Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Apester, which helps digital publishers add interactivity to their content, is rolling out a new format called the Story Strip.

CEO and co-founder Moti Cohem told me that the Story Strip is modeled on the Story format popularized by Snapchat and Instagram — a format that he praised for being one of the few content types that’s truly “tailored to the mobile experience,” offering a fast, interactive experience for readers.

Cohen said that by bringing the format out of “the social walled gardens” and allowing publishers to embed Story Strips into their articles, Apester is “paving the way for media companies to capture a new audience, a young audience.”

You can see a Story Strip for yourself on TV Insider, a pop culture and entertainment website NTVB Media. It appears in articles as a carousel of related stories, allowing readers to select the story that interests them and then quickly swipe through slides summarizing the story highlights.

Cohen said a Story Strip can be created by a publisher’s editorial team, or Apester can automatically generate them based on an article. And since they can also include ads, this creates new monetization opportunities for publishers. In fact, Apester says TV Insider has seen its daily revenue double since the two companies started working together.

As for how these kinds of content widgets might fit in as publishers explore subscriptions and other business models beyond advertising, Cohen argued that even as business models change, “the blend is what’s going to be important.”

And by allowing publishers to engage with users and collect data about their behavior, he said, “Apester is going to allow you to monetize all of [your audiences] differently … You can use the engagement that’s happening and understand why it’s happening in order to drive the right action.”

Toyota is doubling down on its prediction that the key to building a compelling car of the future will be creating a true connection between car and driver (or passenger, depending on whether or now you’re using autonomous mode). The car maker’s new LQ concept is an evolution fo the Concept-i vehicle it unveiled at CES in 2017, complete with its onboard ‘Yui’ virtual assistant.

The LQ inherits some of the same design lines and themes as the Concept-i, but working with its R&D arm the Toyota Research Institute, the LQ gains even more advanced autonomous driving capabilities, and an updated Yui that’s more responsive to the driver in terms of learning and adapting to their behavior and preferences.

Yui interacts with the driver using a voice interface, as well as illumination, air condition control and even by emitting fragrances, in order to optimize their mood, strengthen that bond between car and human, and even ensure their continued alertness in cases where the driver might need to take over from the onboard autonomous driving features of the LQ.

Speaking of autonomy, the LQ is designed with SAE Level 4 self-driving features on board, which means that it should be able to handle driving tasks completely without the interference of the person behind the wheel. It also boasts “Automated Valet” tech built in partnership with Panasonic for traveling on its own between parking spaces and pick-up/drop-off points, which Toyota says helps when working with drivers that need extra assistance and accessibility.

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Toyota still recognizes the need for the driver to be present when it makes sense, however, and so the LQ incorporates a newly designed seating system that can inflate air bladders embedded in the seat to put the driver in a more upright pose, and to blast them with cold air when attentiveness is key. When it’s not, however, the air bladders mimic a slow breathing rhythm, inflating and elating gradually to promote a relaxed breathing patter for the driver, too.

Color-coded interior lights also help Yui communicate with the driver and any passengers – floor-mounted lights can change color to indicate which party the car’s AI-powered assistant is addressing, for instance, and exterior lights, including a programmable pattern projector installed in the headlights, can visually ‘talk’ to people outside the car. All the dash-mounted displays on the LQ are OLED, for better visibility and power consumption, and there’s an emission scrubbing system that works as the vehicle propels itself for a new level of interior air quality cleanliness.

Of course, this is a concept car, so many of these technologies are a blend of theory and practice at this stage. But Toyota seems intent on a vision of the automotive future where your car is both functional and friendly, and I’m here for it.

Digital media holding company IAC has taken the next step toward spinning off Match Group, with a proposal outlining what that process would look like.

Match Group (which owns Tinder, PlentOfFish, OkCupid, Hinge and of course Match itself) is already a publicly-traded company, but IAC remains the majority owner. With the spinoff, IAC says it should distribute its Match Group shares to IAC stockholders, “resulting in two independent public companies.”

“Today IAC proposed an important first step in the separation of Match Group from IAC,” said IAC CEO Joey Levin in a statement. “IAC is confident that the proposal communicated to the Match Group special committee provides strong footing for Match Group to begin its journey as a thriving, independent company.”

