Category: UNCATEGORIZED

ShareChat, which added Twitter as an investor in 2019, is in talks to add two more American giants to its captable.

The Indian social network is in advanced stages of talks to raise money from Google and Snap, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

The new financing round — a Series E — is slated to be larger than $200 million with Google alone financing more than $100 million, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the talks are private. The round values ShareChat at more than $1 billion, two sources said.

Twitter as well as a couple of other existing investors are also engaging to participate in the round. ShareChat, Google, and Snap did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The terms of the deal could change and the talks may not materialize into an investment, the sources cautioned. Local TV channel ET Now reported last year that Google was in talks to acquire ShareChat.

ShareChat’s marquee and eponymous app caters to users in 15 Indian languages. In an interview with TechCrunch last year, Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder and chief executive of ShareChat, said the app was growing “exponentially” and that users were spending, on an average, more than 30 minutes on the app each day.

If the deal goes through, it would be the first investment from Snapchat’s parent company into an Indian startup. Google, on the other hand, has been on a spree of late. The Android-maker last month invested in DailyHunt and InMobi’s Glance, both of which operate short-video apps.

Like the two, ShareChat also operates a short-video app. Its app, called Moj, had amassed more than 80 million monthly active users as of September last year, the startup said at the time.

Last year, Google said it would invest $10 billion in India over the course of five to seven years. Days later, the company invested $4.5 billion in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms.

More to follow…

A UK district court judge has refused to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US.

In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court this morning, Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied the extradition on grounds that Assange is a suicide risk and extradition to the US prison system would be oppressive, given the likely impact on his fragile mental health.

The US, which has been seeking to bring Assange to the country to put him on trial for conspiracy to hack as well as a number of charges under the controversial Espionage Act, has said it will appeal.

The case has been seen as a pivotal test of press freedoms and freedom of expression vs state power.

In the judgement Baraitser dismissed a number of other defence arguments against Assange’s extradition but concurred with clinical testimony that he is a suicide risk and that he possesses the intellect to circumvent measures that could be taken to prevent him taking his own life.

“I am satisfied that the risk that Mr. Assange will commit suicide is a substantial one,” she writes in the 132-page judgement, discussing the testimony of a number of psychiatrists during last year’s extradition hearing.

“I accept that oppression as a bar to extradition requires a high threshold. I also accept that there is a strong public interest in giving effect to treaty obligations and that this is an important factor to have in mind. However, I am satisfied that, in these harsh conditions, Mr. Assange’s mental health would deteriorate causing him to commit suicide with the “single minded determination” of his autism spectrum disorder.

“I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America,” she added.

The judgement orders Assange’s immediate release although at the time of writing the WikiLeaks founder remains in custody — pending a bail hearing.

The US has 14 days to lodge an appeal.

Assange, who (self) incarcerated in the Embassy of Ecuador in London between 2012 and 2019 to avoid a warrant against him, was arrested last year after Ecuador withdrew his diplomatic asylum.

He was found guilty in a UK court of breaching bail conditions and sentenced to 50 weeks.

The US immediately said it would seek his extradition on its separate roster of charges — which relate to how the WikiLeaks founder obtained and published classified information leaked to it by former army intelligence analyst and whistleblower, Chelsea Manning.

 

A group of more than 200 Google and Alphabet workers have announced their efforts to form a union. With the help of Communication Workers of America Union’s Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA), the Alphabet Workers Union seeks to be open to both employees and contractors.

Of the roughly 227 workers who have so far signed on to support the union, they have all committed to set aside 1% of the yearly compensation to go toward union dues. The bulk of the workers who have signed on are mostly based in offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and one in Cambridge.

“This is historic—the first union at a major tech company by and for all tech workers,” Dylan Baker, a software engineer at Google, said in a statement. “We will elect representatives, we will make decisions democratically, we will pay dues, and we will hire skilled organizers to ensure all workers at Google know they can work with us if they actually want to see their company reflect their values.”

