That’s all on top of 2018’s record-breaking year for fintech, which saw $52.5 billion of investment flow into the space according to KPMG’s estimate.
What’s with all the money flowing into the fintech world? And what does all this investment portend not only for the industry and other potential entrants, but also for customers of financial services? The answer is that this new wave of fintech startups has figured out embedded finance, and that it is changing the entire economics of disruptive financial services.
First, this isn’t (really) about blockchain
Let’s get one thing out of the way right away, for whenever the topic of financial services and digital disruption come together, some blatherer always yells blockchain from the proverbial back row (often with a bit of foaming at the mouth I might add).
Crowdfunded spacecraft LightSail 2 is making good on its name, after successfully unfurling its solar sail in orbit so that it can begin propelling itself using the force of light alone. The sail’s mylar surface reflects photons from the Sun, accumulating velocity gradually thanks to the additive effect of countless sub-atomic impacts. The team confirmed sail deployment initiated at 11:47 AM PT (2:47 PM ET), and full sail deployment complete at 11:50 AM PT (2:50 PM ET).
LightSail 2 got its ride to space with the Falcon Heavy launch on June 25, sharing a ride with a variety of payloads including NASA and Air Force experiments. The spacecraft is the product of The Planetary Society, a non-profit organization devoted to the advancement of space exploration that’s led by Bill Nye . Its goal is to study solar sailing in practice – a technology whose conception goes back centuries, but whose actual field use is extremely limited, with only a few examples existing previously, including JAXA’s IKAROS mission from 2010.
The sail’s total propulsion power is astonishingly small, despite its size (it’s about the size of a boxing ring) – it provides about as much power as a housefuls landing on your hand. But it also will never theoretically run out of fuel, and can gradually increase its speed over time to very high velocities thanks to the friction-free environment of the vacuum of space.
“Things are great, things are nominal,” explained The Planetary Society’s Chief Scientist Bruce Betts on a live stream of the sail’s deployment, indicating that everything is to plan so far. The Planetary Society will attempt to get back images from the deployment the next time the craft is within range of a grand station, and we’ll update when those become available.
Researchers at MIT have developed a new type of sensor that could make diagnosing sepsis much quicker, easier and more affordable than ever before. This could have a huge potential impact, since sepsis is one of the leading causes of death in hospitals, and is responsible for almost 250,000 patient deaths per year in the U.S. alone.
The method developed by MIT employs microfluidics to detect the presence of key proteins in the blood that act as early warning signs about the onset of sepsis. One in particular, called ‘interleukin-6’ or IL-6, appears hours before any other symptom appears in a patient. Ordinary ‘assay’ or blood test devices aren’t able to pick it up that quickly, however, since despite the fact that it can spike early on, these spikes don’t actually represent significantly high levels relative to what these traditional methods are able to pick up.
MIT’s system can automatically detect these higher concentrations very early, using less blood than you’d get from even just a finger prick. Results are available in just 25 minutes, which contrasts with hours for traditional methods, or half-an-hour for more modern ‘point-of-care’ systems that have been brought to market recently, which can nonetheless use higher quantities of blood and are much more expensive overall.
The way that MIT was able to work around these limitations was by using a testing method that mirrors a lab-based detection method for IL-6 that uses tiny magnetic beads to show the presence of the protein, while reducing the size so that it’s actually field-deployable. Existing field methods use high-quality optics, which are expensive and don’t allow for much in the way of cost-saving innovations, keeping the price of these tests and the hardware needed to run them prohibitive for wide use.
Researchers plan to continue their work by developing a full panel of proteins that act as early markers for sepsis detection to reinforce the accuracy of their diagnosis. The system could be tuned to detect a range of different biomarkers, however, so its potential applications could extend to other diagnostics as well.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
Apple is in “advanced talks” to buy Intel’s smartphone modem business for “$1 billion or more,” according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.
