Category: UNCATEGORIZED

It seems the pandemic has forced the business world to digitize faster, and the industrial sector is no different. Parsable, a San Francisco startup that is helping digitize industrial front line workers, announced a $60 million Series D today.

Activate Capital and Glade Brook Capital Partners co-led the round. They got help from new investors Alumni Ventures Group, Cisco Investments, Downing Ventures, Evolv Ventures and Princeville Capital along with existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Future Fund, B37 Ventures, Honeywell and Saudi Aramco. Today’s money brings the total raised to over $133 million, according to the company.

As I wrote at the time of the company’s $40 million Series C in 2018, “Parsable has developed a Connected Worker platform to help bring high tech solutions to deskless industrial workers who have been working mostly with paper-based processes.”

CEO Lawrence Whittle says that while the pandemic has shut some factories, and reduced overall worker headcount, it has still led to increased usage on the platform of companies whose products are considered essential services. What’s more, Parsable’s ability to deal with information on an individual mobile device or laptop means that in many cases, workers can stay separated and not share computers on the factory floor, making the process safer.

“Fortunately, the majority of our focus is in what’s often deemed as essential industries — so consumer packaged goods (CPG), food, beverage, agriculture, and related industries such as paper and packaging. Those markets interestingly enough, predominantly because of consumer demand continue to operate pretty successfully from a demand perspective during this COVID period,” Whittle told TechCrunch.

While the company would not give specific growth numbers, they shared that registered users grew 11x and the number of deployed sites tripled year over year. What’s more, they have users in over 100 countries encompassing 14 languages.

With the money, the company wants to expand internationally into Asia, EMEA and Latin America. The startup has 120 employees, but plans to hire for essential needs over the next several months, preferring to be conservative and seeing where the pandemic takes the economy in the coming months.

Whittle points out that the diversity of its user base, and the desire to expand into other regions demands that they have a more diverse employee base, even while it’s a clear ethical consideration, as well.

“When you’re serving customers in over 100 countries, and you provide a product in in 14 languages, [having] diversity and inclusion is to some extent a given. What we’re doing as a company […] is taking every opportunity to further lean into that and that’s one of the leading lights of our of our business,” Whittle said.

Parsable launched in 2013. It took a few years to build the product. Today, customers include Georgia-Pacific, Henkel and Shell.

With a slew of partnerships with large pharmaceutical companies under its belt and the successful spin out of at least one new company, Atomwise has already proved the value of its machine learning platform for discovering and commercializing potential small molecule therapies for a host of conditions.

Now the company has raised $123 million in new funding to accelerate its business.

“Scaling the technology and scaling the team and scaling what we’ve been doing with it,” says chief executive officer Abe Heifets when asked about what comes next for the eight year old business.

Atomwise has already signed contracts worth $5.5 billion with corporate partners that include Eli Lilly & Co., Bayer, Hansoh Pharmaceuticals, and Bridge Biotherapeutics. Smaller, earlier stage companies like StemoniX and SEngine Precision Medicine are also using Atomwise’s tech.

Now the company will look to capture more of the value of drug discovery for itself, looking to develop and commercialize its discoveries by taking over more of the development process and working with manufacturers at a later stage, according to Heifets.

Atomwise tipped its new strategy last year when it announced a partnership with Velocity Drug Development and a $14.5 million investment to create x-37, a spinoff that’s developing small molecule therapies for endodermal cancers, which include cancers of the liver, pancreas, colon, stomach, and bladder.

“We have something like 750 projects running today around the world,” says Heifets. “These comprise more than 600 unique targets and that’s with a vast range of partnerships.”

The power of Atomwise’s drug discovery platform is its ability to harness machine learning to structure new proteins that have never existed — and ensure that they’re able to reach precise target receptors to accomplish a desired task.

Here, the x-37 spinoff is especially illustrative. One line of research the company is conducting into molecules that can target the PIM3 protein receptor. If a drug can block PIM3, it can kill cancerous endodermal cells, according to Heifets. However, if the molecules bind to another, similar target, PIM1, the therapy can cause heart attacks and kill patients.

“This is a challenge and empirically was considered undruggable,” says Heifets. Atomwise’s company screened 11 billion potential molecules against the targets to come up with 500 potential therapies. They’re now working on refining the therapy to bring something to market.

