Category: UNCATEGORIZED

The Federal Trade Commission has announced a settlement with Zoom, after it accused the video calling giant of engaging in “a series of deceptive and unfair practices that undermined the security of its users,” in part by claiming the encryption was stronger than it actually was.

Cast your mind back earlier this year at the height of the pandemic lockdown, which forced millions to work from home and rely on Zoom for work meetings and remote learning. At the time, Zoom claimed video calls were protected by “end-to-end” encryption, a way of scrambling calls that makes it near-impossible for anyone — even Zoom — to listen in.

But those claims were false.

“In reality, the FTC alleges, Zoom maintained the cryptographic keys that could allow Zoom to access the content of its customers’ meetings, and secured its Zoom Meetings, in part, with a lower level of encryption than promised,” said the FTC in a statement Monday. “Zoom’s misleading claims gave users a false sense of security, according to the FTC’s complaint, especially for those who used the company’s platform to discuss sensitive topics such as health and financial information.”

Zoom quickly admitted it was wrong, prompting the company to launch a 90-day turnaround effort, which included the rollout of end-to-end encryption to its users. That eventually months later in late October — but not without another backtrack after Zoom initially said free users could not use end-to-end encryption.

The FTC also alleged in its complaint that Zoom stored some meeting recordings unencrypted on its servers for up to two months, and compromised the security of its users by covertly installing a web server on its users’ computers in order for users to jump into meetings faster. This, the FTC said, “was unfair and violated the FTC Act.” Zoom pushed out an update which removed the web server, but Apple also intervened to remove the vulnerable component from its customers’ computers.

In its statement, the FTC said it has prohibited Zoom from misrepresenting its security and privacy practices going forward, and has agreed to start a vulnerability management program and implement stronger security across its internal network.

Zoom did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Quartz is going private, with co-founder and CEO Zach Seward buying the business news site from its current owner Uzabase.

In his post announcing the deal, Seward described the move as a management buyout that will also see Editor in Chief Katherine Bell and the rest of the Quartz staff taking equity in the new company.

“Most of the time, I hope, Quartz’s finances and our corporate parentage are irrelevant, as long as we’re doing our job well,” he wrote. “But this is an important moment in the life of our company, and we want to share it with all of you, whose readership and enthusiasm for Quartz have carried us successfully through the past eight years.”

Seward suggested that while Uzabase’s ownership was “helpful,” the company is “better off right now as a startup, freer to chart our own path.” And as a startup, it’s looking to raise outside funding.

The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news that Uzabase wanted to sell the property, also reported that Uzabase CEO Yusuke Umeda (pictured above) has made a personal loan to support the site.

Quartz was founded in 2012 by Atlantic Media, then acquired by Uzabase (a Japanese financial data and media company) for $86 million in 2018.

The company has struggled to make the business side work in recent years, reporting a loss of $18.4 million on revenue of $26.4 million in 2019, and cutting about 80 staff positions earlier this year.

In an assessment of the site’s troubles published in June, Digiday’s Steven Perlberg noted Quartz has been restructuring around its subscription business, but he suggested that it’s been caught in digital media’s “mushy middle”: “Not quite niche enough to be essential to a small group of readers, but not quite big enough to compete at scale.”

McDonalds is developing what it calls a plant-based platform called the McPlant that will debut in markets around the world early next year, according to a report in USA Today.

In an investor meeting McDonald’s announced that it had worked to develop its McPlant formulation exclusively. “McPlant is crafted exclusively for McDonald’s, by McDonald’s,” Ian Borden, McDonald’s international president, said at an investor meeting, quoted by USA Today.

The company’s special formulation could extend across plant-based products including burgers, chicken-substitutes and breakfast sandwiches, according to Borden.

To date, McDonald’s has been a laggard in the corporate fight over plant-based burgers and chicken — at least in the U.S.

In McDonald’s around the world — including locations in Germany, the UK, Hong Kong, Israel, Canada, and Finland — diners under the golden arches can find a vegetarian sandwich option.

Indeed, in Canada, McDonald’s launched a pilot last year with Beyond Meat for the PLT sandwich (a play off of the company’s previous sandwich the McDLT, I’m assuming).

Compared to some other fast food chains in the US, McDonald’s has been something of a laggard. Burger King has worked with Impossible Foods to launch the Impossible Whopper and Beyond Meat has partnered with KFC on a plant-based nugget.

