Engineered earworms on TikTok aren’t that far off from disinfo campaigns

Ever since I read this Bloomberg story about how songs are engineered to go viral on TikTok, I’ve had one thought in my head – if you can call it that – it’s more of a noise, or impression: 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Yes, it’s the sound of internally screaming. Just when I thought I understood how deeply social media algorithms have hijacked our desires, tastes and preferences – WHAM! Another jab straight to the nose. I have to admit, I was blindsided by this one. It knocked me out.

Now, I understand that I work for a website called TechCrunch, emphasis on the tech, but if this story doesn’t make you feel at least a teensy bit like a Luddite, well, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re probably like that character in the Matrix, Cypher, who wants to be plugged in.

Is that harsh? I mean, companies are going to company, and partnerships with major record labels is a common sense move for a social media app all about honing the art of short, clever combinations of sound and video. And fair dues to the creators, many of them in college or high school, for jumping at the chance to make some money and get a little bit of fame.

But it’s probably not too harsh when you consider what else is possible when catchiness is weaponized. Here’s what we know: whether it’s internet memes or political slogans or Megan Thee Stallion’s Savage, what drives information dissemination is not the truthfulness of the content or the credibility of the speaker but 1) how easy it is to remember and 2) how quickly it sparks conversations. 

And would you look at that! Those are exactly the variables music producers optimize for today. What the Bloomberg story highlights, inadvertently or not, is how a #1 pop hit and a piece of political disinformation are not all that different, aesthetically. Everyone’s an entertainer.

Now read to the end of the Bloomberg story. Get to the part where it’s revealed that ByteDance (the Chinese company that owns TikTok), in response to threats of a U.S. ban on the app, recruited creators to orchestrate a seemingly grassroots lawsuit against the proposed ban. And I think: damn. Attention really is the most precious commodity in the world. And we’re just…giving it away.

(Cue the internal screams.)

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Engineered earworms on TikTok aren’t that far off from disinfo campaigns Aria Alamalhodaei https://ift.tt/3tRof6g
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Engineered earworms on TikTok aren’t that far off from disinfo campaigns

{rss:content:encoded} Engineered earworms on TikTok aren’t that far off from disinfo campaigns https://ift.tt/3tRof6g https://ift.tt/3aCRLFo April 23, 2021 at 08:06PM

Ever since I read this Bloomberg story about how songs are engineered to go viral on TikTok, I’ve had one thought in my head – if you can call it that – it’s more of a noise, or impression: 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Yes, it’s the sound of internally screaming. Just when I thought I understood how deeply social media algorithms have hijacked our desires, tastes and preferences – WHAM! Another jab straight to the nose. I have to admit, I was blindsided by this one. It knocked me out.

Now, I understand that I work for a website called TechCrunch, emphasis on the tech, but if this story doesn’t make you feel at least a teensy bit like a Luddite, well, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re probably like that character in the Matrix, Cypher, who wants to be plugged in.

Is that harsh? I mean, companies are going to company, and partnerships with major record labels is a common sense move for a social media app all about honing the art of short, clever combinations of sound and video. And fair dues to the creators, many of them in college or high school, for jumping at the chance to make some money and get a little bit of fame.

But it’s probably not too harsh when you consider what else is possible when catchiness is weaponized. Here’s what we know: whether it’s internet memes or political slogans or Megan Thee Stallion’s Savage, what drives information dissemination is not the truthfulness of the content or the credibility of the speaker but 1) how easy it is to remember and 2) how quickly it sparks conversations. 

And would you look at that! Those are exactly the variables music producers optimize for today. What the Bloomberg story highlights, inadvertently or not, is how a #1 pop hit and a piece of political disinformation are not all that different, aesthetically. Everyone’s an entertainer.

Now read to the end of the Bloomberg story. Get to the part where it’s revealed that ByteDance (the Chinese company that owns TikTok), in response to threats of a U.S. ban on the app, recruited creators to orchestrate a seemingly grassroots lawsuit against the proposed ban. And I think: damn. Attention really is the most precious commodity in the world. And we’re just…giving it away.