And x-37 is only one of the companies that Atomwise has created to commercialize various new molecules. There’s also Atropos Therapeutics, Theia Biosciences and vAIrus.

Atomwise is far from the only company to think that the application of machine learning technologies to drug discovery is a winning combination. Menten.ai is a company that’s taken the new technology developments one step further and added quantum computing to the mix to come up with new drugs.

“The market opportunity we’re going after is four times the value of the entire pharma industry today,” said Heifets. “Here’s what that’s about. There’s 20,000 human genes and only 4% have ever been drugs. Another 16% have been evidenced. But the opportunity of drugging the undruggable is way bigger than the entire pharma industry.”

Unlocking that opportunity is going to take lots of capital. That’s why B Capital and Sanabil Investments combined to lead Atomwise’s Series B round. It’s also why companies like DCVC, BV, Tencent, Y Combinator, Dolby Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures and two, undisclosed, insurance companies have invested in the company’s latest round.

 with a goal to commercialize high potential candidates through the drug development process. The company plans to continue to expand its work with corporate partners, which currently include major players in the biopharma space including Eli Lilly and Company, Bayer, Hansoh Pharmaceuticals, and Bridge Biotherapeutics, as well as emerging biotechnology companies like StemoniX and SEngine Precision Medicine. Atomwise has signed approximately $5.5 billion in deal value with corporate partners to date.

To date, Atomwise has worked with 750 academic research collaborations addressing over 600 disease targets, to model and screen over 16 billion new molecules for virtual screening. These molecules have generated 17 pending patent applications and several peer-reviewed publications. There are 285 active drug discovery partnerships with researchers at top universities around the world, and recently announced 15 research collaborations with global universities to explore broad-spectrum therapies for COVID-19, targeting 15 unique and novel mechanisms of action.

“New technologies are enabling better and faster R&D for the life science industry,” said Raj Ganguly, co-Founder and Managing Partner at B Capital Group . “The advancements Atomwise has made with its computational drug discovery platform have effectively cut months or even years off of the R&D lifecycle. More importantly, however, they are solving biology problems previously believed to be unsolvable by researchers and delivering that capability to everyone from academics to big pharma. We’re excited to continue to partner with the Atomwise team on its mission to develop new, more effective therapies.”

For lead investor, B Capital, the Atomwise investment is part of a thesis around lowering the cost of care and improving outcomes.

“Companies like Atomwise that are improving the cost curve are in the same vein of bringing therapies to market faster and cheaper. Which means you can improve access and improve costs and address things like rare diseases,” said Adam Seabrook, a principal at B Capital focused on healthcare.

A breeding ground for European entrepreneurs, Berlin has a knack for producing a lot of new startups: the city attracts top international, diverse talent, and it is packed with investors, events and accelerators. Also important: it’s a more affordable place to live and work when compared to many other cities in the region.

Berlin ranked 10th place in the 2019 Global Ecosystem Report, trailing behind only two other European cities: London and Paris. It’s home to unicorns such as N26, Zalando, HelloFresh and pioneers of the scene such as SoundCloud.

Top VCs include Earlybird, Point Nine, Project A, Rocket Internet, Holtzbrinck Ventures and accelerators such as Axel Springer Plug and Play Accelerator, hub:raum and The Family.

To get a sense of how the novel coronavirus has changed the landscape, we asked ten investors to give us an insight into their thinking during these pivotal times:

• Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, founding partner, La Famiglia
• Jorge Fonturbel, associate, Target Global
• Luis Shemtov, founding partner, Lunar Ventures
• Mike Lobanov, founding partner, Target Global
• Ludwig Ensthaler, founding partner, 468 Capital
• Mathias Ockenfels, partner, Speedinvest
• Axel Bard Bringéus, partner, EQT Ventures
• Eckhardt Weber, managing partner, Heal Capital
• Joerg Rheinboldt, managing partner, APX Axel Springer Porsche GmbH & Co. KG
• Christian O. Edler, partner, Christianedler.com

Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, La Famiglia

What trends are you most excited about investing in, generally?
Generally, we believe in a future in which we can leverage technology to free up humans from repetitive and tedious work and to empower them to shift their focus to what they consider more meaningful and impactful: that is creative and interpersonal activities. Thus, we are excited about founders working towards that future and finding answers across multiple industries, such as manufacturing or logistics, across all working-classes, and across different eras – before, during and after COVID.

