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There is often a mistaken impression that covering the enterprise is kind of dull when compared to the consumer side of the house, but having followed the space for a couple of decades now, I can tell you that nothing could be further from the truth.

For one thing, there’s big money in the enterprise, like Oracle buying Cerner last week for $28 billion and shaking up the healthcare vertical while they were at it, or UiPath going from obscure startup to $35 billion RPA juggernaut earlier this year, before falling back a bit after going public.

There’s intrigue, like when activist investors try to force companies to make moves they normally wouldn’t want to make, and battles for control of the board like we saw at Box this year.

There’s drama, like the three-year battle among the biggest enterprise cloud infrastructure companies in the world for the $10 billion Department of Defense JEDI cloud contract, a procurement process that had everything from lawsuits to repeated internal reviews to presidential interference.

So you can say a lot of things about the enterprise… but boring? Definitely not — and this year was no different. So I decided to close out 2021 with a look at five stories that rocked the enterprise. It’s hard to narrow 12 months of news down to the five biggest stories, but here are my choices.

The Bezos-Jassy-Selipsky musical chairs at Amazon

Perhaps the biggest news this year involved Jeff Bezos deciding to step back as CEO, taking on the chairman role. Now that in itself did not have a huge enterprise impact because Amazon is an e-commerce company, which doesn’t necessarily fall within my purview, but then there was what happened next.

That February day when Bezos made his announcement, he also indicated he had chosen his replacement, Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy. He had helped build the cloud infrastructure business at Amazon into a massive business, surpassing a $64 billion run rate in the most recent quarter.

Replacing him wouldn’t be easy, but they turned to an old friend when they hired Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky to take over for Jassy. Selipsky had previously been at AWS from its inception until 2016, when he left to take over Tableau. Now it’s his job to keep the train moving. He has momentum in his favor, but competition is getting ever more fierce, and it bears watching what happens next year under Selipsky’s leadership.

Bret Taylor’s totally excellent week

One of the other top stories involved Salesforce executive Bret Taylor getting a couple of big jobs in the same week at the end of November, making for a pretty sweet week for him. For starters he was named chairman of the board at Twitter. If that weren’t enough, he was also named co-CEO at Salesforce, where he had moved rapidly up the ladder since his company, Quip was acquired in 2016 for $750 million.

While Twitter had turmoil of its own with long-time CEO Jack Dorsey stepping down and Parag Agrawal taking over, the move to co-CEO at the CRM giant was clearly the bigger news from an enterprise perspective. While The Information reported that Taylor would still be reporting to company co-founder, chairman and co-CEO Marc Benioff, the promotion put Taylor in line to be Benioff’s heir apparent should Benioff decide to step back into the chairman role in the same way that Bezos did earlier this year. Another storyline to consider in 2022 is whether Salesforce revisits its desire to buy Twitter, a move it thought of making in 2016 before walking away.

Box-Starboard Value proxy fight

Box beat back an attempt by activist investor Starboard Value to take over the board, a move that likely would have resulted in the removal of co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie, the sale of the company, or both. It was the culmination of months of drama and it made it a major enterprise story line for 2021.

Starboard Value, an activist investor, bought a 7.5% stake in the cloud content management company in 2019, which would grow to 8.8%, giving the firm considerable influence over the company. They remained quiet for a time, but last year they decided to make a move and put Box on notice that they wanted to take over the board, which resulted in a proxy battle.

Along the way, Box answered with a $500 million investment from KKR, further angering Starboard, filed a document with the SEC pushing back against Starboard’s slate of board candidates and issued their earnings report early to give voters a chance to see their latest results. As luck would have it, the company scored two decent quarters following Starboard’s action and easily won the proxy battle, leaving the status quo for now. What happens in 2022? As I wrote, perhaps it’s time for Box to make some bold moves, and use some of KKR’s money to buy some adjacent functionality.

DoD kills JEDI and announces new cloud initiative

The $10 billion, decade-long JEDI cloud contract has been drama-filled from the day it was announced in 2018. Over those years, I wrote more than 30 articles on it, so when the Pentagon decided to kill it finally this year, that was big news.

From the start, conventional wisdom said that it was Amazon’s contract to win. There were complaints that the RFP was written with Amazon in mind, but in the end it was Microsoft that won the deal. Amazon went to court though, stating that the previous president had directly interfered with the procurement process because of his personal dislike for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also happens to own The Washington Post newspaper. Amazon also argued that it should have won on merit.

Regardless, it succeeded in convincing a judge to put the project on hold in February 2020. It would never restart, and the DoD decided to move on to a new project in July, stating that technology had changed since 2018 (which is true) and wisely deciding to go with a multi-vendor approach with its new initiative, instead of the winner-take-all approach it had pursued with JEDI.

Dell spins out VMware

When Dell bought EMC in 2015 for $67 billion (later amended to $58 billion), it was the largest deal in tech history, and another doozy of a story to follow and write about over the years. VMware was always the crown jewel of the deal, and so enterprise reporters like me kept a close eye on what Dell was going to do with it. For a long time it stood pat, but it was a huge story in the early part of the year when it announced it was spinning out the company in a deal valued at $9 billion.

It seemed a little light perhaps given the amount of money that’s still on the books for the EMC deal. What happens next year? Could someone make a run to acquire VMware now that it’s free of Dell? Dell remains a major shareholder and still has plenty of debt left over from that EMC deal, so it is definitely something to watch in 2022.

It’s hard to choose just five because inevitably I’ve left out some worthy storylines. What would you have included? Leave a comment and let me know.

Just when we thought things couldn’t get more unexpected than a pandemic that shut down the world in 2020, 2021 entered the chat.

As we started to navigate a “new normal,” we also started challenging the systems around us with advancements in crypto, web3, the metaverse and so much more.

When looking at our top-performing stories of the year, a lot stood out. Some stories were to be expected, like product launches and major outages (ahem, Facebook). Others were deep analyses and interviews on different sectors of the industry. It was hard to narrow down a top 10.

Instead of spitting out a list of TechCrunch’s top-performing stories, we asked our staff to vote on their favorite stories of the year, added evergreen content and our top TC+ articles for a well-rounded 2021 list. Enjoy!

Staff picks

1. Air conditioning is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century. It’s also killing the 21st

What started as a small Twitter Spaces interview with about 180 listeners quickly (and very unexpectedly) turned into one of TechCrunch’s top-read stories of 2021. Danny’s book reviews gained traction this year, but nothing piqued readers’ interests (see the comments for proof) quite like unpacking the modern-day air conditioner. Danny’s Spaces interview with Eric Dean Wilson focused on his book “After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort,” exploring the before, during and after story of A/C — and how damaging the comforts of cold, clean indoor air can actually be.

