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Independent restaurants don’t typically have the luxury to create their own online food ordering and delivery capabilities or negotiate for lower rates from legacy ordering platforms like the large restaurant chains do.

Here’s where Owner.com comes in. The Beverly Hills-based company provides a free online ordering, delivery and marketing platform for independent restaurants that puts them on similar playing fields with the big guys. And unlike the legacy food delivery services, Owner.com restaurants own their customer data and can automate marketing campaigns.

Adam Guild is the company’s 21-year-old co-founder and CEO, a high school dropout and a Thiel Fellow, who originally started by assisting his mother’s dog grooming business that was having difficulties attracting customers. After stepping in with some online marketing methods, her business grew, and later expanded into multiple locations. Guild then wanted to work with a bigger group of people and stumbled across restaurants while helping some clients create online landing pages.

With consumer demand shifting to primarily online ordering and delivery over the past 18 months, online ordering revenue is expected to double from $248 billion in 2020 to $449 billion by 2025. Ordering platforms like Doordash, Uber Eats and Grubhub control 80% of orders and typically charge between 20% and 30% per order to restaurants and additional fees to consumers.

In contrast, Owner.com is free for restaurants and charges customers a flat $4 fee when they order from the website. Guild explained that larger restaurant chains have the buying power to negotiate lower rates, while independent restaurants do not. With the inability to keep up, some 110,000 restaurants in the U.S. closed in 2020.

Guild initially bootstrapped his company, working with large restaurant chains, like P.F. Chang’s, drive online orders. Then the global pandemic hit. He ended up losing all of his revenue and had to let all of his employees go but one. To add to his bad luck, he was then rejected from Y Combinator and other accelerator programs.

“For the first three days, I was depressed,” Guild told TechCrunch. “I had spent two years building a company and now it was dead. In the same way we were disrupted, I began to think there was no better position to be in than a scrappy startup. I didn’t know what the next business would look like, so I started cold-calling restaurant owners, asking how I can be helpful and what type of technology they were looking for. Many of them told me that online ordering sucked, but if they didn’t solve it soon, they would go out of business.”

One pivot and a year later with co-founder Dean Bloembergen, Owner.com closed on $10.7 million in seed funding led by SaaStr Fund, with participation from Redpoint Ventures and Day One Ventures, as well as a group of individual investors including Naval Ravikant, CNBC’s The Profit host Marcus Lemonis, The Kitchen Restaurant Group’s Kimbal Musk, DoNotPay founder Joshua Browder, Figma founder Dylan Field, The Chainsmokers and independent restaurant owners and customers of Owner.com.

Jason Lemkin, founder of SaaStr Fund, said restaurant SaaS was a space in which his firm was interested in investing, but thought it was a bit boring — there were already quite a few vendors in the space, like Toast and Grubhub, and most were just technology solutions. However, when he heard that Owner.com was a break-out company from the monotony, he said he had to take a look.

“The ability to own the customer relationship is that ultimate differentiation,” Lemkin said. “Their ultimate goal is to provide a robust technology platform to increase margins, have people order more and come back often.”

Meanwhile, Guild intends to use the new funding to continue product development and add new features like landing pages, the ability to make reservations and native apps for white-label service.

Since the launch last year, the company has reached a seven-figure run-rate and over 105% monthly revenue retention across over 700 restaurant locations, Guild said. To date, Owner.com has transacted over $18 million and helped its restaurant customers avoid paying $3 million to online order platform fees annually.

“It’s all about empowering the 40% of the restaurant industry that is run by people who started off in entry-level positions, and over the years, worked their way up to own the ‘American Dream,’ ” he added.

Max Q is a weekly newsletter from TechCrunch all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox.

We had a few launches this week, including SpaceX’s first one after one of its longer recent pauses in activity. Astra hoped to have its first commercial payload mission go well, but instead it had one of the more visually interesting takeoff mishaps in private spaceflight.

Astra’s launch drifts and then nearly recovers

Image Credits: Astra

Astra’s launch from Kodiak, Alaska was its first attempt since it nearly reached orbit with a successful test last year. The engines all lit as planned, but almost as quickly, one of those went out and the result was a rocket that nearly toppled over, before floating horizontally for a while, while the remaining engines redistributed power to ultimately start the vehicle climbing skyward.

It’s perhaps more impressive that the Astra rocket didn’t crash and burn right away, even if this was ultimately a failure. The rocket eventually climbed to an altitude of around 160,000 feet before Astra’s flight engineers issued an abort command and the vehicle returned safely to Earth after the engines cut off.

This was a disappointment because the mission was meant to be Astra’s first commercial flight, since it was carrying a simulated test payload on behalf of client the U.S. Space Force. But it also was still technically a test, and the company says it gathered a lot of valuable data from the roughly 2.5 minutes that the rocket was flying before the abort command was given.

While the newly public Astra’s share price took a hit on the news, I think the more instructive bit for the company’s long-term fortunes will be how long it takes to recover from this mishap and try again, and also what the result will be of that follow-up mission.

SpaceX breaks in its new landing barge

Image Credits: SpaceX

SpaceX’s return to flight was another of the Commercial Resupply Services flights it performs for NASA to the International Space Station, and this one went smoothly as usual. The cargo included a new robotic arm for use on the station, as well as interesting experiments including live ants.

The launch also saw SpaceX use its new ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ autonomous drone ocean landing ship for the first time. This is the third drone ship that SpaceX has in its fleet, and everything went smoothly with the landing for a successful recovery of the first stage booster used for the flight.

Blue Origin launches suborbital, non-crewed flight

Image Credits: Blue Origin

Blue Origin has launched its 17th New Shepard reusable rocket mission, though this one wasn’t as impressive as its last effort: No Jeff Bezos on board. Unlike that first human spaceflight, there weren’t any passengers in the capsule this go around, but there were a healthy collection of experiments.

One of those was a NASA experimental landing system component that’s going to be used eventually for the agency’s lunar landing vehicle. The interesting subtext here is that Blue Origin is actually suing the agency over its award process for the human lander contract, which selected SpaceX (and only SpaceX) as a lunar lander vehicle provider earlier this year.

Rocket Lab goes public

Image Credits: Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab is now a public company, trading under the name RKLB on the NASDAQ after a SPAC merger. This is one of the largest private space companies yet to go public via any means, and our own Aria Alamalhodaei spoke to Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck to get the low-down on the company and what it means to be a member of the public markets.

