Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Coalition, a cybersecurity insurance company, has raised $40 million in its latest round of funding.

Fintech investment giant Ribbit Capital led the investment with participation from Greenoaks Capital and Hillhouse Capital.

Coalition’s insurance covers expenses incurred from liabilities related to third-parties, such as fines and penalties — as well as fraud, breach response, extortion and ransomware recovery, and device replacement, and more. The company also aims to give U.S.-based customers an at-a-glance look at their cybersecurity posture — from alerts, threat intelligence, and advice on what to improve, such as vulnerability fixing.

With its Series B, the company said it’s planning to expand its data analytics platform used to assess a company’s security posture. The funding will also expand its engineering and incident response team.

Coalition, which declined to state its valuation, previously raised $10 million in February 2018.

Cybersecurity insurance remains a fickle area. Amid an ongoing threat of breaches and data exposures, having an insurance policy in place to get a company back on its feet is smart. But many companies previously believed to be covered by cybersecurity insurance are not. When shipping giant Maersk was knocked offline by ransomware during the NotPetya attack incurring more than $300 million in damages, its insurer Zurich declared the Russian-backed attack was an act of war and didn’t pay out.

Even when companies do pay out, it’s not a silver bullet.

Coalition’s proactive security efforts to try to prevent data breaches — and subsequent costs — is one way to save paying up. Will that scale up to another global cyberattack? Let’s hope we never find out.

Coalition, a cybersecurity insurance company, has raised $40 million in its latest round of funding.

Fintech investment giant Ribbit Capital led the investment with participation from Greenoaks Capital and Hillhouse Capital.

Coalition’s insurance covers expenses incurred from liabilities related to third-parties, such as fines and penalties — as well as fraud, breach response, extortion and ransomware recovery, and device replacement, and more. The company also aims to give U.S.-based customers an at-a-glance look at their cybersecurity posture — from alerts, threat intelligence, and advice on what to improve, such as vulnerability fixing.

With its Series B, the company said it’s planning to expand its data analytics platform used to assess a company’s security posture. The funding will also expand its engineering and incident response team.

Coalition, which declined to state its valuation, previously raised $10 million in February 2018.

Cybersecurity insurance remains a fickle area. Amid an ongoing threat of breaches and data exposures, having an insurance policy in place to get a company back on its feet is smart. But many companies previously believed to be covered by cybersecurity insurance are not. When shipping giant Maersk was knocked offline by ransomware during the NotPetya attack incurring more than $300 million in damages, its insurer Zurich declared the Russian-backed attack was an act of war and didn’t pay out.

Even when companies do pay out, it’s not a silver bullet.

Coalition’s proactive security efforts to try to prevent data breaches — and subsequent costs — is one way to save paying up. Will that scale up to another global cyberattack? Let’s hope we never find out.

A coalition of child protection and privacy groups has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging it to investigate a kid-focused edition of Amazon’s Echo smart speaker.

The complaint against Amazon Echo Dot Kids, which has been lodged with the FTC by groups including the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Consumer Federation of America, argues that the ecommerce giant is violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa) — including by failing to obtain proper consents for the use of kids’ data.

As with its other smart speaker Echo devices the Echo Dot Kids continually listens for a wake word and then responds to voice commands by recording and processing users’ speech. The difference with this Echo is it’s intended for children to use — which makes it subject to US privacy regulation intended to protect kids from commercial exploitation online.

The complaint, which can be read in full via the group’s complaint website, argues that Amazon fails to provide adequate information to parents about what personal data will be collected from their children when they use the Echo Dot Kids; how their information will be used; and which third parties it will be shared with — meaning parents do not have enough information to make an informed decision about whether to give consent for their child’s data to be processed.

They also accuse Amazon of providing at best “unclear and confusing” information per its obligation under Coppa to also provide notice to parents to obtain consent for children’s information to be collected by third parties via the online service — such as those providing Alexa “skills” (aka apps the AI can interact with to expand its utility).

A number of other concerns are also being raised about Amazon’s device with the FTC.