This deal could potentially bring Apple hundreds of engineers and key patents, and that could allow the company to build out some of the technologies it’s currently licensing from Qualcomm.
Sequoia Capital previously led Bird’s $300 million Series C round back in June, with Roelof Botha joining Bird’s board at the time. Sequoia declined to comment on the round, but Botha did say the Bird team “exemplifies grit.” (So, not exactly a denial.)
The option to engage with the new activities — like deep breathing and self-compassion exercises — pops up when a Pinterest user searches for “stress quotes,” “work anxiety” or other terms that indicate they might be feeling down.
The Verge obtained messages sent by Facebook informing parents that the company has found “a technical error.” This error allows a child’s friend to create a group chat with them that also included contacts who hadn’t been approved by their parent — which is exactly what Messenger Kids was supposed to prevent.
The startup — which won our Startup Battlefield in London — was building technology to do things like interpret a video and automatically set music to it.
The company’s initial goal was to bring better sound quality to concerts. Instead of hearing music blasted out of speakers, users can connect their smartphone to a Mixhalo network — then, through their earbuds, they’ll hear the same sound mix that the musicians receive through their in-ear monitors.
The agenda for TC Sessions: Enterprise has just been announced, featuring enterprise powerhouses like Bill McDermott (SAP), Scott Farquhar (Atlassian), Andrew Ng (Landing AI), Julie Larson-Green (Qualtrics), Wendy Nather (Duo Security), Aaron Levie (Box) and Jason Green (Emergence). The event will take place on September 5 in San Francisco.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
Apple is in “advanced talks” to buy Intel’s smartphone modem business for “$1 billion or more,” according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.
This deal could potentially bring Apple hundreds of engineers and key patents, and that could allow the company to build out some of the technologies it’s currently licensing from Qualcomm.
Sequoia Capital previously led Bird’s $300 million Series C round back in June, with Roelof Botha joining Bird’s board at the time. Sequoia declined to comment on the round, but Botha did say the Bird team “exemplifies grit.” (So, not exactly a denial.)
The option to engage with the new activities — like deep breathing and self-compassion exercises — pops up when a Pinterest user searches for “stress quotes,” “work anxiety” or other terms that indicate they might be feeling down.
The Verge obtained messages sent by Facebook informing parents that the company has found “a technical error.” This error allows a child’s friend to create a group chat with them that also included contacts who hadn’t been approved by their parent — which is exactly what Messenger Kids was supposed to prevent.
The startup — which won our Startup Battlefield in London — was building technology to do things like interpret a video and automatically set music to it.
The company’s initial goal was to bring better sound quality to concerts. Instead of hearing music blasted out of speakers, users can connect their smartphone to a Mixhalo network — then, through their earbuds, they’ll hear the same sound mix that the musicians receive through their in-ear monitors.
The agenda for TC Sessions: Enterprise has just been announced, featuring enterprise powerhouses like Bill McDermott (SAP), Scott Farquhar (Atlassian), Andrew Ng (Landing AI), Julie Larson-Green (Qualtrics), Wendy Nather (Duo Security), Aaron Levie (Box) and Jason Green (Emergence). The event will take place on September 5 in San Francisco.
Researchers have found several security flaws in popular corporate VPNs which they say can be used to silently break into company networks and steal business secrets.
Orange Tsai and Meh Chang, who shared their findings with TechCrunch ahead of their upcoming Black Hat talk, said the flaws found in the three corporate VPN providers — Palo Alto Networks, Pulse Secure, and Fortinet — are “easy” to remotely exploit.
These VPNs — or virtual private networks — aren’t your traditional consumer VPN apps designed to mask where you are and hide your identity, but used by staff to access resources on a company’s network who work remotely. Typically employees have to enter their corporate username and password, and often a two-factor code. By connecting over an HTTPS (SSL) connection, these providers create a secure tunnel between the user’s computer and the corporate network.
