Before automakers and giant tech companies kicked off their own autonomous vehicle pilots, a startup called nuTonomy launched a self-driving taxi service in Singapore for the public, not just its test engineers.
The AV industry took notice; and by October 2017 it was snapped up for $450 million by Aptiv, U.S. auto supplier and self-driving software company formerly known as Delphi.
We’re excited to announce that Karl Iagnemma, co-founder of nuTonomy and now president of AptivAutonomous Mobility will participate in TechCrunch’s inaugural TC Sessions: Mobility, a one-day event on July 10, 2019 in San Jose, Calif. centered around the future of mobility and transportation.
Iagnemma, who earned his MS and PhD degrees from MIT, co-founded nuTonomy in 2013. The former director of the Robotic Mobility Group at MIT, has filed for, or been issued, 50 patents and published more than 150 technical publications and edited volumes that include books on the DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge autonomous vehicle competitions.
After Aptiv acquired nuTonomy, Iagnemma became president of Aptiv Autonomous Mobility, which is building advanced safety and automated driving systems. Aptiv recently announced that it’s opening an autonomous mobility center in Shanghai — the fifth market where the company has set up R&D, testing or operational facilities — to focus on the development and eventual deployment of its technology on public roads.
Aptiv has autonomous driving operations in Boston, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh and Singapore.
In short, Iagnemma is an authority on robotics and autonomous vehicles. Iagnemma will join a panel discussion focused on the real-life operations of autonomous vehicles — the where and how it works and what challenges could derail AVs.
If you haven’t noticed, TC Sessions: Mobility has a jam-packed agenda. Some of the biggest names and most exciting startups in the transportation industry are participating; and we have more to announce in the weeks ahead. With early-bird ticket sales ending soon, you’ll want to be sure to grab your tickets after checking out this agenda.
You can expect to hear from and partake in discussions about the future of transportation, the promise and problems of autonomous vehicles, the potential for bikes and scooters, investing in early-stage startups and more.
We’ll be joined by some of the most esteemed and prescient people in the space, including Dmitri Dolgov at Waymo, Argo AI Chief Safety Officer Summer Craze Fowler, Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson, Karl Iagnemma of Aptiv, Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron and Seleta Reynolds of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. UberElevate, Populus AI, May Mobility, Ford, Fuell, Scoot, Lyft and Jump will also be there.
If you’re feeling flush this week, then perhaps instead of buying a second Bugatti you might consider picking up this lightly used Enigma Machine. These devices, the scourge of the Allies in World War II, are rarely for sale to begin with — and one in such good shape that was actually used in the war is practically unheard of.
The Enigma saga is a fascinating one, though far too long to repeat here — let it suffice to say that these machines created a code that was as close to unbreakable, allowing the Nazis to communicate securely and reliably even with the Allies listening in. But a team of mathematicians and other experts at Bletchley Park in Britain, the most famous of them Alan Turing, managed to crack the Enigma’s code, helping turn the tide of the war. (If you’re interested, a good biography of Turing will of course tell you more, and Simon Singh’s The Code Book tells the story well as part of the history of cryptography.)
The risk of exposure should a machine be captured by the Allies meant that German troops were instructed to destroy their Enigma rather than let it be taken. And at the end of the war, Winston Churchill ordered that any surviving Enigmas be destroyed, but many escaped into the hands of private collectors like the person who got this one. It is thought that only a few hundred remain extant, though as with other such infamous artifacts a precise estimate is impossible.
This machine, however, passed through the fires of WWII and survived not only intact but with its original rotors — the interchangeable parts which would spin in a special fashion to irreversibly scramble text — and only one of its interior light bulbs out. The battery’s shot, but that’s to be expected after so long a duration in storage. If you’re waiting on an Enigma in better condition, expect to be waiting a long time.
Naturally this would be of inestimable value to a deep-pocketed collector of such things (let us hope in good taste) or a museum of war or cryptography. The secrets of the Enigma are long since revealed (even replicated in a pocket watch), but the original machines are marvels of ingenuity that may still yield discoveries and provoke wonder.
