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The cloud kitchen craze has reached Latin America. Food tech startup called Muy landed a fresh $15 million Series B to expand into Mexico and soon Brazil. The service is currently operative in Colombia. 

Muy is a “cloud kitchen meets Chipotle,” says one investor. The company describes itself as a virtual kitchen and smart chef system that uses AI to produce food based on forecasts of demand, which can help to reduce food waste. Muy, translated from Spanish to English as “very,” allows users to place personalized orders in one of Muy’s physical restaurants or through a mobile app. Muy’s concept also exists as 20 physical dining locations offering what it says are quick, fresh and personalized dishes. Founder Jose Calderon says Muy is serving more than 200,000 dishes per month. 

The round was led by Mexico-based investor ALLVP, with previous investor Seaya returning. The $15 million Series B brings MUY’s total funding to $20.5 million.

Calderon is no newcomer to the takeaway experience space. He previously raised $47.7 million for a Colombian online food ordering startup called Domicilios, which he exited to Delivery Hero. 

The explosion of delivery apps has kept options competitive for customers not only in the U.S. but across Latin America. The congested highways of São Paulo, Mexico City, Bogotá and beyond are filled with motor couriers running deliveries with Rappi, UberEATS and the like.  

Calderon notes that cloud kitchens are poised to make on demand ordering and delivery more efficient in these high-density cities due to the long commute times that keep the growing middle class out of their homes for extended periods of 12 hours or more.  

Alternatives like full service restaurants can be prohibitively expensive and time consuming, and traditional casual restaurants don’t meet quality standards. A large part of the market, around 40%, brings a lunch to work, says Calderon. But as disposable income increases, he predicts that more people will avoid cooking at home and will opt for faster and higher-quality options like Muy.

Cloud kitchens – the fully equipped, shared, commercial grade spaces for restaurant owners – have left U.S. investors balking. Journalists have described these virtual spaces as “ghost kitchens” and many have noted the threat they pose to independently owned restaurants. My colleague Danny Crichton wrote that “cloud kitchens are the WeWork for restaurant kitchens,” adding that suddenly sharable kitchen space will lead to bidding wars between these virtual food brands.  

This rhetoric isn’t hindering the rise of cloud kitchens and the services that support them from launching in the U.S. and down to Latin America. According to Calderon, the food service market opportunity in Latin America will reach $270 billion by 2021.

The founder also notes that the Latin America market is highly fragmented; the top 10 chains only hold around 5% of market share in comparison to countries like the U.S. where this figure reaches 24%. “Large players will consolidate and win, and small ones will face pressure,” he says. 

Larger incumbents have already begun to dip into the cloud kitchen opportunity. Earlier this year, Amazon took a $575 million bite into Deliveroo, which opened up its first shared kitchen in Paris in 2018. City Storage Systems, the holding company of CloudKitchens, was backed with a $150 million controlling stake from Uber founder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick. 

For better or worse, delivery apps and cloud kitchens are revolutionizing the way we eat in the U.S., Asia and now in Latin America. The winners among the various global delivery apps, cloud kitchens and controlling incumbents have yet to emerge, but what we do know is that everyone needs to eat lunch.

Facebook has reached a settlement with the UK’s data protection watchdog, the ICO, agreeing to pay in full a £500,000 (~$643k) fine following the latter’s investigating into the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.

As part of the arrangement Facebook has agreed to drop its legal appeal against the penalty. But under the terms of the settlement it has not admitted any liability in relation to paying the fine, which is the maximum possible monetary penalty under the applicable UK data protection law. (The Cambridge Analytica scandal predates Europe’s GDPR framework coming into force.)

Facebook’s appeal against the ICO’s penalty was focused on a claim that there was no evidence that U.K. Facebook users’ data had being mis-used by Cambridge Analytica .

But there’s a further twist here in that the company had secured a win, from a first tier legal tribunal — which held in June that “procedural fairness and allegations of bias” on the part of the ICO should be considered as part of its appeal.

The decision required the ICO to disclose materials relating to its decision-making process regarding the Facebook fine. The ICO, evidently less than keen for its emails to be trawled through, appealed last month. It’s now withdrawing the action as part of the settlement, Facebook having dropped its legal action.

