Author: azeeadmin

BeyondID, a cloud identity consulting firm, announced a $9 million Series A today led by Tercera. It marked the first investment from Tercera, a firm that launched earlier this month with the goal of investing in service startups like Beyond.

The company focuses on helping clients manage security and identity in the cloud, taking aim specifically at Okta customers. In fact, the firm is a platinum partner for Okta. As they describe their goals, they help clients in a variety of areas including identity and access management, secure app modernization, Zero Trust security, cloud migration and integration services.

CEO and co-founder Arun Shrestha has a deep background in technology including working with Okta from its early days. Shrestha came on board in 2012 as the head of customer success. When he began, the startup was in early days with just 50 customers. When he left five years later just before the IPO, it had over 3500.

Along the way, he gained a unique level of expertise in the Okta tool set, and he decided to put that to work to help Okta customers implement and maximize Okta usage, especially in companies with complex implementations. He launched BeyondID in 2018 with the intention of focusing on systems integrations and managing a company’s identity in the cloud.

“We believe we are becoming a managed identity service provider, so managing anything identity, anything related to cybersecurity. We’re helping these companies by being a one-stop shop for companies acquiring, deploying and managing identity services,” Shrestha explained.

It seems to be working. The last couple of years the company revenues grew at 300% and as it matures, and the growth rates settle a bit, it’s still expected to grow between 70 and 100% this year. The firm has 250 customers including FedEx, Major League Baseball, Bain Capital and Biogen.

It currently has 75 employees serving those customers with plans to grow that number in the next year with the help from today’s investment. As Shrestha adds new employees, he sees building a diverse workforce as a crucial goal for his company.

“Diversity is absolutely critical to our long term sustainable success, and it’s also the right thing to do,” he said. He says that building an organization that promotes women and people of color is a key goal of his as the leader of the company and something he is committed to.

Chris Barbin, who is managing partner and founder at lead investor Tercera, says that he chose BeyondID as the firm’s first investment because he believes identity is central to the notion of digital transformation. As more companies move to the cloud, they need help understanding how security and identity work differently in a cloud context, and he sees BeyondID playing a critical role in helping clients get there.

“BeyondID is in a rapidly growing space and has an impressive customer list that represents nearly every industry. Arun and the leadership team have a strong vision for the firm, deep ties into Okta, and they’re incredibly passionate about what they do,” he said.

UK-based Isotropic Systems has raised a $40 million funding in an “oversubscribed” round that the startup says will help it get its next-generation broadband terminal to the production phase by its 2022 target. The funding, a Series B that brings the company’s total raised to $60 million, was led by SES and included participation form Boeing HorizonX, Space Angels, Orbital Ventures on the venture side, and that includes UK government grant support as well.

Isotropic’s business is centred around a new type of broadband terminal it’s developing that can communicate across multiple frequencies, making it possible for it to connect to more than one satellite network at the same time without any loss in signal quality or network speed for any individual connection. The final product would then offer ground connectivity to customers that could potentially maintain connections with more than one of the emerging satellite broadband networks in development, including those being set up by OneWeb, SpaceX, Intelsat, SES, Amazon and more.

The startup will be stand-in cup a 20,000 square-foot testing and prediction facility near Reading in the UK, and expects to have the first operational version of its ground terminal in production by 2022. If its final product works as advertised, it could be a major boon both for satellite network connectivity providers and for clients, since it would mean that customers who can afford the service don’t have to either select from among the available options, and can instead use one hardware solution to connect to multiple in order to take advantage of potential speed benefits, as well as network redundancy.

The benefits are obvious, provided the financials make sense. Imagine, for instance, using onboard wifi on an international flight. Typically, these networks have been unreliable to say the least. Coverage and quality drop-outs are common, and speeds tend to be weak in even the best of cases. Networks like Starlink aim to correct a lot of these legacy problems, but even better would be a solution that offers connection to multiple satellite networks simultaneously, switching between each connection as necessary to maintain the best possible network quality – and potentially combining available bandwidth when possible to boost speeds.

Isotropic’s potential customer list for such an offering spans military, government, and civilian markets, across both broadband and low-data IoT networks. This latest funding should help it prove its groundbreaking technology can attain the production scale and efficacy required to live up to its promise.