What’s your latest, most exciting investment?
One of the recent additions of our new fund is Luminovo, a Munich-based company that develops a solution in the electronics industry to reduce the time and resources needed to go from an idea to a market-ready circuit board.

Are there startups that you wish you would see in the industry but don’t? What are some overlooked opportunities right now?
So far, we have only scratched the surface of the kind of efficiency gains that can potentially be achieved – particularly in industries that were considered to be boring and sluggish in the past, such as insurance or logistics. Even small improvements driven by technology can have a massive direct impact on P&L.

What are you looking for in your next investment, in general?
In general, we love to back visionary founders in the seed-stage that tap into giant industries with a high potential for digitization across Europe and the US.

Which areas are either oversaturated or would be too hard to compete in at this point for a new startup? What other types of products/services are you wary or concerned about?
COVID has sprung a myriad of companies in the communication and collaboration space into existence. While we believe in a future in which products and processes will be inherently remote-first, we will see a consolidation of that space that only allows for an oligopolistic market structure similar to how there is only one Zoom and Google Meet in the video communication space today.

How much are you focused on investing in your local ecosystem versus other startup hubs (or everywhere) in general? More than 50%? Less?
We have always considered ourselves as one of the few funds in Germany with a significant investment footprint both in Europe and the US. COVID has emphasized that we are able to invest entirely remotely and hence we will continue and even increase our activities across multiple hubs, such as Munich, Paris, or London.

Which industries in your city and region seem well-positioned to thrive, or not long-term? What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not), which founders?
Germany’s economy relies on wealthy traditional companies sitting on top of capital to be unlocked which new entrants can make use of. This has been true before 2020, and COVID will only demand more and accelerated innovation across these traditional industries ranging from automotive, manufacturing, to the chemical industry.

How should investors in other cities think about the overall investment climate and opportunities in your city?
Berlin and other German cities have consistently proven to develop and grow new leaders across multiple categories such as banking (N26), mobility (Flixbus and Lilium), or data analytics (Celonis). This is certainly driven by a mix of talents coming out of world-class educational institutions, the relative low cost of living in tech hubs, and large local incumbents with massive capital to invest and spend.

Do you expect to see a surge in more founders coming from geographies outside major cities in the years to come, with startup hubs losing people due to the pandemic and lingering concerns, plus the attraction of remote work?
While COVID has accelerated remote-first products and processes, we still believe that people will flock back to startup hubs such as Berlin or Munich, especially given the relatively low cost of living compared to other tech hubs like San Francisco. Nevertheless, we will continue to see an increasing number of companies scattered across multiple time zones building products that are inherently remote first, regardless where the general work environment will shift into.

Which industry segments that you invest in look weaker or more exposed to potential shifts in consumer and business behavior because of COVID-19? What are the opportunities startups may be able to tap into during these unprecedented times?
We are lucky in that our investment focus has been on sector verticals such as Logistics, Supply chain, manufacturing or the future of work, which have all captured significant tailwind from Covid.

How has COVID-19 impacted your investment strategy? What are the biggest worries of the founders in your portfolio? What is your advice to startups in your portfolio right now?
While our investment strategy on a high level will not change, we are putting longer sales cycles into consideration as potential customers of our portfolio companies now are focusing on capital efficiency which also holds true for our founders. Thus, we advise them to focus on extending the runway both by increasing capital efficiency as well as taking on additional funding.

Are you seeing “green shoots” regarding revenue growth, retention or other momentum in your portfolio as they adapt to the pandemic?
As our economy is still in the midst of dealing with the effects of COVID, it is too early to tell, but we definitely see positive indications driven by efforts of portfolio companies that could adapt quickly and shipped features catered to the current needs. One example is Personio, which extended their HR offerings with features that solve the need of customers who shifted to short-time work.

What is a moment that has given you hope in the last month or so? This can be professional, personal or a mix of the two.
What gave me hope was the cohesion of the German economy that fought together for solutions and support during these difficult times. One positive example was the German Startup Association that helped achieve additional governmental financial aid for German SMEs.

