Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Following fast on the heels of Pfizer’s announcement of its COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, Moderna is also sharing positive results from its Phase 3 trial on Monday. The biotech company says that its COVID-19 vaccine candidate has shown efficacy of 94.5% in its first interim data analysis, which covers 95 confirmed COVID cases among its study participants, of which 90 were given the placebo, and only 5 received Moderna’s mRNA-based vaccine. Further, of 11 severe cases of COVID-19, none were found among those who received the actual vaccine candidate.

This is another very promising sign for the potential of having effective vaccines available to the public in some kind of significant volume at some point next year. As mentioned, it’s worth pointing out that this is just a first interim report, but it is data that comes from the safety board overseeing the trial appointed by the National Institutes of Health, which is an independent body not affiliated with Moderna, so it’s a reliable result that provides hope for continued and final analysis.

Moderna says that it will be submitting for an Emergency Use Authorization of its vaccine candidate based on the results within the coming weeks, looking to get approval from the FDA to use it in emergency circumstances ahead of a full and final approval. That EUA, should it be granted, will be based on data from 151 confirmed cases among the Phase 3 participant group (which included 30,000 participants in total), and data from follow-ups extending on average over two months after case confirmation.

All final data will also be submitted to the scientific community for independent peer review, which is a standard part of the ultimate vaccine trial and approval process.

Both these and Pfizer’s vaccine candidate, which it developed in partnership with BioNTech, are mRNA-based vaccines. These are relatively new in terms of human use, and differ from traditional vaccines in that they use messenger RNA to instruct a recipient’s cells to generate effective antibodies, without actually exposing them to any virus, whereas more traditional vaccines in general use typically use either small, safe doses of active or inactive virus in order to trigger a patient’s immune system to generate their own antibodies.

Organizations today are sitting on mountains of data that they amass and use in their own businesses, but many are also looking to share those troves with other parties to expand their business — a model that comes with challenges (privacy and data protection being two key ones); and these days (due to Covid-19 and the push to more digital transformation) with urgency; but also big rewards if you can pull it off well.

Today, a new London startup called Harbr, which has built a secure platform to enable big data exchange, is announcing a big round of funding to tap into that demand. The company has raised $38.5 million in a Series A round of funding, just six months since emerging from stealth mode. It plans to use the money to hire more people to meet the demand of serving more enterprise customers, and for R&D.

Led jointly by new backers Dawn Capital and Tiger Global Management, the round also had participation from past investors Mike Chalfen, Boldstart Ventures, Crane Venture Partners, Backed and Seedcamp, alongside UiPath’s founder and CEO Daniel Dines and head of strategy Brandon Deer. Harbr has now raised over $50 million, and it’s not disclosing its valuation.

Harbr has been around since 2017, but it only came out of stealth mode earlier this year, in May. Its approach has mirrored that of a lot of other enterprise startups that spend a long time building their product under wraps. Identifying the market opportunity when it was still nascent, Harbr then worked directly (and quietly) with enterprises to figure out what they needed and build it, before launching it as a commercial product (with customers already in hand).

“Back in 2017 no one was talking about enterprise data exchanges,” Harbr’s CSO Anthony Cosgrove (who co-founded the company with Gary Butler, the CEO)  me in an interview. “So we worked with big companies to understand their needs and built Harbr based on that.”

Customers include those in financial and enterprise services such as Moody’s Analytics and WinterCorp, as well as governments. Cosgrove noted that nearly 100% of Harbr’s clients are in the US, where the startup’s chairman Leo Spiegel (also an investor, and with an extensive enterprise data services resume to his name) is based.

“This is a team that has worked together for a long time,” Spiegel said in an interview. “Gary [the CEO] and I have worked together for 20 years before Harbr. I have been in data a very long time, and we have a lot of relationships with US companies.” (That is one sign of why this enterprise startup has raised a substantial amount of funding so early in its public life.)

Cosgrove, an MBE, himself has a background in banking and before that UK government.

The platform today provides enterprises with a way to tap into data that an organization may already have in data lakes and warehouses that and already uses for analytics and business intelligence. The idea is to make that data ready and secure for enterprise data exchange, either with other parts of your own large organization, or with third parties. The involves creating a “clean room”, providing tools for making it accessible by third parties, and potentially turning it into a data marketplace if that is your goal.

Image Credits: Harbr

The challenges that Harbr addresses come from a couple of different angles. The first of these is technical: putting data troves from disparate sources into a format that can be usable by others. The second of these is commercial: creating something that you can then provide to others, but also making that marketplace findable and usable. The third of these is security.

