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  • OpenAI pledges that its models wont censor viewpoints
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:1:47 PM PST February 12, 2025Image Credits:OpenAIOpenAI pledges that its models wont censor viewpointsOpenAI ismaking clearthat its AI models wont shy away from sensitive topics, and will refrain from making assertions that might shut out some viewpoints.In an updated version of its Model Spec, a collection of high-level rules that indirectly govern OpenAIs models, OpenAI says that its models must never attempt to steer the user in pursuit of an agenda of [their] own, either directly or indirectly.OpenAI believes in intellectual freedom, which includes the freedom to have, hear, and discuss ideas, the company writes in its new Model Spec. The [model] should not avoid or censor topics in a way that, if repeated at scale, may shut out some viewpoints from public life.The move is possibly in response to political pressure.Many of President Donald Trumps close allies, including Elon Musk and crypto and AI czar David Sacks, have accused AI-powered assistants ofcensoring conservative viewpoints. Sacks hassingled outOpenAIs ChatGPT in particular as programmed to be woke and untruthful about politically sensitive subjects.Topics
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  • VC industry reacts to Trump nominating a16zs Brian Quintez for regulatory role
    techcrunch.com
    Brian Quintenz, who leads policy for Andreessen Horowitzs crypto team, announced on Wednesday that hes being tapped to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), according to his X post. And many in the VC industry appear to be thrilled about it.The CFTC regulates the trading of commodity futures, options, and swaps, otherwise known as derivatives. It is also involved in the enforcement of regulations impacting some crypto.He previously served as a commissioner for the CFTC during the first Trump administration, according to his a16z biography and, prior to that, he founded the investment firm Saeculum Capital Management.He joined a16z in 2021 as an advisory partner before becoming head of policy for its crypto arm.His appointment received support from some big names in the industry. On X, many working for the a16z crypto arm sent their congratulations. Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, who reportedly met with President Trump to discuss staff appointments, posted an X welcoming Quintenz to the CFTC. Bobby Franklin, president of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), a lobbying group, released a statement in support of Quintenzs nomination, saying his government and venture experience will provide valuable perspectives as he helms a top regulatory body for the crypto market. His pending appointment comes at a time when the CFTC has been mired in controversy. The acting chair, Caroline Pham, recently removed the head of HR, and the agency released a statement that made allegations against this person. This after Bloomberg reported that there were internal investigations going on at the agency.Quintenz is the latest affiliate of a16z to find his way to the White House. The firm has become so involved with the Trump administration that co-founder Marc Andreessen, an ardent Trump supporter, is said to be quietly helping with government staff recruitment.Elsewhere, Sriram Krishnan, former general partner at a16z, is now a White House senior policy advisor; Scott Kupor, one of the firms managing partners, was tapped to lead the Office of Personnel Management, and Jamie Sullivan, another investor at the firm, is rumored to be advising DOGE.
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  • ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot
    techcrunch.com
    ChatGPT, OpenAIs text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership [] 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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  • Apples TV app, TV+ streaming service, and MLS Season Pass launches on Android
    techcrunch.com
    Apple on Wednesday announced that its Apple TV app, including its Apple TV+ streaming service and MLS Season Pass, is arriving on Android devices. While the company previously offered a version of its app for Google TV, the newly released app will support a broader range of Android-based devices, including phones, tablets, and even foldables. In addition, Google customers on both living room and mobile platforms will now be able to subscribe to Apple TV+ and MLS Season Pass through Google Play billing.Before, Google TV users would have to have an existing account on Apple TV+ before using the app. Now, users will be able to create an Apple account on their device and pay for the service as they do on Apple devices. The pricing will remain the same at $9.99 per month. The expansion of the TV app will allow Apples streaming service to reach a wider user base, particularly in non-U.S. markets where Android devices are more heavily utilized. Apples TV+ service brings with it a number of top shows, like Severance, Slow Horses, The Morning Show, Presumed Innocent, Shrinking, Hijack, Loot, Palm Royale, Masters of the Air, and Ted Lasso, among others. Apple Original films like Wolfs, The Instigators, The Family Plan, Killers of the Flower Moon, CODA, and more are also included.The Android version of the TV app will also offer access to commonly used features, like offline downloads, saved watchlists, and a continue watching feature that syncs your watch history across devices. The latter will work even if you use a mix of devices in your household, like an Android phone or tablet combined with an Apple TV streaming box, for instance.Android TV app users will also be able to see when new episodes or TV seasons drop. However, the app doesnt yet offer native notifications to alert users to updates and new arrivals. As users browse through the TV+ content, theyll be pointed to some of the most well-received and popular TV+ content, which they can add to their watchlist or stream instantly.Friday Night Baseballs live sports broadcast is also available to Android users. MLS Season Pass is available as an optional add-on ($12.99/mo or $79/season), with all 30 MLS clubs available starting the weekend of February 22. Users can follow their favorite teams for personalized recommendations, including those within a dedicated supporters section in the app. One key difference between the Android and Apple versions of the app is that Android users will not have access to the in-app Store, where users can rent and buy movies and shows. Optimized for Android, the new app uses Androids Material Design principles, including adaptive layouts that adjust to different screen sizes like phones, tablets, and foldables. The app arrives five years after the tech giant launched Apple TV+ worldwide, its first foray into original streaming content. Apples premium streaming service has garnered a reputation for having high-quality content, particularly in categories like drama and sci-fi. Its the first streamer to land an Academy Award for Best Picture with its 2022 win for CODA and more recently saw its original shows nominated for 2024 Emmys in all the major categories, pulling in 10 wins (including Creative Arts awards.)Apple TV for Android is rolling out to Google Play users starting Wednesday.
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  • Security compliance firm Drata acquires SafeBase for $250M
    techcrunch.com
    Drata, a security compliance automation platformthat helps companies adhere to frameworks such as SOC 2 and GDPR, has acquired software security review startup SafeBase for $250 million. SafeBase co-founders Al Yang (CEO) and Adar Arnon (CTO) will retain their roles, and SafeBase will continue to offer a standalone product while bringing its core solutions to Dratas platform.This partnership isnt just about combining complementary products, Yang wrote in a post on SafeBases official blog Tuesday. Its a union of two customer-obsessed companies with aligned missions and cultures, focused on delivering the tools enterprises need to succeed.Yang and Arnon founded SafeBase in 2020 after meeting at Harvard Business School. Incubated by Y Combinator, the company helps customers fill out security questionnaires the reviews that organizations normally kick off before purchasing a new piece of software. SafeBase employs AI models specifically trained on security documentation use cases to read, interpret security information and questions, and then automatically respond to security questionnaires. Beyond the custom models, SafeBase provides an engine that allows a company to assign rules-based behavior for customer access, as well as dashboards that show insights and analytics on the companys security posture.SafeBase, which is headquartered in San Francisco, managed to raise $53.1 million in venture capital from investors including Zoom Ventures, NEA, and Comcast Ventures prior to its exit. According to Yang, SafeBase has over 1,000 customers today, including LinkedIn, Palantir, and CrowdStrike.As Drata co-founder and CEO Adam Markowitz noted in a post on Tuesday, Dratas acquisition of SafeBase comes as the demand for so-called trust management solutions rises. Cloud apps and AI have increased organizations reliance on third parties that have access to sensitive data. At the same time, new regulations like the Digital Operational Resilience Act in the EU are imposing new security requirements on vendors.With SafeBase, Markowitz aims to create a seamless ecosystem of trust, governance, risk, and compliance offerings. Together with SafeBase, were more committed than ever to empowering our customers to build and scale trust, unlock growth, and achieve success, Markowitz said in the blog. Just in time for Dratas fourth anniversary, this milestone marks the start of an exciting new chapter.Founded in 2020, Drata has grown rapidly over the years, securing well over $300 million in funding and acquiring over 7,000 customers including Notion and Tenable. It counts Iconiq Growth and Salesforce Ventures among its backers, in addition to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.Last year, Dratas revenue grew 100% year-over-year, and the San Diego-based company said that it was adding 650 new customers each quarter. Drata also made its first acquisitions, snapping up governance and automation firm Harmonize.io in April and cloud security platform Oak9 in May.A PR rep for Drata told TechCrunch via email that Drata is nearing $100 million in annual recurring revenue.But the aggressive growth strategy hasnt consistently paid off. Last September, Drata laid off around 40 people, or 9% of its workforce. At the time, the company alluded to sustainable growth; Dratas headcount grew a whopping 52% from 2023 to last year.Topics
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  • Las Vegas just got a Netflix restaurant
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:10:10 AM PST February 12, 2025Image Credits:NetflixLas Vegas just got a Netflix restaurantYou can now dine out on dishes inspired by Netflix movies and shows at Las Vegass newest restaurant. Netflix Bites is open as of this week in the MGM Grand Hotel & Casio, where it will operate for a year. The restaurant offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner options like a Bridgerton-inspired tea service, Stranger Wings, nachos crafted by Wednesdays Thing, DIY Nailed It! cakes, and an assortment of drinks, like a Love is Blind cocktail where you combine flavors for a surprise.This isnt the first time Netflix has gotten into food service a Netflix Bites restaurant was previously open as a pop-up for a month in L.A. in 2023. But this new year-long residency in a travel hotspot will offer broader reach and more marketing opportunities.Netflix has been expanding more into in-person experiences in recent years, including with live events like The Queens Ball: A Bridgerton Experience; Stranger Things: The Experience; and Squid Game: The Experience, now open in New York, Madrid, and Sydney. Another, Netflix House, is coming to Dallas and Philadelphia in 2025Topics