2. OnlyFans’ porn ban is crypto’s opportunity of a lifetime

Twitter erupted when OnlyFans announced its ban on “sexually explicit content” in mid-August in an attempt to comply with its investors and banks. At the time, the decision left creators feeling betrayed, and experts questioned if OnlyFans could even survive the transition. Although the decision has since been suspended, the tech community’s immediate solution to the ongoing regulatory issues the porn industry faces was simple: crypto. For those of you new to the world of crypto, this real-world antidote will help you understand the “why” behind the push for cryptocurrencies. And for those of you well-versed on the topic, Lucas weighs both the opportunities and potential challenges crypto and porn face.

3. Elon Musk said it was ‘Not a Flamethrower’

This is probably our “most 2021” headline. Many of us are — maybe a little too much — accustomed to the Tesla CEO’s name in headlines for wacky, meme-like behavior or commentary. But what makes this story interesting is the real-life dangers behind Musk’s money-spinning gag products. Musk sold a limited run of flamethrowers back in 2017 in an effort to raise awareness and funds for his startup, The Boring Company, which launched in 2016. However, Musk knew various countries had a ban on flamethrowers and thus labeled the product “Not a Flamethrower.” Problem solved? Not even close. TechCrunch contributor Mark Harris highlights an American who was incarcerated in Italy for the possession of Not a Flamethrower.

4. Medium sees more employee exits after CEO publishes ‘culture memo’

It’s safe to say this year brought much disruption to today’s corporate ecosystem. Not only are employees challenging work-life balance, the wealth gap and company culture, but they are also taking a stance on social and political initiatives. Natasha spoke with various former and current employees at Medium after CEO Ev Williams posted a “culture memo,” which ended up tripling churn at the company. However, after speaking to one engineer, Natasha found that there has been a long-standing “history of problematic issues at Medium, with a wave of departures that seem to be clearly triggered by the memo.” This article not only explores the downfall of Medium’s company culture but also how it relates to companies who sent out similar memos, like Coinbase and Basecamp.

5. TikTok just gave itself permission to collect biometric data on US users, including ‘faceprints and voiceprints’

TikTok took off in the thick of the pandemic as many people in 2020 turned to the platform for their daily dose of viral videos, dances and trends while in quarantine. However, now more than ever, social media users are aware of data collection as growing concerns of privacy rights emerge. TikTok changed its privacy policy in June to allow the capture of users’ biometric data, which includes faceprints and voiceprints. At first glance, the new privacy policy is on par with many other social networks’ use of data collection. But Sarah breaks down why the new policy is alarming, TikTok’s history with the U.S. government, past biometric privacy violation lawsuits and the policy update’s buggy rollout. This article is a good starting point for the ongoing data-privacy issues social media users face.

Best evergreen

With only a few days left in 2021, we looked back to see what we covered this year that we can continue to learn from in the future. NFTs aren’t going anywhere, yet, so that was at the top of our evergreen list, along with privacy laws, how Zoom effects your brain and how lessons in growth marketing from Cam Sinclair director of Ammo, a Perth-based growth marketing agency.

1. If you haven’t followed NFTs, here’s why you should start

This new(ish) wave of crypto has grown exponentially over the past year. When Cooper Turley wrote this article in February 2021, he said, “The estimated total value of crypto art has now passed $100 million according to cryptoart.io/data — just one vertical of a growing ecosystem of NFTs.” The estimated total value now, December 2021, is over $2 billion. If you don’t know much about NFT’s, this article is a great starting point.

2. This tool tells you if NSO’s Pegasus spyware targeted your phone

Are you concerned that your phone was targeted by NSO’s spyware? You probably shouldn’t be, but in July of 2021, a list was leaked that contained, “50,000 phone numbers of potential surveillance targets was obtained by Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International and shared with the reporting consortium, including The Washington Post and The Guardian.” Zack writes about how Pegasus can be delivered and how you can tell if your phone has been targeted.

3. New York City’s new biometrics privacy law takes effect

In July of 2021, Zack also reported on a new biometric law taking effect in New York City. This law limits what businesses can do with the biometric data they collect. Zack says, “The move will give New Yorkers — and its millions of visitors each year — greater protections over how their biometric data is collected and used, while also serving to dissuade businesses from using technology that critics say is discriminatory and often doesn’t work.”

4. This is your brain on Zoom

We’ve all been working from home, faces seen by colleagues on endless video chats, so it was great to read Devin Coldewey’s breakdown of a study Microsoft conducted about how your brain needs a break. When discussing the study, Devin says, “During the meeting block with no breaks, people showed higher levels of beta waves, which are associated with stress, anxiety and concentration.” Here’s to scheduling meeting breaks in 2022!

5. Australian growth marketing agency Ammo helps startups calibrate their efforts

TechCrunch Experts launched this year with the first focus being growth marketing. Anna Heim interviewed Cam Sinclair, Ammo’s director, and they talked about when companies are ready for growth marketing, mistakes to avoid when branding and more. Sinclair says, “At Ammo, we don’t measure time, we measure outcomes. At the start of every project we define what success looks like with the client. Every client is different, and we’re responsive to that.”

TC+ Favorites

1. Subscription-based pricing is dead: Smart SaaS companies are shifting to usage-based models

Kyle Poyar, partner at OpenView, contributed this article about usage-based pricing models in January of 2021. Poyar says, “Usage-based pricing will be the key to successful monetization in the future.” The article continues with four tips to help companies with this model. While we don’t want to give all of the tips away in this summary, one of the tips that Poyar writes about is picking the right usage metric.

2. Nubank’s IPO filing gives us a peek into neobank economics

In November, Alex and Natasha wrote about Nubank’s IPO filing, focusing on the economics of neobanking and Nubank’s financial health. If you want to take a deeper dive into Nubank, you can read Marcella McCarthy and Danny Crichton’s TC-1 here.

3. How does former Better.com CEO Vishal Garg still have a job?

Mary Ann was busy in the month of December, with one of her focuses being news from Better.com (like when they laid off 9% of their staff). While it would take a lot to shock Mary Ann and Alex, especially after this, they were surprised that Garg hadn’t been asked to completely step down. They said, “Some surmised that he had super-voting shares and thus could vote to keep himself in the role of CEO despite what others voted. But after digging into the S-4 filed by Better.com’s SPAC partner, Aurora Acquisition Corp., in November, we realized that is not the case.”

4. How should SaaS companies deliver and price professional services?

Roger Hurwitz, a founding partner at Volition Capital, contributed an article about how to charge for professional services and why that pricing may be different from other SaaS strategies. Hurwitz compares a three-year impact of two pricing strategies in this article.

5. 5 critical pitch deck slides most founders get wrong

Jose Cayasso, co-founder and CEO of Slidebean, reviews “250 to 300 investor decks every single month” and uses this experience to teach others what the must-haves are for a slide deck. His first suggestion is a go-to-market slide, and he includes why and where in the deck it should appear with an example of one in the full article.

