Category: UNCATEGORIZED

View, a 13-year-old, Milpitas, Calif.-based company that makes dynamic glass designed to reduce heat and glare as well as lessen eyestrain, has cut an unknown number of employees, including at a plant in Olive Branch, Mississippi. One employee of several years, an IT manager, wrote on LinkedIn that he was laid off owing to the pandemic. Another employee of the company for the better part of decade — an engineer and project manager — wrote on LinkedIn that he has also been laid off and that the company “really cleaned house.”

This individual added that several other “long timers” had also lost their jobs.

Efforts to reach these former View employees was unsuccessful this afternoon. A request for help from the company’s head of communications also went unreturned today.

The company — which touts its glass as a way for real estate owners to attract commercial tenants as well to improve energy consumption by up to 20 percent —  is among a large stable of companies that raised enormous amounts of capital from SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

The funding it was provided by outfit — $1.1 billion in early November 2018 — was notable at the time given that it included no other investors.

The round was also announced at a trying time for the Vision Fund —  roughly on month after the journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Instabul, Turkey, drawing unwanted scrutiny to both Saudi Arabia and to the Vision Fund. As many industry watchers will know, the Japanese conglomerate had raised nearly half the capital for its massive Vision Fund from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Though no one in Silicon Valley was willing to speak up at the time about the episode, SoftBank’s checks were presumably seen as radioactive in that moment to at least some founders.

View has been selling its glass to building owners and commercial real estate developers. On its site, it features a testimonial from a 14-person development firm in Utah named Cottonwood Partners, for example.

Real estate, as with transportation and fintech, has been an apparent area of interest for SoftBank, whose other portfolio companies include Katerra, a tech-driven construction company that had run into troubles well before this year, according to several reports by The Information, and Opendoor, the home-buying company that earlier today announced that it was laying off 35 percent of its employees.

Though the construction industry has been hard hit since the coronavirus hit the U.S. market and largely shut the nation down, it is still operating in some pockets, saved by the belief in some states and cities that certain projects constitute essential business.

Earlier this month, for example, crews were at work on apartment buildings just south of West Hollywood. Asked by the New York Times to explain, officials agreed the work was essential, while a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department called what was happening “uncharted territory for all of us.”

Before SoftBank came onto the scene, View had raised about $800 million over the years, including from Corning, Madrone Capital Partners, TIAA Investments and a New Zealand sovereign wealth fund.

At the time it was announced, CEO Rao Mulpuri told Bloomberg that the deal predated Khashoggi’s murder, telling the outlet, “Obviously, what happened in the region there is quite concerning. But, at the same time, we’ve now built a relationship of getting to know SoftBank over a long period of time, and we are quite comfortable moving forward with this investment.”

Heading into its current layoff, which was announced to employees yesterday, View had roughly 600 employees, according to LinkedIn.

View, a 13-year-old, Milpitas, Calif.-based company that makes dynamic glass designed to reduce heat and glare as well as lessen eyestrain, has cut an unknown number of employees, including at a plant in Olive Branch, Mississippi. One employee of several years, an IT manager, wrote on LinkedIn that he was laid off owing to the pandemic. Another employee of the company for the better part of decade — an engineer and project manager — wrote on LinkedIn that he has also been laid off and that the company “really cleaned house.”

This individual added that several other “long timers” had also lost their jobs.

Efforts to reach these former View employees was unsuccessful this afternoon. A request for help from the company’s head of communications also went unreturned today.

The company — which touts its glass as a way for real estate owners to attract commercial tenants as well to improve energy consumption by up to 20 percent —  is among a large stable of companies that raised enormous amounts of capital from SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

The funding it was provided by outfit — $1.1 billion in early November 2018 — was notable at the time given that it included no other investors.

The round was also announced at a trying time for the Vision Fund —  roughly on month after the journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Instabul, Turkey, drawing unwanted scrutiny to both Saudi Arabia and to the Vision Fund. As many industry watchers will know, the Japanese conglomerate had raised nearly half the capital for its massive Vision Fund from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Though no one in Silicon Valley was willing to speak up at the time about the episode, SoftBank’s checks were presumably seen as radioactive in that moment to at least some founders.