The two leading alternative protein makers have done a fairly good job of carving up the fast food market to date — but McDonald’s entry with its exclusive formulation must come as a blow to the companies (and the other startups that were hoping for a bite of McDonald’s food empire).

That includes startups like Chile’s the Not Company and Hong Kong’s Green Monday Holdings, which have both been vying for McDonald’s plant-based patty business.

Apple Music is targeting Gen Z users in its battle with Spotify . On Friday, Apple launched ten new Apple Music playlists focused on the music interests of Gen Z users — including one playlist that features the latest tracks to go viral across social media apps like TikTok. Other playlists feature emerging artists and sounds, experimental or cross-genre selections, or music by mood — like playlists for getting energized to go out or one to destress, for example.

One of the more interesting additions from this new group — at least from a technology perspective — is the new editorial playlist, “Viral Hits.” While Apple doesn’t specifically mention TikTok by name here, the short-form video app’s influence is apparent.

TikTok’s music-laden memes and trends today heavily influence what younger users are listening to. The app has also long-since proven its ability to break new artists and send tracks, both new and old, up to the top of the streaming charts across Spotify and Apple Music, as well as the Billboard charts, at times.

With the “Viral Hits” playlist, Apple will round-up the songs that are making the leap from social media channels to “the broader cultural stream,” the company explains.

“Social media hasn’t just changed how we communicate, but also what we listen to and how we hear it,” says Apple.

Because of the nature of viral trends, there’s no set schedule as to when the “Viral Hits” playlist will update. Instead, Apple Music editors will updated the selections throughout the week, as needed.

Currently, there are 98 songs representing nearly 5 hours of music on the playlist, including many tracks that are also now on Apple Music’s top charts. But the tracks on “Viral Hits” aren’t ranked by number of plays they’re receiving — it’s an editorial selection, not a chart.

Apple isn’t alone in formally acknowledging the power TikTok has over popular music. Spotify last week launched a new feature for artists that would allow them to promote tracks that were going viral on TikTok.

In addition to “Viral Hits,” the other new Apple Music playlists aimed at a Gen Z demographic include the following additions:

• Superbloom: Apple describes this playlist as a “new home for young, risk-taking visionaries who think about music differently.” The selections will feature artists who often have developed grass-roots followings across social media, where they’ve experimented and sparked trends.
• Lifted: This cross-genre playlist is a melting pot of music Apple describes as “a little underground, but too dynamic for the mainstream to ignore.” Tracks will range from the poppy end of the spectrum to hip-hop, R&B, and indie rock, Apple says.
• Wildflower: This playlist will feature emerging voices across a mix of hip-hop, R&B, dance, indie pop and rock.
• Glow: An upbeat playlist of “feed-good, mood-boosting” tracks.
• The Nerve: This playlist features “downcast hybrids” of hip-hop, pop punk, emo, and grunge that are “a little too raw for broader audiences.” Apple says the music can be “bleak.”
• The Sound: A playlist featuring the best in new rock.
• Verified Hits: Another cross-genre playlist, this one featuring hit songs from genres including pop, indie, arty R&B, and electronic.
• Catching Feelings: Music for chilling that’s a little slow moody, mellow and low-key.
• Do Not Disturb: Music on this playlist aims to help listeners not feel alone when dealing with mental health issues, like the ups, downs, crashes and the coping, says Apple.

Apple says the new playlists were created specifically with the needs of Gen Z users in mind, describing this young group as “tech savvy, social media mavens” as well as “rabid music lovers.”

In addition to the Gen Z playlists, Apple Music released 24 brand-new playlists aimed at helping users center and find a few moments of calm. These playlists follow what has been a tense week in the U.S., particularly, due to the 2020 Presidential Elections and their delayed results.

Riveside.fm is a new startup with an easy-to-use platform for recording professional-quality video podcasts.

In fact, although the company only recently came out of stealth, it already has a number of high-profile customers including TechCrunch’s parent company Verizon Media and Hillary Clinton, who’s using Riverside.fm to record her new podcast “You and Me Both With Hillary Clinton.”

“Just imagine, we needed a recording platform that could help us make a podcast during a pandemic, and, boy, did they step up,” Clinton said in a statement.

