Author: azeeadmin

Another hour, another billion-dollar round. That’s how February is kicking off. This time it’s Databricks, which just raised $1 billion Series G at a whopping $28 billion post-money valuation.

Databricks is a data-and-AI focused company that interacts with corporate information stored in the public cloud.

News of the new round began leaking last week. Franklin Templeton led the round, which also included new investors Fidelity and Whale Rock. Databricks also raised part of the capital from major cloud vendors including AWS, Alphabet via its CapitalG vehicle, and Salesforce Ventures. Microsoft is a previous investor, and it took part in the round as well.

But we’re not done! Other prior investors including a16z, T. Rowe Price, Tiger Global, BlackRock, and Coatue were also involved along with Alkeon Capital Management.

Consider that Databricks just raised a bushel of capital from a mix of cloud companies it works with, public investors it wants as shareholders when it goes public, and some private money that is enjoying a stiff markup from their last check into the company.

The company has made its mark with a series of four open source products with a core data lake product call Delta Lake leading the way. You may recall that another hot data lake company, Snowflake, raised almost a half a billion dollars on a $12.4 billion valuation a year ago before going public last September with a valuation twice that. Databricks has already exceeded that public valuation with this round — as a private company.

When we spoke to Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi at the time of his company’s $400 million round in 2019, one which valued the company at $6.2 billion at the time, he said his company was the fastest growing enterprise cloud software companies ever, and that’s saying something.

The company makes money by offering each of those open source products as a software service and it’s doing exceedingly well at it, so much so that investors were tripping over each other to be part of this deal. In fact, Ghodsi said in a conversation with TechCrunch today that his company had targeted a much more modest $200 million raise, but that figure grew as more parties wanted to invest funds into the company. Even with that, Databricks had to turn capital away, he added, after deciding to cap the round at $1 billion.

The extra $800 million that the company raised will be used for M&A opportunities with an eye on talent, spend on establishing a Lakehouse concept, international expansion, while also expanding its engineering team, the CEO said.

Ghodsi also made clear that he does not intend to let the percentage of revenue that the company spends on R&D to drop, as is common at modern software companies — as many SaaS companies grow, they expend more of their revenue on sales and marketing efforts over product spend, something that Databricks wants to avoid by continuing to invest in engineering talent.

Why? Because Ghodsi says that the pace of innovation in AI is so rapid that IP becomes outdated in just a few years. That means that companies that want to lead in this space will have to stay on the bleeding edge of their market or fall back swiftly.

The Databricks model appears to be working well, with the company closing 2020 at $425 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR. That figure, up 75% from the year-ago period, is also up from a $350 million run rate at the end of its Q3 2020. (For more on Databricks’ business, product and growth, head here.)

Notably Ghodsi told TechCrunch that this deal only started to come together in December. It’s February 1st today, which means that it took on this bushel of new funding remarkably quickly.

Finally, at $425 million in ARR, is the CEO worried about having a valuation sitting at roughly a 65x multiple? Ghodsi said that he is not. He said that he told his company during an all-hands earlier today that the AI market is a long journey, one that he hopes to be on for decades, and the stock market will go up and down. His point, as far as I could read into it, was that so long as Databricks keeps growing as it has, its valuation will take care of itself (and that seems to be the case so far with this company).

What’s certainly true is that Databricks is now as rich as it has ever been, as large as it has ever been, and in a market that is maturing. Let’s see what it can do with all this money.

Companies become industry leaders because of sparks: Ideas that lead to innovation, which shakes up a category. Apple changed the world when it realized that people wanted a PC in their pocket and it had to feel and look good.

Research makes sparks possible. In the modern economy, “eureka” moments are rare, and product-market fit like the iPhone, PayPal, and so many others are the outcome of sparks of innovation, yes — but more importantly, rigorous research. People still have great ideas in the shower, but most of the time, big advances happen after countless hours of market research, A-B testing and the like.

