Author: azeeadmin

The effects of a warming planet, from frequent and extreme flooding to hurricanes and drought, has prompted activists and governments to take action. It’s also spurred a growing number of entrepreneurs to launch technology startups focused on the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

At the center of this activity are the venture capitalists deciding which startup — and tech — has the best chance to decarbonize the planet while providing returns. Unlike other categories, climate tech is particularly complex because it spans so many different industries. Investors might be meeting with a founder trying to develop a plant-based fabric on a Monday and one who claims to have developed cutting-edge carbon capture technology on Tuesday.

TechCrunch is excited to announce that Carmichael Roberts, who co‐leads the investment committee at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Sean O’Sullivan, managing general partner at SOSV, will join me on our virtual stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021. The virtual conference kicks off September 21 and runs through September 23.

Roberts and O’Sullivan will dig into what climate tech means — and what it doesn’t — their investing approach, the hottest and most promising technology within this sector and the risk of not getting it right.

The pair have the expertise to weigh in. Roberts is also co-founder and managing partner of Material Impact, a fund that builds resilient technology companies developing products to solve real‐world problems using innovative materials. Before he became an investor, Roberts  co‐founded several ventures, in which he served as president and CEO or chairman. He also worked in business development at GelTex Pharmaceuticals, acquired by Genzyme for $1.3 billion, and in new product and business development at Dow Chemical (formerly Union Carbide Corporation).

Before Sullivan joined SOSV, one of the most active venture investors in the world, he founded MapInfo. The company grew to a $200 million revenue public company with more than 1,000 employees, and popularized street mapping on computers. He also founded NetCentric, is credited as the co-creator of the term “cloud computing” and co-founded Dial2Do.

The panel is just one of many investment-focused discussions we’ll be having at Disrupt 2021. But as moderator, this is the one I look most forward to!

Fivetran, the data connectivity startup, had a big day today. For starters it announced a $565 million investment on $5.6 billion valuation, but it didn’t stop there. It also announced its second acquisition this year, snagging HVR, a data integration competitor that had raised over $50M, for $700 million in cash and stock.

The company last raised a $100 million Series C on a $1.2 billion valuation, increasing the valuation by over 5x. As with that Series C, Andreessen Horowitz was back leading the round with participation from other double dippers General Catalyst, CEAS Investments, Matrix Partners and other unnamed firms or individuals. New investors ICONIQ Capital, D1 Capital Partners and YC Continuity also came along for the ride. The company reports it has now raised $730 million.

The HVR acquisition represents a hefty investment for the startup, grabbing a company for a price that is almost equal to all the money it has raised to date, but it provides a way to expand its market quickly by buying a competitor. Earlier this year Fivetran acquired Teleport Data as it continues to add functionality and customers via acquisition.

“The acquisition — a cash and stock deal valued at $700 million — strengthens Fivetran’s market position as one of the data integration leaders for all industries and all customer types,” the company said in a statement.

While that may smack of corporate marketing speak, there is some truth to it, as pulling data from multiple sources, sometimes in siloed legacy systems is a huge challenge for companies and both Fivetran and HVR have developed tools to provide the pipes to connect various data sources and put it to work across a business.

Data is central to a number of modern enterprise practices including customer experience management, which takes advantage of customer data to deliver customized experiences based on what you know about them, and data is the main fuel for machine learning models, which use it to understand and learn how a process works. Fivetran and HVR provide the nuts and bolts infrastructure to move the data around to where it’s needed, connecting to various applications like Salesforce, Box or Airtable, databases like Postgres SQL or data repositories like Snowflake or Databricks.

Whether bigger is better remains to be seen, but Fivetran is betting that it will be in this case as it makes its way along the startup journey. The transaction has been approved by both company’s boards. The deal is still subject to standard regulatory approval, but Fivetran is expecting it to close in October

Time to carbo-load, startup fans. Tomorrow we kick off the opportunity marathon that is TechCrunch Disrupt 2021, and we can’t wait to see it all unfold! Considering the amount of programming available over the next three days, you might appreciate some expert guidance. No worries — we’ve got you covered.

Make the Disrupt Desk your first destination. That’s where you’ll find TechCrunch editors highlighting just some of the must-not-miss moments on Day One. Here’s a fine example. Get your first look at some of the companies competing in Startup Battlefield. Companies like Dropbox, Vurb, Mint and many more got their start as Startup Battlefield competitors. Catch the next generation in this always-epic pitch throw-down.