Under the proposal (which IAC says still needs to be approved by its board of directors, as well as the aforementioned special committee, as well as stockholders), Match Group’s dual-class stock structure would  be eliminated, creating a single class of stock.

The company said in August that it was exploring spinoffs of both Match Group and ANGI Homeserivces.

In his statement today, Levin said, “As it relates to evaluating our ownership stake in ANGI Homeservices, we don’t currently expect to turn our attention to the question of a spin-off until a Match Group transaction has been completed.”

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

We have a special episode this week. Instead of our regular lineup, we got Alex on the phone with an IPO expert to dig into the year’s IPO cycle both at home and abroad. Helping with the effort was James Clark, the Head of Tech and Lifesciences, Primary Markets at the London Stock Exchange.

That means we had IPO fans from both the US and across the pond to kick into what has happened thus far in 2019, and what’s coming around both in Q4 and in 2020.

We touched on a few topics, including the declining popularity of startups that don’t make money, the strength of software companies’ debuts (Datadog, CrowdStrike, for example), and a little bit on direct listings (they have a different name in the UK, it turns out).

We’re now into the fourth quarter of 2020, and some companies have done better than expected (Beyond Meat), while others have done worse (Uber and Lyft). It’s been fun, and, fingers crossed, we won’t run short of more fodder in the coming months!

There remains a problem with the race to create a quantum computer, which is that experiments in this area can be extremely error-prone. Rahko is a new UK startup that thinks is can address this problem with what’s known as ‘Quantum machine learning’.

It’s now raised a £1.3M ($1.6M) in a seed round led by Balderton Capital, a rare move for a VC which normally only comes in at a Series A level. Joining the round is AI Seed and angel investors Charles Songhurst (former Microsoft Head of Corporate Strategy), Tom McInerney (Founder, TGM Ventures), John Spindler (CEO, Capital Enterprise) and James Field (CEO, LabGenius).

Rahko says it is building ‘quantum discovery’ capabilities for chemical simulation, which could enable groundbreaking advances in batteries, chemicals, advanced materials and drugs. It was started by cofounders Leonard Wossnig, Edward Grant, Miriam Cha and Ian Horobin.

Leo and Ed were longtime collaborators through their PhDs at University College London. They had been working on research in quantum machine learning (QML) with now lead developers Shuxiang Cao and Hongxiang Chen for several years and had been consolidating all their research into a QML platform.

They say the QML platform attracted serious attention from a tech giant and overtures were made. Leo and Ed made the decision not to give away control of the sum of their work, and decided instead to launch a business to commercialize it.

Chemical simulation is a vital capability for research that has not advanced significantly in recent years due to the limited computational power of classical computer. Rahko claims it has an arsenal of tools that may make quantum computers accessible and commercially usable at an accelerated pace, often through the use of hybrid approaches with classical computers.

Leo Wossnig, CEO, said: “Most people find quantum computers mysterious and wonder if they are going to save or break the world as we know it. In reality, quantum computing is going to unlock radical advances in areas of research and technology in which we have found ourselves stuck for some time now. Our team is excited to get together every day to work on problems that would have been impossible to solve only a couple of years ago. We are delighted to welcome on board this unique group of investors who truly share our excitement.” Earlier this year, Wossnig was the recipient of the prestigious 2019 Google Fellowship in Quantum Computing, for his achievement in computer science.

Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, General Partner at Balderton Capital, said: “Rahko is one of the top teams in the world working on a complex space at the very edge of science and computing. The application of discoveries within quantum has already been profound and impacted our fundamental understanding of the world around us. The pace and rate of change in this field over the past few years has been astonishing, and we feel incredibly lucky to be supporting this exceptional team as they continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible.”

Rahko is one of several startups originating from UCL’s Computer Science programme, supported by Conception X, a venture builder for deep tech startups. It works in partnership with several of the world’s largest quantum hardware manufacturers, leading academic teams and national laboratories.

Wossnig added: “Quantum software is a relatively new field. It is growing very quickly but at this stage the field is small enough for us to know all of the best teams out there and be working with many of them. IBM and Microsoft, for instance, have large software teams but we are partners with both of them.”