Bidding for this Enigma starts at $200,000 on Thursday at Nate D Sanders Auctions. That’s some ten times what another machine went for ten years ago, so you can see they’re not getting any less expensive (this one is in better condition, admittedly) — and it seems likely it will fetch far more than the minimum.
There are plenty of travel apps for researching flights and hotels or generally organizing your trips, but indie German developer Hans Knöchel struggled to find one that could gather all his travel-related information in one place, in addition to allowing a group of friends to collaborate on the trip-planning process. So he built one for himself: Lambus, an app that lets you organize your travel documents, manage expenses, plus collaborate and chat with fellow co-travelers about the trip being planned.
Previously a senior software engineer at Appcelerator in San Jose, Knöchel came up with the idea for Lambus after being on the road a lot himself, and finding existing travel apps lacking.
“When traveling, you either use a manual folder with dozens of pages for all your information — or countless apps to display travel expenses, booking confirmations, and waypoint planning. Alternatives like Google Trips, Sygic and Roadtrippers were always limited to one person and never offered all the features I needed during the trip,” he explains. “This gave me the idea for Lambus: A collaborative platform on which travel groups — in real-time — can display all the properties of the trip in an easy-to-use platform: Waypoints, travel expenses, booking documents, notes, photos and chat,” he says.
The resulting app he refers to as a “Swiss Army Knife” for travel planning.
Like TripIt and others, travel documents can be shared with Lambus by forwarding emails to a unique personal email address. The imported documents — like plane tickets or Airbnb stays will then be made available to all group attendees automatically. This is handy for group trips where often multiple people take turns making the various reservations, but don’t have any easy way to share the information with others beyond forwarding emails or writing down information in a shared online document.
Documents can also be uploaded through an “Import PDF” feature, as an alternative to email sharing. And photos can be added by snapping a picture or importing from the phone’s Camera Roll, as well.
The photo feature is handy for saving those miscellaneous pieces of travel information — like how to access an Airbnb upon arrival, travel directions posted on an event or venue’s website, a helpful online review you saved, and more. It’s also a fast way to import any other information, without having to rely on email or uploads.
In the expenses section, you can keep track of either private or group expenses by entering the amount and what it was for, and, optionally, if it’s been paid.
While largely aimed at group travel because of the collaboration and built-in chat features, the app can be used for solo trips, too.
In testing the app, we found there were a few kinks that still needed to be corrected.
The calendar, for example, didn’t include the days of the week, only the dates — which was unusual. The app also had trouble finding some points of interest — like a convention center, for example, when it was entered directly in the search box. (It came up when we searched for a “nearby place” to an existing waypoint, oddly.) This appears to be a bug.
Some parts of the German app hadn’t been localized to English, either. For instance, when viewing the detail page for a waypoint, the “On My List” section read: “Noch keine Orte in der Nähe geplant.” (Meaning: “No places planned nearby.”)
More importantly, Lambus didn’t turn imported documents into an easy-to-read itinerary, as TripIt does. The travel plan, instead, included a list of waypoints but not the dates and times, with all the details like flight numbers or hotel reservation numbers. That’s perhaps a deal-breaker in terms of dumping all other travel apps in favor Lambus alone.
Despite its quirks, the concept here is solid and the app is nicely designed with a bright and clean look-and-feel. The app is only a couple of months old, so given a little more time, attention, and a few more releases, it has the potential to become a seriously useful travel tool for group trip planning.
The name, “Lambus,” is an odd choice, we have to also note.
Knöechel says he was searching for a word that was easy to pronounce in many different languages, and settled on this — a domain name he already owned.
While Knöechel is the sole founder, Lambus is a team of seven including mainly university friends, he says. The startup is seed-funded by the Ministry of Economics in Germany (~120k€), and eventually has plans to generate affiliate revenue by offering hotel, flight, Airbnb and activity bookings in-app.
Warranties for purchased products is a $40 billion annual market. But in in their current form, they are considered by some to be one of the bigger scams in the world of retail because they cost so much and often return too little.
Now there is an alternative emerging. A startup out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, called Upsie has decided to wage war on the old warranty, with more reasonable pricing (typically 70 percent lower than what the retailer offers) and a much more modern approach to selling and managing the warranty.
