Calendars are obviously artificial.
Leap year isn’t a thing. Unless we want it to be.
A bonus day, to do whatever we like with.
Actually, we can have a bonus day whenever we choose, because the cadence of our days is up to us, more than we often want to admit.
If you had more time, what would you do with it?
GDC’s top sponsors continue to pull out of attending the San Francisco gaming conference. Today, Amazon announced it would no longer be sending employees to the event.
In an update, the team shared that they would instead be hosting a “global online event” to share news that they had been planning to detail at the conference.
Amazon Game Tech is a “diamond partner” at the Game Developers Conference this year, a designation that signifies sponsors “who play an integral role in the success of GDC,” the conference says on its website. At this point, the only diamond partners who have not officially withdrawn are Intel, Nvidia and Google.
Facebook, Sony, Microsoft, Unity and Epic Games have all pulled out of the conference over concerns surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak. Now, Amazon joins them.
TechCrunch has reached out to the other remaining sponsors at the event.
As pointed out by @beccahallstedt, the red companies have officially pulled out.
Wouldn't be surprised if Google, Amazon, Intel, and Nvidia also pull out. pic.twitter.com/C81LomyM0L
— Xavier
GDC
(@XCK3D) February 27, 2020
With the next version of Windows 10, coming this spring, Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant will lose a number of consumer skills around music and connected homes, as well as some third-party skills. That’s very much in line with Microsoft’s new focus for Cortana, but it may still come as a surprise to the dozens of loyal Cortana fans.
Microsoft is also turning off Cortana support in its Microsoft Launcher on Android by the end of April and on older versions of Windows that have reached their end-of-service date, which usually comes about 36 months after the original release.
As the company explained last year, it now mostly thinks of Cortana as a service for business users. The new Cortana is all about productivity, with deep integrations into Microsoft’s suite of Office tools, for example. In this context, consumer services are only a distraction, and Microsoft is leaving that market to the likes of Amazon and Google.
Because the new Cortana experience is all about Microsoft 365, the subscription service that includes access to the Office tools, email, online storage and more, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the assistant’s new feature will give you access to data from these tools, including your calendar, Microsoft To Do notes and more.
And while some consumer features are going away, Microsoft stresses that Cortana will still be able to tell you a joke, set alarms and timers, and give you answers from Bing.
For now, all of this only applies to English-speaking users in the U.S. Outside of the U.S., most of the productivity features will launch in the future.
Years from now, after this event is long over, what should we remember about it?
A week from now, when the crisis hits, what should we remember about this meeting?
Tomorrow, when the day gets busy, what would you like me to remember about the discussion we just had?
Begin with the end in mind.
Amazon Web Services has entered a partnership with Safaricom — Kenya’s largest telco, ISP and mobile payment provider — in a collaboration that could spell competition between American cloud providers in Africa.
In a statement to TechCrunch, the East African company framed the arrangement as a “strategic agreement” whereby Safaricom will sell AWS services (primarily cloud) to its East Africa customer network.
Safaricom — whose products include the famed M-Pesa mobile money product — will also become the first Advanced Consulting Partner for the AWS partner network in East Africa.
“The APN is…the program for technology…businesses who leverage AWS to build solutions and services for customers…and sell their AWS offerings by providing valuable business, technical, and marketing support,” Safaricom said.
“We chose to partner with AWS because it offers customers the broadest and deepest cloud platform…This agreement will allow us to accelerate our efforts to enable digital transformation in Kenya,” said Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph.
“Safaricom will be able to offer AWS services to East-African customers, allowing businesses of all sizes to quickly get started on AWS cloud,” the company statement continued.
For now, the information provided by Safaricom is a bit sparse on the why and how of the partnership between the American company and East African mobile, financial and ISP provider.
TechCrunch has an inquiry into Amazon and some additional questions posed to Safaricom, toward additional coverage.
An initial what-this-all-means take on the partnership points to an emerging competition between American cloud service providers to scale in Africa by leveraging networks of local partners.
The most obvious rival to the AWS-Safaricom strategic agreement is the Microsoft-Liquid Telecom collaboration. Since 2017, MS has partnered with the Southern African digital infrastructure company to grow Microsoft’s AWS competitor product — Azure — and offer cloud services to the continent’s startups and established businesses.