Amazon released the Echo Dot Kids a year ago — and, as we noted at the time, it’s essentially a brightly bumpered iteration of the company’s standard Echo Dot hardware.

There are differences in the software, though. In parallel Amazon updated its Alexa smart assistant — adding parental controls, aka its FreeTime software, to the child-focused smart speaker.

Amazon said the free version of FreeTime that comes bundled with the Echo Dot Kids provides parents with controls to manage their kids’ use of the product, including device time limits; parental controls over skills and services; and the ability to view kids’ activity via a parental dashboard in the app. The software also removes the ability for Alexa to be used to make phone calls outside the home (while keeping an intercom functionality).

A paid premium tier of FreeTime (called FreeTime Unlimited) also bundles additional kid-friendly content, including Audible books, ad-free radio stations from iHeartRadio Family, and premium skills and stories from the likes of Disney, National Geographic and Nickelodeon .

At the time it announced the Echo Dot Kids, Amazon said it had tweaked its voice assistant to support kid-focused interactions — saying it had trained the AI to understand children’s questions and speech patterns, and incorporated new answers targeted specifically at kids (such as jokes).

But while the company was ploughing resource into adding a parental control layer to Echo and making Alexa’s speech recognition kid-friendly, the Coppa complaint argues it failed to pay enough attention to the data protection and privacy obligations that apply to products targeted at children — as the Echo Dot Kids clearly is.

Or, to put it another way, Amazon offers parents some controls over how their children can interact with the product — but not enough controls over how Amazon (and others) can interact with their children’s data via the same always-on microphone.

More specifically, the group argues that Amazon is failing to meet its obligation as the operator of a child-directed service to provide notice and obtain consent for third parties operating on the Alexa platform to use children’s data — noting that its Children’s Privacy Disclosure policy states it does not apply to third party services and skills.

Instead the complaint says Amazon tells parents they should review the skill’s policies concerning data collection and use. “Our investigation found that only about 15% of kid skills provide a link to a privacy policy. Thus, Amazon’s notice to parents regarding data collection by third parties appears designed to discourage parental engagement and avoid Amazon’s responsibilities under Coppa,” the group writes in a summary of their complaint.

They are also objecting to how Amazon is obtaining parental consent — arguing its system for doing so is inadequate because it’s merely asking that a credit or debit/debit gift card number be inputted.

“It does not verify that the person “consenting” is the child’s parent as required by Coppa,” they argue. “Nor does Amazon verify that the person consenting is even an adult because it allows the use of debit gift cards and does not require a financial transaction for verification.”

Another objection is that Amazon is retaining audio recordings of children’s voices far longer than necessary — keeping them indefinitely unless a parent actively goes in and deletes the recordings, despite Coppa requiring that children’s data be held for no longer than is reasonably necessary.

They found that additional data (such as transcripts of audio recordings) was also still retained even after audio recordings had been deleted. A parent must contact Amazon customer service to explicitly request deletion of their child’s entire profile to remove that data residue — meaning that to delete all recorded kids’ data a parent has to nix their access to parental controls and their kids’ access to content provided via FreeTime — so the complaint argues that Amazon’s process for parents to delete children’s information is “unduly burdensome” too.

Their investigation also found the company’s process for letting parents review children’s information to be similarly arduous, with no ability for parents to search the collected data — meaning they have to listen/read every recording of their child to understand what has been stored.

They further highlights that children’s Echo Dot Kids’ audio recordings can of course include sensitive personal details — such as if a child uses Alexa’s ‘remember’ feature to ask the AI to remember personal data such as their address and contact details or personal health information like a food allergy.

The group’s complaint also flags the risk of other children having their data collected and processed by Amazon without their parents consent — such as when a child has a friend or family member visiting on a playdate and they end up playing with the Echo together.

Responding to the complaint, Amazon has denied it is in breach of Coppa. In a statement a company spokesperson said: “FreeTime on Alexa and Echo Dot Kids Edition are compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Customers can find more information on Alexa and overall privacy practices here: https://www.amazon.com/alexa/voice [amazon.com].”

