Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Curio, the burgeoning audio platform that offers a curated library of “expert” journalism, has closed a $9 million in Series A round funding.

The round is led by Earlybird, with participation from Draper Esprit, Cherry Ventures, and Horizons Ventures. It follows $2 million in previous backing from Cherry, 500 Startups and unnamed private angel investors, bringing the total amount raised to $11 million to date.

Founded in 2016 by Govind Balakrishnan, an ex-BBC strategist, and Srikant Chakravarti, a former solicitor, London-based Curio offers a curated library of journalism translated into and presented as audio, letting listeners get their daily fix of news and analysis. Over 50 publications are curated on the app including the likes of The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Financial Times, and specialist titles such as Wired, MIT Technology Review, and Aeon.

The audio articles are narrated by professional voice actors. Listeners can browse by new stories, most played, categories, and publication, and also discover new tracks on playlists curated bi-weekly by the Curio editorial team. In addition, you can click on “read along” on the app to access the original text in via publisher’s website, therefore helping to drive traffic to the original publisher.

“We are here to help people learn through quality journalism and great stories,” says Balakrishnan. “Curio is a premium audio platform with a curated library of expert journalism. It provides listeners with stories and insights on critical topics shaping our world, helping them learn and grow.

“Journalism has come to be narrowly associated with breaking news. However it encompasses thoughtful opinions, insightful analyses and bold investigations. Some of the biggest ideas shaping our world are being discussed by opinion formers on our publisher partners, and offer an unprecedented opportunity for consumers to learn and grow. Audio allows people to go deeper and learn as they go about their everyday lives”.

That thesis appears to be resonating with users. Balakrishnan tells me that Curio’s largest subscriber group is 24-35 year olds and the services reaches roughly the same number of women and men. “Over 60% of our current subscribers are not existing podcast/audio listeners,” he says. “In this sense we see a big opportunity in helping a broader range of people who are interested in quality journalism”. Noteworthy, 70% of Curio’s audience is outside the U.S. and roughly 40% is non-western markets.

To that end, Curio says it will use the injection of capital to strengthen its position in the U.S. and U.K. markets, while also expanding to other English-speaking parts of the world, including India, Australia, and South Africa. It also has a number of co-produced series and guest curations in the pipeline, alongside what it describes as “AI-led” personalisation and commissioning based on over 2 million monthly data points.

Times Internet said on Thursday it reaches more than 557 million active users in India each month and over 111 million users a day as several of its digital offerings demonstrated strong growth in the past year.

The Indian conglomerate — which operates over three-dozen properties, including on-demand streaming services MX Player and Gaana, and newspapers Times of India and Economic Times — added 107 million monthly active users in the financial year that ended in March, it said.

Its platform clocked over 67 billion page views in FY 2020, up from 47 billion from the year prior.

MX Player, which has now amassed over 200 million monthly active users, and Gaana, which now reaches 185 million monthly active users, grew 75% in the year, Satyan Gajwani, vice chairman of Times Internet told TechCrunch in an interview.

These figures put Times Internet, a subsidiary of 182-year-old Bennett Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL), at the centre of the world’s largest open battleground (well, almost), which is otherwise dominated by Google, Facebook and Amazon.

According to analytics firm Comscore, Google reached 98% of the digital population in India on web (desktop as well as mobile) in the month of June. During the same month, Facebook reached 94.9% of the population, Times Internet 77.7% and Amazon settled at fourth place with 76%. (The figures do not include app usage data.)

Founded over 20 years ago, Times Internet had a huge headstart over nearly every firm that dominates the digital landscape today. But it largely failed to cash in on that for several years, critics say. Under the current leadership, however, the firm has followed a steady path and grown.

Gajwani acknowledged that some of Times Internet’s offerings weren’t in great shape at the beginning of the last decade. “So we put a lot more emphasis on just product quality during 2013 to 2016. The next few years after that we also bought and built good products.”

“We’ve sold products or exited products where we didn’t think we could be competitive. We’ve got a reasonably strong portfolio now,” he added.

The most recent phase of Times Internet’s growth, said Gajwani, is the push to find revenue channels beyond ads. Gaana, MX Player, ET Prime (ad-free tier for Economic Times) and Times Prime (which bundles and resells a range of third-party subscription offerings) are helping it find subscribers, while MensXP’s e-commerce section, ETMoney, MagicBricks, GradeUp and Dineout are driving transactions.

Overall, Times Internet said its revenue grew 24% to $221.5 million in FY20. The firm did not disclose how much revenue it clocked from subscriptions, but said it had over 2 million paying subscribers and its transacting businesses grew 68%. Its ad business was also up 22%.

