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Technology
Robotics, AI and automation have long been one of the hottest categories for tech investments. After years and decades of talk, however, those big payouts are starting to pay off. Robotics are beginning to dominate nearly every aspect of work, from warehouse fulfillment to agriculture to retail and construction.
Our annual TC Sessions: Robotics+AI event on March 3 affords us the ability to bring together some of the top investors in the category to discuss the hottest startups, best bets and opine on where the industry is going. And this yearVC panel is arguably our strongest yet:
- Eric Migicovsky is a general partner a Y Combinator. Prior to joining the firm, he co-founded Pebble. The smartwatch pioneer was itself a YC-backed venture, along with raising three of Kickstarterall-time top crowdfunding campaigns. Migicovsky joined YC following Fitbitacquisition of the startup in 2016.
- DCVC partner Kelly Chen focuses primarily on the AI, robotics, manufacturing and work-related sectors. Her work is generally focused on the world of hardware, along with the transformations of populations and labor.
- Dror Berman co-founded Innovations Ventures in 2010 with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. A key driver in the firminvestments in Uber, SoFi and Formlabs, Berman also focuses on robotics, including companies like Blue River Technology and Common Sense Robotics.
TC Sessions: Robotics+AI returns to Berkeley on March 3. Make sure to grab your early-bird tickets today for $275 before prices go up by $100. Startups, book a demo table right here and get in front of 1,000+ of Robotics/AIbest and brightest — each table comes with four attendee tickets.
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1. VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition
VMware is closing the year with a significant new weapon in its arsenal. (I restrained myself from using a &pivotal& pun here. You&re welcome.)
The acquisition — first announced in August — helps the company in its transformation from a pure virtual machine supplier into a cloud native vendor that can manage infrastructure wherever it lives. It fits alongside the acquisitions of Heptio and Bitnami, two other deals that closed this year.
2. Spotify to ‘pause& running political ads, citing lack of proper review
The company told us that starting early next year, it will stop selling political ads: &At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content.&
3. ‘The Mandalorian& returns for Season 2 on Disney+ in fall 2020
The last episode of the first season of &The Mandalorian& went live on Disney+ on Friday, and showrunner Jon Favreau wasted very little time confirming when we can expect season two of the smash hit to land: next fall.
4. 2019 Africa Roundup: Jumia IPOs, China goes digital, Nigeria becomes fintech capital
The last 12 months served as a grande finale to 10 years that saw triple-digit increases in startup formation and VC on the continent. Herean overview of the 2019 market events that capped off a decade in African tech.
5. Maxar is selling space robotics company MDA for around $765 million
Maxargoal in selling the business is to help alleviate some of its considerable debt. The purchasing entity is a consortium of companies led by private investment firm Northern Private Capital, which will acquire the entirety of MDACanadian operations — responsible for the development of the Canadarm and Canadarm2 robotic manipulators used on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, respectively.
6. Cloud gaming is the future of game monetization, not gameplay
Lucas Matney argues that as is so often the case with the next big thing in tech, cloud streaming is much more likely to become the next big feature of a more traditional platform, rather than the entire platform itself. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
7. This weekTechCrunch podcasts
Equity took the week off, but we kept Original Content going with a review of Netflixnew fantasy show &The Witcher.&
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Read more: Daily Crunch: VMware completes Pivotal acquisition
Write comment (98 Comments)Companies sold a lot of wireless headphones in 2019. You already knew that though, right? What you probably didn&t know was precisely how many constitutes the aforementioned &a lot.& New numbers from Canalys shed light on those successes. The research firmclassification of audio products is a little wonky, but it drives the point home nonetheless.
In their terms, we&re talking specifically about &true wireless stereo& products under the umbrella of &smart personal audio devices& — in other words, wireless headphones. Taken as a whole, the category (which also includes tethered wireless earbuds and over/on ear wireless headphones) hit 96.7 million shipments in Q3, making a 53% year over year growth. For the fourth quarter (including the holidays), the number is expected to break 100 million, pushing things to around 350 million for the full year.
