Kim Dotcom sees BCH as “great for payments” compared with BTC as “great for asset storage.”
Future crypto guidelines remain uncertain, however.
Bitcoin’s surge to $23,800 triggered strong rallies in large-cap altcoins like Litecoin and Dogecoin.
Autonomous vehicle company Aurora Innovation sent offers Thursday to more than 75% of employees at Uber Advanced Technologies Group, just a week after announcing plans to acquire the self-driving subsidiary, according to a source familiar with the post-merger integration plans.
Uber ATG Toronto, which employs about 50 people where the subsidiary conducted its research and development work, did not not made the cut, according to a source. Nor has Uber ATG’s chief scientist Raquel Urtasun, who led the Uber ATG R&D team. It was previously confirmed that Uber ATG CEO Eric Meyhofer would not join Aurora once the deal closed. Until today, it was unclear if Urtasun, a University of Toronto professor and the Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and Computer Vision as well as the co-founder of the Vector Institute for AI, would be moving over to Aurora. Urtasun is considered a leading expert in machine perception for self-driving cars.
Of the 1,200 people who work at Uber ATG, more than 850 received emailed offers from Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson. In the email, an excerpt of which TechCrunch has viewed, Urmson said the decision of who to pick was difficult. He noted that the decisions were based on Aurora’s specific business needs such as areas of overlaps, relative impact and management reporting.
Aurora wouldn’t comment on the offers, but did confirm that Uber’s Toronto office was not being integrated into the newly combined company. An Uber spokesperson also confirmed that the Toronto R&D lab would not be integrated into the joint organization.
“As an independent company focused on our long-term growth and success, we must be thoughtful about where and how we spend resources. To deliver on our mission, we weave research into our development process and engineering work, rather than having a separate research and development team,” an Aurora spokesperson wrote in an email statement. “We have immense respect for Raquel Urtasun and her team. The impact they have made on both the ATG team, and the industry in general, is incredible. While she and her team will not be continuing on with Aurora, we wish them tremendous success.”
If every Uber ATG employee who received an offer accepts, it would more than double Aurora’s size. Before the acquisition was announced, Aurora had about 600 employees working out of its offices in Palo Alto, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Texas. Uber ATG had offices in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.
Aurora and Uber had been in talks for months before reaching a complex deal that will value the combined company at $10 billion. Aurora is not paying cash for Uber ATG, a company that was valued at $7.25 billion following a $1 billion investment last year from Toyota, DENSO and SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Instead, Uber is handing over its equity in ATG and investing $400 million into Aurora, which will give it a 26% stake in the combined company, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Shareholders in Uber ATG will now become minority shareholders of Aurora.
At the time the deal was announced, Urmson told TechCrunch that the next 60 days would be spent bringing the two teams together and “dispassionately looking at what is the technology that accelerates our first product to market and then amplifying that.”
Ned Desmond, a longtime publishing executive who spent more than half a dozen years at Time Inc. before becoming the chief operating officer of both TechCrunch and Engadget for more than eight years, has joined the investment firm SOSV as a senior operating partner.
It’s seemingly a good fit for both sides.
SOSV — which is currently managing a $277 million flagship fund alongside some smaller vehicles — has become known for its popular accelerator programs, including Hax, a program focused around nascent hardware startups, and IndieBio, SOSV’s life sciences-focused accelerator.
In fact, the outfit, founded by serial entrepreneur Sean O’Sullivan in 1995, has now funded so many startups — roughly 1,000 of them — that it recently sought out Desmond to work with them, connect them, shine a light on their work and help them raise follow-on funding.
It’s work that has become intuitive for Desmond, who among other things was heavily involved in organizing TechCrunch’s multiple events around the world each year, along with its signature Battlefield competitions, which collectively feature dozens of nascent startups annually.
Indeed, soon after Desmond resigned from TechCrunch last summer in search of a new challenge (and some needed downtime), O’Sullivan reached out to him, asking if he might join SOSV to help with its marketing and sales efforts, as well as to provide coaching and connections to its startups.