The entire quantum computing industry is relying on quantum hardware maturing to a scale that will allow powerful, commercially valuable applications. It’s estimated this will be in 3-5 years. Until this happens it is a little premature to say definitively who is leading the race.

Satellite imagery holds a wealth of information that could be useful for industries, science and humanitarian causes, but one big and persistent challenge with it has been a lack of effective ways to tap that disparate data for specific ends.

That’s created a demand for better analytics, and now, one of the startups that has been building solutions to do just that is announcing a round of funding as it gears up for expansion. Descartes Labs, a geospatial imagery analytics startup out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is today announcing that it has closed a $20 million round of funding, money that CEO and founder Mark Johnson described to me as a bridge round ahead of the startup closing and announcing a larger growth round.

The funding is being led by Union Grove Venture Partners, with Ajax Strategies, Crosslink Capital, and March Capital Partners (which led its previous round) also participating. It brings the total raised by Descartes to $60 million, and while Johnson said the startup would not be disclosing its valuation, PitchBook notes that it is $220 million ($200 million pre-money in this round).

As a point of comparison, another startup in the area of geospatial analytics, Orbital Insight, is reportedly now raising money at a $430 million valuation (that data is from January of this year, and we’ve contacted the company to see if it ever closed).

Santa Fe — a city popular with retirees that counts tourism as its biggest industry — is an unlikely place to find a tech startup. Descartes Labs’ presence there is a result of that fact that it is a spinoff from the Los Alamos National Laboratory near the city. Johnson — who had lived in San Francisco before coming to Santa Fe to help create Descartes (his previous experience building Zite for media, he said, led the Los Alamos scientists to first conceive of the Descartes IP as the basis of a kind of search engine) — admitted that he never thought the company would stay headquartered there beyond a short initial phase of growth of six months.

However, it turned out that the trends around more distributed workforces (and cloud computing to enable that), engineers looking for employment alternatives to living in pricey San Francisco, plus the heated competition for talent you get in the Valley all came together in a perfect storm that helped Descartes Labs establish and thrive on its home turf.

Descartes — named after the seminal philosopher/mathematician Rene Descartes — describes itself as a “data refinery”, by which it means it injests a lot of imagery and unstructured data related to the earth that is picked up primarily by satellites but also other sensors (Johnson notes that its sources include data from publicly available satellites; data from NASA and the European space agency, and data from the companies themselves); applies AI-based techniques including computer vision analysis and machine learning to make sense of the sometimes-grainy imagery; and distills and orders it to create insights into what is going on down below, and how that is likely to evolve.

This includes not just what is happening on the surface of the earth, but also in the air above it: Descartes Labs has worked on projects to detect levels of methane gas in oil fields, the spread of wildfires, and how crops might grow in a particular area, and the impact of weather patterns on it all.

It has produced work for a range of clients that have included governments (the methane detection was commissioned as part of New Mexico’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), energy giants and industrial agribusiness, and traders.

“The idea is to help them take advantage of all the new data going online,” Johnson said, noting that this can help, for example, bankers forecast how much a commodity will trade for, or the effect of a change in soil composition on a crop.

The fact that Descartes’ work has brushed with the energy industry gives an interesting twist to the use of the word “refinery”. But in case you were wondering, Johnson said that the company goes through a process of vetting potential customers to determine if the data they are providing is for a positive end, or not.

“We have a deep belief that we can help them become more efficient,” he said. “Those looking at earth data are doing so because they care about the planet and are working to try to become more sustainable.”

Looking ahead, the company is building what it describes as a “digital twin” of the earth, the idea being that in doing so it can better model the imagery that it injests and link up data from different regions more seamlessly (since, after all, a climatic event in one part of the world inevitably impacts another). Notably, “digital twinning” is a common concept that we see applied in other AI-based enterprises to better predict activity: this is the approach that, for example, Forward Networks takes when building models of an enterprise’s network to determine how apps will behave and identify the reasons behind an outage.

In addition to the funding round, Descartes named Phil Fraher its new CFO, and is announcing Veery Maxwell, Director for Energy Innovation and Patrick Cairns, who co-founded UGVP, as new board observers.

The reelection campaign will be livestreamed. US president Donald Trump has joined Amazon-owned livestreaming platform Twitch.

Twitch is best known as a social video streaming platform for gamers but does host other content, including politics.