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  • SGNL snags $30M for a new take on ID security based on zero-standing privileges
    techcrunch.com
    Security experts often describe identity as the new perimeter in the world of security: in the world of cloud services where network assets and apps can range far and wide, the biggest vulnerabilities are often leaked and spoofed log-in credentials.A startup called SGNL has built a new approach that it believes is better at securing how identities are used to access apps and more it is based on the emerging concept of zero-standing privilege, where user access is conditional rather than standing and today its announcing $30 million on the back of strong growth.The funding, a Series A, is being led by Brightmind Partners, a new VC focusing on cybersecurity (it has yet to announce its first fund: that is due to come later this year). Also participating are Costanoa, which led SGNLs seed round in 2022, and strategic investors Microsoft (via M12) and Cisco Investments, whose contribution to this latest round actually dates from 2023.SGNL has now raised $42 million, and while PitchBook data notes a valuation of $100 million our sources tell us this is inaccurate (and too low). The company has not disclosed any details on the valuation front, but SGNL is growing and claims to have multiple major enterprise customers, including one that has major media, entertainment, and technology operations and is using SGNL to streamline access management across its cloud environments.The startup does not disclose its customer list but notes that examples of the kinds of breaches that have resulted from holes in identity posture the kind that would be better plugged by using technology like SGNLs include the breaches at MGM ($100M), T-Mobile ($350M), AT&T, Microsoft, and Caesars.SGNL is the brainchild of Scott Kriz (CEO) and Erik Gustavson (CPO), who had previously co-founded another ID access management company called Bitium. Google acquired that startup in 2017 and there, Kris said, he and his team were tasked with not only directory services for products like Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform, but also building and maintaining ID access management for the company itself, specifically how employees at Google were able to access data.It was there that Kriz and Gustavson saw a gap in how ID services were being managed across enterprise ID access tools at the time, including their own.Essentially, we realized that there was a missing solution in identity security that was not just unique to Google, but across the industry, he said. There was this desire for companies to get to a place where there was no standing access.In a nutshell, Kriz said, ID access requires a level of context: you need passwords, but also access privileges, for each app. But even in [services] where that was being done Okta was one, Microsoft was another they were very good at opening doors. What they werent very good at was closing that door.In other words, once one circumstance changed employment status being the most obvious, but also others like whether a particular job was finished access was not getting closed off. That, in turn, created potential vulnerabilities for malicious actors to exploit.Kriz said that a couple of factors have kept security companies from being able to close off that access, until now. The first has been a lack of agreement between vendors for a standard. The breakthrough for that came from another ex-Googler called Atul Tulshibagwale, who was the inventor of CAEP (the continuous access evaluation protocol), which is what underpins SGNLs platform. CAEP has been adopted by the OpenID Foundation, and Tulshibagwale is now SGNLs CTO.Its not proprietary to us, but, we are the ones that you know originated that, and now it has adoption in Microsoft, in Apple, in Cisco, in the largest companies, Kriz said.The second development, unique to SGNL, is how it has built what Kriz describes as the rich context that it uses to build its access management. This lets, essentially, companies set up multiple access policies, plus a number of conditions that additionally have to be met, in order for someone to be able to access a particular app or other data.SGNL has created not just the structure for how access can be permitted (or closed off) but also what it describes as the data fabric, an identity graph that lets the system work without depending on individual data sources being up to date. Kriz noted that one of its customers had 400,000 employees and 30,000 roles within AWS, and it helped it to reduce that down to six policies (plus multiple conditions connected to them). (As for the AI in its name, it uses AI to build and manage this data fabric.)There are multiple large companies doing more around zero-standing privilege, including CyberArt and SailPoint, alongside a number of startups; but that isnt deterring investors.I love the fact that theyve founded and exited a company, and theyve spent a decent amount of time at Google. Those things are very important. They understand how large enterprises work, said Stephen Ward, one of the founders of Brightmind (and himself a former CISO of HomeDepot and ex-government security specialist). Its not a popular venture thing to say but, with an idea this big, you can create a big moat just from building the platform.
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  • Suger helps companies list and scale up on cloud marketplaces
    techcrunch.com
    When cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and AWS launched cloud software marketplaces a decade ago, it opened up a new sales channel for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to get in front of potential enterprise customers. These marketplaces effectively enabled SaaS companies to bypass the traditional, lengthy sales cycles.But rarely is the seller-side experience a walk in the park. Getting software listed on these marketplaces requires multiple engineers, and the overhead burden only increases as a company scales. Jon Yoo and Chengjun Yuan know the problem well from their respective times working at Salesforce and Confluent. The pair decided to launch a company, Suger, to lessen the operational challenge associated with selling via cloud marketplaces.Suger is a toolkit that automates SaaS product listing across various marketplaces and manages these listings as they scale up. The platforms unified APIs integrate with a companys billing, customer relationship management, and other existing tools. Yoo said that Suger can help with a variety of cloud marketplace-related tasks, including flexible pricing, revenue reports, and delivering buyer insights.We built a workflow so that we can orchestrate all these actions that these people do as a day-to-day job, Yoo told TechCrunch. Lets automate each part in the lifecycle of a transaction, like each node, so that we can help them transact at scale. Thats really starting to play out. We look at our data and we see that our customers, on average, 3x their marketplace volume when they switch over to us from an in-house solution or a competitor product.Suger launched at the end of 2022. Since then, the companys customer base has grown to more than 200 companies including Snowflake, Notion, and Intel.Suger recently raised a $15 million Series A round led by Threshold Ventures with participation from existing investors including Craft Ventures, Intel Capital, and Y Combinator. Yoo said the company received multiple term sheets pretty quickly, as many of the investors Suger spoke with have portfolio companies struggling to wrangle cloud marketplaces.Some prospective investors told Yoo that Suger would struggle to raise in this funding environment because it wasnt marketing itself as an AI company. Clearly, that didnt dissuade many backers.We leverage AI internally in our product, but AI is just technology, Yoo said. AI can be the underlying technology, but what is the actual value that we are providing to our customer? At the end of the day, they want to make sure that we are helping them do their jobs and supplementing the work theyre doing, versus kind of this marketing fluff.The use of cloud marketplaces continues to be a growing part of enterprise sales. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that in its second quarter of fiscal 2025, three of Salesforces top ten largest deals were closed through AWS cloud marketplace.Yoo added that many young AI startups are looking to cloud marketplaces as a sales channel right off the bat.Its a massive market, Yoo said. Its started to become not just a nice-to-have channel, but really a must-have channel if you are selling to enterprises.There is competition in Sugers sector, to be clear. Some companies build their own cloud marketplace listing systems in-house, while others turn to startups like Tackle, which has raised more than $148 million in venture funding and offers capabilities similar to Sugers.Yoo said Suger has the advantage of being a second mover. (Tackle launched a few years prior.) Suger also goes beyond just the listing process, Yoo added, where Tackle is mainly focused.Yoo said Suger will put its fresh funds toward building out its product and expanding its engineering bandwidth. Eventually, Suger hopes to build tools for the buyer side, as well, helping enterprises procure software and manage their spend.[Were] really excited for the future, and also not just the future of the company, but also the future of cloud marketplaces, Yoo said. We really want to bring that consumer experience to B2B sales, because it just does not make sense to me that it takes two years for an enterprise sales cycle.
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  • AI-driven manufacturing database Keychain raises $5M for European push
    techcrunch.com
    Brands are constantly trying to streamline how they source packaging materials and ingredient suppliers for their products in order to quickly meet consumer demand. However, even today this process can involve some laborious wandering around trade shows.Keychain is an AI-powered platform that aims to quickly connect the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry with manufacturing partners using its database of 30,000+ manufacturers and 20,000+ brands and retailers. The company has now raised a $5 million investment led by European retailer Continente, aretail chain run by Sonae Distribuio, Portugals largest retailer.Founders Oisin Hanrahan (CEO) and Umang Dua previously founded home services marketplaces Handy, which was acquired by ANGI Homeservices. They started Keychain with Jordan Weitz.There are easily 200 to 300 trade shows a year for manufacturers, Hanrahan told TechCrunch. One has 70,000 people go to it. Brands and retailers spend a fortune trying to interact, and theres no digital product for this and no one manufacturer or retailer has the ability to organize the data using AI. Weve probably spent $3 million on building the data asset, and I think were probably 10x to 15x more efficient because of our ability to use AI.He said traditional brokers have historically profited by creating information asymmetry that drives up the costs of goods, and Keychain is using AI to eliminate these fees and other costs.We launched it just under a year ago, and it didnt really work for the first two months, he said. Then we got it right, and the data just started to take off, and the whole thing started to work.Brands and retailers use the products to submit projects. They are currently submitting over a billion dollars in projects alone, and we started selling to U.S. manufacturers a few months ago, he added.Hanrahan noted the startup is now also launching two new platforms one in packaging, and another in ingredients as well as taking a strategic investment from one of the largest retailers in Europe. Were not obviously saying when, but we do plan to launch in Europe later on this year, he said.Since November 2023, Keychain has raised a total of $38 million from leading venture firms BoxGroup, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and SV Angel, as well as CPG giants General Mills, The Hershey Company, and Schreiber Foods.