In a statement laying out the bare bones of the settlement reached, the ICO writes: “The Commissioner considers that this agreement best serves the interests of all UK data subjects who are Facebook users. Both Facebook and the ICO are committed to continuing to work to ensure compliance with applicable data protection laws.”

An ICO spokeswoman did not respond to additional questions — telling us it does not have anything further to add than its public statement.

As part of the settlement, the ICO writes that Facebook is being allowed to retain some (unspecified) “documents” that the ICO had disclosed during the appeal process — to use for “other purposes”, including for furthering its own investigation into issues around Cambridge Analytica.

“Parts of this investigation had previously been put on hold at the ICO’s direction and can now resume,” the ICO adds.

Under the terms of the settlement the ICO and Facebook each pay their own legal costs. While the £500k fine is not kept by the ICO but paid to HM Treasury’s consolidated fund.

Commenting in a statement, deputy commissioner, James Dipple-Johnstone, said:

The ICO welcomes the agreement reached with Facebook for the withdrawal of their appeal against our Monetary Penalty Notice and agreement to pay the fine. The ICO’s main concern was that UK citizen data was exposed to a serious risk of harm. Protection of personal information and personal privacy is of fundamental importance, not only for the rights of individuals, but also as we now know, for the preservation of a strong democracy. We are pleased to hear that Facebook has taken, and will continue to take, significant steps to comply with the fundamental principles of data protection. With this strong commitment to protecting people’s personal information and privacy, we expect that Facebook will be able to move forward and learn from the events of this case.

In its own supporting statement, attached to the ICO’s remarks, Harry Kinmonth, director and associate general counsel at Facebook, added:

We are pleased to have reached a settlement with the ICO. As we have said before, we wish we had done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica in 2015. We made major changes to our platform back then, significantly restricting the information which app developers could access. Protecting people’s information and privacy is a top priority for Facebook, and we are continuing to build new controls to help people protect and manage their information. The ICO has stated that it has not discovered evidence that the data of Facebook users in the EU was transferred to Cambridge Analytica by Dr Kogan. However, we look forward to continuing to cooperate with the ICO’s wider and ongoing investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes.

A charitable interpretation of what’s gone on here is that both Facebook and the ICO have reached a stalemate where their interests are better served by taking a quick win that puts the issue to bed, rather than dragging on with legal appeals that might also have raised fresh embarrassments. 

That’s quick wins in terms of PR (a paid fine for the ICO; and drawing a line under the issue for Facebook), as well as (potentially) useful data to further Facebook’s internal investigation of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

We don’t know exactly it’s getting from the ICO’s document stash. But we do know it’s facing a number of lawsuits and legal challenges over the scandal in the US. 

The ICO announced its intention to fine Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal just over a year ago.

In March 2018 it had raided the UK offices of the now defunct data company, after obtaining a warrant, taking away hard drives and computers for analysis. It had also earlier ordered Facebook to withdraw its own investigators from the company’s offices.

Speaking to a UK parliamentary committee a year ago the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, and deputy Dipple-Johnstone, discussed their (then) ongoing investigation of data seized from Cambridge Analytica — saying they believed the Facebook user data-set the company had misappropriated could have been passed to more entities than were publicly known.

The ICO said at that point it was looking into “about half a dozen” entities.

It also told the committee it had evidence that, even as recently as early 2018, Cambridge Analytica might have retained some of the Facebook data — despite having claimed it had deleted everything.

“The follow up was less than robust. And that’s one of the reasons that we fined Facebook £500,000,” Denham also said at the time. 

Some of this evidence will likely be very useful for Facebook as it prepares to defend itself in legal challenges related to Cambridge Analytica. As well as aiding its claimed platform audit — when, in the wake of the scandal, Facebook said it would run a historical app audit and challenge all developers who it determined had downloaded large amounts of user data.

The audit, which it announced in March 2018, apparently remains ongoing.

Particle, a platform for Internet of Things devices, has raised $40 million in its latest round of funding.