The verified DonaldTrump Twitch account, spotted earlier by Reuters, has just one video in the recent broadcast section so far: A livestream of a Trump rally which took place in Minneapolis yesterday evening.

Alongside the saved video of this broadcast is a growing selection of user generated clips culled from the stream, with titles such as “This is our president.”, “LOL”, “KEK” and “pepelaugh”.

Another clip remarks on how a single black man — who’s visible in the top corner of the shot of the audience behind Trump — vanishes as “they zoom him out of the picture”.

Trump is not the only high profile US politician to be taking to Twitch to broadcast campaign rallies in real time ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Democratic senator Bernie Sanders, who is making a pitch to be the party’s presidential candidate, joined the platform a few months ago. And at the time of writing Sanders still has more followers than Trump on Twitch (88,795 vs 37,754).

Over on Twitter, meanwhile — Trump’s go-to social media soapbox for skewering opponents and deflecting criticism, via his preferred medium of the early morning attack tweet — the president has ~65.6M followers.

So Twitter is very unlikely to be concerned that its highest profile user is flirting with Amazon’s social streaming platform. (Though it’s much less clear how happy “Jeff Bozo” will be about Trump getting on Twitch.)

Trump has dabbled with using Twitter’s own video streaming tool, Periscope. But the choice of Twitch for streaming his campaign rallies looks mostly like a case of horses for courses. Periscope is more for on-the-fly mobile streaming, whereas Twitch is a platform built for playing to (and building) a ‘lean back’ audience.

Troll culture also thrives on gamer Twitch. And Trump is of course edgelord of the trolls. Ergo he should fit right in.

With Periscope Twitter has been taking a stronger approach to tackling abusive comments in recent years (and also trying to fight fake and spam content) — in line with its stated desire to increase ‘conversational health’ on its platforms. So it’s probably happy to have dodged a bullet here.

Certainly Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has more enough flying his way over whatever Trump choses to tweet next.

Tick tock it’s now o’clock, startuppers. The last few hours of super early bird savings on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019 are slipping away faster than grains of sand through an hourglass. The bird bites the dust and prices go up as of 11:59 p.m. (CEST) tonight, 11 October.

Buy your passes to Disrupt Berlin now and, depending on which pass you choose, you can save up to €600. Who wants to pay more than necessary?

What’s high on your Disrupt must-see list? Maybe it’s the Hackathon where up to 500 participants will compete in sponsored challenges to create solutions to real-world problems — in less than 36 hours. It’s intense, exhausting caffeine-fueled fun, and we can’t wait to see which teams win the individual contests and which one team wins the €5,000 grand prize for best overall hack.

Perhaps you’re all about witnessing the glorious chaos that is Startup Battlefield? Who can blame you? It’s fast-paced action as 15-20 of the top early-stage startups take the Main Stage to deliver a convincing 6-minute pitch and demo to a tough panel of expert technologists and veteran VCs. The follow-up Q&A is no joke, either. Talk about flop sweat. It’s worth the ride and the chance to take home the Disrupt Cup and $50,000.

Could be you’re looking to make business connections to keep your startup (founder or investor) dream moving forward. Set your GPS for Startup Alley, the exhibition floor where opportunity awaits. Hundreds of early-stage startups and sponsors will be in force to talk tech, share inspiration, meet potential customers, investors and collaborators. It’s a veritable breeding ground of opportunity, innovation and inspiration.

While you’re there, be sure to connect with our TC Top Picks. TechCrunch editors hand-pick this cohort of stellar early-stage startups choosing only up to five to represent each of these tech categories: AI/Machine Learning, Biotech/Healthtech, Blockchain, Fintech, Mobility, Privacy/Security, Retail/E-commerce, Robotics/IoT/Hardware, CRM/Enterprise and Education.

As always, we’ll feature a slate of amazing speakers on our different stages. Iconic technologists, boundary-pushing VCs, entrepreneurs who’ve persevered, done the work and reaped the rewards. They’ll be on hand to share their stories, tips and insights. You’ll find big topics on the Main Stage and an opportunity to have smaller, more intimate conversations with speakers in our Q&A Sessions.