(Cue the internal screams.)

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Longevity startup Longevica plans to launch supplements based on long-term research

A biotech company that has spent 11 years researching supplements to increase human longevity plans to launch its supplements later this year. Longevica says it has attracted a total of $13 million from investors, including Alexander Chikunov, a longevity investor, who is also president of the company.

Longevica says it created a biotechnology platform for longevity after researching the life-span of laboratory mice. It now aims to produce medicines, dietary supplements and food products.

The longevity space is a growing sector for tech startups. Google backed the launch of Calico in the space. Late last year Humanity Inc. raised $2.5 million in a round led by Boston fund One Way Ventures for its longevity company that will leverage AI to maximize people’s health span.

Longevica’s CEO Aynar Abdrakhmanov, backing up his company’s aim to tap the desire for people to live longer, said: “According to the WHO, by 2050, 2 billion people will be 60+ years old. By 2026, the sales of services and products for this audience will be around $27 trillion… By comparison, it was only $17 trillion in 2019.”

According to CB Insights, life-extension startups raised a record total of $800 million in 2018 alone. And there are some high-profile investors in the space.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel invested in Unity Biotechnology, which is developing drugs to treat diseases that accompany aging. And Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin invested $2.4 million worth of Ether into the nonprofit SENS Research foundation, where famed longevity research Aubrey de Grey is chief science officer, to develop rejuvenation biotechnologies.

Longevica is basing its platform on the work of scientist Alexey Ryazanov, who holds 10 U.S. patents in the space, and is a longtime researcher into the regulation of protein biosynthesis cells.

Chikunov said: “I gathered scientists known in this field to discuss their approaches to the problem. Then Alexey Ryazanov proposed the innovative idea of large-scale screening of all known pharmacological substances on long-lived mice in order to find those that prolong life.”

Under the leadership of Ryazanov, Longevica says it used 20,000 long-lived female mice and 1,033 drugs representing compounds from 62 pharmacological classes to find five substances that statistically significantly increased longevity by 16-22%: Inulin, Pentetic Acid, Clofibrate, Proscillaridin A, D-Valine.

From this work, they formed a view about the elimination of certain heavy metals from the body and improved the body’s ability to remove toxins.

How and when to build marketing teams at deep tech companies

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Just one week left to save $100 on TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising

Don’t let procrastination slow your roll. Yeah, we’re looking at you, early-stage founders. At TechCrunch, we love to reward action with savings. Want to save a cool $100? Buy your Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising pass before April 30, at 11:59 p.m. (PT), and you’ll keep a cool $100 in your pocket.

Take action, reap savings and get ready to join your community of early-inning startup founders for a two-day bootcamp (July 8-9) dedicated to helping you build a firm foundation for entrepreneurial success. We’re talking a day packed with highly interactive presentations, breakout sessions and plenty of time for Q&As with top-tier industry leaders and experts — plus a thrilling day-long pitch competition.

Part one of TC Early Stage 2021, which took place in April, featured folks like entrepreneur and VC Melissa Bradley, who delivered advice on nailing a virtual pitch meeting; Alexa von Tobel lead a discussion on finance for founders; and Fuel Capital’s Leah Solivan revealed 10 things not to do when you start a company.

Here’s just one example of the quality topics and guidance you can expect at TC Early Stage 2021 in July.

Plenty of founders struggle to find, or even define, product-market fit. And let’s face it, without the proper product-market fit, you basically have two chances of raising a unicorn: slim and fat. That’s why you won’t want to miss out on what Superhuman founder, CEO and product-market fit master Rahul Vohra has to say on the subject. Bring your questions and take advantage of his invaluable advice.

Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra is coming to TechCrunch Early Stage in July

Pro Tip: We’re building our July agenda and announcing new speakers every week (like Mike Duboe and Sarah Kunst) — stay tuned!