But its heavy reliance on ads means it has also been hit by the coronavirus, which slashed consumers’ spendings across the industry, resulting in advertisers cutting their budget.

Gajwani said the month of March saw a “big drop” in ad revenue for the firm, but the next three months were “soft” and July and August delivered a big rebound. “The gains of July and August have now made up for the losses of April, May, June in terms of our net year over year,” he added.

The virus and New Delhi’s ban on Chinese apps in recent months haven’t been a complete downer. Both MX Player and Gaana are attempting to fill the void left by the ban on TikTok in India and have received better traction than some of the more heavily-funded firms such as Twitter-backed ShareChat, according to mobile insight firm App Annie, data of which an industry executive shared with TechCrunch.

MX TakaTak, the short-video app from MX Player, has amassed over 10 million daily active users and 45 million monthly active users, it claimed earlier this week. Users have uploaded more than 15 million videos on the app and clocked over a billion views within a month, it said.

Moving forward, Gajwani said the firm will also continue to try to deepen its relationship with users. “The number of people who consumed two or more of our businesses grew 48%. And the number of people who consumed three or more of our businesses, grew 120%,” he said, without disclosing the number of users.

BCCL has engaged in conversations with investors in recent months to sell stake in Times Internet, a person familiar with the matter said. The deal, if secured, would make Times Internet — which employs more than 6,000 people, up from 5,000 last year — financially stronger to explore more acquisition opportunities, the person said. Gajwani declined to comment. Bloomberg first reported about the talks.

The city council in Portland, Oregon passed legislation Wednesday that’s widely regarded as the most aggressive municipal ban on facial recognition technology so far.

Through a pair of ordinances, Portland will both prohibit city bureaus from using the controversial technology and stop private companies from employing it in public areas. Oakland, San Francisco and Boston have all banned their governments from using facial recognition tech, but Portland’s ban on corporate uses in public spaces breaks new ground.

City Council Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty linked concerns around high-tech law enforcement tools to ongoing protests in Portland, which have taken place for more than three months. Last month, the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed that it used a small aircraft to surveil crowds near the protest’s epicenter at the Multnomah County Justice Center in downtown Portland.

Hardesty called the decision to ban local law enforcement from employing facial recognition tech “especially important” for the moment Portland now finds itself in.

“No one should have something as private as their face photographed, stored, and sold to third parties for a profit,” Hardesty said. “No one should be unfairly thrust into the criminal justice system because the tech algorithm misidentified an innocent person.”

The ACLU also celebrated Wednesday’s vote as a historic digital privacy win.

“With today’s vote, the community made clear we hold the real power in this city,” ACLU of Oregon Interim Executive Director Jann Carson said. “We will not let Portland turn into a surveillance state where police and corporations alike can track us wherever we go.”

Portland’s dual bans on the public and private use of facial recognition may serve as a roadmap for other cities looking to carve out similar digital privacy policies — an outcome privacy advocates are hoping for.

“Now, cities across the country must look to Portland and pass bans of their own,” Fight for the Future’s Lia Holland said. “We have the momentum, and we have the will to beat back this dangerous and discriminatory technology.”

Even as more than 150 million people are using digital payment apps each month in India, only about 20 million of them invest in mutual funds and stocks. A startup that is attempting to change that figure by courting millennials has just received a big backing.

Bangalore-headquartered Groww said on Thursday it had raised $30 million in its Series C financing round. YC Continuity Fund, the growth-stage investment fund of Y Combinator, led the round, while existing investors Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital and Propel Ventures participated in it. This is the Continuity Fund’s first investment in India. The new rounds brings three-year-old startup Groww’s total raise-to-date to $59 million.

Groww allows users to invest in mutual funds, including systematic investment planning (SIP) and equity-linked savings. The app, which maintains a very simplified user interface to make it easier for its largely millennial customer base to comprehend the investment world, offers every fund that is currently available in India.

In recent months, the startup has expanded its offerings to allow users to buy stocks of Indian firms and digital gold, said Lalit Keshre, co-founder and chief executive of Groww, in an interview with TechCrunch. Keshre and other three co-founders of Groww worked at Flipkart prior to this startup.

The startup has amassed over 8 million registered users for its mutual fund offering, and over 200,000 users have bought stocks from the platform, said Keshre. The new fund will allow Groww to further expand its reach in the country and also introduce new products, he said.

One of those products is the ability to allow users to buy stocks of U.S.-listed firms, he said. The startup is already testing this with select users, he said.

