Max Q: Solving artificial gravity with gravityLab

Hello and welcome back to Max Q!

In this issue:

• Solving artificial gravity with gravityLab
• News from Atomos Space and more

But first… The Aerospace Corporation and TechCrunch are joining forces to host a pitch competition to find the strongest startups using AI/Machine Learning to work with satellite data streams. Finalists will get the rare opportunity to pitch in front of our judges on the Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 and exhibit their AI/ML startup at Disrupt 2023 this September. Apply today!

Startups, apply to the Space Domain Awareness Challenge Pitch-off at TC Disrupt 2023

gravityLab wants to tackle the artificial gravity problem

Living without gravity spells disaster for the human body. Even a few weeks in microgravity can lead to issues with circulation and vision; over the longer term, the complications compound even further. The heart begins to degenerate and atrophy. Bones turn thin and brittle.

But what about Martian gravity, which is around 0.38 that of Earth? Or somewhere in-between — 0.16 G on the moon, or 0.91 on Venus? How do these gravity levels affect the body, plants and other organisms, even manufacturing processes? We have astonishingly few answers to these questions.

gravityLab wants to find some. Click the link above to learn how.

Image Credits: gravityLab (opens in a new window)

More news from across TC

• Astrobotic, Blue Origin and Varda Space are among the 11 awardees of new NASA funding for “tipping point” technologies.
• Atomos Space, an in-space logistics startup, will launch its first demonstration mission on SpaceX’s Transporter-10 in the first quarter of 2024, as the company looks to gain an early foothold in the emerging market for orbital transfer services.
• Congress heard from pilots on their encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena.
• Impulse Space, the space logistics startup headed by founding SpaceX employee Tom Mueller, has closed a $45 million Series A led by RTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies).
• NASA is launching its own streaming service, NASA+, later this year.
• The Federal Aviation Administration is in the early stages of formulating regulations for commercial human spaceflight, an industry that’s starting to pick up some speed.

Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. If you enjoy reading Max Q, consider forwarding it to a friend. 

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Dynatrace acquires cloud-native debugging platform Rookout

Observability and security platform Dynatrace today announced that it plans to acquire Rookout, a Tel Aviv-based observability startup that focuses on helping developers troubleshoot and debug their code in production.

Publicly traded Dynatrace already offers a comprehensive suite of observability tools, but the addition of Rookout will allow it to expand these services with code-level observability into production environments. Dynatrace expects the transaction to close before September 30.

The two companies did not disclose the acquisition price, but Rookout previously raised a total of $28 million, including a $16 million Series B round it announced a year ago. The company’s investors include the likes of Fort Ross Ventures, TLV Partners, Emerge, Cisco Investment, LIAN Group, Mighty Capital and Binder & Partners.

Rookout CEO Shahar Fogel and CTO Liran Haimovitch. Image Credits: Rookout

Unsurprisingly, Dynatrace says it plans to embed Rookout into its existing platform and notes that this will also help it improve collaboration between development, IT and security teams, which will then be able to use a single platform for their observability needs.

“Our mission is to make debugging easy and fast for developers with state-of-the-art quality and a simple experience,” said Shahar Fogel, CEO at Rookout. “We believe integrating Rookout into the Dynatrace platform and leveraging the AI and automation capabilities Dynatrace is known for will accelerate this mission. This will also create a new standard for how engineers use developer-first, cloud-native observability to improve productivity by enabling them to spend less time on manual activities and more time delivering business value.”

Rookout raises $16M Series B to scale its developer-first observability platform

Rookout lands $8M Series A to expand debugging platform

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How to succeed in today’s grocery delivery market

The instant grocery delivery market has been on a roller coaster ride over the past few years, and recently the ride has been down.

For example, Dunzo, a hyperlocal delivery startup in India, reportedly postponed employee salaries for a month and plans additional layoffs, with a strategy on “streamlining our cash flow so we can build a more sustainable business for the future,” it wrote to employees in an email.

Then over in Europe, Getir, the delivery giant there, said it was pulling out of Spain, Italy and Portugal as it was finalizing a new round of investment. That announcement came a month after Getir exited France.

Not everything is doom-and-gloom in this market, though. Misfits Market acquired Imperfect Foods at the end of 2022, and JOKR raised additional funding earlier this year. Meanwhile, Misfits Market is finishing up the integration of the two companies. Granted, Misfits Market had its own brush with layoffs earlier this year, but founder and CEO Abhi Ramesh told TechCrunch+ that he has seen “meaningful positive improvement” in operation.

But in broader terms, he also said that “it is hard times for the industry.” We sat down with Ramesh to chat about how to succeed in this sector, the key to driving unit economics and what’s next for Misfits Market.

The following was edited for length and clarity.

How do instant grocery delivery companies succeed in this environment?

One of the strategic mistakes folks in this category made was they assumed that the growth rate and demand in 2020 and 2021 would stay for the next three, four or five years. In reality, what happened is some of the demand was simply pulled forward, but not as much. Now it’s more like a normalization period.

For companies to do well right now, it requires a few things; one is you have to have scale. It’s tricky because this is also a time period where every company is trying to push profitability. When you’re pushing profitability, the first thing companies try to do is pull back on marketing spend to save dollars. But in e-commerce, that’s actually a vicious cycle where you pull marketing so you don’t grow as much or get the leverage in your finances to burn more.

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GM begins shipping a pricier-than-expected Chevy Blazer EV

The Chevrolet Blazer EV, a battery electric SUV that is part of GM’s bid to surpass Tesla in U.S. EV sales by 2025, is headed to dealerships.

The automaker said Monday that the first 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EVs have started shipping from GM’s factory in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico. GM also released details on pricing and range estimates for a few of the SUV’s trim models.

The upshot? Prices are higher than expected.

The Blazer EV follows the behemoth GMC Hummer pickup and Cadillac Lyriq in the new Ultium architecture — the modular electric platform that includes a new battery design and software and is at the heart of the automaker’s EV strategy.