As one might expect, the pandemic has forced research online. The companies that figure out remote research will find success and profitability more quickly than those who are still struggling to. Remote research will remain the rule even as the worst of the pandemic mercifully ends, as our lives will still be upended for months or even years. For those investing in tech companies, newly honed remote research capabilities are a critical yet undervalued asset and a stealth indicator of company health.

The pandemic has been a major challenge for good corporate research. Most researchers — myself included — historically relied on in-real-life, face-to-face conversations with current and potential customers. Now that 2021 is underway, the onus is on organizations to explain how they’ve figured out the remote research problem. They’ve had 10 months to do so, and if they haven’t, they better have a plan for how they’re going to fix it.

Investors, executives and teams from the bottom-up must see — and demand — that companies get research right. Billions of dollars ride on it. No one wants to be Quibi, where good consumer research would have made all the difference.

There are ways to recreate effective research techniques digitally. Leaders should ask what tools researchers are using; what hacks they’ve developed to serve their needs in new and different ways. Are researchers using collaboration tools to draw out ideas and get to know people better? For example, I ask for photo collages of a person’s home life to help understand a person’s context. The next question should be how the research team is using these tools. Are they just giving a presentation, or are they using these tools in an open-ended fashion to spur dynamic conversation? I often use a digital whiteboard to provide a personal touch with real-time drawing and diagramming, which can be fun and even silly. It helps people let their guard down.

Next, leaders need to make sure the company is incorporating research into the design process, regardless of the collaboration difficulties the pandemic has imposed. Researchers and the design team need to answer questions like:

• Is research just a box to check? Or are designers and developers constantly referring to it?
• Is the research team properly elevated, ideally reporting into the chief product officer and sharing insights frequently with the executive team to provide a sharper sense of consumer desires?
• Are researchers given the freedom to learn more about the hacks that consumers are implementing in today’s unusual reality?
• Are designers and developers using the research as a jumping-off point, and do they have permission to design and create in new ways?

In all cases, research should be a core dimension of good product decisions, of sound digital product design and development. If it isn’t, organizations should make changes in 2021.

There is quantitative data to back up this statement. According to InVision’s industry research, only 10% of 2,300 teams surveyed deploy the most design-mature research practices, which increase speed-to-market, revenue and valuation. Only 7% say they rely on customer reviews and co-create products alongside their customers (important research practices).

Put more starkly, it’s likely the companies that are getting investment are not using research in the best possible way. Fewer than 10% of thousands of teams surveyed elevate design research. That means fewer than 10% of organizations are able to meet today’s remote research challenges easily, adapt to new realities quickly and succeed in this extreme time of change. In the throes of a pandemic, that is a problem.

Even after COVID, companies that thrive — or even simply survive — will be design-mature and digital-first. They will derive more of their revenue, interact with customers and gain new research insights digitally. In such an economy, technical and engineering prowess are critical, but all the technical ability in the world is worthless without understanding what consumers want a company to create. It is worthless without feedback. It is worthless without insight that leads to innovation.

It is worthless without a mature design process that uses research to validate, understand and turn the spark of an idea into reality.

UiPath, one of the leaders in the quickly growing robotic process automation (RPA) space, announced Monday that it has closed on $750 million in Series F funding at a staggering post-money valuation of $35 billion.

Existing backers Alkeon Capital and Coatue co-led the round, which also included participation from other returning investors such as Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, IVP, Sequoia, Tiger Global, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. The financing brings the New York-based company’s total raised to nearly $2 billion since inception, according to Crunchbase.

UiPath was founded in 2005 but didn’t raise institutional capital until 2015, according to Crunchbase. CNBC reported in December that the company had annual revenue of about $360 million and over 6,300 customers including Amazon, Bank of America and Verizon.

UiPath’s self-proclaimed mission is “to unlock human creativity and ingenuity by enabling the Fully Automated Enterprise and empowering workers through automation.” Its Automation Platform aims to “transform the way humans work” by giving companies a way to build out and run automations across departments.