Its bet is that lower prices, and more flexible options for ordering, tracking and claiming against warranties, will drive more users to its service and take some business away from the retailers that largely dominate the market today. Today it’s announcing that it has raised $5 million led by True Ventures to build out that busines in the US. Techstars Ventures, Matchstick Ventures, Syndicate Fund, M25, and angel investor Marc Belton also participated.
If you’ve ever purchased an expensive consumer electronics product, you’ll know the problem that Upsie is tackling: warranties can cost a lot, and in many cases you’re not sure what you might even be getting out of it. And if you do find yourself in the unfortunate predicament of needing to claim, you may find the process a little less than efficient but hopefully not as bad as this:
“If you buy a product worth $900 dollars, a warranty might cost an extra $130, but that warranty might cost only $10 from the insurance company,” said Clarence Bethea, the CEO and founder of Upsie.
When an expensive purchase like a consumer electronics product breaks down, the buyer needs to pay out big money for repairs or replacements, and that worry drives many of those customers to pay a big sum for the guarantee that someone else will cover those liabilities.
The operative words in that last paragraph are “big sum”: a warranty can represent peace of mind, and sometimes actually help in those cases where something relatively new does break down, but one of the big issues is the mark-up that providers put on a service that preys on the fear of needing it — in some cases a warranty can cost as much as 900 percent more than the policy would cost if it were purchased directly from an insurance provider.
Bethea used to be a consultant to big box retailers and in the work he did, he realised quickly that the retailers were taking advantage of consumers when they were selling warranties on top of products. “Consumers don’t know what the warranties actually cost,” he said. “That’s what pushed me into this.”
Upsie gives consumers the option to purchase warranties up to 60 days after the sale (or 45 for smartphones). The product itself needs a minimum 90-day warranty from the manufacturers themselves, and the Upsie warranty does not kick in until 30 days after its purchased — the idea being that it picks up right after the manufacturer warranty ends.
The warranties can be purchased online or through an app and they apply currently to around 15 different categories and hundreds of electric goods covering areas like computers, wearables, phones, TVs, small and large appliances and outdoor tools. The Upsie app in itself is like your warranty file in your filing cabinet, except much simpler and lighter and less cluttered: it stores receipts, lets you scan sku’s to register the goods and more to make it easier. Then after a user purchases the warranty, it can be managed and claims can be filed by way of Upsie’s app.
The basic idea behind Upsie is reminiscent of the direct-to-consumer brands that have grown in popularity over the last several years.
Just as these have leveraged the web, mobile apps and more recently social media to build direct relationships with consumers, Upsie is also bypassing retailers and hoping that consumers will consider their cheaper alternatives, which in actuality have been negotiated with the same warranty service providers that the retailers use. It currently works with Centricity, and the plan is to expand it to a wider range over time.
Other companies have built businesses in the area of providing warranty services outside of what retailers offer, such as SquareTrade, which was acquired by AllState, and Asurion. Puneet Agarwal, a partner at True Ventures, believes that it stands out.
“Upsie is the only consumer facing brand in the space whereas everyone else is more of a back end provider,” he said. “Their subscriber growth and engagement are tremendous and the end consumer identifies with them. Because of their direct consumer focus, they also offer a level of pricing, convenience, and customer service the industry has not seen.” He added that the “big ambition” is “to make the idea of ‘upsie-ing’ a product as part of the the everyday lexicon of the consumer.”
Bethea said that one of the big early challenges was convincing insurance companies that D2C was a viable idea — which dissipated as insurance companies, like all brands and B2B2C businesses, began to consider the plethora of ways that people are buying goods today, which increasingly extend well outside the realm of just retailers.
The other challenge that is still one that Upsie will continue to work to surmount as it continues growing is convincing consumers to change their behavior. “Initially it was about convincing the industry that this is a market,” he said. “Today it’s awareness and giving consumers another option. ‘I didn’t know I could leave the register and purchase a plan afterwards’ is what we want people to be thinking.”
So far, the results have been pretty positive. Since exiting beta in 2016, Bethea said that the company has grown 300 percent each year. Services are live only in the US, and while it works towards expanding to international markets, it will also be adding auto warranties to its plans next.