MS and Liquid Telecom have focused heavily on the continent’s young tech companies. “We believe startups will be key employers in Africa’s future economy. They’re also our future customers,” Liquid Telecom’s Head of Innovation Partnerships Oswald Jumira told TechCrunch in 2018.
Amazon hasn’t gone fully live yet with e-commerce services in Africa, but it has aggressively positioned AWS and built a regional client list that includes startups — such as fintech venture Jumo — and large organizations, such Absa and Standard Bank.
Partnering with Safaricom plugs AWS into the network of one East Africa’s most prominent digital companies.
Safaricom, led primarily by its M-Pesa mobile money product, holds remarkable dominance in Kenya, Africa’s 6th largest economy. M-Pesa has 20.5 million customers across a network of 176,000 agents and generates around one-fourth ($531 million) of Safaricom’s ≈ $2.2 billion annual revenues (2018).
Compared to other players — such as Airtel Money and Equitel Money — M-Pesa has 80% of Kenya’s mobile money agent network, 82% of the country’s active mobile-money subscribers and transfers 80% of Kenya’s mobile-money transactions, per the latest sector statistics.
A number of Safaricom’s clients (including those it provides payments and internet services to) are companies, SMEs and startups.
Extending AWS services to them will play out next to the building of Microsoft’s $100 million Africa Development Center, with an office in Nairobi, announced last year.
After investing nearly $2 billion of its Innovation Fund in Latin America in 2019, Softbank announced this month that it would add an additional $1 billion into the fund to continue supporting tech startups across the region. While the Japanese investor faces the challenge of raising a second global fund after its Vision Fund, Softbank is still investing heavily in Latin America.
One of its early Latin American investments – and the first in Colombia – Ayenda Rooms, is performing particularly well, raising $8.7 million from Kaszek Ventures this month. Ayenda is the local version of Oyo Rooms, one of Softbank’s biggest bets in India, which has looked to expand into Mexico despite a financial crunch last month. In fact, the fund recently came under scrutiny by the Wall Street Journal for funding similar delivery competitors Uber, Rappi, and Didi, suggesting a conflict of interest.
Most recently, Softbank invested $125 million in Mexico’s lender, Alphacredit, and they reportedly plan to continue investing in that niche. The firm currently oversees over 650 companies in Latin America, largely concentrated in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, and plans to invest $100-150M in seventeen firms and two VCs by the end of the year. To date, over 50% of Softbank’s investments have been into Brazil, most of which exist in the fintech sector.
In a self-fulfilling prophecy, Mexico’s neobank market became all the more competitive this month with the addition of a new player: Stori. Within the past few months, both TechCrunch and Business Insider pointed to Mexico’s neobank market as the one to watch in Latin America as startups like Albo, Klar, and Nubank battle for market share. In February, digital bank Stori joined the conversation with a $10 million Series A from Bertelsmann Investments (BI) and Source Code Capital, along with an existing investor, Vision Plus Capital.
This round of funding, led by Chinese investors, is part of a growing trend of foreign funds waking up to the Latin American startup ecosystem, Asian VCs in particular. Tencent has invested in Brazil’s Nubank, which has since expanded to Mexico, and in Argentina’s Uala, which is considering a similar move. Softbank has investments in the largest lending and credit startups in Brazil and Mexico, as well.
Stori will use the investment to improve its AI technology as it tries to reach over 100,000 Mexicans through its inclusive digital banking services. The neobank has raised over $17 million from investors since it was founded in 2018.
In January, Rappi and Lime pulled back their operations in Latin America in order to focus on technology over rapid growth. Brazil’s top mobility startup, Grow Mobility (which rose out of a merger between e-scooter companies Grin from Mexico and Yellow from Brazil) also pulled back. The startup, which provides e-scooters and bikes shares across Brazil, took bicycles out of operation and removed its scooters from 14 cities.
Grow also restructured its operations through layoffs that affected employees across Brazil, although they did not comment on how many people were affected. Grow Mobility’s scooters will now only operate in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Curitiba.