The company uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in an effort to “automate millions of repetitive, mind-numbing tasks for business and government organizations all over the world, improving productivity, customer experience and employee job satisfaction.” Its goal is to give workers the mental energy and time to focus on more complex jobs. Competitors include Microsoft Power Automate, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere. SAP also recently entered the space.

The company has been growing like crazy. Back when I covered its $568 million Series D in April of 2019, UiPath had 400,000 users in 200 countries. At the time, the company said it had increased its annual recurring revenue (ARR) from $8 million in April 2017 to over $200 million. UiPath said then it had grown its headcount by 16 times over a two-year period, to more than 2,500 employees. It also hinted that it was considering an IPO.

True to its word, UiPath in December submitted a draft registration to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering. So it’s especially interesting that it raised such a huge round now.

For some, UiPath’s going public could be the Snowflake IPO of 2021. Alternative payments provider Affirm followed a similar path recently – raising $500 million before filing for an IPO weeks later.

UiPath declined to comment on its latest funding round beyond a press release.

In addition to AirPlay support for Fitness+, today’s iOS 14.5 developer beta is bringing some key new features to mobile operating system. At the top of the list is undoubtedly Apple Watch unlock for users wearing face coverings.

The long-awaited feature arrives a year or so into a pandemic that has made face masks a reality in parts of the world that previously had not seen wide scale adoption. The Apple Watch has, of course, long had the ability to unlock Macs, so this integration seems like a pretty sensible addition.

Starting with iOS 14.5, Apple Watch wearers will be able to opt-in to iPhone unlock under the phone’s Face ID & Passcode settings. Once enabled, the Watch will give a haptic buzz to notify the wearer that the handset has been unlocked. The Watch needs to be unlocked, on a wrist and in close proximity to the iPhone in order to work.

It beats having to pull your mask down in public (even if some folks are still feeling nostalgic for Touch ID).

The addition should be included in the consumer version of the software when it launches. Also included are the ability to ask Siri to call emergency contacts and app tracking controls that require permissions from developers. Support for new Xbox and PlayStation game controllers has been added, as well.

Microsoft today announced that Azure Quantum, its cloud-based platform for using quantum hardware and software tools from partners like Honeywell Quantum Solutions, IonQ, 1QBit and others, is now in public preview. Azure Quantum went into limited preview last May. At the time, it was only open to a small number of select Microsoft partners and customers, but starting today, anyone with an interest in quantum computing can start experimenting with the service.

The service offers a small free allowance to get started. After that, using it could get pricey pretty quickly, though. You can find the complete pricing chart here, but to use the system for trying out the basics, you’re looking at about $10 per compute hour.

Image Credits: Microsoft

It’s still early days in quantum computing, so building on a specific platform, be that Microsoft’s or that of competitors like IBM and Rigetti, means buying into a specific toolset as well. For Microsoft, that’s the open-source Quantum Development Kit and its Q# language, as well as its recently announced hardware-agnostic Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR) intermediate language based on LLVM.

“The transition to Public Preview of Azure Quantum is a key milestone for quantum computing and our ecosystem,” writes Krysta Svore, the GM of Microsoft Quantum “This continues the momentum we saw last year, which includes selection for the National Quantum Initiative Quantum Research Centers, the addition of new Azure Quantum partners, and hardware advances in scaling control circuitry for qubits.”

Microsoft’s own efforts to build a quantum computer haven’t resulted in a working qubit yet, but the company has made strides in other areas. For the time being, though, Microsoft is betting on partnerships with other players in the space to power this platform. This also allows the company to claim that it offers the “world’s first full-stack, public cloud ecosystem for quantum solutions.”

Image Credits: Microsoft

A week after introducing Time to Walk, Apple has released another software update aimed at expanding its Fitness+ footprint. With today’s arrival the developer seed of watchOS 7.4 and iOS 14.5, the company is adding a new feature that will make it possible to stream workouts to an AirPlay enabled TV – with some caveats.