Any other thoughts you want to share with TechCrunch readers?
Similar to how the past financial crisis allowed companies such as Stripe or Shopify to become ubiquitous parts of our daily life, these unprecedented times now will also give birth to new forms and shapes in which new ideas will grow into large businesses and we are excited to partner up with founders willing to take a bet on that future.

Jorge Fonturbel, Target Global

Civil rights campaigners in the UK have won a legal challenge to South Wales Police’s (SWP) use of facial recognition technology. The win on appeal is being hailed as a “world-first” victory in the fight against the use of an “oppressive surveillance tool”, as human rights group Liberty puts it.

However the police force does not intend to appeal the ruling — and has said it remains committed to “careful” use of the tech.

The back story here is SWP has been trialing automated facial recognition (AFR) technology since 2017, deploying a system known as AFR Locate on around 50 occasions between May 2017 and April 2019 at a variety of public events in Wales.

The force has used the technology in conjunction with watchlists of between 400-800 people — which included persons wanted on warrants; persons who had escaped from custody; persons suspected of having committed crimes; persons who may be in need of protection; vulnerable persons; persons of possible interest to it for intelligence purposes; and persons whose presence at a particular event causes particular concern, per a press summary issued by the appeals court.

A challenge was brought to SWP’s use of AFR by a Cardiff-based civil liberties campaigner, called Edward Bridges, with support from Liberty . Bridges was in the vicinity of two deployments of AFR Locate — first on December 21, 2017 in Cardiff city centre and again on March 27, 2018 at the Defence Procurement, Research, Technology and Exportability Exhibition taking place in the city — and while he was not himself included on a force watchlist he contends that given his proximity to the cameras his image was recorded by the system, even if deleted almost immediately after.

The human rights implications of warrantless processing of sensitive personal data by the police is the core issue in the case. The issue of bias risks that can flow from automating identity decisions is another key consideration.

Bridges initially brought a claim for judicial review on the basis that AFR was not compatible with the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, data protection legislation, and the Public Sector Equality Duty (“PSED”) under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.

The divisional court dismissed his appeal on all grounds last September. He then appealed on five grounds — and has succeeded on three under today’s unanimous court of appeal decision.

The court judged that the legal framework and policies used by SWP did not provide clear guidance on where AFR Locate could be used and who could be put on a watchlist — finding too broad a discretion was afforded to police officers to meet the standard required by Article 8(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

It also found that an inadequate data protection impact assessment was carried out, given SWP had written the document on the basis of no infringement of Article 8, meaning the force had failed to comply with the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018.

The court also judged the force wrong to hold that it had complied with the PSED — because it had not taken reasonable steps to make enquiries about whether the AFR Locate software contained bias on racial or sex grounds. (Though the court noted there was no clear evidence the tool was so biased.)

Since Bridges brought the challenge London’s Met police has gone ahead and switched on operational use of facial recognition technology — flipping the switch at the start of this year. Although in its case a private company (NEC) is operating the system.

At the time of the Met announcement, Liberty branded the move “dangerous, oppressive and completely unjustified”. In a press release today it suggests the Met deployment may be unlawful for similar reasons as the SWP’s use of the tech — citing a review the force carried out. Civil liberties campaigners, AI ethicists and privacy experts have all accused the Met of ignoring the findings of an independent report which concluded it had failed to consider human rights impacts.

Commenting on today’s appeals court ruling in a statement, Liberty lawyer Megan Goulding said: “This judgment is a major victory in the fight against discriminatory and oppressive facial recognition. The Court has agreed that this dystopian surveillance tool violates our rights and threatens our liberties. Facial recognition discriminates against people of colour, and it is absolutely right that the Court found that South Wales Police had failed in their duty to investigate and avoid discrimination.

“It is time for the Government to recognise the serious dangers of this intrusive technology. Facial recognition is a threat to our freedom — it needs to be banned.”

In another supporting statement, Bridges added: “I’m delighted that the Court has agreed that facial recognition clearly threatens our rights. This technology is an intrusive and discriminatory mass surveillance tool. For three years now South Wales Police has been using it against hundreds of thousands of us, without our consent and often without our knowledge. We should all be able to use our public spaces without being subjected to oppressive surveillance.”