So much to do at Disrupt Berlin 2019 and so little time to get the best price on passes. Super early bird pricing ends tonight at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Don’t let the hours slip past you — buy your passes. It’s now o’clock, baby!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

One of the most exciting aspects of Disrupt Berlin 2019, which takes place on 11-12 December, is networking with like-minded startuppers from around the world. But with thousands of attendees, hundreds of early-stage startups exhibiting in Startup Alley — and only two programming-packed days to take it all in — how the heck can you zero in on the right connections?

Never fear, we’ve got you covered and then some. Take advantage of CrunchMatch, our free business match-making service that takes the pain out of networking. No more wasting time talking to the wrong people.

Before we explain how CrunchMatch simplifies your Disrupt experience, we must ask a vital question. Did you buy your pass yet? If not, know this: super early bird pricing ends tonight at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Buy your ticket now, and save up to €600.

Where were we? Ah, yes…CrunchMatch can help everyone attending Disrupt Berlin ’19 — founders looking for developers, investors hunting hot prospects, technology service providers eager for new customers, founders looking for marketing help — the list is endless. Here’s how it works.

We’ll email registered attendees when CrunchMatch launches and explain how to access the platform. Then you create a profile listing your specific business criteria, goals and interests. CrunchMatch (powered by Brella) waves its magic algorithm to find and suggests matches. And, subject to your approval, CrunchMatch proposes meeting times and sends out meeting requests.

If you’re wondering whether an automated, albeit curated, networking platform can really make a difference, listen up. In 2018, CrunchMatch facilitated more than 3,000 meetings. And Yoolbox — makers of a portable wireless charger — says the connections it made through CrunchMatch helped to increase its distribution.

Needmore encouragement? More than 95 percent of our CrunchMatch users reported that they’d use the platform again. And here’s what Caleb John, co-founder of Cedar Robotics, said about his experience using CrunchMatch.

“CrunchMatch is a great way to pitch your ideas to investors quickly. Instead of approaching each one individually, just type up your pitch and send it to 50 people. Even if only 10 percent get back to you, you still have five investors. It’s one of Disrupt’ best benefits.”

You have only two action-filled days at Disrupt Berlin 2019. Make the most of your time, save your shoe leather and tap into more opportunity with CrunchMatch. And don’t forget: the super early bird price disappears tonight at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Go buy your pass and save!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Klarna is quietly becoming a fintech giant. Following its latest founding round, the company is now valued at $5.5 billion. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski will join us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin.

If you live in Europe and regularly purchase stuff online, chances are you’ve used Klarna already. The company offers a simple way to pay for e-commerce purchases over multiple installments.

And it’s been massively successful in Europe. You could think as Klarna as a sort of credit card-alternative payment method. Even if you don’t have a credit card, you can choose to purchase something right now, pay after 30 days or pay over 3 or 4 installments without any interest.

This way, expensive payments become slightly easier for customers. And if there’s a problem with your purchase, Klarna ensures that you don’t have to pay or get your money back — your money never left your bank account in the first place.

Just like using a PayPal account, if you pay on another site that uses Klarna, you don’t have to enter your payment information again. Merchants that leverage Klarna gets paid instantly after a purchase, even if clients choose to pay later.

Klarna is also building a marketplace of stores. You can download the mobile app and search for products across multiple stores. This could become a great alternative to e-commerce giants like Amazon.

Up next, Klarna wants to grow its presence in the U.S. While it already has millions of customers and thousands of merchants, the company thinks there’s still a ton of potential in the U.S.

If you want to know how a Swedish startup plans to disrupt the credit card industry in the U.S., buy your ticket to Disrupt Berlin to listen to this discussion — and many others. The conference will take place December 11-12.

In addition to panels and fireside chats, like this one, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield to compete for the highly coveted Battlefield Cup.

In 2005, Sebastian Siemiatkowski co-founded Klarna in order to provide safe and smooth online payments. He currently serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Over the past decade, he has overseen the company’s rapid growth across Europe and more recently into North America. Klarna is a now fully licensed bank with 60mn consumer and 170,000 merchant user base.

Sebastian has received multiple awards for his leadership, including runner up in the 2015 global EY Entrepreneur of the Year award, Leader of the Year by Adecco, and European Entrepreneur of the Year Award by TechTour. He holds a master’s degree from the Stockholm School of Economics.