Users can stream audio and video the company’s subscription-based fitness app to AirPlay 2-enabled sets. That’s a nice addition for those without an Apple TV and users looking to bring the service on the road with them via compatible hotel TVs (when people start staying in hotels again).

The biggest difference here is that metrics won’t be displayed on screen. That means you lose things like your rings, calories burned, etc. They’ll have to rely on the connected Apple Watch and iPhone or iPad for that information. Not the end of the world, but they’re an important part of the Fitness+ experience. Apple no doubt wants to continue to incentivize its own hardware ecosystem, while working to grow the exercise app.

Fitness+ arrived at the right time for the company, as Covid-19 has caused many of us to let our gym memberships lapse, in favor of at home workouts. There’s a question of sustainability of home workouts in general, with the roll out of numerous vaccines.

Maintaining and continuing to grow these applications will require flexibility. When I spoke to Apple about Fitness+ last week, the company noted that it envisions people bringing the app with them on the go. That could mean doing a Fitness+ workout on the iPad at their gym or finding a way to back the experience in a bag and use it during their travels.

The feature is currently available as part of the developer seeds of the new watchOS and iOS versions, and should be available to consumers when the final versions go live.

Smartphone maker Xiaomi has sued the United States government over its inclusion in a military blacklist. The filing, which was submitted on Friday, calls the decision “unlawful and unconstitutional.”

The Chinese smartphone maker adds:

It is not owned or controlled by, or otherwise affiliated with the Chinese government or military, or owned or controlled by any entity affiliated with the Chinese defense industrial base. Nor does the Chinese government or military, or any entity affiliated with the defense industrial base, possess the ability to exert control over the management or affairs of the company.

The filing reflects similar statements by the company in the wake of the listing. The designation came in the waning days of the Trump administration, less than a week before Biden’s inauguration. Huawei and DJI have also been caught up in U.S. blacklists in recent years, though those companies were tagged as part of the separate entity list maintained by the Commerce Department. Huawei filed suit against the government in March 2019.

The listing, which is set to go into effect on March 15, bars investment in the smartphone maker. It’s already had an impact on its bottom line. Xiaomi already has a massive global footprint, ranking No. 2 behind Apple and Samsung, according to the latest figures from Canalys. The company saw a 31% annual growth in market share y-o-y for Q4, as the larger industry continued to stall. Xiaomi hasn’t had much visibility in the U.S., but a potential ban in the world’s third-largest market could severely hamper the company’s growth.

It remains to be seen how the new U.S. administration will impact relations with both China and its hardware makers. Notably, the letter addresses Biden appointees Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Poland-based Telemedico has closed a €5.5 million (~$6.6M) Series A round of funding. The round is led by Flashpoint Venture Capital, Uniqa Ventures, PKO VC, Black Pearls VC (an existing investor) and Adamed.

Telehealth services specifically, and digital health more broadly, have racked up plenty of growth during the pandemic as demand for remote consultations (and other types of support) has accelerated sectoral uplift.

Telemedico, which was founded back in 2014 — but only launched its current b2b model (which is primarily targeted at insurance firms) in 2017 — says 2020 was a record year for its business.

One million consultations were carried out via its platform during the 12-month period, it told us.

Pawel Sieczkiewicz, founder and CEO at Telemedico, says it’s fielding over 100,000 consultations per month at this stage — and is projecting that to increase to 250,000 by the end of 2021.

The platform has been used by more than 900,000 patients to date. While more than 600 doctors currently provide remote consultations for Telemedico.

Services its platform offers include consultations with a doctor via chat, video, telephone; AI-triaging and coordination; and booking of in-person visits and blood testing.

The business has been growing 3x YoY since 2018, per Sieczkiewicz, who says it has carried out more than 2.5 million appointments in total to-date, spanning 10 languages.