Meanwhile, ispace is creating a larger lunar lander that can make it through lunar nights. Its existing small lander design isn’t intended to last long in the dark, since its power reserves would deplete quickly and also the super low temperatures are not kind to most electronics.

Join us at TC Sessions: Space in December

Last year we held our first dedicated space event, and it went so well that we decided to host it again in 2021. This year, it’s happening December 14 and 15, and it’s once again going to be an entirely virtual conference, so people from all over the world will be able to join — and you can, too.

The rumored satellite features for future iPhones are reserved for emergency uses only, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. A few days ago, a report by well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said the next iPhones will come with support for Low Earth Orbit satellite calls and messages. Gurman’s sources said, however, that Apple isn’t turning its devices into actual satellite phones, at least for now. Instead, the tech giant is reportedly developing at least two emergency-related features relying on satellite networks.

The first feature is called Emergency Message via Satellite and will be added as a third protocol, alongside iMessage and SMS, to the Messages app. It’s apparently codenamed Stewie inside the company and will allow users to text emergency services even when there’s no signal, which sounds especially useful during emergencies in remote locations, such as mountains and forests.

Apple is also reportedly working on a second satellite feature that will allow users to report crisis situations like plane crashes and fires. This system will give users a way to report the incident at length and will ask them specifics, such as if anybody needs search-and-rescue services or if anybody in the vicinity is armed. It can also automatically send authorities the reporter’s location and their details from the Health app, such as their medical history, age, medications and information like height and weight. The feature can also a notify the reporter’s emergency contacts for them.

While both features sound useful, their availability is restricted by satellite location and reach. They might not work for some regions, and in some cases, users may have to walk outdoors in a certain direction where their iPhone can connect to a satellite. Also, Gurman’s sources said it’s unlikely that the features will be ready before the year ends, which means the next iPhones expected be announced sometime in September won’t be able to send messages via satellite yet.

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Engadget.

In the two years since Gatik AI came out of stealth, the autonomous vehicle startup has launched pilots with Walmart and Canadian retail giant Loblaw in its bid to prove that self-driving technology combined with box trucks is the secret economic sauce for hauling goods short distances.

Now, the company is expanding into Texas — its fourth market — with a fresh bundle of capital. Gatik said Tuesday it has raised $85 million in a Series B round led by new investor Koch Disruptive Technologies, the venture arm of Koch Industries. Existing investors Innovation Endeavours, Wittington Ventures, FM Capital, Dynamo Ventures, Trucks VC, Intact Ventures and others also participated. Gatik has raised $114.5 million to date.

“We are very much in expansion mode in growth mode and felt that Koch Industries would add the most value,” Gatik CEO and co-founder Gautam Narang said in a recent interview, adding that he views the company as a strategic investor.

Gatik has been shuttling goods as part of pilot programs for Walmart in Arkansas and Louisiana and in Ontario, Canada for Loblaw Companies Limited. Gatik also struck a manufacturing partnership with Isuzu in 2020 with an aim to mass produce medium duty autonomous trucks by early 2023.

Unlike other autonomous delivery companies, Gatik isn’t targeting consumers. Instead, the startup is using its autonomous trucks to shuttle groceries and other goods from large distribution centers to retail locations. For instance, Gatik uses about five box trucks to carry goods for Loblaw. On one route in Arkansas, Gatik has removed the human safety driver, which means some of the autonomous box trucks used to carry goods are now “driverless.” The goal is to remove safety operators from all of its box trucks.

Gatik said it has opened an autonomous trucking facility in the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone, a 26,000-acre industrial, mixed-use, and residential planned development in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that has become a hub of transportation and logistics. The company is already carrying freight for several customers, which it declined to name. Narang did say that the trucks deployed in Texas are based on the Isuzu platforms.

The company plans to have presence in multiple cities within Texas, Narang said.

Its move to Texas follows other autonomous vehicle technology companies such as Aurora, Kodiak Robotics, TuSimple and Waymo that have set up shop in the state. The decision to expand into Texas was driven by its status an international shipping hub, the regulatory environment that supports autonomous vehicle testing and deployment on public roads and favorable weather. Narang added that the abundance and variety of potential customers will also allow it to have a multi-tenant operation. This means it can use the same truck throughout the day for multiple customers.

The new funding will be used add more vehicles to its fleet of Class 3-6 multi-temperature autonomous box trucks and hire more employees, particularly in Texas. Today, Gatik’s roughly 70 employees are spread between its headquarters in Palo Alto, engineering center in Toronto and operations in Arkansas and Louisiana.

Narang said they plan to double the number of employees to around 150 people in the next six to nine months.

In India, a country that is more densely populated and has lower rates of car ownership, auto rickshaws and other two- or three-wheeled vehicles play a central role. While many auto rickshaws on Indian roads are already electric, they tend to rely on lead-acid batteries that need to be replaced every six to 11 months.

Power Global, a two-year-old startup, wants to disrupt the auto rickshaw market by offering a retrofit kit for diesel-powered vehicles and swappable battery pack to transition the more common lead-acid batteries to lithium-ion.

Power Global was founded by Porter Harris, who had previously engineered the batteries for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. He also worked as the chief battery engineer at EV startup Faraday Future. Thus far, he estimates Power Global has been around 95% self-funded – thanks in part to the sale of his SpaceX stock.

“I’ve been looking at the Indian market now for about five years,” he told TechCrunch in a recent interview. The opportunity is certainly ripe, with some market research firms estimating that the electric rickshaw market in India will grow to $1.3 billion by 2025. It’s also dire: last year, 15 out of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world were in India, according to air quality technology company IQAir, and much of those emissions are due to transportation.

By offering two separate products for diesel-powered or electric rickshaws – the retrofit kit, which Harris said will fit over 90% of current models, and the “eZee” swappable battery – Power Global is aiming to capture almost the entire auto-rickshaw market.

Harris says the company already has around 48 dealers ready to sell their products, thanks largely to Power Global co-founder Pankaj Dubey’s extensive history working with Indian dealerships over his career with Hero Motors, Yamaha, and Polaris. And that’s a real benefit, because much of Power Global’s plan is dependent upon an extensive dealer network that can get people signed up to the swappable battery subscription model and help drivers buy and install the retrofit kits.

The main source of revenue will come from getting drivers on the energy-as-a-service monthly subscription model via Power Global’s “eZee” swappable batteries.

