

She went on to say that the current signatories to the code haven’t provided external researchers with the kind of data access the Commission would like to see — to support greater transparency into (and accountability around) the disinformation problem.

The code does require either monthly (for COVID-19 disinformation), six monthly or yearly reports from signatories (depending on the size of the entity) but what’s being provided so far doesn’t add up to a comprehensive picture of disinformation activity and platform reaction, she said.

She also warned that online manipulation tactics are fast evolving and highly innovative — while saying the Commission would nonetheless like to see signatories agree on a set of identifiable “problematic techniques” to help speed up responses.

EU lawmakers will be coming with a specific plan for tackling political ads transparency in November, she noted.

They are also, in parallel, working on how to respond to the threat posed to European democracies by foreign interference cyberops — such as the aforementioned influence operations often found hosted on Facebook’s platform.

The commissioners did not give many details of those plans today but Jourova said it’s “high time to impose costs on perpetrators” — suggesting that some interesting possibilities may be being considered, such as trade sanctions for state-backed disops (although attribution would be one challenge).

Breton said countering foreign influence over the “informational space” is important work to defend the values of European democracy.

He also said the Commission’s anti-disinformation efforts would focus on support for education to help equip citizens with the necessary critical thinking capabilities to navigate the huge quantities of variable quality information that now surrounds them.

Chinese-backed and Africa-focused fintech platform OPay is in talks to raise up to $400 million, The Information reported today. The fundraising will be coming two years after OPay announced two funding rounds in 2019 — $50 million in June and $120 million Series B in November.

The $170 million raised so far comes from mainly Chinese investors who, over the past few years, have begun to bet big on Africa. Some of them include SoftBank, Sequoia Capital China, IDG Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, GSR Ventures, Source Code Capital.

In 2018, Opera popularly known for its internet search engine and browser, launched the OPay mobile money platform in Lagos. It didn’t take long for the company to start expanding aggressively within the city using ORide, a now-defunct ride-hailing service as an entry point to the array of services it wanted to offer. The company has tested a number of verticals — OBus, a bus-booking platform (also defunct); OExpress, a logistics delivery service; OTrade, a B2B e-commerce platform; OFood, a food delivery service, among others.

While none of these services has significantly scaled, OPay’s fintech and mobile money arm (which is its main play) is thriving. This year, its parent company Opera reported that OPay’s monthly transactions grew 4.5x last year to over $2 billion in December. OPay also claims to process about 80% of bank transfers among mobile money operators in Nigeria as well as 20% of the country’s non-merchant point of sales transactions.

Last year, the company also said it acquired an international money transfer license with a partnership with WorldRemit also in the works.

It’s quite surprising that none of OPay’s plans to expand to South Africa and Kenya (countries it expressed interest in during its Series B) has come to fruition despite its large raises. The company blamed the pandemic for these shortcomings. However, earlier this year the country set up shop in North Africa by expanding to Egypt. This next raise which might be a Series C will be instrumental in the company’s quest for expansion, both geographically and in product offerings. Per The Information, OPay’s valuation will increase to about $1.5 billion, three times its worth in 2019.

We reached out to OPay but they declined to comment on the story.

“Headless” commerce — a set of tools that companies can use with their own customized front ends to build apps for selling goods and services — have become a huge business, not just because companies are seeing a bigger demand than ever before for people buying online, but because those companies are generally more focused in their own strategies around how and what they want to present to the world.

Today, one of the companies building headless tools is announcing a round of funding as it continues to expand its business.

Commerce Layer, which provides a set of APIs for businesses to build e-commerce apps with their own, customized front ends, has raised $16 million — money that it will be using to continue expanding its business and adding more commerce tools into its API library.

Currently Commerce Layer provides tools to build your own mobile, wearable and voice apps, point of sale solutions, subscriptions, and multi-vendor commerce models (as you might have in a marketplace), along with services like building your own shopping carts and turning print catalogues into interactive, “shoppable” digital experiences.

Filippo Conforti, the CEO and co-founder, said it plans to bring in a lot of new features. On the roadmap are new developer dashboard, a command-line interface (CLI) and order management system, and a hosted checkout application, metrics API, a reporting application, and better support for subscription and marketplace models.