An Amazon spokesperson also told us it only allows kid skills to collect personal information from children outside of FreeTime Unlimited (i.e. the paid tier) — and then only if the skill has a privacy policy and the developer separately obtains verified consent from the parent, adding that most kid skills do not have a privacy policy because they do not collect any personal information.

At the time of writing the FTC had not responded to a request for comment on the complaint.

Over in Europe, there has been growing concern over the use of children’s data by online services. A report by England’s children’s commissioner late last year warned kids are being “datafied”, and suggested profiling at such an early age could lead to a data-disadvantaged generation.

Responding to rising concerns the UK privacy regulator launched a consultation on a draft Code of Practice for age appropriate design last month, asking for feedback on 16 proposed standards online services must meet to protect children’s privacy — including requiring that product makers put the best interests of the child at the fore, deliver transparent T&Cs, minimize data use and set high privacy defaults.

The UK government has also recently published a Whitepaper setting out a policy plan to regulate Internet content which has a heavy focus on child safety.

In 1927, Charles Brannock, the son of a local shoe company owner in Syracuse, N.Y., invented the Brannock Device. The steel measurement tool with five scales has been the most effective way in the U.S. to find an accurate shoe size.

Industry-wide, 60% of consumers are wearing the wrong-sized shoes. Not only is there a discrepancy among different styles of shoes (high heels to leather boots), sizing can often differ from brand to brand within one type of shoe (like adidas sneakers to Nike sneakers) and even silhouette to silhouette within a singular brand.

For instance, I’ve owned Nike React Epic sneakers with Flyknit technology in a women’s size 10. I have men’s suede Nike Air Max 95s in a 9.5. All of my men’s Air Jordan 1s are comfortably a men’s size 8.5, but I have a women’s pair in an 11, and my Air Jordan 4s are an 8. Meanwhile, my Nike Air Max 720s feel decidedly too small at a men’s 8.5. And this is all within one brand.

During the 92 years since its introduction, the birth of the internet, and some other society-altering technological advances, the Brannock Device has somehow remained uncontested. Until now.

This summer, Nike will introduce Nike Fit, a foot-scanning solution designed to find every person’s best fit. Conceptually, Nike Fit falls somewhere between “why would we reinvent the wheel” and “we don’t even need that wheel.”

Nike Fit uses a proprietary combination of computer vision, data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence and recommendation algorithms to find your right fit. With sub two-millimeter accuracy through dozens of data points, measurements are fed into the machine learning model that accommodates every detail of every Nike silhouette down to the materials that were used, the lacing systems and other critical aspects of fit. This is then paired with AI capabilities to learn a wearer’s personal fit preference and how they relate to the population as a whole.

Users can either find their size with the augmented reality feature in the Nike app or, soon, visit participating stores to use the technology. I recently had the opportunity to do both.

Within the Nike app, I used my phone’s camera to capture an empty space where the floor meets the wall as a point of reference, with the app’s guidance ensuring a level plane. I stood with my heels against the wall I captured as my reference point and pointed the camera down at my feet as if to take a photo. Once my feet were properly aligned with the outline guide within the app, I simply touched the button that looks just like I’m taking a photo.

In seconds, this action scans the feet and collects 13 data points, the best of the 32 points Nike is capable of capturing. Despite all of the data being collected, users will only be offered the length and width measurements, down to the millimeter, of each foot individually.

“Augmented reality is a new type of experience for a lot of consumers and sets a lot of challenges for them,” says Josh Moore, Nike’s vice president of design and user experience. “We’ve been doing a lot of experiments and creating new features in our SNKRS app over the last few years where we really learned a lot about how to use augmented reality successfully. Specifically, we know we have to guide our users through the journey at their own pace so they can comprehend as they go.”

“We’re talking about phones with cameras measuring your feet,” Moore continues. “It’s a new type of experience where you’re using your device, the device’s camera, the 3D space around you, and you’re using your body. There’s no common UX pattern for this.”