“It’s a totally different business model,” Harris said. “We can’t translate petrol or gas solutions and try and make that work for electric, it’s really a whole new thing. Our viewpoint is: a lot of kiosks, a small amount of [battery] modules per location.”

Image Credits: Power Global (opens in a new window)

The company wants to launch on the outskirts of New Delhi, National Capital Region to start, with the eventual goal of planning a kiosk every three kilometers or so. Drivers will also have the option to take the battery home and charge it using a Power Global home charger.

On the user side, the company’s also developing an app that will allow drivers to see stats like how many kilometers they’ve traveled that day, their remaining battery life and where they can find the nearest battery swapping kiosk.

Power Global expects its batteries to last four and a half to five years. The company plans to use the batteries for stationary energy storage application once they’re taken out of the eZee ecosystem. Harris said there are plans to eventually tie those batteries in with small solar panels to provide energy to rural areas. Once the battery has been completely depleted of all its useful life, Harris said it’ll be sent to a recycler.

The company aims to release its eZee swappable battery product in the first quarter of next year, followed by the retrofit kits. It has opened a battery production plant in Greater Noida, India, which it anticipates will produce about a gigawatt-hour – which is about 10,000 Model S packs –this time next year. That’ll make it one of the largest domestic manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries in the country. By the end of 2022, Power Global aims to have at least 10,000 vehicles on the eZee swappable system.

While Power Global is in discussion with some U.S.-based companies interested in the eZee product, Harris said the focus is ultimately further east. “Do we really need another solution for the top 10% of the world? No, we don’t. Let’s focus on the other 90% of the world and actually make a difference.”

The scale of the tech industry’s spending to influence the European Union’s tech policy agenda has been laid out in a report published today by Corporate Europe Observatory and Lobbycontrol — which found hundreds of companies, groups and business associations shelling out a total of €97 million (~$115M) annually lobbying EU institutions.

The level of spending makes tech the biggest lobby sector in the region — ahead of pharma, fossil fuels, finance, and chemicals — per the report by the two lobbying transparency campaign groups.

The EU has a raft of digital legislation in train, including the Digital Markets Act, which is set to apply ex ante controls to the biggest ‘gatekeeper’ platforms to promote fair competition in the digital market by outlawing a range of abusive practices; and the Digital Services Act, which will increase requirements on a swathe of digital businesses — again with greater requirements for larger platforms — to try to bring online rules in line with offline requirements in areas like illegal content and products.

Tackling online disinformation and threats to democratic processes — such as by updating the EU’s rules for political ads running online and tighter regulation of online ad targeting more generally is also being eyed by Brussels-based lawmakers.

The bloc is also in the process of agreeing a risk-based framework for applications of artificial intelligence.

Data reuse is another big EU regulatory focus.

At the same time, enforcement of the EU’s existing data protection framework (GDPR) — which is widely perceived to have been (mostly) weakly applied against tech giants — is another area where tech giants may be keen to influence regional policy, given that uniformly vigorous enforcement could threaten the surveillance-based business models of online ad giants like Google and Facebook.

Instead, multiple GDPR complaints against the pair are still sitting undecided on the desk of Ireland’s Data Protection Commission.

A small number of tech giants dominant EU lobbying, according to the report, which found ten companies are responsible for almost a third of the total spend — namely: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Huawei, Amazon, IBM, Intel, Qualcomm and Vodafone — who collectively spend more than €32M a year to try to influence EU tech policy.

Google topped the lobbying list of Big Tech big spenders in the EU — spending €5.8M annually trying to influence EU institutions, per the report; followed by Facebook (€5.5M); Microsoft (€5.3M); Apple (€3.5M); and Huawei (€3M).

Unsurprisingly, US-based tech companies dominate industry lobbying in the EU -- with the report finding a fifth of the companies lobbying the bloc on digital policy are US-based -- although it suggests the true proportion is "likely even higher".

While China (or Hong Kong) based companies were only found to comprise less than one per cent of the total, suggesting Chinese tech firms are so far not invested in EU lobbying at anywhere near the level of their US counterparts.

"The lobbying surrounding proposals for a Digital Services pack, the EU’s attempt at reining in Big Tech, provides the perfect example of how the firms’ immense budget provides them with privileged access: Commission high-level officials held 271 meetings, 75 percent of them with industry lobbyists. Google and Facebook led the pack," write the pair of transparency campaign groups.

The report also shines a light on how the tech industry routinely relies upon astroturfing to push favored policies -- with tech companies not only lobbying individually but also being collectively organised into a network of business and trade associations that the report dubs "important lobby actors" too.

Per the report, business associations lobbying on behalf of Big Tech alone have a lobbying budget that "far surpasses that of the bottom 75 per cent of the companies in the digital industry".

Such a structure can allow the wealthiest tech giants to push preferred policy positions under a guise of wider industry support -- by also shelling out to fund such associations which then gives them an outsized influence over their lobbying output.

"Big Tech’s lobbying also relies on its funding of a wide network of third parties, including think tanks, SME and startup associations and law and economic consultancies to push through its messages. These links are often not disclosed, obfuscating potential biases and conflicts of interest," the pair note, going on to highlight 14 think tanks and NGOs they found to have "close ties" to Big Tech firms.

"The ethics and practice of these policy organisations varies but some seem to have played a particularly active role in discussions surrounding the Digital Services pack, hosting exclusive or skewed debates on behalf of their funders or publishing scaremongering reports," they continue.

"There’s an opacity problem here: Big Tech firms have fared poorly in declaring their funding of think tanks – mostly only disclosing these links after being pressured. And even still this disclosure is not complete. To this, Big Tech adds its funding of SME and startup associations; and the fact that law and economic experts hired by Big Tech also participate in policy discussions, often without disclosing their clients or corporate links."

The 14 think tanks and NGOs the report links to Big Tech backers are: CERRE; CDI, EPC, CEPS, CER, Bruegel, Lisbon Council, CDT, TPN, Friends of Europe, ECIPE, European Youth Forum, German Marshall Fund and the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.

The biggest spending tech giants were contacted for comment on the report. We'll update this article with any response.

We have also reached out to the European Commission for comment.

The full report -- entitled The Lobby Network: Big Tech's Web of Influence in the EU -- can be found here.

After a number of delays, South Korea’s National Assembly today voted to approve the passage of its “Anti-Google law.” Nicknamed after the search giant but more wide-ranging, the law will prevent Google and Apple from forcing developers to use their in-app billing systems when building apps for their two market-dominating app stores .

