Only Products and Other Stuff

The COVID-19 pandemic taught the world how to work from home, but Russia’s war in Ukraine has taught the employees at Delfast, a Ukrainian e-bike startup, how to work from bomb shelters, while on the move and under threat of violence.  The usual priorities of a startup – securing venture funding, researching and developing new products, finding product-market fit – haven’t exactly been put on hold, but they are now much lower on Delfast’s to-do list. Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in late February, Delfast’s top priority has been to see its Ukrainian team of 30 safely evacuated from the most dangerous parts of the country.  When not focusing on sales, marketing, R&D and customer support, Delfast’s smaller team of seven employees based in Los Angeles has been pleading with U.S. politicians and the European Commission to supply Ukraine with anti-aircraft missiles and fighter jets that could help Ukraine gain back some control over its air space, and, hopefully, put a...

Goldman Sachs is no stranger to testing the waters with crypto, with institutional clients looking for more exposure in the space. Last week, Goldman was the first major U.S. bank to execute an over-the-counter crypto options trade with Galaxy Digital, which some market players say is foreshadowing more institutional adoption of digital assets. “Crypto markets need large, credible and credit-worthy counterparties to grow the space further,” a source who works with digital assets at a major investment bank told TechCrunch. “Goldman and other Wall Street banks will bring that eventually.” The 153-year-old firm is headquartered in New York City with offices globally and has $2.47 trillion assets under supervision. Galaxy Digital’s trading unit facilitated and executed the transaction with the investment bank in the form of a Bitcoin non-deliverable option. This means that the firm isn’t directly engaging or holding the underlying crypto, but taking an option with a payoff that’s set...

Signaling its ambitions in the process automation market, Microsoft has acquired Minit , a Bratislava, Slovakia-originated process mining technology vendor, for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today. Microsoft says that the purchase will “further empower” it to “help … customers digitally transform” by creating a more complete picture of their processes — and identifying which of those processes are ripe for automation. “Minit currently enables businesses to transform the way they analyze, monitor and optimize their processes. Minit’s solutions have helped businesses gain deep insights into how processes run, uncover root causes of operational challenges and help mitigate undesired process outcomes,” Justin Graham, Microsoft’s general manager of process insights, wrote in a post on Microsoft’s corporate blog. “[With Minit, our] customers will be able to better understand their process data, uncover what operations look like in reality, and drive process standardization an...

Mass transit and shared mobility provider Swvl went public today in a landmark moment for Egyptian and Middle Eastern tech ecosystems . It’s also a test for the company going public despite a market that’s been unfriendly toward combinations with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, of late.  The Egypt-born and Dubai-based company has listed its shares at $10 on the Nasdaq through a merger with U.S. women-led blank check company Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital. The planned merger, which will see Swvl offer 20-30% of its total shares, was announced last July . Following closing, the combined company, now “Swvl Holding Corp,” will trade under GMBT and GMBTW today before switching to SWVL and SWVLW on April 1. Swvl is the first company launched from Africa and the second Middle Eastern company to list on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger . Anghami, an Abu Dhabi-based music streaming platform, did so last February when it listed with Vistas Media Acquisition at a $220 milli...

Earlier this week, a video surfaced of a robot dog walking down the streets of Shanghai with a bullhorn strapped on its back. There are those who will, no doubt, view it as a kind of apocalyptic vision. I’d be lying if the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. It’s a strange thing, living through history and imagining yourself traveling back in time as recently as 2019 and attempting to describe the scene. A quadrupedal robot bounding along down empty streets in a city with a population topping 26 million. The voice emerging from its back is warning citizens to stay inside, as China begins its largest lockdown in two years, as the country is seeing another spike in the ongoing pandemic. The less cynical part of me (it exists! really!) sees a fascinating little microcosm. We can debate lockdown measures (and certainly China’s specific approach to them) another day. But the image of a robot doing a job designed to curb the spread of the virus’s transmission distills a lot of what I’ve been ...