The in-store experience differs in a few ways. It wasn’t enough to simply have great technology, it also had to reduce friction within the in-store buying process. The idea is to reduce the amount of time associates spend going back and forth grabbing sizes from the stock room in order to ensure time spent with customers is higher quality and more efficient.

At the Retail Lab on Nike’s campus, I stood on a mat while a Nike sales associate scanned my feet with a handheld iTouch device. With the measurements taken (my right foot is 1 millimeter longer than my left, while my left is 1 millimeter wider than my right), the associate can provide a range of sizes for me, which includes where my best fit could fall in any shoe in Nike’s catalog. Once they look up the shoe I’m interested in, the app will offer the best fit size for my measurements and that shoe. If it’s available, they’ll bring out that size, and if there is any disbelief, they’ll bring out the size you’d like to try, as well.

Trying the Nike Fit experience at the Retail Lab on Nike’s campus

Whether using the app to find the right fit and make a purchase or going into the store, associates and customers can record which size is purchased, as well as other personal preferences around fit.

“Before a shoe arrives onto the market, it will already be trained into the solution. But since the solution encompasses both machine learning and AI, its accuracy out of the gate is astonishing and just gets even better,” says Michael Martin, vice president of Nike direct products, growth and innovation.

With more data, Nike will not only have continual improvements of an individual’s fit preferences, it will also learn the greater population’s preferences around each specific model, offering insight on creating better-fitting shoes. 

In development for just over 12 months, Nike Fit was being tested in three stores — one each in Seattle, Dallas and Pasadena, Calif. — only six months after Nike acquired Israeli startup, Invertex, whose entire mission was to create scans of the human body for better fit customization.

“Fundamentally, at this stage, Nike is a technology company. It’s a technology company that builds upon its historical strengths in footwear design, storytelling and inspiration, and it’s able to use those in combination to solve problems that no one else can solve,” says Martin. “We think this is arguably our biggest solution to date.”

Despite being for footwear right now, the technology created for Nike Fit has the potential to change retail in a lot of ways. One can imagine women being able to use the tech to find the right bra size. It could also make buying denim easier. As individualism and inclusivity have become marketing tools, custom fit seems like a natural next step, but until now, there hasn’t been a clear-cut solution.

Nike Fit will be introduced in select stores in the U.S. and within the Nike app in early July 2019, with Europe to follow later in the summer.

Nike has always had a place in the conversation alongside the likes of Apple when upper echelon branding and storytelling is discussed. With the introduction of Nike Fit, Nike just does it — again.

It’s that time again. Parents across the world are doling out $15 to Epic Games after the developer released Season 9, the latest update for its hit game Fortnite that’s particularly popular among kids and young adults.

Fortnite is estimated to have over 250 million players, and it has proven to be a major money-spinner for Epic thanks to sales of seasonal Battle Passes, skins and virtual items for avatars. That’s very much for the focus for Season 9, which dropped today and is really about the cosmetics with the latest Battle Pass unlocking over 100 rewards, including a range of new skins and characters.

Season 9 is an upgrade that’ll keep existing gamers locked into Fortnite through evolution — there are no radical changes to excite new or less active players.

In terms of gameplay, Fortnite has added two new locations. Neo Tilted replaces Tilted Towers, which was destroyed by a volcano eruption last week, then there’s Mega Mall which is an upgrade on Retail Row. Epic has added ‘Slipstreams’ which are turbines that power a wind-based transport system for getting across the map quickly, and potentially adding an interesting new combat angle.

There’s also a new ‘Fortbytes,’ which is essentially a hidden item challenge. Gamers who bought a Battle Pass can collect a series of 100 collectible computer chips which are scattered across the map. There are an initial 18 released, with a new arrival each day — those who collect them all can unlock rewards and “secrets.”

There’s just one new gun on offer, the combat shotgun which doesn’t seem particularly impressive, while grenades have returned. A large number of weapons have been removed — or “vaulted” in Epic parlance — and they include clingers, pump shotgun, poison dart trap, scoped revolver, suppressed assault rifle, thermal assault rifle, and balloons.