Qualcomm Ventures and Energy Impact Partners led the Series C raise, with backing from existing investors including Root Ventures, Bonfire Ventures, Industry Ventures, Spark Capital, Green D Ventures, Counterpart Ventures, and SOSV.

With its latest round of funding, Particle has raised comes to $81 million to date.

The San Francisco-based startup provides the back-end for its customers to bring Internet of Things devices to market without having to shell out for their own software infrastructure. The platform aims to be the all-in-one solution for IoT devices, with encryption and security, as well as data autonomy and scalability.

That means more traditional businesses can buy a fleet of sensors and other monitoring devices, hook them up to their own machines, and use Particle’s infrastructure for monitoring.

That’s a common theme that Particle sees, according to Zach Supalla, the company’s chief executive.

“More and more of our customers are in old-fashioned, even unglamorous, businesses like stormwater management, industrial equipment, shipping, or monitoring any number of compressors, pumps, and valves,” he said in remarks. “These businesses are diverse, but the common thread is that they need to monitor and control mission-critical machines, and we see it as our mission to help bring their machines, vehicles, and devices into the 21st century.”

Particle said the funding round follows “significant growth” for its enterprise platform, seeing 150 percent year-over-year growth in revenue.

The company currently has 100 staff working to support 85 enterprise clients across agriculture, automotive, smart city and other industries.

Ahead of Friday’s launch of Apple’s new streaming service, Apple TV+, the company announced an Apple Music/Apple TV+ bundle deal specifically aimed at making the service more affordable for younger subscribers. According to an Instagram Story published by Hailee Steinfeld, star of Apple TV+’s first potential hit series, Dickison, Apple Music student subscribers will be able to stream Apple TV+ for free.

The announcement was spotted earlier by 9to5Mac.

After a series of Instagram-hosted Q&A’s meant to stoke excitement for the show among her fans, Steinfeld announced the bundle deal by saying that: “for those of you who are students with an Apple Music student subscription, you can now get Apple TV+ for free.”

She noted this means student subscribers will not only be able to watch her new show on Friday, November 1st, they can also check out her new single “Afterlife” with the same subscription.

The Apple Music student subscription is currently $4.99 per month, which provides full access to Apple Music’s catalog of 50 million songs, live local radio stations, curated playlists, and other original content.

An Apple Music-Apple TV+ bundle had been rumored to be in the works, prompting rival Spotify to team up with Hulu to pre-emptively strike with a bundle deal of their own.

But when Apple formally announced its TV streaming service, it instead surprised everyone by offering the service for free with the purchase of a new Apple device.

Of course, students are less likely to upgrade their phones and tablets as often as working adults, given the costs. That means they would have missed out on the “new device” deal, and would have instead had to pay the $4.99 per month subscription for the TV service. 

Meanwhile, Apple TV+’s debut shows have received mixed reviews from critics ahead of launch — with the star-powered The Morning Show featuring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Whitherspoon, and Steve Carell even being called “dull” and “underwhelming.” Dickison, however, has been a bright spot, with some even saying the show is set to be Apple TV+’s breakout series. It would make sense for Apple to capitalize on that attention — as well as on Steinfeld’s 12.4 million Instagram followers — to get more people watching.

Apple didn’t share any additional information about the Music/TV+ bundle beyond what Steinfeld announced. There was no related press release or even a tweet posted to the Apple TV Twitter account. In other words, Apple was narrowly targeting Steinfeld’s built-in fan base with the news.

It appears this is not a limited-time deal with an expiration date attached, just an ongoing benefit of a student Music subscription.

 

 

New numbers from Gartner mark another major increase for global wearable spending in 2020. The analyst firm forecasts a 27% jump in end-user spending over this year, from $40.5 billion to $51.5 billion. Once again, the pack is lead by smartwatches, which continue to burn the hottest among in the space.

Interestingly, the increase on smartwatch spending from $17 billion to $22.8 billion will be lead by decreasing prices (a 4.5% decrease in average selling prices in 2021). Those are, in turn, the result of a combination of increased competition from Samsung and some external pressure from Fitbit, which has found a sweet spot at around $200 a unit. Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi have also gone a ways toward decreasing the price on the low end of the market. 