By O’Sullivan’s telling, SOSV could use the help more than ever.
The outfit has had its share of successes. It was the lead investor in the electric bike company Jump Bikes, acquired by Uber in 2018 for an undisclosed amount. It’s an early investor in the 3D printing company FormLabs (valued at more than $1 billion during its last round in 2018). It also wrote an early check to the peer-to-peer car-sharing company GetAround, which was hard hit by the pandemic but whose business has since reportedly rebounded such that it was able to raise $140 million in Series E funding in October. (It has raised $600 million altogether.)
Not last, SOSV is an investor in the lab-grown meat producer Memphis Meats, which raised $161 million in new funding at the start up of the year, led by SoftBank.
Still, SOSV is in the same boat as many seed-stage investment firms. It’s working with a lot of very new teams for whom the pandemic has been rough. According to Crunchbase, seed funding in the third quarter was down 32% year over year and down 11% quarter over quarter.
While the buzzier, more established companies have had no problems in fundraising — many are having to bat back overeager investors — newer, unproven teams without established connections have found it harder to land seed-stage and Series A checks.
“It’s a super tough market,” says O’Sullivan. “Angels have completely dropped out. Seed investing is down massively.” Except in life sciences, especially in the U.S.,” says O’Sullivan, “it’s tougher for every company because you can’t move quite as fast.”
What of Zoom and related talk by VCs of the extra time they now have to meet with new startups? O’Sullivan suggests with a laugh that there’s no shortage of posturing in the industry. “Everyone’s always doing ‘great,’ ” he notes. “But I’m a Catholic guy. I have to be honest,” and there’s “nothing quite like going to meet with a company and working with them across the table. When you’re working with them remotely, it’s just a slower process.”
Google has been all about the fun little augmented reality Easter Eggs lately, with a bevy of search terms triggering Halloween-themed AR experiences back in October. Ghosts! Jack-o-lanterns! Dancing skeletons!
Now they’ve got another one. Rolled out just in time for tomorrow’s Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian, this one brings The Child (or, as the world has taken to calling him, “Baby Yoda”) into your living room.
Want to check it out yourself? You just need to search for the right thing. This is the way:
- Open Google.com in the browser of an iOS or Android device
- Search for “The Child,” “Baby Yoda” or [The Child’s actual name here which I’ll omit because spoilers].
- Scroll down until the “View in 3D” button appears. Tap it, then the “View in your space” button. (Depending on your device, you might need the Google search app installed. It worked by default on a Pixel.)
- Wait until the camera view pops up, then wave your camera around a bit. Once the camera figures out where the floor is, he should appear. Be sure to bump your volume up.
I just tested it myself and it worked well, albeit better on some devices than others. It was fast and flawless on a Pixel, but the lighting was bugging out hard on my iPhone.
There’s a camera button that’ll let you snap photos and videos, and you can drag/pinch to move him around the room or rotate him in place for better shots. Have fun!
The coronavirus pandemic has underscored, and often exacerbated, the mental health crisis that exists across the world. Even the spread of remote work is part of the problem: As everyone stays at home, the lack of interaction and watercooler chat has left employees without in-person interaction.
The need for a solution has helped tech-powered mental health solutions raise funding to meet increased demand. In the latest development, it emerged that Lyra Health, a platform that focuses on providing workforces with mental health care, has filed paperwork to raise a $175 million Series E at a $2.25 billion valuation.
The paperwork was uncovered by Prime Unicorn Index. While it is not clear whether the company has closed the round, filings in Delaware usually appear after part or all of the funding has been secured. Prime Unicorn Index notes that the terms surrounding this Series E round include a “pari passu liquidation preference with all other preferred, and conventional convertible, meaning they will not participate with common stock if there are remaining proceeds.” It also noted that Lyra Health’s most recent price per share is $27.47, an up round from the Series D, which priced shares at $14.21.