View has been selling its glass to building owners and commercial real estate developers. On its site, it features a testimonial from a 14-person development firm in Utah named Cottonwood Partners, for example.

Real estate, as with transportation and fintech, has been an apparent area of interest for SoftBank, whose other portfolio companies include Katerra, a tech-driven construction company that had run into troubles well before this year, according to several reports by The Information, and Opendoor, the home-buying company that earlier today announced that it was laying off 35 percent of its employees.

Though the construction industry has been hard hit since the coronavirus hit the U.S. market and largely shut the nation down, it is still operating in some pockets, saved by the belief in some states and cities that certain projects constitute essential business.

Earlier this month, for example, crews were at work on apartment buildings just south of West Hollywood. Asked by the New York Times to explain, officials agreed the work was essential, while a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department called what was happening “uncharted territory for all of us.”

Before SoftBank came onto the scene, View had raised about $800 million over the years, including from Corning, Madrone Capital Partners, TIAA Investments and a New Zealand sovereign wealth fund.

At the time it was announced, CEO Rao Mulpuri told Bloomberg that the deal predated Khashoggi’s murder, telling the outlet, “Obviously, what happened in the region there is quite concerning. But, at the same time, we’ve now built a relationship of getting to know SoftBank over a long period of time, and we are quite comfortable moving forward with this investment.”

Heading into its current layoff, which was announced to employees yesterday, View had roughly 600 employees, according to LinkedIn.

Previse, a fintech focused on helping suppliers get faster payment, announced that it has raised $11 million in new funding led by Reefknot Investments and Mastercard. Returning investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Hambro Perks and Augmentum Fintech also participated.

Founded in 2016, Previse says it currently processes about 100,000 invoices a day, and its goal is to handle payments for five million suppliers within the next five years.

This round brings Previse’s total raised so far to more than $21.8 million and will be used to expand its InstantPay product to more corporate buyers around the world. Previse is taking part in Mastercard’s Start Path accelerator program. Reefknot was founded by Temasek Holdings and Kuehne + Nagel last year to invest in logistics and supply chain startups.

Paul Christensen, the founder and CEO of Previse, told TechCrunch that InstantPay allows corporate buyers to send quick payments to suppliers by using machine-learning based technology to analyze historical data and predict which invoices can be paid immediately, and which ones are potentially higher risk and need to be checked manually.

Traditional invoice payment methods used by large buyers can take up to months to complete, putting pressure on the cash flow of small- to medium-sized businesses. Christensen said this is due to a combination of corporate policy, including the terms and conditions of a sale, and the amount of administrative tasks, including inputting, checking and approving invoices, that need to be performed. InstantPay can reduce that timeframe down to a day.

Rapid payment to suppliers is even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.

“The pandemic has put a huge strain on the working capital of companies, large and small, all over the world, causing a severe cash crunch. Previse’s platform can unlock working capital, meaning that the tens of thousands of SME suppliers who supply to a large corporate chain can be paid on day one, rather than having to wait weeks or months,” he said.

“This is critical now when supply chains have been disrupted, but it will also be critical when we come out the other side and there is a demand surge and supplier supplies have to fulfill large orders.”

Previse, a fintech focused on helping suppliers get faster payment, announced that it has raised $11 million in new funding led by Reefknot Investments and Mastercard. Returning investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Hambro Perks and Augmentum Fintech also participated.

Founded in 2016, Previse says it currently processes about 100,000 invoices a day, and its goal is to handle payments for five million suppliers within the next five years.

This round brings Previse’s total raised so far to more than $21.8 million and will be used to expand its InstantPay product to more corporate buyers around the world. Previse is taking part in Mastercard’s Start Path accelerator program. Reefknot was founded by Temasek Holdings and Kuehne + Nagel last year to invest in logistics and supply chain startups.

Paul Christensen, the founder and CEO of Previse, told TechCrunch that InstantPay allows corporate buyers to send quick payments to suppliers by using machine-learning based technology to analyze historical data and predict which invoices can be paid immediately, and which ones are potentially higher risk and need to be checked manually.

Traditional invoice payment methods used by large buyers can take up to months to complete, putting pressure on the cash flow of small- to medium-sized businesses. Christensen said this is due to a combination of corporate policy, including the terms and conditions of a sale, and the amount of administrative tasks, including inputting, checking and approving invoices, that need to be performed. InstantPay can reduce that timeframe down to a day.

