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Technology
NASA has added five companies to the list of vendors that are cleared to bid on contracts for the agencyCommercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. This list, which already includes nine companies from a previous selection process, now adds SpaceX, Blue Origin, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. All of these companies can now place bids on NASA payload delivery to the lunar surface.
This basically means that these companies (which join Astrobotic Technology, Deep Space Systems, Draper Laboratory, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin Space, Masten Space Systems, Moon Express and OrbitBeyond) can build and fly lunar landers in service of NASA missions. They&ll compete with one another for these contracts, which will involve lunar surface deliveries of resources and supplies to support NASAArtemis program missions, the first major goal of which is to return humans to the surface of the Moon by 2024.
These providers are specifically chosen to support delivery of heavier payloads, including &rovers, power sources, science experiments& and more, like the NASA VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), which is hunting water on the Moon. All of these will be used both to establish a permanent presence on the lunar surface for astronautics to live and work from, as well as key research that needs to be completed to make getting and staying there a viable reality.
Artistconcept of Blue OriginBlue Moon lander
NASA has chosen to contract out rides to the Moon instead of running its own as a way to gain cost and speed advantages, and it hopes that these providers will be able to also ferry commercial payloads on the same rides as its own equipment to further defray the overall price tag. The companies will bid on these contracts, worth up to $2.6 billion through November 2028 in total, and NASA will select a vendor for each based on cost, technical feasibility and when they can make it happen.
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos announced at this yearannual International Astronautical Congress that it would be partnering with Draper, as well as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, for an end-to-end lunar landing system. SpaceX, meanwhile, revealed that it will be targeting a lunar landing of its next spacecraft, the Starship, as early as 2022 in an effort to help set the stage for the 2024-targeted Artemis landing.
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Uber Chief Product Officer Manik Gupta announced today he is leaving the company. Guptalast day will be December 13, he wrote in a note to Uberproduct team today.
&After a few discussions with Dara as well as with my family—and now that we&ve made it through the IPO and an important year for the company—I&ve made the tough decision to leave Uber,& Gupta wrote in the note.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Gupta elaborated that he felt like now was a good time for him to take a break, noting that he&leaving the team in very capable hands.& Additionally, he said he&very bullish on Uberfuture.&
As for whatnext for Gupta, his plan is to recharge and spend time with his family before jumping into the next thing. During this time, Gupta plans to look at some of the emerging trends in the consumer internet space, which has changed a lot over the last four years, he told TechCrunch. Take TikTok, he said, which didn&t exist four years ago. Meanwhile, there is increased scrutiny surrounding all of these consumer platforms.
&I really want to look at some of these trends,& he said.
Gupta joined Uber from Google in 2015 as a senior director of the maps and marketplace product team. In November 2018, Gupta was promoted to chief product officer. Uber does not have another chief product officer lined up, so the plan is for Gupta to stay on for a bit during this transition and help the company find his replacement. Matt Cohler, general partner at Benchmark, will also help Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in his search for a chief product officer, according to Uber. In the meantime, all of Guptareports will report directly to Khosrowshahi. In Guptanote, he said it will be a good opportunity for Khosrowshahi to get more involved with the product team.
&Over the past four years, Manik has elevated our product strategy and has been the driving force behind some of our most ambitious launches, including Uber Rewards and Uber Pro, Uber Wallet, and our movement towards a ‘super app,& & an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch. &We&re grateful for his leadership and wish him the very best.&
This year, Uber has laid off more than 1,000 employees across its marketing, engineering, product, Eats, self-driving and other organizations throughout the company. Gupta was one of the leaders tasked with evaluating his team, identifying duplicate and overlapping roles, as well as individual performance to determine who would be laid off. That process resulted in 170 layoffs from the product team in September.
&Obviously, that was a tough decision we made but it was the right decision,& Gupta said. &We had to take our execution to the next level and look at how we set ourselves up for the future.&
Meanwhile, Uber has unveiled a number of new features and tools over the past few months, including a financial services platform, ads within Eats and rewards programs. Uber Pro, Uber Rewards and Uber Money are three products Gupta pointed to when discussing how Uber has better positioned itself to become the operating system for everyday life. This is a vision Gupta said he&very excited about.&
Moving forward, Gupta hopes the company will keep moving faster and &take on more and more bold bets,& he said.
Guptadeparture comes shortly after Uber reported losses of more than $1 billion in its latest earnings report. Uberstock is currently trading at $26.78.
Herethe entirety of Guptanote:
Team,
The end of November marks 4 years for me at Uber, and as we&ve been planning our strategy for next year, I&ve been doing my own personal 2020 planning. After a few discussions with Dara as well as with my family—and now that we&ve made it through the IPO and an important year for the company—I&ve made the tough decision to leave Uber.