Living outside of Silicon Valley as I do, companies that are outliers from the normal pattern that often list the same litany of credentials (including but not limited to grads from Stanford or MIT, possible stint at YC, office in San Francisco, past history at other tech companies), but are still thriving, do tend to catch my eye. Upsie, with its roots in the Midwest and an African American founder (also not very common at the typical SV startup), and tackling something that is fundamentally broken but not flashy, ticks some of those boxes.
Turns out that True sees and wants to seek out more of this, too.
“Great companies are being built everywhere,” said Agarwal. “More and more of the companies we invest in are outside of the Valley or are building teams outside of the Valley and we encourage it. It can be a tremendous competitive advantage both from a talent and cost perspective. We have had great success investing in places like Michigan, Montana, Oregon, Wisconsin, Washington, even recently in Africa, and now in Minnesota with Upsie. I still do see a lot of bias from investors not wanting to invest outside of the Valley. There is no question they will miss out not because of high prices in the Valley but because of the opportunity.”
We’re hunting for bold, boundary-breaking founders of early-stage mobility startups to apply to our TC Top Picks program at Disrupt San Francisco 2019. “Bold and boundary-breaking” pretty much describes the current tech revolution taking place in mobility and transportation — one that Henry Ford and the Wright brothers could never have imagined.
Top Pick designees receive a VIP Disrupt experience. It starts with a free Startup Alley Exhibition package which, among other things, includes a full day exhibiting in Startup Alley. Top Picks attract a lot of media and investor interest, and they also receive invitations to special events at Disrupt SF — like the investor reception.
One special perk lasts long after the show ends. Each Top Pick will be interviewed by one of our TechCrunch editors live on the Showcase Stage, and we promote that interview across all our social media platforms.
Here’s what one co-founder had to say about his TC Top Pick experience.
Israeli-based CAARESYS earned a TC Top Pick designation in the mobility category at Disrupt SF 2018. The startup’s vehicle monitoring system uses low-emission radio frequency radar and contactless biometrics to track the body location and physical state — respiration rate, heart rate and heart-rate variability — of each passenger in the car.
According to Konstantin Berezin, the company’s COO and co-founder, the connections they made as a TC Top Pick at Disrupt SF resulted in projects with three OEM and Tier 1 companies. The company is currently in the integration phase with auto manufacturers to get the systems into cars by 2021.
“We also followed up with a potential customer we met at Disrupt and, as a result of that meeting, we signed a memorandum of understanding to partner on a mutual project,” said Berezin. “I can’t disclose the name just yet, but we’re very excited. Being a TC Top Pick really put us on the map.”
Berezin also enjoyed the Showcase stage interview, which has become a very useful marketing tool for his company.
“The interview was terrific, and TechCrunch did a very professional job shooting and editing the video,” said Berezin. “Sending our video to current and potential customers gives us prestige and a certain cool factor. We love it!”
Our TC Top Picks program won’t cost you a thing to apply or to participate. The application is dead simple. Being selected is not. TechCrunch editors vet the applications and choose up to five outstanding early-stage startups for each of these categories: AI/Machine Learning, Biotech/Healthtech, Blockchain, Fintech, Mobility, Privacy/Security, Retail/eCommerce, Robotics/IoT/Hardware, SaaS and Social Impact & Education.
While you’re applying to be a TC Top Pick, why not apply to compete in Startup Battlefield, too? Our epic startup pitch competition carries a $100,000 equity-free cash prize.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt SF 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
Honda e, the compact electric vehicle that’s coming to market in spring 2020, is bringing its side view mirrors inside. The company confirmed Tuesday that its side camera mirror system, which was on the prototype version, will be a standard feature when the car enters production.
The side camera mirror system includes two six-inch screens, situated on the left and right sides of the dashboard, provides live images of traffic. Honda argues that the tech reduces aerodynamic drag by 90 percent compared to conventional door mirrors for an overall 3.8 percent improvement for the entire vehicle. This, in turn, can help with the battery’s efficiency and range.
The mirrors also improve visibility, Honda says, adding that the camera unit housings are shaped to prevent water drops on the lens. The lens has a water-repellent coating to prevent residual water build up.
You can check out how it works in the video below.
The driver can choose two views, normal and wide, via the vehicle settings. The two views extends the field of vision and helps reduce blind spots by about 10 percent in normal and about 50 percent when using the wide option, Honda claims.