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  • Adobe launches subscriptions for Firefly AI
    techcrunch.com
    Adobe is hoping to capitalize on the early success of its Firefly AI models by launching a new standalone subscription service that gives users access to the companys AI image, vector and video generating models.This marks Adobes boldest attempt yet to turn its Firefly AI models into a real product.The company is also launching a redesigned webpage, firefly.adobe.com, where people can use Adobes AI models. This includes the new Firefly AI video model, which is rolling out in public beta on the Firefly website and in the Premiere Pro Beta app.Adobes Firefly AI model made This. Looks like a deformed whale in the back? Image Credits: AdobeImage Credits:AdobeFireflys Standard plan costs $9.99 per month and provides unlimited access to Adobes AI image and vector generating features, as well as Adobes new AI video model. The Standard plan gives users 2,000 credits, which is enough to make 20 five-second AI videos.Users can also connect Firefly plans to their Creative Cloud accounts to get unlimited AI image and vector generation in Photoshop, Express or other Adobe apps.Meanwhile, the Pro plan will run users $29.99 a month, and offers enough credits to generate 70 five-second AI videos per month. The company is also working on a Premium tier (it hasnt announced pricing for this yet) that lets users create 500 AI videos per month, according to Adobes VP of Generative AI, Alexandru Costin.Adobe wants creators to generate visual effects with Firefly. Image credits: AdobePreviously, Adobe offered many of Fireflys AI tools within its existing Creative Cloud subscriptions, letting users try the new tools for no added cost. Users could upgrade to pricier plans if they wanted more access to Firefly, but they didnt have to. That system worked well for Adobe: Fireflys generative fill feature, added to Photoshop in 2023, has become one of the companys most popular new features of the last decade.Now, Adobe wants to see if users will also pay up for its Firefly AI models.The Firefly video model lets you turn text or images into a five-second, AI-generated video. There are controls on a side panel for changing the camera angles, camera movement, aspect ratio, and other features that creative professionals might want to customize.The new Firefly offerings will compete directly with OpenAIs Sora, Runways Gen-3 Alpha, and other AI video models that already have dedicated webpages and subscription plans. Google DeepMinds AI video model, Veo, seems to be a legitimate contender in the space as well, but its still in private beta.Part of Adobes pitch to creative professionals is that Firefly was trained on a dataset of licensed videos, without any brand logos or NSFW content (something the company paid quite a bit to do). That means, according to Adobe, creatives should be able to use the Firefly AI models without worrying about legal troubles.Heres what prompting FIreflys AI model looks like. Image credits: AdobeWe think the key differentiator for us is that were the only IP-friendly, commercially-safe video model, Costin said in an interview with TechCrunch. We want to differentiate with deep understanding of customer problems.Adobe has also tried to ship AI tools that solve problems for creative professionals instead of just generating random AI videos.For example, one of Fireflys AI video features, Generative Extend, lets users extend any clips video and background noise by a few seconds. This is one of the more practical AI video tools on the market; other AI models just let you create new videos from scratch, or animate photos.Costin says Adobe is working on another AI video tool to help with pre-production. The tool, which has yet to be announced, would help get creatives aligned on the same vision by creating a rough sketch of what a scene, or string of scenes, would look like.However, Adobe needs to walk a fine line with generative AI. Many professionals who have used Adobes apps for decades are upset about the rise of generative AI tools in their industries. The technology poses a threat to their livelihoods as they risk having their work automated away to an AI model like the ones Adobe is building.But Adobe is convinced this is where the puck is going in the creative world.
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  • EU abandons ePrivacy reform, as bloc shifts focus to competitiveness and fostering data access for AI
    techcrunch.com
    A long stalled bid to beef up European Union rules around online tracking technologies and put penalties on a similar footing to the blocs data protection framework, GDPR, which allows for fines of up to 4% of annual turnover for breaches has been withdrawn by the Commission after co-legislators failed to reach agreement over the plan.The original proposal to update the ePrivacy Directive, and turn it into a fully fledged Pan-EU regulation, dates back to 2017 so the writing has been on the wall for considerable time. But on Wednesday the effort is officially dead as the Commission has included the ePrivacy Regulation in a list of legislative initiatives that are being withdrawn, via its 2025 work program giving as a reason: No foreseeable agreement. The EU also writes that: The proposal is outdated in view of some recent legislation in both the technological and the legislative landscape.The move to withdraw the proposal for a regulation concerning the respect for private life and the protection of personal data in electronic communications, as the documents official title reads, is hardly surprising given how many years the effort has been stalled. The file attracted intense lobbying from both tech giants and telcos whose businesses would fall in scope. Back in 2021 documents unsealed via a U.S. antitrust lawsuit suggested that Googles attempts to lobby against the file had included attempts to mobilize other tech giants to join in efforts to delay and, ultimately as has happened now derail the reform. While a Politico report from 2020 named ecommerce giant Amazon as also involved in efforts to weaken support among EU co-legislators for the proposal. The dominance of behavioral advertising business models that rely on tracking and profiling web users to monetize peoples attention raised the commercial stakes for any reform of EU ePrivacy rules especially a proposal to underscore the need for entities to obtain affirmative consent from consumers to snoop on them. And which could even, potentially, have given legal teeth to do-not-track if parliamentarians efforts in this direction had prevailed. Had that come to pass the ePrivacy Regulation could have flipped the script and made online privacy convenient for European consumers, instead of the current dysfunctional web reality where commercial actors with tracking-based business models do their utmost to make it really difficult for consumers to protect their information when they use the internet.While the Commissions proposal to replace the ePrivacy Directive with a modernized Regulation has now been withdrawn the blocs existing e-Privacy rules remain in force. And its worth noting that several tech giants have faced sanctions for breaches of this regime in recent years. Both Google and Amazon, for example, faced fines for breaching cookie consent rules with Frances data protection authority, the CNIL, hitting Google with a penalty of around $120 million in December 2020 and another of around $170 million in January 2022 for failing to obtain proper consent for dropping tracking cookies. Amazon was also stung with a cookie consent fine of around $42 million from the CNIL at the end of 2020. Others facing penalties have included Facebook (aka Meta) and TikTok. Discussing the demise of the ePrivacy Regulation proposal, Dr Lukasz Olejnik, an independent researcher and consultant who has tracked the policy area for a number of years, told TechCrunch: Ending this trainwreck is a good move. The writing was on the wall long ago; this was a funeral in slow motion.As well as being the target of intense industry lobbying, Olejnik believes the proposals chances of reaching a compromise between legislators in the European Parliament and the Council was scuppered by bad timing in the wake of the bloc passing its flagship update to data protection rules, the GDPR, he suggests there was a surge in scaremongering about expanding privacy rule-making. The unwarranted GDPR scare killed it, and the current climate for hostility towards regulations is not a good time to edit any data protection related files, which could severely backfire, even significantly weaken the GDPR.A source inside the Commission, who weve granted anonymity to as they were not authorized to speak to the press on the topic, had a similar analysis. [Commissioners Viviane] Reding and [Neelie] Kroes should have done ePrivacy and GDPR together The momentum was lost when everyone was exhausted at the end of the GDPR negotiations, they told us.At the same time our source suggested that the original proposal was not well conceived dubbing it a relic of the days when there were just telcos. The flaw is that telcos and big surveillance tech are completely different beasts, they said, adding: If GDPR cant tame the billionaires why would ePrivacy? The issue is business models, market power and police efforts to kill E2EE [end-to-end encryption].So what happens next when it comes to regulating online tracking in the EU? Theres likely to be increased uncertainty and more wiggle room for technologists to evolve their approaches to claim they sit outside an increasingly dated ePrivacy rulebook. As new technologies are developed and put to use, they will stay out of the radar, Olejnik suggests. The GDPR is unable to cover it all, and the need to reinterpret the old ePrivacy Directive has its limits too. So we should expect interpretations and guidance from the ECJ [European Court of Justice], which will build the legal acquis and perhaps sooner or later someone will come up with a revamp.Tech priorities in EUs 2025 work planMeanwhile the Commission has plenty of other tech-focused legislative work to keep it busy this year after its leadership reboot and a switch of gears that foregrounds competitiveness, with an explicit goal of fostering economic growth through support for tech innovations like AI that looks set to more closely align with private sector interests.Its 2025 work program includes a plan for an Innovation Act, slated as coming later in the mandate, that will aim to support startups, scale-ups and innovative companies to invest and operate in the single market through a process of simplifying applicable rules and working towards a 28th legal regime [i.e. rather than 27 different ones apiece for each EU Member State]. The Commission says it wants this reform to simplify applicable rules and reduce the cost of failure, including any relevant aspects of corporate law, insolvency, labour and tax law.Another focus is on boosting biotech with the EU writing that it wants to use European life sciences to drive innovation in biotechnology, pool resources, break regulatory barriers, tap into the full potential of data andartificial intelligence, and boost deployment.Support for high capacity digital infrastructure is also part of the plan, with a Digital Networks Act planned that the EU says will create opportunities for crossborder network operation and service provision, enhance industry competitiveness and improve spectrum coordination.Also planned is a Cloud and AI Development Act, which the Commission wants to boost access to data in a bid to accelerate homegrown AI. There will also be an AI Continent Action Plan, dealing with efforts to marshal resources and skills under the EUs existing AI Factories scheme that aims to fire up competitive AI ecosystems in Europe; as well as an Apply AI strategy, as the bloc seeks to push forward adoption of AI by industries and organizations of all stripes. The work program also lists an EU Quantum Strategy thats set to be followed by a Quantum Act targeting what the EU dubs a critical and strategic sector. The strategy will contribute to building our own capacities to research and develop quantum technologies, and produce devices and systems based on them, it notes. A Space Act is also slated as incoming, along with efforts to better protecting undersea comms infrastructure at a time when accidents or sabotage appear to be an increasing risk for the regions undersea cables. When it comes to consumer protection the EU 2025 work plan offers thinner pickings. The Commission mentioned that its next Consumer Agenda 2025-2030 will include a new action plan on consumers in the single market ensuring a balanced approach that protects consumers without overburdening companies with red tape but the phrasing suggests its priorities have skewed towards business interests, in the drive to fire up economic growth, with consumers interests having to be balanced against that overarching imperative.On the hot button topic of online disinformation/misinformation the EU workplan reiterates that it will be coming with a Democracy Shield. This initiative will aim to tackle the evolving nature of threats to our democracy and electoral processes including by stepping up engagement with civil society organisations.