The &true wireless stereo& segment (fully wireless earbuds) saw a 183% growth for the quarter, overtaking wireless earphones and wireless headphones in the process. Another not surprising thing: Apple led the pack, far and away. The company controls 43% of the market, per the firm. Xiaomi and Samsung are a distant second and third, respectively, at 7% and 6%, respectively. And Applenumbers will likely continue to look pretty good with the warm reception of the AirPods Pro.
The market is likely to get even more interesting in 2020 with the arrival of new products from giants like Google and Microsoft, coupled with an increased presence of low-cost alternatives. But Applestranglehold, particularly among iOS users, will be a tough one to break.
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Read more: Just how good was 2019 for wireless headphones Very, very good.
Write comment (96 Comments)The age of alternative meats is upon us.
Beyond Meat is a $5 billion public company selling burgers in Canadian McDonaldand American CarlJr., breakfast sausages in Dunkin, and even chicken in a limited trial at KFC. Meanwhile, Impossible Foods has become a runaway hit at Burger Kings around the country. And the company is reportedly seeking to raise $300 million and $400 million at a valuation of roughly $3 billion according to reports in Reuters.
The plant-based up-and-comers have become a big enough threat thatthe meat industry has hired a marketing hit man to go after the new plant-based contenders to an increasing share of meatmarket. And they have a reason to be worried. By 2040, the conventional meat supply will drop by more than 33%, according to a report from the consulting firm AT Kearney.
As these no-longer-startups bask in the warm glow of success (and the rejuvenation of a sleepy corner of the supermarket) the question is whatcoming next from the research labs and test kitchens that are backed by millions in venture capital dollars.
Wherethe beef?
For the initial wave of investment, driven in part by a desire to appeal to consumers looking for alternatives to animal products, but wary of the cost of cultivating muscle tissue plant-based alternatives seemed obvious. Brown says animals are wholly unnecessary to make products that recreate the taste of a beef steak or a burger — and potentially surpass their flavor, all at a lower price.
Other companies have taken up that challenge as well in the months since Beyond Meathistoric run in public markets (for a while, the company was the best-performing public offering of 2019). Startups like Rebellyous, Nuggs, and Daring Foods are making chicken replacements (along with big meat producer Tyson Foods through its Raised - Rooted brand).
Meanwhile beef gets its own challengers (outside of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat) with companies like Nestleplant-based pitch Sweet Earth Foods, Tyson Foods, Beyond the Butcher, Hungry Planet and a host of others.
Even shrimp has a plant-based competitor in New Wave Foods, a startup that actually raised cash from Tysonventure capital arm earlier this year.
What has set Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat apart from other competitors — at least in the eyes of the investors — is the research and development teams that are working on flavor profiles and products that simply are more direct corollaries to the products they&re looking to supplant.
For Impossible, thatthe use of genetically modified yeast cells that are manufacturing a protein found in soy called leghemoglobin. Thatthe core of Impossiblesecret weapon — the use of heme (a protein found in blood) to make its plant products taste meaty.
These same benefits apply to investors& approach to plant-based dairy alternatives that are trying to one-up soy and almond milks with a more direct one-to-one substitute for dairy.
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Read more: What’s beyond Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods in the future of food
Write comment (93 Comments)
We&re excited to announce a new Extra Crunch community perk from Typeform. Starting today, annual and two-year members of Extra Crunch can get 25% off an annual Typeform Premium plan.
Typeform lets you create beautiful, interactive experiences across your most important customer touchpoints. Everything from slick surveys, friendly forms and quizzes can all be easily made with Typeform. Typeform is great for collecting feedback, generating leads, conducting research, generating event signups, engaging your audience, training team members and more.
What makes Typeform stand out over products like Google Forms is the carefully crafted interface. Itdesigned to keep users engaged and focused, so you get better data. You can learn more about Typeform here.
Extra Crunch is a membership program from TechCrunch that features how-tos and interviews on company building, intelligence on the most disruptive opportunities for startups, an experience on TechCrunch.com thatfree of banner ads, discounts on TechCrunch events and several community perks like the one mentioned in this article. Our goal is to democratize information about startups, and we&d love to have you join our community.