Matt Gatto Contributor Share on Twitter Matt Gatto is a managing director at Insight Partners. He focuses on high-growth software and SaaS businesses across infrastructure, healthcare and enterprise applications, and also has experience with leveraged buyouts. Last year was huge for the cybersecurity market, fueled by rising incidents of cyberattacks, particularly ransomware that disrupted services and held companies hostage. The numbers are striking: Investments in the space more than doubled from the year before to $29.3 billion, according to a recent report by investment bank Momentum Cyber. Two recent funding rounds, in November and February, even exceeded $1 billion. A record 286 M&A deals, worth $77.5 billion, were made, and 14 deals of those were over $1 billion each. This year is off to a promising start with Google’s $5.4 billion acquisition of Mandiant in March. The market is responding to the evolving threat landscape. As new types of attacks arise, sec...

Apple today announced it will begin to allow a subset of applications sold on its App Store to link to an external website where users can create or manage their accounts with the app developer. The change to Apple’s App Store Review guidelines only applies to what Apple calls “reader” apps — meaning, apps designed primarily to provide access to some sort of digital content, like magazines, books, audio, music or video. Apple’s plans were first announced last September in the context of the tech giant’s settlement with a Japanese regulator, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), and had been set to arrive sometime in early 2022. The company had earlier said the changes would apply globally to all reader apps on the App Store when they went live, but had not provided an exact launch date. Apple announces new settlement with Japan allowing developers to link to external websites   Today, Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines have been updated with a new reference that expl...

OpenStack , the massive open source infrastructure-as-a-service project that allows enterprises and public hosting services to run their own on-premise clouds, today released version 25 of its software, dubbed Yoga . Like all large open source projects, OpenStack has gone through its ups and downs, but as the Open Infrastructure Foundation , the organization behind OpenStack and a number of other projects like Kata Containers, recently announced , OpenStack now manages over 25 million CPU cores in production and nine out of the top 10 telcos now run OpenStack, as do large enterprises like Bloomberg, Walmart, Workday and TechCrunch parent Yahoo. China Mobile alone runs an OpenStack deployment with 6 million cores, and more than 180 public cloud data centers now run OpenStack. Even after 25 releases in 12 years, the OpenStack community is still adding new features, in addition to the usual bug fixes and maintenance updates. As with most recent releases, this means increased support for ...

We’ve known Mojo Vision’s journey to market was going to be a long and deliberate one since we saw an early prototype in Las Vegas a number of CESes ago . You can multiply all of the talk of hardware being hard a few times over when attempting to execute something novel and tiny that’s designed to be worn on one of the more vulnerable parts of the human anatomy. Today the Bay Area-based firm announced a new prototype of its augmented reality contact lens technology. The system is based around what Mojo calls “Invisible Computing,” its heads up display technology that overlays information onto the lens. Essentially it’s an effort to realize the technology you’ve seen in every science-fiction movie from the past 40+ years. The set-up also features an updated version of the startup’s operating system, all designed to reduce user reliance on screens by — in a sense — moving the screen directly in front of their eyes. The system is building around a 0.5 millimeter microLED display with a ...

Security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek shook the automotive industry in 2015 by remotely hacking a Jeep Cherokee driven by Wired reporter , and willing participant, Andy Greenberg. The notorious hack caused Fiat Chrysler, Jeep’s parent company, to recall 1.4 million vehicles and pay $105 million in fines to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. The warning might have been a wake-up call to the industry, but it didn’t slow the rise of the connected car.  Today, the “connected car” is commonplace and delivers a long list of services to the driver and passengers, from internet connectivity and vehicle monitoring to safety warnings and the ability to buy goods and services while on the go. And it has crept beyond the passenger vehicle into the emerging autonomous vehicle industry, too.  Perhaps it’s not surprising then that automotive cyberattacks have grown in frequency — up more than 225% in 2021 , compared to 2018. It’s a trend that ha...

There were already several hints that YouTube was getting more serious about podcasts, after reports indicated the company hired a podcast executive , Kai Chuk, to lead its efforts in the space and had even begun offering cash to popular podcasters to film their shows. Now, a leaked document has unveiled more about YouTube’s plans in this area, pointing to a future podcasts homepage on YouTube.com and other monetization features. The details were published by Podnews , which recently got its hands on an 84-page presentation where YouTube described its podcasts roadmap. Here, the company says it will improve podcast ingestion by piloting the ability to pull in podcast RSS feeds. It also noted it plans to centralize podcasts on a new homepage at YouTube.com/podcasts. The URL doesn’t yet work; but it also doesn’t automatically redirect to the YouTube homepage — which is what it does if you put other random words after the slash. Not surprisingly, Google sees podcasts as a way to expand...