Cosgrove said that he doesn’t think of Harbr as a security company first, but he points out that these days this has become as much of a concern (if not more) than simply making a data product usable. Being able to protect your data as valuable IP is important, but on top of that, you have the role of privacy and data protection.

These have moved from being fringe concerns to a priority for many users, and, in an increasing number of cases, a legal requirement. So, as companies look for ways to tap into the big data opportunity while keeping those principles in mind, they are looking for companies built with privacy and data protection in mind.

“We’re really focused on helping people to treat data as a product. They bring assets into a platform and turn them into data products that are easy to consume, use and merge,” said Cosgrove. “We see security as a by-product of that: you have to consider security as part of the product.” Harbr the name is a play on Harbor, which itself is a reference to safe harbor principles and regulations.

Harbr is not the only company looking at this opportunity. InfoSum, also out of the UK, is also tackling the concept of a privacy-first approach to federated data, providing a way to share data across organizations without compromising data protection in any way. DataFleets out of the Bay Area is also another startup also building a platform and tools to help enterprises with this challenge and opportunity.

“For data to become truly powerful, we need more automation and collaboration. Today, human efforts are consumed by finding and preparing data, rather than focused on high-value activities that drive real productivity gains,” said Evgenia Plotnikova, partner at Dawn Capital, in a statement. “Harbr is in the vanguard of companies changing this reality, and we are incredibly excited to be partnering with them. Customers we’ve spoken to find Harbr’s enterprise data exchange transformative, and their engagement across Fortune 1000 companies substantiates this.”

Apple has updated a documentation page detailing the company’s next steps to prevent last week’s Gatekeeper bug from happening again, as Rene Ritchie spotted. The company plans to implement the fixes over the next year.

Apple had a difficult launch day last week. The company released macOS Big Sur, a major update for macOS. Apple then suffered from server-side issues.

Third-party apps failed to launch as your Mac couldn't check the developer certificate of the app. That feature, called Gatekeeper, makes sure that you didn't download a malware app that disguises itself as a legit app. If the certificate doesn’t match, macOS prevents the app launch.

Many have been concerned about the privacy implications of the security feature. Does Apple log every app you launch on your Mac to gain competitive insights on app usage?

It turns out it's easy to answer that question as the server doesn't mandate encryption. Jacopo Jannone intercepted an unencrypted network request and found out that Apple is not secretly spying on you. Gatekeeper really does what it says it does.

“We have never combined data from these checks with information about Apple users or their devices. We do not use data from these checks to learn what individual users are launching or running on their devices,” the company wrote.

But Apple is going one step further and communicating on the company's next steps. The company has stopped logging IP addresses on its servers since last week. It doesn't have to store this data for Gatekeeper .

“These security checks have never included the user’s Apple ID or the identity of their device. To further protect privacy, we have stopped logging IP addresses associated with Developer ID certificate checks, and we will ensure that any collected IP addresses are removed from logs” Apple writes.

Finally, Apple is overhauling the design of the network request and adding a user-facing opt-out option.

“In addition, over the the next year we will introduce several changes to our security checks:

• A new encrypted protocol for Developer ID certificate revocation checks
• Strong protections against server failure
• A new preference for users to opt out of these security protections”

Walmart announced today it will sell most of its shares in Seiyu, the Japanese supermarket chain it acquired 12 years ago, to KKR and Rakuten. The deal values Seiyu at about $1.6 billion and means Walmart will almost completely exit its operations in Japan.

Under the agreement, investment firm KKR will buy a 65% stake in Seiyu, while Rakuten, Japan’s largest e-commerce company, will take a 20% stake through a newly created subsidiary called Rakuten DX. Walmart will retain a 15% stake in Seiyu.

After struggling with strong competition in Japan and low margins, Walmart reportedly considered relisting Seiyu or its holding company, Walmart Japan Holdings last year.

Rakuten is already familiar with Seiyu’s business because it formed a strategic alliance with Walmart in 2018 that included launching an online grocery delivery service in Japan. Called Rakuten Seiyu Netsuper, the online delivery service includes a dedicated fulfilment center, in addition to inventory picked up from Seiyu’s supermarkets.

After the deal, Seiyu will be part of Rakuten DX, which is intended to bring more brick-and-mortar stores online through Rakuten’s e-commerce and cashless payment channels.

Japan’s online grocery delivery market has trailed behind other countries, due in part to the reluctance of shoppers to purchase fresh food online. But the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a rapid shift in consumer habits. According to a July 4 report from the Japan Times, internet sales accounted for about 5% of total grocery sales, compared to 2.5% before the pandemic.