It’s expecting to double the size of its (60-strong) team this year, he adds.

The Series A funding will be put towards international expansion — including eyeing potential growth opportunities in LatAm.

Expanding supported languages is part of that plan. (Currently it supports consultations in English, Spanish, Polish, Czech, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic; languages it’ll be adding next are: Italian, French, Greek, German, and Romanian.)

Telemedico’s best markets to date are Poland and Spain, per Sieczkiewicz, who says it’s active in 14 markets in total.

“We aim to increase our presence on the markets where we are already active: Spain, Russia, Portugal, Turkey, and launch on new markets, with new languages — mainly EU Countries, like France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Romania,” he adds.

While there’s a lot of activity in the telehealth space, Telemedico bills itself as one of the only ‘plug and play’ platforms for insurance companies — offering a whitelabel service geared towards a sector that Sieczkiewicz argues may not want to relinquish so much control to brasher, brand-building ‘digital first’ competitors.

“We provide our enterprise customers with a platform they can customise to meet their needs and a network of over 600 doctors who speak 10 languages that they can mix with their own network,” he tells TechCrunch. “We help our customers strengthen their value chain, so they can stand up against digital-first insurance companies who have been emerging for the last couple of years.

“The top three competitors are Babylon Health, KRY, and Pushdoctor. They represent a B2C approach, with a strong local presence. They are also building strong brand awareness around the service, and force insurance companies to let their customers leave their ecosystem. From the feedback that we receive from insurance companies, this isn’t their favourite way of organizing the patient flow.”

“One major drawback for insurers using the Babylon-style setup is that in the future, Babylon might be able to begin offering insurance cover directly to consumers, cutting out the original insurance companies themselves — similar to how digital-first insurance companies like Oscar Health operate,” he adds.

Telemedico says its system can be deployed within around 48 hours — letting insurance firms and other enterprise customers offer a telehealth platform that gives their users access to web and mobile white-label patient portals; online consultations; medical documentation storage; in person visits; automated triaging; and symptom checker tools.

The startup also offers insurance companies access to an ‘insurance product creator’ to manage variants of their current product suite for specific groups of users.

Telemedico says its platform is used by “a number” of health ministries around the world, as well as PZU, Allianz, AXA, Metrored, Compensa, TU Zdrowie and more than 50 other insurance and medical assistance companies (“mostly” within the telemedicine space).

It does also offer a direct-to-consumer telehealth service in Poland, via the public healthcare system — where consultation fees are covered by the insurance of the publicly funded National Health Fund of Poland (i.e. free at the point of use for patients).

It also offers consultations via a fee-for-service model. Sieczkiewicz says its USP is “that we are built on three foundations: B2B, whitelabel and cross-country services”.

“Telemedico is primarily a B2B company,” he continues. “The majority of our business comes from recurring enterprise customers, such as insurance companies, banks, pharmacies and other companies who either offer health services and want to improve them with a digital layer or want to offer health services to their digital offering.

“We see a huge trend among insurance companies, that add new healthcare products to their offers. We help create those products with our so-called ‘insurance product creator’, providing them with tools for setting up and management of their digital health services, patient flow, and more.”

He also says the ‘plug and play’ style SaaS platform supports a modular approach — enabling the target b2b users to zero in on the most useful aspects of its platform for their particular customer case (be it telemedicine, drug ordering or automated triage).

The software can be completely integrated into a customer’s platform or run as a stand-alone product, he adds.

“Telemedicine is no longer an add-on to insurance packages but in many countries the first touchpoint with medical services — a way to increase patients satisfaction and decrease costs for the insurer,” Sieczkiewicz suggests.

Commenting on the Series A funding in a statement, Michael Szalontay, general partner at Flashpoint VC, said: “We are convinced that telemedicine will become a primary distribution channel for medical services in the next decade and Telemedico is poised to become a European leader in this domain. We are proud to become Pawel’s partner in Telemedico, he has an amazing energy and conviction, and in our experience, such gumption is a prerequisite for success.”