That’s about the sum of the new update, although Fortnite does now include three new limited time games: three-person squad ‘trios,’ a ‘solid gold’ mode that uses legendary weapons and ‘one shot,’ a sniper-only battle set in a low gravity environment.

Qualcomm today announced that it has partnered with Google to create a reference design and development kit for building Assistant-enabled Bluetooth headphones. Traditionally, building these headphones wasn’t exactly straightforward and involved building a lot of the hardware and software stack, something top-tier manufacturers could afford to do, but that kept second- or third-tier headphone developers from adding voice assistant capabilities to their devices.

“As wireless Bluetooth devices like headphones and earbuds become more popular, we need to make it easier to have the same great Assistant experience across many headsets,” Google’s Tomer Amarilio writes in today’s announcement.

The aptly named “Qualcomm Smart Headset Development Kit” is powered by a Qualcomm QCC5100-series Bluetooth audio chip and provides a full reference board for developing new headsets and interacting with the Assistant. What’s interesting — and somewhat unusual for Qualcomm — is that the company also built its own Bluetooth earbuds as a full reference design. These feature the ability to hold down a button to start an Assistant session, for example, as well as volume buttons. They are definitely not stylish headphones you’d want to use on your commute, given that they are bulky enough to feature a USB port. But they are meant to provide manufacturers with a design they can then use to build their own devices.

In addition to making it easier for developers to integrate the Assistant, the reference design also supports Google’s Fast Pair technology that makes connecting a new headset to an Android Phone without the usual hassle that comes with connecting a headset for the first time.

Uber, WeWork and Slack’s IPOs are poised to pay out for SoftBank’s Vision Fund, but already the megafund is claiming impressive results. At SoftBank Corp’s annual shareholder meeting, chairman Masayoshi Son revealed return rates for LPs for the first time: and funds value is up 45 percent.

The Vision Fund is fascinating for many reasons — not to mention its insane $100 billion size — and Son detailed that LPs in the fund cover two different bands. One set has a fixed distribution of seven percent through preferred equity, that covers $40 billion. The remaining $58.6 billion of regular equity pays out based on fund (portfolio) performance which, Son revealed, is at 45 percent (after fees) two years into the Vision Fund’s life.

Son called the early results “very high” and “rare” for venture capital.

“Some people criticized [us, saying:] ‘You have been too aggressive and you can’t deliver good results by just investing so much,’ but we show this result,” Son said in comments that were translated into English for an online broadcast of his speech to shareholders.

Son pointed out that even a blended return, which includes the seven percent fixed payout, stands at 29 percent.

In contrast to the conventional secrecy of VC firms, SoftBank President Masayoshi Son is opening the books on the Vision Fund’s performance

The SoftBank supremo claimed many underestimate how involved the parent company is in the fund — a lot of light is shone on Saudi investor PIF and particularly its link to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of the regime — but he pointed out that SoftBank Corp represents 48 percent of the regular equity in the fund and is thus in line for a large share of the spoils.

SoftBank’s paper-based return from the fund reached 62 percent IRR which even Son himself admitted is a lofty target that the Vision Fund will struggle to maintain. SoftBank’s IRR was 44 percent during Son’s 18-year tenure leading the business, which he said makes him bullish for the future.

“I don’t like number two. From my personality perspective, I can’t accept number two, I need to be number one. I’ve been like that since I was a kid,” he said — again via a translator — of SoftBank’s goal to assemble a group of ‘global champions’ in the Vision Fund.

SoftBank Corp (SBG in the chart above) stands to gain significantly if and when the Vision Fund can convert paper gains into returned capital

The Vision Fund has collected 82 investments to date, and SoftBank’s earnings show that two exits in the year were Flipkart, which sold to Walmart for $16 billion last year, and Nvidia, after the Vision Fund dumped its entire stake in February following a downturn in its share price. SoftBank generated income of ¥146.7 billion and ¥138.3 billion, respectively, from those deals. That’s a combined ¥306.8 billion including derivative gain, or around $2.8 billion.