Rivals to Rakuten include grocery delivery services run by Aeon (in partnership with Ocado), Amazon and Ito-Yokado.

The real estate industry has been slow to adopt technology compared to many other sectors. So when Dominic Penaloza left his job at WeWork China as the head of innovation and technology this spring, he decided to focus on proptech in Asia.

Instead of building a startup himself or investing in one, Penaloza combines both objectives by launching a “startup studio” called REinvent (“RE” short for “real estate”). The industry jargon refers to an organization that builds startups with an in-house team, hence it’s also referred to as a “startup factory” or “venture builder.” A famous example is Rocket Internet, which is credited for building Lazada in Southeast Asia and Jumia in Africa.

Penaloza, a serial entrepreneur who exited his co-working startup Naked Hub to WeWork China in 2018, now runs a team of 45 across Shanghai, Taipei and Singapore, most of whom he has worked with at WeWork and Naked Hub. The studio is organized into what the chief executive calls product “squads” consisting of the likes of product managers, designers, engineers, and artificial intelligence experts, and has the capacity to work on four projects at one time.

The founder also brought onboard heavyweight investors to help the startup studio tackle a sector with deeply entrenched players. Among REinvent’s backers are JustCo, a major co-working company in the Asia Pacific backed by some of Asia’s biggest property owners, such as the Singaporen sovereign wealth fund GIC; multi-national property developer Frasers Property; and one of Japan’s leading real estate firms Daito Trust.

REinvent has full ownership in the ventures it launches, while the three investors own equity in it. The company declined to disclose how much it has raised from its investors so far.

The financiers also importantly contribute strategic resources, Penaloza told TechCrunch in an interview. Started in May, REinvent has already launched two ventures, including one called Switch that lets individuals and enterprises book workspace and pay per minute, similar to how bike-sharing works. The difference is that Switch is a marketplace with third-party landlords like JustCo and Frasers, while bike-share companies often supply and operate the bikes themselves.

Screenshot of the Switch app

The marketplace today has a growing network of 2,500 desks at over 20 locations across Singapore, including small office booths that have sprung up across malls. It’s proposing on-demand workspace at a time when the whole world is forced by the coronavirus pandemic to rethink where to work physically.

“Real estate companies are all figuring out how to react to COVID, how to help organizations survive COVID and to prepare for the next pandemic so the impact on business would not be as big as this time,” said Penaloza.

Meanwhile, flexible work pods are an attractive proposition for mall owners, especially those in China looking for new tenants as e-commerce encroaches into offline retail.

“E-commerce was eating up the traditional retail model even before COVID. Developers in China are trying to repurpose some of their malls… There are now a lot of F&B, experiential stores, cafes, and even co-working space inside malls,” observed Penaloza.

Penaloza tested an early version of his on-demand workspace vision back at WeWork China where he made the firm’s public space available to customers without a membership, capturing professionals who use Starbucks for meetings and remote working but providing a quieter environment and better WiFi.

The other product REinvent has introduced is SixSense, software for spatial analytics and social distance detection.

“Real estate is something not many people think about, but it’s one of the biggest industries on earth,” noted Penaloza. “Proptech in Asia and China is very early-stage but it is picking up.”

SpaceX has become the first private company to launch astronauts to the International Space Station, marking the culmination of years of work in partnership with NASA on developing human spaceflight capabilities. At 7:27 PM EST (4:27 PM PST), NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, and Michael Hopkins, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi left launch pad 39-A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida bound for the ISS.

SpaceX’s human launch program was developed under the Commercial Crew program, which saw NASA select two private companies to build astronaut launch systems for carrying astronauts to the ISS from U.S. soil. SpaceX was chosen alongside Boeing by NASA in 2014 to create their respective systems, and SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket became the first to achieve actual human flight certification from NASA earlier this year with the successful completion of its final, Demo-2 test mission, which flew to the ISS with two U.S. astronauts on board.

To get to this point, SpaceX had to complete a number of milestones successfully, including a fully automated uncrewed ISS rendez-vous mission, and a demonstration of both a launch pad abort and post-launch abort emergency safety system for the protection of the crew. During the Demo-1 mission, while all actual launch, docking and landing was handled by SpaceX’s fully autonomous software and navigation, astronauts also took over manual control briefly to demonstrate that this human-piloted backup would operate as intended, if required.