Efforts to unionize at Google and Alphabet come following the creation of unions at tech companies Kickstarter and Glitch early last year. Additionally, workers at HCL Technologies workers who contract for Google in Pittsburgh and tech company cafeteria workers in the Bay Area formed unions last year.

“You have an industry of workers — the new generation of workers and the industry, especially tech and games, has been growing exponentially with young people,” CODE-CWA union organizer Wes McEnany previously told TechCrunch about why we’re seeing more tech companies organize. “Some of them make a lot of money and are working at companies that do really bad things. I think they’re at a position socially where they’re like enough is enough.”

Google has been at the center of a plethora of labor issues over the past few years. Between the the Google walkout, the reported retaliation against organizers of the walkout and the recent departure of Dr. Timnit Gebru, it should come as no surprise that folks at the company decided to make their organizing efforts more official.

In a press release, workers also pointed to how more than half of the people who work at Alphabet companies are contract workers and therefore lack many benefits. Additionally, workers take issue with hefty payout packages to executives accused of harassment, as well as with some of the company’s government contracts, such a s the one around military drone targeting.

Meanwhile, just last month, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Google alleging the company violated parts of the National Labor Relations Act by surveilling employees, and generally interfered with, restrained and coerced employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.

The NLRB also alleges Google discouraged “its employees from forming, joining, assisting a union or engaging in other protected, concerted activities,” the complaint stated.

Those are just some of the reasons why workers want to unionize and gain the legal right to collectively bargain over workplace conditions. Still, there is a lot that needs to happen before Alphabet Workers Union fully comes into fruition. As of right now, the 227 or so workers still need to get other Google and Alphabet workers on board in order to reach a strong majority of people in favor the union. As of September 30, 2020, Alphabet employed 132,121 people. The next step is then seeking recognition from Alphabet.

That last part can be difficult. Case in point: Kickstarter. When workers asked for voluntary recognition from Kickstarter in 2019, the company’s leadership refused to do so, despite workers having majority support. Instead, Kickstarter leadership forced workers to have a formal election with the National Labor Relations Board. It all worked out for Kickstarter workers in the end but it took about ten months from going public with its efforts to being recognized as the Kickstarter Union. Once official, Alphabet Workers Union will be part of CWA Local 1400.

“This union builds upon years of courageous organizing by Google workers,” Nicki Anselmo, a program manager at Google, said in a statement. “From fighting the ‘real names’ policy, to opposing Project Maven, to protesting the egregious, multi-million dollar payouts that have been given to executives who’ve committed sexual harassment, we’ve seen first-hand that Alphabet responds when we act collectively. Our new union provides a sustainable structure to ensure that our shared values as Alphabet employees are respected even after the headlines fade.”

Bangalore-based CRED is kickstarting the new year on a high note.

The two-year-old startup, led by high-profile entrepreneur Kunal Shah, said on Monday it has raised $81 million in a new financing round and bought shares worth $1.2 million (about 90 million Indian rupees) from employees.

The Series C financing round, as first reported by TechCrunch in late November, was led by DST Global. Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, and General Catalyst also participated in the round, and so did a few names including Satyan Gajwani of Indian conglomerate Times Internet, Sofina, and Coatue.

The round gave CRED — which operates an eponymous app to reward customers for paying their credit card bill on time and offers deals from interesting online brands — a post-money valuation of $806 million.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Shah said that about 10 percent of CRED’s captable is currently held by employees and those who held vested stocks were eligible to sell up to 50% of their shares back to the startup in its first ESOP liquidity program. “We believe that startups should think about creating wealth for every shareholder, including employees.”

In the past year, CRED nearly doubled its customer base to about 5.9 million, or about 20% of the credit card holder base in India. The startup said that the median credit score of its customer was about 830, and about 30% of its customer base today holds a premium credit card. (On a side note, more than 50% of CRED customers pay their bills using UPI.)

CRED is one of the most talked about startups in India, in part because of the scale at which its valuation has soared and the amount of capital it has been able to raise in such a short period.

One of the biggest questions surrounding CRED today is just how it makes money, given how most fintech startups in the country today — and there are many of them — are struggling to find a business model.

