Category: UNCATEGORIZED

One of Richard Branson’s space companies (yes, he has more than one) is looking to bring satellite launches to British soil, with a new Virgin Spaceport based in Cornwall. The project now has buy-in from the UK Space Agency, which intends to put £7.8 million (around 9.94 million USD) into developing the facility.

The goal would be to have the Spaceport up and running sometime in the early 2020s, which is not too far away considering it’s 2019. In a blog post discussing the plan, Branson expounds on his personal affection for Cornwall and the adventures he’s had there, as partial justification for the site selection.

In case you need a refresher on the Virgin family of space products, Virgin Orbit is the one focused on launching small satellites using a customized 747 that employs traditional terrestrial aircraft take-off and landing to mitigate rocketry costs, before the LauncherOne two-stage launch craft it carries as cargo deploys its thrusters and takes its own cargo of satellites the rest of the way to space from 30,000 feet up.

Virgin currently has a Spaceport in New Mexico, and its Virgin Galactic wing (which focuses on reusable passenger travel to space using its WhiteKnightTwo carrier craft and SpaceShipTwo actual space craft) recently began shifting operations from California to that facility.

India appears to be doubling down on its push to replace gasoline and diesel vehicles on its streets with environment friendly electric cars. The government plans to order ride hailing firms such as Uber and Ola, that operate hundreds of thousands of cars in the nation, to convert 40% of their respective fleets to electric by April 2026, Reuters reported today.

As part of the push, Uber and Ola and other companies would need to onboard with this goal as soon as early next year, the report claimed. The ride hailing giants will have to convert 2.5% of their fleet of cars by 2021, 5% by 2022, and 10% by 2023. A source familiar with the matter corroborated Reuters‘ findings to TechCrunch.

The move comes as New Delhi looks to cut reliance on oil imports and bring down air pollution to abide by its commitment as part of the 2015 Paris climate change treaty. In recent years, China has also ramped up similar efforts with even tougher EV sales targets.

Electric vehicles still account for a tiny portion of all the cars that are sold in India. In the year that ended in March, only 3,600 electric vehicles were sold in India, compared to 3.3 million diesel and gasoline cars.

At an event last year, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi urged industrialists and global business leaders to work with the government on creating a “new mobility ecosystem” that is in “sync with nature.” He added, “my vision for the future of mobility in India is based on 7Cs: common, connected, convenient, congestion-free, charged, clean, and cutting-edge.

India’s electric push will spell new frustration for Uber, which is already struggling to fight back Ola, the market leader in ride-hailing space in the country. Ola, which is also backed by SoftBank, started working on electric vehicles several years ago.

It conducted a first of its kind trial in Nagpur three years ago and clocked millions of kilometers through electric vehicles. The company said last year that it aims to launch 10,000 three-wheeled electric vehicles in 12 months and one million electric vehicles by 2021.

Uber, which recently attempted and failed to sell its food delivery business Uber Eats to local rivals Swiggy and Zomato, has appeared to dial down on its focus on India. The company currently has no programs around electric vehicles in India, other than a limited pilot project it announced with electric scooter maker Yulu last month.

Earlier this year, Ola also spun off its electric mobility unit and raised $58 million for its expansion. In March, Ola raised $300 million from Hyundai and Kia to collaborate on building mobility solutions and electric vehicles.

Femtech is having a banner year, largely as a result of a massive uptick in venture capital financings for women’s fertility businesses. Men’s health companies, however, are having a moment too.

Legacy, a male fertility startup that won TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield competition at Disrupt Berlin 2018, is today announcing a $1.5 million seed round led by Bain Capital Ventures. The news follows an announcement from Dadi, a sperm storage business that closed on $2 million in capital commitments from London-based seed fund firstminute capital and New York-based Third Kind Venture Capital four months ago.

Founder and chief executive officer Khaleed Kteily tells TechCrunch that Legacy, which is based out of the Harvard Innovation Labs in Boston, will use the capital to expand its sperm analysis, improvement and cryogenic storage services.

Like the genetic testing business 23andMe, Legacy sends a collection kit directly to the homes of its customers, allowing them to masturbate and collect a sperm sample in the comfort of their own homes. Once the sample is mailed back to Legacy, the company tests the sperm collection’s mobility and morphology (the size and shape of the sperm), to identify the highest quality sperm to freeze. Legacy also sends men a sperm report, with an overall assessment of sperm health and lifestyle recommendations included.

“If it literally just entails masturbating at home to be able to preserve your ability to have a child for the rest of your life, we think that’s something everyone is going to be doing,” Kteily said. “What we are doing really comes down to changing the way people think about fertility. We have this view that fertility is a women’s issue but that’s just biologically wrong.”

Founded in January 2018, the company was created as a result of personal experience, as is often the case with fertility startups and healthtech companies more generally. Kteily, a former healthcare consultant, was dealing with a friend who was looking for sperm storage solutions while facing a cancer diagnosis and he himself had personally gone through the process of freezing his sperm only to realize how terrible it is.

“It was the singular most awkward experience of my life and I just kept thinking there’s got to be a better way to do this,” he said.