Here’s a tiny taste of what’s on tap tomorrow on the Disrupt Stage, the Extra Crunch Stage and in our special breakout sessions. Consult the Disrupt agenda for exact times.

Disrupt Stage

Saving the World

COVID-19 changed everything. It not only threatened our individual health and well-being, but it also shook industries and economies across the globe. And the same could be said about the COVID-19 vaccines. Hear from BioNTech cofounder and CEO, Ugur Sahin on the process of rapidly developing the world’s most sought-after vaccine, alongside Pfizer, and the long-term potential of mRNA-based therapies. Ursheet Parikh of Mayfield Fund will join Sahin to discuss what’s next for startups in this rapidly evolving industry.

Extra Crunch Stage

How to Ditch Traditional Fundraising

In 2021, venture capital has never been more plentiful, but some founders still can’t break into networks or have found that traditional fundraising isn’t the best route for their business. Fortunately, alternative fundraising techniques are gathering steam as founders find paths to raise cash that diverge from the startup success stories of the past. Join the discussion with Pipe’s Harry Hurst, Accel’s and Clearco’s Michele Romanow.

Breakout Session

Demo Derby — How startups are disrupting the status quo with innovative data analytics, AI and modern app development

Startups need to move quickly and focus limited resources on areas where they can differentiate. In this fast-paced session, learn from startups and Google experts how you can leverage Google technologies to serve customers better and get to market more quickly. In a series of short demos, see how innovative startups and Google experts have used Google compute, storage, networking and AI technologies to “disrupt” the status quo.

Any last-minute decision makers out there? You can still buy a full Disrupt 2021 pass right here but hurry because prices increase tonight at 11:59pm PT! Or if you’re just looking for a taste of Disrupt – get access to all of the Breakout Sessions and the expo for free TODAY ONLY HERE.

There you have it. A quick way to tap into the first day of Disrupt 2021. Go forth and discover opportunities that can take your business forward to the next level and beyond. We can’t wait to see where Disrupt takes you!

Earlier today, TechCrunch examined the new IPO price range for Toast. The U.S. software-and-fintech company moved its valuation materially higher in anticipation of pricing tomorrow after the bell and trading on Wednesday. It was not alone in doing so.

Freshworks is also targeting a higher IPO price range, it disclosed today in a fresh SEC filing. The customer service-focused software firm now expects to charge between $32 and $34 per share in its debut, up from the $28 to $32 per-share range that it initially disclosed.

Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, Freshworks’ IPO valuation could just pass the $10 billion mark, calculated on a fully diluted basis. Its simple IPO valuations, while rising, are lower than that figure.

Mathing that out, Freshworks expects to have 284,283,200 shares outstanding when public, inclusive of its underwriters’ option, but not inclusive of vested shares present in RSUs or options. At its new IPO price range, Freshworks would be worth between $9.1 billion and $9.7 billion.

U.S. technology unicorn Toast filed a new S-1 document this morning detailing a higher IPO price range for its shares. The more expensive range indicates that Toast may be worth more in its debut than it initially expected, a bullish sign for technology companies more broadly.

Toast’s rising valuation may provide a boon to two different sub-sectors of technology: software and fintech. The restaurant-focused Toast sells software on a recurring basis (SaaS) to restaurants while also providing financial technology solutions. And while it is best known as a software company that dabbles in hardware, Boston-based Toast generates the bulk of its aggregate top line from financial services.

Software revenues are valuable thanks to their high margins and recurring structure. Toast’s financial-services revenues, by contrast, are largely transaction-based and sport lower gross margins. The company’s IPO price, then, could help the private markets more fairly price startups offering their own blend of software-and-fintech incomes.

The so-called “vertical SaaS” model, in which startups build software tailored to one particular industry or another, has become a somewhat two-part business effort; many startups today are pursuing both the sale of software along with fintech revenues. Toast’s IPO, then, could operate as a bellwether of sorts for a host of startups.

To see Toast raise its range, therefore, got our eyebrows up. Let’s talk money.

Toast’s new IPO range

From a previous range of $30 to $33, Toast now expects to price its IPO between $34 and $36.

Toast now expects its IPO price to clear its previous upper-end guidance at the low end of its new range. That’s bullish — and indicative of a thus-far receptive market for the company’s equity.

Coinbase efforts to play hardball with the Securities and Exchange Commission didn’t last too long. The cryptocurrency exchange had garnered the ire of the regulatory commission over its plans to launch a crypto lending product, with the SEC sending the company a Wells notice which indicated that the agency would sue Coinbase if they launched their crypto lending product called Lend.