This is the first time globally that a government has intervened to prevent Google and Apple from imposing on their own payment rails on in-app purchases.

Google and Apple have been increasingly under scrutiny over the restrictive aspects of their respective systems in other market, and so now many will be looking to see if the move in South Korea becomes a tipping point, where the two might be subjected to similiar measures in other countries. Most imminently, Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is also considering regulations for digital payments system of Apple, Google and WeChat, according to media reports.

South Korea’s preliminary committee voted on Wednesday, 25 August to proceed with the revised Telecommunication Business Act, seeking to restrict Google and Apple from charging app developer’s commission on in-app purchases.

Since August 2020, lawmakers in South Korea have proposed bills to prohibit the global tech companies from wielding their dominance in the app payment market.

Google in March 2021 reduced its commission to 15% from an original 30% for all in-app purchases to appease app developers. But four months later, it announced that it will push back its new in-app billing system to March 2022.

Meanwhile, Apple in August proposed a settlement in a lawsuit filed against it by software developers in the US that notes Apple will allow app developers to direct their payment options outside of their iOS app or the App Store, although it didn’t go as far as allowing developers to include alternative methods of payment within app themselves.

Apple said in its statement, “the proposed Telecommunications Business Act will put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections, make it difficult to manage their purchases, and features like ‘Ask to Buy’ and Parental Controls will become less effective.”

Google could not be reached.

LoftyInc Capital, a pan-African VC firm, announced today that it is launching its third fund — LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund 3 — at $10 million for tech startups in Africa.

The firm has reached the first close of $5.5 million. Some of the limited partners in the vehicle include those from its second fund, FBNQuest Funds, syndicates from The Green Investment Club, HNIs from multinationals like Google, Facebook, and ExxonMobil; and Andela CEO Jeremy Johnson, among others.

So far, LoftyInc has written checks to over 20 startups since it began raising money for the fund. They cut across various industries like e-commerce, fintech, healthcare, logistics, and media in different regions within and outside Africa.

In Francophone Africa, the company has invested in Afrikrea and Star News Mobile. Then in Omnibiz, RXAll, Sudo Africa, Tech Advance, Aladdin, Flex Finance, Star Kitchens Group, and EPump across West Africa.

For LoftyInc’s portfolio in North Africa, there’s Odiggo, Illa, Tagaddod, and Instadiet. Akiba Digital, Beamm, and Zazu Africa make up LoftyInc’s portfolio in South Africa, while Cashback and Dash are the startups funded in East Africa. LoftyInc also has Diasporan interests in OjaExpress and FitMatch.

LoftyInc runs three funds simultaneously. The second fund, which is its first formal VC fund, is largely focused on Nigeria. On the other hand, this third fund follows the thesis of LoftyInc’s first fund: investing in startups across different markets and sectors in Africa and the diaspora.

The fund says it wants to take big bets on markets outside the Big Four — Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt.

Operating three funds

A month ago, TechCrunch covered one of Africa’s most important angel investors Olumide Soyombo. He is one of the few giants in a game that includes LoftyInc founder and general partner Idris Bello.

Bello likes to describe his 12-year venture into technology and entrepreneurship as an “Afropreneurship journey.” While in business school in the U.S, he realized that the next wave of innovation that Africa as a continent needed rested on the shoulders’ of up-and-coming founders.

With that in mind, Bello started LoftyInc Allied Partners alongside other entrepreneurs as an enterprise development company. It spun off a technology hub and venture accelerator called Wennovation Hub and also the venture arm called LoftyInc Capital.

In 2012, the firm launched the first fund — LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund 1 — as its pre-seed stage investment vehicle. The fund act more like a syndicate or an angel group of which investors includes senior executives in key industries across Africa.

L-R: General partners [Marsha Wulff (sitting), Michael Oluwagbemi (standing), and Idris Bello (right)

Five years later, as the founding partner, Bello teamed up with a long-time advisor Marsha Wulff, an early investor in healthtech company Teladoc. They launched the second fund, LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund 2, alongside Michael Oluwagbemi, who also acts as a general partner at the firm. 

From 2017 to 2020, LoftyInc wrote checks worth over $1.2 million in nine rounds to six Nigerian startups — Printivo, RelianceHMO, Epump, YouVerify, Shyft Power Solutions, and Flutterwave (at pre-Series A).

Flutterwave serves as LoftyInc’s first exit, one which Bello said returned 3x to its LPs. It was this successful exit that laid the foundation for the third fund.

“When we exited our Flutterwave stake in February, our LPs wanted us to raise and put together another fund because we made returns for them. At first, we wanted to do a $2.5 million fund but after making enquiries from LPs, it rose to $4 million. Then eventually we just decided to make it $10 million, so we could invest in more startups,” Bello said to TechCrunch.

But when you look at Bello’s status in the African tech ecosystem and what similar Africa-focused funds are raising these days, one may wonder why the investor isn’t raising more.

His answer to that:

“I always say this — my approach is very different. I’m quite organic which is evident in how we moved from a group of angels to LPs. I feel once you get up to $50m to $100m, your problem becomes good deployment, especially in Africa. And what I’m doing is to build a smaller base to a pyramid so when I’m raising a large fund, it won’t be a problem deploying the funds.”

Another point he makes has to do with the limited partners involved. Most of the firm’s LPs in this third fund hold C-suite and managerial positions in banks and other multinationals. Bello argues that if Fund 3 can make good on its promise to make fantastic returns for these individual LPs, it will be a no brainer to onboard the institutions they work with for a bigger fund.

“We want to build an ecosystem of African investors. After that, we’ll start building up the institutions to also partake in making investments.”

LoftyInc has a robust deal flow and views about 30 decks per week, according to Bello. He says the fund receives this much flow because the founders of portfolio startups are the firm’s strongest source of proprietary deals. And that’s what he thinks differentiates LoftyInc from other VC firms.

For instance, in a brief chat with TechCrunch, Andela CEO Jeremy Johnson mentioned that before anyone knew about his startup, LoftyInc already backed him. And to him, it only makes sense to do the same by sourcing deals and investing in the fund.

In addition, the firm, via its first fund, also has an extensive investor base of African origin who live in and outside the continent. Per Bello, this angel network double as venture scouts for the firm.

“We usually invest before any major investor does, hold the hand of new founders, source their initial clients within our large portfolio of over 65 African startups and our large African-based angel and LP network.