This is always a strange week — that liminal space between the Christmas holiday and New Year. Romjul — or “Dead Week” — as they call it in Norway (thanks Haje). It’s a time for quiet and reflection on the year that was for some — and CES embargoes for others. We’re currently focused on the latter, while trying to stay mindful of the former here at Actuator HQ.

We devoted much of the past few weeks to rounding up some of the year’s key trends in the space: delivery, warehouse/fulfillment and food prep. We’ve also spoken to a number of key people in the industry, including CMU robotics head Matthew Johnson-Roberson and Boston Dynamics CEO Rob Playter, OpenRobotics CEO Brian Gerkey and iRobot CEO Colin Angle.

Image Credits: Paul Marotta/Getty Images for TechCrunch

This week we’ve asked MIT CSAIL Director Daniela Rus to weigh in on the matter. She’s really gone above and beyond in her responses for this last Actuator of 2021, so I’m going to let her kick things off.

What was the defining robotics/AI/automation trend of 2021? Regarding robotics and automation, the pandemic and subsequent labor shortages made it abundantly clear that there is a critical role for robots in the workplace. Industry has seen increased adoption of robots for manufacturing and logistics applications, where autonomy can deliver value, yet autonomy on the roadways in the form of a robotaxi is still a long way away. Research has made great strides on safer and more capable robots, with advancements in soft robot bodies and machine-learning powered robot brains.

In AI, we have seen heightened awareness about the challenges with today’s AI solutions. Industry has adopted many deep neural network applications that are enabling tools to augment work in a variety of fields. But it has also become clear that these methods require data availability, meaning massive data sets that have to be manually labeled and are not easily obtained in every field. The quality of that data needs to be very high, and if the data is biased or bad, the performance of the systems trained on this data will be equally bad. Furthermore, these systems are black boxes — there is no way for users of the systems to truly “learn” anything based on the AI’s innerworkings. There are also robustness problems as the trained models are often unstable, and we need to understand that the systems do not do “deep reasoning”, they mostly perform shallow pattern matching. The research community is working to address these challenges.

What will 2022 bring for these categories? As we move forward into our rapidly changing world, I believe that robots and AI can help us unlock our human potential, as individuals and as a collective. While the past 60 years have defined the field of industrial robots and empowered hard-bodied machines to execute complex assembly tasks in constrained industrial settings, the next sixty years will usher in robots in human-centric environments to assist humans with physical tasks.

While the industrial robots of the past 60 years have mostly been inspired by the human form, the next stage will be soft robots inspired by the animal kingdom: form and diversity modeled by our own built environment, with broad potential to mimic our natural state. While the industrial robots of the past 60 years are made of hard plastics and metal, I believe the next 60 years will bring us machines made of materials available to us naturally, or through engineered processes like wood, plastics, paper, ice or even food.

We will also see new ideas for AI, get more serious about AI and privacy, and address AI sustainability. It is important to remember that today’s greatest advances are due to decades-old ideas enhanced by vast amounts of data and computation. New technical ideas and funding to back them are needed to ensure progress. Additionally, we will understand more clearly the carbon footprint of machine learning and get more serious about Sustainable AI.

AI innovations can help optimize many of our activities to slow the impacts of warming: optimizing the electricity cost of technology, making transportation more efficient, monitoring and stopping deforestation, preserving biodiversity or ensuring there’s enough food to go around. But to do all that, AI systems must consume enormous amounts of energy. Current research estimates that training a large deep-learning model produces 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, equal to the lifetime emissions of five cars. We need to develop simpler models, which can drastically reduce the carbon footprint of AI.

The spread of robotics, automation and AI technologies has the potential to make people’s lives easier — but many of the roles that these technologies can play will displace work done by humans today. We will also focus efforts to anticipate and respond to the economic inequality this could create.

DEARBORN, MI – SEPTEMBER 27: A Ford Motor Company worker works on a Ford F-150 truck on the assembly line at the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant on September 27, 2018 in Dearborn, Michigan. The Ford Rouge Plant is celebrating 100 years as America’s longest continuously operating auto plant. The factory produced Eagle Boats during WW I and currently produces the Ford F-150 pickup truck. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

It’s going to be impossible to top Professor Rus’ words this week, but I would like to cap the year off with a couple of items that highlight what’s happened in the industry over the past year and — perhaps — give us a glimpse of where things are going. I will echo what a lot of people have already said in the pages of Actuator: It’s been a remarkable year for robotics. After spending many years covering the space and hearing people prognosticate on the eventually of robotics, the pandemic has seen many begin to be put into practice faster than many predicted.

Of course, I don’t think anyone was hoping that a pandemic would be how we got here, but, well, that’s how things go. And to echo Professor Rus’ statement, here’s hoping we’re able to address climate change concerns head on before it’s too late — and that we can address the inevitable displacement of human jobs. If we’re going to be deploying robots to improve the working conditions of some, it behooves us as a society to ensure that we’re able to support those whose jobs are made redundant as a result.

Roboticists will tell you about the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs they plan to replace, but there’s a far more difficult conversation around the impact that shift has on humans. It’s true right now that companies are having a difficult time filling roles — something automation can and will address. It’s also true that most of this technology is still in a collaborative stage that requires the involvement of human workers. But as the technology progresses and becomes more capable, is it invetible that we’re going to leave large swaths of the population behind because we’ve deemed the work they do as unskilled?

Looking at the trends for the past year, these are the key categories I’ve been following in the space:

• Warehouse/fulfillment
• Transportation
• Food delivery/prep
• Farming/agriculture
• Home
• Medical/surgical
• Manufacturing
• Construction

And in some ways, that’s really just the start. For instance, a couple of weeks ago we covered Petra, a drilling company that raised $30 million to bore through solid rock for infrastructural projects. The list of fields robotics is set to disrupt is long and growing. As we look forward to 2022, let’s consider how we handle such things, going forward. I’m excited to continue discussing these and other issues in Actuator going forward. Next week, however, we’re going to get much more myopic and focus on the robots of CES.

Image Credits: Meituan’s food delivery drone seen landing on top of a pickup kiosk in Shenzhen / Photo: TechCrunch

Thankfully, the big robotics news has slowed down a bit this Romjul (I only get to use my new word like once a year, so I’m making the most of it). Rita has a great story for you about Meituan, which is taking drone-based food delivery to Shenzhen. The Tencent-backed company has delivered 19,000 meals to 8,000 customers during its two-year pilot. As the piece notes, relatively lax regulations in the manufacturing hub are a big part of what brought it to Shenzhen.

Speaking of China, the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has helped map out an ambitious five-year plan aimed at increasing robotic adoption. That includes a planned 20% per year revenue increase, with a focus on manufacturing.

Happy New Year, and congrats on getting through this last one. Not everyone was so lucky. Here’s to sharing more robot news in 2022.