Less than a couple weeks after publishing a defiant blog post titled “The SEC has told us it wants to sue us over Lend. We don’t know why.” the company quietly announced over the weekend that it will not be launching the Lend product after all.

On Friday, the company quietly added an update to its launch post for Lend, detailing in part:

As we continue our work to seek regulatory clarity for the crypto industry as a whole, we’ve made the difficult decision not to launch the USDC APY program announced below. We have also discontinued the waitlist for this program as we turn our work to what comes next.

Lend was far from an anomaly in the crypto exchange world; investors can find similar functionality in platforms like Gemini which allow users to lend their crypto holdings back to the exchange for the promise of earning interest rates that are much, much higher than traditional savings accounts offer. Coinbase planned to launch the Lend product with the functionality for users to stake the stablecoin USDC and earn (as a starting rate) 4% APY.

The SEC, which has long complained about the limited resources at its disposal, has pursued a limited set of cases against crypto products but doesn’t seem to have been quite comfortable with the fact that users were essentially forfeiting custody of their coins to Coinbase and its partners, while indicating that the Lend product did indeed involve a security. Coinbase, which has made the fact that it coordinates closely with regulatory bodies part of its brand, had been trying to take things slowly while sticking to their belief that the product wasn’t security-related.

“The SEC told us they consider Lend to involve a security, but wouldn’t say why or how they’d reached that conclusion. Rather than get discouraged, we chose to continue taking things slowly. In June, we announced our Lend program publicly and opened a waitlist but did not set a public launch date. But once again, we got no explanation from the SEC. Instead, they opened a formal investigation,” a recent Coinbase company blog post read.

The big question is what this means for the other crypto exchanges and whether this act signals the start of a more aggressive streak for SEC chief Gary Gensler’s commission in the crypto world, especially in regards to DeFi mechanics.

Apple has just released the final version of iOS 15, the next major version of the operating system for the iPhone. It is a free download and it works with the iPhone 6s or later, both generations of iPhone SE and the most recent iPod touch model. iPad users will also be able to update to iPadOS 15 and watchOS 8 today.

The biggest change of iOS 15 is a new Focus mode. In addition to “Do not disturb,” you can configure various modes — you can choose apps and people you want notifications from and change your focus depending on what you’re doing. For instance, you can create a Work mode, a Sleep mode, a Workout mode, etc.

There are many new features across the board, such as a new Weather app, updated maps in Apple Maps, an improved version of FaceTime, and more. Safari also has a brand-new look.

The new version of iOS also scans your photos for text. Called Live Text, this feature lets you highlight, copy and paste text in photos. It could be a nice accessibility feature as well; iOS is going to leverage that info for Spotlight. You can search for text in your photos directly in Spotlight and it’ll pull out relevant photos. These features are handled on-device directly.

Paid iCloud users have been upgraded to iCloud+. In addition to more storage, iCloud+ subscribers get a handful of new features. iCloud Private Relay, which is available as a beta feature, lets you browse the web with increased privacy. Hide My Email lets you create randomly generated email addresses to create new accounts around the web. iCloud email users can also switch to a personal domain name.

The update is currently rolling out and is available both over-the-air in the Settings app, and by plugging your device to your computer for a wired update. But first, back up your device. Make sure your iCloud backup is up to date by opening the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tapping on your account information at the top and then on your device name. Additionally, you can also plug your iOS device to your computer to do a manual backup in Finder or iTunes for Windows (or do both, really).

Don’t forget to encrypt your backup in iTunes. It is much safer if somebody hacks your computer. And encrypted backups include saved passwords and health data. This way, you don’t have to reconnect to all your online accounts.

Once this is done, you should go to the Settings app, then ‘General’ and then ‘Software Update.’ You should see ‘Update Requested…’ It will then automatically start downloading once the download is available.

The crypto space has matured so much in so little time, but even amid a blockbuster year, it’s still facing down the existential risk of aggressive regulation from U.S. agencies.

All the while, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has been tirelessly building out a major crypto arm dedicated to ensuring that the firm will be an institutional powerhouse in the world of cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance and broader “Web3” technologies for years to come. Its early network of investments power much of the crypto world’s earliest success stories, but the firm has bigger ambitions yet. The firm’s efforts here are co-led by General Partner Katie Haun — who was once a federal prosecutor tackling fraud and cyber crime alongside top government agencies.