So far, Crew-1 is proceeding as expected, with a picture-perfect takeoff from Florida, and a successful recovery of the first-stage booster used on the Falcon 9 rocket used to launch Dragon. Crew Dragon ‘Resilience’ also departed from the second-stage of the Falcon 9 as planned at just after 10 minutes after liftoff, and there will be a 27 hour trip in orbit before the Dragon meets up with the ISS for its docking, which is scheduled to take place at around 11 PM EST (8 PM PST) on Monday night. Once fully docked, the astronauts will disembark and go over to the station to begin their active duty stay, which is set to last until next June.

From left, the crew of Crew-1: NASA’s Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Michael Hopkins; JAXA’s Soichi Noguchi Image Credits: SpaceX

Three of the four astronauts on this mission have been to space previously, but for pilot Victor Glover, it’s his first time. These four will join NASA’s Kate Rubins, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov on the station, bringing the total staff complement to seven (an increase from its usual six that NASA says will free up more time for the astronauts to perform experiments, as opposed to their tasks related to regular daily maintenance of the station).

This is the first time that astronauts have launched to space during a regular operational NASA mission since the end of the Shuttle program in 2011. It marks an official return of U.S. human spaceflight capabilities, and should hopefully become the first in many human flight missions undertaken by SpaceX and Dragon – across both NASA flights, and those organized by commercial customers.

MindTickle, a startup that is helping hundreds of small and large firms improve their sales through its eponymous sales readiness platform, said on Monday it has raised $100 million in a new financing round.

The Pune and San Francisco-headquartered startup’s new financing round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The round is a combination of debt and equity, the startup said. Existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, Accel Partners, Canaan, NEA, NewView Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures also participated in the round, which according to a person familiar with the matter, valued the eight-year-old startup at roughly $500 million, up from about $250 million last year.

The vast majority of this $100 million fund is equity investment, said Krishna Depura, co-founder and chief executive of MindTickle, in an interview with TechCrunch. He declined to disclose the specific amount, however, or comment on the valuation.

We used to live in a seller’s world, where buyers had a small selection of choices from which they could pick their products. “You wanted to buy a car, there would be only one new car model every four years. Things have changed,” said Depura, noting that customers today have no shortage of companies trying to sell them similar lines of products.

While that’s great for customers, it means that companies have to put more effort to make a sale. A decade ago, as Depura watched Facebook and gaming firms like Zynga develop addictive products and services, he wondered if some of these learnings could be baked directly into modern age sales efforts.

That was the inception of MindTickle, which now helps companies guide their customer-facing teams. Regardless of what these firms are attempting to sell, they are competing with dozens of firms, if not more, and customers have ever-so-declining patience to hear them.

MindTickle, whose name is inspired from the idea of gamifying mindsets, allows companies to train and upskill their salespeople at scale, and uses role playing methods to help them practice their pitch, and how to handle a customer’s queries.

Depura said the platform helps salespeople measure their improvement in revenue metrics and offers feedback on the calls they made. The platform utilizes machine learning engines to serve personalized remediations and reinforcements to salespeople, he said.

More than 200 enterprises, including more than 40 of the Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 firms, are among MindTickle’s clients today — though, citing confidential agreements, the firm said it can’t disclose several names. Some of the names it did share include MongoDB, Nutanix, Qualtrics, Procore, Square, Janssen, Cloudera, Dexcom, Merck & Co., and Benetton Group.

As of this writing, MindTickle was ranked the fifth best product for sales on G2, a popular marketplace for software and services.

“MindTickle’s track record of growth, quality of product and marquee customer base highlights their strengths,” said Sumer Juneja, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement. “By delivering engaging and personalized training to users, MindTickle is uniquely placed to support businesses to increase revenue generation and extend critical capabilities within their existing workforce.” The Japanese investment group, which began conversations with MindTickle about three months ago, is exploring more investments in SaaS categories.

The new funding capital will allow MindTickle, which employs about 400 people in the U.S., Europe, and India, to further establish this new category, said Depura. The startup is developing new product features and will deploy the new funds to further grow in Europe, and the U.S., which is already one of its key markets.

More to follow…

“The Vow” is a fascinating documentary, but we can’t quite recommend it whole-heartedly.

As we discuss on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, HBO’s new docuseries tells the story of NXIVM (pronounced nex-ee-um), a self-improvement company that was subsequently revealed as a sex cult, with its leader Keith Raniere sentenced to 120 years in prison.

The core story is both compelling and horrifying. And “The Vow” features an astonishing amount of footage showing Raniere and other high-level NXIVM members at work — for that reason alone, the series is worth watching for anyone interested in the NXIVM story.