However, SoftBank mostly relies on “unrealized gains” on investments like Uber, OYO and others for its impressive numbers — in other words, how much the value of its stake in these companies has increased as they raise more capital and increase their valuations. These are, of course, paper gains until they pay out via acquisition or — what is most likely the goal for the Vision Fund — IPO. Indeed, the Vision Fund itself is reportedly planning a listing of its own.

That’s a major caveat for the IRR numbers that SoftBank claimed, since the majority of its investments haven’t exited for hard cash at this point. The fact that these assets have increased in value suggests that, as and when they do, the payouts will be handsome, but getting them liquidated is, as most VCs will tell you, the hard part.

Ping An Health and Guardant Health — two of its less prominent investors — went public last year in Hong Kong and the U.S, respectively, but it is still early days for the rest of the Vision Fund herd. That said, over the coming weeks, we’ll see the results of SoftBank’s prominent bets as Uber, WeWork and Slack head to the public markets and that’ll give a clearer indication of the progress and value for LPs.

Already, the Vision Fund is tipped to make a $3 billion paper gain from Uber’s IPO on an investment made at the end of 2017 — the fund is Uber’s largest shareholder — but how much it realizes will depend on what it sells at the bell, what it holds and how Uber’s share price develops.

In sticking with his unconventional approach to venture capital, Son is promising to provide an annual update. That’s a long time to wait and there are sure to be more explosive developments over the next 12 months particularly as SoftBank is increasing its deal volume per quarter.

Uber, WeWork and Slack’s IPOs are poised to pay out for SoftBank’s Vision Fund, but already the megafund is claiming impressive results. At SoftBank Corp’s annual shareholder meeting, chairman Masayoshi Son revealed return rates for LPs for the first time: and funds value is up 45 percent.

The Vision Fund is fascinating for many reasons — not to mention its insane $100 billion size — and Son detailed that LPs in the fund cover two different bands. One set has a fixed distribution of seven percent through preferred equity, that covers $40 billion. The remaining $58.6 billion of regular equity pays out based on fund (portfolio) performance which, Son revealed, is at 45 percent (after fees) two years into the Vision Fund’s life.

Son called the early results “very high” and “rare” for venture capital.

“Some people criticized [us, saying:] ‘You have been too aggressive and you can’t deliver good results by just investing so much,’ but we show this result,” Son said in comments that were translated into English for an online broadcast of his speech to shareholders.

Son pointed out that even a blended return, which includes the seven percent fixed payout, stands at 29 percent.

In contrast to the conventional secrecy of VC firms, SoftBank President Masayoshi Son is opening the books on the Vision Fund’s performance

The SoftBank supremo claimed many underestimate how involved the parent company is in the fund — a lot of light is shone on Saudi investor PIF and particularly its link to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of the regime — but he pointed out that SoftBank Corp represents 48 percent of the regular equity in the fund and is thus in line for a large share of the spoils.

SoftBank’s paper-based return from the fund reached 62 percent IRR which even Son himself admitted is a lofty target that the Vision Fund will struggle to maintain. SoftBank’s IRR was 44 percent during Son’s 18-year tenure leading the business, which he said makes him bullish for the future.

“I don’t like number two. From my personality perspective, I can’t accept number two, I need to be number one. I’ve been like that since I was a kid,” he said — again via a translator — of SoftBank’s goal to assemble a group of ‘global champions’ in the Vision Fund.

SoftBank Corp (SBG in the chart above) stands to gain significantly if and when the Vision Fund can convert paper gains into returned capital

The Vision Fund has collected 82 investments to date, and SoftBank’s earnings show that two exits in the year were Flipkart, which sold to Walmart for $16 billion last year, and Nvidia, after the Vision Fund dumped its entire stake in February following a downturn in its share price. SoftBank generated income of ¥146.7 billion and ¥138.3 billion, respectively, from those deals. That’s a combined ¥306.8 billion including derivative gain, or around $2.8 billion.