We’re excited to have Haun join us at TechCrunch Disrupt this year (September 21-23), where we’ll be asking her about all things crypto regulation and what the firm hopes to accomplish with its new, massive $2.2 billion crypto fund. Beyond the firm’s aggressive fund sizes and rapid deal-making in the crypto space, the firm’s partners — including Haun — have been among the most vocal about the potentially transformative nature of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

This has gotten more attention in 2021 when currencies have surged, fallen and surged again, minting more and more crypto millionaires while sucking in retail investors clamoring to get a piece of the hot space. It’s also been a year where the crypto space’s diversity has emerged with decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) gaining attention, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) catching global attention and decentralized finance (DeFi) threatening to upend financial institutions.

Haun serves on the boards of Coinbase and OpenSea. Coinbase went public this year and delivered one of the firm’s biggest payouts ever, while OpenSea is the dominant platform in the ever-shifting and ever-surging world of NFTs. Both companies are facing controversies on their quest toward crypto greatness. This month, Coinbase detailed that the SEC plans to sue it over the company’s upcoming lending feature. Meanwhile, OpenSea is grappling with the resignation of a highly visible executive who was discovered to be abusing company information to trade NFTs.

It’s a controversial space with plenty of money to be had, and Andreesen Horowitz has made a lot of it.

We look forward to chatting with Haun, alongside a whole host of amazing speakers at Disrupt, including Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, actor-entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

The show is coming up fast. Get your ticket now for less than $100 before the price increases tonight — and we’ll see you soon.

Six-year-old Bangalore-based fintech Razorpay, which was valued at $3 billion in a financing round in April this year, has courted one more high-profile investor: Salesforce Ventures.

Razorpay said on Monday it has received a “strategic investment” from the the venture arm of the American enterprise giant. The investment will help the startup “further strengthen its presence in the business banking space,” it said.

The two firms didn’t disclose the size of the investment, but Sequoia Capital India-backed startup said the deal will “make an impactful contribution to the industry and drive adoption and financial growth for underserved small businesses in the next twelve months.”

Razorpay accepts, processes and disburses money online for small businesses and enterprises — essentially everything Stripe does in the U.S. and several other developed markets. But the Indian startup’s offering goes much further than that: In recent years, Razorpay has launched a neobanking platform to issue corporate credit cards (more at the bottom of the article), and it also offers businesses working capital.

With the global giant Stripe still nowhere in the Indian picture, Razorpay has grown to become the market leader.

“At Razorpay, we want to make further strides on the idea of investing in India’s digital future and building an intelligent payment and banking infrastructure for the new- world. We are delighted to associate with Salesforce Ventures and Salesforce more broadly in India,” said Harshil Mathur, co-founder and chief executive of the fintech startup.

“I am certain that this investment, along with support from our existing investors will help build an ecosystem for a hassle-free, easy-to-integrate payments and banking experience. We also hope to expand, build new products and deliver this experience to businesses in South East Asian countries too.”

Monday’s deal is Salesforce Ventures’ second investment in India. The firm led a $15 million Series C financing round in Hyderabad-headquartered Darwinbox earlier this year.

“The journey towards a ‘less-cash’ economy has been accelerated with the pandemic. The rapid growth in digital payments over the last year has opened doors for technology innovation and Razorpay has been emerging as the company of choice for a lot of e-commerce businesses,” said Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson and chief executive of Salesforce India, in a statement.

“We are excited to support Razorpay in their journey to revolutionize digital finance not only in India, but globally as well,” she added.

The Indian startup, which became a unicorn a year ago, said it has witnessed a 40-45% month-on-month growth in recent months. The startup is currently in the market to raise a new financing round and is negotiating a considerably larger valuation bump over the current value, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Google Meet will soon make it easier for you to see all of your co-workers or friends properly on video calls. The web version of the app can detect when someone is underexposed due to bad lighting. Meet will then increase the brightness so it’s easier to see your cohorts and perhaps make your feed clearer if you have a terrible webcam.

The low-light mode hit the Google Meet iOS and Android mobile apps last year. It uses AI to examine light levels and tweak the brightness. There’s no admin control for the feature, though users will be able to switch it off — Google says having it enabled might slow down your device.

The feature is coming to all Workspace and G Suite basic and business users. Google is rolling it out to Rapid Release domains starting today and Scheduled Release domains on October 4th. The rollout will take up to 15 days in both cases, so by mid-October, bad webcam feeds could be a thing of the past on Meet calls.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.