But Tsai and Chang say the bugs they found allow anyone to covertly burrow into a company’s network without needing a working username or password.
“We could compromise the VPN server and corporate intranet with no authentication required, compromise all the VPN clients, and steal all secrets from the victims,” Tsai told TechCrunch an email.
“The SSL VPN is the most convenient way to connect to corporate networks,” Tsai said. “On the other hand, for hackers, SSL VPN must be exposed to the internet, so it’s also the shortest path to compromise their intranet.”
“A few SSL VPN vendors dominate the market — therefore, if we find any vulnerability on these vendors, the impact is huge,” he said.
In their first writeup detailing the Palo Alto bug, the researchers said a simple format string flaw — such as inputted text that isn’t properly understood by the server — is enough to crash the service altogether. Several major companies use Palo Alto’s GlobalProtect VPN — including Uber — they said.
The researchers tested the bug on one of Uber’s internal Palo Alto-run servers, they said. Uber quickly fixed the bug, but said its internal infrastructure was safe.
A screenshot showing the researchers compromising an Uber VPN server. (Image: supplied)
The researchers also used the vulnerabilities to expose flaws in systems belonging to Twitter, said Tsai. “We got the root privilege on Twitter’s most important VPN server successfully and got the highest severity and the highest bounty from their bounty program,” he said.
When the researchers privately contacted Palo Alto about the bugs, the company said the bugs had already been “found internally” and did not issue a corresponding public security advisory. Following Tsai and Chang’s writeup, some were critical of Palo Alto’s response. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont said in a tweet that it looked like the security giant issued a “silent fix” for this “really serious bug” without alerting anyone. About one-third of the internet-connected boxes he tested were vulnerable as of last week, he tweeted.
Palo Alto eventually issued an advisory, a day after Tsai and Chang posted their blog post detailing the bugs.
Fortinet also released advisories for their respective bugs and have updated new firmware to fix the vulnerabilities. System administrators are advised to update their vulnerable gateways to the latest versions.
Pulse Secure’s chief marketing officer Scott Gordon said the company notified its customers in late-April of the vulnerability and an available patch. Gordon said the company is “not aware” of any exploit.
Palo Alto acknowledged it fixed the bugs but did not address criticism from the security community.
A spokesperson for Fortinet did not comment when reached prior to publication.
It’s the latest round of VPN-related bugs this year. In April, Homeland Security warned enterprises about a rash of vulnerabilities in many major corporate VPN providers — also affecting Palo Alto and Pulse Secure, as well as Cisco and F5 Networks.
Tsai and Chang are set to release details of the Pulse Secure and Fortinet flaws in the coming days.
As the ways we consume content multiply and change, media creators are hard pressed to adapt their methods to take advantage. Short-form audio and video news is one growing but labor-intensive niche — and Agolo aims to help automate the process, pulling in the AP as a client and Microsoft, Google, and Tensility as investors.
Agolo is an AI startup focused on natural language processing, and specifically how to take a long article, like this one, and boil it down to its most important parts (assuming there are any). Summarization is the name of the process, as it is when you or I do it, and other bots and services do it as well. Agolo’s claim is to be able to summarize quickly and accurately, producing something of a quality worthy of broadcast or official documentation. Its deal with the AP provides an interesting example of how this works, and why it isn’t as simple as picking a few representative sentences.
The AP is, of course, a huge news organization and a fast-moving one. But its stories, while spare as a rule, are rarely concise enough to be read aloud by a virtual assistant when its user asks “what’s the big news this morning?” As a result, AP editors and writers manually put together scores or hundreds of short versions of stories every day specifically for audio consumption and other short-form contexts.
Since this isn’t a situation where creative input is necessarily required, and it must be done quickly and systematically, it’s a good fit for an AI agent trained in natural language. Even so it isn’t as easy as it sounds, explained Agolo co-founder and CEO Sage Wohns.