This latest Series B round is being led by Coatue Management, with general partner Caryn Marooney (who has led comms at Facebook, among many other high-ranking comms roles) taking a seat on Commerce Layer’s board. Previous investors Benchmark and Mango Capital also participated. Benchmark led Commerce Layer’s Series A about a year ago.

That round came at a very key moment for the startup. Based just outside of Florence, Italy, and coming just on the heels of the first rush of Covid-19 cases in Europe — where for a time Italy was the epicenter of the pandemic — it was an early sign not just of how startups were able to keep working, but how investors were willing to back the best of them, even in times of uncertainty.

It also turned out that e-commerce became one of the big stories out of 2020, as more consumers went to digital channels to shop at a time when they couldn’t go to stores as easily, if at all.

That has definitely had a knock-on effect for Commerce Layer. Conforti told me that the company saw its revenues grow 6x in the last year — albeit it was starting from a small place, with only six customers on its books back in May 2020. It now has around 26 businesses using its tools, he said, including Chilly’s, Brioni, SumUp, Paradox Interactive and Coca Cola Embonor (a company that works under a Coca Cola license to make and distribute drinks in Chile and Bolivia).

The interesting thing about “headless” platforms is that they are becoming a much bigger part of the equation whe it comes to building and running e-commerce experiences. That seems to be a sign not just of how the sector continues to mature in terms of retailers and how they are looking for more than a plug-and-play, one-size-fits-most approach in their own strategies. It also speaks to the growing range of permutations of how and where people sell today, and the need for tools to address that.

While Commercetools is one of the bigger “headless” commerce providers, and whose founder even coined the term “headless commerce”, there are a number of others now building tools to help companies build more unique e-commerce experiences, including the likes of Spryker, Swell, Fabric, Chord, and Shogun. Even Shopify has stepped into the fray with Shopify Plus.

“eCommerce has become core to our everyday lives. As a result, big brands and enterprises need better ways to shift from retail and build exceptional online storefronts. We believe that Commerce Layer is building the API platform for this new category, and we’re incredibly proud to join them in pursuing their ambitious and exciting vision,” said Marooney in a statement.

The last time humans visited the moon in 1972, they got around on a relatively simple battery-powered vehicle. As NASA prepares for the next crewed mission to the moon, it’s looking to give the lunar rover an upgrade.

Lockheed Martin and General Motors said Wednesday they’re working together to develop a next-generation lunar vehicle designed to be faster and capable of traveling farther distances than its predecessor. If the project is selected by NASA, the rover would be used on the upcoming Artemis missions. The first mission, which will be an uncrewed test flight, is scheduled for November. The request for proposals will likely be published in the third or fourth quarter of this year, executives said at a media briefing Wednesday. NASA will award the contract after evaluating the submitted proposals.

The previous rover was only capable of traveling less than five miles from the Apollo landing site, limiting the astronauts’ ability to collect important data on far-flung lunar locales, like the north and south poles. The Moon’s circumference is nearly 7,000 miles. The two companies are aiming to improve the specs, Lockheed’s VP for lunar exploration Kirk Shireman said, noting that the exact materials used for the new rover, its range and other capabilities have yet to be determined.

GM will also be developing an autonomous driving system for the rover, which executives said Wednesday will improve safety and the ability for astronauts to collect samples and conduct other scientific research. GM is investing more than $27 billion through 2025 in electric and autonomous vehicle technologies and it aims to bring that research to the lunar rover project, Jeffrey Ryder, VP of growth and strategy at GM Defense, said. “We’re heads-down right now in investigating how we would take those capabilities and apply them to specific missions and operation associated with the Artemis program.”

GM also said it will be using its earth-bound research into battery and propulsion systems in developing the rover. Ryder anticipates that the rover program will lead to other market opportunities.

Both companies have supplied technology for NASA missions before, including its lunar missions. Auto manufacturer GM helped develop the previous lunar rover that was used during the Apollo era, including its chassis and wheels. It also manufactured and integrated guidance and navigational systems for the program. Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin’s experience extends to building spacecraft and power systems that have been included on every NASA mission to Mars.

The companies said this was “one of several initiatives” they’re working on together, with further announcements regarding other projects expected in the future.

Prismic, a company building a content management system, has raised a $20 million Series A funding round. While the startup has been profitable since 2016, it wants to unlock the full potential of its headless CMS by iterating more quickly on its product. Aglaé Ventures and Eurazeo are co-leading today’s funding round.