However it’s important to note that he did not win his appeal on all grounds.

Notably the court held that the earlier court had correctly conducted a weighing exercise to determine whether the police force’s use of AFR was a proportionate interference with human rights law, when it considered “the actual and anticipated benefits” of AFR Locate vs the impact of the AFR deployment on Bridges — and decided that the benefits were potentially great, while the individual impact was minor, hence holding that the use of AFR was proportionate under Article 8(2).

So the UK court does not appear to have closed the door on police use of facial recognition technology entirely.

Indeed, it’s signalled that individual rights impacts can be balanced against a ‘greater good’ potential benefit — so the ruling looks more like it’s defining how such intrusive technology can be used lawfully. (And it’s notable that SWP has said it’s “completely committed” to the “careful development and deployment” of AFR, via BBC.)

The ruling does make it clear that any such deployments need to be more tightly bounded than the SWP application to comply with human rights law. But it has not said police use of facial recognition is inherently unlawful.

Forces also cannot ignore equality requirements by making use of such technology — there’s an obligation, per the ruling, to take steps to assess whether automated facial recognition carries a risk of bias.

Given bias problems that have been identified with such systems that may prove the bigger blocker to continued police use of this flavor of AI.

Digital entertainment titan Tencent continues to drum up its music ambitions. On Tuesday, Tencent Music Entertainment, majority-owned by Tencent with a 55.6% stake, announced establishing a new joint label with its licensing partner Universal Music Group to discover, develop and promote Chinese artists domestically and to the world.

TME, which spun off from Tencent and went public in the U.S. in 2018, commands the lion’s share of China’s music streaming industry through three apps — QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo. It also operates other music-related businesses, including live events and a popular karaoke app.

651 million users streamed music through TME services in the second quarter, but only 47.1 million were paid subscribers, signaling a much lower conversion rate compared to Spotify, which did a share swap with TME in 2017.

Licensing fees take up a big chunk of streaming services’ expenses. Cultivating its own artists will give TME more control over music content and eventually reduce dependence on content IP owners.

TME hopes that the new label will enable it to “produce new music loved by the younger demographic, bringing in iconic music stars, innovative music works, and more breakthrough music genres to the global music market, ultimately providing music fans in China and around the world with a spectacular music entertainment experience,” said TC Pan, the group’s vice president of content cooperation.

Break with precedent

As part of the announcement, TME also said it signed a multi-year extension of licensing agreement with UMG.

Concurrent with the news is, noticeably, UMG’s licensing deal with TME’s Chinese rival NetEase Cloud Music. This departs from the precedent of TME’s monopoly on streaming Western mainstream music in China. For years, TME had spent heavily on exclusive rights from UMG, Warner Music and Sony Music Entertainment. It further deepened ties with WMG and SME, which bought shares of TME when it went public.

The setup triggered an antitrust investigation into TME last year. It forced TME’s domestic rivals including NetEase to sublicense its catalogs, often at above-market rates, and indirectly prompted smaller players to develop their own artists. NetEase, for instance, is known for developing indie musicians.

NetEase CEO William Ding has been a critic of exclusive music rights. In a February analyst call, he labeled the practice ‘unfair and unreasonable’ and called for an end to it. He achieved his goal.

Speaking on NetEase’s latest licensing tie-up with UMG, Ding remarked: “The partnership further strengthens NetEase Cloud Music’s position as a go-to platform for high-quality international music and marks a great step forward for China’s music industry as a whole.”

Vitesse, the London-based fintech that offers real-time cross-border payments for businesses, has raised £6.6 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from existing backers including Hoxton Ventures and various angel investors.

The company says the new investment will be used for growth, including building out its sales and marketing functions, and expanding Vitesse’s footprint in the U.S. market. It will also further invest in the “reach and speed” of its banking capabilities in order to meet customer demand as the fintech expands globally.

Founded in 2014 by Phillip McGriskin and Paul Townsend, who sold their previous fintech to Worldpay, Vitesse operates a global banking and payment network. This sees it able to provide customers with direct access to the domestic payment networks of more than 100 countries in over 60 currencies.