Shah said CRED makes money by cross-selling financing products — for which it has a revenue-sharing arrangement with banks and other financial institutions — and levies a similar revenue cut from merchants who are on the platform today. More than 1,300 brands including big names Starbucks, TAGG, Eat.Fit, Nykaa, and emerging premium direct-to-consumer brands such as The Man Company, Sleepy Cat, and Crossbeats have joined the platform in recent years.

Direct-to-consumer market in India is still in its nascent stage, though some estimates say it could be worth $100 billion by 2025.

“I don’t think we were very deliberate to make D2C happen. It just so happened that in the early days when we offered rewards for D2C brands, they started to see huge traction,” he said, adding that CRED drove more than 30% sales for some brands.

“We realized that we were able to solve the discovery problem for customers. We are approaching this with themes — work-from-home and coffee — and it’s working out well. We are now playing matchmaking role between customers and brands that otherwise had to spend a lot of money in marketing.”

One of the biggest propositions of CRED is that it has been able to court some of the most sought-after customers in India. Unlike many other startups and giants such as Google and Facebook, CRED is not going after the next billion users.

“About 20 million customers account for 90% of all online consumption in India. These are the customers we are focusing on,” said Shah, who previously ran financial services firm Freecharge and delivered one of the rare successful exits in the country. The core challenge in chasing customers in smaller cities and towns in India is that very few people have the financial capacity to buy things, Shah said.

For that model to work, the GDP of India — where the average annual income of an individual is about $2,000 — needs to grow. And for that, we need more participation from females, said Shah. Fewer than 10% of the female population in India are currently part of the workforce, compared to over 90% in China.

An interesting use case for CRED today is that it could potentially license data about the traction D2C brands are seeing on its platform to venture firms, who could use it as a signal to inform their investment decisions.

Shah cautioned that the startup is “extraordinarily sensitive about data” but said the team is thinking about ways to help venture firms discover these firms. “We are planning to create a newsletter to showcase many of these brands to the investor world,” he said.

And finally, will CRED launch a credit card? “Will we cross-sell every product that banks today offer? The answer is yes,” said Shah, though he cautioned that the startup is in no hurry to supercharge its offerings and will likely engage with other players in the industry to enable these services.

The battle is heating up between Tesla and its Chinese challenger Xpeng as the latter makes clearer its stance on the future of autonomous driving. Over the weekend, Xpeng, which counts Xiaomi and Alibaba among its investors, announced that it will be using lidar sensors from Livox, a startup with closes ties to the Chinese drone giant DJI.

The choice of remote sensing technology lidar and a Chinese supplier reflects the complexities of the U.S.-China tech war. Tesla has accused Xpeng of intellectual property theft, a claim that the Chinese electric vehicle maker repeatedly denied. In a turn that surprises some industry experts, Xpeng said it will be adding lidar to its mass-produced autonomous cars in 2021, a strategy that would differentiate it from Tesla. Having seen Xpeng’s announcement, Elon Musk scoffed that Xpeng lacks Tesla’s technology.

Musk has long dismissed the use of lidar in autonomous driving, calling the technology “expensive sensors that are unnecessary.” Instead, Tesla relies on neural network training and camera-enabled visual recognition for its autonomous vehicles. Some Chinese players agree with Musk’s vision. Daimler-backed Momenta, for instance, is betting on less expensive millimeter-wave radars and high-definition cameras.

Xpeng already utilizes several sources to collect data: camera, millimeter-wave radar, ultrasonic, among other sensors. The addition of lidar, it says, will “provide a greater level of safety redundancy,” which allows a self-driving car to continue operating even when the primary system component fails, “by allowing more accurate imaging of the road situation.” Lidar will also “enhance target detection, measurement accuracy, performance in low ambient light and other challenging perception conditions,” the company claims.