Today in an SEC filing, Tesla disclosed that it has acquired $1.5 billion in bitcoin, the popular cryptocurrency. Moreover, the company noted that it may also accept bitcoin in the future as a form of payment for its cars, though it did allow that there is some regulatory uncertainty around that effort.

As the news broke, the price of bitcoin instantly rose by around 7% to more than $40,000 per coin.

Tesla had previously telegraphed that it had an interest in the cryptocurrency, however to purchase such a large block of the coin is notable.

In its filing, Tesla writes that earlier this year it “updated [its] investment policy to provide [it] with more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on [its] cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity,” adding that it has the option of putting cash into “certain alternative reserve assets” that include “digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future.”

Under that banner, the firm has “invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin,” going on to say that the well-known electric car company “may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term.”

That’s enough wiggle room for Tesla to do whatever it wants with its cash and the crypto markets.

But the company wasn’t done, completing its news-drop by adding that the company “expect[s] to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for [its] products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which [it] may or may not liquidate upon receipt.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made waves in recent days by pumping a silly cryptocurrency joke called Dogecoin; this is something more material. Tesla is selecting bitcoin as the cryptocurrency of its choice, helping to further cement the blockchain as the world’s best known. And that it may accept bitcoin-denominated transactions in the future could help bitcoin retain both value, and exchange volume, though we probably repeat ourselves. It’s worth noting that Musk himself has also personally sent bitcoin prices higher in past using his social presence, including by changing his bio to just the single word, before its price faded back after he removed it earlier this month.

The car company then spends three paragraphs saying that its choice is risky. That’s an understatement. Then again, what is Musk if not entertaining?

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Hi friends and new readers, welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B.

Let’s dive in … 

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Micromobbin’

Last week I highlighted how Lime was getting into the shared moped business. Now, shared moped startup Revel is getting into the EV charging game. I wonder if we are starting to witness the beginning of a business diversification trend in micromobility?

Revel said it is building a DC fast-charging station for electric vehicles in New York City, the first in a new business venture that will eventually spread to other cities. The company said this new “Superhub,” which is located at the former Pfizer building in Brooklyn, will contain 30 chargers and be open to the public 24 hours a day. This will be the first in a network of Superhubs opened by Revel across New York City, the company said.

Revel didn’t build the EV charging infrastructure in-house. Instead, it is using Tritium’s new RTM75 model for the first 10 chargers at its Brooklyn site, which will go live this spring. These chargers are designed to deliver 100 additional miles of charge to an electric vehicle in about 20 minutes, according to Revel.

Deal of the week

Uber announced plans to acquire alcohol delivery service Drizly in a stock-and-cash deal valued at $1.1 billion deal — cementing a strategy that started more than a year ago. The upshot: Uber is betting that its delivery and ride-hailing businesses will provide the fastest path to profitability.

Drizly’s marketplace will be eventually folded into the Uber Eats app. For now, Drizly will maintain the standalone app. The acquisition of Drizly is expected to close in the first half of the year.

For those who don’t follow Uber’s every move, here’s a quick recap. Since early 2020, Uber has offloaded most of its businesses, including shared scooter and bike unit Jump, self-driving subsidiary Uber Advanced Technologies Group and the air taxi moonshot Uber Elevate. It also sold a $500 million stake in its Uber Freight spinoff. Meanwhile, it acquired on-demand delivery app Postmates and now Drizly.

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Rad Power Bikes is one other company that had a “deal of the week” worthy funding round. The Seattle-based electric bike seller raised $150 million from institutional investors, including Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global Fund, Fidelity Management & Research Company, TPG’s global impact investing platform The Rise Fund and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. Existing investors Durable Capital Partners LP and Vulcan Capital also participated in the round.

While $150 million is hardly the biggest raise in transportation, it’s one of the larger ones in the world of electric bikes. The size of round — and the institutions involved — suggests investors see room from growth in the ebike industry and believe in Rad Power’s business model and its ability to expand beyond the $100 million in sales it generated in 2019. Rad Power Bikes declined to disclose its 2020 sales numbers.

Rad Power is a direct-to-consumer electric bike seller known for creating robust products that combine features like fat tires, big batteries and motors with touchscreens, and even cargo carrying capacity — all at prices hundreds of dollars below its competitors.

