Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Facebook is officially killing off the Rift.

The company showed off its latest headset at its newly renamed Facebook Connect online event today, but they also revealed that they would be ending sales of the PC-based Oculus Rift S early next year. Facebook will soon only be selling the new Quest 2, and pushing users interested in PC VR to tether their headset to a PC using the Oculus Link software, which the company debuted last year.

A statement from an Oculus spokesperson to TechCrunch fully confirms the shuttering of the PC VR line, “…we are fully focused on the Quest platform as the best of both worlds for all-in-one and PC gaming, so we will not be making any future Rift or PC-only headsets.”

After a hyped Kickstarter campaign, a Facebook acquisition, several developer kits and a few delays, the original Oculus Rift began shipping its first units in early 2016. In the years since, the hardware strategy of Facebook’s virtual reality arm has weaved dramatically.

Since CEO Mark Zuckerberg showcased the company’s three distinct product lines back in 2018 (the Oculus Go, Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift), the company has moved to contract its product offerings and go all-in on its standalone offering that does not require a PC or smartphone to operate. This year, Facebook has announced the end of both the Go and Rift lines. The shrinking of device offerings comes among an expansion of features for the latest Quest 2 headset, but also comes after months of crippling product shortages for the company’s entire line of VR headsets, including its heavily hyped Quest headset, which has been unavailable or in low stock for most of 2020.

Back in 2018, TechCrunch reported that Oculus had abruptly canceled the internal development of the Rift 2 and that Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe was leaving the company, in part, over his frustrations with the direction of the company’s PC-based hardware and the shelving of the “complete redesign.” We later reported that Oculus was planning to release a more modestly updated headset called the Rift S, which would adopt the Quest’s inside-out tracking capabilities.

When Facebook unveiled the Rift S months later, they shared that, unlike the Quest, which is developed wholly in-house, the PC-based headset had been designed and developed with Lenovo. At the time, Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell, who has since left the company, classified the device as “more of an evolution of Rift than a revolution,” indicating that the device was not a full sequel.

It’s clear from today’s announcement that Oculus intends to fully double down on standalone VR, while allowing users with gaming PCs to continue to access existing content and titles built for platforms like SteamVR.

It’s unclear how important Oculus sees PC-based virtual reality to the future of the company. While the Quest 2 can be tethered to a PC via its Oculus Link software (which will soon exit beta), it seems unlikely that the company will continue to invest in PC-based content at the same pace it has in the past. When asked during a pre-briefing whether the company planned to scale back investment in PC VR content, Oculus Head of Developer Strategy Chris Jurney pointed to ongoing development of previously announced PC titles, while highlighting that creating games for Quest “has kind of taken the lead from developers.”

Facebook’s virtual reality dreams have been a headache for the company.

At CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s prodding, the company has spent billions on Oculus and dealt with huge added complexities to their business, while encountering countless issues regarding the company’s founding team, a massive IP lawsuit, crippling supply chain issues and an impossible-to-satisfy user base. But for all the tears, that toil has given the tech world a weirdly poignant look at what’s possible when you attempt to brute-force an industry into existence.

Has Facebook convinced anyone out there that virtual reality is a technology we deeply need? Not so much.

And yet, six years after Facebook acquired Oculus VR, the company has released a device that feels meaningfully complete. In short, the new Quest 2 headset is a fantastic piece of hardware that showcases what a rewarding ecosystem can be built when you throw enough money and engineering talent at a dream. For all of the improvements that Facebook has driven to the Quest’s software since launch, I do still wish the platform was more diverse in its non-gaming offerings.

Quest 2 features

• $299 (64GB) or $399 (256GB)
• New two-tone design
• More powerful Snapdragon XR2 Platform
• 6GB RAM (Original Quest had 4GB)
• 503g headset weight, 10% lighter than previous generation
• Product Dimensions: ​191.5 mm x 102 mm x 142.5 mm (strap folded in)
• 72hz 1832×1920 (per eye) Fast-switch LCD
• Integrated speakers and microphone
• 2-3 hours battery life
• Adjustable IPD with three settings for 58, 63 and 68mm
• Redesigned controllers

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Arriving around 18 months after its predecessor launched, most users were likely expecting this update to host a minor spec bump, yet the Quest 2 is a true upgrade, making advances in about every way. It’s lighter, smaller, more powerful, easier to use and cheaper, now starting at $299. As the company kills off its Rift line of PC-only headsets, months after sunsetting its $199 Go headset, in some ways the Quest 2 feels like a last-ditch attempt at mainstream success.