It currently targets businesses in the insurance, payroll and corporate payment space who want to simplify their liquidity management and easily make cross-border payments. Existing customers include Brit Insurance, DXC Technology and Gett. To date, Vitesse has processed over £2.1 billion across almost 2.3 million transactions.

“Cross border payments are still largely inefficient, especially for businesses,” explains McGriskin. “They can be slow and expensive, and tracking and reconciling them and keeping compliant in a constantly shifting regulatory environment can prove difficult”.

To remedy this, Vitesse’s banking network provides access to multiple domestic banking services so that businesses can make payments to other businesses and their customers in the “fastest, and most economical way”. In addition, they gain greater transparency through things like real-time reporting.

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Over on Extra Crunch, early Vitesse backer Hoxton Ventures assess Europe’s early-stage landscape.

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“We are essentially running a globally distributed, local banking network to make payments so our customers don’t have to do it themselves,” says McGriskin. “And then we supply a customer specific view so they can manage their funds most effectively, giving appropriate views right across their business. It saves them a lot of time and money and operational expense”.

In the verticals it currently operates, the fintech typically competes with banks, which, conversely, it also partners with to gain access to those domestic payments networks and to tailor its services to customers.

Explains McGriskin: “The biggest different between us and the banks is technology. We are able to use our technology to provide real-time services with very rich and flexible reporting for our customers. And we can be nimble. But we prefer to work with the banks to optimise services for our customers”.

As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

And so we arrive at the news, put out yesterday in the horse latitudes of summer via joint press statement, that the EU’s executive body and the US Department of Commerce have begun talks toward fashioning a shiny new papier-mâché ‘Privacy Shield’.

“The U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Commission have initiated discussions to evaluate the potential for an enhanced EU-U.S. Privacy Shield framework to comply with the July 16 judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Schrems II case,” the pair write.

The EU-US Privacy Shield, as you may recall, refers to the four-year-old data transfer mechanism which Europe’s top court just sunk with the legal equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

Five years ago the same court carpet-bombed its predecessor, a fifteen-year-old arrangement known — without apparent irony — as ‘Safe Harbor’.

Thousands of companies had been signed up to the Privacy Shield, relying on the claimed legal protection to authorize transatlantic transfers of EU users’ data. The mirage collapsed on cue last month, raising legal questions over continued use of cloud services based in a third country like the US — barring data localization.

Alternative data transfer mechanisms do exist but data controllers wanting to use an alternative tool, like Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), to take EU citizens’ data over the pond are legally required to carry out an assessment of whether US law provides adequate protections. If they cannot guarantee the data’s safety they cannot use SCCs legally either. (And if they go ahead they are risking costly regulatory intervention.)

The fall of Privacy Shield should really have shocked no one, given the warnings, right from the get-go, that it amounted to ‘lipstick on a pig‘. Nothing has changed the fundamental problems identified by the Court of Justice of the EU in 2015 — so carrying on doing bulk data transfers to the US was headed for the same legal slapdown.

The basic problem is the mechanism failed to do what’s claimed on the tin. Which is to say EU people’s personal data is not safe as houses over there because US government security agencies have their hands in tech platforms’ cookie jars (and all the other jars and tubes of the modern Internet), as the 2013 Snowden revelations illustrated beyond doubt.

Nothing since the Snowden disclosures has substantially reworked US surveillance law to make it less incompatible with EU privacy law. President Obama made a few encouraging noises but under Trump the administration has dug in on helping itself to people’s data without a warrant. So it’s closer to a funnel than a shield.

Turns out neither a ‘Shield’ nor a ‘Harbor’ were metaphors grand enough to paper over this fundamental clash of legal priorities, when a regional trading bloc with long standing laws that protect privacy butts up against an alien regime that rubberstamps digital intrusion on national security grounds, with zero concern for privacy.

And so we arrive at the prospect of a new, papier-mâché ‘Privacy Shield II(I)’ — which looks to be the most appropriate metaphor for this latest round of EU-US ‘negotiations’ aimed at cobbling something together to buy more time for data to keep flowing. Bottom line: Even if Commission and US negotiators ink something on paper any claimed legal protections will, without root and branch reform of US surveillance law, sum to another sham headed for a speedy demolition day in court. 