This pattern of pull-back following explosive growth has become more common among Latin America’s biggest startups, pushing these early stage companies to focus on technological solutions that boost revenue, rather than blitzscaling measures that only buy market share.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced it would invest $236 million (R$1 billion) into Sao Paulo over the next two years to strengthen its Latin American infrastructure. This effort may be a part of Amazon’s work to consolidate market share in Latin America’s increasingly competitive e-commerce market, where legacy players like MercadoLibre still dominate. This investment will enable Amazon to expand its Brazilian data centers and improve local service offerings to both private and public partners.
Amazon also announced that it would build a new distribution center in Pernambuco in the north of Brazil to support sales across the country. Brazil accounts for almost 40% of Latin America’s e-commerce market, making the country vital to Amazon’s positioning in the region.
Weel, a Brazilian accounts-receivable management platform, announced an $18.4 million investment from Banco Votorantim, Brazil’s seventh-largest bank, in February 2020. This investment was Banco Votorantim’s second in the startup after a $6 million contribution in 2019. Weel will use the investment to explore expansion across Brazil, as well as exploring Chilean and Mexican markets.
Chilean international transfer startup Global 66 received $3.25 million in February from UK investor Venrex, to continue its expansion across the region. The startup currently offers rates up to eight times better than existing transfer services, especially for the Latin American region. Global 66 recently opened new offices in Peru and plans to expand to Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico within the next two years. Within just two years of operations, Global 66 has processed transactions for over 25,000 users across 60 cities worldwide.
Yuca, a Brazilian proptech, raised $4.7 million from Monashees, ONEVC, and Creditas to help fight housing crises in Brazil’s largest cities. As Brazil’s cities sprawl – Sao Paulo is one of the largest in the world – Yuca creates central co-living spaces for young people that want to shorten their commutes. Inspired by Chinese startup, Ziroom, Yuca currently manages 18 apartments for 80 students and plans to scale to 500 apartments by the end of the year.
Brazil’s digital prescription startup, Memed, recently raised $4.5 million from DNA Capital and Redpoint eVentures to improve the local prescription system for doctors and patients alike. Today, Memed has over 80,000 registered doctors who have created over 10 million prescriptions worth more than $237 million. Memed’s 100% digital prescriptions are said to improve security and efficiency in Brazil’s complex, bureaucratic healthcare system.
While Brazil is still at the forefront of Latin America’s tech ecosystem, Mexican fintechs are edging up, especially with additional support from international investors. 2020 is off to a strong start, hinting at another potential record-breaking year for Latin American tech investment.
Amazon Transcribe, the AWS-based speech-to-text service, launched a small but important new feature this morning that, if implemented correctly, can automatically hide your personally identifiable information from call transcripts.
One of the most popular use cases for Transcribe is to create a record of customer calls. Almost by default, that involves exchanging information like your name, address or a credit card number. In my experience, some call centers stop the recording when you’re about to exchange credit card numbers, for example, but that’s not always the case.
With this new feature, Transcribe can automatically identify information like a social security number, credit card number, bank account number, name, email address, phone number and mailing address and redact that. The tool automatically replaces this information with ‘[PII]’ in the transcript.
There are, of course, other tools that can remove PII from existing documents. Often, though, these are focused on data loss prevention tools and aim to keep data from leaking out of the company when you share documents with outsiders. With this new Transcribe tool, at least some of this data will never be available for sharing (unless, of course, you keep a copy of the audio).
In total, Transcribe currently supports 31 languages. Of those, it can transcribe 6 in real-time for captioning and other use cases.
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Today we’re starting on a somber topic, so I’ll hold off on our usual jokes and attempts at puns. The impact of the coronavirus known as COVID-19 is starting to show up in U.S.-based technology earnings, and it’s something we need to discuss. We’ll get back to SaaS multiples, the IPO market, and riffing on startups later today, but first, some bad news from the public markets.
Let’s examine the latest from Microsoft, Nutanix, and Booking Holdings (parent company of Bookings.com), OpenTable, and Kayak. Afterwards, we’ll talk about what types of companies might be impacted, given what we’ve learned. And finally, we’ll link this all back to startups, younger technology shops sensitive to changes in market sentiment and repricing due to public market gyrations.