I thoroughly enjoyed the original Quest but its limitations were staring you right in the face. Games were limited because of the aged Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 powering the headset and the device’s OLED display felt too pixelated.

Facebook has thankfully delivered substantial updates to both the CPU/GPU and display, and I don’t have many complaints. The Quest 2 now uses the recently launched Qualcomm XR2 platform which delivers some steady performance gains over the 835. Oculus was a little coy about just how much better it performed, so I ended up getting on the phone with Hugo Swart, Qualcomm’s head of XR, who walked me through some details.

He wouldn’t speak to the individual implementation of the XR2 chipset on Quest 2, but did offer up some broad comparisons between the chipset powering it compared with the first-generation Quest. The high-level is that the XR2 is wildly more powerful than the Snapdragon 835, think doubled gains when it comes to CPU and GPU performance. For developers, this could mean doubling the visual complexity of titles, something that would allow them to more easily port PC experiences to the standalone headset.

But before you get too excited, it’s unlikely that Quest 2 titles will be harnessing this full power. Having a chipset that’s 2x as powerful actually means two things: It can do things that are twice as complex, but it can also do things that are just as complex as its predecessor while using roughly half of the power. I would imagine Facebook will push developers to focus on the latter rather than the former, especially considering that the XR2 is now powering a higher resolution display.

Part of that is the result of launching a full successor 18 months after its predecessor and trying not to piss off early adopters who will also want to play the latest releases, but it’s also a result of Oculus choosing to optimize for form factor over software complexity. Oculus has shaved several ounces off of the device’s weight and part of this has actually come from reducing the size of the device’s battery. Oculus tells me the engineering team redesigned the battery for the Quest 2 and that it’s now 18% smaller and 29% lighter.

The new display moves from OLED to the Fast-switch LCD type that the company used on the Rift S. It still operates at 72hz, but Oculus says that it will be pushing 90hz refresh rates to the device “soon.” The most noticeable difference to users will be the enhanced clarity of the screen which boasts a different pixel layout as well as a lot more pixels than the previous generation, over 50% more in fact. In practical use, the new display is noticeably clearer and makes painful VR experiences like reading small paragraphs of text a lot less painful.

Another interesting change with the display is how IPD (inter-pupillary distance) is shifted. A big concern with early leaks of the Quest 2 was that users wouldn’t be able to adjust the distance between the lenses to account for different face shapes. Well, the Quest does indeed allow for multiple IPD adjustments, but it’s less precise and achieved in a different way. Instead of a button or dial, users just physically pull the lenses apart, snapping them into one of three settings, 58mm, 63mm and 68mm.

This won’t deliver a perfect experience for everyone, but is a relief for users that Oculus would follow in the footsteps of the Go and Rift S and just get rid of adjustable IPD altogether.

The new controllers are fine upgrades, taking more cues from the design of the original Rift Touch controllers and allowing for a larger thumb rest. The big upgrade is that the controllers are now more battery efficient, with Oculus telling me that the new controllers last four times longer on a single AA battery than the original Quest. No big updates beyond that for the controllers, I will say I’m not as wild about the two-tone look on the controllers as with the headset.

That brings me to the headset housing, it has ditched the fabric-covered enclosure of the original and is now completely hard-shelled with a new two-tone light gray and black design. I like the colors, which have more of a toy-like appearance and appear a bit friendlier. It feels significantly smaller than the original Quest and the 10% reduction in weight is also apparent to heavy users of the previous generation. I was worried a shift to a plastic shell would feel cheap like the Rift S did compared to the original Rift, but the new headset housing is a highlight of the new design.

The onboard speakers which are fit into the arms of the head-strap are, again, just okay. They work, though honestly you’ll probably want to score some good in-ear buds if you’re serious about getting immersed in the content.