“We also provide meaningful introductions to regulators, partners, mentors, top hires and experienced board directors. Also, founders want us in their deals because they have seen us attract both early and later-stage investors to prior ventures.”

In terms of what LoftyInc looks for in companies it invests in, there’s a bias towards those who go for a large market with little or no competition, a product that users love, and execution.

As with most VC firms out there, LoftyInc claims to be sector agnostic. However, there’s some affinity towards startups playing in the IoT, fintech and healthtech space, Bello said. 

LoftyInc’s first fund, mostly catered to by angel investors, is most bullish at the pre-seed stage. This year alone, the group has done over 50 pre-seed deals. For the others, the focus is on seed to Series A deals with an average ticket size of $250,000. 

While LoftyInc’s target for Fund 3 is $10 million, Bello tells TechCrunch that the firm is hoping to achieve a final close above that figure before the end of Q4 2021.  

Motional revealed Tuesday the first images of its planned robotaxi, a Hyundai all-electric Ioniq 5 SUV that will be the centerpiece of a driverless ride-hailing service the company wants customers to be able to access starting in 2023 through the Lyft app.

The purpose-built vehicle, which will be assembled by Hyundai, is integrated with Motional’s autonomous vehicle technology, including a suite of more than 30 sensors including lidar, radar and cameras that can be seen throughout the interior and exterior. That sensing system provides 360 degrees of vision, and the ability to see up to 300 meters away, according to Motional.

The company, which was born out of a $4 billion joint venture with Aptiv and Hyundai, intentionally showcases the numerous sensors, president and CEO Karl Iagnemma said in a recent interview.

“We see so many competitors bending over backwards to try to hide this sensor suite and conceal it in these big plastic casings,” Iagnemma told TechCrunch. “And the fact is, you can’t hide the sensors. They need to be where they need to be and they’re an important part of the car and a key part of the technology. So our strategy was to celebrate the sensors, and to adapt the design language of the vehicle and carry that through the design of the integrated sensor suite.”

Motional has not announced where it will launch its first driverless robotaxi service. It’s likely that it will be in one of the cities it currently is testing and validating its technology, a list that includes Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh.

Image credit: Motional

The base of Motional’s robotaxi is the Hyundai Ioniq 5, an electric vehicle revealed in February with a consumer release date expected later this year. The consumer version will not be equipped with Motional’s autonomous vehicle technology. Unlike some AV developers, Motional didn’t chose a  shuttle design or even a larger van for its first robotaxi.

Iagnemma said that the company’s research shows the vast majority of taxi or ride-hailing trips are for two or fewer passengers. The Ioniq 5 is the right size vehicle for Motional’s use case, he added.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is the first vehicle based off the automaker’s dedicated battery electric vehicle platform called the Electric Global Modular Platform (E-GMP). The vehicle — both the consumer and robotaxi version — is equipped with an 800-volt electrical system. This higher voltage system is able to supply the same amount of power as the more common 400-volt with less current. The 800-volt system, which debuted in the all-electric Porsche Taycan, is lighter, more efficient and allows the vehicle to charge at a faster rate.

That fast charging rate will be an important benefit for Motional’s robotaxi service.

Image Credits: Motional

The robotaxi version of the Ioniq 5 will be assembled by Hyundai, a noteworthy detail, Iagnemma said.

“This is vehicle that will come off the assembly line looking, as you see it in the pictures,” Iagnemma said. “This is not a scenario where we’ll take a base vehicle, move it to a different line, take the components off and then reintegrate or retrofit it.

Inside the robotaxi are displays to allow riders to interact with the vehicle during their ride, such as directing the robotaxi to make an extra stop, according to the company.

The robotaxi still has a steering wheel and other features found in traditional vehicles operated by a human driver. Riders will not be permitted to sit in the driver seat.

More major consolidation underway in the world of payments: Prosus — the Dutch tech giant that bundles together Naspers’ fintech, e-commerce and other international investments and businesses outside of South Africa — today announced that it would pay $4.7 billion to acquire BillDesk, a payments provider out of India. Prosus plans to combine BillDesk with PayU, its existing global fintech and payments business, which already has a strong presence in India. The deal has been rumored to be in the works since about July.

The acquisition will make PayU one of the bigger online payment providers globally with some $147 billion in payment volume annually. But the acquisition is not only a significant consolidation move in the world of payments: it also underscores Prosus’ continuing focus on developing markets and specifically India. Prosus said that the deal — one of the biggest ever made by Prosus, and one of the biggest M&A moves in India — will give its fintech holdings in India a cumulative investment value of $10 billion.

That is part of a long-term strategy for Prosus (and Naspers) that stretches back nearly a decade involving a number of other acquisitions and investments in startups in the region.

“Payments and fintech is a core segment for Prosus and India remains our number one investment destination,” said Bob van Dijk, group CEO of Prosus, in a statement. PayU — formed out a combination of various interests in fintech and payments that Naspers (and then Prosus) had acquired over several years, is currently active in some 20 markets.

India represents a huge market for financial services, with a digitally-savvy consumer base with a rapidly expanding middle class with disposable income.

Within that, PayU has positioned itself as a strong player. Specifically, it has been highly competitive in the Indian online merchant acquiring market – both on price and in-field sales effort. PayU India has a dominant share in the payments gateway business where it traditionally competed with BillDesk and CCAvenue (owned in part by Infibeam).

BillDesk has been around since 2000 and its investors had included Visa, General Atlantic, and the State Bank of India. PitchBook estimated that its valuation was around $1.53 billion in 2019 when it last raised money.

BillDesk is among the firms that has applied for the license of NUE, a new retail payments networks proposed for India that is expected to compete with established UPI railroads. BillDesk has teamed with Amazon, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Pine Labs, and Visa for the license.

“We believe this transaction will stimulate both innovation and competition within India’s digital payments industry,” said Laurent Le Moal, CEO of PayU, in a statement. “This will not only help to strengthen India’s digital economy, but also bring financial services to those who may have historically been excluded. This ambition is fully aligned with the Government of India’s vision of ‘Digital India’ and is a key objective for PayU across all the communities we serve globally.”

PayU today said that its domestic and cross-border payments business as of March 2021 was up 51% year-on-year across its operations in India, Latin America and EMEA, a mark of the overall boom that we have seen in the global digital payments market in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Other businesses PayU operates include credit solutions across India and five other markets. Prosus itself is also an active investor, with stakes in remittance company Remitly and others — representing a pipeline for strategic partnerships, but also potentially future acquisitions.