The company’s founder and CEO Mike Radenbaugh told me that the funds will be used to double its 325-person workforce, increase the number of retail showrooms and service locations, continue to bring on more contract manufacturers to diversify its supply chain and add more accessories so consumers and customize their bikes.

Other deals that got my attention …

Bear Flag Robotics, the Silicon Valley-based startup that is developing autonomous technology for farm tractors, announced last month a $7.9 million seed extension funding round led by True Ventures. (I missed this one last week). The funding comes two years after it raised a $4.6 million seed round also led by True Ventures. Graphene Ventures, AgFunder, D20 and Green Cow VC also participated in the round.

DealerPolicy, an insurance marketplace for automotive retail, raised $30 million in Series B funding led by 3L Capital and Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd.

Hip, the mobile app startup that connects riders to buses and shuttles, raised $12 million. The company was a consumer-facing business, but has changed its business model to focus on helping employers prepare for, and start to bring their workers back to the office or factory.

Otonomo, the cloud-based software startup that helps companies capture and monetize connected car data, agreed to merge with special purpose acquisition company Software Acquisition Group Inc. II with a valuation of $1.4 billion. The prospectus filed by the Otonomo shows it generated $400,000 in revenue in 2020 with a total operating expenditure of $10 million. Otonomo said it expects to have a negative gross profit through 2021. The company said it expects to be EBITDA positive by 2024.

REE Automotive has reached merger agreement with special purpose acquisition corporation 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp. The combined company, which will be listed on the NASDAQ under the new ticker symbol “REE,” will have an equity valuation of $3.6 billion. The startup has developed flat and modular EV platforms with fully autonomous-ready independent drive-by-wire, brake-by-wire and steer-by-wire technology for each wheel.

The company said it raised $300 million in private investment in public equity, or PIPE, from investors including Koch Strategic Platforms and Mahindra & Mahindra and Magna International.
The transaction is expected to provide more than $500 million of gross proceeds to the company.

Urban SDK, a connected mobility and safety analytics platform, raised $1.66 million in a funding round led by the Florida Opportunity Fund and matched by DeepWork Capital, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies in Florida.

Wheels Up, the private jet subscription service, announced plans to go public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Aspirational Consumer Lifestyle Corp. The deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter, would give Wheels Up a valuation of more than $2 billion — more than twice its 2019 value.

Ford ramps up EV and AV spending

Ford said this week it will spend $22 billion on electrification — double its previous commitment — and invest $7 billion on autonomous vehicles through 2025. It should be noted that $2 billion of that AV budget has already been spent, leaving $5 billion left to invest over the next four years.

“We are accelerating all our plans — breaking constraints, increasing battery capacity, improving costs and getting more electric vehicles into our product cycle plan,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said. “People are responding to what Ford is doing today, not someday.”

The announcement comes at the beginning of a critical two-year period for Ford and on the heels of a fourth quarter that delivered a $2.8 billion loss. The automaker will ramp up deliveries of its all-electric Mustang Mach-E vehicle and the Bronco Sport (which is not an EV). The first electric E-Transit commercial vans will come off the line in late 2021. Meanwhile, development continues on an all-electric F-150 pickup that is coming in mid- 2022.

And don’t forget that Ford is also planning to use Google’s Android Automotive operating system in new vehicles, beginning in 2023 as part of a six-year partnership announced February 1 that will bring embedded Google apps and services to drivers.

Ford’s announcement comes a week after GM said it aspired to produce only electric vehicles by 2035.

Automattic, the for-profit company tied to open source web publishing platform WordPress, is announcing that it has acquired analytics provider Parse.ly.

Specifically, Parse.ly is now part of WPVIP, the organization within Automattic that offers enterprise hosting and support to publishers including TechCrunch. (We use Parse.ly, too.)

WPVIP CEO Nick Gernert described this as the organization’s first large enterprise software acquisition, reflecting a strategy that has expanded beyond news and media organizations — businesses like Salesforce (whose venture arm invested $300 million in Automattic back in 2019), the NBA, Condé Nast, Facebook and Microsoft now use WPVIP for their content and marketing needs.