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Need a head start on your New Year’s resolution of subscribing to more free robotics newsletters? Have I got some great news for you.

Two more auto giants have added their names to the growing list of big companies opting out of an in-person CES with less than a week remaining before kickoff. Yesterday, Mercedes confirmed that it would be skipping the physical event.

“As the health and safety of our customers, partners, employees and guests are our highest priority,” the company said in a statement. “Due to the large group of participants and the different country-specific regulations, a solid, safe and harmless planning for all participants is unfortunately not be feasible in the current situation. We deeply regret this decision but consider it necessary.”

Today, BMW followed suit, issuing a media release, announcing a shift to a virtual press conference. The carmaker’s statement was short and sweet, noting, “For many years, the BMW Group has been presenting innovations at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Due to the pandemic situation, the BMW Group will move all planned media activities at CES to a fully digital program livestreamed from Germany.”

Lidar company Velodyne, meanwhile, issued a full press release about its decision this week, stating:

Velodyne Lidar will not participate in person at CES 2022 due to the surge in COVID-19 infection rates. The health and safety of employees, partners and the public are the topmost priorities for Velodyne and were the primary factors in the company’s decision.

Early today, IBM also confirmed its decision to extract itself from the in-person event in a statement to TechCrunch:

Due to the evolving COVID conditions, and out of an abundance of caution, IBM will not participate on-site at CES in Las Vegas this year. We look forward to participating in the event virtually.

Also newly out is Panasonic, which had planned an in-person press conference for January 4. The company has shifted to a virtual event and will only have a limited presence at the show.

Those companies join GM, Google, Microsoft, AMD, OnePlus, MSI, Lenovo, Intel, T-Mobile, AT&T, Meta, Twitter, Amazon, Proctor & Gamble, TikTok, Pinterest and a number of major media outlets, TechCrunch included. The decision to jump ship over mounting omicron concerns is likely an especially difficult one for startups, who rely on shows like CES to get noticed. I have, however, been contacted by a growing number of smaller companies who have made the difficult decision to stay home.

The Consumer Technology Association — which runs CES — has stood firm in its plans to go ahead with the show, which starts January 5 (with media days on the 3 and 4).

“CES 2022 will be in person on January 5-8 in Las Vegas with strong safety measures in place, and our digital access is also available for people that don’t wish to, or can’t travel to Las Vegas,” the org said in a statement issued December 22. “Our mission remains to convene the industry and give those who cannot attend in person the ability to experience the magic of CES digitally.”

On Christmas Day, the Las Vegas Review Journal ran an op-ed from CTA head Gary Shapiro headlined “CES will and must go on in Las Vegas,” which accused media of “tell[ing] the story only through their lens of drama and big name companies.”

This year was rife with ransomware. 2021 witnessed the attack on IT software company Kaseya that knocked 1,500 organizations offline, the CD Projekt Red hack that saw threat actors make off with source code for games including Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, and several high-profile attacks targeting big-name tech companies, from Olympus to Fujitsu and Panasonic.

It was also the year that hackers seized global attention by targeting critical infrastructure, hacking American oil pipeline system Colonial Pipeline, meat-processing giant JBS and Iowa New Cooperative, an alliance of farmers that sells corn and soy, to name just a few.

After the attacks led to prolonged shutdowns, inflated oil prices and ran the risk of food shortages, the U.S. government began to take notice — after years of inaction — and scored some rare wins in what once seemed like an unwinnable battle against the ransomware epidemic.

It began in April when the Department of Justice formed the Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force. The move, which followed what the DOJ described as the “worst year” for ransomware attacks, aimed to prioritize the “disruption, investigation, and prosecution of ransomware and digital extortion activity.” The task force declared its first victory two months later when the DOJ announced it had arrested 55-year-old Latvian national Alla Witte and charged her for her role in “a transnational cybercrime organization” that was behind TrickBot, one of the most well-known and widely used banking trojans and ransomware tools.

An even bigger win came just days later when the DOJ announced it had seized $2.3 million in bitcoin that Colonial Pipeline paid to the DarkSide ransomware gang to reclaim its data. Since then, the U.S. government has offered a reward of up to $10 million for information that helps identify or track down leaders of the notorious ransomware group.

At the same time, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against the Chatex cryptocurrency exchange for facilitating ransom transactions, just weeks after taking similar action against the Suex crypto exchange.

The biggest win for the Task Force came in October with its disruption of the notorious REvil ransomware gang. Prosecutors announced they had charged a 22-year-old Ukrainian national linked to the gang that orchestrated the July ransomware attack against Kaseya, and said it had seized more than $6 million in ransom tied to another member of the notorious ransomware group.

The U.S. government’s efforts to target ransomware groups this year were applauded by many, particularly for its tactic of following the money. Chainalysis, a provider of blockchain transaction analysis software, lauded the Treasury’s action against Suex as a “big win” against ransomware operators, telling TechCrunch that dismantling the mechanisms for ransomware groups to cash out their cryptocurrency would be vital in slowing them down. Morgan Wright, chief security advisor at SentinelOne, said that without removing the main incentive — financial gain — ransomware gangs will continue to operate and expand.

“Attackers will always have the advantage because they don’t have to follow the rules or the law. However, there are two approaches that could seriously impact the ability of transitional ransomware gangs to achieve their goals — removing the ability to use cryptocurrency for ransoms and machine speed responses to machine speed attacks,” said Wright.

The U.S. government also offered rewards for information on ransomware tactics, like the $10 million bounty for information on DarkSide, and the subsequent reward for intel on REvil. “With rewards this large, there’s a substantial incentive for these criminals to turn on one another. This action undermines trust across the ransomware as a service affiliate model,” Jake Williams, CTO at BreachQuest, told TechCrunch.

But some believe that while the government’s actions have undoubtedly scared off some, it’s unlikely to disincentive ransomware gangs that continue to reap the financial rewards.

“While I applaud law enforcement efforts to bring those responsible for ransomware attacks to justice, the likelihood of apprehension and jail time simply does not outweigh the large sums of money being made by these criminal groups,” said Jonathan Trull at Qualys, an IT security company. “Unfortunately, the battle against ransomware is an asymmetric one, meaning there simply is not enough law enforcement resources globally to deal with the volumes and complexity of investigations needed.”

Wright agreed, and was less than impressed by the U.S. government’s activity so far: “Arresting two people and recovering a few million dollars isn’t a victory over ransomware. This is more of a political statement to ’show’ something is being done about ransomware. $2.3 million isn’t even worthy of a rounding error when you look at the billions of dollars already lost.”

Similarly, many believe that these tactics will unlikely be enough to fend off the growing threat of ransomware as we enter the new year, particularly as threat actors adapt their own. Experts believe that the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model — in which operators lease out their ransomware infrastructure to others in return for a percentage of the ransom proceeds — will continue to thrive in 2022, making it more difficult for law enforcement to track down operators.