It’s also worth noting that Europe’s judges are likely to step on the gas in this respect, with Privacy Shield standing for just a fraction of the time Safe Harbor hung around. So any Privacy Shield II (III if you count Safe Harbor) would likely get even shorter shrift. 

Not that legal reality and legal clarity is preventing fuzzy press soundbites from being despatched from both sides of the Atlantic, of course.

“The European Union and the United States recognize the vital importance of data protection and the significance of cross-border data transfers to our citizens and economies. We share a commitment to privacy and the rule of law, and to further deepening our economic relationship, and have collaborated on these matters for several decades,” the pair write in a fresh attempt to re-spin a legal car crash disaster that everyone could see coming, years ahead.

“As we face new challenges together, including the recovery of the global economy after the COVID-19 pandemic, our partnership will strengthen data protection and promote greater prosperity for our nearly 800 million citizens on both sides of the Atlantic.”

There’s no doubting the appetite of the Commission and the US Department of Commerce share for data to keep flowing. Both prioritize ‘business as usual’ and lionize their notion of “prosperity”, to the degree where they’re willing to turn a blind eye to rights impacts (including the Commission).

However neither side has demonstrated that it posses the political clout and influence to remake the US’ data industrial complex — which is what’s needed to meaningfully ‘enhance’ Privacy Shield. Instead, we get publicity for their next pantomime.

We’ve reached out to the Commission with questions, lots of questions.

 

Eggtronic, the Italy-founded startup developing power electronics, wireless charging and data over power technology and products, has closed around $10 million in Series A funding.

Backing the company is Rinkelberg Capital — the investment fund from the founders of TomTom — and funds managed by an unnamed investment bank in Milan. It brings the total raised by Eggtronic since 2012 to $17 million.

Eggtronic says the capital will be used to develop a new integrated circuits division at the Eggtronic research laboratories as it continues along its roadmap of more efficient power transformers. Eventually, the company hopes its “capacitive” wireless charging technology will be adopted universally as a new industry standard.

Founded by CEO Igor Spinella out of Italy’s Modena — famous for its balsamic vinegar, opera heritage and Ferrari and Lamborghini sports cars — and now with offices and production facilities in the U.S., Italy, and China, Eggtronic is best-known for its sleek laptop charger and stone-shaped wireless chargers.

However, it also makes various power electronics for other brands, and it is B2B, including producing ICs that other manufacturers can use in their own devices, that is the company’s longer-term and “scalable” future.

Spinella tells me that Eggtronic’s consumer and white-labeled products serve as a direct way of signalling to the market what Eggtronic is capable of and brings in revenue that can be reinvested into R&D to get to a better wireless charging future.

“We were not in California, and working in a capital intensive field almost unknown by Italian investors, we created a pipeline able to validate us as a manufacturing and design company, invest in R&D — [including] being able to create some incredible demos of our most innovating technologies — and scale internationally,” explains Spinella.

Those demos included a capacitive wireless surface able to charge a smartphone in 2015, a TV in 2017, and two laptops connected and charging via data over power in 2020.

“These R&D demos were extremely important milestones to validate our own idea of wireless power and data,” says Spinella. [This includes] total position freedom: you can literally put every device on the desk randomly, charging and connecting them all”.

In addition, the company has been able to demonstrate high power use-cases, and data over power that it claims can hit the same speed of a USB 3 cable but wirelessly.

“This technology has already some industrial customers, the next steps are the creation of ICs and the first retails products based on these ICs, then we can work on the adoption by a leading company,” adds the Eggtronic founder.

In the interim, the company is applying some of the same capacitive technology to power conversion for existing applications, such as Eggtronic’s laptop chargers and power bricks.

“We filed several patents in this area, starting from our capacitive power converters able to remove the transformer, increasing efficiency and reducing size,” says Spinella. “Today we have several architectures that we invented, able to cover most of the typical applications, from some tens of Watts to kW, with our own resonant architectures (capacitive, inductive, and hybrid), with several proprietary control algorithms, our own ‘Power Factor Correction’ circuits, several proprietary ways to shrink the size of the components, to reduce the number of stages in series and so on”.