Apple, in turn, has responded by keeping the two-year-old Series 3 on the market at the $200 price point. It’s a sign of a maturing category that no longer commands as much of a premium pricing in past generations. Google, meanwhile, recently bought a fair chunk of IP from Fossil and has reportedly been eyeing a Fitbit acquisition after years of struggling to crack the category.

Headphones have continued steady growth, as well, thanks to an explosion in fully wireless earbuds, lead by Apple and Samsung, with the recent lower cost addition of Amazon. Google, too, has been eying a reentry into the category next year with the return of its much panned Pixel Buds. Even Microsoft plans to enter the category with its unique Surface Buds.

Gartner predicts continued spending growth in wearables for 2021, with spending hitting $62.9 billion.

Stampli, the Mountain View-based company looking to automate invoice management, has today announced the close of a $25 million Series B round. The funding round was led by SignalFire, with participation from existing investors such as Hillsven Capital, Bloomberg Beta, as well as new investors such as NextWorld Capital.

Stampli launched in 2015 to build software specifically focused on invoice management. Part of the problem with invoice management is that many people in the organization procure services and contract vendors, but the people who deal with the majority of the paperwork are siloed off from that process. This means the folks in the finance department are often tasked with chasing down coworkers from other departments to resolve their issues.

With Stampli, the entire procure to pay process happens in a collaborative software suite. Each invoice is turned into its own communications hub, allowing people across departments to fill in the blanks and answer questions so that payments are handled as efficiently as possible. Moreover, Stampli uses machine learning to recognize patterns around how the organization allocates cost, manages approval workflows and what data is extracted from invoices.

In other words, over time, Stampli gets better and better for each individual organization.

Stampli charges based on the amount of transactions an organization has in the system, as well as how many ‘advanced users’ are taking part in that action. Stampli recognizes the difference between users in the finance department, making high-level decisions, and other users from the organization who are simply collaborating on the platform much more infrequently.

Cofounder and CEO Eyal Feldman believes that another big differentiator for the company is that it has specifically decided to be payments agnostic, letting customers choose their payments provider and maintain control of that part of the system.

As of right now, Stampli is processing more than $12 billion in invoices annually, with more than 1,900 businesses and 40,000 users on the platform.

This new round comes on the heels of a $6.7 million Series A round from August 2018, also led by SignalFire with participation from UpWest Labs, Bloomberg Beta, and Hillsven Capital. This brings Stampli’s total funding to $34.7 million.

The ubiquity of APIs and cloud solutions have opened up a world of interesting ways for businesses to create a service without having to build every part of it themselves. But they have unleashed something else, too: an increased risk of breaches resulting from data being moved and used in multiple places and in multiple ways. Now, a startup that has built a way to help safeguard against that threat — using homomorphic encryption — is announcing funding, a sign of market demand and the opportunity it presents for cybersecurity.

Duality, which builds solutions based on homomorphic encryption — a technique that encrypts an organization’s data in a way that lets it stay encrypted even as the company collaborates with third parties that also process the data — is today announcing that it has raised $16 million in funding.

The Series A round is being led by Intel Capital, with participation also from Hearst Ventures and Team8.

Team8 is the heavyweight Israeli cybersecurity incubator that counts Intel as a strategic partner and itself has an impressive list of backers that include Microsoft, Walmart, Eric Schmidt and Accenture.

Intel is a financial and strategic backer here: last year the two worked on a project to expose the security challenges of AI workloads, which utilised homomorphic encryption on Intel platforms in order to minimise data exposure. Intel’s are used in a wide range of use cases that include cloud services and massive hardware companies, you could see where the two might work together more in the future.

Other companies that Duality works with are in the financial markets, healthcare, and insurance, although it says it cannot disclose who because of NDAs. One customer it did name was the CDA, the Cyber Defense Alliance, in the UK, a cross-bank security alliance.

Another is may well be Heart, the other investor named in this round.

“As a leading global, diversified media, information and services company with more than 360 businesses across industries, we are acutely aware of the increasing importance of data and data collaboration in companies across many market segments,” said Kenneth Bronfin, Senior Managing Director of Hearst Ventures, in a statement. “Sensitive data is constantly being generated by both individuals and businesses; there needs to be technology available that protects such data while allowing us to extract insights. We are excited by Duality’s mission and its ability to deliver complex technology to real-world use cases and applications.”