I’m not as satisfied with the decision to redesign the head strap to a fabric-only adjustable strap, which is worse that the previous generation and doesn’t redistribute weight quite as nicely. I’m sure this was done to reduce the base weight of the headset and its packable size, but I’m not convinced it was the right choice. Oculus is notably launching a pair of add-on rigid head straps which are built more like PC headsets including the $49 Elite Strap as well as a bundle that adds a small external battery into the back of the headset to extend playtime and redistribute weight more aggressively.

On the note of battery life, the company says the Quest 2 is sticking to the 2-3 hours of battery life depending on usage. I think the sweet spot for a device like this would be a bit longer, so it’s too bad that the company opted to set this as the goal, especially given that they actually shrank the size of the battery in this release.

I want to touch on the Oculus software for a bit because it is actually crazy how much the Quest’s software experience has improved since its initial launch. All of these software perks have been evident to existing Quest owners who have seen the upgrades bringing items like hand-tracking and updates to the Oculus browser. Almost everything has been meaningfully improved from navigation to watching media content.

All of these improvements have highlighted some limitations with the platform, though; namely there’s still not enough non-gaming content. I worry that so many of the VR-curious platforms have already grown tired of VR and decided it’s not worth the effort of maintaining a separate app. I almost wish Oculus would start integrating Android apps to the screen to passively flip through in between gaming sessions and media viewing. The Oculus browser is passable but I’d love to get quicker slightly more native access to doing some of the things I can on my phone. It seems like the platform is ready to move more in that direction.

One clear difference in the onboarding for this device compared to past hardware is that a Facebook account is now required to activate the headset. For a small subsection of folks this might be a dealbreaker, but it’s not the most surprising development, as Facebook has been slowly opting to treat Oculus as more of an internal division rather than a distinct organization.

The fact is, a decent amount of people do hate Facebook. After I watched the so-so documentary The Social Dilemma on Netflix this weekend, it’s also becoming clearer to me that even if popular culture trends back towards an excitement and hopefulness surrounding the tech industry over time, the scrutiny being paid toward the impact of social media companies on society will probably continue to drive distaste for Facebook. That’s a liability for Oculus, but time will tell how substantial of one it is.

Final thoughts

It is surprising to see such a revamp coming just a bit more than one year after the original Quest’s launch, but the new hardware is a sign of Oculus itching to double down on a new direction wholly focused on a single, more accessible device driving their vision.

This is the most convincing argument Oculus has made for VR since its inception and pricing the device at $299, on par with a Nintendo Switch, will likely open up more folks to the vision. For existing Quest owners, this release will probably be a tad frustrating, because I think it’s worth the upgrade and its coming in so quickly even as Facebook has struggled to keep the original Quest in stock.

It’s a fantastic VR device, but the question I’ve struggled with is whether a fantastic headset is still a great gadget. It’s still largely for gamers and will still fall danger to getting mainstream users excited for a few weeks and then spending the rest of its life in the closet.

One of the biggest complaints around VR is the same issue that’s plagued generations of gaming platforms: content. A console is only as good as its games, as the saying goes. Today at Facebook Connect, however, Oculus just added two of gaming’s biggest franchises to its slate of upcoming titles.

Ubisoft marked the event by announcing that it will be bringing Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell games to VR. The key details are still extremely thin at the moment, but the gaming giant calls them both “new, made-for-VR,” implying that they’ll be more than just ports of existing games.

Production for both is being spearheaded by Ubisoft’s Red Storm subsidiary. The developer has been working on Tom Clancy titles since the late-90s. It’s also behind a handful of VR titles, including 2017’s Star Trek: Bridge Crew.

More details — including timing — will be available closer to launch. Whenever that is.

At Oculus Connect 7 Facebook Connect today, the company announced a big follow-up to the Oculus Quest and it’s been improved in almost every way. Yes, it’s the same headset as the leaks foretold, but there’s more to be seen.

The Oculus Quest 2 is $100 cheaper, 10% lighter, a bit smaller, and now comes in a two-tone light grey and black design. It also sports a processor that’s twice as powerful, has more RAM, and a higher resolution display. Pre-orders for the device kick off today, the device launches October 13, 2020.