However, SoftBank mostly relies on “unrealized gains” on investments like Uber, OYO and others for its impressive numbers — in other words, how much the value of its stake in these companies has increased as they raise more capital and increase their valuations. These are, of course, paper gains until they pay out via acquisition or — what is most likely the goal for the Vision Fund — IPO. Indeed, the Vision Fund itself is reportedly planning a listing of its own.

That’s a major caveat for the IRR numbers that SoftBank claimed, since the majority of its investments haven’t exited for hard cash at this point. The fact that these assets have increased in value suggests that, as and when they do, the payouts will be handsome, but getting them liquidated is, as most VCs will tell you, the hard part.

Ping An Health and Guardant Health — two of its less prominent investors — went public last year in Hong Kong and the U.S, respectively, but it is still early days for the rest of the Vision Fund herd. That said, over the coming weeks, we’ll see the results of SoftBank’s prominent bets as Uber, WeWork and Slack head to the public markets and that’ll give a clearer indication of the progress and value for LPs.

Already, the Vision Fund is tipped to make a $3 billion paper gain from Uber’s IPO on an investment made at the end of 2017 — the fund is Uber’s largest shareholder — but how much it realizes will depend on what it sells at the bell, what it holds and how Uber’s share price develops.

In sticking with his unconventional approach to venture capital, Son is promising to provide an annual update. That’s a long time to wait and there are sure to be more explosive developments over the next 12 months particularly as SoftBank is increasing its deal volume per quarter.

In a move clearly driven by economic interests and an urgency to meet stringent regulations, the world’s largest games publisher Tencent pulled its mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on Wednesday and launched a new title called Game for Peace (the literal translation of its Chinese name 和平精英 is ‘peace elites’) on the same day.

As of this writing, Game for Peace is the most downloaded free game and top-grossing game in Apple’s China App Store, according to data from Sensor Tower data. That’s early evidence that the new title is on course to stimulate Tencent’s softening gaming revenues following a prolonged licensing freeze in China. Indeed, analysts at China Renaissance estimated that Game for Peace could generate up to $1.48 billion in annual revenue for Tencent.

Tencent licensed PUBG from South Korea’s Krafton, previously known as Bluehole, in 2017 and subsequently released a test version of the game for China’s mobile users.

Game for Peace is available only to users above the age of 16, a decision that came amid society’s growing concerns over video games’ impact on children’s mental and physical health. Tencent has recently pledged to do more ‘good’ with its technology, and the new game release appears to be a practice of that.

Tencent told Reuters the two titles are from “very different genres.” Well, many signs attest to the fact that Game for Peace is intended as a substitute for PUBG Mobile, which never received the green light from Beijing to monetize because it’s deemed too gory. Game for Peace received the license to sell in-game items on April 9.

For one, PUBG users were directed to download Game for Peace in a notice announcing its closure. People’s gaming history and achievement were transferred to the new game, and players and industry analysts have pointed out the striking resemblance between the two.

“It’s basically the same game with some tweaks,” said a Guangzhou-based PUBG player who has been playing the title since its launching, adding that the adjustment to tone down violence “doesn’t really harm the gamer experience.”

“Just ignore those details,” suggested the user.

For instance, characters who are shot don’t bleed in Game for Peace. A muzzle flash replaces gore as bloody scenes no longer pass the muster. And when people are dying, they kneel, surrender their loot box, and wave goodbye. Very civil. Very friendly.

“It’s what we call changing skin [for a game],” a Shenzhen-based mobile game studio founder said to TechCrunch. “The gameplay stays largely intact.”

Other PUBG users are less sanguine about the transition. “I don’t think this is the correct decision from the regulators. Getting oversensitive in the approval process will prevent Chinese games from growing big and strong,” wrote one contributor with more than 135 thousand followers on Zhihu, the Chinese equivalent of Quora.

But such compromise is increasingly inevitable as Chinese authorities reinforce rules around what people can consume online, not just in games but also through news readers, video platforms, and even music streaming services. Content creators must be able to decipher regulators’ directives, some of which are straightforward as “the name of the game should not contain words other than simplified Chinese.” Others requirements are more obscure, like “no violation of core socialist’s values,” a set of 12 moral principles — including prosperity, democracy, civility, and harmony — that are propagated by the Chinese Communist Party in recent years.