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  • Chestnut Carbon gets $160M to turn old farms into forests
    techcrunch.com
    Nature-based carbon removal startup Chestnut Carbon has raised $160 million in Series B financing, the company told TechCrunch. The startup buys marginal and degraded farmland, plants them with native trees, and harvests the resulting carbon credits.Carbon credits have become a hot commodity, especially among tech companies looking to offset skyrocketing emissions caused in part by the breakneck expansion of data centers serving cloud and AI customers.The new round included investment from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Cloverlay, and DBL Partners along with unnamed university endowments, family offices, funds of funds, and other institutional investors.For Chestnut Carbon, the $160 million is actually a somewhat modest sum. When the company was founded, private equity firm Kimmeridge capitalized it by pledging up to $200 million. The firm typically invests in oil and gas companies, but managing partner Ben Dell saw an opportunity to stake a claim in the growing carbon credit market.To make it happen, he acquired Forest Carbon Works, a startup founded by Kyle Holland that helped families manage their forests to sell carbon credits. Holland continued with Chestnut, where hes currently chief product officer.With Chestnut, the team expanded their focus to include projects developed by the company, not just managing existing forests.Chestnut currently owns more than 35,000 acres of marginal and degraded farmland and pasture in the southeastern United States. Part of the goal of the fundraise is to grow Chestnuts holdings significantly. The startup is hoping to expand its carbon credit capacity to 100 million metric tons by 2030, which will require hundreds of thousands of acres to be transformed back into forests.Last month, Chestnut made a down payment on that target with the sale of 7 million carbon credits to Microsoft. (One carbon credit is worth one metric ton of carbon.) The 25-year deal will help Chestnut rehabilitate 60,000 acres in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. Chestnut uses Gold Standard to certify its carbon credits for 100 years.The new funding round should help the startup dramatically expand its operations. While theres plenty of demand for high-quality carbon credits today, Chestnuts goal of 100 million metric tons represents a fraction of a percent of annual carbon emissions, which hit 37.4 billion metric tons in 2023, according to the IEA.Still, if Chestnut can secure its foothold in the carbon credit market, afforestation and reforestation hold great potential to rein in the effects of climate warming pollution.A study in 2019 found that the world can support 2.2 billion acres more forest than it has today. Once those forests matured, they would hold 205 billion metric tons of carbon, or about a quarter of the carbon currently in the atmosphere.
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  • Google Whisk, an image remixing tool, is now available in 100+ countries
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:11:19 PM PST February 11, 2025Image Credits:Google LabsGoogle Whisk, an image remixing tool, is now available in 100+ countriesGoogle keeps releasing experimental products built with its AI models to give users a taste of its capabilities. Last year, the company debuted an image remixing tool called Whisk that was available to users in the U.S. On Tuesday, Google made the tool available in more than 100 countries.There are plenty of image-generation tools that create images through text prompts. Google Whisk tries to make things easier by letting you upload three images for subject, scene and style, and remix them into a new creation powered by the Imagen 3 model.If you want to customize the image, you can use text prompts for the overall image or specific to the subject, scene or style.Apples Image Playground also lets you create images in a similar manner by combining styles and subjects.Notably, Whisk is not available in countries and regions like India, Indonesia, the EU, and the U.K.Topics
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  • Tabby doubles valuation to $3.3B in $160M funding as it looks beyond BNPL and plans IPO
    techcrunch.com
    Consumer demand for credit options varies across regions, and for fintechs, understanding these differences is key to survival. In developed markets, where credit cards are common, consumers often view buy now, pay later (BNPL) offerings positively because of their flexible installment options.But in emerging markets like the Middle East, where credit card penetration is low but spending power is high, BNPL has an even more convincing use case. The model is gaining such strong traction that Tabby, one of the regions pioneers, has now become the most valuable fintech in MENA after securing $160 million in a Series E round at a $3.3 billion valuation.Growth equity investor Blue Pool Capital and investment management firm Hassana Investment Company co-led the financing. Saudi-based investor STV and Wellington Management also participated.The round comes less than 18 months after Tabby raised $200 million in a Series D round when it was valued at $1.5 billion. Since then, Tabby which says it is profitable has doubled its valuation and annualized transaction volume, which now exceeds $10 billion, according to the company.As our volumes have doubled, the profitability of the business has grown significantly, Tabby founder and CEO Hosam Arab tells TechCrunch. He attributes this growth to the launch of new products, which have driven higher usage frequency. Customers used to rely on us only for e-commerce or [point-of-sale] spending. Now, especially in the UAE, they see Tabby as a tool to manage all their spending, whether its buying a cup of coffee or taking an Uber ride, he adds.Move into broader financial servicesOriginally focused on online transactions, Tabby later expanded into in-store payments, then deeper into retail and financial services. Its Tabby Card now allows users to spend flexibly, while Tabby Plus offers a subscription-based rewards program. Meanwhile, Tabby Shop provides longer-term payment plans to help users access better deals.The Riyadh-headquartered fintech, which now supports 40,000+ brands and merchantsincluding Amazon, Adidas, IKEA, Samsung, and Noonsays expanding its product line has helped grow its user base to 15 million customers across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait, a 50% increase since October 2023.Tabby isnt stopping at credit. Last year, it acquired Tweeq, a Saudi-based digital wallet provider, as part of its plan to expand into broader financial services, including digital accounts, payments, and money management tools, offerings that align with the countrys push toward a cashless economy.Further on its road map, Tabby is eyeing remittances, an area where it already has strong positioning. With Saudi Arabia and the UAE among the worlds largest remittance markets, Tabbys customer baseheavily composed of expatspresents a natural opportunity.While Arab declines to share specific details, Tabby may initially target the UAE-India corridor, one of the busiest remittance routes globally. He does note that flexibility will be key in Tabbys provision of remittance services. Unlike traditional remittance providers, the fintech plans to allow users to split remittances over time, an option few competitors offer.Brewing competition and IPO plansTabby competes regionally with Coatue-backed Tamara in the BNPL space. With remittances, it will face newfound competition from global players like Revolut, the U.K.-based neobank, which announced plans to enter UAEs $44 billion market last September.Yet, Arab is confident that the scale, local market expertise, trusted brand, and deep customer relationships Tabby has amassed as one of the regions largest financial services platforms, with a large customer base and an extensive merchant network, will work in its favor.On the IPO front, this Series E round might be Tabbys last private raise before going public on the Saudi Exchange. That was also supposed to be the case during its Series D, but market conditions may have delayed those plans. Were opportunistic with funding rounds, says Arab. This was the right discussion with the right partner at the right time, so we decided to raise now. That said, our plans for an IPO remain unchanged. Were fairly serious about it, and unless markets shift significantly, were unlikely to raise another private round.Investor demand for tech IPOs in MENA is rising. Talabats massive listing in Dubai last year showed the regions appetite for high-growth startups. Meanwhile, Klarnas expected IPO in April could serve as a bellwether for BNPL companies, signaling whats ahead for the sector. (Already, Amazon announced plans to buy Indian player Axio.) For now, though, Tabby, which has raised over $1 billion in equity and debt, is focused on scaling its financial ecosystemand when the time is right, it aims to be the regions next major tech listing. Per Bloomberg, the fintech, which moved its HQ from Dubai to Riyadh for this purpose, has hired three banks to work on the deal. Topics
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  • Shopify took down Kanyes swastika T-shirt shop, but another antisemitic storefront still operates
    techcrunch.com
    Shopify took down Kanye Wests online store after the musician sold T-shirts with the swastika symbol.West, who also goes by Ye, advertised his online store in a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday, directing viewers to his website, where the only item listed was the swastika T-shirt.Though Shopify removed a policy banning sellers from hosting hateful content last year, the e-commerce giant removed Yes store on Tuesday, days after the Super Bowl ad appeared. Shopify reportedly shuttered the storefront because of the potential for fraud, and not because it was selling a Nazi T-shirt, according to an internal memo seen by The Logic, a Canadian tech publication.All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify, the company told TechCrunch in a statement.Within the past week, Ye made several antisemitic posts on X, proudly proclaiming that he is a Nazi and does not like or trust any Jewish person. He praised Adolf Hitler, then wrote, I appreciate Elon for allowing me to vent before his account was deleted.TechCrunch asked X if Ye deleted the account himself or if it was deleted by the platform; X did not comment.However, X has set the precedent that Holocaust denial, praise of Hitler, and support of Nazis are allowed on the platform. TechCrunch found an example of an X creator with 200,000 followers who uses Shopify to sell products glorifying the Auschwitz death camps and espousing Holocaust denialism.While Shopify removed Yes swastika merch, the other antisemitic shop remains on the platform; Shopify did not return TechCrunchs request for comment on why that shop has been allowed to remain.Additional reporting from Maxwell Zeff.