The long-term goal is to leverage its growing collection of data, which is end-to-end encrypted and HIPAA-compliant, to become a research center for male fertility. That, Kteily admits, will take many years and more capital (they are expecting to begin fundraising again very soon), but they aren’t in a rush.

“You can’t start a fertility company with the intention of just getting a profit in the next few years, you can’t cut corners or risk shutting down in the next few years,” he said. “We aren’t in it for a quick break. It’s not about moving fast and breaking things. It’s about moving as fast as possible without breaking anything.”

Apple is potentially seeking to acquire Silicon Valley autonomous driving startup Drive.ai, according to a new report from The Information. The report describes the acquisition as in process, and says it will be an ‘acqui-hire,’ which means it’s primary goal is to bring in the talent of Drive.ai – with presumably special focus on the engineering talent of the self-driving tech company.

Drive.ai got its start in 2016, founded by a crack team of graduates from Stanford’s AI lab. It focused originally on building out not only the functional autonomy of driving systems, but also intelligent communications systems that would help self-driving vehicles better integrate with existing human drivers and pedestrians.

The company later raised more money with a business model shift focused on retrofitting existing fleets of commercial vehicles, and last year began testing its own self-driving pick-up and drop-off service in Frisco, Texas.

The Information reported earlier this year that Drive.ai started seeking potential buyers for the company after finding fewer options in terms of continued funding and independent operation. Apple, for its part, has had a spotty history with its own efforts around autonomous driving, with some high-profile leadership shifts on its so-called ‘Titan’ car project. It’s still actively testing vehicles on roads, but the scope and shape of its approach aren’t entirely clear.

We’ve reached out to both Apple and Drive.ai, who declined to comment to The Information regarding the original report, and will update if we hear back.

Urban-X, the startup accelerator for companies focused on solving the problems facing the world’s urban environment, has selected the latest seven companies for its sixth cohort.

Backed by the design arm of BMW’s Mini division and the venture capital firm, Urban.US, the seven companies will receive $150,000 in financing and participate in the Urban-X 20-week accelerator program replete with access to engineers and designers from BMW, software developers, policy experts, and sales and marketing leaders.

The companies selected for the program include:

• 3AM Innovations: the company provides a tracking tool for first responders specifically designed for emergency response situations
• Cove.Tool: an early stage building design toolkit which automates performance modeling
• Evolve Energy:  Reducing energy costs for homes using a combination of real-time pricing, connected home devices and renewable energy.
• Food For All: partners with restaurants to take potential food waste and convert it to meals that cost as little as $4
• OurHub: an outdoor exercise network using public spaces for outdoor recreation
• Pi Variables: a traffic control software service
• Varuna: a water quality monitoring service

Mini launched Urban-X three years ago as part of its Innovation and Brand Strategy practice. The accelerator is focused on backing companies that pitch services for mobility, efficient and renewable energy use, urban infrastructure, housing, food waste, and more.

Since its launch, the program has accelerated 44 companies, with over 85% raising additional rounds of capital.

“Cities and emerging technology companies are powerful partners in helping to tackle our cities biggest challenges,” said Urban-X Managing Director, Micah Kotch. “We look forward to working with Cohort 06 and bringing their solutions to scale across a diverse set of industries that impact city living.”

Urban-X, the startup accelerator for companies focused on solving the problems facing the world’s urban environment, has selected the latest seven companies for its sixth cohort.

Backed by the design arm of BMW’s Mini division and the venture capital firm, Urban.US, the seven companies will receive $150,000 in financing and participate in the Urban-X 20-week accelerator program replete with access to engineers and designers from BMW, software developers, policy experts, and sales and marketing leaders.

The companies selected for the program include:

• 3AM Innovations: the company provides a tracking tool for first responders specifically designed for emergency response situations
• Cove.Tool: an early stage building design toolkit which automates performance modeling
• Evolve Energy:  Reducing energy costs for homes using a combination of real-time pricing, connected home devices and renewable energy.
• Food For All: partners with restaurants to take potential food waste and convert it to meals that cost as little as $4
• OurHub: an outdoor exercise network using public spaces for outdoor recreation
• Pi Variables: a traffic control software service
• Varuna: a water quality monitoring service

Mini launched Urban-X three years ago as part of its Innovation and Brand Strategy practice. The accelerator is focused on backing companies that pitch services for mobility, efficient and renewable energy use, urban infrastructure, housing, food waste, and more.

Since its launch, the program has accelerated 44 companies, with over 85% raising additional rounds of capital.

“Cities and emerging technology companies are powerful partners in helping to tackle our cities biggest challenges,” said Urban-X Managing Director, Micah Kotch. “We look forward to working with Cohort 06 and bringing their solutions to scale across a diverse set of industries that impact city living.”

Zyper, the London-based marketing platform that connects brands with their ‘superfans’, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. The new round, which brings Zyper’s total funding to date to $8.5 million, is led by Talis Capital, with participation from Forerunner Ventures and Y Combinator.

Founded by Amber Atherton, Zyper has built a platform that lets companies identify their top fans, and therefore advocates, on various social media. It then invites these communities of fans to join advocacy campaigns where user-generated ‘ad’ content is seeded in return for various rewards and experiences.