The startup was founded by brothers Nadav and Gideon Keyson — Nadav, who serves as CEO (Gideon is CTO), explained that they first created a platform where politicians could participate video debates, but then realized that there was a more promising business model for a broader podcasting tool.

In addition to officially launching, Riverside.fm is announcing that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Oren Zeev .

Gideon gave me a quick demo of the platform, showing me that it’s a fairly straightforward recording experience — the host just shares a link with the guests, no software installation necessary. There are plenty of other browser-based podcasting tools (for example, Zencastr recently expanded beyond audio with video support), but the Keysons suggested that they’ve spent a lot of time solving common technical issues for podcasters.

For one thing, each participants’ audio and video is recorded as a separate track on their device, so that a bad internet connection won’t affect recording quality. The recording is uploaded during the session, so you don’t have to have a long wait for files to upload. And there are automatic backups, in case someone’s browser or computer freezes.

“Stability … is so important,” Nadav said. “[Otherwise,] you could spend half year to get a certain guest and then you lose their recording.”

Despite its simplicity, Riverside.fm supports 4K video and uncompressed WAV audio. It also includes an interface where podcast producers can monitor each guest’s equipment and adjust audio levels.

“We do really make it easy for the beginner and faster for the professionals,” Nadav said.

Gideon added that Riverside.fm isn’t interested in getting involved in the podcast distribution, but instead focuses on being a reliable production platform, as well as providing cross-platform analytics.

“We don’t want to start competing with Spotify and YouTube,” he said — in fact, Spotify is already a Riverside.fm customer.

The brothers also suggested that even if you’re not interested in creating a full-fledged video podcast, Riverside.fm is still the right choice for recording audio. Plus, you could still use the video recordings to create promotional clips for YouTube and social media.

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox.

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.

What.A.Week. Shall we dig in?

Email me anytime at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also send a direct message to me at Twitter — @kirstenkorosec.

Transportation on the ballot

Election Day turned into Election Week as the presidential race tightened and the world waited to see if President Trump would remain in office or if Joe Biden would become the 46th leader of the country.

On Saturday morning, AP, Fox News and every other major news outlets called the race, naming Joe Biden president-elect. The ballot counts will still continue and eventually lead to each state’s Electoral College electors formally casting their votes for president and vice president on December 14, as dictated by our election process.

Assuming Biden is sworn in as the next president of the United States, transportation will likely not be his first area of focus. However, it will be interesting to see how his personal experience of losing his first wife and daughter in a car crash, views on climate change and love for Corvettes as well as Amtrak might shape federal transportation policy. The country has deep infrastructure needs, a rail service in crisis and an emerging tech sector focused on commercializing automated vehicle technology.

Election Day was, of course, about more than Trump and Biden. Ballots throughout the U.S. contained dozens of transportation-related measures, including public transit funding, a car owner’s right to repair and whether gig economy workers should be classified as employees or independent contractors. 

Prop 22, the California ballot measure, might have been the most visible campaign thanks to the tens of millions of dollars that Uber, Lyft and other gig worker-reliant companies contributed to help garner support and get it passed. Voters approved Prop 22, which means that gig workers will continue to be classified as independent workers. Companies that use gig workers will be required to provide an earnings guarantee of at least 120% of minimum wage, 30 cents per engaged miles for expenses, a healthcare stipend, occupational accident insurance for on-the-job injuries, protection against discrimination and sexual harassment and automobile accident and liability insurance.

Fresh off of its success on Election Day, Uber signaled that it will continue to push laws similar to the Prop 22. The ride-hailing company’s ambitions for laws that preserve its business model are global. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Thursday during an earnings call with analysts that the company will “more loudly advocate for laws like Prop 22.” He later added that it will be a priority of the company “to work with governments across the U.S. and the world to make this a reality.”

There were at other transportation-related measures that were decided by voters in California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan Oregon and Washington. Of the 19 measures related to public transit, 15 passed, two failed and one in Gwinnett County, Georgia is still “too close to call.” The Center for Transportation Excellence created a handy spreadsheet tracking Election 2020 ballot measures related to public transit.

Finally, another ballot measure, which received a lot of attention and lobbying dollars, was Question 1 in Massachusetts. The ballot measure, which was approved by 75% of voters, amends and broadens a law that gives consumers in Massachusetts the right to repair the vehicles they own.