The vehicle will initially be available in three trims: luxury (LT), rally sport (RS) and super sport (SS). The 2LT front-wheel drive version will be the entry-level option. The company said it’s also making a “police pursuit” vehicle available to law enforcement early next year.

GM, like most other automakers, has launched with its more pricey trim. Still, it seems even some of the lower priced trims are still higher than GM’s original estimate. Last year, the company revealed Blazer EV and said the base version would start at about $44,995. At the time, the company said it would price the 2LT at about $47,595 and the RS at $51,995.

In reality, the trims are as much as $10,000 higher than originally estimated.

The first Blazer EV to hit dealer lots this summer will be the RS all-wheel drive, a model that starts at $60,215 and has an estimated range of 279 miles. This vehicle is loaded with a number of features, including gloss black trim, a heads-up display, heated front and rear seats, ventilated front seats and animated exterior lighting. Prices don’t include tax, title, license, dealer fees and optional equipment.

The RS rear-wheel drive, which is expected to have a 320-mile range and has a few extras including a Bose audio system, will start at $61,790. The 2LT AWD, which starts at $56,7151 and has a range of 279 miles, will come equipped with a 17.7-inch-diagonal infotainment touchscreen and 11-inch-instrument cluster, heated steering wheel, heated front seats, heated side mirrors and wireless phone charging, among other features.

GM said the RS rear-wheel drive and 2LT AWD trims will begin production this fall. The company has pushed the production start date of the SS version to spring 2024.

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Would-be Twitter rival T2 adds DMs — a feature others, including Threads, don’t yet have

As the battle among would-be Twitter rivals continues, one of the smaller apps to via for Twitter (now X‘s) fleeing user base, T2, has added an in-demand feature that even Meta’s Threads doesn’t yet have: DMs. The company recently announced it added support for direct messages, which has been among users’ top requests, it said.

The addition differentiates T2 from buzzier Twitter competitors like Threads, Bluesky, and to some extent, Mastodon, where Direct Messages work a little differently — they are effectively just posts that have the “direct” visibility selected but are not end-to-end encrypted.

Similarly, T2’s direct messages also aren’t end-to-end encrypted, but they do at least allow users to connect more privately on the app. Of course, sensitive conversations should generally not be shared on new social media apps but on dedicated privacy apps, like Signal or even WhatsApp, which has prioritized encryption.

With the rollout of DMs on T2 on July 26th, users can now find a new link in the app’s sidebar. The company explains users can control who’s allowed to DM them via the Settings tab in T2. From here, you can choose to allow DMs from anyone on the app, only from accounts you follow, or you can turn off receiving DMs altogether.

The company said it opted not to encrypt direct messages so it can combat spam and harassment in these conversations. It even built-in nudges in DMs to automatically detect possible insults or other threatening behavior, then nudge the sender to change their message. Nudges like this can be somewhat effective. Twitter, pre-Elon Musk, had once used nudges in an attempt to get users to tone down their replies. It said that 34% of people revised their initial reply after seeing the prompt, or chose not to send the reply at all. Plus, after being prompted once, people then composed 11% fewer offensive replies in the future, on average.

T2 was founded by Twitter and Google veterans, including co-founder Sarah Oh, Twitter’s former human rights advisor, and Gabor Cselle, who had sold his prior companies to Twitter and Google. The company’s goal has been to build an alternative to Twitter that had an increased focus on trust and safety — or, as Gabor’s profile reads, “a kinder, safer public square.”

That’s an area where another Twitter rival, Bluesky, has since stumbled. The latter has been under attack for moderation missteps that saw it failing to crack down on bigotry and even allowing usernames with racial slurs to slip through in recent days.

Bluesky, however, has seen its app installed 1 million times to date, outpacing the number of invites available to its still private network. T2, meanwhile, continues to operate as a web app but is optimized for mobile screens. Its user base should reach around 15,000 by the end of the week, the company says. T2 has not yet announced any concrete plans around decentralization — meaning using a protocol like ActivityPub, which powers Mastodon, and soon Threads, or Bluesky’s AT Protocol, in order to connect with other social networks.

Currently, the team views decentralization as a major hurdle to moderation and building a lasting, stable and civil community, we understand, as users can move to other servers when they don’t want to abide by stricter moderation rules.

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SEC sues Richard Heart and his projects Hex, PulseChain and Pulse X for fraud, securities violations

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it is suing Richard Schueler, known online as Richard Heart and his three crypto projects, Hex, PulseChain and PulseX, for conducting unregistered offerings of “crypto asset securities.”

The unregistered offerings raised more than $1 billion in crypto from investors, the agency stated.

Heart and PulseChain also were charged with fraud “for misappropriating at least $12 million of offering proceeds to purchase luxury goods including sports cars, watches, and a 555-carat black diamond known as ‘The Enigma’ – reportedly the largest black diamond in the world.”

PulseChain launched in May, and PulseX is the exchange on its blockchain that allows users to exchange other tokens on its network, according to its website.

The two entities were off to a rocky start due to their connection to Hex and some community members’ concerns about its fundamentals. Hex has been around since 2019 and doesn’t have a stellar reputation because many market players view it as a scam due to its advertisements as the first “blockchain certificate of deposit.” It claimed that users who stake its token could mine new coins with high APYs and deposits are worth “trillions of dollars” and are “worth more than gold, credit card companies and cash.”

With that said, Hex claims it’s not a scam, and even has a page on its website dedicated to clarifying itself.

The SEC echoed that Heart allegedly created the “staking” feature for HEX tokens, which he claimed would provide yields as high as 38%, the agency stated. The complaint further alleges that Heart “attempted to evade securities laws by calling on investors to ‘sacrifice’ (instead of ‘invest’) their crypto assets in exchange for PLS and PLSX tokens.”