“We believe Groww is building the largest retail brokerage in India. At YC, we have known the founders since the company was just an idea and they are some of the best product people you will meet anywhere in the world. We are grateful to be partners with Groww as they build one of the largest retail financial platforms in the world,” said Anu Hariharan, partner at YC Continuity, in a statement.

More than 60% of Groww users come from smaller cities and towns of India and 60% of these have never made such investments before, said Keshre. And that’s where the growth opportunities lies.

“India is seeing increased participation of retail investors in financial markets — with 2M new stock market investors added in the last quarter alone,” said Ashish Agrawal, Principal at Sequoia Capital India, in a statement.

In recent years, a number of startups such as INDWealth and Cube Wealth have emerged in India to offer wealth management platforms to the country’s growing internet population. Many established financial firms such as Paytm have also expanded their offerings to include investments in mutual funds.

Lucid just launched its first production vehicle, and it looks impressive. But let’s talk about the new website, too. It features a remarkable buying experience that lets shoppers build a 3D car online and experience it in VR at a Lucid dealership.

Right now, minutes after its launch, the site is laggy at time. I expect it will improve.

Using the tool is just like building a character in a video game. Select a model, add some color, and spin the model around to get another look. Don’t like how the black looks? Change it to red, and the image updates in place. Zoom in, zoom out, and change the wheels. The image updates as you go.

Video games have had this feature for years. This isn’t a new concept. And some automakers have similar features that allow shoppers to change colors and trim pieces, but none I’ve seen have gone nearly as far as Lucid. Mercedes-Benz’s online shopping tool might be the closest, but it lacks the 3D range of view found on Lucid’s tool.

Once the customer customizes a vehicle to their liking, they can save the file to their Lucid profile and go to a Lucid showroom to experience it in VR. These showrooms — Lucid expects to build 20 in the United States — will have a display with Lucid seats and VR headsets. Lucid employees will load the customers saved vehicle into the VR system, and the shopper will be able to experience the car before it’s built.

This tool seems purpose-built for the COVID-19 age. It gives shoppers significantly more insight into a vehicle before going to the dealership. And then, when at the dealership, shoppers can experience the car without getting in a car.

For Lucid, this experience is dramatically more immersive than what Tesla offers shoppers.

General Keith Alexander, who oversaw the National Security Agency when Edward Snowden revealed the shocking extent of its illegal wiretapping and data collection programs, has joined Amazon’s board as a director.

Gen. Alexander’s duties on the audit committee and anywhere else he might be needed are not spelled out anywhere. He is currently co-CEO of IronNet Security, the firm he founded six years ago. Before that he was head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.

He is perhaps best remembered by the general public as having helped build and operate an enormous set of secret programs for domestic surveillance in the security-first post-9/11 era. There’s a bit more to running the country’s cybersecurity infrastructure than that, of course, but the Snowden leaks ended up defining the end of his career in government intelligence.

Amazon itself has faced accusations of surveilling and profiling its own users via network of Alexa-powered devices (and internet infrastructure, and buying habits, and emotion-monitoring smartwatches), and while it may get a few tips from the more experienced Gen. Alexander, it is more likely his expertise and connections within the wide world of intelligence and military matters that the company seeks.

That sort of thing is helpful when trying to make lucrative deals with the feds, something of a sore spot with Amazon since it lost the excruciatingly drawn-out bid process for the $10 billion JEDI contract to Microsoft. (The award is still being challenged.)

Gen. Alexander will join former and current executives from the likes of Pepsico, Starbucks, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bridgewater Associates, and others on the board director rolls.

I’ve reached out to Amazon for further information and comment and will update this post if I hear back.

TechCrunch interviewed the General on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt not too long ago to find out how he perceives the need to balance security and privacy.

After years of development, Lucid Motors took the wraps off the Air, an electric luxury sedan that was unveiled Wednesday in a live streamed event.

The Air combines high-end features with eye-popping performance specs and technology that puts it in the same luxury category as a Mercedes S Class. The Air will range in price from as high as $169,000 for its flagship Dream variant to just below $80,000 for the base model, not counting the $7,500 federal tax credit.

The vehicle will have four variants in all, each with slightly different battery ranges that fall between 517 miles and about 400 miles. The Air will be loaded with 32 sensors, a driver-monitoring system and an Ethernet-based architecture all for its advanced driver assistance system, which is designed to support hands-free driving on highways.

Inside the Air, is a simple — not stark — design that balances technology and the needs of the driver. A 34-inch curved glass 5K display sits in front of the driver, appears to float above the dashboard. Another center touchscreen is retractable. Meanwhile, a few physical controls remain on the steering wheel and just above the center screen.