Rapid payment to suppliers is even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.

“The pandemic has put a huge strain on the working capital of companies, large and small, all over the world, causing a severe cash crunch. Previse’s platform can unlock working capital, meaning that the tens of thousands of SME suppliers who supply to a large corporate chain can be paid on day one, rather than having to wait weeks or months,” he said.

“This is critical now when supply chains have been disrupted, but it will also be critical when we come out the other side and there is a demand surge and supplier supplies have to fulfill large orders.”

Silicon Valley mainstay the Mayfield Fund has raised $750 million across two new funds, the firm said today.

The venture capital firm said its Mayfield XVI will continue to invest in early-stage companies, while its Mayfield Select II will invest in later-stage rounds of breakout portfolio companies. One difference in the new Select fund will be its ability to invest in growth-stage companies outside of its portfolio. 

Navin Chaddha

In its blog post announcing the new funds, Mayfield managing partner Navin Chaddha recalled the timing of its fund XIII, raised in September 2008 right after the market crash.

In the wake of the crisis, Chaddha writes, Mayfield stuck to core principles. The firm decided not to dramatically increase the size of its investment vehicles (unlike some of its peers, which now hold several billion under management in current funds), and kept to a four-year fundraising cycle.

Kleiner Perkins, by contrast, went through a $600 million investment vehicle in about a year and went back out to market to raise another fund shortly thereafter.

“We stuck to our conviction of staying as an early-stage venture investor over four subsequent funds even as the venture industry was shifting. We went deeper into domains we were already experts in vs. following shiny new objects. We raised funds at a measured pace of every four years and built a team of investors who were company builders,” Chaddha wrote.

To date, Mayfield has backed a slew of companies that have gone on to successful exits, including Lyft, Marketo, ServiceMax and SolarCity — all deals that came out of the 2008 financial crisis and its subsequent funds. Current portfolio companies, like the CRISPR-focused biotech company Mammoth Biosciences and retail investments like PoshMark, show that the firm hasn’t lost its luster for picking new deals.

The secret to the firm’s continued success is its focus on what Chaddha considers to be the “craftsman model” of investors “working closely with a handful of entrepreneurs.”

“As many of our peers raised mega-funds, it took courage and discipline for us to stay focused rather than follow the crowd. We raised a similar size fund every four years and invested in thirty companies per fund. We primarily led Series A investments and were comfortable with the fact that the companies we invested in will evolve,” Chaddha wrote.

So what’s next for the venerable firm as it heads into its latest fund? Chaddha flags biology as technology; human-centered artificial intelligence; the resurgence of chip design; the future of work; privacy and security; and next-generation consumer brands as areas where Mayfield will look to commit capital.

Some big changes are underway for Medopad, a startup that builds software for medical practitioners to monitor patients remotely based on digital biomarkers — measurable indicators of the progression of illnesses, diseases or overall health that are picked up not with blood samples or in-doctor visits but using apps and wearables.

The company is rebranding to Huma and appointing its first chairman, the former UK Health Minister Alan Milburn. And alongside that, Huma is announcing the acquisition of two AI startups to expand the scope of its business: the mental health-focused BioBeats, and cardiovascular specialist Tarilian Laser Technologies (TLT).

The financial terms of the deals have not been disclosed but we understand BioBeats was around a $10 million deal, and TLT includes software assets, a number of patents, and a new hardware device that measures blood pressure continuously but in a non-invasive way that is currently awaiting FDA approval.

Both will help Huma expand its biomarker monitoring to new areas of coverage (specifically mental-health related biomarkers, and all of the indicators related to blood pressure), and extend into areas around preventative, proactive human health, alongside monitoring for chronic illnesses, diseases and other conditions.

Huma has built a strong network of partnerships to expand its reach and scope. They include working with Tencent on a trial to measure the progress of Parkinson’s just by monitoring you as you speak into the camera on your smartphone. And with pharmaceutical giant Janssen, it’s working on a way to measure Alzheimer’s based on the sound of your voice. It’s also collaborating closely with leading research hospitals like Kings and Barts in London and Johns Hopkins in the US to develop other biomarker tests.