Others expect multi-staged attack chains — the breaches that start with a phish and lead to data theft and eventually ransomware — to become more prevalent, which could enable hackers to infiltrate even the most well-protected network infrastructures.

The latter will likely lead to the U.S. government collaborating more closely with the private sector in 2022, according to Trull. “Law enforcement alone is not going to turn the tide, in my opinion. It will need to be a combination of enforcement actions paired with dedicated efforts to harden systems, develop, and operationalize backups of key data and systems, and effective response from the private sector.”

While it’s clear that more action is needed, the U.S. government is making progress. While a handful of prosecutions has been mocked by some, it’s clearly had an impact — particularly on ransomware groups’ ability to advertise and recruit potential partners. In the wake of this unwanted attention, ransomware was banned from several popular hacking forums, leading to one hacking group setting up a fake company to lure unwitting IT specialists into supporting its continued expansion into the lucrative ransomware industry.

“Ransomware gangs are less welcome on certain cybercrime forums than they once were,” said Brett Callow, a ransomware expert and threat analyst at Emsisoft.

The future of lidar is uncertain unless, as Voyant hopes to do, its price and size are reduced to fractions of their current values. As long as lidars are sandwich-sized devices that cost thousands, they won’t be ubiquitous — so Voyant has raised some cash to bring its smaller, cheaper, more easily manufactured, yet still highly capable lidar to production.

When I wrote up the company’s seed round back in 2019, the goal was more or less to shrink lidar down from sandwich to fingernail size using silicon photonics. But the real challenge faced by nearly every lidar company is getting the price down. Between a strong laser, capable receptor and a mechanical or optical means of directing the beam, it just isn’t easy making something cheap enough that, like an LED or touchscreen, you can easily put several of them in a vehicle that costs less than $30,000.

CEO Peter Stern joined the company just as COVID was getting started, and they were looking for a way to turn a promising prototype developed by co-founders Chris Phare and Steven Miller into a working and marketable product. After going back to basics they ended up with a photonics-based frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) system (just go with it for now) that could be manufactured at existing commercial fabs.

“Every other system is filled with a lot of expensive stuff — our vision is a mass-produceable chip, like anything else,” he said, and noted the lack of a powerful precision laser as a huge savings to cost and space. “What people use as a laser source generally costs a lot, needs assembly and calibration, there are lens issues… our laser sources are basically out of date, slightly refurbished datacom lasers the size of sesame seeds. These things cost like $5 each, the laser path costs $30, something like that.”

This tiny scale is made possible by the FMCW method, used more often in radar. A continuous beam of light encoded with identifiable data patterns and constantly adjusting its frequency, this approach avoids many issues with traditional lidar methods. And the way Voyant does it, it’s cheap — possible to get under a hundred bucks with scale. All the optics, beam handling and sensing and so on is right there on the chip.

Close-up of some of the waveguides found on the lidar chip. Image Credits: Voyant Photonics

But they’re not going up against Velodyne or any of the upstart lidar companies duking it out in the automotive sector like Luminar and Baraja. “We’re too underfunded to take us through an automotive development cycle,” Stern said — and indeed it’s quite an expensive market to try to break into. “Because we’re cheaper, we see applications in robotics, mobility, industrial safety… anywhere someone wants to use a Velodyne puck, we can displace them for non-automotive purposes pretty quickly.”

You may very well think “wait, I have lidar on my phone — what’s different about this?” Certainly you can make lidar units at this scale and size, but their capabilities are extremely limited. Great for scanning your living room, but unreliable past a few meters or in sunshine or bad weather. Voyant isn’t going for cars, but its devices still have auto-grade specs: millimeter accurate out to a hundred meters, the sort of thing you want when you’re traveling 70 MPH.

The FMCW technique (also used in Aeva’s lidars) produce fewer points, leading to lower resolution, but it provides instantaneous doppler velocity. Knowing how fast the thing your beam hit is moving without having to expend extra scanning power or computation is arguably a big plus.

Another interesting leg up it has on the competition is in the unit’s ability to discern not just distance and velocity, but at least to a certain extent material. This uses a measure of polarization, a factor of the beam that is affected in different ways by different surfaces. So from a single data point, Voyant’s devices should be able to tell whether something is metal, asphalt, wood, skin, clothing or fur — among other things. That’s unbelievably useful for categorizing objects — if it has fur on it, it’s probably not a tree or a car, right?

Block diagram of the Lark lidar test kit. Image Credits: Voyant Photonics

The $15.4 million A round was led by UP.Partners, with participation from LDV Capital and Contour Ventures. The company plans to use the money to move toward production by putting its development kits in the hands of partners. The “Lark” is the more traditional of the two, bouncing the laser signal off a galvo mirror, while the “Sparrow” unit uses a 2D beam steering technique that further reduces the need for mechanical components.

Stern said they’ll be making about 200 units for partners in 2022, and then will start taking commercial orders in 2023. By that time the automotive world may have taken note, but if Voyant’s strategy succeeds, it will have slipped a good piece of the industrial market out of reach of companies making larger, more expensive units.

Consumer electronics are a bad metric for gauging the passage of time. And, frankly, Consumer Electronics Shows are considerably worse. I’ve attended well into the double digits of CES and have largely experienced them in similar manner: as a week-long flurry of news and shiny gadgets, filing news from trailers, press centers, hotel rooms and convention center hallway floors in a sometimes quixotic attempt to define the year’s trends.

The halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center and its many satellite Expo Halls and hotel suites are thick with the ghosts of good intentions and forced obsolescence. That’s the nature of the category. Some of the devices that have become our daily drivers over the past decade debuted at CES, but more often than not, devices come and go — if they ever end up making it to store shelves in the first place.

CES 2022 will be a strange one — a fact that has more to do with extenuating global circumstances than anything happening on the show floor (though, last I heard, one of the Backstreet Boys will still be on hand to show off home boxing equipment). Questions around the relevance of in-person conferences pre-dated COVID-19, of course — though CES has always felt like an exception, owing to the importance of being in the same room with the hardware being announced.

After narrowly missing pandemic-related shutdowns in 2020, CES 2021 was a dry run for what an all-virtual future might look like. The results were…half-baked. CES 2012, on the other hand, had none of those issues. After a bit of dip in previous years (owing to a global recession), the show boasted its best-ever attendance of 153,000. The growth would continue over the next several years, as the event continued to take over Vegas, peaking again at around 182,000 in 2019, according to the CTA.

In 2012, CES still felt like something of a phone show in a way that no longer exists. Between Mobile World Congress the following month and the decision for many of the big companies to follow in Apple’s footsteps by announcing their flagships on their own time, CES isn’t the same epicenter of phone news it once was. Though that void has been quickly filled by other categories in the subsequent decade — including, most notably, automotive, which has moved front and center.