The Air’s design comes across as precise and thoughtful, not jammed with buttons, touchscreens and toggles.TechCrunch hasn’t been inside the production version of the vehicle just yet. But we have loads of photos to share. Check out the inside and exterior of the Air below.

[gallery ids="2042987,2042986,2042982,2042981,2042985,2043002,2042989,2042988,2042991,2042990,2042993,2042992,2042996,2042998,2043000,2042995,2042997,2042999,2043001"]

Lucid Motors provided Wednesday a peek of the next vehicle in its all-electric lineup — an SUV called the Lucid Gravity.

The Lucid Gravity follows the Air, a luxury all-electric sedan that was revealed Wednesday in a live streamed event. The Gravity, which will have the same underlying vehicle platform as the Air, is already well into the design process. The company has a working prototype, which was spotted this summer out in the wild. Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson later confirmed the SUV’s existence. This is the first time the company has publicly shared photos of the SUV.

Not much is known about the SUV, although the photos released Wednesday provide a few hints of what is to come.

The Air and Gravity share a few design features, notably the outline of the trunk and single long taillight, features that Lucid’s vice president of design Derek Jenkins told TechCrunch in a recent interview would show up in future vehicles.

“The opening of the trunk is on sides of the vehicle and so that allows this super clean rear end, and a single piece taillight, which I think is very distinctive,” said Jenkins describing the Air. At the time, Jenkins noted that future vehicles would likely have same the long light blade that can be seen on the Air. Photos of the SUV don’t show the front, leaving that feature a mystery for now.

The photos also show a rooftop storage unit, suggesting that Lucid is creating a line up of accessories to go with its electric vehicles.

While Lucid hasn’t disclosed when the SUV would come to market, Rawlinson has said the company’s next vehicle would go into production in 2023.

[gallery ids="2042970,2042971,2042972,2042973,2042974,2042975,2042976"]

Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson had a clear vision for how to take an electric car to another level. The former chief engineer of the Tesla Model S just didn’t expect it to take quite so long.

Today, nearly four years since the company first announced its intentions to produce electric vehicles, Lucid Motors revealed the final version of its all-electric luxury Air sedan. The Air has eye-popping performance specs, an estimated range of up to 517 miles and a design that manages to balance technology and luxury without feeling opulent or cluttered.

Two of the four variants — the $169,000 flagship Dream edition and a $139,000 Grand Touring model — will go into production first at its new factory in Casa Grande, Arizona this year. Deliveries of these variants are slated to begin in spring 2021. Two other variants, a Touring model priced at $95,000 and a base model that’s a smidge below $80,000, are expected at the end of 2021 and into 2022, respectively. (all prices are before the $7,500 federal tax credit is accounted for)

The Air is meant to be an EV replacement to the Mercedes S Class — an electric vehicle category that Rawlinson says has not existed until now.

“Tesla (Model S) is premium, it’s beautifully engineered and it’s super disruptive, but it is not an S Class Mercedes replacement in the EV space and that’s what we’re offering,” Rawlinson said in a recent interview ahead of the September 9 reveal.

The Air is dripping with luxury in an understated way. It’s spacious inside the cabin, the result of what Rawlinson and VP of design Derek Jenkins have described as a clean sheet approach. The company has “redefined the three-dimensional puzzle that is a car through the miniaturization of electric powertrain and that’s making the space concept work, where the car is more compact on the outside, and bigger on the inside,” Rawlinson said, who added that it’s shorter and narrower than the Tesla Model S or the Porsche Taycan.

The vehicle’s four variants offer a variety of performance levels all via its dual-motor, all-wheel drive architecture. The Dream edition boasts 1,080 horsepower and can travel from zero to 60 mph acceleration in 2.5 seconds. As a result of the power, the Dream edition has 465 miles of range. Meanwhile, the Grand Touring has 800 horsepower and can hit that same acceleration in 3 seconds, but has the highest range of 517 miles.

The Air will be loaded with 32 sensors, a driver-monitoring system and an Ethernet-based architecture all for its advanced driver assistance system, which is designed to support hands-free driving on highways.

Inside, a 34-inch curved glass 5K display sits in front of the driver, and appears to float above the dashboard. Another center touchscreen is retractable, revealing more storage. Meanwhile, a few physical controls remain on the steering wheel and just above the center screen to control volume, activate the ADAS and Amazon Alexa, which is integrated into the vehicle. Below that center touchscreen and moving to the console is a spot for inductive charging, cupholders and USB-C ports along with additional storage.

Owners of the Air will have an app that will control and communicate with the car, such as locking and unlocking the vehicle. But it will also be equipped with facial recognition that confirms the identity of the owner.