But when it comes to building some of the early work, it would take years for Huma to build up knowledge and teams that would be on par with what BioBeats and TLT have built: hence the move to acquire.

That’s a pattern that the startup plans to follow.

Huma is currently working on closing a fundraise in the coming weeks and months that’s targeted to be one of the biggest ever in the UK health technology sector (the high water mark is Babylon Health, which last year raised $550 million).

The fundraise will be to make more acquisitions, not to run the business itself: Huma still has more money in the bank than it last raised (it announced a $25 million round led by Bayer last November), and has, according to CEO and founder Dan Vahdat, already hit its revenue target for the whole year (and it’s only April).

Part of that strong business funnel is due to the novel coronavirus. Huma announced a COVID-19 tracker at the end of March that aims to help keep hospitals from overflowing. People with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 that are not serious enough to land them in the hospital are instead monitored closely using measurements taken using smartphones, watches and other devices. If their biomarkers indicate that their illness may be taking a turn for the worse, they can subsequently be ordered to come into the hospital before the case becomes a dire one.

At a time when many health systems around the world are being stretched to breaking point with the influx of coronavirus cases, this is one way to try to triage the traffic, and that’s struck a chord in many places. Huma is due to announce its first official deals for the service in multiple countries in the coming weeks, Vahdat said.

“I’m pleased to work with Huma to help transform the health sector by developing a new understanding of the human body through digital biomarkers,” said Milburn in a statement. “We’re at the very early stages of what could be breakthroughs in how we understand health, diagnose and treat illnesses and Huma could become a true leader in this promising new area for life sciences, innovation partners and healthcare.”

Glitch is building a premium tier for power users of its user-created micro apps.

The rather eccentric developer tools platform launched in 2017, combining a coding workspace with a community of users sharing and customizing web apps. With more than 5 million apps and bots now on its platform, the team is launching paid subscriptions today, eliminating some of the barriers that plagued coders that were pushing the platform’s limits.

The $10 per month (or $96 annually) service is geared towards juicing the service for power users, allowing paid users to choose five of their apps to run continually, stripping rate limits from all of their apps, doubling the free tier disk space allotment to 400MB and quadrupling memory to 2GB. The service is all designed around giving power users something worth paying for.

Apps on the platform are bite-sized and generally pretty limited in scope, but can fulfill customized tasks that other platforms can’t. Apps exist for tracking your focus, visualizing COVID-19 data, or — on the sillier side — comparing turnip prices in Animal Crossing with your friends.

CEO Anil Dash tells TechCrunch he sees the new subscription plan as a step further towards letting its users create deeply unique and useful tools that might not have been created otherwise. Dash says the company’s offering represents “a more consumerized version of cloud computing.”

“[Glitch] eliminates all the barriers between getting your idea out in the world,” Dash says. “It’s a different view of what coders are and how much better the internet is when it’s made by people rather than the five big companies people talk about.”

The New York company already has built a Teams product in free beta, though paid plans are also on the horizon, the company says. The firm raised a $30 million Series A this past July from Tiger Global.

Last fall we launched a series of new benefits for annual and 2-year Extra Crunch members called Partner Perks. The idea with the Partner Perks program was to find products or services that could benefit our readers, and then collaborate with the makers of the products to offer up discounts to our members. Since many of our members are building companies from scratch on tight budgets, we felt that the Partner Perks program would be a great way for our community to save a few bucks on products and services that are in high demand.

Now we are making it easier for readers to find and use the Partner Perks by parking everything on a single page on the site (this one). Feel free to browse the offerings and claim the discounts. If you are already a subscriber, this is a great page to bookmark for future reference.

Here’s a full list of the Partner Perks and how to claim each deal.

Most of NASA’s facilities around the country have been shut down, and while some teams can work (and drive a Mars rover) from home, others are knuckling down to get some crucial missions out the door — or face a half-billion dollar late fee, said agency head Jim Bridenstine.

In an interview with the Planetary Society published today, Bridenstine discussed a variety of interesting topics, but none more immediately salient than the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on NASA’s work.

With projects tentatively scheduled for as long as a decade out, there’s plenty of wiggle room. But not every mission has that luxury, he explained, and the two that have been deemed truly essential — and therefore warranting NASA employees actually coming in to work — are the Commercial Crew program and the Mars Perseverance rover (formerly known as Mars 2020 and recently renamed in a very cute contest).