The choice of Livox is also intriguing. There are mature foreign options such as Velodyne and Luminar, but Xpeng’s pick is expected given the Chinese government’s push for technological autonomy in key industries. In China, Livox faces some strong opponents like Hesai, which is backed by Bosch and Chinese search giant Baidu, and Robosense, which has fundings from state-backed carmakers BAIC and SAIC.

Livox itself was founded as an “independent company” in 2016 through DJI’s internal incubation program, according to the startup’s own description. One of its selling points has been to lower the price point of lidar, which the company claims is made possible by its unique optoelectronic scanning method.

The foray into autonomous driving is fitting as DJI has been pivoting to B2B businesses like agriculture drones. But the giant’s relationship with the lidar startup remains mystic, at least from the public viewpoint. Livox’s company boilerplate states it is “backed by DJI’s deep expertise in sensor innovation and hardware manufacturing” and its products are sold through DJI’s official retail store. Other than that, it hasn’t addressed whether DJI holds any equity in it or has controlling power over its management.

As it turns out, Livox is “just a team within DJI, which was later positioned as a separate company” while enjoying access to DJI resources including manufacturing and supply chain “just like another product brand,” a person with knowledge of the matter told TechCrunch.

One possible motive for Livox’s deliberate distancing from DJI is to avoid potential scrutiny from the U.S. government, which sees lidar as a key area in the tech war with China, the person said. DJI was recently added to the U.S. government’s trade blacklist, which has sanctioned other Chinese tech titans like Huawei and SenseTime from accessing key components from U.S. suppliers. Frank Wang, founder and chief executive of DJI, is also believed to want less public attention.

Livox and DJI couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

TMYTEK recently raised a Series A+ round of about $10 million for products that make it easier to test 5G millimeter wave equipment. So far, the company’s clients include KDDI, NTT DoCoMo and research institutions. But the Taiwanese startup has aspirations to sell its own base stations, too, competing with well-established players like Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Huawei. TMYTEK plans to use its expertise, gleaned from helping other researchers develop 5G infrastructure, to create what its chief executive officer describes as a “complete 5G industrial chain.”

Its latest funding round was led by TMYTEK’s manufacturing partner Inventec, one of the largest OEMs in Taiwan, and brings the startup’s total funding so far to $13.3 million. Other investors included Taisic Materials, ITEQ, Tamagawa Electronics, and Taiwan’s National Development Fund. TMYTEK also recently took part in SparkLabs Taipei’s accelerator program.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Su-Wei Chang told TechCrunch that it plans to raise a Series B next to develop and commercialize its base stations. To get ready for its base station business, TMYTEK recently joined the O-RAN Alliance, founded by some of the world’s biggest telecoms to create more interoperable mobile networks, in a bid to encourage the development of new technology and faster deployment.

Chang said TMYTEK’s base in Taiwan gives it a strategic advantage. 5G manufacturing is an important part of Taiwan’s economy, with exports reaching record highs during the second half of 2020, thanks in part to demand for 5G-related equipment and technology for smartphones, autonomous vehicles and smart devices.

Chang studied at University of Massachusetts Amherst and when TMYTEK was founded six years ago, he was often asked why he didn’t stay in the United States, where it would have been easier to secure startup funding. But being in Taiwan puts the company closer to many important markets, including Japan, where 30% of its current business comes from, and gives TMYTEK a good foundation to expand into the U.S. and European market, he said.

It has also given the company a supply chain advantage. TMYTEK has manufacturing partners across Asia, including Inventec in Taiwan, and factories in Vietnam and Thailand, in addition to China. Chang said this means TMYTEK was not limited by the COVID-19 pandemic or the U.S-China trade war.

Before launching TMYTEK in 2014, Chang and co-founder Ethan Lin both worked at Academia Sinica, one of the top research institutions in Taiwan, where they focused on millimeter waves even though at the time most researchers were more interested in the mid-band spectrum.

But as more devices and applications began to crowd the 4G spectrum, mmWave became less niche. With Qualcomm’s launch of next-generation 5G mmWave hardware and chips, and more carriers launching mmWave coverage, mmWave is poised to become mainstream.