From December 2019 to November 2020, Heart and Hex allegedly offered and sold HEX tokens in an unregistered offering, bringing in over 2.3 million ether, worth about $4,271,468,000 at present value, the SEC stated.

The SEC also alleged that between July 2021 and March 2022, Heart created two additional unregistered crypto tokens, PLS and PLSX, that raised hundreds of millions in crypto to support PulseChain and PulseX, respectively.

The price of the HEX, PLS and PLSX tokens fell 24%, 25% and 42%, respectively, on Monday after news of the SEC’s complaint.

In recent months, the SEC has ramped up efforts to crack down on the crypto industry, going after companies big and small for alleged securities violations, fraud, and other activities. As the agency continues to scrutinize the space, we could well see other firms facing lawsuits in the coming months.

All in all, the SEC’s issue is with companies treating crypto assets as securities, something that the industry and other government regulatory bodies don’t agree on.

Earlier this month, a federal court ruled that the XRP token, used for the Ripple blockchain, is not a security when sold to the broader public, but could be considered as one for institutional sales. The SEC had alleged in its case that Ripple and two executives had raised $1.3 billion in an alleged “unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.”

Stu Alderoty, chief legal officer of Ripple Labs, told me on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast that the ruling could potentially provide clarity for other pending lawsuits. “I think our case and the decision rendered by our judge will provide comfort to other judges that the SEC is just misguided.”

But, he said, the question that policymakers and lawyers should be asking is, “What’s the best regulatory framework that we can create that protects the integrity of the market?”

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Apple greenlights Twitter app’s rebrand to X

After weeks of changes to its social handles, branding on its interface, a redirect on the web, and lots of chatter from its owner, Twitter the app has finally changed its name on the App Store to X. The single-letter name may have an exception: Apple typically doesn’t allow developers name their apps as a single character.

Last week, Twitter rebranded its iOS and Android apps, replacing the old bird logo, and screenshots in the App Store, with the new ‘X’ logo. However, the company wasn’t able to change its actual listed name on the App Store. As developers pointed out, this is because the App Store Connect — the portal that lets developers manage their apps — shows an error when developers try to use just one character as the app name.

Despite that, today Apple seems finally to have granted Elon Musk’s X Corp. — the official owner of Twitter — an exception to have a single-letter app name. We have reached out to Apple for a comment, and we’ll update the story if we hear back.

X also changed its App Store tagline from “Let’s talk.” to “Blaze your glory!” It’s not clear what that means. Musk himself posted a tweet with this tagline without any context.

Blaze Your Glory!!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2023

In contrast, Twitter’s rebranding on Android faced no roadblocks as the app changed the name to X along with the logo swap earlier.

Over the weekend, another app named X — which supposedly was using Unicode in its name to get around Apple’s character limits — was renamed. The app description now reads “[We are not affiliated with Twitter/X and will soon give our app a new name]”

The app that was named “X” because of Unicode characters recently has been rebranded to “Note” an hour ago.

Curious if the app title update resulted from litigation by Twitter, or if it was a simpler decision to avoid going viral on social media as "X."

Musk lacks absolute IP… https://t.co/HUvOCGTN14 pic.twitter.com/ikcklnIz7x

— Nick (@nickjsheriff) July 29, 2023

Last week, TechCrunch reported that X took over the @X handle without any warning to its original owner. The company didn’t compensate the user and just offered him a selection of X merchandise and a tour of X’s HQ, as a “reflection of our appreciation.”

X is also in the process of renaming its subscription service from Twitter Blue to X Blue. The company now mentions on the support page that the subscription service allows users to upload up to three hours of video — extending the previous limit of two hours set in May.

Last week, X also expanded its ad revenue-sharing program globally after giving creators $5 million in the first round of payments. To earn however, you have to pay and play to cash in: to be eligible, creators have to be verified; need at least 500 followers; and they also must have accrued 15 million total impressions from across their posts in the last three months.

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China’s cutthroat e-commerce tactic goes global as Shein-Temu war escalates

The battle between two of China’s largest e-commerce firms is heating up, as they take the cutthroat tactics that have long been around in the country to the international markets they both covet.

Chinese e-commerce deals giant Pinduoduo’s affiliate, Temu, which is aggressively expanding overseas, recently filed a court document in the U.S. accusing fast fashion giant Shein of anti-competitive practices. Specifically, Temu claims that Shein has been “forcing exclusive dealing arrangements on clothing manufacturers.”

This allegation is reminiscent of Alibaba’s infamous “choosing one from two” policy, where vendors were asked to sell exclusively on Alibaba’s platforms and skip its archrival, Pinduoduo. As part of its sweeping crackdown on the tech industry, the Chinese government launched a probe into Alibaba in late 2020 over its monopolistic practices.

TechCrunch has reached out to Shein and Temu for comment on the case.

Since then, China has proposed an anti-monopoly law to rein in the power of its consumer internet giants. The question is whether China will take action on the ongoing battle between Shein and Temu, neither of which sells products directly in China.

Shein’s holding company is domiciled in Singapore, though it has a significant operational footprint and sources mainly from manufacturers in China. In an effort to ramp up global expansion, the entity behind Temu and Pinduoduo recently made Dublin its base.

A closer look at what Shein and Temu are fighting over — clothing manufacturers — reveals an interesting detail. Besides price control, why would Shein keep such a tight grip on its apparel suppliers, given the abundance of resources in China? A post on Xiaohongshu, China’s lifestyle and experience sharing community, offers a clue.

The author of the post, who appears to be a Temu seller, claims that her jeans factory is having trouble procuring cotton that’s not produced in Xinjiang, the major source of cotton in China. For context, the U.S. fashion industry now must wean itself off Xinjiang cotton after a law came into force in 2021, giving U.S. border authorities greater powers to block goods linked to alleged forced labor in China.

The exclusivity requirement isn’t just about cotton. As of May, Shein has required all of the approximately 8,338 manufacturers supplying or selling on its platform to sign exclusive-dealing agreements, preventing them from selling on Temu or supplying products to Temu sellers, according to Temu’s filing.