Automakers that sell vehicles with telematics systems in Massachusetts will now have to equip them with a standardized open data platform beginning with model year 2022. This standardized open data platform has to give vehicle owners and independent repair facilities direct access and the ability to retrieve mechanical data and run diagnostics through a mobile-based application.

Importantly, this measure covers the data that telematics systems collect and wirelessly transmit. And it not only gives access to the mechanical data, it allows owners and independent mechanics to send commands to the vehicle for repair, maintenance and diagnostic testing.

The upshot? While this ballot measure is restricted to Massachusetts, there is precedent that it will expand to the rest of the country. The initial Right to Repair law went into effect in Massachusetts in 2013. By 2014, the industry agreed in a memorandum of understanding to expand that bill and cover the rest of the country.

Deal of the week

Transportation isn’t just about the movement between places; it’s also about the less active moments like parking. Which brings us to one eye-popping deal this week.

REEF Technology, the Miami-based company that started its life as ParkJockey, raked in $700 million from a group of investors that included Softbank and Mubadala Corp.

REEF provides hardware, software and management services for parking lots. But it more recently added other services such as providing infrastructure for cloud kitchens, healthcare clinics, logistics and last-mile delivery and even brick-and-mortar retail and experiential consumer spaces.

The company said that the money will be used to scale from 4,800 locations to 10,000 new locations around the country and to transform the parking lots into “neighborhood hubs,” according to Ari Ojalvo, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. Private equity and financial investment giants Oaktree, UBS Asset Management and the European venture capital firm Target Global also participated in the round.

As TechCrunch’s Jonathan Shieber noted in his coverage of the REEF round, like WeWork, REEF leases most of the real estate it operates and upgrades it before leasing it to other occupants (or using the spaces itself). Unlike WeWork, the business actually has a fair shot at working out — especially given business trends that have accelerated in response to the health and safety measures implemented to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other deals that got my attention …

ANOTHER LIDAR SPAC! Aeva is the latest company to eschew the traditional IPO path and go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. It’s also the third lidar company, following Velodyne and Luminar, to take this route to the public markets.

Aeva is a Mountain View, California-based lidar company started by two former Apple engineers and backed by Porsche SE. The company announced it was merging with special purpose acquisition company InterPrivate Acquisition Corp., with a post-deal market valuation of $2.1 billion. The deal with InterPrivate is expected to close by early 2021.

Logisly, a Jakarta-based startup that describes itself as a “B2B tech-enabled logistics platform,” announced today it has raised $6 million in Series A funding to help streamline logistics in Indonesia. The round was led by Monk’s Hill Ventures.

Marshmallow, a UK startup aiming to take on legacy insurance giants with a new approach to determining risk, raised $30 million in a Series A round. The company has a post-fundraising valuation of $310 million.

Pony.ai, the autonomous vehicle company that operates in California and China, is now valued at $5.3 billion following a fresh injection of $267 million in funding. The round was led by TIP, an innovation fund within the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board that focuses on late-stage venture and growth equity investments in companies that deliver disruptive technology. Existing partners Fidelity China Special Situations PLC, 5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Venture Capital), ClearVue Partners and Eight Roads also participated in the round.

Provizio, which developed a sensory platform it says can perceive, predict and prevent car accidents in real time and beyond the line-of-sight, closed a seed investment round of $6.2 million. Bobby Hambrick, the founder of Autonomous Stuff, the founders of Movidius, the European Innovation Council (EIC) and ACT Venture Capital participated in the round.

Scale AI, a startup that uses software and people to process and label image, lidar and map data for companies building machine learning algorithms such as Toyota and Zoox, is on the brink of becoming a company valued $3 billion, The Information reported. The company founded and led by 230year-old Alexandr Wang reportedly received an offer of investment from Tiger Global Management valuing Scale at $3.2 billion pre-money, or triple its prior valuation.

Notable reads and other tidbits

All the other stuff you should know about …

Amazon has started operations at its first European Amazon Air hub, based out of the Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany. The new facility spans 20,000 square meters and will host two Amazon-branded Boeing 737-800 aircraft, bringing the company’s total operational air fleet to more than 70 aircraft.