Both companies, Gernert said, come from similar backgrounds, with “roots” in digital publishing and a “heavy focus on understanding the impact of content.”

“We’ve really to shift more towards content marketing and starting to think more deeply beyond just what traditional page analytics provide,” he continued. That means doing more than measuring pageviews and time on site and “really starting to look more deeply at things like conversation, attribution, areas … that from a marketer’s perspective are impactful.”

WordPress and Parse.ly already work well together, but the plan is to make WPVIP features available to Parse.ly customers while also making more Parse.ly data available to WPVIP publishers. And Gernert said there also opportunities to add more commerce-related data to Parse.ly, since Automattic also owns WooCommerce.

The goal, he said, is to “make Parse.ly better for WordPress and best for WPVIP.”

At the same time, he added, “There’s no plans here to make Parse.ly the only analytics solution that runs on our platform. We want to preserve the flexibility and interoperability [of WordPress], and we want to make sure from a Parse.ly perspective that it still exists as a standalone product. That’s key to its future and we will continue to invest in it.”

Parse.ly was founded in 2009 and has raised $12.9 million in funding from investors including Grotech Ventures and Blumberg Capital, according to Crunchbase. Parse.ly founders Sachin Kamdar and Andrew Montalenti are joining WPVIP, with Kamdar leading go-to-market strategy for Parse.ly and Montalenti leading product.

“We’ve always had deep admiration for WPVIP’s market position as the gold standard for enterprise content teams, and we’re thrilled to be able to join together,” Kamdar said in a statement. “From the culture and people, to the product, market and vision, we’re in lockstep to create more value for our customers. This powerful combination of content and intelligence will push the industry forward at an accelerated pace.”

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening as the country prepared to start the week-long Lunar New Year holiday. Inside WeChat groups, Clubhouse users rushed to report the situation and help each other with ways to get back onto the red hot live audio app.

Audio drop-in startup Clubhouse was rapidly gaining steam in China, attracting a bevy of users early on to conversations on a wide range of topics. The app seemed likely to meet the fate of other U.S.-based apps and services, however – namely, a ban – and as of Monday, that indeed what Clubhouse faces, as confirmed by TechCrunch. Clubhouse is no longer available to users in China, and is unlikely to return given how much the app’s model would have to change to comply with Chinese internet regulation.

Clubhouse has faced criticism at home in the U.S. for its lack of effective moderation and abuse-prevention practices, so it’s hardly a surprise that it has fallen afoul of China’s rather more strict enforcement of measures designed to stifle the spread information the government deems inappropriate for discussion. The app was also not officially available via Apple’s China App Store, though access to it and its audio rooms was, before today, freely available without use of a VPN provided a user had the app installed on their device.

As Clubhouse was not listed on the Chinese App Store, so it’s unclear how many people from mainland China were on the platform. A room discussing the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen protest, a taboo topic in China, reached the maximum number of participants at 5,000 on Friday. Some users are reporting inside WeChat groups that they can no longer receive verification codes at their Chinese phone numbers, which could provide additional clues to the level of blockage. Users in China used their Chinese phone numbers to sign up for Clubhouse, and those are linked to their real ID in the country, which means there are potential risks for those who registered.

In the past two weeks, Clubhouse soared in popularity within a few communities in mainland China, including people in startups, investment, academic, or those with overseas background. Many of them were aware the app wouldn’t last long in China given free and often political debates frequented the platform. Clubhouse rooms titled “How long will Clubhouse last in China” and “Have you been invited to have tea for using Clubhouse?” attracted big crowds. “Having tea” is a euphemism for being taken away for interrogation by the police.

As TechCrunch noted on Saturday, Clubhouse’s early success prior to this shutdown has already prompted the creation of a number of homegrown alternatives designed around drop-in audio networking. Clubhouse’s popularity in China, however, may be difficult to replicate for any of these similar efforts – for the same reasons the original app itself is now inaccessible within the country.

 

 

With a Great Firewall circumvention tool like a virtual private network (VPN), some users on mainland China managed to regain access to Clubhouse.

We will update with more information about the ban….

Phable, a three-year-old healthtech startup that is serving patients with chronic illnesses in India, has raised $12 million in a new financing round as it looks to scale in the world’s second most populated nation.