If the driver, puts the vehicle in reverse, guidelines appear on the side view screens. As lighting conditions change, the brightness levels on the interior displays adjust.
Honda also has confirmed that the pop out door handles will be in the production version.
The automaker has big plans for the Urban EV, officially named the Honda e, and more broadly electric vehicles. The Honda e is expected to have a battery range of more than 124 miles and come equipped with a “fast charge” capability that will provide a 80 percent change in 30 minutes.
Way back in 2017, Honda Motor Co. president and CEO Takahiro Hachigo emphasized that the Urban EV wasn’t some “vision of the distant future.”
Honda plans to bring electrification, which can mean hybrid, plug-in or all-electric, to every new car model launched in Europe. The automaker is aiming for two-thirds of European sales to feature electrified technology by 2025.
The production version of the Honda e will be unveiled later this year. Customers can make a reservation for priority ordering online in the UK, Germany, France and Norway or register their interest in other European markets on the Honda national websites.
All-in-one PCs have adopted some pretty odd designs over the years, but I’ve never seen one quite like this.
The Looking Glass Pro is an all-in-one gaming PC that’s focused on one thing, visualizing 3D content on its bizarre lenticular display that makes you feel like you’re staring into a glass box filled with pixels. The embedded 4K display renders dozens of potential views and pipes them out as lower-res slices through some bizarre lens wizardry so that users can see the onscreen content in volumetric 60fps 3D without needing glasses.
You can get a better sense of how exactly this looks from a video that the company tweeted out.
With #AWE2019 fast approaching, a couple of exciting announcements coming your way! Numero 1⃣: Today, we launched the Looking Glass Pro, an all-in-one solution designed specifically for businesses seeking a turnkey holographic display solution https://t.co/IkKe6cFicfpic.twitter.com/0kGGoVxHzp
This isn’t the first product from Brooklyn-based Looking Glass Factory, but it is a culmination of all their weirder efforts to date.
Last year, the company raised nearly $850k in a crowdfunding campaign for its Looking Glass display, focusing the market for the display technology on creators looking to visualize 3D graphics and objects without having to toss on a VR headset. The company has disclosed nearly $14 million in funding.
With the new hardware, the startup is aiming to court some enterprise customers to shove one of these front-and-center on their conference table displays, hoping that the new design can streamline the process of showcasing 3D content. Looking Glass Factory is courting everyone who has ever brought a VR headset to showcase 3D content. The startup argues that their solution showcases glorious 3D but doesn’t require a headset and can showcase multiple views to multiple people at once.
Copyright 2006 Phoebe Cheong, all rights reserved
The hardware is focused on ensuring that you can cue up content and live-render it as users manipulate the content or change views with the onboard touch controls. The Looking Glass Pro integrates an Intel NUC 8 VR mini PC running Windows as well as a 7″ secondary touch panel screen that flips out from the side to make navigating the PC a bit easier, though that process still seems to be a tad janky at the moment.
The whole premise for this thing is weird and cool but also super expensive. The original 15.6″ Looking Glass display was $3,000, this thing is $6,000. The workstation is available for pre-order now and ships in July.
MyndYou, which has developed a technology to assess cognitive degeneration in senior citizens, has partnered with the Japanese company Mizuho Information & Research Institute to test the company’s product for a potential nationwide rollout later in 2019.
Starting with five cities in Japan over the course of May, MyndYou’s technology will be deployed in homes around Japan to provide remote care and analyze for changes in cognitive function.
The company has a downloadable app that passively tracks movement and monitors conversations for any signs of diminishing brain function.
“What we market today is anomaly detection and this allows us to go into the market without detecting specific anomalies,” says Ruth Poliakine, the company’s chief executive and co-founder. “As we grow and progress we see this going into more specific conditions and early conditions… first we have senior adults getting service.”
MyndYou says it already has over ten occupational therapists that have incorporate use of the MyndYou app into treatment regimes for their patients. That means hundreds of patients are currently testing out MyndYou’s service, the company said.
Partnering with Mizuho opens MyndYou up to a market that is acutely aware of the need to develop services for an aging population.