Wondering whether attending TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising is worth your time and money? Here’s what two founders shared about their experience at last year’s event.

Early Stage 2020 provided a rich, bootcamp experience with premier founders, VCs and startup community experts. If you’re beginning to build a startup, it’s an efficient way to advance your knowledge across key startup topics. — Katia Paramonova, founder and CEO of Centrly.

Sequoia Capital’s session, Start with Your Customer, looked at the benefits of storytelling and creating customer personas. I took the idea to my team and we identified seven different user types for our product, and we’ve implemented storytelling to help onboard new customers. That one session alone has transformed my business. — Chloe Leaaetoa, founder, Socicraft.

TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising takes place on July 8-9, and you have just one week left to save $100 on the price of admission. Kick procrastination to the curb and keep more money in your wallet. Buy your TC Early Stage 2021 pass before April 30, at 11:59 p.m. (PT).

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Early Stage 2021 – Marketing & Fundraising? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Just one week left to save $100 on TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising https://ift.tt/3nhjkcn

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Introvoke raises $2.7M to power online events that can be embedded anywhere

While there’s been plenty of attention and money lavished on virtual event platforms over the past year, Introvoke co-founder and CEO Oana Manolache predicted that we’re only at the beginning of a “third wave of digital transformation.”

In her framing, the first wave came at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was using video conferencing tools like Zoom for their virtual events. Next came conference platforms like Hopin (which has been raising money at a mind-boggling clip). But Manolache argued that even Hopin represents a “Band-Aid” that customers are hoping will tide them over until in-person events can resume — particularly when organizers have to point attendees to a third-party platform.

“One size does not fit all,” she said. “The Band-Aid solution that was only supposed to last for a couple months has had big benefits as companies grew their customer base and revenue targets. Now we’ve reached the third wave, as organizations want to bring solutions to their own universe and own their relationship with the audience.”

San Francisco-based Introvoke is a Techstars Accelerator graduate aiming to provide this third-wave solution. It’s announcing today that it has raised $2.7 million in funding led by Struck Capital, while Comcast, Social Leverage, Great Oaks, V1vc, Time CTO Bharat Krish and Resy co-founder Mike Montero also participated.

The startup offers components like virtual stages, chat rooms and networking hubs, all customizable and embeddable on a customer’s website. Manolache said Introvoke (the name comes from the idea of “thought-provoking introductions”) is designed for a hybrid future, which will take multiple forms: “Hybrid is going to mean virtual-only events, in-person only events and events that have in-person and virtual elements.”

Image Credits: Introvoke

Introvoke charges customers based on live event minutes, a model that it says is accessible to companies large and small. Its components can be embedded on websites built with WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Splash and other platforms, but also on a customer’s internal intranet.

“We’ve been so impressed by the way customers are using the technology — conferences, career fairs, employee engagements,” Manolache said.

These best practices maximize the value of your online events

She added that as customers like Comcast, Wharton and Ritual Motion have used the platform in private preview mode, they’re beginning to break free of the in-person model. For example, Introvoke events can allow for attendees to chat with each other over weeks or months, not just a few days.

In a statement, Struck Capital founder and Managing Partner Adam B. Struck suggested that virtual events “will continue far beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Right now, virtual experiences, from conferences and concerts to company all-hands, are generally hosted on third party platforms, which creates a disjointed experience for the brand or organization hosting the event,” he continued. “Virtual enablement should be native to the website and platform of the enterprise itself, and it’s the role of technologists like the Introvoke team to make these experiences as seamless as any in-person event.”

Hopin confirms $400M raise at $5.65B valuation

https://ift.tt/3tNS9bp Introvoke raises $2.7M to power online events that can be embedded anywhere https://ift.tt/3sL7msD

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Hyundai invests in teleoperations startup Ottopia as part of $9M round

After spending much of his career in mission-critical environments, including the Israeli Air Force, Israeli Intelligence and leading development of a cybersecurity product at Microsoft, Amit Rosenzweig turned his attention to autonomous vehicles.