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  • Founders Fund is about to close another $3B fund
    techcrunch.com
    Founders Fund is on track to conclude fundraising of its third growth fund at the end of March, according to people close to the firm. The Peter Thiel-founded outfit is raising $3 billion, a source told TechCrunch and Axios also reported. The fund, which is intended primarily for additional investments in its successful late-stage portfolio companies, is expected to be significantly oversubscribed.Founders Funds previous $3.4 billion growth fund closed in early 2022 and is fully invested in companies like Rippling, which raised $200 million in April. Founders Fund is also leading Andurils newest raise, on track to be an up to $2.5 billion round at a valuation of $28 billion, CNBC reported. Sources confirmed to TechCrunch that its share will be the largest check Founders Fund has ever written. Its unclear whether the firms reported $1 billion investment in Anduril would be out of that 2022 $3.4 billion fund.The firm will not be raising a ninth core fund for early-stage companies because it was essentially already raised three years ago. Founders Fund reportedly slashed the size of its eighth venture capital fund of about $1.8 billion in half in 2023, Axios reported. The remaining $900 million was pushed into the firms core ninth fund.Thats one reason why theres so much excitement for this new growth fund. While most multi-stage venture firms are raising larger funds, or at least trying to maintain their peak ZIRP-era sizes, Founders Fund is limiting its fund sizes.Investors have reason to want in. Founders Fund has an enviable portfolio of growth companies which not only includes Anduril and SpaceX but Stripe, OpenAI, and Figma.Founders Fund declined to comment.
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  • Federal workers sue Elon Musk and DOGE to cut off data access
    techcrunch.com
    More than 100 current and former federal workers have sued Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency agency he runs for allegedly accessing highly sensitive personnel records without proper vetting or authorization, according to a new federal lawsuit filed Tuesday. The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York by 104 workers along with various unions representing government workers. The plaintiffs are asking for the governments main HR agency, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), to cut off access to DOGE and its agents.OPM Defendants gave DOGE Defendants and DOGEs agents many of whom are under the age of 25 and are or were until recently employees of Musks private companies administrative access to OPM computer systems, without undergoing any normal, rigorous national-security vetting, the lawsuit reads.The complaint names Elon Musk, DOGE, the OPM, and current OPM director Charles Ezell as defendants. The lawsuit alleges that DOGE obtaining OPM records violated the Privacy Act, which prohibits improper access to personal data, including across federal agencies.The Privacy Act makes it unlawful for OPM Defendants to hand over access to OPMs millions of personnel records to DOGE Defendants, who lack a lawful and legitimate need for such access, the complaint alleges. No exception to the Privacy Act covers DOGE Defendants access to records held by OPM.The lawsuit says DOGEs agents were not government employees at the time they received access to OPM computer networks. It calls out 19-year-old DOGE worker Edward Coristine, who reportedly went by Big Balls online, for being fired from a cybersecurity firm after an internal probe into data leaks during his employment.The suit also alleges that DOGEs access to federal worker data could spark harmful professional consequences for them, noting that Musk and President Trump have threatened to fire employees viewed as disloyal. Disclosure of their financial data could also expose the workers to hacking by criminals and foreign actors, the complaint says.The lawsuit comes amid growing controversy over DOGEs access to sensitive government data as the agency begins instituting mass layoffs and other reforms across the federal government.The lawsuit is focused on getting an injunction to cut off that access, but is just phase one before a class action lawsuit, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Victoria Noble, told WIRED.DOGE, Musk, and OPM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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  • ChatGPT may not be as power-hungry as once assumed
    techcrunch.com
    ChatGPT, OpenAIs chatbot platform, may not be as power-hungry as once assumed. But its appetite largely depends on how ChatGPT is being used, and the AI models that are answering the queries, according to a new study.A recent analysis by Epoch AI, a nonprofit AI research institute, attempted to calculate how much energy a typical ChatGPT query consumes. A commonly-cited stat is that ChatGPT requires around 3 watt-hours of power to answer a single question, or 10 times as much as a Google search. Epoch believes thats an overestimate.Using OpenAIs latest default model for ChatGPT, GPT-4o, as a reference, Epoch found the average ChatGPT query consumes around 0.3 watt-hours less than many household appliances.The energy use is really not a big deal compared to using normal appliances or heating or cooling your home, or driving a car, Joshua You, the data analyst at Epoch who conducted the analysis, told TechCrunch.AIs energy usage and its environmental impact, broadly speaking is the subject of contentious debate as AI companies look to rapidly expand their infrastructure footprints. Just last week, a group of over 100 organizationspublished an open lettercalling on the AI industry and regulators to ensure that new AI data centers dont deplete natural resources and force utilities to rely on non-renewable sources of energy.You told TechCrunch his analysis was spurred by what he characterized as outdated previous research. You pointed out, for example, that the author of the report that arrived at the 3-watt-hours estimate assumed OpenAI used older, less efficient chips to run its models.Image Credits:Epoch AIIve seen a lot of public discourse that correctly recognized that AI was going to consume a lot of energy in the coming years, but didnt really accurately describe the energy that was going to AI today, You said. Also, some of my colleagues noticed that the most widely-reported estimate of 3watt-hours per query was based on fairlyold research, and based on some napkin math seemed to be too high.Granted, Epochs 0.3 watt-hours figure is an approximation, as well; OpenAI hasnt published the details needed to make a precise calculation. The analysis also doesnt consider the additional energy costs incurred by ChatGPT features like image generation, or input processing. You acknowledged that long input ChatGPT queries queries with long files attached, for instance likely consume more electricity upfront than a typical question.You said he does expect baseline ChatGPT power consumption to rise, however.[The] AI will get more advanced, training this AI will probably require much more energy, and this future AI may be used much more intensely handling much more tasks, and more complex tasks, than how people use ChatGPT today, You said.While there have been remarkable breakthroughs in AI efficiency in recent months, the scale at which AI is being deployed is expected to drive enormous, power-hungry infrastructure expansion. In the next two years, AI data centers may need close to all of Californias 2022 power capacity (68 GW),according to a Rand report. By 2030, training a frontier model could demand power output equivalent to that of eight nuclear reactors (8 GW), the report predicted.ChatGPT alone reaches an enormous and expanding number of people, making its server demands similarly massive. OpenAI, along with several investment partners, plans to spend billions of dollars on new AI data center projects over the next few years.OpenAIs attention along with the rest of the AI industrys is also shifting to so-called reasoning models, which are generally more capable in terms of the tasks they can accomplish, but require more computing to run. As opposed to models like GPT-4o, which respond to queries nearly instantaneously, reasoning models think for seconds to minutes before answering, a process that sucks up more computing and thus power.Reasoning models will increasingly take on tasks that older models cant, and generate more [data] to do so, and both require more data centers, You said. OpenAI has begun to release more power-efficient reasoning models like o3-mini. But it seems unlikely, at least at this juncture, the efficiency gains will offset the increased power demands from reasoning models thinking process and growing AI usage around the world.You suggested that people worried about their AI energy footprint use apps such as ChatGPT infrequently, or select models that minimize the computing necessary to the extent thats realistic.You could try using smaller AI models like [OpenAIs] GPT-4o-mini, You said, and sparingly use them in a way that requires processing or generating a ton of data.
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  • Apple Maps plans to show Gulf of America, following Google
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:2:09 PM PST February 11, 2025Image Credits:Maxwell Zeff/Apple MapsApple Maps plans to show Gulf of America, following GoogleApple Maps will soon rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, following similar changes made by Google this week, in order to comply with U.S. President Donald Trumps executive order that officially changed the name.U.S.-based Apple users may see the Gulf of America as soon as Tuesday, according to Bloomberg, and the company will soon roll out the name to users in other countries.Google Maps users around the world already see the split name, Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) when viewing the body of water, whereas Mexican and American users see their countrys respective names.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent a letter to Google asking the company to reconsider renaming the gulf. However, Apple and Google seem to be following orders from the sitting U.S. President.Topics
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  • Anduril takes control of Microsofts $22B VR military headset program
    techcrunch.com
    The Army has granted upstart weapons maker Anduril control of one of its highest-profile and long-troubled projects known as the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, founder Palmer Luckey announced in a blog post Tuesday.IVAS was initially awarded to Microsoft in 2018 to develop augmented reality headsets for soldiers based on a ruggedized version of Hololens. The initial budget for IVAS was set at $21.9 billion.Anduril will now assume control of the contract. While Microsoft is being removed as the prime contractor, it is not being kicked off of the project. Microsoft will continue to be the cloud provider, according to Anduril.It isnt clear yet what new parts of IVAS Anduril will now be on the hook to provide and the company has not yet revealed that.The initial idea was to give troops a heads-up display with features like a thermal sensor, Tactical Assault Kit software (which provides various types of mission-critical information) and maps. Andurils Lattice software had already been added to Microsofts IVAS headsets, Andruil announced in September. Lattice added computer vision AI and other features that helped the headset detect, track, and classify objects.But IVAS has had a long history of problems. Back in 2022, the DoDs Inspector General issued a report saying IVAS wasnt doing a good enough job serving the people meaning the soldiers who will use the headsets. The report warned, Procuring IVAS without attaining user acceptance could result in wasting up to $21.88 billion in taxpayer funds to field a system that soldiers may not want to use, or use as intended.Microsofts prototypes suffered from technical issues, as prototypes tend to do, such as detecting virtual objects, sources told Breaking Defense in 2023.In August, the Army indicated it was open to pulling Microsoft off as the prime contractor although the tech giant vowed it would enter any new bidding process to attempt to keep it, Breaking Defense reported.Luckeys blog post on the Anduril win waxed poetic and covered a lot of celebratory ground, including diss to a competitor. The blog post got downright comical at certain points.Tactical heads-up-displays that turn warfighters into technomancers and pair us with weaponized robotics were one of the products in the original Anduril pitch deck for a reason, he wrote.If Anduril had been more than a dozen people when IVAS was first getting spun up all those years ago (at least the Tragic Heap guys didnt win, our country really dodged a bullet there), I do believe our crazy pitch could have won this from the start, he continued.Tragic Heap is Luckeys unkind nickname for Magic Leap, reportedly among the 80-some companies vying to take over this project. Others included Palantir, and Kopin, which builds displays used in F-35 helmets, Breaking Defense reported.Luckey also teased a whole list of new features were planned for the project but didnt name them. Instead he jokingly redacted that paragraph.Whatever you are imagining, however crazy you imagine I am, multiply it by ten and then do it again.I am back, and I am only getting started, he promised.Whether the project, under its new prime contractor Anduril, will retain the entire $22 billion budget remains to be seen. Threats to cut funding, or cancel the program altogether, have been ongoing for years.Still, 2025 is already shaping up to be a hell of a year for Luckey and Anduril. The company is in talks to raise up to $2.5 billion round at a $28 billion valuation. And it announced that the location of its new weapons-building megafactory will be in Ohio.