Headless content management systems are a bit different from traditional content management systems. The backend and the frontend of your website operate totally separately. You write content in the backend where it is safely stored. The frontend of your application fetches content from the backend using an API and display it to your customers and readers.

Dissociating those two key parts of your content management system provides many advantages. It is more secure, it scales much better and it gives you a ton of flexibility when it comes to frontend framework and hosting.

In addition to iterating on its CMS, Prismic manages the infrastructure for you. When you sign up, you don’t have to deploy the backend on your own server. You can connect to the admin interface and start building.

After that, your content is accessible through an API. It means that you can build your own website and fetch content from Prismic. You can also build a mobile app and use Prismic as your content backend for the news section.

You can pick your own framework and build your site through that framework. Prismic supports Gatsby, React.js, Next.js, Vue.js and more.

Prismic is also trying to popularize something called slices. Traditional content management systems let you create pages or posts. Each page uses the same header and footer. It’s just a unit of content enclosed in your website.

Slices are vertical sections of your websites, such as a banner at the top, a section with featured content, some related content, recent reviews, a newsletter sign-up form, etc. Developers can create their own custom slices using React.js, Vue.js and others.

After that, the content marketing team can mix and match slices as well as customize them whenever they’re creating a new page. It unlocks more potential and lets non-technical people create dynamic content for a website. Essentially, Prismic is adding some no-code features to its CMS with those slices.

“Prismic becomes a page builder for the marketing team. From there, they can access all sections of the site and can compose new pages by piecing together those slices and by adding content,” co-founder and CEO Sadek Drobi told me.

That concept in particular seems to have some potential. That’s why the company is raising some money. The startup generates revenue from subscriptions and targets small clients, such as web agencies, as well as big companies that subscribe to enterprise plans.

When Merlin Labs founder Matt George was learning to fly in Vermont, he had a close call with a Jet Blue aircraft that was coming into Burlington airport. It was “an unsettling experience,” he told TechCrunch, but one that stuck with him. A few years later, after the transportation company he founded Bridgj was acquired by Singapore-based Transit Systems, he started thinking about how he could bring the innovations that were taking place in autonomous ground transportation to the air.

Now, two-and-a-half years after founding Merlin Labs, the company is coming out of stealth with a 55-aircraft partnership with aviation solutions company Dynamic Aviation.  The company also announced that it has raised $3.5 million in seed funding and $21.5 million in Series A, led by First Round Capital and GV (formerly Google Ventures) respectively, with additional investments from Floodgate, Harpoon, WTI, Ben Ling, Box Group, Shrug Capital and Howard Morgan.

Merlin Labs’ has performed “a couple hundred” autonomous missions from takeoff to touchdown across the three generations of its experimental system, George said. It’s been conducting its flight tests from a dedicated facility at the Mojave Air & Space Port. The latest iteration, called Murray, is a few months old. He described the system as a drop-in autonomy kit that can be adapted across aircrafts. While there is a human pilot monitoring the aircraft on the ground that can take over in case of an emergency, planes retrofitted with Merlin Labs’ system operate on their own.

Image Credits: Merlin Labs (opens in a new window)

However, before the fleet of 55 King Air planes can take to the skies for commercial service, Merlin Labs still needs to get a supplemental type certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. George was unable to provide a timeline of when Merlin Labs might get the certification but it’s a necessary process in an industry that’s highly regulated and justifiably risk averse.

The company is also certifying capability to allow air traffic controllers to “talk” to the aircraft directly, using natural language processing so that the aircraft understands the words and can translate it into action. The plane will also be able to respond with “a high degree of cognition,” George said.

“We firmly believe that air traffic controllers need to be able to interact with the aircraft just like they would interact with any other aircraft,” he said. “There shouldn’t be any special interfaces. They should be able to go talk to it, have the aircraft perform those actions, and talk back. So that’s a really important part we’re working on.”

Looking to the future, George said that Merlin Labs has no intention of becoming an airline or operating planes themselves. Instead, it’s looking to provide autonomy as a service to more providers like Dynamic Aviation (which owns the largest private fleet of King Air planes) and logistics giants like UPS and FedEx.

“Autonomy is eating the world,” George said. “The opportunity to be able to go automate the airspace is really important, to be able to bring people together, to create digital infrastructure that connects the entire world.”