It was a technology that he soon recognized would need what every other mission-critical system requires: humans. 

“I understood that there are so many edge cases that will not be solved purely by AI and machine learning, and there must be some kind of human-in-the-loop intervention,” Rosenzweig said in a recent interview. “You don’t have any mission-critical system on the planet — not nuclear power plants, not airplanes — without human supervision. A human must be in the loop or present in some way for autonomous mobility to exist, even in 10 or probably 20 years from now.”

That “human in the loop” conclusion led Rosenzweig to found teleoperations startup Ottopia in 2018. (His brother, Oren Rosenzweig is also in the autonomous vehicle business via the lidar company he co-founded, Innoviz.) Ottopia’s first product is a universal teleoperation platform that allows a human operator to monitor and control any type of vehicle from thousands of miles away. Ottopia’s software is combined with off-the-shelf hardware components like monitors and cameras to create a teleoperations center. The company’s software also includes assistive features, which provide “path” instructions to the AV without having to remotely control the vehicle.

Since launching, the small 25-person company has racked up investors and partners such as BMW, fixed-route AV startup May Mobility and Bestmile. Ottopia said Friday that it has raised $9 million from Hyundai Motor Group as well as Maven and IN Venture, the Israel-focused venture capital arm of Sumitomo Corporation. Existing investors MizMaa and Israeli firm NextGear also participated.

Hyundai and IN Venture also gained board seats. Woongjun Jang, who heads up Hyundai’s autonomous driving center, and IN Venture managing partner Eyal Rosner, are now on Ottopia’s board.

Ottopia has raised a total of $12 million to date, and Rosenzweig has already set his sights on a larger round to help fund the company’s growth.

For now, Rosenzweig is focused on doubling his workforce to 50 people by the end of the year and opening an office in the United States. Rosenzweig said the company is also expanding into other applications of its teleoperations software, including defense, mining and logistics. However, most of Ottopia’s resources will continue to be dedicated to automotive, and specifically the deployment of autonomous cars, trucks and shuttles.

“The motivation is really simple — it’s simple but it’s hard to do — and that’s to make affordable autonomous transportation closer to reality,” Rosenzweig said. “The problem of course is that when an AV does not have any kind of backup or any kind of safety net in the form of teleoperations and it gets stuck, passengers are going to get anxious, ‘what’s going on, why, why is this not moving’.”

The other problem, Rosenzweig noted, is that AVs need to be combined with an efficient transit service. That’s where he sees his newest partner, on-demand shuttle and transit software company Via, coming in.

Under the partnership, which was also announced this week, Via will offer autonomous vehicle fleets that combine its fleet management software with Ottopia’s teleoperations platform. Via is not developing its own self-driving software system. In November 2020, Via announced it had partnered with May Mobility to launch an autonomous vehicle platform that integrates on-demand shared rides, public transportation and transit options for passengers with accessibility needs.

Ethics in the age of autonomous vehicles

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Hyundai invests in teleoperations startup Ottopia as part of $9M round https://ift.tt/3tPHm0v

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The TechCrunch Germany Survey — Calling Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Bielefeld, Frankfurt

TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey European founders and investors in cities outside the larger European capitals.

Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in these cities to talk about their ecosystems, in their own words.

This is your chance to put Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Bielefeld and Frankfurt on the TechCrunch Map!

If you are a tech startup founder or investor in these cities please fill out the survey form here.

We are particularly interested in hearing from women founders and investors.

This is the follow-up to the huge survey of investors we’ve done over the last six or more months, largely in capital cities.

These formed part of a broader series of surveys we’re doing regularly for Extra Crunch, our subscription service that unpacks key issues for startups and investors.

In the first wave of surveys, the cities we wrote about were largely capitals. You can see them listed here.

Put your city on the TC map — TechCrunch’s European Cities Survey 2021

This time, we will be surveying founders and investors in Europe’s other cities to capture how European hubs are growing, from the perspective of the people on the ground.