These approximately 8,338 manufacturers represent 70-80% of the total number of merchants capable of supplying ultra-fast fashion, Temu claims.

The legal dispute between Shein and Temu is not one-sided. Back in March, Shein made accusations that Temu “willfully and flagrantly infringed Shein’s exclusive and valuable trademark and copyright rights,” and engaged in a scheme to boost its own growth in the U.S. by “impersonating [the] Shein brand on social media, trading off of the well-known Shein trademarks, and using copyrighted images owned by Roadget as part of [its own] product listings.”

Pinduoduo’s sister shopping app Temu tops US App Store

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X reinstates Kanye West’s account after Musk banned him last year

Social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) has reinstated the account of Kanye West (who legally goes by Ye) after he was banned last year for posting a picture of Swastika merged with the Star of David.

Last December, months after Elon Musk took over the platform, Ye created a tweetstorm by posting a series of antisemitic comments along with a picture that violated the social network’s rules. At that time, Ye also posted an “unflattering” picture of Musk, but the Tesla CEO clarified that the rapper-producer wasn’t banned because of that.

Just clarifying that his account is being suspended for incitement to violence, not an unflattering pic of me being hosed by Ari.

Frankly, I found those pics to be helpful motivation to lose weight!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that Ye’s account won’t be eligible for monetization and ads will not appear next to his posts. Last week, X rolled out an ad revenue-sharing program with global creators. Creators will need to have at least 500 followers and will need to garner 15 million impressions over the previous three months to be eligible for the program.

Ye hasn’t made any posts yet after his account was unbanned. However, the account was only restored after he gave assurance that he won’t post antisemitic content or hateful language, the WSJ report said, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.

Musk, who is a self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist,” has made controversial decisions about restoring certain accounts after he took over Twitter. The list includes former U.S. President Donald Trump, far-right influencer Andrew Tate, who was banned by Twitter for misogynistic comments, and right-wing academic Jordan Peterson. Most recently, Twitter faced criticism for restoring the account of Dominick McGee, who posted an image of child sexual abuse.

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Fidelity deepens valuation cut for SaaS startup Gupshup

Fidelity has slashed the estimated worth of its holding in SaaS startup Gupshup by over 20% in a month and by more than 50% since the original investment in the latest brutal markdown across private markets.

The U.S. asset manager valued its holding in Gupshup at $8.08 million at the end of June, down from $10.15 million a month prior, according to a monthly disclosure. Fidelity originally invested $16.2 million from its Blue Chip Growth Fund in Gupshup in mid-2021 in a funding round that valued the business messaging services provider at $1.4 billion.

The business messaging platform, which started its journey in India 17 years ago, raised $340 million in 2021 from a clutch of investors including Tiger Global, Think Investments and Malabar Investments.

Fidelity slightly improved the value of its holdings in Reddit, Discord, Twitter-parent X Holdings and Indian e-commerce Meesho in the month of June, it disclosed in the filing.

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Walmart pays $1.4 billion to buy Tiger Global’s remaining Flipkart stake

Walmart paid $1.4 billion to buy out Tiger Global’s remaining holding of Flipkart shares as the retail giant further expands its stake in the Indian e-commerce startup.

The transaction took place in recent days and Tiger Global, which has cashed most of its Flipkart shares earlier, overall made a return of $3.5 billion on an investment of $1.2 billion, the New York-headquartered hedge fund told investors, according to a person familiar with the matter. Wall Street Journal first reported on the deal.

Flipkart is the only Indian startup in which Tiger Global had invested more than $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The U.S. investment giant has poured over $6 billion on Indian startups altogether.

The secondary Flipkart shares sale valued the Bengaluru-headquartered at $35 billion. Flipkart was valued at $37.6 billion in a funding round in 2021, but has since internally cut its worth by about $5 billion following the split of payments startup PhonePe.

Walmart, which paid $16 billion for a 77% stake in Flipkart in 2018, held 72% share in the firm as of last year, according to an analysis by market intelligence firm Tracxn. Tiger Global, prior to the recent transaction, held a 4% stake in Flipkart.

An alternative perspective on Walmart’s over $20 billion investment in Flipkart could be that the American giant has bought shares in a company that competes with the local division of Amazon, which was able to establish a similar business in-house for less than $7 billion.

The funding faucet for Flipkart probably won’t be turned off in the near future.

Flipkart has largely depleted the capital it raised in 2021 and now faces the need for another round of funding. Flipkart has gauged market interest in recent months, but no deal was struck due to a lower valuation. As such, it seems likely that it will turn back to Walmart to secure the majority of the financing needed for the next round.

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Tesla’s range-flation problem, Waymo reverses on self-driving trucks and Ford tweaks its EV playbook

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. 

Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

Hey frens! I’m back from vacation and who-wee — a lot happened this week from automaker earnings and the Tesla range inflation drama to Waymo tapping the brakes on self-driving and Cruise expanding to yet another city.

One other note, you can find me on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, a place where I will show up on a semi-regular basis, including this episode that came out Friday!

Onward!

---

Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com.

Reminder that you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

Micromobbin’

Is there anything else to talk about besides Lyft mulling the sale of its ebike division?

Lyft posted on its blog that it had received “strong inbound interest” in its bikes and scooters business.

The company stated:

As a leading bikeshare provider, supplying solutions to over 53 markets across 15 countries, it’s only logical for Lyft to listen to credible proposals and explore strategic partners and options in several forms to serve more riders in more cities. We expect this part of the business to continue to be a meaningful part of Lyft’s offering now and into the future.

The announcement runs contrary to what newly appointed CEO David Risher has told reporter Rebecca Bellan in past interviews. Risher, who is known as a big supporter of ebikes, did say the company planned to focus on its core ride-hailing business and become profitable, but it didn’t seem like the two-wheeled share service was on the chopping block.