What to do in the face of failure? What happens when you’ve done your best and it still doesn’t get the review, close the sale or win the race?
One approach is to embrace the easy path of “did my best” = “failure” therefore, I should give up or simply accept mediocrity.
The other, the growth mindset, is to realize that while you did your best, it’s not your best forever, it’s just what you’ve done so far. And that while you haven’t created what you set out to create, the key word, the one you have to remind yourself of daily, is yet.
That growth mindset demands advice and collisions with the marketplace. That mindset means that you need to see what those you seek to serve have to say because without that insight, your ‘yet’ might not arrive.
By all means, ignore those that aren’t in on the joke, that haven’t signed up for the journey, that don’t want to go where you want to go.
For everyone else, though, the answer is, “thanks, wait until you see what’s next.”
Weeks after Uber exited India’s food delivery market, conceding defeat to local giants Swiggy and Zomato, a new player is gearing up to challenge the heavily-backed duopoly: Amazon.
The e-commerce giant plans to enter the Indian food delivery market in the coming weeks, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The launch of the service, which would be offered as part of Amazon’s Prime Now platform, could happen as soon as next month, we are told.
In the run up to the launch, the e-commerce giant has been testing its food delivery service with select restaurant partners in Bangalore, the source said, requesting anonymity as details of the new business are still private.
The company has been working on its food delivery business for several quarters and was previously aiming to launch it during the festival of Diwali. It’s unclear what caused the delay.
TechCrunch could not ascertain the kind of business agreement Amazon has formed with Indian restaurant partners — many of which have grown frustrated with online food delivery players. An Amazon spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
Amazon’s foray into the food delivery market would create new challenges for Prosus Ventures-backed Swiggy, and Zomato, a 10-year-old startup that acquired Uber’s Eats business in India for about $180 million in January.
Both the startups, having raised more than $2 billion together, are still not profitable, losing more than $15 million each month to acquire new customers and sustain existing ones.
Anand Lunia, a VC at India Quotient, said in a recent podcast that the food delivery firms have little choice but to keep subsidizing the cost of food items on their platform as otherwise most of their customers can’t afford them.
Figuring out a path to profitability is especially challenging in India as unlike in the developed markets such as the U.S., where the value of each delivery item is about $33; in India, a similar item carries the price tag of $4, according to estimates by Bangalore-based research firm RedSeer.
In recent years, both Swiggy and Zomato have expanded beyond food delivery businesses. Swiggy today runs what it claims to be the largest cloud kitchen network in India, and has also expanded to delivery of just about any item (not just food). Zomato has been working on “Project Kisan,” to procure raw material directly from farmers and fishermen in an attempt to assume control of the supply of items to restaurants.
That’s not to say that it would be very easy for Amazon to scale its food delivery business in India. Swiggy alone operates in more than 520 cities in India and maintains partnership with over 160,000 partners.
Swiggy is adding 10,000 new partners to its platform each month, it said last week on the sidelines of its latest fundraise announcement. At stake is India’s food delivery market that was worth $4.2 billion as of the end of last year, according to RedSeer.
Amazon has established a dense delivery network in India through its own logistics chain and also through partnership with thousands of neighborhood stores.
The company’s move comes as Flipkart, its chief rival in India, is foraying into food retail business. Flipkart, which sold a majority stake in the company to Walmart for $16 billion last year, has registered an entity called “Flipkart Farmermart Pvt Ltd” that will focus on food retail, said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart Group CEO, in a statement to TechCrunch in October.
The extended business for the Indian firm represents “an important part of our efforts to boost Indian agriculture as well as food processing industry in the country,” he said, adding that the company is already working with hundreds of thousands of small farmers for the business. Flipkart has already committed $258 million to the new venture. Last month, it piloted delivery of fresh fruits and vegetable, Indian newspaper Economic Times reported.
Excitement for The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups is heating up. Here is the first wave of speakers and judges — with more coming!