The headset is compatible with all of the existing Quest content and even though it’s SoC is significantly more powerful (a Snapdragon XR2), don’t expect developers to fully shift to making Quest 2 exclusives, it sounds like Oculus is mainly relying on the CPU/GPU gains to power the higher-res display and achieve the same battery life on a smaller battery.

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This will soon be the only device that Oculus sells, the company has announced that its sunsetting its PC VR line just months after sharing it was ending sales of the Oculus Go.

Here’s the full list of improvements over the original Quest, which it’s worth noting only went on sale in April of last year.

Quest 2 features

• $299 (64GB) or $399 (256GB)
• New two-tone design
• More powerful Snapdragon XR2 Platform
• 6GB RAM
• 503g headset weight, 10% lighter than previous generation
• Product Dimensions: ​191.5 mm x 102 mm x 142.5 mm (strap folded in)
• 72hz 1832×1920 (per eye) Fast-switch LCD
• Integrated speakers and microphone
• 2-3 hours battery life
• Adjustable IPD with three settings for 58, 63 and 68mm
• Redesigned controllers

All-in-all, there’s a lot going on, which I break down in-depth in my expansive review here.

Meet PowerZ, a new French startup founded by Emmanuel Freund, the founder of popular cloud gaming service Shadow, as well as former Shadow employees. The company wants to develop a video game that is as engaging as Fortnite, but with a focus on education. It is both an edtech startup and a video game studio.

PowerZ has raised a $3.5 million (€3 million) seed round from Educapital, Hachette Livre and various business angels, such as Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, Michaël Benabou and Octave Klaba.

After turning Shadow into one of the most valuable French startup, Freund stepped back and took some time to think about his second act. He spent some time with his two children aged 5 and 8 years old.

“I realized that code learning tools for children are very lacking. So I turned to math because you don’t need any support material. There are 40,000 apps but they all look like holiday workbooks,” Freund told me.

From his experience, most education apps are focused on one knowledge area in particular and are somewhat basic. According to him, education hasn’t changed that much in the past 100 years. When you walk into a classroom, it still looks like a classroom.

At the same time, when you see a kid playing on Fortnite or Minecraft, chances are they’re hooked. You tell them to come for dinner and they ask you for five more minutes of playtime.

“What if we could build a sort of Ready Player One for education. An open world in which a child could learn new things,” Freund said.

Here’s what you can expect from PowerZ. First, it’s not going to focus on one area in particular. You can learn history, geography, math, but also botanical knowledge, astronomy and poetry.

Second, content isn’t going to be gamified to motivate you to learn more to do more in the game. You’ll be able to unlock some customizations but PowerZ is taking it easy with gamification.

Third, the game will evolve depending on what you’re doing. Some children will be better at math, others will be better at grammar. Some children like to learn new things in short sessions, others can remain focused for a while. This way, parents can get reports on what their children have been doing.

PowerZ wants to develop its game with a community of parents, teachers and children. There will be an alpha test in 2021, first in France and then in English-speaking countries. It’s still the early days of the company, but it’s going to be interesting to see how it evolves over time.

Apple’s hardware event yesterday wasn’t particularly eventful for its most popular devices, bringing only iterative changes to Apple Watch and the iPad. But the company tipped its hand as to a new, aggressive approach to services with a fitness product and new unified subscription called Apple One. What are the implications of this shift?

For one thing, Cupertino is engaging in a form of future-proofing to offset slowing hardware sales and potentially a loss of App Store income.

And yet some of the services may not survive the next few years. What happens when no one wants to pay for Apple Arcade or TV+? Will its newest service, Fitness+, impact self-employed fitness workers who are building their own brands by undercutting them and offering exclusive watchOS integration?

Lastly, the whole deal may look different depending on what country you live in — and no one likes to feel left out.

TC staff dilate on these possibilities below:

• Brian Heater: This is Apple’s new bread and butter.
• Kirsten Korosec: If you’re a self-employed fitness pro, Apple just ate your lunch.
• Lucas Matney: Apple One is doomed from the start.
• Devin Coldewey: Apple’s increasingly complex global ecosystem.