Color-coded cables run into the radio unit of Sprint Corp. 8T8R equipment, the multiple antenna technology which combines eight-transmit and eight-receive radios at a cell site to boost the performance of Sprint’s LTE TDD 2.5 GHz spectrum, on a rooftop in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014. Sprint reported its first quarterly profit in more than six years in July, with sales that topped analysts’ estimates, after holding onto more subscribers than projected. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

LTE was everywhere at CES 2012, much like the 5G bombardment of a few years back. CNET even went so far as saucily calling the show a “4G Orgy” in a headline. Five years after Sprint demoed Wimax in Vegas for the show, it was officially ready to jump ship and join the rest of the world in LTE-land. The Sony Xperia S grabbed headlines, as did the Droid 4, Motorola’s valiant attempt to keep the physical keyboard alive five years after the first iPhone marked the beginning of the end of the BlackBerry’s reign.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

But the show truly belonged to one of two LTE-sporting Windows Phone devices announced at the show. The HTC Titan II may have been the first device on the OS to sport the next-gen wireless technology, but the Nokia Lumia 900 captured attendees’ imaginations with a 4.3-inch AMOLED display, 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, 512MB of RAM and an eye-catching design.

A year prior, straight-talking CEO Stephen Elop compared the company’s woes to a man standing on a burning platform in the middle of icy waters. The partnership with Microsoft was Nokia’s leap. A year later, Nokia would sell off its mobile division to Microsoft.

Like the Droid 4’s valiant — if ultimately doomed — attempt to hang onto the QWERTY keyboard, Sony’s Bloggie was a last gasp for standalone blogging camcorders. This was a year after Cisco shut down its Flip Video business, after acquiring the then-red hot pocket camcorder in 2009 for $590 million. Leave it to Sony to say “screw it,” and attempt to squeeze the last few embers from a dying category.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

And then there were the ultrabooks. If the category can be said to have had a moment, it was those five days in Las Vegas. By mid-year, the stories about the death of the category had already begun. Coined by Intel and announced at Computex 2011, the category was the latest thin-and-light classification — really, an attempt for PC-makers to offer their own take on the MacBook Air.

Intel offered strict guidance for the category, focused on things like thinness, weight and battery life. The category was, ultimately, cost-prohibitive and doomed by ever shifting goal posts of specs and the rise of smartphones and tablets.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

At CES 2012, desktop 3D printing was the future, and MakerBot was front and center. The NYC-based spinout of the RepRap open source project used the show to debut the Replicator. A significant improvement over its previous Thing-O-Matic system, the system sported a Star Trek-inspired name and felt like a major step toward a dream of a 3D printer in every home.

Pricing, technical limitations and the arrival of more advanced technology from companies like Formlabs damped the fortunes of many companies in the space, in what ultimately proved a fairly massive tech hype bubble. A year later, MakerBot was acquired by 3D printing giant Stratasys, which has focused on the technology for the educational market.

As always, CES brings plenty of concepts that seem destined to stay conceptual. The Samsung Smart Window is pretty much par for the course on that front. The transparent window display with touchscreen functionality captured the eye of many show goers in an era where everyone seemed to want everything to be a giant screen, but never seemed to make it much further than CES booth dressing. As a footnote, the company has since invested in an artificial smart window as part of its C-Lab initiative, because, again, the consumer electronics industry is a weirdly cyclical one, for all of its talk about forward progress.

Ten years out, CES 2012 may appear more miss than hit. Certainly the most hyped products tend to be the ones that suffer the most in hindsight. We never made it to 3D printers and smart windows in every home, but hey, LTE had a pretty good run.

Ten years ago, if you were a scrappy kid somehow making a living off of YouTube ad revenue and brand deals, you were probably told you didn’t have a real job. Now, if monetizing your creative output is how you pay your rent, you’re part of the creator economy, a buzzy new industry.

An often-cited landmark report from the venture capital firm SignalFire says that creators are the fastest-growing type of small business. Despite the creator economy only really forming a decade ago, there are now 50 million people who consider themselves “creators,” and more American children want to be YouTube stars (29%) than astronauts (11%), per SignalFire. So it makes sense that more and more startups are cropping up to provide tools for creators — it’s an opportunity to cash in on a growing market, and savvy entrepreneurs want to make money.

As this market has expanded, I’ve written about credit card companies for creators, community-building tools and companies that help you design a product to sell, among other ventures. But as my inbox teems with too many creator-focused startup pitches, products and opportunities to ever even consider, I’ve noticed a troubling trend — not all of these businesses are actually good for the creators they intend to serve. Some might actually be pretty predatory.

For example, if an all-in-one creator platform folds, what does that mean for creators who put all their eggs in that basket? How do major tech acquisitions impact the people who monetize on those platforms? As venture capitalists invest in creators as though they’re startups, how can those creators protect themselves from exploitative terms and conditions?

Startups need to have a backup plan to make sure that if they don’t become the next Patreon, the creators who trusted them won’t be doomed. I’ve started asking these questions to any startup that purports to be a “one-stop shop” or an “all-in-one solution” to the creator economy. Fourthwall had a good answer.

The company said that it has three months of emergency operating expenses set aside to ensure that if they were to fail, they could help transition creators to other platforms. Fourthwall also said it would also make its platform open source if this were to happen. But regardless, this friction isn’t exactly helpful.

The inherent tension within the creator economy lies between the promise of financial freedom and the realization this freedom comes at a cost. As more startups aim to connect talent with brand deals, build monetization tools and develop new social platforms, creators need to know what to look out for to avoid a bad situation — and startups themselves need to think as though they’re in a creator’s shoes, understanding that if a creator trusts them with their business, then they have a moral and financial obligation not to screw it up.

‘A platform is not your friend’

When Spotify bought the popular podcast creation service Anchor in 2019, podcasters panicked. But Amanda McLoughlin, CEO of the independent podcast collective Multitude Productions, had seen massive acquisitions like this happen before. Since the early days of YouTube, McLoughlin has been a creator herself, so she’s seen the industry change from both creative and business perspectives. One defining moment in her early life as an internet creator was when Google bought YouTube in 2006.

“Before 9 a.m., I got a dozen messages from friends and colleagues worried about what such a large and unexpected consolidation means for those of us trying to make a living in podcasting,” McLoughlin wrote at the time. So she rehashed the lessons she learned from the YouTube acquisition: Diversify your income streams, don’t trust individual platforms too much and believe in your own value.

It wouldn’t be CES season without at least a couple of offbeat robots showing up. Yukai Engineering, the maker of the Qoobo robotic cat tail pillow, has revealed a soft robot that nibbles on a user’s fingertip. The company hopes the “somewhat pleasing sensation” will brighten up your day.