The Awards — which have been running for over 10 years — will be held on 25 June 2020 in London, U.K. on the front lawn of the Geffrye Museum in Hoxton, London — creating a fantastic and fun garden-party atmosphere in the heart of London’s tech startup scene.
TechCrunch is once more the exclusive media sponsor of the awards and conference, alongside The Pathfounder.
The application form to enter is here.
We’re scouting for the top late-stage seed and Series A startups in 22 categories.
You can nominate a startup, accelerator or venture investor that you think deserves to be recognized for their achievements in the last 12 months.
CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: 25 March 2020
For the 2020 awards, we’ve overhauled the categories to a set that we believe better reflects the range of innovation, diversity and ambition we see in the European startups being built and launched today. This year we are particularly looking at startups that are able to address the SDGs/Globals Boals.
The Europas Awards
The Europas Awards results are based on voting by experts, experienced founders, hand-picked investors and the industry itself.
But the key to it is that there are no “off-limits areas” at The Europas, so attendees can mingle easily with VIPs.
Timeline of The Europas Awards deadlines:
Submissions now open!
25 March 2020 – Submissions close
14 April – Public voting begins
25 April – Public voting ends
8 June – Shortlist Announced
25 June – Awards evening, winners announced
Amazing networking
We’re also shaking up the awards dinner itself. There are more opportunities to network. Our awards ceremony this year will be in the setting of a garden/lawn party, where you’ll be able to meet and mingle more easily, with free-flowing drinks and a wide selection of street food (including vegetarian/vegan). The ceremony itself will last less than 45 minutes, with the rest of the time dedicated to networking. If you’d like to talk about sponsoring or exhibiting, please contact Claire Dobson on claire@thepathfounder.com
Instead of thousands and thousands of people, think of a great summer event with the most interesting and useful people in the industry, including key investors and leading entrepreneurs.
The Europas Awards have been going for the last 10 years, and we’re the only independent and editorially driven event to recognise the European tech startup scene. The winners have been featured in Reuters, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Forbes, Tech.eu, The Memo, Smart Company, CNET, many others — and of course, TechCrunch.
• No secret VIP rooms, which means you get to interact with the speakers
• Key founders and investors attending
• Journalists from major tech titles, newspapers and business broadcasters
The Pathfounder Afternoon Workshops
In the afternoon prior to the awards we will be holding a special, premium content event, The Pathfounder, designed be a “fast download” into the London tech scene for European founders looking to raise money or re-locate to London. Sessions include “How to Craft Your Story”; “Term Sheets”; “Building a Shareholding Structure”; Investor Panel; Meet the Press; and a session from former Europas winners. Followed by the awards and after-party!
The Europas “Diversity Pass”
We’d like to encourage more diversity in tech! That’s why we’ve set aside a block of free tickets to ensure that pre-seed female and BAME founders are represented at The Europas. This limited tranche of free tickets ensures that we include more women and people of colour who are specifically “pre-seed” or “seed-stage” tech startup founders. If you are a women/BAME founder, apply here for a chance to be considered for one of the limited free diversity passes to the event.
Meet some of our first speakers and judges:
Anne Boden
CEO
Starling Bank
Anne Boden is founder and CEO of Starling Bank, a fast-growing U.K. digital bank targeting millions of users who live their lives on their phones. After a distinguished career in senior leadership at some of the world’s best-known financial heavyweights, she set out to build her own mobile bank from scratch in 2014. Today, Starling has opened more than one million current accounts for individuals and small businesses and raised hundreds of millions of pounds in backing. Anne was awarded an MBE for services to financial technology in 2018.
Nate Lanxon (Speaker)
Editor and Tech Correspondent
Bloomberg
Nate is an editor and tech correspondent for Bloomberg, based in London. For over a decade, he has particularly focused on the consumer technology sector, and the trends shaping the global industry. Previous to this, he was senior editor at Bloomberg Media and was head of digital editorial for Bloomberg.com in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nate has held numerous roles across the most respected titles in tech, including stints as editor of WIRED.co.uk, editor-in-chief of Ars Technica UK and senior editor at CBS-owned CNET. Nate launched his professional career as a journalist by founding a small tech and gaming website called Tech’s Message, which is now the name of his weekly technology podcast hosted at natelanxon.com.