This is Apple’s new bread and butter

Brian Heater

Of course Apple’s not at any risk of losing money on the hardware front. It still sells a ton of iPhones, a lot of computers and more smartwatches than anyone else. But certain categories are seeing a slow down. The iPhone in particular — the long-time tentpole product of Apple’s hardware offering — has been impacted as smartphone sales have plateaued and slowed down nearly across the board.

Accordingly, services have become an increasingly important piece of Apple’s quarterly revenue. Earlier this year, the company noted a year-over-year sales increase of 17%, due in no small part to recent additions like Arcade and TV+. Today’s addition of Fitness+ will no doubt juice the numbers even further, arriving at a perfect moment for in-home workouts amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

On August 5th, TechCrunch wrote that startups should “go public while software valuations make no sense.” What came next was a happy coincidence. Just a few weeks after that post, Unity, JFrog, Asana, Snowflake and Sumo Logic all filed to go public.

Today we’re seeing some data from those debuts, most notably the incredibly strong pricing runs from both JFrog and Snowflake. But even more, Snowflake just opened at either $245 or $269.50, depending on your data source. Regardless, the company’s stock is currently worth $276.2 per share, some 130% higher than its IPO price. Which, as we noted earlier, was already pretty high, given the company’s most recent revenue results.

Adding to the Snowflake example, JFrog opened worth around $71.30 today, sharply higher than its above-an-already-raised-range IPO price of $44. That’s wild! JFrog is now worth around $7 billion, despite having posted revenue in its last quarter of just $36.4 million.

The message from today’s debuts appears to be that valuations are unmoored from old rules — for the moment, that is — and thus companies that can post 100% growth or greater have little in the way of a cap on their upper limit.

Our takeaway: Go public now.

Adding to the good news is that some of the valuations we’ve understood less than others are holding up. First-day pop-and-drop today’s market isn’t. For example, Lemonade is still up about 50% from its IPO price, and OneMedical is up 100% from its own. So, software valuations are so wild that even software-adjacent companies are benefiting!

This is excellent news for a great number of unicorns. The good times are still here, amazingly, while the economy is still pretty bad and the election looms. All those old rules about having successive quarters of profitability and not going public during more turbulent years is, for now, bullshit.

Normalcy will re-emerge at some point. Things will eventually quiet down. But not yet, so get that S-1 out and take advantage of the good times while they last.

More consolidation in the thin-margin food delivery space: Delivery Hero has announced it’s buying the LatinAm operations of Glovo, a Spanish on-demand delivery app. The German company said today that it’s paying up to €230 million to take over eight markets, including a €60M performance-based earn-out.

The transaction, which Berlin-based Delivery Hero said it expects to close within a few weeks, will cover all of the Latin American countries where Glovo operates — namely: Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.

Glovo had already pulled out of two LatAm markets at the start of this year, saying then that it was focused on markets where it could grow and establish itself among the top two delivery players. It exited the Middle East at the same time.

Offloading its LatAm operations to Delivery Hero now will leave it with 14 markets — and a fuller focus on Southern and Eastern Europe.

The move isn’t a huge surprise, given ongoing questions over profitability in the thin-margin delivery space.

Last December Glovo told us it was focused on trying to reach profitability “in a little over a year’s time”. That essentially means winning the race with competitors to be the dominant platform where you’re operating, and only operating in cities where the unit economics stack up, so — ideally — where you can nudge users to make high volumes of repeat orders.

Still, in December 2019 Glovo’s co-founder also told us it was expecting its LatAm business to be operationally profitable this year. But perhaps challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic have pushed it to narrow its focus.

There are also SoftBank’s billions to contend with. The Japanese tech investor has a $2BN fund aimed at Central and South American — as well as making multiple investments in on-demand delivery startup which have been duking it out for share in the region. The cost of competing in the region was likely rising and that wouldn’t help Glovo’s push for profitability.

Commenting on the sale in a statement, Glovo CEO, Oscar Pierre, said: “We feel that it’s important to focus on key markets where we can build a long-term sustainable business and continue to provide our unique multi-category offering to our customers.”