Amagami Ham Ham has an algorithm called a “Hamgorithm” that selects one of two dozen nibbling patterns, so you’ll never be sure exactly what you’ll feel when you shove your digit into the robot’s maw. Yukai designed the patterns — which include Tasting Ham, Massaging Ham and Suction Ham — to replicate the feeling of a baby or pet nibbling on one’s finger.

Yukai Corporation

“Amagami” means “soft biting” and “ham” means “bite” in Japanese. Yukai based the look of the robot on a character from Liv Heart Corporation’s Nemu Nemu stuffed animal series. There’ll be a couple of finger-munching models to choose from: Yuzu (Calico Cat) and Kotaro (Shiba Inu).

“Most people like the nibbling sensation but know they need to teach their children or pets to stop it, because kids and animals will otherwise bite them with full force eventually,” said Yukai Engineering CMO Tsubasa Tominaga, who invented the robot at a hackathon earlier this year. “Amagami Ham Ham is a robot that frees humankind from the conundrum of whether ‘to pursue or not to pursue’ the forbidden pleasure.”

Pricing hasn’t been determined, but Yukai and Liv Heart plan to run a crowdfunding campaign in the spring. In the meantime, those braving CES can check out Amagami Ham Ham at the show, and perhaps leave Yukai’s booth with a slightly more tender finger.

Among the other devices Yukai will show off at CES is Bocco Emo. The company has updated the original Bocco robot to act as a smart medical device. Yukai says hospitals in Japan are using it to monitor patients’ vitals (via connected sensors like pulse oximeters and thermometers) and notify nurses about a patient’s condition.

During a pilot period, Bocco Emo was used to inform patients’ families about how they’re doing. It can also communicate with patients using sound effects, facial expressions and gestures while they wait for a nurse to arrive.

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

Two years ago, the African tech ecosystem saw newfound attention from global players that translated to the continent’s best year of receiving venture capital. From varying sources, it is estimated up to $2 billion went into African tech startups in 2019.

With high-profile visits from the most famous Jacks (Ma and Dorsey), a long-awaited first IPO by e-commerce giant Jumia and massive $100 million rounds, it was a sign of things to come for African tech.

But two months into 2020, the pandemic did an excellent job of lowering expectations as investment activities from local and international investors slowed down.

It wasn’t a bad year, though. African startups nearly raised $1.5 billion and saw a couple of fascinating exits: Stripe-Paystack and WorldRemit-Sendwave.

Entering 2021, the bullishness of African tech stakeholders returned — and why not? As businesses reopened globally and the pandemic drove people to adopt new habits in e-commerce, work, spending money, online delivery, and learning, venture capital into various industries was poised to increase immensely, and Africa would not be exempt.

Predictions were made on how much the continent’s startups would raise in December. AfricArena, a tech ecosystem accelerator, pegged deals to close between $2.25 billion and $2.8 billion. Stephen Deng, the co-founder and partner of DFS Lab, a firm that invests in digital commerce startups, serially compared the 2016 Southeast Asia funding landscape to where Africa might be in 2021, at $3 billion.

These predictions weren’t entirely off the mark. In the end, information from the likes of Maxime Bayen and Briter Bridges made 2019 numbers look like child’s play. 2021 was when African tech took center stage as companies raised over $4 billion (more than they got in 2019 and 2020 combined).

From minting five unicorns to witnessing more million-dollar raises by female CEOs, we spotlight some of the events that shaped this pivotal moment in African tech.

What’s a record year of funding without some unicorns?

Attaining unicorn status — a privately held company with a valuation of $1 billion — is undoubtedly one of the vainest achievements for any startup, yet it remains the most coveted.

In Africa, the first two unicorns were Jumia (in 2016) and fintech giant Interswitch (in 2019). As Jumia went public on the NYSE in 2019, it ceased to be a unicorn and became a typical billion-dollar publicly held company.

It’s a similar case with Egyptian payments company Fawry. It went public on the Egyptian stock market (the first indigenous tech company to do so on African soil) in 2019. However, unlike Jumia, Fawry only reached a billion-dollar valuation a year after going public. So, it isn’t and technically wasn’t a unicorn.

Interswitch was the continent’s sole unicorn until five more were minted this year. Four are fintechs: Flutterwave, OPay, Wave and Chipper Cash, while one is tech talent marketplace Andela.

Flutterwave got its horn in March at $1 billion; OPay in August at $2 billion; Wave and Andela the following month, at $1.7 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively; Andela in September raised at a $1.5 billion valuation; Chipper Cash in November at $2 billion. Meanwhile, Interswitch, the sole unicorn between 2019 and 2021, is worth $1 billion.

A couple of reasons are behind this sudden surge in unicorn numbers on the continent. More experienced founders exist and specific markets, particularly in the Big Four (Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya), show a mix of matured but still open-for-disruption traits.

Also, sectors such as fintech keep opening up in ways never seen before and there’s a rush of foreign money from first-time investors in early and later stages, simultaneously.

International investors participated from pre-seed to Series E stages

While global investors have previously invested in African startups, their activity seemed more prominent in 2021, probably because of their participation across the board.

For instance, investors such as Berlin-based VC firm Target Global and renowned investment firm and hedge fund Tiger Global cut checks across early and growth stages.

Target invested in both Series A rounds of Kuda and Mono (including the Series B round of the former). The European VC also led the pre-seed rounds of Kippa and Edukoya. On the other hand, Tiger led Union54’s seed round, Mono’s Series A and later rounds in FairMoney and Flutterwave.

Other deals where growth firms participated in early and growth stages included Sequoia in Telda’s pre-seed; Wave’s Series A, via stealthy wealth management fund Sequoia Heritage; and OPay’s Series C, via its subsidiary fund Sequoia Capital China.   

There was also action from other investors, such as Dragoneer, FTX, Fidelity, SVB Capital and Sam Altman, who got involved in single large deals for the first time. It was routine for other firms like Tencent as it invested in the growth rounds of uLesson, Ozow and TymeBank– and SoftBank, who, via its Vision Fund 2, led two of the continent’s many nine-figure rounds in 2021: unicorns Andela and OPay.

African startups raised more $100M+ rounds this year than ever before

OPay had one of the three nine-figure deals in 2019 after raising a $120 million Series B round. Others included Andela’s $100 million and Interswitch’s $200 million deals. So imagine the surprise the following year when no nine-figure deal took place (just as the continent didn’t produce any unicorn).

The draught didn’t last long, as Africa not only had its highest unicorn year but also recorded the most nine-figure rounds (11 from 10 startups) in a single year.

Let’s start with the unicorns: Flutterwave’s Series C was $170 million; OPay raised a $400 million Series C; Wave and Andela each picked up $200 million. Then Chipper Cash did the double: a $100 million Series C and a $150 million extension for its unicorn round months later.

Others include TymeBank’s $180 million Series B, Jumo and MNT-Halan’s $120 million rounds, TradeDepot’s $110 million and MFS Africa’s $100 million.