Millimeter waves offer powerful signals with wide bandwidth and low latency, but drawbacks include difficulty traveling through obstacles like buildings. It also has a limited range, which is why millimeter waves need more base stations. Beamforming, which directs signals toward a specific device, and antenna array, or multiple antennas that work like a single antenna, are used to extend its coverage.

Making mmWave development faster

One of the main challenges for the millimeter wave market, however, is the lack of R&D tools to speed up their development and time to market, resulting in higher costs and slower deployment.

To keep up with market opportunities, TMYTEK transitioned from design and manufacturing projects for clients to offering 5G-focused solutions like the BBox, which stands for “beamforming box.” The BBox was created after a professor at National Taiwan University told Chang that his team was working on antenna design, but didn’t have the resources to work on beamforming technology, too. It lets researchers create 16 beams and control the signal’s amplitude and phase with software, so they can test how it works with antennas and other hardware more quickly. TMYTEK claims the BBox can save researchers and engineers up to 80% in time and cost.

Chang said TMYTEK realized that if researchers at NTU, one of Taiwan’s largest research universities, needed a solution, then other labs did, too. So far, it has delivered 30 sets to companies including KDDI, NTT DoCoMo, Fujitsu, several Fortune 500 companies and research institutions.

While the BBox was created for antenna designers, the company also began exploring solutions to help other designers, including algorithm developers who want to test beam tracking, communicate with base stations and collect data.

For that scenario, TMYTEK created the XBeam, which is describes as a “total solution,” and is meant for the mass production phase, testing modules, smartphones and base stations before they are shipped. Traditional solutions to test modules rely on mechanical rotators, but Chang said this is more suited to the research and development process. The XBeam, which is based on the BBox, electronically scans beams instead. The company claims the XBeam is up to 20 times faster than other testing solutions.

TMYTEK created the XBeam’s prototype in 2019 and launched the commercialized version in November 2020.

The BBox and XBeam will help TMYTEK build its own base station business in two ways, Chang said. First, having its own solutions will allow TMYTEK to test base stations and bring them to market faster. Second, the startup hopes building a reputation on effective research and development tools will help it market its base stations to private and public networks. This is especially important to TMYTEK’s ambitions since their base stations will be up against products from major players like Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Huawei.

“Our advantage at TMYTEK is that we’re doing the design and we have good partners for manufacturing. Inventec, our investor, is a top five manufacturer in Taiwan,” he said. “And TMYTEK also builds our own testing solution, so our value is that we can provide a total solution to our customers.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Samsung’s next flagship is set to debut January 14. The company just confirmed earlier rumors surrounding the date for its next Unpacked event (virtually, of course). This one sports the name, “Welcome to the Everyday Epic.”

“Over the past year, mobile technology has taken center stage in everyday life as people are working remotely and spending more time at home,” the company writes. “The accelerated transition to a mobile-first world brings with it the need for devices that can transform everyday life into an extraordinary experience.”

The event’s timing is an interesting artifact of 2021’s wacky show scheduling, with the COVID-19 pandemic still very much being front of mind. Past Unpackeds were generally timed around Mobile World Congress. That show has been delayed until the summer, however, in hopes of returning to an in-person event. So Samsung has opted to kickstart sales a month or so earlier this year.

In fact, the event is a mere days after CES. Gone are the days a gadget journalist could take a few days to decompress after the year’s biggest hardware show. It also, perhaps, doesn’t bode well for Samsung’s announcements during CES itself (though the electronics giant has more than enough divisions to keep its presence at the show interesting).

Another odd change this year is the fact that you can already reserve the S21, sight unseen. There’s little doubt it will be a solid phone, though there are plenty of questions around how the company will up the ante in the era of flagging smartphone sales. The leaks so far have been kind of underwhelming, though Samsung’s usually got a couple of fun surprises up its sleeve.

We’ve already seen enough of the Galaxy Buds Pro that they don’t qualify as a surprise, exactly. But the company has a solid enough track record with earbuds that there’s reason to be excited. The AirPods Pro competitors are are said to be priced at a reasonable $199.