“This deal will allow us to strengthen our presence in those markets where we are already very strong, while also allowing us to invest in new markets where we see huge growth potential and opportunity. We truly believe that Delivery Hero is the best possible partner to take the business we’ve built in Latin America to the next level. They have everything it takes to go on and become the leading player in the region,” he added.

The sale means Delivery Hero will add five new markets to its LatAm footprint, as well as removing a competitor in three markets where the two have been directly competing (Argentina, Panama and the Dominican Republic).

In these three overlapping markets it will take over Glovo’s businesses directly, on the closing of the transaction. Glovo will continue to operate the other businesses until March 2021, they added.

The transaction is also subject to fulfilment of certain conditions and relevant regulatory approvals.

In a statement Niklas Östberg, CEO and co-founder of Delivery Hero, said LatAm offers “exceptional growth potential” for his veteran food delivery business — which only two years ago sold its operations in its home market of Germany to another rival, Takeaway.com. (So, yes, the food delivery space really is a sizzling stir-fry of deals as players jockey for position and — they hope — profitability…)

“Latin America is a region with exceptional growth potential for online delivery. Acquiring Glovo’s local operations gives us the opportunity to double down on our efforts to drive innovation, continuously improve customer experience and support local vendors in the region. We have been working closely with Glovo for many years, and are proud to incorporate their Latin American services into our global network,” Östberg said.

Back in August Delivery Hero also went shopping on the grocery delivery front picking up Dubai-based InstaShop. Grocery delivery has risen up the agenda during the coronavirus crisis, as food delivery app users have found themselves with more time at home than usual.

Glovo also bills itself as ‘more than food delivery’ — with a button in the app where users can request delivery of ‘anything’ (or at least anything one of its couriers can manage on a bike or moped to them).

Kbox Global, the U.K. startup that turns underused commercial kitchen space into takeout delivery hubs — therefore helping existing kitchens generate much-needed revenue — has raised £12 million in new funding. The round is led by Balderton Capital, and follows a £5 million investment from early Deliveroo backer Hoxton Ventures disclosed in July.

Aiming to build and expand on the so-called “dark kitchen” model, whereby new delivery-first restaurants and brands are created to run on top of the likes of Deliveroo and Uber Eats, Kbox’s “host kitchen” tech and unique business model utilises capacity in existing commercial kitchens, such as those found in pubs, hotels, restaurants and even supermarkets.

Partnering kitchens are tech and data-enabled by Kbox, and given the recipe — figuratively-speaking and quite literally — along with the needed training to ensure that entering the takeout market is a success and where margins are notoriously thin with little room for error. Most importantly, incentives appear to be aligned: Kbox makes money only if Kbox host kitchens do.

“The reality is that most restaurant and commercial kitchens, be it in hotels, pubs, gyms, catering kitchens or supermarkets, are underutilised,” explains Kbox founder Salima Vellani. “The model is outdated. One very expensive location with one brand that cannot evolve as food trends change. The result is ambitious and successful food providers not being able to capitalise on the soaring delivery market. So, we’ve fixed this”.

On the demand side, Kbox has created a multi-cuisine range of delivery focused food brands, “so kitchens can serve more local people, more easily, with the ability to adapt swiftly to demand flux and taste changes,” she says. “And on the supply side, our tech platform digitises kitchen operations to make them efficient”.

However, Vellani claims that what makes Kbox special is its AI and machine learning tech, which enables advanced analytics. This sees the startup help kitchens find the right set of food brands for their local market, and then “future proof” them by keeping menus current through data analysis without the need for a data scientist. “Using our AI, we can also forecast demand for each kitchen, which in turn minimises waste, improves staff utilisation, and morale, and thus improves the profitability of each host kitchen,” she explains.

To that end, Vellani says there is no upfront cost to franchise Kbox brands and technology and “zero investment” in kitchen upgrades or equipment. Furthermore, Kbox generates revenue on a per order basis so it only benefits when the kitchen makes money. In other words, one of the biggest draws is there’s little risk for a host kitchen when working with Kbox.

“I recall having a conversation last week with the senior EVP of one of the most well know hotel asset owners in the world and he said to me, and I paraphrase: ‘so basically this is a risk free model with absolutely no downside to us — the only thing I can see happening if this doesn’t work is you have simply up-skilled my staff. I am going to make sure all of my hotel owners talk to you’,” says the Kbox founder.