The news prompted some here at TechCrunch to declare that shared micromobility was officially dead. I’m not so sure.

What do you think?

Deal of the week

Instead of a deal of the week, I’d like to call y’all’s attention to the list of deals below. See a pattern emerging?

Yup, me too. Software and EV charging sure seems like a thing, eh?

Other deals that got my attention this week …

Ampcontrol, an EV fleet management software startup, raised $10 million in Series A funding round led by the Westly Group. Other investors included AngelPad and Lorimer Ventures.

Aurora raised $820 million in a public and concurrent private offering (a deal we covered last week.) As I mentioned in the Equity podcast, tucked inside the SEC filing detailing the deal we learn that Uber invested $1 million in the private placement and $74 million in the public follow-on. When taking into account the Class B shares, Uber has a 22% stake in Aurora.

EV.energy, the UK-based EV charging software startup, raised $33 million in a Series B round led by National Grid Partners with participation from new investors Aviva Ventures, WEX Venture Capital and InMotion Ventures, as well as existing investors Energy Impact Partners, Future Energy Ventures and ArcTern Ventures.

Flipturn, a startup that developed a software management system for EV truck fleets, raised $4.5 million in a seed round led by Accel.

Field, the battery energy storage systems developer launched by former Bulb Energy co-founder Amit Gudka, raised £200 million from DIF Capital Partners.

Voltpost, a New York City–based startup that developed hardware that converts lampposts into EV charging spots, raised $3.6 million in a seed round led by RWE Energy Transition Investments with participation from Twynam Funds Management, Exelon Foundation, Good News Ventures and Climate Capital.

VW Group made a pair of deals with Chinese automakers aimed at shoring up sales in China, including taking a 5% stake valued at about $700 million XPeng as part of a deal to jointly develop and produce two mid-sized EVs for China. In a separate agreement, Audi expanded a partnership with SAIC. Reporter Rita Liao provides insight on what this deal could mean for future alliances between China and the West.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Autonomous vehicles

Cruise self-driving vehicles arrived in Nashville this week for testing; a robotaxi service is expected to follow. Cruise will also begin testing in multiple, new cities as part of its aggressive commercial ramp, according to the company. If the company’s careers page provides any hints, it seems Atlanta is one of them.

Want evidence that Cruise is accelerating? One year ago, Cruise only operated in San Francisco. Cruise has since expanded to Austin, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and most recently Miami.

Rafaela Vasquez, the safety driver who was behind the wheel of an Uber ATG self-driving vehicle when it struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe in 2018, pleaded guilty to endangerment. Vasquez was sentenced to three years of supervised probation.

Waymo is tapping the brakes on self-driving trucks and shifting most of its capital, resources and talent to one commercial bet: ride-hailing. I won’t call it a complete shutdown as limited testing will continue. But the program as it once stood is over. It seems most people on the team have kept their jobs at Waymo, per sources. (However, it’s still early; we’ll see how it all shakes out once the program is wound down.)

Earnings

Ford and GM both posted earnings this week and there were some general themes; namely that business is good if you’re selling gas and hybrid trucks and SUVs. The EV business? Well that’s a bit of a money loser. Both companies raised profit guidance for the year and GM said it would cut costs another $1 billion as it focuses on earning more money.

Ford, which now breaks out earnings for three business units, is tweaking its EV plans. The big line item is that Ford expects its EV business to lose $4.5 billion in 2023 — double what it previously forecast. And the company seems to be more bullish than ever on hybrids, which reminds me of Bill Ford’s comments way back in 2016 about viewing hybrids as a transitional, or bridge technology. At the time, the sentiment was about consumer adoption. These days Ford is learning that hybrid technology applied to trucks is particularly attractive to buyers.

Electric vehicles, batteries & charging

Ample, a San Francisco-based startup, is bringing its modular EV battery swapping technology to Mitsubishi Fuso’s electric trucks this winter.

GM isn’t going to kill off the Chevy Bolt EV after all. This is going to be a next-gen Bolt EV based on the new Ultium platform and battery design. I’m fascinated by this reversal because it happened so quickly (3 months!).  Will it still be assembled at the Orion plant? Reminder: Orion was supposed to be retooled for electric truck production once the Bolt went out of production at the end of 2023.

Tesla exaggerated the range estimates for its EVs for years, prompting owners to flood its service center over concerns that their vehicles needed service, according to a new detailed Reuters report. As I note in my own story, one of the nagging problems with range estimates is their variability, which allows some automakers to push the boundaries of the system. While the EPA does review and approve those estimates, it allows automakers to use one of two methods to reach those figures: use a standard formula that converts fuel economy results, or conduct additional tests to come up with their own range estimate. Tesla has always done the latter, which gives far better numbers.

Miscellaneous

Lacuna Technologies, a startup that sold software services to cities to help create and enforce transportation policies, has shut down, per a LinkedIn post from product lead Samuel Jackson. (h/t to the source who pointed me to the post).

Disrupt!

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Is Black news VC backable?

Lately I’ve been thinking about media publishing startups (think Semafor and Puck) and their fundraising rounds.

Semafor recently raised a $44 million seed round, and Puck raised a $7 million Series A in 2021. The Messenger, among the newest in the industry, recently raised $50 million. Publishing media jobs are uncertain, pushing those with an entrepreneurial spirit to start their own companies, giving them more ownership over their work. But compare their experience to that of Dana Amihere, who is still trying to find support and funding for her news media startup.

She launched AfroLA News in 2022 to cover the Black community in Los Angeles. So far, she won’t even touch venture capital. The outlook is bleak for people who look like her, she said. People in the startup world keep telling her things are getting better, but “Who are things improving for?” she asked.

“Knowing what the landscape looks like, it almost feels more worthwhile to dedicate the limited time I do have to other things,” she told TechCrunch+. “I don’t think backing Black news outlets is seen as inherently risky. Rather, I think it’s not seen [at all]. Investors don’t see it as a viable or worthwhile investment unless it’s splashy or fits their idea of what Black news should be.”