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  • Google says it removed cultural events from its calender last year
    techcrunch.com
    Google has removed events such as Black History Month and Pride Month from being listed on the calendar by default.Other events that were removed from the default calendar include Jewish Heritage, Indigenous People Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Hispanic Heritage Month.Google spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld confirmed the changes to TechCrunch, saying that in mid-2024, the app reverted to show only what timeanddate.com shows as a public holiday or and national observance.Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world. We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasnt scalable or sustainable, the spokesperson said, adding that users can still manually add other important moments, to their calendars.Googles calendar update news also comes just a day after the company officially changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America for users in the U.S.The move was in accordance with the Trump administrations executive order to change the name of the Gulf.It is unclear why these changes are just being noticed now by some users but it comes as the roll-back on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts has taken the spotlight. Big Tech companies have started to end various DEI measures. Meta, Google, and Amazon have all announced a reassessment or elimination of DEI programs, with the latter two adjusting the wording in their 10-K filings to remove some or all mention of DEI.
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  • Apple brings heart rate monitoring to Powerbeats Pro 2
    techcrunch.com
    Apple Tuesday announced the long-awaited debut of Powerbeats Pro 2. The new headphones arrive nearly six years after the original Powerbeats hit the market. The new model maintains the familiar ear hook for workouts, while delivering upgraded sound, better battery life, and a wireless charging case.The earbuds also mark a major next step in the companys bid to expand its health care features, with the addition of built-in heart rate monitoring. The feature triggers during workouts, offering real-time data via LED optical sensors.In addition to Apples own health app, the monitoring is compatible with a number of leading fitness apps, includingOpen, Peloton, Runna, Slopes, Ladder, Nike Run Club, and YaoYao. One of the most popular running apps, Strava, is conspicuously absent from the list, however.Image Credits:Apple/BeatsThe Powerbeats expand an Apple health portfolio that currently revolves around the Apple Watch. While elements like step tracking have been around since the early days, Apple has since gone all-in on health. The Watch now features ECG readings, fall detection, sleep tracking, and various other features aimed at providing a full picture of the wearers health.Apples health suite further branched out in 2024, with the addition of a hearing aid feature for the AirPods Pro 2. The arrival of heart rate monitoring on the Beats line could herald the features addition to upcoming AirPods updates though doing so would require a major hardware refresh. Apple-branded headphones are also more general lifestyle products, compared to the Powerbeats fitness focus.The new headphones have been upgraded from Apples W2 to its H2 chip, which debuted on the AirPods Pro 2 in 2022. That continues to be the top of the line Apple headphone chip until the company introduces AirPods Pro 3 at a future date. Image Credits:Apple/BeatsApple cites the proprietary silicon as the driving force in battery life improvements. The buds themselves sport a stated 10 hours of battery, compared to their predecessors nine. More impressive, however, is the case, which improves total battery life from 24 to 45 hours. The company managed to do so while reducing the footprint of the original Powerbeats Pros infamously massive case. Apple is touting improvements to sound quality, as well. Those arrive with the addition of Spatial Audio with head tracking, the same noise-canceling found on the AirPods Pro 2, and Adaptive EQ, which adjusts audio quality to matchs the wearers ear. The familiar ear hooks now sport nickel alloy, for improved strength, while the buds overall weight has decreased by 20%.Image Credits:Apple/BeatsApple adds that its tested the Pros on 1,000 athletes in an attempt to create a more universal fit. The headphones also sport an IPX4 sweat resistance resistance rating the same rating found on AirPods. In addition to wireless charging, the headphones swap their predecessors Lightning port for USB-C.The Powerbeats Pro 2 are available online starting today, priced at $250 same as their predecessors, back in 2019. They hit store shelves February 13. Apple just missed the Super Bowl with its announcement, but thats not stopping the company from spending a load on ads, with endorsements from star athletes, including LeBron James, Lionel Messi, and Shohei Ohtani.
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  • Klarna and Deel eye IPOs, and Stripe embraces crypto
    techcrunch.com
    Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech!This week were looking at how fintech heavyweights such as Klarna and Stripe are incorporating crypto into their strategies, which companies are planning for IPOs, one fintechs Super Bowl ad, Stripes new lead of startups and venture capital, and more!To get a roundup of TechCrunchs biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here.The big storyImage Credits:KlarnaKlarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski posted in a February 8 post on X that he and Klarna would embrace crypto. The Swedish buy now, pay later giant is also said to be planning a U.S. initial public offering in April with a target of a $15 billion valuation, according to the Financial Times. Even though this would be about one-third lower than its peak valuation of $45.6 billion in 2021, it would still be one of the biggest listings of the year, reports FT. Klarna was valued at $6.7 billion when it raised $800 million in 2022.Dollars and centsKhazna.Image Credits:KhaznaKhazna, an Egyptian fintech startup that offers financial services tailored toward low- and middle-income workers, recently secured $16 million in pre-Series B funding, bringing its total funding to over $63 million.Rapyd Financial Network is looking to raise $300 million in a new funding round that would value the global payments platform at $3.5 billion, a considerable decrease from its approximately $9 billion valuation set in 2021.Fintech-turned-HR outfit Deel is trying to lay the groundwork for an IPO. On February 4, it said its annual revenue run rate climbed to $800 million in 2024 after growing by 70%. It also sold $300 million in secondary shares to General Catalyst and an unnamed sovereign investor.Superlogic, a startup that helps give consumers a way to apply rewards points toward experiences such as courtside tickets to NBA games, has raised $13.7 million at a $200 million valuation.A clearer picture of Benchs downfall is emerging thanks to newly released bankruptcy filings. The records show that the Canada-based startup, which ironically enough offered cloud accounting software for small businesses, consistently struggled to reach profitability. It burned through $135 million from its founding in 2012 to September 2024. By the time of its collapse, Bench was forced to shut down due to a liquidity crisis, the records say. The company has since been acquired by Employer.com. However, Benchs bankruptcy offers a window into the dangers of too much debt for startups. Charles Rollet takes a look.Stripe has closed on its $1.1 billion purchase of stablecoin platform Bridge marking the payment giants largest acquisition to date and tangible push into crypto.In other Stripe news, TechCrunch learned that the payments giant has tapped Asya Bradley to serve as its Startups and VC Partnerships lead. Bradley previously held revenue roles at Synapse and Sila. Shes also an LP in venture funds Ganas Ventures and Cowboy Ventures.Philadelphia Eagles star running back Saquon Barkley has not only become an investor in fintech startup Ramp, but he was also the star of the companys first Super Bowl commercial.US consumer finance watchdog (CPFB) chief tells all staff to cease work, days after the Trump administration closes the bureaus headquarters for a week.Plaid working with Goldman Sachs on raising $300M to $400M in tender offerThanks for reading! Until next week Follow me on X @bayareawriter for breaking fintech news, posts about coffee, and more.