There are a handful of cybersecurity startups and larger companies emerging that are building solutions on the principle of homomorphic encryption.

They include Enveil, CryptoNext Security, IBM. Duality, however, has an interesting pedigree when it comes to the field: one of its co-founders, Shafi Goldwasser, won a Turing Award for her groundbreaking work in cryptographic algorithms that form the basis of homomorphic encryption.

As with a lot of high-level math, that work is largely theoretical, and so the work that Duality — led by its other co-founders Alon Kaufman, Rina Shainski, Vinod Vaikuntanathan and Kurt Rohloff, all of whom also have long lists of cybersecurity and data science credentials — has done has involved making the algorithms into something that is commercially viable and usable by most businesses.

That being said, there is still a lot of time and computing energy that are needed to process encrypted data, and so the idea with Duality is that it’s used on a company’s most sensitive information. With some of the funding going towards R&D it will be interesting to see whether algorithms can improve enough to extend that kind of encryption i a practical way to wider data sets.

“There is no free lunch here,” said Kaufman, the CEO, in an interview this week. “Homomorphic encryption is the holy grail of security and privacy since it removes huge challenges. But there are overheads. When we deploy it with a customer, we don’t say, from now on encrypt everything and assume nothing is open. That’s because i’s a storage and computational overhead. That is why we focus on sensitive data sets.” He added that one of Duality’s unique qualities is that its overhead is dramatically improved compared to others that are also building solutions on this principle, but all the same, “you apply it only when you need to.”

“The ability to secure data during analysis is a critical component in the future computation stack, specifically in the context of AI. Intel Capital has been following the space closely, and we are excited to see secure computing and homomorphic encryption becoming practical and broadly applicable,” said Anthony Lin, Vice President & Senior Managing Director of Intel Capital, in a statement. “We believe privacy-preservation in AI and ML represents a huge market need, and we’re investing in Duality because of its unique founding team and world-leading expertise in both advanced cryptography and data science.”

 

Good news, satellite radio fans: SiriusXM is getting a bit easier to control on your various Google Home and Nest Mini speakers.

The streaming radio network is at long last getting support for Google Assistant, allowing you to say things like “Hey Google, play 90s on 9” and have the station start right up.

While SiriusXM has technically been compatible with these speakers for a while, getting it to play meant poking around the mobile app and sending your desired station over via Chromecast. With this update, all it takes is a voice command.

Google says the SiriusXM functionality should start rolling out this week. It’ll roll out in the US and Canada first, initially supporting English and later supporting Canadian French.

Getting any of this to work, of course, means having a SiriusXM subscription. As such, Google says that all Nest speakers and smart displays will include a three-month SiriusXM trial out of the box. (Just don’t forget to set that calendar reminder in case you want to cancel.)

Why raise venture capital when you can raise debt and keep your equity?

That’s the question a whole slew of new financial technology companies are hoping entrepreneurs will ask themselves as they begin to think about collecting outside capital for their businesses. Clearbanc made waves with its “20-Minute Term Sheet” campaign, with a goal of backing 2,000 businesses with $1 billion in non-dilutive capital by the end of 2019. Now, Capital is launching to educate founders about the possibility of debt funding.

Founded by former Draper Fisher Jurvetson (now known as Threshold Ventures) investor Blair Silverberg, Csaba Konkoly and Chris Olivares, Capital is launching today with $5 million from Future Ventures, Greycroft, Wavemaker and others. Additionally, it’s raised from “prominent institutional pools of capital” to invest between $5 million and $25 million in promising companies, determined using “The Capital Machine.”

Capital’s underwriting technology, dubbed The Capital Machine, determines if businesses have the growth potential necessary for an infusion of debt (by analyzing revenue and other financial considerations), then delivers term sheets within 24 hours. The expedited process cuts out the time-consuming elements of pitching venture capitalists, the company says, allowing businesses to go from zero to $5 million—or more—in a matter of hours.