I joined Uber to work on the fascinating problem of building a real-world, real-time marketplace, at global scale. I have had the privilege of being part of an amazing journey as we got to incredible scale across several businesses. I am truly proud of everything we have accomplished as a team. We have a strong product roadmap ahead of us and I continue to be bullish about Uberfuture.
I am grateful for this team, who is hard at work building an amazing product experience for our users. This is a great opportunity for Dara to get even more involved in Product and, until he finds my replacement, my leads will report directly to him. Later this afternoon, Dara and I will host a Q-A with all of you to talk about the transition and the plan for the interim.
As for whatnext for me, you only get a few moments in your life to take a break, and with the holidays coming up and before my son starts middle school mid-next year, I plan to spend some quality time with family and recharge before my next adventure.
I want to thank Dara for the opportunity to lead the Product team and drive the product vision at one of the most transformational companies of all time. Thanks to all of you as well for your partnership and for teaching me so much—I will always be cheering for you. I&m around until December 13th and hope to catch up with as many of you as possible. Thank you.
Manik
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Write comment (93 Comments)Like many things found on todaysocial media platforms, Twitter Lists feature was introduced without thinking about the impact it could have on marginalized groups, or how it could otherwise be used for abuse or surveillance if put in the hands of bad actors. Today, Twitter is taking a step to address that problem with the launch of a new reporting feature that specifically addresses the abusive use of Twitter Lists.
The feature is launching first on iOS today, and will come soon to Android and the web, Twitter says.
Similar to reporting an abusive tweet, Twitter users will tap on the three-dot icon next to the List in question, and then choose &Report.& From the next screen, you&ll select &Itabusive or harmful.& Twitter will also ask for additional information at that point and will send an email confirming receipt of the report, along with other recommendations as to how to manage your Twitter experience.
Twitter Lists have been abused for years, as they became another way to target and harass people — particularly women and other minority groups. They were particularly useful as a way to avoid being banned for abusive tweets, as Twitter took no notice of Lists.
Twitter has been aware of the problem for years, noted CNBC in an exposé that ran over the summer.
Back in 2017, Twitter said it would no longer notify users when they&ve been added to a list — an attempt to cut back on what were very often upsetting notifications. It then reversed the decision after people argued that notifications were how they learned what sort of harmful lists they had been added to in the first place.
Despite Twitterunderstanding of how Lists were abused, there have not been any good tools for getting an abusive list removed from Twitter itself — users could only block the listcreator.
Twitter has admitted that despite the availability of its reporting tools and the increasing speed with which it handles abuse reports, therestill too much pressure on people to flag abuse for themselves. The company says it wants to figure out how to be more proactive — today, the majority is not flagged by technology (only 38% is), but by reports from users.
This problem and all the many like it have to do with who has built our social media tools in the first place.
Twitter, like other tech companies, has struggled with a lack of diversity, which means therea large lack of understanding about how features could be twisted to be used in ways no one intended. Though Twitterdiversity metrics have been improving, Twitter as of this spring was 40.2% female, but just 4.5% black, and 3.9% Latinx.
The other issue with Twitter — and social media in general — is that theresome distance between the abuser and the victim of harassment. The latter is often not seen as a real person, but rather a placeholder meant to absorb someonemalcontent, outrage or hatred. And thanks to the platformanonymity, there are no real-world consequences for bad behavior on Twitter the way there would be if those same hateful things were said in a public place — like in a community setting such as your local church or social group, or in your workplace.
Finally, Twittertrend toward pithiness has led to it becoming a place to be sarcastic, cynical and witty-at-others&-expense — a trend thatdriven by a prolific but small crowd of Twitter users. The goal has very much been to &perform& on Twitter, and accumulate likes and retweets along the way.
Twitter says the new feature is rolling out now to iOS.
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Since the election of president Emmanuel Macron in 2017, Paris has experienced a surge of momentum as a startup hub. Investor interest had been building for years, but Macrongovernment has aggressively focused on adopting more business-friendly regulations and heavily courted the startup and VC community. In September, he announced a €5 billion initiative to bring more late-stage VC capital into the market.