It’s not a coincidence that TechCrunch has covered more African startups in the last year than any period in our history. Many of those companies are Nigerian, and when we look at venture capital data, we can see why. The country had an incredible 2021 as the most active venture capital scene in Africa, collecting more than $1.8 billion, or 34% of the $5 billion raised across the continent, according to Partech , a pan-African VC firm that also tracks investments. The country has posted steady progress in the last three years as the leading African startup market. In 2019, startups based in Nigeria attracted $747 million, or 37% of Africa’s total VC investment . Those numbers decreased to $307 million, or 21% of the continent’s total, the following year, though 2020 was a venture capital year much impacted by outside forces. YC W22 batch nets 24 African startups, including 18 from Nigeria Thanks in part to a global boom in venture capital activity last year, Nigeria became th...

VinFast, the Vietnamese automaker under Vingroup, said Tuesday it will build its first U.S. factory in North Carolina, part of the company’s previously stated plans to invest and expand in the country. The automotive newcomer said it will spend about $2 billion in the first phase of construction of the 1,976-acre North Carolina factory and will continue to invest in future phases. That first phase, which is expected to be completed by July 2024, will have the capacity to produce 150,000 vehicles annually. VinFast plans to produce two passenger vehicles at the factory as well as electric buses, batteries for electric vehicles and ancillary industries for suppliers. The VinFast VF 9, a 7-passenger all-electric SUV, and the VinFast VF 8, a 5-passenger, all-electric midsize SUV that will include blockchain technology to record orders and confirm ownership, will be produced at the U.S. factory, according to VinFast’s memorandum of understanding with North Carolina. Prices for the VF 9 ...

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is introducing several new features and shortcuts to its Messenger app. Most notably, the company is adding a new Slack-like “@everyone” functionality that will notify all participants in a chat about a new message. Meta notes that the new feature is perfect for group reminders, get-togethers or when you’re asking a time-sensitive question and need a quick response. On the other hand, the company is also rolling out a “/silent” functionality. When you type in “/silent” before sending a message in a group chat, the members of the group will not receive a notification of your message at all. Meta says the feature removes the anxiety of interrupting someone who may be in a different time zone and allows users to read messages at their leisure. These two new features are available starting today. Meta also hinted at a few upcoming shortcuts that will roll out in the coming weeks. The company plans to launch a new “/pay” shortcut in the United States t...

Since inception, Y Combinator has invested in thousands of startups, and more recently, even hundreds within a single batch. Given the accelerator’s growth, competitive tensions feel nearly inevitable. Still, one has to wonder if there is a fundamental shift afoot. Whereas YC always backed companies that might at some point overlap, the outfit appeared to casting its net far and wide, bringing in different startups at different stages from different geographies – companies that used each other’s products, in fact, and formed tight bonds through YC’s active alumni network. Now, however, YC seems to be actively leaning into startups that are roughly the same age, operating in the same countries, and targeting exactly the same opportunity with nearly identical business models. While similar types of companies within a class had grown inescapable as YC’s class sizes have ballooned, a kind of sameness is more apparent than ever with it latest batch of 400 startups. Indeed, it’s beginni...

Five years ago, Jonathan Tan and Roger Basu were on the hunt to find an industry where they could take their expertise in thin-film technology and make the biggest and fastest impact possible. They chose batteries — or more specifically, battery degradation and lifespan. It wasn’t — and still isn’t — an industry lacking in investment, research or companies claiming to have struck battery breakthrough gold. But the pair contend they have zagged where everyone else has zigged. Tan and Basu, who co-founded California-based startup Coreshell in 2017, said they steered clear of trying to develop a new battery from scratch, an expensive and lengthy undertaking that numerous companies were already working on. Instead, they focused their efforts on nanolayer coating technology that can be added to a battery cell manufacturer’s existing production system. This coating increases usable battery capacity by 30% or more and increases heat tolerance by 200%, all while lowering costs and improvin...