German startup Dance is launching its subscription service in its hometown Berlin. For a flat monthly fee of €79 (around $93 at today’s exchange rate), users will get a custom-designed electric bike as well as access to an on-demand repair and maintenance service.

Founded by the former founders of SoundCloud and Jimdo, the company managed to raise some significant funding before launching its service. BlueYard led the startup’s seed round while HV Capital (formerly known as HV Holtzbrinck Ventures) led Dance’s €15 million Series A round, which represented $17.7 million at the time.

The reason why Dance needed so much capital is that the company has designed its own e-bike internally. Called the Dance One, it features an aluminum frame and weighs around 22kg (48.5lb). It has a single speed and it relies on its electric motor to help you go from 0 to 25kmph.

And the best part is that you can remove the lithium battery and plug it at home — something that is desperately lacking in VanMoof’s e-bikes. This way, you don’t have to carry your entire bike up the stairs. People living in apartments will appreciate that feature. Users can expect to charge the battery after riding for 55km.

Image Credits: Dance

The Dance One uses a carbon belt so that it doesn’t require much maintenance. At the front of the bike, there’s an integrated smartphone mount that should be compatible with popular cases designed for this type of mounts. You can control the level of electric assistance with buttons of the handlebar. There are three different modes: high assistance, low assistance or no assistance at all.

The bike comes with a front and rear lights that you can activate with a button as well. When it comes to brakes, Dance has opted for hydraulic discs. You can optionally add a basket or saddle bags at the back of the bike.

Like other popular e-bikes from VanMoof or Cowboy, you can lock and unlock the Dance bike from a mobile app. The company has integrated GPS and Bluetooth chips in the frame of the bike. Of course, you should also use a traditional lock in addition to the smart lock.

On paper, it looks like a nice e-bike for city rides. Users will have to pay €79 per month to get access to a bike. There are no time commitment or upfront fees. If you want to subscribe just for the summer, you can do that. If you have an issue with your bike, the company will send a mechanic to fix it for you.

Dance has been trying out the service with hundreds of beta users and “thousands” of bikes are now available for new users. While the company is focusing on Berlin for now, it plans to expand to other German and European cities in the future.

Dance will compete with a handful of other services around Europe, such as Swapfiets, or Véligo in Paris. It’ll also indirectly compete with on-demand shared bikes, such as Lime and all the various city-led public-private bike-sharing services around Europe. And of course, some people will end up buying their own e-bike.

But Dance seems like a well-designed offering with a nice-looking bike and a lot of flexibility for the end user. I’m sure the startup will have no issue finding customers who are looking for a seamless end-to-end experience.

Image Credits: Dance

More than 15 years ago, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, which was acquired by Nasdaq in 2008, and another since-sold exchange called HedgeStreet, both announced they intended to offer something called event contracts to investors. The idea was to allow people to bet “yes” or “no” on questions about future events that were structured as all-or-nothing options, and to pay a fixed amount when an outcome either occurred or did not.

At the time, it was a novel but controversial idea; it also failed to generate enough interest from investors to succeed. Now, Kalshi, a young, New York-based, 33-person startup is testing the waters anew and it’s doing so with the help of some heavyweight investors that include Sequoia Capital, Henry Kravis, Charles Schwab and SV Angel that have collectively provided the company with $36 million in funding to date.

Their enthusiasm ties in part to a major hurdle that Kalshi — founded by former MIT classmates and researchers Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara — overcame last year by winning approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to run a derivatives exchange.

Mansour says Kalshi’s small team worked closely with the agency at every turn to ensure it would pass muster. “This was quite the process, as the more problems you face, the more problems emerge,” he says now of the process. Bringing aboard a former head of clearing at the CFTC as Kalshi’s head of regulation also helped, he says.

Kalshi is also emerging during a time when people are consuming more, and sometimes narrower, news stories through their social media feeds and elsewhere.

That matters, suggests Lopes Lara, because the “contracts are pretty much tied to news and things that are going on in the world and relevant in the world right now.” Indeed, though a tie-up with a social media platform would probably be ideal, one way the startup is getting in front of information junkies is advertising on the question-and-answer site Quora. (Other, more “partnership-based” tie-ups are coming, add the founders.)

In the meantime, Kalshi is on a mission to prove it can entice a new generation of traders — both retail and institutional, accredited and unaccredited — to bet on all kinds of possible outcomes, like whether or not Turkey will join the European Union by June of next year, which is one contract on the platform currently.

Kalshi — which has a clearinghouse partner that holds the funds from all users to ensure that every contract is collateralized —  is seeing some traction. Since launching in March, the platform has attracted 4,000 users who have agreed to its “yes” or “no” contracts that have just two outcomes and that pay either 100% if an investor bets correctly and zilch if the investor bets wrong. It’s a respectable but conservative amount of users.

The founders suggest things will begin to pick up at a faster clip this fall, given that Kalshi has a “few avenues for acquiring users and growing our user base,” says Mansour.

One if these is the consumer product that people have so far been experimenting with and which is available to anyone who wants to enter into a contract at its website.

More impactful, potentially, Kalshi also has “a few brokers that we’re going to partner with . . . to allow people to trade event contracts the same way they trade stocks, or commodities, or options on their preferred brokerage app,” says Mansour, adding that “by brokers, I mean the Fidelities and Charles Schwabs of the world.”

Adds Lopes Lara, “People who use Robinhood or Coinbase or other brokers are our first target, given how much they already understand about investing and are interested in these types of questions and event-based thinking for their investments.”

What interested parties should know not to expect are event contracts around sports outcomes (“that’s very much like gambling, and we don’t [facilitate] that,” says Lopes Lara.)

Owing to federal regulations, certain other areas are also very much off limits, including events contracts tied to geopolitical events, like whether a war will breakout, and political events. (For example, though users might be tempted to bet on whether or not California Governor Gavin Newsom will be recalled in September, they’d have to drum up that action elsewhere.)

As for what happens if Kalshi takes off  and other brokerages or other large financial institutions attempt to create their own event contract offerings, Mansour insists that it wouldn’t be so easy for them. “A lot of the work that we’ve done over the last two-and-a-half years is [intellectual property]. Every single detail of operations was built for event contracts. It would take a bit of time — especially for some of these bigger institutions — to really get into the space.”

Only time will tell.

Other investors in Kalshi include Y Combinator and Tinder cofounder Justin Mateen, a co-founder of dating app Tinder. Alfred Lin, the former Zappos executive turned Sequoia Capital investor, sits on the company’s board.