Tania Boler
CEO and founder
Elvie
/> Tania is an internationally recognized women’s health expert and has held leadership positions for various global NGOs and the United Nations. Passionate about challenging taboo women’s issues, Tania founded Elvie in 2013, partnering with Alexander Asseily to create a global hub of connected health and lifestyle products for women.
Kieran O’Neill
CEO and co-founder
Thread
Thread makes it easy for guys to dress well. They combine expert stylists with powerful AI to recommend the perfect clothes for each person. Thread is used by more than 1 million men in the U.K., and has raised $35 million from top investors, including Balderton Capital, the founders of DeepMind and the billionaire former owner of Warner Music. Prior to Thread, Kieran founded one of the first video sharing websites at age 15 and sold it for $1.25 million at age 19. He was then CEO and co-founder of Playfire, the largest social network for gamers, which he grew to 1.5 million customers before being acquired in 2012. He’s a member of the Forbes, Drapers and Financial Times 30 Under 30 lists.
Clare Jones
Chief Commercial Officer
what3words
Clare is the chief commercial officer of what3words; prior to this, her background was in the development and growth of social enterprises and in impact investment. Clare was featured in the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list for technology and is involved with London companies tackling social/environmental challenges. Clare also volunteers with the Streetlink project, doing health outreach work with vulnerable women in South London.
Luca Bocchio
Principal
Accel
Luca Bocchio joined Accel in 2018 and focuses on consumer internet, fintech and software businesses. Luca led Accel’s investment in Luko, Bryter and Brumbrum. Luca also helped lead Accel’s investment and ongoing work in Sennder. Prior to Accel, Luca was with H14, where he invested in global early and growth-stage opportunities, such as Deliveroo, GetYourGuide, Flixbus, SumUp and SecretEscapes. Luca previously advised technology, industrial and consumer companies on strategy with Bain & Co. in Europe and Asia. Luca is from Italy and graduated from LIUC University.
Bernhard Niesner
CEO and c-founder
busuu
/> Bernhard co-founded busuu in 2008 following an MBA project and has since led the company to become the world’s largest community for language learning, with more than 90 million users across the globe. Before starting busuu, Bernhard worked as a consultant at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. He graduated summa cum laude in International Business from the Vienna University of Economics and Business and holds an MBA with honours from IE Business School. Bernhard is an active mentor and business angel in the startup community and an advisor to the Austrian Government on education affairs. Bernhard recently received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 UK Awards in the Disruptor category.
Chris Morton
CEO and founder
Lyst
Chris is the founder and CEO of Lyst, the world’s biggest fashion search platform used by 104 million shoppers each year. Including over 6 million products from brands including Burberry, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and Saint Laurent, Lyst offers shoppers convenience and unparalleled choice in one place. Launched in London in 2010, Lyst’s investors include LVMH, 14W, Balderton and Accel Partners. Prior to founding Lyst, Chris was an investor at Benchmark Capital and Balderton Capital in London, focusing on the early-stage consumer internet space. He holds an MA in physics and philosophy from Cambridge University.
Husayn Kassai
CEO and co-founder
Onfido
/> Husayn Kassai is the Onfido CEO and co-founder. Onfido helps businesses digitally onboard users by verifying any government ID and comparing it with the person’s facial biometrics. Founded in 2012, Onfido has grown to a team of 300 across SF, NYC and London; received over $100 million in funding from Salesforce, Microsoft and others; and works with over 1,500 fintech, banking and marketplace clients globally. Husayn is a WEF Tech Pioneer; a Forbes Contributor; and Forbes’ “30 Under 30”. He has a BA in economics and management from Keble College, Oxford.
The U.K. has a strong history when it comes to processors, but the global chip market has seen some ups and downs of late. Today comes some big news that underscores how investors are doubling down on one of the big hopefuls for the next generation of chipmaking to see it through any possible winter winds. Graphcore, the Bristol-based startup that designs processors specifically for artificial intelligence applications, announced it has raised another $150 million in funding for R&D and to continue bringing on new customers. It’s valuation is now $1.95 billion.