You can sign up for Extra Crunch here.
Extra Crunch subscribers get 25% off Typeform Premium yearly plans. All you need to do is create a free Typeform account, and then use the coupon code to upgrade. The coupon code will be provided to Extra Crunch annual and two-year subscribers in the welcome email after signing up for our service.
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This is one of several community perks we&ve launched for Extra Crunch annual members. Other community perks include a 20% discount on TechCrunch events, 100,000 Brex rewards points upon credit card sign up and an opportunity to claim $1,000 in AWS credits. For a full list of perks from partners, head here.
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Read more: Typeform Premium is now 25% off for Extra Crunch members
Write comment (98 Comments)As big tech gets bigger, industry leaders have begun making more noise about helping homeless populations, particularly in those regions where high salaries have driven up the cost of living to heights not seen before.Last January, for example, Facebook and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, among other participants, formed a group called the Partnership for the BayFuture that said it was going to commit hundreds of millions of dollars to expand affordable housing and strengthen &low-income tenant protections& in the five main counties in and around San Francisco. Microsoft meanwhile made a similar pledge in January of last year, promising $500 million to increase housing options in Seattle where low- and middle-income workers are being priced out of the city and its surrounding suburbs.
Amazon has made similar pledges in the past, with CEO Jeff Bezos pledging $2 billion to combat homelessness and to fund a network of &Montessori-inspired preschools in underserved communities,& as he said in a statement posted on Twitter at the time, in September 2018.
Now, however, Amazon is taking an approach that immediately raises the bar for its rivals in tech: itopening up a space in its Seattle headquarters to a homeless shelter, one thatexpected to become the largest family shelter in the state of Washington.
Business Insider reported the news earlier today, and it says the space will be able to accommodate 275 people each night and that it will offer individual, private rooms for families who are allowed to bring pets. It will also feature an industrial kitchen thatexpected to produce 600,000 meals per year.
The space is scheduled to open in the first quarter of the new year and is part of a partnership Amazon has enjoyed for years with a nonprofit called MaryPlace that has been operating a shelter out of a Travelodge hotel on Amazoncampus since 2016.
The new space, which BI says will have enough beds and blankets for 400 families each year, isn&t just owned by Amazon but the company has offered to pay for the nonprofitutilities, maintenance, and security for the next 10 years or as long as MaryPlace needs it.
BI notes that the shelter will make a mere dent in Seattlehomeless population, which includes 12,500 people in King County, where Seattle is located. But itstill notable, not least because of the companywillingness to house the shelter in its own headquarters.
Ita move that no other tech company of which we&re aware has taken. The decision also underscores other cities& equivocation over where their own, growing homeless populations should receive support.
In just one memorable instance, after San Francisco Mayor London Breed last March floated an idea of turning a parking lot along the cityEmbarcadero into a center that would provide health, housing services, and stays for up to 200 of the city7,000-plus homeless residents, neighboring residents launched a campaign to squash the proposal. It was later passed anyway.
Vox noted in report about Microsoft$500 million pledge that many of these corporate efforts tend to elicit two types of reactions: either admiration for the companies& efforts — or frustration over the publicity these initiatives receive. After all, ithard to forget that Amazon paid no federal tax in the U.S. in 2018 on more than $11 billion in profit before taxes. The company also threatened in 2018 to stop construction in Seattle if the city passed a tax on major businesses that would have raised money for affordable housing.
Whether Amazon — one of the most valuable companies in the world, with a current $915 billion market cap — is doing its fair share is certainly worthy of exploring in an ongoing way. The same is true of every tech company that‘eating the world.&
Still, a homeless shelter at the heart of a company like Amazon is worth acknowledging — and perhaps emulating — too.
&Itnot one entity thatgoing to solve this& issue of urban homelessness, Marty Hartman, the executive director of MaryPlace, tells BI. &Itnot on corporations. Itnot on congregations. Itnot on government. Itnot on foundations.
&Itall of us working together.&
Pictured above: A view of the new MaryPlace Family Center from the street, courtesy of Amazon.
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