Meanwhile, Spinella is being advised by consumer electronics veteran Mark Gretton, who is the former CTO of TomTom and helped pioneer mobile computing at Psion. He was introduced to Eggtronic via Rinkelberg Capital, before deciding to invest and join as an advisor.

“I decided to get involved because firstly I liked and respected Igor, but also because unlike so many technology companies that come my way, the Eggtronic proposition was refreshingly simple,” Gretton tells me. “We are going to make something that is an integral part of everyone’s lives better through applying technology. There was no change of behaviour, complex business model, or solution to a problem nobody knew they had. Just designing better power electronics for everyone”.

Google has rolled out a new Search feature in India that enables influencers, entrepreneurs, freelancers, or anyone else who wants to be easily discovered online create a virtual visiting card in what appears to be the company’s latest attempt to bring more of LinkedIn functionalities into its search engine.

The company said it has rolled out the feature, called people cards, first in India because of the special “affinity” people in the world’s second largest internet market have shown toward looking up their own names on the search engine.

Users can create people cards about themselves by signing into their Google account and then looking up their name on Google search. This will prompt a new option called “add me to Search”; tapping which will open a form that asks users to provide a bio of themselves, links to their website and social media profiles, and optionally, their phone number and email address.

Google said the more information one provides, the easier it would be for others to find them on Google Search. The company said that it has put in place several measures to curb potential misuse of the new feature. One of which is limiting the number of people cards one Google account can create — it is set to one.

“We have a number of mechanisms to protect against abusive or spammy content, and if you come across low quality information or a card that you believe was created by an impersonator, you can tap the feedback link to let us know. If you no longer want your people card to appear in Search, you can delete it at any time,” it said.

People card appears to be Google’s latest step to bring more functionalities into Search and thereby eliminate the need of users’ reliance on multiple services. In this case, the feature is likely aimed at LinkedIn. Two years ago, the company added job listing discovery to Search in India after unveiling it in the U.S. in 2017.

“For the millions of influencers, entrepreneurs, prospective employees, self-employed individuals, freelancers, or anyone else out there who wants to be discovered, we hope this new Search feature will help the world find them. For people in India searching on mobile phones, people cards are rolling out in English starting today,” wrote Lauren Clark, Product Manager for Search at Google, in a blog post.

More to follow…

Incomlend, a Singapore-headquartered startup that operates a trading platform to connect exporters and importers with investors, has raised $20 million in a new financing round, it said on Tuesday.

Sequoia India, the India and SEA investment arm of the storied U.S. headquartered venture firm, led the Series A round in four-year-old Incomlend. The CMA CGM Group, one of the world’s largest shipping and logistics firms, also participated in the round.

Incomlend’s invoice trading platform is solving three pain points. Exporters typically get paid weeks or months after shipping goods and lack working capital to move to service other orders until they have received the due. Incomlend says its platform employs AI-powered underwriting technology to enable exporters to receive early payment.

Similarly, the startup says importers on its platform are able to minimize the risk of supply chain disruption and set more favorable payment terms. And investors have found a new alternative asset class to invest in through Incomlend that offers returns in shorter durations.

These roadblocks have prompted traditional banks to pull back from financing such deals, creating a cash crunch among cross-border trading firms worldwide. “This has led to a $1.5 trillion trade finance gap, hitting mid-cap companies hard. This gap has worsened with Covid-19,” the startup said, citing its own research.

“The impact is acute in high-growth Asia where SMEs — which account for more than 95% of all businesses and provide two out of three private-sector jobs in the region — need more financing options to meet their growing demand. Further, low-interest rates in Asia — and negative rates in Europe — are prompting many global investors to seek alternative asset classes,” the startup said.

Morgan Terigi, co-founder and chief executive of Incomlend, said the startup’s trading platform is able to onboard clients and process deals in a more timely fashion with higher flexibility. Incomlend has facilitated over $330 million in financing and covered invoice finance trades across 50 countries to date.

“The massive trade finance gap, combined with declining global interest rates and the high credit quality of Incomlend’s customers, has helped them create a compelling business that helps solve one of the most important challenges faced by global SMEs,” said Abheek Anand, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India, in a statement.

Terigi said the startup will deploy the fresh capital to expand into Europe, Southeast Asia, and North Asia and bulk up its technology stack.