Part of the problem is that the pool of investors who like investing in media, specifically publishing, is already small. The industry is risky, and not in the startup sense where one might strike big returns one day. Last year the media sector raised a healthy $15 billion, according to PitchBook; within that, publishing raised just $298 million.

Charles Hudson, a managing partner at Precursor Ventures who invests in new media, said that the funding landscape for most media companies, B2B or B2C, is limited when it comes to venture. “What dollars do get invested tend to go to categories that feel big, like national news, industry-specific vertical pubs like Skift or The Information or B2B media companies,” he told TechCrunch+.

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Can we trust automakers to build an EV charging network that rivals Tesla’s Supercharger?

Automakers appear to have had an awakening last week: Electric vehicles are the future, and if they want to continue selling cars, they have to think beyond the car. I’m not talking about subscriptions, though; I’m talking about charging.

For years, major auto manufacturers were happy to leave the infrastructure to someone else. Tesla was the lone exception, building a globe-spanning network of speedy and reliable chargers that have placated range-anxious car shoppers who have bought the company’s EVs in droves. Other automakers, though, failed to connect the EV charging experience with EV sales. Perhaps it’s because infrastructure is unfamiliar territory. Or maybe they actually weren’t that interested in selling EVs.

Whatever the case, automakers’ recent come-to-Jesus moment culminated in an announcement last week that seven of the largest would be forming a joint venture to build a massive charging network across North America.

Consisting of no fewer than 30,000 charge points offering both Combined Charging System (CCS) and the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connectors, the as-yet-unnamed network promises to be a true rival to Tesla’s Supercharger and the Volkswagen diesel settlement-funded Electrify America.

Sounds like a step in the right direction.

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When you’ve got two exits under your belt by the age of 26

In this week’s edition of The Interchange, we get into M&As in the fintech space as AngelList nabbed a startup and Uplift got bought for less than it raised in venture funding. We get into those deals and much more. Want to receive this in your inbox every Sunday? Sign up here.

Shopify’s credit bet, Jeeves’ update and AngelList’s second buy

Last week, Shopify announced a new offering — Shopify Credit, a business credit card designed exclusively for its merchants. The new product marked Shopify’s first pay-in-full business credit card, said Shopify president Harley Finkelstein. It is powered by Stripe and issued by Celtic Bank, “and accepted everywhere Visa is,” he added. My editor and I were intrigued by the fact that Shopify insisted it would charge no fees — no late fees, no foreign transaction fees, and no interest. But upon further digging into the fine print, as fellow fintech enthusiast Sar Haribhakti tweeted about, it turns out that Shopify is also describing the new offering as a “pay in full credit card.” So, merchants have 25 days after the close of their monthly billing cycle to pay their balance. And if they don’t? Well, according to Shopify’s website, the card will be locked and the merchant won’t be able to make any new purchases until the balance has been repaid. That explains how/why the company is not charging any interest! Unfortunately, I was traveling early last week and didn’t get to actually speak to Harley — our interview was over email, and somehow this little tidbit of information got left out. It certainly was not something that Shopify publicized. It feels like retail/commerce companies deciding to go into the credit card space should proceed with some caution, though, if Apple’s experience is any indication. The Information did a deep dive last week on how “the tech giant and the Wall Street titan went from ‘the most successful credit card launch ever’ to Goldman trying to exit the partnership.”

I also gave us an update on fintech startup Jeeves, which did something that us reporters wish more (actually, all) private companies would do — share financials. We’ve been covering the goings-on at Jeeves since the startup first emerged from stealth in July of 2021, announcing $131 million in debt and equity financing from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). It then announced a $57 million Series B exactly three months later. Jeeves is among the many players in the corporate card space — but CEO and founder Dileep Thazhmon believes it’s got an advantage over competitors in that it can serve clients in Latin America (its biggest market) and other regions by offering cards that can be paid in local currencies. That’s a big deal, he says, because businesses can save money on foreign transaction fees, for example. He told us: “This is a really big differentiator because it means we’re the only expense management company that can issue local cards in Latin America, North America and Europe. It takes time to build rails in other countries. If you look at U.S.-based expense management platforms, they cannot onboard a company headquartered in Mexico. If you look at Mexican expense management providers, they cannot onboard a company [that] is headquartered in the U.S. Jeeves can do both.” Read about how Jeeves entered 2023 with annualized revenue of $40 million, its recent expansion beyond corporate cards into prepaid cards and cross-border payments, and what its plans for the future are here.

I also got the exclusive on some big news out of AngelList — its purchase of fintech startup Nova and formal expansion into the private equity space. I talked both with AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli and Nova founder Pradyuman Vig about how the deal came about and what the expansion means for the organization. On Friday’s episode of the Equity podcast, Alex Wilhelm, Kirsten Korosec and I dug into what some might consider an unexpected move for AngelList — which has historically served early-stage investors. Hint: We thought it might have a little something to do with its 2022 raise that was co-led by a global investor that rhymes with Kiger. Private equity talk aside, it’s always cool to see a young founder with not just one exit under their belt, but two — by the age of 26. — Mary Ann

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Image Credits: Founder Dileep Thazhmon / Jeeves

Weekly News

What do caregiving and divorce have in common? Financial stress for employees. This week, Christine reported on Helpful raising $7.5 million. The new app brings together insurance benefits, medical records and caregiving resources into one dashboard.

As reported by Manish Singh: “The world’s largest asset manager is re-entering India — and it’s doing so in a partnership with Asia’s richest man. Jio Financial Services and BlackRock have struck a deal to form a joint venture, called Jio BlackRock, aimed at serving India’s growing investor base. BlackRock and Reliance’s finance unit are targeting an initial investment of $150 million each into the new 50/50 venture, which will seek to offer tech-enabled access to ‘affordable, innovative’ investment solutions for millions of investors in India, they said.” More here.