The only non-fintech deals were Andela and TradeDepot (although the latter has an embedded finance play). Also, all but two deals were solely equity-based: TradeDepot and MFS Africa raised a mix of equity and debt.

A handful of local acquisitions and a monumental exit

Digital payments gateway MFS Africa is one of Africa’s few corporate investors and acquirers. Over the past five years, the company has made strategic bets across overlooked startup regions in Africa, investing in Julaya, Maviance and Numida. And in terms of acquisitions, Beyonic and, most recently, Baxi.

Last year, the trend of seeing local companies buy each other played out and continued into 2021. Some interesting acquisitions include TLcom-backed Kenyan consumer experience platform Ajua buying WayaWaya; Nigerian bus booking and Techstars-backed Treepz expanding into Ghana and Ugabus after getting Stabus and Ugabus; and Flutterwave making a foray into the creator economy space with the Disha acquisition.

Others include Jiji’s acquisition of Cars45, Egypt’s B2B e-commerce platform MaxAB purchasing YC-backed Waystocap, thus expanding into Morocco, and Cheki selling its businesses in Kenya and Uganda to Nigeria’s Autochek.

Like the MFS Africa-Baxi deal — which both parties claimed to be the second-largest fintech acquisition in Africa after Stripe-Paystack — the other acquisitions listed were undisclosed. 

Why African startups don’t disclose their acquisition figure is a topic for another day. Personally, reporting such deals may not be appealing going forward (if they remain undisclosed) unless they involve international expansion plays. Case in point: Nigerian healthtech Helium Health acquiring UAE’s Meddy (the first of its kind between sub-Saharan Africa and the GCC) and Australian BNPL player Zip buying up South Africa’s PayFlex.

And international expansion via acquisition gets more exciting when a figure is attached; for instance, data center Equinix announced that it would acquire Nigeria’s MainOne, for $320 million. The news was the highlight for this year’s acquisition deals, not only for its size but also because MainOne is a female-led company, with Funke Opeke as its CEO.

More female-led startups raised million-dollar rounds

Funke Opeke is one of the very few founders to have come this far: running an African tech company to the point of exit. She’s also probably the only female founder on the continent to have raised nine figures cumulatively for her business.

Opeke’s experience is an outlier. In Africa and globally, funding doesn’t come easy for female-led companies. A report by Briter Bridges from the middle of this year looked at 1,100+ companies to have received VC money between 2013 and May 2021 (pegged at $20 million or less).

Per the report, only 3% of the $1.7 billion raised within this period went to all-female founding teams compared to 76% for all-male teams.

So, it’s great news when female-led startups raise a million dollars or more in Africa. And it indirectly contributes to how well the region performs, as we can attest to this year which recorded more than ten deals, signalling an improvement in VCs (both gender-focused and gender-agnostic) sourcing for female-led teams to invest in.

The female-led startups that raised a million dollars or more this year include Shuttlers, Bankly, Lami, Okra, Klasha, Akiba Digital, Ejara, Kwara, Edukoya, Reelfruit and Jetstream.

Local investors — and founders — stepped up their game

Alitheia IDF is an investor in Reelfruit and Jetstream. The women-focused firm, led by principal partners Tokunboh Ishmael and Polo Leteka, is a $100 million private equity fund for gender-diverse businesses in Africa.

It’s also one of the local funds that raised huge sums of money this year to write checks for African startups across different stages. Others include Ventures Platform, LoftyInc Capital, Voltron Capital and 4DX Ventures, all sub-Saharan-based VC firms with a pan-African strategy.

Up north, investors such as Sawari Ventures and Algebra Ventures pulled their weight backing startups, particularly in Egypt, where startup innovation and investment has taken off astronomically.

Local and Africa-focused investors also took up entire seed to Series A rounds of some companies in sub-Saharan Africa (Appzone, Payhippo, to name a few), which rarely happened in previous years. Future Africa, Kepple Africa, Launch Africa, and others continued with their pace from 2020 and wrote many new and follow-on checks this year.

We even noticed how active founders like Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga’ GB’ Agboola, Paystack founders Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, and Chipper Cash founders Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled took part in some early-stage rounds too.

Nigeria became the unicorn capital; Egypt, a powerhouse

In November 2019, three fintech companies, Interswitch, OPay and PalmPay, raised a cumulative $360 million from American and Chinese investors. That announced Nigeria as Africa’s unofficial capital for fintech investment and digital finance startups.

Fintech opportunity in Nigeria is the largest on the continent. With over 40% of Nigerian adults having bank accounts and digital payments hitting more than $250 billion in 2019, it’s no surprise that the startups facilitating transactions for the unbanked (OPay) and providing gateways (Interswitch and Flutterwave) are now worth more than $1 billion.

The three companies, including Andela, started operations in Nigeria’s commercial city, Lagos, earning Nigeria the status of Africa’s unicorn capital in 2021.

For a long time, Nigeria has been one of the three countries that receive the bulk of local and international venture capital, including Kenya and South Africa. The three countries present Africa’s most connected populace and growing economy; the perfect environment to attract foreign capital before others.

But then Egypt stepped into the picture in 2017, and with time, the North African country became part of the “Big Four” as the country began attracting venture capital eyeballs. And after quietly spending the last couple of years at the rear, Egypt picked up impressively in 2020 and this year surpassed Kenya to become the region’s third most active investment region.

As this report aptly put: “Seemingly from nowhere, Egypt is suddenly on the radar as a key African startup funding destination, highlighting the prospects for continental growth of the nascent sector.”

Egypt also has bragging rights in producing the first SPAC deal on the continent. In July, Cairo and Dubai-based ridesharing company Swvl announced that it was going public via a merger with Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital. It’s a deal that will value Swvl, one of the country’s success stories, at almost $1.5 billion once completed.

With a large population and impressive GDP per capita, the North African country raised almost $600 million this year. While it’s less than what Nigeria and South Africa raised at over $1.4 billion and $830 million, respectively, some observers predict that Egypt will surpass South Africa by next year if it keeps up with its pace.

There are a few reasons behind this thinking. In Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, fintech is the sector that receives the most funding. The major sector is e-commerce and retail in Egypt, but the country is a hot spot for fintech, too, evident in holding the highest pre-seed rounds in both categories (Rabbit’s $11 million and Telda’s $5 million rounds).

When I wrote this piece earlier this year, the largest pre-seed round at the time was Autochek’s $3.4 million. Rabbit’s eight-figure pre-seed is thrice that amount. Sources recently told TechCrunch that another Egyptian startup will close a pre-seed round that high next year.

Mindblowing pre-seed investments like these are one of the many indicators of how fast venture capital has picked up in Africa. The continent’s startups raised over $4 billion this year and minted five unicorns. No one knows what to expect in 2022, but there’s a nuanced sanguinity that we would see “more of everything” including some IPOs (I might be reaching here) so brace yourselves.