Manipal Hospitals, one of the largest healthcare providers in India, led the Series A round in Phable. Existing investor New Jersey-headquartered SOSV also participated in the round.

Hundreds of millions of people in India suffer from chronic diseases. One of the biggest challenges they face is the volume of transactions they have to manage each day. There are appointments with doctors and labs for tests, purchasing of medicines, medical devices and insurance, and keeping a log of their test results.

The Bangalore-based startup has built a full-stack solution to process all these transactions. It has also developed what it claims to be the world’s largest integration with medical IoT devices.

The purpose of this is to automatically collect patients’ data so that doctors can keep a better track of their progress. The app also enables patients to share what medicine they are taking, and the frequency of the intake.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Phable co-founder Sumit Sinha explained that patients often become less disciplined about taking full dose of their medication once they start to see improvements in their conditions.

Phable has created a more transparent and real-time communication channel that allows a doctor to nudge their patients to take their medicine on time, and make any necessary changes to the lifestyle or medication cycle, or request a follow-up appointment. The app itself can be used for tele-consultation, the demand for which has skyrocketed in recent quarters as coronavirus forced people to stay indoors.

“This creates a feedback loop between the patient and the doctor even when the patient is not at the clinic or hospital and enables active interventions to get the best outcome,” he said.

The startup also sells a range of medical IoT devices through its platform that patients can buy for tracking their body performance such as blood pressure and glucose levels. Sinha said that even if a patient has bought a machine from some other place, Phable’s app is compatible with most devices. (Even if it is not — as is sometimes the case with low-cost, non-branded devices — patients can manually enter their result, or take a picture of the result and through computer vision, Phable is able to understand and make a record of it.)

“The growing burden of chronic diseases in India is exacerbated by issues around compliance of patients with the treatment regime – including medication, lifestyle changes and periodic follow-ups. Phable would help to fill that gap and would enhance the quality of life for many patients. Manipal Hospitals is pleased to have this opportunity to work with the team at Phable to enhance and grow their offerings,” said Dr. Ranjan Pai, Chairman of Manipal Education and Medical Group, in a statement.

Phable, which employs 72 people, also maintains partnership with 1mg and Medlife to make it easier for patients to place orders for their medicines and get them delivered at their doorstep.

In recent quarters, millions of Indians have consulted with their doctors through their phone or computer and bought medication online. According to Frost & Sullivan, e-pharmacy market in India was estimated to be around $512 million in 2018. In a recent note to clients, analysts at Bank of America estimated this market to be worth $2.4 billion by 2022. (The preventive healthcare market, which caters to physical and mental well-being, is expected to grow to $102 billion by 2022.)

Phable today serves patients with cardiovascular and endocrinology related chronic diseases. It has already served over 220,000 patients and plans to deploy the fresh capital to scale the startup to reach 5 million patients and 35,000 doctors by the end of the year. It also plans to broaden its offering, including allowing patients to purchase insurance from within the app or website.

Currently Phable is used by over 5,000 doctors. These doctors are using the platform to stay better connected with their existing patients and are not being paid by Phable. The startup, however, also enables patients to discover more doctors. All in all, Sinha said doctors have seen their revenue grow by 20% by using Phable’s platform.

“Phable started with an uncompromising vision of connected healthcare, reimagined through leading-edge technology, and has been unrelenting in their efforts since day one. It’s been our privilege to work with the team through our accelerator MOX and to further support Phable as they go on to better millions of lives in India,” said William Bao Bean, General Partner at SOSV, in a statement.

We often hear about companies working to improve the customer experience, but for IT their customers are the company’s employees. Nexthink, a late stage startup that wants to help IT serve its internal constituents better, announced a $180 million Series D today on a healthy $1.1 billion valuation.

The firm, which was founded in Lucerne, Switzerland and has offices outside of Boston, received funding from Permira with help from Highland Europe and Index Ventures. The company has now raised over $336 million, according to Crunchbase data.

As you might imagine, understanding how folks are using a company’s technology choices internally is always going to be useful, but when the pandemic hit and offices closed, having access to this type of data became even more important.

Nexthink CEO and co-founder Pedro Bados says that most monitoring tools are focused on figuring out if the systems are working correctly and finding ways to fix them. Nexthink takes a different approach, looking at how employees are adopting the tools a company is offering.