“The way that we have things read to us is different from the way we read them. So the algorithm understanding that and reproducing it is important,” he said. And that’s without reckoning with the AP’s famous style guide.
“This is one of the most important points that we worked on with them,” Wohns said. “The AP has their style bible, and it’s a brick. We have a hybrid model that has algorithms pointed at each of those rules. We never want to change the language, but we can shorten the sentence.”
That’s a risk with algorithmic summarizing, of course: that in “summarizing” a sentence you change its meaning. That’s incredibly important in the news, where the difference between a simple statement of fact and an egregious error can easily be in a single word or phrase. So the system is careful to preserve meaning if not necessarily the exact wording.
While the AP may not be given, as I am, to circumlocutions, it may still be beneficial to shift things a bit, though. Agolo worked closely with the news organization to figure out what’s acceptable and what’s not. A simple example would be changing something like “Statement,” said the source to The source said “Statement.” That doesn’t save any space, but you get the idea: essentially lossless compression of language.
If the AP team can trust the algorithm to produce a well-worded summary that follows their rules and only takes a quick polish by an editor, they could serve and even grow the demand for short-form content. “The goal is to enable them to create more content than was humanly possible before,” said Wohns.
The investment from and collaboration with Google falls along these lines as well, though not as laser-focused on turning news stories into sound bites.
“What we’re working on with them is making the web listenable,” said Wohns. “Right now you can ask Google a question but it often doesn’t have an answer it can read back to you.”
It’s primarily a bid to extend the company’s Assistant product as it continues its combat with Alexa and Siri, but may also have the extremely desirable side effect of making the data Google indexes more accessible to blind users.
The scope of Google’s data (Agolo is probably now getting the full firehose of Google News, among other things) means that the AI model being used has to be lightweight and quick. Even if it takes only ten seconds to summarize every article, that gets multiplied thousands of times in the complex workings of sorting and displaying news all over the world. So Agolo has been very focused on improving the performance of its models until they are able to turn things around very quickly and enable an essentially real-time summary service.
This has a secondary application in large enterprises and companies with large backlogs of data like documentation and analysis. Microsoft is a good example of this: After decades of running an immense software and services empire, the number of support docs, studies, how-tos, and so on are likely choking its intranet and search may or may not be effective on such a corpus.
NLP-based agents are useful for summarizing, but part of that process is, in a way, understanding the content. So the agent should be able to produce a shorter version of something, but also tell you that it’s by this person (useful for attribution); it’s about this topic; it’s from this date range; it applies to these version numbers; its main findings are these; and so on and so forth.
Not all this information is useful in all cases, of course, but it sure is if you want to digest 30 years of internal documentation and be able to search and sort it efficiently. This is what Microsoft is using it for internally, and no doubt what it intends to apply it to as part of future product offerings or partnerships. (Semantic Scholar has applied a similar approach to journals and academic papers.)
It would also be helpful for, say, an investment bank analyst or other researcher, who can use Agolo’s timeline to assemble all the relevant documents in order, grouped by author or topic, with the salient information surfaced and glanceable. One pictures this as useful for Google News as well in browsing coverage of a specific event or developing story.
The new (undisclosed amount of) funding has Microsoft (M12 specifically) returning, with Google (Assistant Investment Group specifically) and Tensility Venture Partners joining for the first time. The cash will be used in the expected fashion of a growing startup: chasing sales and a few key hires.
“It’s about building out the go-to-market side, and the core NLP abilities of the team, specifically in New York and Cairo,” said Wohns. “Right now we’re about a 90 percent technical team, so we need to build out the sales side.”
Agolo’s service seems like a useful tool for many an application — anywhere you have to reduce a large amount of written content to a smaller amount. Certainly that’s common enough — but Agolo will need to prove that it can do so as non-destructively and accurately as it claims with a wide variety of datasets, and that this process contributes to the bottom line more than the time-tested method of hiring another intern or grad student to perform the drudgery.