T-Mobile, the third largest cell carrier in the U.S. after completing its recent $26 billion merger with Sprint, ended 2020 by announcing its second data breach of the year.

The cell giant said in a notice buried on its website that it recently discovered unauthorized access to some customers’ account information, including the data that T-Mobile makes and collects on its customers in order to provide cell service.

From the notice: “Our cybersecurity team recently discovered and shut down malicious, unauthorized access to some information related to your T-Mobile account. We immediately started an investigation, with assistance from leading cybersecurity forensics experts, to determine what happened and what information was involved. We also immediately reported this matter to federal law enforcement and are now in the process of notifying impacted customers.”

Known as customer proprietary network information (CPNI), this data can include call records — such as when a call was made, for how long, the caller’s phone number and the destination phone numbers for each call, and other information that might be found on the customer’s bill.

But the company said that the hackers did not access names, home or email addresses, financial data, and account passwords (or PINs).

The notice didn’t say when T-Mobile detected the breach, only that it was now notifying affected customers.

A spokesperson for T-Mobile did not respond to requests for comment, but told one news site that the breach affects about 0.2% of all T-Mobile customers — or approximately 200,000 customers.

It’s the latest security incident to hit the cell giant in recent years.

In 2018, T-Mobile said as many as two million customers may have had their personal information scraped. A year later, the company confirmed hackers accessed records on another million prepaid customers. Just months into 2020, T-Mobile admitted a breach on its email systems that saw hackers access some T-Mobile employee email accounts, exposing some customer data.

It’s fair to say that most people have heard about diversity reports. And it’s probably also fair to say that most of us have watched, sometimes with a metaphorical bucket of buttered popcorn, as companies crisis-comms their ways out of … crises. But most of us do not know what goes on behind the scenes.

Mark S. Luckie has an idea. The digital strategist, journalist and author of “The Digital Journalist’s Handbook” and “DO U,” has written “Valley Girls,” a fictional portrayal of life behind the social curtain at popular tech company Elemynt. Particularly the journey of main character Kelsey Pace, as she navigates life as a communications manager for the company. Having worked in strategy and partnership positions at Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, Luckie tells us he was most interested in exploring how the actual conversations about diversity work inside of tech companies.

“The most that people the most insight that people have is diversity reports, which of course are published from the tech companies, but not an idea of ‘Okay, what’s really going on?’ And so that’s what ‘Valley Girls’ aims to explore — what’s really going on? How bad is diversity? What are the things that are happening or not happening? What is the employee attitude towards it? One of the big narratives is what are the contentions between employees and executives to actually furthering diversity within these companies?”

Tech watchers will read “Valley Girls” and perhaps be able to identify what company drama he is referring to when he mentions this Congressional hearing or that anonymous memo. This, Luckie says, was on purpose.

“It is a merging of the narratives. So yeah, anyone who follows tech or works around tech will be able to … say, ‘Okay, this reminds me of this, it reminds me of this.’ And because like I said, all these experiences are not isolated from each other. They’re woven into each other.”

With “Valley Girls,” Luckie says he wanted to explore the personal conflict that can emerge while working at one of these companies. He did that and more.

Click play above to hear more about the book, due out this month, and what he heard about the reactions from some in Silicon Valley.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hellllooooo, 2021! Welcome back to Human Capital, a weekly newsletter that details the latest in the realms of labor, and diversity and inclusion.

Not a ton happened this week so I figured I’d use the time to look back on some of the more notable labor stories of 2020.

Sign up below to receive Human Capital in your inbox every Friday at 1 p.m. PT. 

Gig workers vs. Uber, Lyft, Instacart et al.

California’s Proposition 22, backed by gig companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, passed to ensure gig workers are classified as independent contractors. It was an important proposition that resulted in the yes side contributing north of $200 million to its efforts. But the fight isn’t over, which you can read about here. 

Amazon’s stumbles

Amazon faced a number of labor disputes throughout the year — many of them involving its warehouse workers and surveillance. 