Coral Capital, a Tokyo-based venture capital firm, announced today that it has closed its third fund, Coral Capital III, raising $128 million (14 billion yen). Coral Capital’s total assets under management (AUM) is now $275 million.

Limited partners in the vehicle include Mizuho Bank, Mitsubishi Estate, Shinsei Bank, Pavilion Capital, Founders Found, Dai-ichi Life Insurance, GREE, and undisclosed domestic and international institutional investors.

Coral Capital, founded by two partners James Riney and Yohei Sawayama, will continue to invest in seed and early-stage companies in Japan, deploying first checks from $500,000 to $5 million, and follow-on funding, CEO and founding partner Riney told TechCrunch.

“We have made a few large follow-on investments – $20 million into SmartHR and $17 million into Graffer. we also allocated a significant portion of our latest fund for follow-on investment,” Riney said. About 30% of its third fund is from global investors including the US, Asia and Europe, and Coral Capital wants to be a bridge between its Japan-based portfolio companies and global venture capital community for reaching international scale, Riney continued.

What makes the latest fund unique is that it has a longer fund life that can be extended to 14 years, Riney said. “We want our founders to focus on building without the pressure of a VC looking for a quick exit,” Riney told TechCrunch. Its previous two funds had about 10 years of fund life, Riney noted.

Riney and Sawayama, who were co-founders of 500 Startups Japan, launched their first fund in partnership with 500 Startups in February 2016. Coral Capital has set up its $45 million second fund, Capital Fund II under their own brand name, in February 2019.

Coral Capital has invested in over 80 companies in Japan and exited 7 companies so far, according to Riney. It has made a raft of investments including SmartHR, Graffer, GITAI, and Kyoto Fusioneering.

The company will focus on investing digital transformation in areas including SaaS, insurance, fintech, healthcare, deep tech, fusion engineering companies, robotic companies, Riney told TechCrunch.

The Japanese startup ecosystem is striking its stride now compared to 9 years ago, Riney said. As Riney and Sawayama started investing in seed and early-stage startup companies back in 2012, the startup world was a black box in the country, according to Riney. There was less than a billion invested into startups every year and hardly any unicorns in Japan, and there was not enough information available in Japanese on building companies, he said.

Many startups in Japan are now forgoing an early IPO and raising larger amounts in later stage rounds, Riney said.

Japan’s annual startup investment is estimated at $5 billion, with six unicorns including Coral Capital’s portfolio company, up from just about $600 million in 2012. The $5 billion in annual startup investment is nothing when you consider that the U.S. and China attract tens of billions, and even neighboring country Korea attracts about $4 billion and produced Coupang, a decacorn, Riney said.  “We can do better, and we will” and Coral Capital will continue to support and play an important role in driving the ecosystem forward in Japan, Riney added.

Coral Capital also plans to double down on its media outlet, Coral Insights, and recruit staff for building its community. Many startup founders, employees, and investors publish content on their learnings, raising the bar for everyone in the ecosystem and Japan is starting to look a lot more like Silicon Valley, Riney said.

Doctor Anywhere, a startup that takes an “omnichannel” approach to healthcare, announced today it has raised $88 million SGD (about $65.7 million USD) in Series C funding. The round was led by Asia Partners, with participation from Novo Holdings, Philips and OSK-SBI Partners. It also included returning investors EDBI, Square Peg, IHH Healthcare, Kamet Capital and Pavilion Capital. 

As part of the round, Asia Partners co-founder Oliver Rippel and Novo Holdings Equity Asia senior partner Dr. Amit Kakar will join Doctor Anywhere’s board of directors. The company’s Series C, which it claims is one of the largest private rounds raised by a Southeast Asian healthtech company, brings its total funding to more than $140 million SGD. 

Doctor Anywhere’s omnichannel approach means that in addition to online consultations, it runs in-person clinics, provides home visits, medication deliveries and operates an in-app marketplace for health and wellness products. 

Founded in 2017 by Lim Wai Mun, Doctor Anywhere claims it now serves more than 1.5 million users. It is available in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, and recently established tech hubs in Bangalore and Ho Chi Minh City. 

Lim told TechCrunch in an email that when he started working on Doctor Anywhere, there were already successful telemedicine platforms in the United States, the United Kingdom and China, but the model was still nascent in Southeast Asia. A former investor, Lim began Doctor Anywhere as a side project because he had older relatives who could not leave their homes for medical visits. 

Doctor Anywhere launched as an online-only telehealth platform, but “we quickly realized that physical presence is very important in order to build trust with users,” Lim said. As a result, the company started its home care services and physical clinics. 

According to Doctor Anywhere’s estimates, the COVID-19 pandemic fast-tracked the adoption of telehealth services in Southeast Asia by at least five years. The company saw more demand for online medical consultations, medication deliveries and marketplace purchases. 

“In the past year, we have more than doubled the size of our network, from around 1,000 providers at the start of 2020 to currently close to 2,500 medical professionals across Southeast Asia,” Lim said. 

In response to the pandemic, Doctor Anywhere launched an online COVID-19 Medical Advisory Clinic last year to provide on-demand consultations for people with suspected symptoms. It also created an online mental wellness module with psychologists. Lim said the company has seen an increase in demand for mental health-related services, like insomnia and anxiety. 

Other telehealth startups in the region include WhiteCoat, Speedoc and Doctor World. Lim said Doctor Anywhere wants to differentiate by quickly launching new products in response to user inquiries, and “cultivating a balance between technology and human touch.” 

The funding will be used to deepen Doctor Anywhere’s presence in its current markets and expand into new ones. It also plans to scale its tech infrastructure and big data capabilities for a better online-to-offline user experience, and will introduce new medical specialty modules, shorten medication delivery times and develop personalized healthcare plans. 

Few robotics categories are poised to benefit more from the events of the past year than construction. It’s a booming field that could benefit massively from automaton, a fact that’s only been amplified as the pandemic brought many nonessential businesses to a standstill. We’ve seen a number of players in the category raise notable rounds over the past year or so, including Toggle, Dusty, Scaled and SkyMul.

Founded in 2018, Houston-based Rugged Robotics raised a $2.5 million seed round back in 2019. While the company isn’t actively raising at the moment, it has already begun to roll out its technology in early pilots, including a partnership with Massachusetts-based construction-firm Consigli.