We are reaching out to the company and investors for a response to the filing. One investor noted that the round has not closed yet.
Past backers of the company include Adams Street Partners, Tenaya Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, IVP and Greylock.
We seem to be in a period of rapid growth rounds getting raised in quick succession for the most promising startups. As with Discord — which confirmed a $100 million round just six months after raising $100 million — Lyra Health also recently raised funding — specifically a $110 million Series D that catapulted it above a $1 billion valuation.
That effectively means the startup doubled its valuation in a handful of months, suggesting rapid growth or key validation. As reported by Forbes, Lyra Health was set to bring in around $100 million in revenue by the end of the year at the time of its prior fundraise.
There have been a number of categories of technology that have seen a bump of usage and interest during this coronavirus pandemic, and sadly — or perhaps usefully, depending on how you look at it — mental health and wellness startups, aimed at helping our well-being in this trying time, have been one of them. Just last week, the meditation app Calm raised $75 million at a $2 billion valuation.
Burlingame, California-based Lyra Health wants to live in offices everywhere. The company helps employers give their employees a suite of safe and confidential tools to support their mental health needs. This is a tricky space to play in, considering that mental health can still feel taboo in workplaces and employees might feel uncomfortable turning to their employers for support. Still, in a world where in-office perks are no longer available, mental health might be a key investment to help startup retention.
Once an employee joins Lyra, the company creates a set of recommendations for the now-patient based on a survey. Lyra Health then can connect patients to its network of thousands of therapists for appointments, consultations and check-ins. The flywheel continues.
During the pandemic, Lyra Health has brought on 80,000 new users, to a total of 1.5 million users last reported.
Tech-enabled mental health care has found tailwinds as the coronavirus pandemic leads to a surge of telehealth, as in-person doctor’s appointments could leave patients at risk. Indeed, Lyra Health started Lyra Blended Care, which pairs video therapy with online lessons and exercises rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy.
NASA’s Artemis mission is just starting to get underway, and among the commercial partnerships vying for the privilege of building the lunar landing system is one between Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin, which is leading the effort. Lockheed VP and GM of Commercial Civil Space Lisa Callahan says that the collaboration has been surprisingly smooth and fruitful.
Speaking at TC Sessions: Space, Callahan expressed her excitement for being able to take part in such an endeavor to begin with: “Who wouldn’t want to do that? That’s pretty awesome,” she said. “A lot of our workforce wasn’t around in the Apollo days, so they’re really excited to be a part of this next generation and bringing astronauts back to the moon — and for me personally, the fact that we’re going to bring the first woman to the moon is just amazing.”
She explained that Lockheed is working on the ascent module, while Northrup Grumman and Draper are working on other components, and Blue Origin, the prime contractor, is making the descent module.
“It’s a really fun combination of the entrepreneurial, from the Blue Origin perspective, with some of the heritage companies that Lockheed and Northrop Grumman and Draper provide going back to the Apollo days, to bring a kind of national time together for this national priority,” she said.
One might fairly expect a bit of friction between the old rivals and the newcomer, but according to Callahan it’s been extremely constructive.
“It’s a merging of different cultures, and I think everyone on the team is growing because of it,” she said. “Blue Origin has been a great prime, they’ve really welcomed everybody in a sort of… what I’ll call a badge-less environment. I don’t think if you were sitting in one of the technical interchange meetings that we have, you would even know who works for who. Because we just bring the best of breed and who has the right experiences to do the job we’ve got to the table. So it’s really been quite seamless, and we’ve had a lot of fun with it.”
All despite the pandemic, which has caused nearly every company to change the way it operates. Callahan said that this has really put existing efforts to modernize operations into focus rather than upend their plans.