Graphcore has now raised over $450 million and says that it has some $300 million in cash reserves — an important detail considering the doldrums that have plagued the chipmaking market in the last few months, and could become exacerbated now with the slowdown in production due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The funding is an extension of its Series D, it said, and brings the total valuation of the company to $1.95 billion. (For reference, the original Series D in December 2018 valued Graphcore at $1.7 billion.) This latest round includes investments from Baillie Gifford, Mayfair Equity Partners and M&G Investments — all new backers — as well as participation from previous investors Merian Chrysalis, Ahren Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners and Sofina. Other past backers of the startup include BMW, Microsoft, Atomico and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind.
Graphcore’s big claim to fame has been the development of what it calls its Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) hardware and corresponding Poplar software, designed specifically for the kind of simultaneous, intensive calculations demanded of AI applications (which are designed based on how humans think, in “parallel” processing mode).
Graphcore describes its IPU as the first processor to be designed specifically for AI. However, a number of other companies including Nvidia, Intel and AMD have made huge investments into this area and have ramped up their pace of development to meet market demands — and hopefully to overtake what have been limitations in the wider area of AI processing, a problem that still continues to persist.
“Deep learning has only really existed in since 2012,” Nigel Toon, founder and CEO, said recently to TechCrunch. “When we started Graphcore, what we heard from innovators was that hardware was holding them back.”
This D2 round comes ahead of what Graphcore describes as strong demand for 2020, and is happening on the heels of a strong year for the company, including a commercial deal with one of its previous strategic backers.
“2019 was a transformative year for Graphcore as we moved from development to a full commercial business with volume production products shipping,” said Nigel Toon, founder and CEO. “We were pleased to publicly announce our close partnership with Microsoft in November 2019, jointly announcing IPU availability for external customers on the Azure Cloud, as well as for use by Microsoft internal AI initiatives. In addition, we announced availability of the DSS8440 IPU Server in partnership with Dell Technologies and the launch of the Cirrascale IPU-Bare Metal Cloud. We also announced some of our other early access customers which include Citadel Securities, Carmot Capital, and Qwant, the European search engine company.”
Here’s See Toon speaking at our recent Disrupt conference in Berlin about the prospect for chips here:
It’s trickier than it sounds. It’s often conflated with ‘quality’ (which means consistent adherence to spec) and ‘luxury’ (which means it costs more than it needs to).
Here’s the thing: Swedish matches are better. They might be the best in the world. They do everything a match should do–but better. They light more quickly, burn hotter, and give more match satisfaction.
Except you probably don’t have a box in your house.
Because you don’t care that much about matches.
Because for you (and for billions of non-match-loving people around the world), this sort of better isn’t your sort of better. Your sort of better, when it comes to matches, might be: free and handy.
The lesson is simple: better is always in the eye of the beholder.
PS Coming back by popular demand is the Story Skills Workshop, led by bestselling author Bernadette Jiwa. We open for registration on March 3rd, and you can register for more information by visiting here.
Amazon expands its Just Walk Out technology beyond convenience stores, Intuit acquires Credit Karma in its biggest acquisition ever and Grab raises hundreds of millions of dollars. Here’s your Daily Crunch for February 25, 2020.
1. Amazon opens its first cashierless grocery store
Amazon is opening its first grocery store to pilot the use of the retailer’s cashier-less “Just Walk Out” technology, which previously powered 25 Amazon Go convenience stores in a handful of major U.S. metros. The store is 10,400 square feet overall, making it the largest use of Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology to date.
Based in the company’s hometown of Seattle, the new Amazon Go Grocery store allows customers to shop for everyday grocery items like fresh produce, meat, seafood, bakery items, household essentials, dairy, easy-to-make dinner options, beer, wine and spirits and more.
2. Intuit confirms that it is buying Credit Karma for $7.1B in cash and stock
Intuit announced that it plans to acquire Credit Karma — the fintech startup with more than 100 million registered users, 37 million of them active monthly users, which lets people check their credit scores, shop for credit cards and loans, file taxes and more. The financial software giant says it will pay $7.1 billion for the acquisition, making this Intuit’s biggest-ever acquisition to date, and one of the biggest in the category of privately held fintech companies.