Commercial Crew has SpaceX and Boeing competing to provide an American-built alternative to the Soyuz spacecraft we’ve been using exclusively to sent astronauts to the International Space Station since we retired the last Space Shuttle in 2011.

“That’s an essential function really for one reason. We have to make sure that we have access to the International Space Station, which is a $100 billion investment by the American taxpayer,” Bridenstine said. “So that mission is going forward.”

Going forward as early as next month, in fact, a date that has remained remarkably solid during a tough time for industries around the world, and in a program that has seen any number of speculative deadlines come and go.

Later in the interview he clarified that the Crew Dragon and Starliner capsules are not meant to be complete and permanent replacements for the Soyuz and Russian launch vehicles, but an alternative to make sure access is assured and the relationship to Russia isn’t one of dependency. Late last year a Soyuz failure nearly led to the ISS being empty for the first time ever, but quick work by investigators got things going again quickly. Having multiple vehicles ready to go would reduce the likelihood of that kind of crisis occurring.

The second mission that has been deemed essential is the next Mars rover, Perseverance.

“That’s mission essential for one reason and that is that we have a very limited launch window to go to Mars,” explained Bridenstine.

Unlike satellites going to orbit or even missions to the Moon, which have long and frequent launch windows, spacecraft going to Mars must be launched at times when our two planets are at very specific points in their orbit, in order to have shorter travel time and arrive precisely at the location planned. Interplanetary travel is a very exact science, and failing to get Perseverance out the door on time (July 17 in this case) would be disastrous.

“If we miss that launch window, it will cost us upwards of $500 million over the course of two years, if not wreck the mission altogether, which we do not want to have happen,” Bridenstine said.

He was careful to add that this would not be accomplished at the cost of NASA employees’ health.

They’re going to work with as many precautions as we can attain. We’re spreading the people apart. We’re putting people on different shifts, so they’re not at work at the same time. And then using PPE [personal protective equipment] when and where appropriate.

Look, if there’s anybody in the NASA workforce that doesn’t feel comfortable doing what they’re doing, we want them to say so and we want them to feel free to do something else. We wanna help them in fact do something else. We don’t want anybody to do anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Our employees are the number one highest priority of the agency and we want everybody to feel safe in this very unique moment in time. And so we’re giving people a lot of latitude so that they feel safe and there will be no judgment on them at all.

As for projects that may face delays after all, Bridenstine admitted that the agency’s next-generation launch vehicle, the Space Launch System or SLS, is in “a tough spot.” Its first test, Artemis I, is scheduled for the end of 2021 but may very well slip to 2022, he admitted. But he noted that Artemis II, the SLS’s second launch, is being prepared for independently and isn’t highly dependent on the timing of the first.

The ambitious plan to put boots on the moon in 2024 was already considered something of a long shot, and the pandemic is making it look significantly longer. But at least in the short term, NASA’s truly critical operations are continuing and this spring and summer will, if all goes well (and let us hope it does), host successful and historic missions.

You can read or listen to the full interview with Bridenstine on Planetary’s podcast here.

“Tigertail,” a new film on Netflix, weaves together the past and the present to tell the life story of Pin-Jui, who we first meet as a Taiwanese boy dreaming of moving to America.

We soon see that he eventually made it to New York. In the present-day sequences, he struggles to connect with his adult daughter Angela, while also reflecting on his past — a past illustrated in vibrant flashbacks that show his hardscrabble childhood, followed by blossoming romance.

In many ways, “Tigertail” marks a more expansive, less funny treatment of the material that writer-director Alan Yang previously covered in an episode of “Master of None,” one that was all about adult children trying to understand their immigrant parents.

Not everything benefits from the feature-length treatment. The contemporary storyline can feel a bit repetitive — particularly in contrast with the richer, more eventful flashbacks — with one montage after another of Pin-Jui and Angela staring glumly into the distance. But the performances are compelling and the relationships feel believably strained.

And it’s rich thematic territory, prompting your Original Content podcast hosts to argue about the value of parental sacrifice, and to reflect on their own family relationships.

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

And if you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:44 “Tigertail” review (mild spoilers)
23:01 “Tigertail” spoiler discussion
47:33 Quibi update