Dan Macklin, co-founder of SoFi, has joined Summer as president to help more students and families navigate and reduce student loans. TechCrunch reported on his original departure from SoFi here.

We spotted a tweet (or whatever it’s called now) by Forbes’ Alex Konrad this week about his interview with Victor Lazarte (the former CEO of Brazilian games startup Wildlife Studios), who is Benchmark’s newest equal partner. Lazarte told Forbes that he will invest broadly but has an interest in startups in games, consumer and fintech. TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos caught up with Benchmark’s Miles Grimshaw in June to discuss AI investment. More here.

Also, feds raised rates, and now some fintechs are doing so, too. Wealthfront announced on X that the rate on its “Cash Account” is increasing to 4.80% APY (annual percentage yield), up from 4.55% through its partner banks. If you refer a friend, you get 5.30% APY. Perhaps an interesting note is the up to $5 million FDIC insurance (and $10 million for joint accounts) being offered. Not to be outdone is Robinhood, which also announced via X that it was offering 4.9% APY on accounts that were FDIC-insured up to $2 million through program banks.

What else we’re reading

Six ways FedNow may affect businesses’ cash flow 

Vesttoo investigation reveals $4B fraud involving fake letters of credit

John Collison’s land grab: A Stripe co-founder grows in power

Mastercard’s cease-and-desist letters halt cannabis debit card transactions

Clearwater Analytics to launch new generative artificial intelligence solution for investment management

American Express introduces commercial partner program

Fundings and M&A

Seen on TechCrunch

Upgrade acquires travel-focused BNPL startup Uplift for a song (This is particularly notable considering that Uplift got acquired for far less than it raised over its lifetime.)

GlossGenius raises $28M to expand its bookings and payments platform for beauty businesses

Bloom Money raises £1M to digitize finance for ethnic communities

a16z-backed Eco unveils Beam, a P2P crypto transfer service aiming to be a ‘global Venmo’

Bunq, the Dutch neobank, has raised $111M at a flat $1.8B valuation to break into the US 

Seen elsewhere

Inspectify, which sells software for property inspection services, lands $5.7M 

Digital MGA Foxquilt secures $12M funding

Houston workforce training startup acquired by California company

Mercury Financial secures $200M for its credit card business expansion

Deposit ‘marketplace’ launches with backing from BMO

Settle books $145M credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank 

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Join us at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco this September as we explore the impact of fintech on our world today. New this year, we will have a whole day dedicated to all things fintech, featuring some of today’s leading fintech figures. Save up to $600 when you buy your pass now through August 11, and save 15% on top of that with promo code INTERCHANGE. Learn more.

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Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

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This week in food tech: New fund shows food investments are still simmering

If you’re adventurous with your food, or just like to keep up with the fast-moving food tech industry, here’s a roundup of this week’s stories and some notable news we weren’t able to cover.

Supply Change Capital

The venture capital fund madness we’ve seen all year has made its way to the food sector. This week, I wrote about Supply Change Capital, which closed on $40 million in capital commitments for its first fund, targeting investments in the global food industry.

The female and Latina-owned firm is spearheaded by co-founders and managing partners Noramay Cadena and Shayna Harris, who met 14 years ago in business school.

The firm has already made 15 investments, including in allergen-free snack food company Partake Foods, ingredients startup Michroma and alternative seafood maker Aqua Cultured Foods.

Supply Change joins firms like Joyful Ventures, which debuted in June with $23 million, focused on investment in sustainable protein startups. Joyful was co-founded by Jennifer Stojkovic, Milo Runkle and Blaine Vess and has made two investments from the fund, including New School Foods and Orbillion Bio.

Global investment in food tech and agtech startups were 44% lower than in 2021, totaling $29.6 billion last year. Granted, 2021 had record-breaking investments into this space, but with all this dry powder on the sidelines, it looks promising for the next year.

As seen in TechCrunch

Brevel sprouts $18.5M to develop microalgae-based alternative proteins

Microalgae is everywhere, it seems. This week, Brevel announced a large seed round that will go toward developing microalgae into an alternative protein powder that can be used in foods.

What else I’m reading

Cultivated beef, it’s what’s for dinner in Europe: Israel’s Aleph Farms gears up to sell first cultivated beef cuts in Europe.

New to the aisles of Whole Foods Markets: Actual Veggies expands at the grocery chain amid over 300% growth in the past year. Meati Foods makes its national launch in 46 states (here’s more about them). And Konscious Foods debuts its frozen, plant-based sushi there.

Egg-citing growth: Yo! Egg makes its nationwide launch via a partnership with Veggie Grill. Read our coverage of the company, especially as it relates to the recent hike in traditional egg prices.

Smooth to the touch: MycoWorks unveils plastic-free leather alternative for luxury fashion brands. Read more about our coverage of this company making “leather” from mushrooms.

Gordon Ramsay likes ramen: Gordon Ramsay partners with vegan ramen brand. See who else has plant-based ramen.

Brewing up some M&A: RTD cold brew maker High Brew acquired by Beliv. Ready-to-drink is big; read more.

If you have a juicy tip or lead about happenings in the venture and food tech worlds, you can reach Christine Hall at chall.techcrunch@gmail.com or Signal at 832-862-1051. Anonymity requests will be respected. 

Eliminating food waste is the next frontier in saving the planet

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Twitter rebrands to ‘X,’ hackers infect Call of Duty, and foreign visitors to China go cashless

Hey, friends, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s roundup of the week in tech news. Life getting in the way of your daily TechCrunch habit? Not to worry. WiR will get you caught up in no time.

This week, WiR covers the improving quality of AI porn generators and the ethical dilemmas they raise; Twitter rebranding to “X”; and hackers infecting Call of Duty with self-spreading malware. Elsewhere, we dive into a North Korean hacking group, foreign Chinese visitors’ newfound ability to go cashless, and the rollout of Sam Altman’s Worldcoin eyeball-scanning crypto project.