Money, prizes, glory — it could all be yours, but only if you’re good enough. Do you have the stamina, focus and coding chops it takes to create something awesome out of nothing in less than 24 hours? Then sign up to compete in the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 in Paris on 17-18 May.

The hackathon is open to everyone — across Europe and beyond, so join hundreds of other hackers, UX/UI designers, coders and like-minded techies for a full-on coding free-for-all. And we do mean free — it won’t cost you a thing to participate.

Here’s how the hackathon works. Teams, which can range from 4-6 people, choose one of several sponsored hack contests when they register. If you don’t have a team, that’s OK — you can find one when you arrive onsite. You and your team have just 24 hours to design, code and create a working solution to your chosen challenge. Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of food and drink to fuel your focus — including plenty of coffee. Once you’re finished, you’ll have just 60 seconds for a rapid-fire project pitch and presentation onstage in front of the sponsors and TechCrunch judges.

Each sponsor will be awarding prizes to the projects that address their challenges the best, including up to €5,000 in cash. On top of all that, TechCrunch judges will be scoring each pitch presentation on a scale of 1 to 5 and will declare one team the overall hackathon winner — with a €5,000 grand prize. Huzzah! Plus, if your team earns a combined TechCrunch score of three or higher, you also score two free tickets each to both TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2019 and VivaTech 2020.

Here’s the lowdown on all the sponsored challenges:

EDHEC Challenge

Making an impact can have different meanings, and we believe that one of them is about improving how we support student’s careers. Have you ever asked yourself “have I chosen the right studies and the right career for me?” According to the French Ministry of Higher Education, 150,000 french students decide to change their degree course. Participating in VivaTech is a great way to solve this issue through innovation. So let’s help them find the path that suits them best for their future career! The winner of this challenge will receive a €5,000 prize.

Eramet Challenge

In the 21st century, metal alloys are everywhere, e.g. computers, electric cars, satellites. You can find up to 20 different alloys in a single computer. The quality requirements of customers are extremely tight nowadays. Eramet, a global mining and metallurgical group, challenges you to find a solution that can provide our customers with 100% transparency on our supply chains, from the extraction of ore from the mine to the final product, with a heavy focus on the quality, environmental, social and ethical aspects. The winner of this challenge will receive a €5,000 prize.

Sanofi-Cegedim-IBM Challenge

Collective intelligence can help to find smart solutions to make healthcare professionals’ (HCPs) practice easier and bring better care to people living with cardio-metabolic challenges like diabetes. Sanofi, Cegedim and IBM will provide anonymized electronic health records for you to design data-driven solutions for HCPs and their patients. How to optimize time and effort? How to better predict and personalize care? How can we avoid health complications and allow better decision making? The best product that addresses this challenge will receive €5,000 in prize money.

Galeries Lafayette Publicis Sapient Predictive Mode Challenge

Discovering emerging brands and proposing an offer aligned with consumer expectations is a permanent challenge. Data can help us identify major upcoming trends and measure the potential of a brand or collection by uncovering fashion trends of tomorrow through text mining algorithms and pattern recognition in images and videos. If you wish to put your creativity and data analysis skills to link fashion and deep learning algorithms, this challenge is made for you! The best product that addresses this challenge will receive a prize worth €5,000.

Corvid by Wix Challenge

There are plenty of community, collaboration and project management tools available for developers to use. But how do we make these essential assets better? In this challenge, the team with the best hack that uses Corvid by Wix, an open development platform that lets you build, manage, deploy and scale advanced web applications, will receive a €5,000 prize.

Be sure to check out more info on all the sponsored hackathon challenges and prizes. Here’s the official agenda and, if you have any other questions, take a look at the TC Hackathon FAQ.

The TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 takes place on May 17-18. Money, prizes, glory — plus camaraderie and a whole lot of fun — can be yours. Sign up for your free ticket today and show us your stuff in Paris.