Alphabet’s Loon subsidiary, which aims to blanket the Earth in high-speed broadband Internet connectivity, has passed the 1 million hour mark in terms of total time spent in Earth’s stratosphere across all its flights. The balloons occupy the upper-edge of Earth’s atmosphere, in an altitude band between 50,000 and 70,000 feet, riding wind currents and using automated navigation systems to intelligently fly in specific areas defined by Loon’s engineers.
Loon’s balloons have accumulated almost 40 million km (nearly 25 million miles) or enough to make the trip to the Moon and back over 50 times. The result of all that time spent flying is that the automated navigation software has come up with some unexpected methods for ensuring the balloons stay in their designated flight target zones while dealing with those high-altitude winds.
The balloons make use of zig-zag patterns, similar to tacking tactics used by sailing vessels, for instance – but in doing so they employ strategies that are counterintuitive to even an experienced human navigator. They also waited out or “loitered” in some areas rather than continuing on an expected path, because they can take in wind forecast data and anticipate how to hitch a ride to get where they need to be rather than having to loop back around.
Balloons also adopted figure 8 patterns instead of simple circles to stay in a specific area over longer periods of time, which indeed proved the more effective way to deliver a reliable and consistent LTE connection over time. This was again not what human researchers would’ve attempted as a first choice, proving that logging the hours and letting the automated system figure out what works best based on mission parameters was the wisest course.
Loon CTO Salvatore Candido notes in this blog post that he’s actually unsure of whether or not to qualify this decision-making as basic AI or not – a refreshing admission in an era when most companies try their best to classify everything that can possible fit the definition of AI even loosely as AI. But regardless of what you call it, the software’s ability to adapt to its operating conditions and goals is impressive, and a great sign for Loon’s long-term mission of delivering affordable broadband connections to underserved areas.
Transitioning between different types of professional roles can be challenging — new expectations arise, and fresh ways of seeing the world are required to be successful. A few weeks ago, I interviewed Anjul Bhambhri of Adobe about how she transitioned from engineering into product, where she now leads the company’s customer experience cloud.
While we have written a lot about Shift, we have written far less about Russell, whose career spans a model he calls “learn, earn, and serve.” He received a PhD in international relations at Oxford, switched to founding a startup, then served in the Obama Energy Department, before heading over to Capital One to lead digital and eventually rejoining his friend George Arison and Shift’s co-founder as co-CEO.
Across these roles, Russell has had to adapt to very different environments, and we chatted about those transitions, his lessons learned, and his approach to leadership.
The Planetary Society’s pioneering spacecraft LightSail 2 is getting ready for its big moment – deploying the solar sail it carries on board, which should be able to propel the spacecraft using only the force of photons from the Sun striking its surface, if all goes to plan. You can watch live as it undergoes the unfurling process, starting at around 11:40 AM PT (2:40 PM ET) today.
LightSail 2, a spacecraft funded in part thanks to crowdfunding by a community of space enthusiasts, already made history when it launched aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy on June 25. Since then, it’s been orbiting the Earth and undergoing tests to ensure its readiness for its main mission – deploying the sail and studying the results.
The benefits of solar sail propulsion is that it’s very low-cost and could potentially operate for a very long time, allowing us to study the far reaches of space and deliver a variety of payloads on research missions. It’s very low-thrust, however, and takes a long time to get to speed. And to date, much of what we know about solar sails is still theoretical – one craft called IKAROS was launched in 2010 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, but there’s lots left to learn and LightSail 2 could provide crucial experimental data that it intends to make available to the scientific community to study.
The AP is, of course, a huge news organization and a fast-moving one. But its stories, while spare as a rule, are rarely concise enough to be read aloud by a virtual assistant when its user asks “what’s the big news this morning?” As a result, AP editors and writers manually put together scores or hundreds of short versions of stories every day specifically for audio consumption and other short-form contexts.