To get a sense of where Franceinvestor community sees startup opportunities, I surveyed 10 leading VCs who focus on the Paris ecosystem and asked them to share some of their current interests:
- Nicolas Debock (Idinvest)
- Marie Brayer (Serena Capital)
- Yacine Ghalim (Heartcore Capital)
- Romain Lavault (Partech Partners)
- Pia d&Iribarne (Stride VC)
- Alain Caffi (Ventech)
- Philippe Botteri (Accel)
- Alice Zagury (TheFamily)
- Jean de La Rochebrochard (Kima Ventures)
- Benoit Wirz (Brighteye Ventures)
Here are their responses:
Nicolas Debock (Idinvest)
Privacy is a trend I am really excited about. After the years of deployment of the web through different platforms (browser, mobile, TV, objects…) where personal data was just gathered and used in a ruthless way, I believe end users and companies are getting more conscious of the value (and not only the financial value) of their data.
This is creating the emergence of different tools around personal data management: from personal data platform, synthetic data to anonymization tool and encryption there is a wide range of new kind of businesses that could emerge. I believe that the future always emerge from tension between two trends. The web has been all around transparency and data deluge it is maybe time for the opposite trends to build its momentum.
Marie Brayer (Serena Capital)
We&re still big on deeptech startups because we are deeply convinced that France is a great place to start them (not unlike Israel) and there are still huge fields like healthcare, infrastructure and fashion where you can develop relevant and persistent value.
We are more and more focused on positive investing, which is much more than a buzzword: the current generation of entrepreneurs (and returning entrepreneurs as well!) want to dedicate their time to a worthy cause with social and societal impact. At Serena, we already invested in several companies with strong missions such as Lifen for instance (mission: reduce medical errors), Inato (decrease R-D cost of new medicine) or Accenta (reduce carbon footprint), and can see first hand the appeal they have towards tier one talent.
A new strong focus for us is also the gaming and entertainment industry, which will take a larger share of our lives thanks to all the existing solutions already optimizing our work time and our daily mobility.
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Just a few months back, Google announced a partnership with a company called CloudSimple to help more enterprise teams move their on-site operations to the cloud. Now Google is outright acquiring them.
So what is CloudSimple? It lets businesses run VMware vSphere workloads on the cloud, allowing them to take their existing on-premises tools and databases and plug them into Google Cloud with minimal re-tooling.
As TechCrunchFrederic Lardinois wrote when the initial partnership was announced:
While Google would surely love for all enterprises to move to containers and utilize its Anthos hybrid cloud service, most large companies currently use VMware. They may want to move those workloads to a public cloud, but they aren&t ready to give up a tool that has long worked for them.
In addition to Google Cloud, CloudSimple also offered support for MicrosoftAzure platform. Itunclear if this support will continue post-acquisition; we&ve reached out to Google for more details. Update: Google has declined to comment, instead linking us to its blog post on the announcement (which makes no mention of Azure.)
Terms of the deal have yet to be disclosed.
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Write comment (90 Comments)The Daily Crunch is TechCrunchroundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you&d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. John Legere is stepping down as CEO of T-Mobile, succeeded by deputy Mike Sievert on May 1
Sievert, whocurrently T-MobileCOO, will become chief executive on May 1, 2020. Legere will remain on the companyboard.
This only adds fuel to speculation that Legere will be taking over as CEO of embattled co-working company WeWork. The initial reports that Legere might be making a move prompted sources to push back and say he had no plans to leave T-Mobile, but it seems clear now that they were misinformed …
2. Yahoo Japan and Line Corp confirm merger agreement
SoftBank and Naver, the owner of Line, will each own 50% of a new holding company that will operate Line and Z Holdings (formerly known as Yahoo Japan). By uniting, SoftBank and Naver hope that they will better position search portal Yahoo Japan, Linemessaging app and their other businesses to compete with rivals in the U.S. and China.
3. The man behind Bezos& next lunar guidance system talks future tech
TechCrunch sat down with Ken Gabriel, who is regarded as the &godfather& of MEMs — miniaturized and integrated mechanical and electrical technology, which helps phones orient themselves, car airbags know when to fire and biomedical devices save lives. (Extra Crunch Membership required.)
4. SmartNews raises $92M at a $1.2B valuation
Looks like therestill money to be made in news aggregation — at least according to the investors backing the news app SmartNews.
5. Microsoft announces changes to cloud contract terms following EU privacy probe
Specifically, Microsoft is accepting greater data protection responsibilities. The changes to contractual terms will apply globally and to all of Microsoftcommercial cloud customers — whether public or private sector entity, or large or small business.
6. OperaAfrica fintech startup OPay gains $120M from Chinese investors
Nigeria has become the epicenter for fintech VC and expansion in Africa. And Chinese investors have made an unmistakable pivot to African tech.
7. This weekTechCrunch podcasts
On the latest episode of Equity, Alex and Kate discuss a new funding round for Docker. And on Original Content, we check out Disney+ and its flagship show &The Mandalorian.&
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