Meanwhile, there appears to be no exact equivalent offering in the dark kitchen space currently, although there are several heavily-funded players tackling the real estate angle –- a kitchen rental model if you will. Others are building dark kitchen operations and licensing brands from third parties, or creating their own brands.

Adds Vellani: “We are at the very early stages of a massive shift in not only the restaurant industry but in the food service and hospitality industry as a whole. Covid has simply accelerated a shift we were already seeing but it has also highlighted a very pertinent issue – these industries are running on razor thin margins which are not sustainable and only Kbox is really focused on enabling existing food operators move into the delivery-first era without incurring large costs by utilising what they already have”.

So far, the model appears to be working — hence today’s injection of capital. To date, Kbox has partnered with kitchens in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Brighton, and says it is on course for 2,000 operational kitchens in the U.K. before the end of 2021. In addition, an international rollout of the model is underway with franchise agreements in Australia and India launching this month with a further 8 countries to be launched next year.

Amazon Music is the latest streaming service to embrace podcasts. The company announced this morning it’s launching support for podcasts in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan on Amazon Music at no additional cost, and is rolling out its own original programming. The first slate of originals on Amazon Music will include shows hosted by creators like DJ Khaled, Becky G, Will Smith, Dan Patrick, and others.

At launch, Amazon says customers will find “millions” of episodes from top shows and many of their favorite already available, including popular programs like “Crime Junkie,” “What A Day,” “Radiolab,” “Revisionist History,” “Planet Money,” “Ear Hustle,” “Why Won’t You Date Me? with Nicole Byer,” and “Stuff You Should Know.”

Amazon Music will also serve as the exclusive home for the music-meets-true-crime podcast, “Disgraceland,” which will explore various criminal connections in the music industry. The show will debut on Amazon Music in February 2021. Disgraceland’s host, Jake Brennan, says the Amazon Music partnership will allow the show to produce more episodes and release on a weekly basis, providing more consistency for fans.

Among the Amazon Music originals, DJ Khaled will be hosting “The First One,” where he’ll will interview his favorite artists about the hits that made them iconic. Becky G, meanwhile, will host “En la Sala,” which will see the star interacting with big names in music and entertainment to discuss social issues, relationships, politics, sports and more.

Broadcaster Dan Patrick is teaming up with Amazon-owned IMDb for “The Scene with Dan Patrick,” which will disassemble famous scenes from movies and TV shows.

And an untitled project from Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith’s Westbrook Audio will be released on both Amazon Music and Amazon-owned Audible.

Amazon Music didn’t specify how large its total podcast catalog was at launch, but its website continues to solicit creator submissions. In total, Amazon Music’s service reaches over 55 million customers. That means distributing to  Amazon Music will be necessary for any top podcast creator.

The new podcasts will be available on Amazon Music’s apps across mobile and web, and will be organized for browsing by category, as curated recommendations, in top charts, and more. Show pages will feature trailers, if available, and podcasts can be streamed across Alexa devices, including Echo Auto.

Podcasting has grown in recent years to become a sizable industry. In the U.S., for example, forecasts predict the audience for podcasts will top 100 million in 2020, and podcast ad revenue will climb 14.7%, despite the pandemic, bringing total ad revenue near the $1 billion mark. Major streaming services have been chasing their own original content to draw in users to their platform. Even Apple has been dipping its toe in podcast originals in recent months.

The news follows Amazon’s recent addition of Twitch live streams to Amazon Music — a move that allowed Amazon to differentiate its offering from other top music services, like Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music, for example.

“Our customers’ listening habits are constantly evolving, and we know they’re looking to us to provide them with a rich experience rooted in music and entertainment,” said Steve Boom, VP of Amazon Music, in a statement about the launch of podcasts. “With this launch, we’re bringing customers even more forms of entertainment to enjoy, while enabling creators to reach new audiences globally, just as we’ve done with music streaming. Podcasts, paired with our recent partnership with Twitch to bring live streaming into the app, makes Amazon Music a premiere destination for creators,” he added.