Roughly one quarter of Japan’s working population will be 75 years-old by the year 2040, according to a recent report. And dementia is on the rise in the country.
“The number of dementia patients in Japan has reached 4.62 million and is expected to increase even further to seven million, which equals to one in five seniors over 65, in 2025. The disease has become an important problem not only for medical field but also for the whole of Japanese society. As in many cases, patients of dementia receive the diagnosis after the symptom has progressed, making a diagnosis and providing adequate care in the early stage is necessary,” said Hitoshi Morio, Joint General Manager, Innovation & Strategy Division, Mizuho Information & Research, in a statement.
The company charges between $10 and $50 for its service, depending on the use case and the number of patients that are using the technology.
News of the new partnership with Mizuho follows an extension of the company’s seed round, which included Amplifyher Ventures, Female Founders Fund and the angel investor, Howard L. Morgan. To date the company has raised $2.1 million.
“As a New York-based company with proprietary technology developed in Tel Aviv, we have partnered with MHIR to further the global potential for MyndYou,” said Poliakine, in a statement. “Now, the senior adult population in Japan will have access to a technology that can not only reduce readmission rates, but also prolong independence of senior adults, while providing them with personalized, data-driven remote care.”
Walmart announced today it has hired former Google, Microsoft and Amazon veteran Suresh Kumar in the newly created position of Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer — a role that will report directly to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. The CTO position was previously held by Jeremy King, who departed the retailer in March to become Pinterest’s head of engineering.
Kumar most recently worked at Google where he served for over a year as VP and General Manager of display, video, app ads, and analytics. Prior to that, he was Corporate Vice President of Cloud Infrastructure and Operations at Microsoft for three and a half years.
However, the experience that likely appeals the most to Walmart is Kumar’s 15 years spent in a variety of positions at Amazon, most recently as VP, Worldwide Retail Systems and Retail Services. He also previously led Amazon’s retail supply chain and inventory management systems.
Earlier in his career, Kumar was a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from Princeton and a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Under Kumar, Walmart aims to bring together its four technology organizations – Global Business Services, Walmart Labs, Sam’s Club Technology, and International technology, the retailer says.
Walmart’s U.S., Sam’s Club and International CTOs will report to Kumar, who will set Walmart’s technical strategy. As Global GDO, he will lead the team in building systems to digitally transform Walmart’s business operations, including the use of Walmart’s data to deliver a competitive advantage.
In addition, Clay Johnson and the Global Business Services team will also report into Kumar.
“The technology of today and tomorrow enables us to serve our customers and associates in ways that weren’t previously possible. We want to take full advantage of those opportunities,” said Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, in a statement about the new hire. “Suresh has a unique understanding of the intersection of technology and retail, including supply chain, and has deep experience in advertising, cloud and machine learning. And, he has a track record of working in partnership with business teams to drive results,” he added.
“Walmart is one of the great success stories in how a company evolves over time to serve the changing needs of its customers, and today, it is in the midst of a very exciting digital transformation,” Kumar noted. “With more than 11,000 stores, a high-growth eCommerce business and more than two million associates worldwide, the potential for technology to help people at scale is unparalleled, and I am excited to be part of this.”
The hire comes at a time when Walmart and Amazon are battling head-to-head across a number of fronts, including e-commerce, omnichannel, advertising, logistics, brick-and-mortar operations, and even the cloud. Kumar’s over 25 years of technology experience will help here, as he has deep experience in retail, e-commerce, advertising, cloud, and machine learning, the retailer says.
Walmart has more recently been positioning itself as a tech company, not just a retailer. Former CTO King pointed to Walmart’s use of technology like VR headsets and machine-learning powered robots at this year’s SXSW, explaining that Walmart was building tech organization but struggles with its perception as being just warehouse-like store known for low prices.
Kumar will begin his new role on July 8.
Below is the full memo that was distributed this morning by Doug McMillon to Walmart’s internal teams about the hire:
Re: Suresh Kumar appointed Global Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer
The technology of today and tomorrow enables us to serve customers and associates in ways that weren’t previously possible. We have started a significant digital transformation in our business, but we have a long way to go. We want to pick up the pace and increase the magnitude of change, so we’re creating a new role, reporting directly to me, of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Development Officer (CDO), and I’m excited to announce we have found a uniquely qualified leader for this position in Suresh Kumar.