However, it’s also hampered by some unfortunate storytelling choices. For one thing, by parceling the story out over nine hour-long episode, the series often feels unnecessarily drawn out and repetitive.

And by focusing on a handful of high-ranking NXIVM members who subsequently became important whistleblowers and critics (including Mark Vicente, the filmmaker responsible for a great deal of that behind-the-scenes footage), “The Vow” has also opened itself up to criticism that it downplays the stories of Raniere’s true victims and obscures the extent of his crimes (unlike the Starz documentary “Seduced”) .

In addition to reviewing the series, we also discuss the latest Disney+ growth numbers and the new season of “The Bachelorette.”

You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also follow us on Twitter or send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

If you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Introduction
0:45 Disney+ discussion
7:40 “The Bachelorette” discussion
30:48 “The Vow” review

SpaceX and NASA have spent years working towards today’s Crew-1 mission, which is set to launch from Florida at 7:27 PM EST (4:27 PM PST). This is the first time that SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket will be officially used as a spacecraft certified by NASA for human flight on a regular astronaut transportation operation. NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, along with JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, will also be aboard the Dragon spacecraft and, barring any weather delays, on their way to the International Space Station later Sunday night.

SpaceX has already flown people using Dragon – NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley had the honor of being the first humans ever to be launched to the ISS aboard a commercial spacecraft when they took part in SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission earlier this year. That was obviously a historic achievement, but it was also technically the last stage in SpaceX’s test and demonstration program for Dragon and Falcon 9, whereas today’s Crew-1 launch no longer qualifies as a test. Think of it this way: If Demo-2 was akin to the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk flight, Crew-1 will be the equivalent of the first U.S. scheduled commercial airline flight in 1914.

Crew-1 will be the first time that a full complement of astronauts are flown on Dragon (there are six total seats but NASA has said it will only ever fly a max of four of its and partner agency crew to the ISS on these flights). The astronauts will join the existing crew on the ISS for a regular tour of performing experiments, maintaining and upgrading the station, which will also see the active ISS population swell by one additional astronaut for the first time during a standard rotation, which means more science can get done according to the agency.

The launch system is designed to work in a completely automated way, which means that it requires no action on the part of the crew on board from launch all the way through its docking with the ISS. That’s also true of the return trip, which will take place sometime around next June.

SpaceX will also be attempting a recovery of the first stage booster used during this launch, using its autonomous drone landing ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Everything should get started closer to the liftoff target time, but NASA will also have programming all day related to the Crew-1 mission, the Dragon program and much more via the livestream above.

Reliance Retail has acquired a majority stake in furniture and decor platform Urban Ladder, making a broader push into e-commerce as the largest retail chain in India gears up to fight Amazon and Flipkart.

In a filing to the local stock exchange, Reliance Retail said it had acquired a 96% stake in Urban Ladder for about $24.43 million. The Indian retail giant, which retains the option to acquire the remainder stake in the seven-and-a-half-years-old startup, said it has proposed to invest up to $10.06 million more in Urban Ladder by December 2023.

Founded in early 2012, Urban Ladder sells home furniture and decor products online. It also operates a chain of physical retail stores in several Indian cities. The deal size suggests that it was a fire sale.

The startup had raised about $115 million from Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners, Steadview Capital, and MIT and other investors, according to Crunchbase and Tracxn. In the financial year that ended in March, the Indian startup reported a loss of $6.63 million on a turnover of $58.2 million.

Reliance Retail said (PDF) the investment “will further enable the group’s digital and new commerce initiatives and widen the bouquet of consumer products provided by the group, while enhancing user engagement and experience across its retail offerings.”

Urban Ladder is the latest acquisition for Reliance Retail, which earlier this year said it had entered into a $3.4 billion deal with Future Group to buy several of India’s second largest retail chain’s businesses. In August, Reliance acquired a 60% stake in pharma marketplace Netmeds’ parent firm Vitalic for about $83.2 million.

Reliance Retail, which is part of Reliance Industries (India’s most valued firm), has raised about $6.4 billion in recent months after its sister subsidiary, Jio Platforms, secured over $20 billion this year from Facebook and Google among other high-profile investors.

Reliance Retail, which serves more than 3.5 million customers each week through its nearly 10,000 physical stores in more than 6,500 cities and towns in the country, entered the e-commerce space with JioMart through a joint venture with Jio Platforms. JioMart now has a presence in over 200 Indian cities and towns, and it also maintains a partnership with Facebook for WhatsApp integration.