For companies that are’t ready for a debt round, or who don’t meet Capital’s qualification, the company is offering access to a free calculator that determines the cost of a company’s capital based on their fundraising and valuation data.

“We are trying to create a business that is the place that all founders go to start their fundraising process,” Silverberg tells TechCrunch. “We just want entrepreneurs to understand that step one in building a balance sheet is to understand your cost of capital. Step two is you can now use that to compare your financing options. We hope we can make this process simpler and more transparent.”

Capital charges a 5% to 15% flat fee on its capital, investing a maximum of $50 million over time. The company has ambitions of becoming a holistic investment bank of sorts, says Silverberg, ready and willing to advise companies on fundraising possibilities and connect them with VCs for future deals.

Historically, Silverberg explains, venture capital dollars went to risky upstarts poised to disrupt a category. Today, loads of equity funding is funneled into predictable business models that could be funded entirely with non-dilutive capital: “I saw what the venture process was like,” Silverberg said, referencing his stint at DFJ. “Tech companies do not utilize debt … this is extremely expensive for founders.”

There’s a culture surrounding venture capital fundraising in Silicon Valley and beyond. One in which startups seek to become ‘unicorns,’ hoping for stories on this very sight to laud their accomplishments—including the loads of venture capital dollars they’ve pulled in. In reality, much of that capital is plowed into things like Facebook and Google to fuel digital ad campaigns, which is not how VC is intended to be used and can result in founders taking a company public with just a few percentage points of ownership.

Solutions like Capital, Clearbanc, Lighter Capital and others, should remind entrepreneurs that venture capital isn’t the only route to getting a company off the ground and can be raised in addition to venture debt.

“There’s no excuse for not knowing your cost of capital,” Silverberg adds.

The Mavic Pro was a revelation when DJI announced it a little over three years ago. The foldable drone was precisely the shot in the arm the industry needed to help make the technology more accessible for the masses.

In July, I paid a visit to the markets of Shenzhen, and it’s clear that the design has had a profound impact on both the industry at large and the public perception of a drone’s platonic ideal. DJI, meanwhile, has spent the last few years refining the line and building up a robust software offering.

The Mavic’s design has also impacted DJI’s other line, including, notably, the DJI Spark. In spite of superficial similarities, however, the selfie drone was never really considered part of the Mavic line. After all, the higher-end drones have long appealed to professionals, thanks to their ability to capture great footage in spite of a small footprint.

Announced today, the Mavic Mini is the next logical step in that evolution. Like the Spark, the new drone is small enough to rest comfortably in the palm of your hand. Unlike the Spark, however, the sub-250 gram drone is designed to serve as a more serious imaging product, capable of shooting 2.7K video at 30fps or 1080p video at 60fps. For stills, it can do 12 megapixels courtesy of a 1/2.3-inch sensor, all mounted on a three-axis motorized gimbal.

Granted, none of that can compete with the Hasselblad camera mounted on the latest Mavic Pro, but weight and pricing were both concerns here. And besides, the Pro is sticking around, so DJI will want to differentiate between tiers. There’s another big difference here, as well — one that deserves to be highlighted for prospective buyers: there’s no built-in obstacle avoidance. The requisite sensors were not included for the aforementioned reasons.

While I can understand cutting corners here, that’s a pretty big one for two key reasons. First, DJI is very much positioning this as a first-time drone for many. Second, the thing is tiny, meaning it’s pretty easy to lose line of sight on the thing quickly.

I will say that, as someone who has flown a few of these things, the Mini handles well and is quite easy to maneuver, in spite, or because, of its small size. Also, DJI offers up free demo software, so you can take a virtual drone for a spin before potentially sacrificing the real thing. Even so, the lack of the feature feels like a pretty glaring omission here.

That said, there’s plenty to like here, including a battery that should get a solid 30 minutes of flight time on a charge, along with a slew of different shooting modes that will make you look like you know what you’re doing with the press of a button.

The drone is up for pre-order today, priced at $399. There’s also a $499 package that includes three batteries, an extra set of propellers, a carrying case, a charging hub that will also charge your phone and some beefy propeller cages. It starts shipping November 11.