Suresh has 25 years of technology leadership experience, coming most recently from Google and previously working at Microsoft, Amazon and IBM. He has a unique understanding of the intersection of technology and retail, including supply chain, and has deep experience in cloud, advertising and machine learning. And, he has a track record of working in partnership with business teams to drive results. He is not only a strong technologist, but a strong business person as well.
As the Global CTO, Suresh will set our technical strategy, combining advances in computing with Walmart’s strengths to deliver the best customer experiences. As the Global CDO, he will lead the team in building tools and systems to digitally transform our business operations, using the scale and power of our data to deliver a competitive advantage while improving the productivity of our associates and their experience of being part of Walmart.
Our Chief Technology Officers (U.S., Sam’s and International) will dually report into Suresh and their respective business leaders to ensure our technology teams continue to meet the needs of our customers and associates. Clay Johnson and the Global Business Services team will also report into Suresh.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our technology team for the progress they’ve led and for their ability to make things happen during a period of change in our industry and our business.
Suresh was most recently at Google, serving as Vice President and General Manager of Display, Video, App Ads and Analytics. Prior to Google, he was the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud Infrastructure and Operations. Suresh spent 15 years at Amazon in various leadership roles, including Vice President of Technology for Retail Systems and Operations, and he led Amazon’s retail supply chain and inventory management systems. Before Amazon.com, Suresh was a research staff member at IBM T J Watson Research Center.
Suresh holds a PhD in Engineering from Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He and his wife Gayathri currently live in Cupertino, CA and have two daughters. He will be based in our Sunnyvale office, officially starting on July 8.
Please join me in welcoming Suresh!
AR startup Meta’s original investors might have been screwed by the company’s collapse and fire sale, but a pair of VC firms are giving the brand another shot with a new corporate entity and CEO that the new backers hope will lead to a less abysmal outcome.
Meta Company is now Meta View, “a wholly new and unaffiliated entity.”
Meta v1’s not-so-differentiated approach to the AR market led it into trouble competing with teams from Magic Leap and Microsoft that were more focused on new technologies, though Meta was also well-financed with some $73 million in funding raised according to Crunchbase. The issue came as the company burned through that cash with the expectation that more was on the way. The unexpected dissolution of a $20 million funding round sunk the company and left it scrambling.
Ultimately, the company’s assets were sold months ago for “less than the bank was owed” to a mystery buyer that we now know was Olive Tree Ventures.
This isn’t the most conventional investment for Israel-based Olive Tree Ventures. One would imagine a deal like this comes from a specialized investor who finds dead startups, puts a new coat of paint on their IP and attempts to revive old relationships, but Olive Tree is just an early-stage VC firm. The fund generally focuses its investments on Israeli startups though Meta View will be based in San Mateo and it has traditionally invested in health-tech, something the AR startup was not particularly focused on its former life.
“We remain extremely bullish on the potential for spatial computing. Our belief was so strong that we did a somewhat non-traditional VC deal to acquire the assets, start a new company and find a new CEO with a vision and focus we believed in,” said Olive Tree Ventures GP Mayer Gniwisch in a statement.
The new company is also launching with an undisclosed amount of funding from Montreal-based BNSG Capital.
It’s not entirely clear what the worth is in so fully reviving the Meta brand other than scrounging up some faith in the Meta 2 headsets which the company staked its reputation on. The company will not be selling the Meta 2 but will be supporting previously-sold headsets as it works on new hardware.
While this whole situation feels a tad dodgy, the new company’s CEO Jay Wright lends the new venture some credibility. Wright was a co-founder of Vuforia which really helped blaze a lot of trails in the AR space and he has led the product at PTC since it was acquired in 2015. Not mentioned in any communications from the new company is the name of Meta’s founding CEO Meron Gribetz whose role, if any, with Meta View is unclear.
When an expensive purchase like a consumer electronics product breaks down, the buyer needs to pay out big money for repairs or replacements, and that worry drives many of those customers to pay a big sum for the guarantee that someone else will cover those liabilities.
#AWE2019 Booth 705 (@LKGGlass) 