“This decade will be the Golden Twenties for telemedicine,” added Dr. Andreas Nemeth, general partner at UNIQA Ventures, in another supporting statement. “The potential is enormous and telemedi.co is already setting standards here today. telemedi.co has the right product, the right team and the right culture to support insurers in providing seamless telemedicine services. We are therefore delighted and proud to be able to follow the path together in the future and pleased to be able to become a part of the company’s international growth story.”

Google regularly tweaks its search results pages and tries out new designs. It’s not that often, though, that it adds new features to those results, so when it does, it’s worth paying attention to.

Today, Google is adding a new menu item to virtually all search results in English in the U.S. on mobile, desktop and its Android Google app. This new link will provide searchers with more information about the site they are about to visit — and before they click on the actual link.

Clicking the new hamburger-style menu icon will pop up a new info panel with additional information about the site. These include a short description of what the site is about — taken from Wikipedia when available– and some data about whether the connection to the site is secure.

Image Credits: Google

For sites without a Wikipedia entry, Google will show when it first indexed the site and other data if it’s available.

There’s also a full link and a short line about whether it’s a native search result or an ad (which seems like a tacit admission that it’s too hard to distinguish ads from regular search results on Google). At the bottom of the pane, there are also links to your privacy settings and to an explainer about ‘how search works.’

Image Credits: Google

“When you search for information on Google, you probably often come across results from sources that you’re familiar with: major retailer websites, national news sites and more,” Google product manager JK Kearns writes in today’s announcement. “But there’s also a ton of great information on and services available from sites that you may not have come across before. And while you can always use Google to do some additional research about those sites, we’re working on a new way for you to find helpful info without having to do another search.”

This new feature will start rolling out today and as usual, it may take a while before you see it in your own search results.

Image Credits: Google

Kleiner Perkins is one of the most prestigious venture firms in all of Silicon Valley. The firm has invested in startups like Twitter, Google, Square, Peloton, Spotify, Robinhood and many, many more. As such, the folks at Kleiner Perkins know a thing or two about what it takes to fundraise across the various stages of a company.

One of the more difficult jumps to make is going from raising a seed round to picking up a Series A. Rather than focusing on the idea and the product market fit, founders must show that their product can scale, with numbers to back it up.

It can be grueling and complicated, but Kleiner Perkins partner Bucky Moore is going to break it all down for us at TechCrunch Early Stage – Operations & Fundraising on April 1 & 2.

TC Early Stage – Operations & Fundraising is a virtual event focused squarely on early stage founders. The event will have dozens of breakout sessions led by investors and experts that break down the most difficult parts of building a business, focusing on startup core competencies like fundraising and operations.

Moore will lead a session called “4 things to think about before raising a Series A” at the event, which takes place on April 1 – 2 and is totally virtual. Plus, Moore will answer questions from the audience.

Here’s a look at what the presentation will focus on:

The most important part of raising a Series A is the decisions made before the fundraise. A shockingly common mistake founders make is not thinking through four critical areas before talking to investors. Bucky Moore will share how founders can prepare for a successful Series A, and discuss what investors are looking for when they write a Series A check. His advice will be valuable to all entrepreneurs looking to raise early-stage funding.

What are those four areas? You’ll have to pick up a ticket (which includes a year of Extra Crunch) to find out!

Moore sits on the boards of Netlify, Materialize, CodeSandbox, Opstrace and Stackbit, and tends to focus his energy on developer-facing software and infrastructure. Before Kleiner Perkins, he was an. investor at Costanoa Ventures, and prior to that he was at Battery.

He also published a list of the areas he’s most interested in as we head into 2021, which you can check out here. Unsurprisingly, data, ML/AI, and advances in cloud technology are front and center.

We’re amped to hear from Moore at TechCrunch: Early Stage. You can pick up a ticket to the show here.