“What we do at Nexthink is to take the [monitoring] problem from a completely different perspective. We say that we’re going to give your IT department a real time understanding of how employees are experiencing IT [at your company],” Bados told me.

He says that they do this by looking at the problem from the employees’ perspective. “At the end of the day we’re giving all the insights to IT departments to make sure they can improve the digital experience of their employees,” he said.

This could involve querying the user base in the same way that HR and marketing survey tools allow companies to check the pulse of employees or customers. By gathering this type of data, it helps IT understand how employees are using the company’s technology choices.

This software is aimed at larger organizations with at least 5000 employees. Today, the company has over a 1000 of these customers including Best Buy, Fidelity, Liberty Mutual and 3M. What’s more, the company has surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, a success benchmark for SaaS companies like Nexthink.

Nexthink currently has 700 employees with plans to reach 900 by the end of this year, and as a maturing startup, Bados has given a lot of thought on how to build a diverse workforce. Just being spread out in two countries gives an element of geographic diversity, but he says it takes more than that, and it all starts with recruitment.

“The way to make sure we get more diversity is we look at recruitment and make sure that we have a balanced pipeline. That’s something we measure as a company,” he said. They also have a diversity committee, which is charged with delivering diversity training and figuring out ways to hire a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

While the company has a healthy valuation and a good amount of money in the bank, Bados doesn’t see an IPO for at least a couple of years. He says he wants to double or triple the business before taking that step. For now, though with $180 million in additional runway and a $100 million in ARR, the company is well positioned for whatever future moves it chooses to make.

Elon Musk notified the world that he would be donating $100 million to pursue new technologies for carbon capture, methods through which carbon dioxide can be actively extracted from the atmosphere as a means to help stave off climate change. As TechCrunch reported in January when he made the tweet, Musk’s sizeable pool of monetary incentive would be going to the Xprize foundation, a non-profit that has organized similar ambitious technology competitions aimed at developing world-changing tech. Now, Xprize and Musk have released new details of the competition.

The entire $100 million prize pool is up for grabs with this competition, which will seek solutions that can “pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans and lock it away permanently in an environmentally benign way.” That’s an ambitious goal, and one that seeks methods for carbon extraction which have a net negative effect on the overall global balance of the element’s presence. Xprize aims to award up to 15 finalists $1 million each, along with three top winners, with $50 million to the Grand Prize victor, and $20 million and $10 million respectively for second and third place. 25 student scholarships valued at $250,000 each will also be up for grabs specifically for student team entrants.

To qualify for victory, solutions must be able to extract 1 ton of CO2 per day, and be viable in a scaled, validated model at time of presentation, with the ability to scale it to “gigaton levels” in commercially viable ways in future. Those are big goals for new technologies, but the competition’s stakes are high: Musk has frequently referred to climate change as an existential threat to humanity, and carbon capture is one key means to combat it.

Carbon capture methods exist, and some are at the center of new startups and emerging businesses, like Canadian company Carggon Engineering which uses CO2 extracted from the atmosphere to create new types of fuel, or Air Vodka, a carbon negative vodka distilled using C02 removed from the atmosphere. Though there are a handful of companies pursuing this, the problem is that it’s typically very expensive to remove carbon in a way that is both safe and that has no subsequent impact on the environment from its resulting byproducts.

The new Xprize competition hopes to spur the development of a wide range of emerging companies in a way similar to how the the 2004 $10 million private spaceflight Ansari Xprize led the development of a whole new era in the space industry. The competition will officially begin on April 22, 2021, at which time full guidelines will be made available and registration will open. Applicants will have up to four years to submit their solution, with the competition closing on Earth Day 2025 and the initial $1 million awards distributed after 18 months following that. That will provide the funding necessary for teams to build out their full-scale demos to claim the top prizes.

VerSe Innovation, the parent firm of popular news and entertainment app DailyHunt and short video app Josh, said on Monday the startup has raised over $100 million as part of its Series H financing round from Qatar Investment Authority and Glade Brook Capital Partners.

The announcement follows another $100 million or so the startup secured from Google, AlphaWave, and Microsoft in December last year.

This is a developing story. More to follow…