Epic journey

It’s been an epic journey for the company that started in 2007 with a different name and mission. Lucid began as Atieva, a company founded by former Tesla VP and board member Bernard Tse and entrepreneur Sam Weng that focused on developing electric car battery technology. That early work would be critically important for the Lucid Motors of today because of the early research, development and eventual progress in the components and overall electric architecture, Rawlinson told TechCrunch. Atieva would go onto to become the battery supplier to Formula E, which would also help the company make gains on the design and performance.

But it was in waning months of 2016 that Lucid came out with a bang and a new publicly stated purpose to make electric vehicles (although the company had already been working quietly at this for a couple of years). Rawlinson, who left Tesla to join Lucid in 2013 as CTO, was one of the driving forces behind this new mission. He later took on the CEO title and responsibility as well. In those early days, Lucid looked well on its way to the difficult and expensive task of becoming a car manufacturer.

“Who would be crazy enough to start a car company?” Rawlinson told TechCrunch recently. “We came out in early 2017 with high hopes and it took us longer to find the right investor.”

That is a slight understatement. Soon after the name change, Lucid announced it would build a factory in Arizona and showed off an alpha prototype of the Air (which I rode in late 2017). But then progress on capturing investors slowed and then stalled altogether.

“At that stage, I think the investment community was in love with the idea of autonomous driving and robotaxis,” Rawlinson said. “No one believed there was still some mileage to getting a better electric car. And I kept plugging that it hasn’t been done yet. Tesla’s doing great job, but they haven’t really cracked it, there’s so much more that can come out of the electric car — and it fell on deaf ears.”

It would take months to land an investor, putting the factory project in limbo. “Those were our darkest hours as a company,” Rawlinson recalled.

In September 2018, Lucid announced that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund had committed to invest $1 billion into the company. The  announcement came just six weeks after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share and had secured the proper funding to make the leap. Musk suggested that Saudi’s wealth fund, which already owns almost 5% of Tesla stock, was interested in backing the company’s move from public to private.

The $1 billion investment deal between Lucid and the Saudi wealth fund closed in spring 2019.  The funding was used to complete engineering development and testing of the Lucid Air, construct its factory in Arizona, begin the global rollout of its retail strategy starting in North America and enter production.

With the Air finally on display, Lucid now must turn its attention to the next task — production and delivery rollout.

A massive content recommendation merger falls apart, Microsoft reveals the release date and pricing for its flagship game console and Alexa enables phone calls for AT&T customers. This is your Daily Crunch for September 9, 2020.

The big story: Taboola and Outbrain call off their merger

Looks like the two biggest companies in the content recommendation market won’t be teaming up after all.

Taboola and Outbrain announced an $850 million merger last year, but apparently a “challenging cultural fit” and the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the digital ad business have scuttled the deal. There’s been no formal announcement yet, but TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden has confirmed the news with both companies.

“We’ve seen changing conditions in the market due to COVID-19, and we decided to terminate the deal,” an anonymous source told us.

The tech giants

Microsoft confirms $499 Xbox Series X arrives November 10, pre-orders begin September 22 — We mentioned a new, scaled-down Xbox yesterday, but Microsoft announced today that the flagship Xbox Series X is arriving on November 10.

AT&T customers can now make and receive calls via Alexa — Once enabled, customers with supported devices will be able to speak to the Alexa digital assistant to start a phone call or answer an incoming call.

Snapchat’s new Lens celebrates tomorrow’s NFL kickoff — Snap and the NFL recently announced a multi-year extension to their content partnership.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Yubico unveils its latest YubiKey 5C NFC security key, priced at $55 — The company says this new security key offers the strongest defenses against some of the most common cyberattacks.

Xometry raises $75M Series E to expand custom manufacturing marketplace — The company has built an online marketplace where businesses can find manufacturers across the world with excess capacity to build whatever they need.

Rick Moranis breaks acting hiatus for 30 seconds to launch Mint’s $30 a month unlimited plan — Why? Who knows!

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

As direct listing looms, Palantir insiders are accelerating stock sales — Danny Crichton examines how insiders perceive Palantir’s value.

Shift’s George Arison shares 6 tips for taking your company public via a SPAC — Shift has nearly completed the SPAC process.

Slack’s earnings detail how COVID-19 is both a help and a hindrance to cloud growth — Alex Wilhelm looks at Slack’s latest numbers.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Watch the first trailer for the insanely star-studded ‘Dune’ — Sandworms, ahoy!

Learn how to build a service marketplace from the CTOs of Peloton and DoorDash at Disrupt — The connected fitness platform and food delivery app have both built massive service businesses that touch millions of consumers.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.