“We’ve been investing for probably the last five years or more in what we’re calling digital transformation — so, digital collaboration tools, building digital twins of our spacecraft, so multiple people can work on the design at the same time,” she explained. “The silver lining, if you want to think about it that way is… COVID has just helped to accelerate those. It’s teaching us that we can really collaborate in this kind of virtual environment in ways that maybe we’d never thought of.”
Lockheed’s next big milestone is the delivery of its Orion spacecraft to Kennedy Space Station in Cape Canaveral.
“We’re really excited. We’ll be delivering that system over the VAB [NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building], and it’ll go through its launch prep for a launch that will happen in 2021. And that will be the first time Orion will have launched off of the Space Launch System,” Callahan said.
Missed the event? Extra Crunch subscribers get access to full videos from our stage, including TC Sessions: Space, Disrupt, and all the rest. You can sign up here.
Forty attorneys general representing both Republican- and Democratic-led states and territories have filed a new antitrust lawsuit against Google claiming that the company has “virtually untrammeled power over internet search traffic” as a result of its “overwhelming and durable monopoly in general internet searches.”
The move comes one day after another complaint filed by Texas and nine other states, and follows a lawsuit filed in October from the Department of Justice.
Today’s lawsuit, led by Colorado, focuses on three categories of allegations. The first is that Google has signed multimillion-dollar agreements to ensure that its search is the default for consumers. Second, the suit argues that Google’s advertising exchange platform does not provide neutral options to advertisers. Third, the filing accuses Google’s search results of giving the company’s own products an advantage over those from competitors. The suit also expresses concerns about how user data has become a new currency, without which the barrier to entry is too high for new competitors to enter the market.
“Cash is no longer the only form of currency, and rather than mining and monetizing a scarce resource such as oil, the attention economy is based on mining and monetizing knowledge about what is inside the minds of individual users,” the lawsuit explains.
This harms both consumers and advertisers, said Phil Weiser, the attorney general of Colorado, with consumers “denied the benefits of competition, including the possibility of higher quality services and better privacy protections,” and advertisers “harmed through lower quality and higher prices that are, in turn, passed along to consumers.”
Why are there so many lawsuits?
The lawsuits are the result of a joint investigation into potentially anti-competitive practices at Google launched in September 2019 and involving 48 states, as well as Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.
Sally Hubbard, the director of enforcement strategy at the Open Markets Institute, explained that the “divide and conquer strategy” is due to resource constraints, “with different enforcers focusing on different aspects of Google’s monopolization.”
What took so long?
While the three lawsuits against Google this year—in addition to lawsuits and investigations against Facebook, Amazon, and Apple—represent a significant turning point in antitrust regulation and enforcement in the United States, this is far from the first time that these companies have come under scrutiny.
In 2013, the Federal Trade Commission decided not to act against Google, despite finding evidence that “Google took aggressive actions to gain advantage over rival search providers.” As Beth Wilkinson, outside counsel for the Federal Trade Commission, put it: “The FTC’s mission is to protect competition, and not individual competitors.”
While the US has been slow in regulating major technology companies, other jurisdictions—especially Europe—have taken regulatory actions in recent years, including $9 billion in fines.
The change has come amid growing concerns about the outsize influence of Big Tech on American life, with an October 2020 Pew research poll showing that seven in 10 Americans believe social media companies have too much influence in American politics.
So what happens next?
Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, has already indicated plans to consolidate this suit with the Department of Justice lawsuit, and an initial case hearing to do so is scheduled for Friday. This lawsuit seeks “to unwind any advantages that Google gained as a result of its anti-competitive conduct, including divestiture of assets as appropriate,” which could include a breakup.
While the lawsuits against Google are collectively the largest, the company is not the only tech giant facing ire. Last week, two separate lawsuits were filed against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission and 47 US states. Investigations into Apple and Amazon are also under way by the DOJ and FTC, respectively. What regulating or breaking up these companies looks like is still a complicated question.
The first covid-19 vaccine developed as part of Operation Warp Speed is likely to be authorized for emergency use this week in the US following an all-day meeting of federal medical advisors today, December 17.