Bentley Motors has begun its long farewell to the 12-cylinder combustion engines that have been the cornerstone of the 100-year-old company. The ultra luxury automaker under VW Group said it will only produce plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars starting in 2026 with an aim to drop all combustion engines in the next decade. Its entire lineup will be all-electric by 2030. The British manufacturer said two plug-in hybrid models will come out next year and its first all-electric vehicle will come to market in 2025.

CarGurus’ 2020 Pickup Truck Sentiment Study revealed that COVID-19 pandemic might have helped spur sales, thanks to young buyers. More than 26% of pickup truckers owners surveyed for the study said they had not planned to buy this category of vehicle. Other results, include 34% said they will  probably/definitely own an electric pickup truck in the next 10 years and 23% in the next five years.

Gen Z/millennial truck owners are over two times more likely to expect to own an electric truck in the next five years when compared to older truck owners (30% vs. 12%). The same age cohort of younger consumers are also two times more likely to consider a truck from category-newcomers like Tesla (32% vs. 14%), Rivian (11% vs. 4%) or Hummer (13% vs 6%) when compared to older truck owners, the study found.

GM is starting to hire people for more than 1,100 new jobs for its nearly 3 million-square-foot Ultium Cells LLC battery cell manufacturing facility in Lordstown, Ohio. Ultium Cells LLC is a joint venture with LG Chem that will mass-produce Ultium battery cells for electric vehicles. The plant is still under construction, but GM said it will begin actively hiring for “key positions.”

Tesla officially launched Teslaquila, a company-branded liquor that originally co-starred in CEO Elon Musk’s controversial April Fool’s Day joke about the automaker filing for bankruptcy. The Tesla Tequila costs $250 and is already sold out.

Uber reported earnings this week. As Alex Wilhelm and I wrote, the company’s two core segments were a tale of two cities: Uber’s ride-hailing (Mobility) business shrank, but made money, while Uber’s food delivery (Delivery) business grew, but continued to lose money.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode that we wound up titling “Fortnite is actually a SaaS company.”

It makes sense in context, I promise.

Anyway, here’s what’s on today’s show:

• Joe Biden was elected President and the stock market is not mad about divided government.
• Positive vaccine news sent many stocks sharply higher this morning, but not all. Some pandemic-favored tech companies instantly dropped double-digit percentage points of value.
• Esign raised $151 million, showing strength in the Chinese startup market, and the esignature space.
• And this neat Series B for Cellwize caught our attention this morning.
• Finally, a warning. The stuff that is changing lately may begin to change a bit less. We’ve lived in the pandemic economy long enough now that it’s hard to recall what life was like before. But, we’d best start remembering as there’s a lot that is going to change in the next few quarters.

This has been a wild to start the week, but with good news.

I suppose a vaccine was always going to eventually make it to this step, but, that said, the United States is seeing record COVID-19 cases today. So mask up and let’s get as many of us across the line as we can.

In addition to the new iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 12 Pro Max, I was able to try out Apple’s new MagSafe Duo Charger. It’s a folding dual travel charger that will hold both an iPhone using MagSafe and an Apple Watch using its more traditional magnetic charger.

Does it work? Yep, works exactly as advertised. Your iPhone will rest comfortably on the MagSafe side of the charger, aligning using the internal magnets. The Apple Watch side pops up and out to allow easy access for closed loop bands. The whole unit folds over to make it easier to travel with and will even fold over backwards if you don’t need one side or the other. It works, for sure.

But that folding is where we start to get to the iffy stuff. For context, you have to understand that this thing is $129 but feels like it should be $70. When you realize that it is a charger that doesn’t come with a power adapter, I would not be shocked if you mentally downgraded it to $40. 

The hinge and casing are coated in soft touch rubber that is sort of press molded on. While the hinge works fine, it is wobbly and immediately creases. The rubber is thick enough that it doesn’t give the impression that it will rip immediately or anything — but it’s not exactly confidence inducing. This is an inexpensive hinge solution that you would expect to see from a price conscious third-party accessory, not from Apple. 

Because the whole thing is press molded, there is also this ridge that runs around the exterior of the unit. It has a basic seal on it but you can see the layers of lamination if you look closely. It looks ripe to nick, fray, bend and get dirty. Not great for something that’s meant to throw in a bag. 

White also a bad choice there, mine’s already getting dingy and I can’t even travel anywhere right now.  