An example: Christian Smalls, a former Amazon warehouse worker, was fired from Amazon in March after organizing a walkout at one of the company’s fulfillment centers in Staten Island. As a result, New York’s attorney general is investigating if Amazon violated federal worker safety laws and New York state’s whistleblower protections laws by firing Smalls.

Smalls’ termination helped galvanize other warehouse workers who later formed an international organization to demand change inside Amazon’s warehouses. Organizers pointed to worker retaliation as one of the driving factors for the formation of Amazon Workers International. Meanwhile, Amazon executives reportedly discussed discrediting Smalls and making him the face of the organizing movement.

An Amazon spokesperson previously told TechCrunch the company did not fire Smalls for organizing a protest. Instead, Amazon said it fired him for “putting the health and safety of others at risk and violations of his terms of employment.”

In November, Smalls filed a lawsuit against Amazon alleging the company failed to provide PPE to its workers.

Tech workers unionize 

Kickstarter and Glitch became two of the first tech companies to unionize. Kickstarter workers voted to unionize in February. A month later, workers at Glitch voted to unionize.

In September, at least ten tech companies were actively looking to form unions, Grace Reckers, the lead northeast union organizer of OPEIU, told TechCrunch at the time.

“Employees are seeing that they don’t actually have control of how the products they make are being used,” she said. “Even though most of the messaging in Silicon Valley is about creating a better world for us, making our lives easier and innovating, it also moves under the philosophy of move fast and break things.”

Disclosure: My partner works at Glitch and serves on the union’s bargaining committee.

Pinterest finds itself under heavy scrutiny 

Two former Pinterest employees, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, spoke out about racial and gender discrimination at the company. Shortly after, Pinterest’s former COO Francoise Brougher sued the company alleging gender discrimination. Pinterest settled the suit for $22.5 million.

But Ozoma and Banks described to me a double standard in their experiences compared to Brougher’s. While Brougher received a $20 million payout, Ozoma and Banks received less than one year’s worth of severance.

“This follows the time-honored tradition in America where Black women come forward, blazing a trail, revealing injustice and white women coming in and reaping all the benefits of that,” Banks told me.

Dr. Timnit Gebru’s departure from Google makes waves

Dr. Timnit Gebru, a top AI researcher, said she was fired from Google for sending an email to her direct reports discussing how she was disappointed in her organization’s approach to DEI as well as the approval process around her research paper. Gebru sent that email after Google did not grant her permission to attach her and her colleagues’ names to an AI ethics paper about language models. Gebru had previously sent her superiors an email, detailing that if they would not meet her specific conditions she would prepare to leave. Google proceeded to tell her it accepted her resignation and cut off her access to her work email. 

In December, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said it would review the events leading up to Gebru’s departure. In Pichai’s memo, he said the company needs to “accept responsibility for the fact that a prominent Black, female leader with immense talent left Google unhappily.” He also noted how it’s had a “ripple effect” through underrepresented communities at Google.

Alexis Ohanian makes room for Black people at the table

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian stepped down from the company’s board of directors, insisting that Reddit replace him with a Black person. Reddit took Ohanian’s advice and appointed Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel.

Troubles at coworking space The Wing

The Wing blew up following allegations of racism and other forms of discrimination. Its CEO, Audrey Gelman, resigned as a result and later apologized for not taking any action. 

In a note sent to former employees, Gelman apologized for not taking action to combat mistreatment of women of color at The Wing. She also acknowledged that her drive for success and scaling quickly “came at the expense of a healthy and sustainable culture that matched our projected values, and workplace practices that made our team feel valued and respected.”

That meant, Gelman said, The Wing “had not subverted the historical oppression and racist roots of the hospitality industry; we had dressed it up as a kindler [sic], gentler version.”

TechCrunch Sessions: Justice is on the horizon

TC Sessions: Justice is hitting your virtual screens this March. You’ll be able to hear from folks like Backstage Capital’s Arlan Hamilton, Gig Workers Collective’s Vanessa Bain, Christian Smalls and others.

Tickets are available here for $5.