3. Grab raises up to $856M to boost payments business as rumors swirl of a merger with rival Gojek
Southeast Asian on-demand transport startup Gojek denies that it is involved in talks to merge with Grab, but today Grab announced a piece of news that could either divert attention from that story — or more likely stoke the fires of speculation that it is indeed gearing up for a deal.
4. New Netflix feature reveals the top 10 most popular programs on its service
The new top 10 list doesn’t offer any hard metrics, but it can at least help point to popular programming and highlight breakout successes Netflix might have in the future. The feature is rolling out now to users worldwide, so you may not see your list quite yet.
5. Instead of IPOs and acquisitions, exiting to community is one alternative
Greg Brodsky, who helps cooperative startups through the Start.coop accelerator, pointed to the “exit to community” idea as an option for startups looking to transition out of the more traditional Silicon Valley model. In this framework, some portion of the company is sold back to the workers or end users. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
6. Revolut raises $500M at a $5.5B valuation
Revolut is building a financial service to replace traditional bank accounts. You can open an account from an app in just a few minutes. You can then receive, send and spend money from the app or use a debit card.
7. Firefox to enable DNS-over-HTTPS by default to US users
Mozilla will bring its new DNS-over-HTTPS security feature to all Firefox users in the U.S. by default in the coming weeks, the browser maker has confirmed. It follows a year-long effort to test the new security feature, which is designed to make browsing the web more secure and private.
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Amazon today is opening its first grocery store to pilot the use of the retailer’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology that has previously powered 25 Amazon Go convenience stores in a handful of major U.S. metros. Based in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, the new Amazon Go Grocery store allows customers to shop for everyday grocery items like fresh produce, meat, seafood, bakery items, household essentials, dairy, easy-to-make dinner options, beer, wine and spirits and more.
The store is 7,700 square feet in the front of the house and 10,400 square feet overall, making it the largest use of Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology to date.
As with Amazon Go convenience stores, shoppers first use the Amazon Go app to scan in as they enter the store, then shop as usual. Cameras and sensors track the items removed from the shelves which are then added to the shopper’s virtual cart. When the customer exits the store, their cart is checked out automatically using their payment card on file.
The end result is a grocery store with no lines or waiting. Meanwhile, store staff are freed up to take care of other aspects of the business — like restocking shelves and customer service.
This model has been working for Amazon’s convenience stores, where customers come in to grab items quickly. But grocery shopping presents a new challenge for Amazon’s cashierless technology. Grocery shoppers tend to examine items more closely — often picking up fresh produce, giving it a squeeze, then putting it back. They may push the produce around on the shelf to find one they like. Or they comparison shop, by picking up two products to compare labels, then put one in the cart and another back on the shelf — sometimes in an incorrect spot. They even discard items on different isles instead of walking back to return it to the proper area when they change their minds.
In traditional grocery stores, this wouldn’t be an issue — if another shopper later grabbed the misplaced item, it could still be rung up properly. Amazon’s technology may struggle to determine what that item was, however.
The Seattle store is located at AVA Capital Hill (610 E. Pike Street). Its hours of operation are 7 AM – 11 PM Sunday through Thursday, and 7 AM – midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
In addition to the typical grocery items, the store promises also a mix that includes organic brands, special finds, and are favorites. Local vendors in the debut assortment include La Parisienne, Donut Factory, Tony’s Coffee, Seattle Bagel Bakery, Lopez Island Creamery, Ellenos Yogurt, Uli’s Famous Sausage, Beecher’s, Eat Local, Sri Bella, Carso’s Pasta Company, and Theo’s Chocolate.
Reports that Amazon was looking to launch its own grocery store business, separate from Whole Foods, began to circulate last year. But it was unconfirmed at the time whether or not Amazon’s grocery plans included the use of its cashierless, A.I.-driven technology, or if the new stores would be more conventional grocery stores designed also to serve as hubs for Amazon’s grocery-delivery business.
It seems Amazon is interested in testing out how well its cashierless technology can scale, but it’s not yet clear how many cashierless stores it wants to open in the months and years ahead.