As always, it’s a lot to get to, so let’s not delay. But first, a reminder that if you haven’t already, sign up here to get WiR in your inbox every Saturday.

Most read

Twitter rebrands to “X”: This week, Twitter removed its iconic bird logo and adopted “X” as its new official branding. The move, which Elon Musk announced over the weekend, is a harbinger of the platform’s shift — perhaps more aspirational than concrete — to deemphasize text tweets in favor of audio, video, messaging and payment and banking.

Now it’s my X: Twitter’s rebranding to X hasn’t been faring exceptionally well. In addition to a haphazard rollout that saw parts of the site referencing “X” while others still implored you to “search Twitter” or push a blue button to “Tweet,” the company didn’t even make an attempt to secure the @x Twitter handle, owned by Gene X Hwang of the corporate photography and videography studio Orange Photography. Twitter later wrested control of the handle without notifying or compensating Hwang.

Hackers infect Call of Duty: Hackers are infecting players of an old Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 2, with a worm that spreads automatically in online lobbies. As Lorenzo writes, Modern Warfare 2 was released quite a bit ago — 2009 — but still has a small community of players. Call of Duty publisher Activision said in a tweet that it would bring the Steam version of the game offline as it “investigates report of [the] issue.”

Foreign visitors to China go cashless: This week, China’s two dominant mobile payment solutions, WeChat Pay and Alipay, announced that foreign users can now pay at Chinese retailers by linking their foreign credit cards, including Visa, Mastercard and Discover. Previously, using WeChat Pay and Alipay in China required a local bank account, making it challenging for short-term visitors to use these payment methods.

Worldcoin launches its eyeball-scanning project: Worldcoin, Sam Altman’s audacious eyeball-scanning crypto startup, has begun the global rollout of its services to help build a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online. People can download World App, the startup’s protocol-compatible wallet software, and visit an Orb, Worldcoin’s helmet-shaped eyeball-scanning verification device, to receive a unique “World ID.”

North Korean hackers expose themselves: Security researchers say they have high confidence that North Korean hackers were behind a recent intrusion at enterprise software company JumpCloud because of a mistake the hackers made. Mandiant, which is assisting one of JumpCloud’s affected customers, attributed the breach to hackers working for North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, or RGB, a hacking unit that targets cryptocurrency companies and steals passwords from executives and security teams.

Waymo puts the brakes on trucks: Waymo is tapping the brakes on self-driving trucks and shifting most of its capital, resources and talent to one commercial bet: ride-hailing. Kirsten writes that the move, which was announced Wednesday in a company blog post, comes six years after Waymo first tested its autonomous vehicle system in Class 8 trucks. The company emphasized the decision was driven by the commercial opportunities in applying its autonomous vehicle technology to ride-hailing.

SEC probes Bolt ex-CEO: Ryan Breslow, co-founder of the e-commerce software outfit Bolt, was subpoenaed along with the company last year by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Christine reported this week. A letter authored in April by a lawyer representing Bolt investors said the SEC was investigating whether federal securities laws were violated in connection with statements made when Bolt was raising money in 2021.

Audio

In need of a podcast to fill the hours? You’re in luck. TechCrunch has a roster of new episodes to keep you both entertained and informed.

On Equity this week, the crew dug through the headlines of the past few days, starting with AngelList’s acquisition of Nova, Waymo steering toward robotaxis and the latest on interest rates from the Fed. They also touched on earnings for Big Tech and how more limited partner capital can funnel into diverse venture funds.

Found featured a conversation with Mandy Price, the co-founder and CEO at Kanarys, a software-as-a-service startup that helps companies tackle their diversity and inclusion problems with data. Mandy talked about why she started the company after a decade-long career as a lawyer and why she didn’t want Kanarys to just be focused on hiring metrics, as many other diversity, equity and inclusion platforms are.

And on Chain Reaction, Deana Burke and Natasha Hoskins, the co-founders of Boys Club, spoke about their social decentralized autonomous organization for the “crypto curious.” Originally designed to get women and nonbinary people into the web3 world, Boys Club now aims to be an open space for anyone looking to get into the space.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

Why SAFE rounds are safe: SAFEs, simple agreements for future equity, have long been touted as a founder-friendly structure for signing venture deals. But is it really fair to call them that? Rebecca investigates.

Positivity in the face of toxicity: Dominic writes about how prioritizing positive company culture is just as important — or at least, should be as important — as investor returns.

Playing the long AI game: Microsoft’s and Alphabet’s results indicate the AI game is more of a long-term strategy, Alex writes.

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In AI-enabled drug discovery, there might be more than one winner

W
elcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.

Today, a look at Israel from three different angles: drug discovery, AI-enabled cybersecurity threats, and investor reactions to the political crisis. — Anna

From spatial biology to proteomics

Chipmaker Nvidia invested $50 million into biotech startup Recursion, which now plans to “accelerate [the] development of its AI foundation models for biology and chemistry,” according to a press release.

Recursion CTO Ben Mabey said the company aims to build “a definitive foundation model for the drug discovery space.” That’s no easy feat; its CEO Chris Gibson referred to drug discovery as “one of the world’s most difficult challenges.”

However, both Recursion and Nvidia hope AI can help solve this challenge. “Generative AI is a revolutionary tool to discover new medicines and treatments,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote in a canned statement.

Recursion is far from the only company working on this; in May, it acquired two companies in the AI-enabled drug discovery space, Cyclica and Valence. But while these three companies are headquartered in North America, I couldn’t help but notice that a number of their competitors are based in Israel.

I asked Lior Handelsman and Renana Ashkenazi, two general partners at Israeli VC firm Grove Ventures, why Israel may be an AI-enabled biotech hotbed. They mentioned some factors I was expecting, such as academic talent and the entrepreneurial spirit that already turned the country into a Startup Nation. But Ashkenazi also noted that the profile of biotech founders is changing.

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