The thing charges adequately fast and the devices lock on well. The Watch charging part of it feels the most premium with its smooth little chrome hinge. The MagSafe Pad and Watch charger are Apple’s typically nicely peened aluminum, and the whole thing has a decent amount of heft to it. For what it’s worth, I was unable to test one thing which is whether it will charge an Apple Watch and an iPhone in fast charge at the same time with the 20W power adapter. I’ll try to update this review with that info.

Of course, because the iPhone side is magnetic, you do get the MagSafe benefit of being able to pick the phone up if it’s attached, but that’s more awkward when it’s a big bundle of charger vs when it’s a slim MagSafe puck on the back of your phone. Fine for a quick alarm check in your hotel maybe.

But I’m sorry to say that I find the whole thing a bit underwhelming after the hype of AirPower and its eventual demise. Apple may very well have had this thing planned the whole time that it was trying to make AirPower happen, but the arc of that story landing on this device is sad trombone indeed.

The MagSafe Duo does work, and there are a couple of engineering bright spots. But you will not feel that it’s worth the money by the time you purchase the $129 charger and the $19 20W power brick to go with it, and there are many third party accessories on the market that do this job just fine.

India’s antitrust watchdog has opened an investigation into Google for allegedly abusing the dominant position of its app store to promote its payments service in the world’s second largest internet market.

In its Monday announcement (PDF) about opening an antitrust case against Google, Indian watchdog Competition Commission of India said it would review the claim whether Google Play Store is favoring Google Pay app over other competing payments services.

The informant alleged that Google prominently showcases Google Pay app in Google Play Store “to the disadvantage of both i.e. apps facilitating payment through UPI, as well as users,” the Indian watchdog said.

If the allegation provided by the informant, who has not been identified, is found credible, Google’s practice could be in violation of various provisions of Section 4 of India’s Competition Act of 2002.

Google Pay, formerly known as Tez, is one of the most popular payments services in India. It competes with Walmart’s PhonePe, Paytm, and a range of other apps. As of last month, Walmart’s PhonePe was slightly ahead of Google Pay in India. Both the apps individually process roughly 40% of all transactions on UPI, a payments infrastructure built by large banks in the country. UPI is the most popular digital payments solution in India.

Google Play Store supports a range of payments methods, including credit cards, mobile wallets, internet banking, and UPI. But, as the informant alleges, “UPI based digital payment apps are more convenient, secured, economical, etc. over other digital payment solutions.” Based on such distinct features, the Indian watchdog said, “the Informant has averred that the market for apps facilitating payment through UPI is a separate relevant market as users do not regard apps facilitating payment through UPI as interchangeable or substitutable with other modes of digital payment.”

The new antitrust case is the latest headache for Google in India, its biggest market by users. In recent months, the dominant position of Android — which powers roughly 99% smartphones in the country, according to research firm Counterpoint, has also irked many startups in the country, who have formed an informal coalition to fight back the Android maker.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

More to follow…

Qumulo, the Seattle-based data storage startup, announced a bunch of updates today including support for NvME caching, an approach that should enable customers to access faster flash storage at a lower price point.

NvME flash storage development is evolving quickly, driving down the price with higher performance, a win-win situation for large data producers, but it’s still more expensive than traditional drives. Qumulo CEO Bill Richter pointed out that the software still has to take advantage of these changing flash storage dynamics.

To that end, the company claims with its new NvME caching capability, it is giving customers the ability to access faster flash storage for the same price as spinning disks by optimizing the software to more intelligently manage data on its platform and take advantage of the higher performance storage.

The company is also announcing the ability to dynamically scale using the latest technologies such as chips, memory and storage in an automated way. Further, it’s providing automated data encryption at no additional charge and new instant updates, which it says can be implemented without any down time. Finally, it has introduced a new interface to make it easier for customers to move their data from on premises data storage to Amazon S3.

Richter says that the company’s mission has always been about creating, managing and consuming massive amounts of file-based data. As the pandemic has taken hold, more companies are moving their data and applications to the cloud.

“The major secular trends that underpin Qumulo’s mission — the massive amount of file-based content, and the use of cloud computing to solve the content challenge, have both accelerated during the pandemic and we have received really clear signs of that,” he said.

Qumulo was founded back in 2012 and has raised $351 million. Its most recent raise was a hefty $125 million last July on a valuation over $1.2 billion.