It’s a more granular and long-tail approach than so-called influencer marketing that targets people with much larger social followings. Atherton has long-argued that traditional influencer marketing often results in poor engagement. Instead, Zyper’s tech identifies a brand’s top 1% organic fans, typically seeing each Zyper brand community consist of around 500-1,000 advocates.

To identify superfans for each respective brand Zyper works with, the startup employs computer vision and natural language processing technology. Atherton tells me that it is this ability to accurately identify and segment superfans that gives the startup an edge, often doing a better job than the brands themselves. Zyper has already filed for a patent relating to its tech and is in the process of filing for a second one.

“These superfans provide a constant stream of trusted, user-generated content (UGC) that sparks conversation and boosts sales while unearthing new product and purchase insights,” explains the company.

To that end, brands Zyper works with include Banana Republic, Coty, Nestlé and Topshop.

Meanwhile, Zyper will use the new funds to open a San Francisco headquarters. It will also continue to invest in the development of its “predictive analytics engine” and recommendation system algorithms.

Atherton says, as part of this, the startup is building out self-service capability so that it can on-board more brands. It is also growing engineering and sales teams and recently appointed Lauren Pye, who previously served VP of Sales in North America for Live Nation Entertainment, as Executive Director of Sales.

I’d spare you the ‘wanna feel old?’ but you probably will anyway: Tetris turns 35 today.

Tetris is a deceptively simple game in which you rotate blocks made up of four squares each arranged in different configurations as they fall, trying to arrange them in a rectangular play area in such a way that you create full rows, which then eliminates the rows from the field of play. I’ve never before had to describe Tetris but I feel like I did ok.

I also learned a new thing in researching this anniversary – the name ‘Tetris’ was conceived by the game’s creator Alexey Pajitnov based on the combination of the Greek tetra (a prefix for ‘four’) and the word tennis (the sport with rackets and the net and the fuzzy neon yellow balls). I really don’t see the tennis inspiration, personally – maybe he blanked for a second and thought he was inventing Pong.

For Tetris fans of a certain vintage, the music below is fully baked into your brain meat in an indelible way. And yet the game manages to find ways to remain fresh and relevant – as with Tetris 99, the modern incarnation that even includes a ‘battle royale’ style multiplayer mechanic inspired by Fortnite and its ilk.

The storied lifetime of Tetris even includes a Hollywood treatment – plans for not only a movie, but a whole trilogy were announced in 2016, helmed by the filmmaker who brought us the venerable 1995 Mortal Kombat film. We haven’t heard much about its progress or continued development since, but it’s also not officially killed, so we could still experience this guaranteed cinematic masterpiece in our lifetimes.

To celebrate, I’m going to dig through my storage locker for my original, still functional Game Boy and Tetris cartridge and clear some lines. But don’t spend too much time on Tetris today – lest you develop the syndrome that borrows its name.

Google doesn’t want to wait for E3 to unveil more details about Stadia, its cloud gaming platform. The company is holding a live stream conference to talk about its service, including pricing, games and launch details.

The conference starts at 9 AM Pacific Time, 12 PM Eastern Time, 5 PM in London and 6 PM in Paris.

Google already unveiled its gaming service at the Game Developers Conference. We already know that you’ll be able to click a “Play Now” button and stream video game from a data center near you.

But there are still many unanswered questions. Is it going to be a subscription service or are you going to pay for games? Will you be able to play games you already own? Are all big publishers on board? It sounds like Google wants to clarify many of those questions today.

Messaging app Line has partnered with Visa to bring traditional financial clout to its mobile payment service.

The deal will see Line Pay become compatible with Visa’s 54 million merchant partner locations worldwide, boosting the service outside of its native Japan, where it has been pitched heaviest so far and where Line claims 80 million users.

The tie-up will allow Line users to use the app’s payment system even where Line Pay isn’t accepted. That’s through a ‘virtual’ visa card that’ll show up in the chat app.

Beyond that, the two sides said they will explore “ways for merchants to interact with the Line Pay service” and its digital wallet. That’s pretty lukewarm, and it’s hard to imagine that it’ll make much of a dent outside of Japan. Line’s three other major markets, in terms of users, are in Asia: Thailand (44 million), Taiwan (21 million) and Indonesia (19 million.)

One intriguing element of the deal involves blockchain, which Line has jumped into with its own crypto token (Link) and a blockchain investment arm. Line said it’ll work with Visa around “new experiences based on blockchain” that could include international money transfers among other things.

Finally, as is often the case with Japanese tech deals, there’s also an Olympics focus — with Tokyo scheduled to host the summer games in 2020.

Mobile payments are one of the Japanese government’s big focuses ahead of the games — organizing its taxis through tech, is another — and, thus, Visa and Line said they plan to heavily promote their ‘cashless’ alliance ahead of 2020.

Line and Visa are far from the first to combine traditional and new payments. Paytm and Uber rival Ola in India have both launched cards in partnership with banks, while cross-border payment companies like TransferWise, Monzo and others have tie-ups with Visa and Mastercard to enable spending.