The shot, called mRNA-1273, was developed by the biotech company Moderna, and the US is relying heavily on it to meet the US government’s timeline of vaccinating most of the population by June.
The vaccine, which contains a snippet of the coronavirus’s genetic code, is based on a novel approach that employs an injection of messenger RNA encased in fatty particles. A similar vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, was authorized last week, but the US secured only 100 million doses. Supplies are limited as the world clamors for the shot.
While Pfizer worked independently, Moderna received billions in funding from the US and collaborated closely with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, making its vaccine the first success of Operation Warp Speed, the administration’s moonshot program to end the pandemic.
In a large clinical trial run in the US, the Moderna shot worked exceptionally well, besting all expectations. After two doses, the efficacy against covid-19 was 94%. A few people who got the vaccine in the trial still got infected, but none developed a severe case of covid-19.
MIT Technology Review spoke with Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel earlier this week about his frame of mind as his company’s product nears authorization.
The US is depending heavily on Moderna’s shot to restore the economy and day-to-day life. On December 14, the Trump administration exercised an option to buy an additional 100 million doses, bringing the total that Moderna has promised to 200 million. So far, however, there is only enough made to vaccinate a few million people.
TR: What were you thinking when you woke up this morning?
Bancel: I am an early riser and I went to do some sports. I was thinking mostly about manufacturing and how we scale manufacturing. As the CEO I am always thinking about the next game, and the next game is manufacturing. This is a big week at the FDA. But I am not worried about the EUA [emergency-use authorization], because the data is the data. I am worried about making more product.
When did you first believe this vaccine was going to work?
I thought so back in May, when we saw very high levels of neutralizing antibodies in all the early trial participants. We knew from animal experiments that the antibodies are the best indicator of future efficacy.
The vaccine works great—but it’s disappointing there isn’t enough for everyone, in the US or in the world. Why is that?
This was anticipated all along. There was never going to be enough of any one vaccine for the planet. What is remarkable is that 11 months since the DNA sequence of the virus became available, you will have two approved mRNA vaccines, which has never happened before with any technology. That is amazing, but this has never been a commercial technology before. No one has a factory sitting idle able to make 1 or 2 billion doses a year.
What is the bottleneck? Is it the raw materials or the equipment?
At the end of the day, it’s a new technology. Imagine the people making cars in the 1920s. If someone had said “I want a billion cars,” the answer would have been “What are you talking about?” None of us were ready because no mRNA vaccines have been approved before, but now we are building the infrastructure to make a billion doses.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last week that this vaccine was “developed” by the NIH. That it’s their invention. What do you think of that?
The vaccine technology was developed by Moderna. What we have done for a period of time is to send them products to try with different viruses. In this case, for the mRNA design, we had two teams working in parallel, to increase the chances. When the coronavirus sequence was put online in January, we had a meeting with them 48 hours later. And both teams, NIH and Moderna, had come to the same design.
What is the next disease or infection for this technology to conquer after covid-19?
Already, before covid, we were working on CMV [cytomegalovirus], which is the number one cause of birth defects in the US. We have beautiful phase 2 data from September, and we will be in phase 3 next year. We think every woman will get this vaccine before getting pregnant. And after that the comes the flu. The flu vaccine efficacy is pretty bad, just 40 or 50%.
Throughout your company’s history, you’ve been searching for how to apply this technology. Do you think vaccines will remain the killer application?
We always said it is was about developing the right delivery technology. And this is something that takes years, not two weeks. We have some intriguing data, published in September, in head and neck cancer. In cardiology, we see the ability to increase blood flow in a human. We think it’s going to be important, and we believe over time it’s going to be applied to a broad range of diseases. We think there are 10 or 20 different cell types to which we can deliver mRNA. It’s by organ system, and it’s by cell type. One you have the delivery, then you can do lots of different drugs, because RNA is information.