Image Credits: Rugged Robotics

“We had a client that was pretty progressive looking,” said Consigli’s Jack Moran. “It’s a building where we were controlling the core shell of the project, as well as the fit-out, which was pretty complex — lots of odd shapes that would be a challenge for us.”

Rugged’s self-described “layout Roomba” was used to help build a 10-story building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, effectively drawing blueprints on the ground of the space that amounted to around 40,000 square feet per floor. The partnership effectively finds Rugged taking a key step from its early research and development mode to commercialize.

“The layout process is the most important task in the construction process,” Rugged founder and CEO Derrick Morse said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Marking where things are installed defines where things are built. A mistake made during layout trickles into the overall construction process and it results in rework, delays and additional expenses.”

The team is still small, with a headcount of around six full-time employees, including co-founders with backgrounds at NASA and Samsung. The team currently has three robots, with plans to expand to five. They print dot matrix ink patterns on the ground to give construction teams a real-world orientation for the buildings they’re creating.

Image Credits: Rugged Robotics

A member of the Rugged team travels to the site with the robot to supervise the robot as it executes on its plans, with the startup charging the construction company through a RaaS (robotics as a service) model.

“We have insatiable customer demand,” said Morse. “We have several multibillion-dollar contractors that are excited to do pilots and demos with us. We’ll be growing the organization and fleet in the upcoming 12 months, and we’ll likely be bringing in additional capital to enable that growth.”

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for August 30, 2021. The startup world is gearing up for Y Combinator Demo Day this week, but the rest of tech isn’t taking a pause. So we have Apple news, Telegram news, antitrust news, video game news, you name it.

But we have some TechCrunch news to start: Ryan Reynolds is coming to Disrupt to talk about his company, Maximum Effort. That’s pretty hype. And we’re going to be talking about software. A lot. — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• China restricts youth gaming: To three hours per week! Which isn’t much! For a country with a large games market like China, this is big darn news. But it’s just one part of a larger regulatory push in China (including things as far afield as taking on online fan culture!) to bring its private companies more in line with the government’s plans.
• Toast’s IPO looks tasty: TechCrunch took a longer look at Boston-based Toast’s IPO filing today. Our takeaways? That the company has posted admirable growth since its COVID lows and has a very sturdy multipart business model. The company is doing the very active Boston startup scene proud.
• Spotify buys Joe Rogan, Apple buys classical music? The campaign to build differentiated music streaming services in an era when music is available everywhere hotted up this week with Apple buying Primephonic. The smaller company, based in Amsterdam, will be absorbed into Apple Music.

Startups/VC

Ready for a broadside of startup news? Good. We have what you need. But first, as a sign of the times, Telegram just crossed the 1 billion download mark. That’s an achievement, sure, but also goes to show that maybe consumers do care about privacy after all.

• Casper’s unfriendly ghost fails to haunt Eight Sleep: Remember when D2C mattress company Casper went public, and it went poorly? That misstep has not stopped investors from putting new capital into Eight Sleep, which makes smart mattresses. The startup just raised $86 million in a Series C round of funding that values it at nearly a half-billion dollars.
• Prive raises $1.7M for better e-commerce subscriptions: Two ex-Uber folks are building something new to make e-commerce subscriptions, helping both retailers sell more goods and consumers get better recommendations. Win/win.
• At long last, a personal CRM? I don’t want to get your hopes up, as building a personal CRM has been a white whale in startupland for some time. But Clay, a startup that just raised $8 million, has put together what TechCrunch calls “a system designed to help you be more thoughtful with the people in your life.” Please let it be good. I need help.
• Alpaca proves that embedded fintech is still hot: TechCrunch has covered Alpaca a few times in recent years, both when it raised capital and when we were delving more deeply into the world of API-delivered startups. Today the company announced a $50 million Series B, a partnership with Plaid and support for crypto trading. Alpaca’s work to provide other fintechs with embedded equities trading appears to be going well.
• How does one become a travel influencer? I don’t know. But if you become one, Thatch wants you to be able to better monetize your recommendations. If you are currently a travel influencer, this is good news. If you were hoping that influencers would lose influence in the coming years, this is not.
• To cap us off today, Ola Electric is looking to raise between $250 million and $500 million. That’s a huge chunk of change. The deal has yet to close, but our early reporting indicates that Ola’s electric vehicle business is about to be more than flush. “Falcon Edge Capital is in advanced talks to lead the round, which values Ola Electric between $2.75 billion to $3.5 billion,” TechCrunch reports.
• Plus, over the weekend I wrote about why startups are going to win the battle to set the tone regarding remote work, in case you wanted to give that a read.

How Amazon EC2 grew from a notion into a foundational element of cloud computing

In August 2006, AWS activated its EC2 cloud-based virtual computer, a milestone in the cloud infrastructure giant’s development.

“You really can’t overstate what Amazon was able to accomplish,” writes enterprise reporter Ron Miller.

In the 15 years since, EC2 has enabled clients of any size to test and run their own applications on AWS’ virtual machines.

To learn more about a fundamental technological shift that “would help fuel a whole generation of startups,” Ron interviewed EC2 VP Dave Brown, who built and led the Amazon EC2 front-end team.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

• ByteDance buys VR hardware startup: Sure, Facebook is a leader in the VR hardware game, but it’s hardly the only player. TikTok parent company ByteDance is looking to take Facebook on by buying Pico, which had raised a $37 million round earlier this year. It’s not clear how this news intersects with gaming restrictions in China, but now we should have national champions duking it out in the VR market.
• Instagram wants to know your birthday: If you aren’t into giving Facebook products more of your data, bad news today from Instagram. It will prompt users to share their birthday and only allow so many deferrals. Why? TechCrunch reports that the change is to help “personalize your experience” on the service. Which means ads.
• Ideanomics buys Via Motors: Ideanomics, a public mobility company, is spending $450 million in stock to buy Via Motors, an EV company. Shares of Ideanomics are up just over 5% today on the news.
• It turns out that most Big Tech employees aren’t opposed to antitrust enforcement, even though the ideas being bandied about the halls of Congress could make life harder for the megacorps that currently constitute the top end of the technology industry.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

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Are you all caught up on last week’s coverage of growth marketing? If not, read it here.

TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you.

Community

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Join Danny Crichton on Twitter Spaces tomorrow, Tuesday, August 31st at 1 p.m. PDT/4 p.m. EDT as he talks with Azeem Azhar about his upcoming book, “The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society,” which will be released on September 7, 2021.