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  • Mast Reforestation hatched a plan to restore wildfire-ravaged forests. Investors took notice.
    techcrunch.com
    Rebuilding after a wildfire isnt cheap. The recent Los Angeles wildfires, for example, incurred up to $164 billion in property and capital losses. But restoring the forest isnt, either, with a few thousand acres running a couple million dollars, Grant Canary, co-founder and CEO of Mast Reforestation, told TechCrunch.If youre a land owner and its going to take 60 to 80 years for those trees to grow, any money manager is going to be like, put your money literally in anything else.The biggest cost in reforestation is dealing with the dead, burned trees. Frequently, theyre cut down, piled up, and burned on site. Thats the cheapest way to do it, Canary said.Canary said Mast has devised a way to pay for reforestation today, without landowners needing to wait decades to either harvest timber or claim carbon credits. Instead of burning whats left, Mast will collect and bury the trees to prevent decay and sell the carbon credits that result.Mast recently raised $25 million to develop the new business, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The round was led by Pulse Fund and Social Capital with participation from Seven Seven Six. The startups first project will be in an area in Montana affected by the Poverty Flats Fire, which swept through in 2021.Biomass burial also avoids sending more soot into the air, but without proper site preparation, it could still release methane and carbon dioxide.In most soils, the wood decays as microbes munch on the cellulose, releasing methane and carbon dioxide.Mast has a different approach. The startup will entomb the trees in an area rich with clay, which limits the flow of air and water, stifling microbial activity. The holes are up to 30 feet deep and span up to three acres. After throwing the dead trees inside, Mast will cap the hole using clay and other natural materials, similar to how landfills are constructed.Once completed, Mast will lace the burial site with monitors to ensure that the wood doesnt decompose. It is also endowing a foundation, the Northwest Permanence Foundation, to watch and maintain the site for the next century, which is the minimum duration of the resulting carbon credits. If anything is amiss, the foundation can make repairs to prevent decay.Because the carbon will remain locked in the trees, Mast can sell up to 30,000 metric tons of carbon credits, the proceeds of which will reforest 900 acres.Canary founded Mast a decade ago as Droneseed, which like the name suggested, used drones to reseed areas scarred by wildfire.He soon realized that a low-cost way to spread seeds was only part of the problem; the company would have to find a source for the seeds, and really, reforestation efforts are more successful with seedlings grown in nurseries, not seeds scattered by drones. So, Droneseed acquired two other businesses, Silvaseed and Cal Forest Nurseries, and changed its name to Mast Reforestation.By contrast, the startup is building its biomass burial business from the ground up.Its acquiring data and developing the technology to determine where on fire-scarred landscapes should biomass burial take place. The goal, Canary said, is to use the data platform alongside carbon credit sales to speed up reforestation at wildfire-scarred sites across the western U.S.It would take three to five years to do a reforestation project, he said. We can get this done in six to 12 months.Topics
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  • Apple reportedly partners with Alibaba after rejecting DeepSeek for China AI launch
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:8:04 AM PST February 11, 2025Image Credits:Alex Tai / SOPA Images / LightRocket / Getty ImagesApple reportedly partners with Alibaba after rejecting DeepSeek for China AI launchAccording to a report published Tuesday by The Information, Apple is partnering Alibaba to bring its Apple Intelligence platform to China. The deal is said to arrive after the iPhone maker reportedly explored but ultimately rejected a potential partnership with uber-buzzy AI startup, DeepSeek, as well as with Bytedance.Apple initially selected Baidu as its partner in bringing Apple Intelligence to its customers in China, but issues adapting the Chinese search giants models were apparently too great to overcome.While China has been a key market for the company, the flagship feature has yet to debut in the worlds largest smartphone market. CEO Tim Cook cited the lack of Apple Intelligence as a driving force behind a recent 11% iPhone sales decline in China. Domestic phone makers including Huawei have rushed in to fill that vacuum.The new report arrives ahead of Apples anticipated fourth-generation iPhone SE launch. The budget-focused handset has historically been a key driver for iPhone sales in both China and India, the worlds first and second largest smartphone markets, respectively.Apple previously partnered with OpenAI for Apple Intelligences U.S. launch. That deal adds ChatGPT access to the Siri smart assistant. Apple has also stated that it is open to additional partnerships, including Googles Gemini.Topics
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  • 3D mood board and marketplace Mattoboard picks up $2M to launch AI visual search
    techcrunch.com
    Mattoboard, the makers of web-based software designed to simplify the creative process for interior designers and architects, is getting into AI. On Tuesday, the startup announced its $2 million seed funding round, which will support the launch of a new feature called Design Stream, an AI-driven visual search and discovery tool.The companys software, a 3D Canva of sorts, allows users to mix and match over 1,000 virtual materials, create mood boards, and provides a centralized hub for experimenting with design ideas across multiple projects.Although the Architecture and Design services industry was estimated to be worth $201.97 billion in 2024, Mattoboard asserts that the current product curation method is outdated, with designers having to order and wait for physical samples to ship, delaying their creative process.Designers also order far more samples than they need, contributing to the 92 million tons of waste generated annually by the textile industry. With Mattoboard, users can show their clients digital concepts before ordering approved samples, making the process both faster and more efficient. Soon, the company will add a new AI tool called Design Stream, enabling designers to search for specific products more efficiently using natural language and visual inputs.With Design Stream, designers will be able to articulate their vision in their own words and receive recommendations tailored to their specific needs. Mattoboard plans to train its own custom AI models specific to the design industry, as it believes the large foundational models currently available are too generalized.Founded in 2020, the startup is led by Guy Adam Ailion (CEO), an architect and designer with over 20 years of experience, recognized for designing and building the award-winning IO House in London. Alion is joined by George Hart (CTO), who previously co-founded Hometapper.Architects and designers waste 40% of their time just searching for products and materials, Ailion told TechCrunch. I realized this segment of the A&D workflow was ripe for disruption and long overdue for digital transformation. There had to be a better way to find, manage, store, and curate the worlds interior materials and products.One notable feature in Mattoboard is its use of 3D twins for materials, which simulates real life by capturing how surfaces and textures interact with light, shadow, and reflections. When users move around an object on the board, adjusting the angles and watching how surfaces react, they can better understand the design aesthetics. Users can also upload images of their own products to add to their 3D mood boards.Image Credits:MattoboardDesigners often use a combination of rival platforms for their workflow, such as Canva for design, Pinterest for mood boarding, and Photoshop or 3D renderers for visualization. Mattoboard aims to consolidate all of these tools into a single platform while also incorporating a search function that allows users to discover and buy materials and products.Additionally, users dont need to be professionals to navigate the platform. During our tests, TechCrunch found it to be fairly user-friendly, making it accessible for beginners, hobbyists, and students.Image Credits:MattoboardSince its launch, around 200,000 designers have been utilizing the free platform. Mattoboard also has a paid Pro version for $30/month, which is being used by over 2,000 paying designers.The latest round was led by Acrobator Ventures, with participation from Home Depot Ventures and Masco. The new capital will also be used to expand its material database and partner with global suppliers with the aim of bringing every material in the world online, Ailion said.
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  • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calls the AI Action Summit a missed opportunity
    techcrunch.com
    In a statement on Tuesday, Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI startup Anthropic, called the AI Action Summit in Paris this week a missed opportunity, and urged the AI industry and government to move faster and with greater clarity. We were pleased to attend the AI Action Summit in Paris, and we appreciate the French governments efforts to bring together AI companies, researchers, and policymakers from across the world, Amodei said. However, greater focus and urgency is needed on several topics given the pace at which the technology is progressing.Amodeis criticism of the AI Action Summit, the latest in a series of conferences that brought together AI companies and regulators to attempt to arrive at a consensus on AI governance, echoes that of several academics earlier this week. One told Transformer that the conferences commitments, which the U.S. and U.K. refused to sign, said effectively nothing except for platitudes.In comments at the conference, U.S. Vice President JD Vance adopted an entirely different stance and denounced what he characterized as massive and stiffling regulations on AI championed by Europe. Vance also took issue with content moderation, alluding to the sustainable and inclusive wording in the conferences commitments, which he rejected as authoritarian censorship.Amodei warned in his statement that AI is rapidly becoming more sophisticated, and that failing to regulate it could result in disastrous consequences. The capabilities of AI systems will be best thought of as akin to an entirely new state populated by highly intelligent people appearing on the global stage, Amodei said. Advanced AI presents significant global security dangers, ranging from misuse of AI systems by non-state actors We mustensure democratic societies leadin AI, and that authoritarian countries do not use it to establish global military dominance.Amodei urged governments to deploy their resources to measure how AI is being used, and to enact policy focused on ensuring that everyone shares in the economic [uplift] of very powerful AI. He also argued for more government transparency when it comes to AI safety and security, as well as plans to assess AI risks.Amodeis appraisal of the Paris AI Summits proceedings stands in contrast to OpenAIs, which said in a statement this weekend that it was confident that the conference would be another important milestone towards the responsible and beneficial development of AI for everyone.Anthropic has generally shown more of an openness to AI regulation in the past. Indeed, Amodei has made similar pronouncements before, cautioning that unfettered AI could have profoundly negative economic, societal, and security implications. Anthropic was one of the few AI companies to tacitly endorse Californias SB 1047, a comprehensive and hotly debated AI regulatory bill. OpenAI opposed the bill, which was vetoed by Governor Gary Newsom last fall.That isnt to suggest Anthropics motives are purely philanthropic. Like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in his recent essay, Amodei offers no concrete recommendations for ensuring the benefits of powerful AI, should it emerge in the near future, are widely and evenly distributed.Read our full coverageof the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris.