We’d like to know how your city’s startup scene is evolving, how the tech sector is being impacted by COVID-19 and generally how your city will evolve.

We leave submissions mostly unedited and are generally looking for at least one or two paragraphs in answer to the questions.

So if you are a tech startup founder or investor in one of these cities please fill out our survey form here.

Thank you for participating. If you have questions you can email mike@techcrunch.com and/or reply on Twitter to @mikebutcher.

14 VCs discuss COVID-19 and London’s future as a tech hub

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J The TechCrunch Germany Survey — Calling Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Bielefeld, Frankfurt https://ift.tt/3neBYBt

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After going public, once-hot startups are riding a valuation roller coaster

To close out the week, a short meditation on value, or, more precisely, how assets are valued in today’s markets.

Do you recall the pre-direct-listing hype Coinbase enjoyed? After reporting its estimated first-quarter financial performance, interest in the domestic cryptocurrency trading giant ran red-hot.

When Coinbase set a $250 per-share direct listing reference price, it was broadly viewed as modest, if not downright low. Of course, a reference price is just that — a reference — so it wasn’t too big a deal. But it also wasn’t surprising that Coinbase shares traded as high as $429.54 on their first day, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Coinbase equity hasn’t topped $400 in any following day and is now under the $300 mark, with more declines set to arrive as trading commences. Its reference price looms, and suddenly a price that felt intensely conservative before Coinbase began to trade is starting to look nearly reasonable.

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The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. 

Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

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There have been other notable declines in value among some recently public, more technologically differentiated companies. The Exchange has watched with something akin to polite confusion as the value of Root, a neo-insurance company, fell to a third of its public-market highs after going public, even though it beat growth expectations in its most recent quarterly report.

We could toss UiPath into our trend of wildly meandering value. The company’s initial IPO price range targeted a price as low as $43 per share. Today it’s worth $76.75 per share in pre-market trading.

No one knows what anything is worth, again. This is the feeling I get while watching the markets work to determine how to value assets as diverse as startups crossing the private-public divide to the value of Bitcoin, which was supposed to keep going up. Until it suddenly reversed gear.

Frankly, we’re still dealing with new-enough models — or big-enough guesses about the future baked into business models — that it’s hard to really value the most uncertain (and therefore most exciting) companies, let alone cryptocurrencies. Let’s discuss.

Value?

https://ift.tt/2YAJc8v After going public, once-hot startups are riding a valuation roller coaster https://ift.tt/3ele8jC

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No one is talking about remote work from space

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

First and foremost, Equity was nominated a Webby for “Best Technology Podcast”!!! Drop everything and go Vote for Equity! We’d appreciate. A lot. And even if we lose, well, we’ll keep doing our thing and making each other laugh.

Natasha and Danny and Alex and Chris got together to chat through the week’s biggest news. And like every other week in recent memory, it was a busy one. But we did our best to hit some M&A news, some unicorn news, and some funding news from smaller startups.

Now, onto the show rundown, here’s what we discussed:

• The Discord-Microsoft deal is done, and Danny has a hot take. Namely, in his view, the deal was mostly banker chatter more than a real possibility. More chaff than wheat, in other words. Agree or not, we’re stoked for the Discord IPO in a few years (quarters?) time.
• Mastercard bought Erkata, and Danny was on hand to hand to explain why we care about the deal. Sure, it was $825 million in value, but some venture data from Finledger helped explain just how much capital is flowing into similar companies. Let’s see how that math works out.
• Clearbanc rebranded itself into a fintech unicorn, providing services along with sweet, sweet capital.
• The UiPath IPO finally priced and started to trade. It had a good first day, and you can check out what we learned talking to its CFO here.
• Over in China, a country that we’ve not covered enough lately, Laiye raised $50 million more. Like UiPath it competes in the RPA world.
• Deel, for one, had a good 2020. It hit 20x growth in revenue last year, and recently raised at a $1.25 billion valuation.
• And then we closed with two seed rounds raised by recent Y Combinator grads: Here’s the Queenly round, and here’s the Albedo deal!

We’ll see you on Monday.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J No one is talking about remote work from space https://ift.tt/3tLNzKW

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Customer Care as a Service: outsourcing can help your startup wow clients 24/7

Your clients might not demand 24/7 customer service yet, but they are certainly hoping for it. It’s easier said than done: how can a startup with a lean staff provide round-the-clock customer care? There are several options available, but more than ever, outsourcing is one of them.

When should your startup consider outsourcing its customer care? And what should you look for in a provider? Here are some insights on what Customer Care as a Service (CCaaS) can do for you, and how fast-growing startups have been leveraging this new class of partners to boost customer satisfaction.

Addressing customer care pain points

Customer Care as a Service (CCaaS) can address several pain points, which recent trends have made more common, such as the need to provide support outside of business hours.

The COVID-19 crisis has significantly increased the share of e-commerce in total retail in recent months, and these new purchasing habits are mostly likely to stick, the OECD pointed out in a recent report. This led many small retailers to discover the reality that e-commerce startups already know well: when you are an online business, working hours aren’t really a thing.

Instead, many shoppers are making purchases on evenings and weekends, and will abandon their carts if nobody is around to answer their doubts. New clients aside, existing customers also hope to get responses outside of typical business hours whenever needed.

And it’s not just e-commerce; from SaaS to mobility services, there is a growing range of startups for which always-on customer service is nothing but a luxury. French CCaaS provider Onepilot knows it first-hand: during its beta program, its ‘support heroes’ were available from 7am to 1am, but it is now moving to 24/7 coverage as clients requested, co-founder Pierre Latscha told Extra Crunch.

French micromobility startup Pony is one of Onepilot’s clients, With floats of dockless bikes and scooters in several cities, it needed reliable customer care, but couldn’t justify the expense of an in-house hire: “We didn’t have enough demand to have someone take care of customer service full-time,” Pony explained to French newspaper Les Échos (translation ours).

In this context, outsourcing to a partner like Onepilot can save costs when demand isn’t high enough. It can also help when demand isn’t constant, whether it’s because it is seasonal; or simply because it is growing faster than the startup can address it.

The latter was the case with SPRiNG, a French subscription service for eco-friendly laundry detergent and cleaning products which has also been using Onepilot. Since its launch in the summer of 2020 and thanks to €2.1 million in seed funding, its team tripled; but with “tens of thousands of clients”, it soon felt the need for more support to handle the growing volume of requests, co-founder Ben Guerville told us via email.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Customer Care as a Service: outsourcing can help your startup wow clients 24/7 https://ift.tt/2Pdielf

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E-commerce tracking platform AfterShip raises $66M led by Tiger Global

AfterShip launched in 2012 to help online sellers track packages across different carriers, but since then it has built a suite of data analytics tools covering almost every step of the shopping experience, from email marketing to customer retention. The Hong Kong-headquartered startup announced today it has raised a $66 million Series B led by Tiger Global, with participation from Hillhouse Capital’s GL Ventures.

AfterShip’s last round of funding was a $1 million Series A in 2014. Co-founder Andrew Chan told TechCrunch that the company has been profitable since its launch and grew mainly through word-of-mouth referrals and partnerships, like a Shopify integration, that boosted its profile. But the company recently added a sales team and will use its latest capital on international hiring for sales and customer support. It also plans to launch new products and expand further in the United States, where about 70% of AfterShip’s customers are located.

AfterShip makes its automated shipping API, Postmen, available for free

The company’s software enables sellers to track shipments made through more than 740 carriers and handles more than 6 billion shipments each year. AfterShip’s partners with about10,000 companies, including some of the biggest names in e-commerce: Shopify (where it is used by 50,000 merchants), Magento, Squarespace, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Groupon, Rakuten, Wish and retail brands like Dyson and Inditex.