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  • Instagram is introducing teen accounts with new safety features in India
    techcrunch.com
    Instagram said Tuesday that the platform is introducing its teen accounts feature, which has extra protective measures for safety for users in India, one of its biggest markets with over 350 million users.The company introduced Teen Accounts last year in The U.S., U.K, Canada, and Australia. Meta migrated accounts of Instagram users who are under the age of 16 to these new types of accounts with default restrictions. These teen accounts are private accounts by default and have messaging restrictions, content controls, interaction limits, time limit reminders, and sleep mode.At Meta, creating a safer and more responsible digital environment is a top priority. With the expansion of Instagram Teen Accounts to India, we are strengthening protections, enhancing content controls, and empowering parents while ensuring a safer experience for teens, Natasha Jog, Director of Public Policy India at Instagram, said ina blog post. The teen account setup means that users under 16 will need the permission of parents or guardians to change some settings in their accounts. Plus, parents of users over 16 will also have an option to turn on the supervision of the teens account. Parents can see who their children are interacting with, but they cant see the message. They can also set daily usage limits and block the app during specific hours. On the content level, Meta only allows users to get messages from people they are connected to. For the connected people criteria, the company considers if the sender is friends with the receiver on any of the Meta platforms or if they have interacted on DMs before but dont follow each other. Teens can also be tagged by only the people they follow. Meta is also filtering out offensive words and phrases from a teens account automatically. Plus, the company is removing content like fighting or promotion of cosmetics products from the explore page and in Reels. Teens can select topics like Soccer, Crafts, Dance, Music & Audio, Cats, Food & Drink, and Computer Science to retune their Explore page and show content related to the selected categories.Meta said that it is also using methods like ID verification and recording video selfies for user age verifications, as teens often lie about their age on various platforms. Last month, India released draft rules related to its data protection law and outlined that companies cant process data of users 18 with verifiable parental consent. Platforms might need to have additional protection measures if these rules are finalized.
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  • Google back Toonsutra to grow its webtoons platform in India
    techcrunch.com
    Its no news that India is a huge market for entertainment businesses, but what often doesnt get mentioned is that its people love to see content in their own languages. According to a recent survey by non-profit Internet and Mobile Association of India, more than 870 million Indians sought out videos, music and other content in Indian languages in 2024, and of those, 57% preferred content in local languages. Toonsutra, a platform for webtoons in India, is trying to leverage the rise in internet usage in the country and this preference for localized content. The company essentially licenses various comics from different corners of the world, arranges them into episodes, and translates them into Indian languages. It currently offers comics in English, Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu via its Android and iOS apps.We looked at the problem of India lacking access to top webtoon titles in snackable format and different languages and thought there is a big opportunity here. We want to grow comics culture in India and create fandoms around it, co-founder and CEO Vishal Anand told TechCrunch.Image Credits: ToonsutraToonsutra monetizes via in-app purchases: A few episodes in each title are free, and users have to unlock the rest by spending coins that they can either purchase outright, or earn by reading more comics. The company is also experimenting with subscription plans and per-episode purchases. Anand said the platform has more than half-a-million monthly active users, and is growing steadily. Thats decent traction for a startup thats been around for less than two years, and investors seem to like the opportunity this presents to enter this relatively underserved market: Toonsutra has raised $5.9 million to date across multiple rounds from the likes of Sony Innovation Fund, Holtzbrinck Ventures, Google, and Maiora Capital, as well as Funimation founder Gen Fukunaga, Crunchyroll co-founderKunGao, Lightspeed partnerWhile its a big name to have on your cap table, Google isnt new to this space. The tech giant has backed several startups in India targeting regional content, including Social network ShareChat, lock screen app Glance, Verse Innovation (operates short video platform Josh and news app Dailyhunt), and audio platform Kuku FM.Filmon Zerai, the co-CEO of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which runs Nature, said the company decided to invest in Toonsutra to diversify itss regional and format strategy. An investment in Toonsutra gives us visibility in the Indian market, which is a dynamic and growing content market. Plus, the startup is an innovative venture with new monetization techniques to succeed in the market, Zerai told TechCrunch.Anand, the former CPO of Dailyhunt, founded Toonsutra in 2023 with Sharad Devarajan, the CEO of animation company Graphic India and digital entertainment firm Liquid Comics. Toonsutra has a rival in Matrix Partners India-backed Dashtoons, which uses an AI creation suite to generate content; PocketFM, which is venturing into creating webtoons; and Krafton-backed Pratilipi, which has a platform for comics in Indian languages.Image Credits: ToonSutraBut Anand pointed out that Toonsutra is not trying to create a platform for writers to adapt their stories to comics. Instead, the company wants to rely on curation and use AI to adapt titles to different languages. Our intention is to be a Netflix rather than YouTube. Because if people associate you with three or four mediocre titles, it is hard to build a brand. We are trying to get exclusive titles on our platform with high quality and high trust, Anand said.The companys partnership with Google also helps it gain access to the search giants models with which it wants to translate and adapt comics to Indian languages, he added.Analysts predict anime and webtoons will see healthy growth in India. For example, anime streaming service Crunchyroll has invested heavily in India its subscription plans here are tailored to Indian price levels, and its catalog even has anime dubbed in some local languages.
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  • Ghanaian fintech Affinity bags $8M to scale digital banking in a mobile money-driven market
    techcrunch.com
    Africas top digital banking platforms typically come from high-growth, populous markets like Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt. But Affinity Africa, an upstart from Ghana, wants to join the conversation. The startup has raised $8 million in seed funding to expand its financial products further across the country, where mobile money is the dominant financial tool.While mobile money has become the go-to for financial transactions, the traditional banking sector in Ghana and Africa as a whole remains highly profitable. Since the pandemic, banks in Ghana have recorded growth with an after-tax return on equity (RoE) that exceeds the global average.However, these profits rely heavily on fees, while inefficiencies like high operational costs, extensive in-person paperwork, and long onboarding times have left millions underserved. Today, less than 10% of businesses in Africa have access to credit, and over 60% of adults lack formal financial services, per World Bank data. This growing gap has fueled demand for digital banking alternatives like Affinity, which offer a cheaper, more inclusive model.Affinity has onboarded over 50,000 customers since its launch last October, its founder and CEO Tarek Mougaine says. Notably, 65% of its users had never accessed formal banking products before, and over 60% are women working in the informal sector.So why has it taken this long for a digital banking upstart to gain such traction in Ghana? The countrys strict banking regulations play a big role. Unlike neighbouring Nigeria, where digital banks can easily operate with microfinance licenses, such licenses are rare, expensive and take time to get in Ghana, making it difficult for fintechs to enter the space.Ghanas regulator is focused on protecting consumers, especially in deposit-taking institutions, Mougaine told TechCrunch. We had to prove strong risk management, break even as a microfinance institution, and align our mission with the governments goal of banking the unbanked. What ultimately convinced them was how our digital platform reduces friction and lowers banking costs for individuals and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs.)From investment banking to fintech disruptorMougaine, who comes from a fourth-generation Ghanaian family of Lebanese descent, studied in the U.K., earning a bachelors and masters degree before launching his career in academia and finance. He later worked as a Director at Man Group, a $160 billion global investment fund. There, he worked on major IPOs, including Visa and Compartamos, Latin Americas largest microfinance institution.After returning to Ghana ten years ago, Mougaine looked to solve Africas financial inclusion problem, a challenge often highlighted in global consulting reports.Numbers like Africas $331 billion credit gap are still being quoted today, he said. Nothing has really changed. That made me obsessed with building a full-fledged retail bank for MSMEs, similar to what Santander, Lloyds, or Chase Bank offer in Europe and the U.S.but tailored for Africas majority.He and a group of friends and family raised $2 million to acquire a microfinance bank in 2020. They included funds from selling his London house, he claims. The entity, which received a savings and loans license, first of its kind granted in over 10 years, served as a testing ground for its current banking solutions.Affinity Africa appImage Credits:Affinity AfricaBy 2022, Affinity raised an additional $3 million in a pre-seed round to upgrade this license. Following months of stealth testing, the fintech officially launched its app last October after receiving approval from Bank of Ghana, the countrys apex bank.The Ghanaian fintech serves both individuals and micro-enterprises, which are often indistinguishable in Africa. Customers get free savings and current accounts with no transaction limits, and the platform immediately begins credit-scoring users based on their transaction history.After a few months of usage, Affinity extends lines of credit with monthly interest rates of 3-7%. The Accra-based fintech has disbursed over $15 million in loans across various products, with instant loans growing 30% month-over-month and a non-performing loan (NPL) rate of 3%.A hybrid approach: digital banking with a physical touchCustomers can also access other banking services, including savings, payments, investments, and transfers to banks and mobile money wallets. Last month, 89% of deposit inflows, which have grown 54% month-over-month since its launch, came from mobile money top-ups, with the remaining 11% from bank transfers. Loans account for over 90% of Affinitys revenue, with the remaining 10% coming from fees and commissions on services like utility bill and internet payments via USSD and the mobile app. Its revenue has increased 37% month-over-month over the last six months, according to Mougaine.Like many digital banks in Africa, Affinity blends online banking with offline touchpoints through its agent network. These agents, about 30 of them, meet small businesses in person, onboard them to the app, and help bridge the trust gap for first-time digital banking users.Africas newest fintech unicorns are winning by keeping their feet on the groundOut of its 50,000 customers, 26,000 joined through the agency network, and 24,000 signed up using the mobile app. Notably, 55% of agent-acquired customers have transitioned to the app, showing strong digital adoption after onboarding.This shift has led us to rethink our agency strategyfocusing on using agents for onboarding, initial education, and driving digital literacy to encourage app adoption. Were excited to refine this hybrid growth approach as we scale, Mougaine said.Affinitys $8 million seed round was led by European VC firms Grazia Equity (Germany) and BACKED VC (London), marking their first African investment. Other investors include Enza Capital, Launch Africa, Renew Capital, Finca International, Attijariwafa Ventures, Impact Assets, joining Eldon Capital an early backer.At Backed, we are founder-first, and we couldnt think of a better person to build Africas local bank than Tarek, said Andre de Haes, founder and managing partner at Backed. He started his career investing in banks through the 2008 financial crisis, became an expert in regulation and strategy, and has built a world-class banking software stack for Affinity from the ground up. His ability to connect with and understand customers has driven impressive early user numbers.
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