A branded shipment tracking page and email created with AfterShip’s software

AfterShip’s core product is its shipment tracking platform, but it also makes apps for shoppers, including self-service returns and package tracking, and sales and marketing tools for merchants that let them get more use out of data from shipments. Chan explained that package tracking is also a user engagement tool for sellers that lets them show more product recommendations and promotions to shoppers. AfterShip’s tools enables merchants to create their own branded tracking pages and notifications. Other features allow them to track the performance of different carriers, create email marketing campaigns and increase customer retention.

Its CRM capabilities help AfterShip differentiate from other shipment tracking aggregator providers.

“When we think of our vision, we look at what Salesforce is doing, but is there an e-commerce Salesforce that can cover more topics for sales people to use,” Chan said.

In press statement, Pangfei Wang, global partner at Tiger Global, said, “AfterShip leads the charge in making the shipping process more transparent and reliable for consumers and companies alike. As growth in e-commerce spirals ever upward, we are excited to partner with AfterShip and its leadership team as they continue to advance technology in this critical and expanding industry.”

How tech can build more resilient supply chains

https://ift.tt/3tDJh8i E-commerce tracking platform AfterShip raises $66M led by Tiger Global https://ift.tt/3sGuXux

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Universal Hydrogen raises $20.5M Series A to help launch hydrogen aviation

The race to decarbonize aviation got a boost this Earth Day with the announcement of a $20.5 million Series A round by Universal Hydrogen, a San Francisco-based startup aiming to develop hydrogen storage solutions and conversion kits for commercial aircraft.

“Hydrogen is the only viable path for aviation to reach Paris Agreement targets and help limit global warming,” said founder and CEO Paul Eremenko in an interview with TechCrunch. “We are going to build an end-to-end hydrogen value chain for aviation by 2025.”

The round was led by Playground Global, with an investor syndicate including Fortescue Future Industries, Coatue, Global Founders Capital, Plug Power, Airbus Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, Sojitz Corporation and Future Shape.

[gallery ids="2141963,2141959,2141962"]

The company’s first product will be lightweight modular capsules to transport “green hydrogen,” produced using renewable power to aircraft equipped with hydrogen fuel cells. The capsules will ultimately be available in different sizes for aircraft ranging from VTOL air taxis to long-distance, single-aisle planes.

“We want them to be interchangeable within each class of aircraft, a bit like consumer batteries today,” says Eremenko.

To help kickstart the market for its capsules, Universal Hydrogen is developing one such plane itself, a modified 19-seat turboprop capable of regional flights of up to 700 miles. The effort is a collaboration with Plug Power, which will supply the hydrogen and fuel cells, and seed investor magniX, which develops motors for electric aircraft.

Eremenko hopes to have the plane flying paying passengers by 2025, and ultimately to produce kits for regional airlines to retrofit their own aircraft.

What’s fueling hydrogen tech?

“We want to have a couple of years of service to de-risk hydrogen certification and passenger acceptance before Boeing and Airbus decide on the airplanes they are going to build in the early 2030s,” says Eremenko. “It’s imperative that at least one of them build a hydrogen airplane or aviation is not going to hit its climate goals.”

Universal Hydrogen is not alone in betting on hydrogen. ZeroAvia in the U.K. is developing its own regional fuel cell aircraft on an even more ambitious timeline, and Airbus in particular has been working on hydrogen aircraft concepts.

Eremenko hopes that producing a simple and safe hydrogen logistics network will soon attract new entrants.

“It’s like the Nespresso system. We have to make the first coffee maker or nobody cares about our capsule technology, but we don’t want to be in the coffee maker business. We want other people to build coffee with our capsules.”

Universal Hydrogen will use the Series A funds to grow its current 12-person team to around 40 and accelerate its technology development.

30kW sub-scale demonstration of Universal Hydrogen’s aviation powertrain, with Plug Power’s hydrogen fuel cell and a magniX motor.

ZeroAvia’s hydrogen fuel cell plane ambitions clouded by technical challenges

 

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Universal Hydrogen raises $20.5M Series A to help launch hydrogen aviation https://ift.tt/3dJiu58

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