Nigerian credit-led digital banking platform FairMoney has acquired PayForce (sub-brand of YC-backed CrowdForce), a merchant payment services that serves small businesses, as the digital lender looks to broaden its financial services proposition to merchants.

Both startups declined to disclose the terms of the deal. However, according to sources, the transaction was a cash-and-stock deal in the range of $15 million to $20 million. As part of the deal, CrowdForce CEO Oluwatomi Ayorinde joins FairMoney, where he will head the company’s payments business unit: PayForce by FairMoney.

Most African consumers and businesses remain financially underserved — and in Nigeria, where 64 million people, according to the World Bank, are underbanked, there’s a massive opportunity to provide access to financial services to both sets of customers.

While FairMoney has predominantly operated a credit-led neobanking play targeting retail customers, CrowdForce, through PayForce, provides agency banking services, a branchless banking model that extends financial services to the last mile via a network of human ATMs. However, several iterations, competition-induced innovation and raising venture capital have pushed both businesses to evolve from their flagship products to a plethora of offerings as the digital retail and merchant banking space intensifies.

PayForce launched with providing merchants with POS devices and allowing them to offer cash-in, cash-out, transfer and bill payments to retail customers while supplying liquidity via a network of partners (the company told TechCrunch last year that it had the largest liquidity among Nigerian agent banking networks, almost ₦1.7 trillion). The fintech, which serves over 10,000 businesses, has buffed up its product suite to include business banking, finance team tools, B2B payments and virtual cards. It raised a $3.6 million pre-Series A last February.

FairMoney, on the other hand, started with a digital lending product that covers loans from 15 days to 24 months to mainly retail customers. The company, which secured a $42 million Series B in 2021, now provides debit accounts and cards, P2P transfers, and payments to over a million retail customers and small businesses, which have become a big part of its business, CEO Laurin Hainy told TechCrunch over a call.

The acquisition, Hainy says, will provide incentives for PayForce-acquired merchants who use FairMoney as their primary bank, such as an 18% annual return on deposits, a rate he claims retail consumers are taking advantage of on the platform. He also said FairMoney will design specific credit products for different sets of businesses, tackling one of the biggest problems facing small businesses in Nigeria: access to loans and working capital. Also, it’s not farfetched to think that FairMoney might look to bank some of the offline customers that CrowdForce has served over the years.

“We see ourselves as a retail bank, but the line between merchants and retail is often blurry. We’ve thought about the merchant space more and more, and we see a lot of potential synergies between what PayForce and we have built independently,” he added. “We know that if we combine both businesses, their merchants will enjoy what our retail customers already enjoy.”

As consumer digital banking startups such as FairMoney and Kuda delve into business banking, fintechs on the other side of the board, including OPay and Moniepoint, are acquiring retail customers. However, the transition hasn’t been smooth for most of these players because of the varying banking needs of different customer profiles on one app. Being one of the dominant retail neobanks, FairMoney will be hoping that PayForce — which, according to Hainy, helps small businesses tackle several pain points and allows them to understand their finances better and make more revenue through its “well thought-out” product — provides it a much-needed merchant-focused value proposition that bolsters its position in the country’s business banking space.

“Our view is that PayForce has an advantage because their software is built for the finance manager and small business owners,” said Hainy, giving his thoughts on competition in the acquiree’s space. “PayForce helps them make more money versus a lot of the other competition, which we think are agency banking businesses as they did not build a product with the merchant in mind; they build the product with the agent in mind. There is a huge difference, so we’re not worried about the competitive landscape there.”

Indeed, FairMoney, via the acquisition, wants to obtain more market share and become the “number one” retail and merchant bank in Nigeria as expressed by Hainy. The fintech intends to add credit cards, remittance, stock and investment products for its retail customers — and include payroll services, BNPL, and online merchant acquiring into its business-facing product suite.

In addition to building out its stack, FairMoney is also actively engaging in several acquisition conversations. The Tiger Global-backed fintech is in talks to raise a $30 million+ bridge round from new and existing investors, money that will go into making these acquisitions (including PayForce’s) and scale operations outside Nigeria and across Africa, according to sources familiar with the deal. Hainy declined to comment.

Acquisitions have been on the rise in Africa lately. According to this report, intra-country acquisitions grew 31% in Q2 to 52% in Q3 2022, signaling an increasing consolidation trend boosted by falling prices and a venture capital crunch. Despite these pointers, basic exit opportunities could trigger a sale in this current market conditions as in the case of CrowdForce according to its former chief.

“There are multiple ways to win. To win, a startup needs a great product, strong execution, marketing and funds. Investors mostly provide funds. This acquisition gives CrowdForce and her investors a combined value proposition to begin execution, win and create value for all shareholders. In a fast-paced market like Nigeria, time and speed is critical,” answered Ayorinde when asked if the Abuja-based CrowdForce had to sell because it met a challenging fundraising environment.

Nigerian credit-led fintech FairMoney acquires PayForce in retail-merchant banking play by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/nigerian-credit-led-fintech-fairmoney-acquires-payforce-in-retail-merchant-banking-play/

You’d think that an industry like manufacturing had its own software stack, but in a lot of cases, a huge amount of getting-things-made is managed through Excel spreadsheets. The thing is, spreadsheets are great for many things, but for manufacturing, and especially on the people-management front, there simply has to be a better way, AG5 believed. A handful of investors agreed, adding €6 million to the Dutch startup’s coffers, as it starts ramping up.

“Manufacturing front-line workers are the biggest group of workers,” says Rick van Echtelt, CEO of AG5 in an interview with TechCrunch. He claims there are 2.7 billion of them, worldwide. “On a macro-level, the current pace of tech development, increasing turnovers and population aging means that the shortage of qualified workers worsens every year, making the balance our economies lay in to more precarious. I love the idea that we can make a difference within this big challenge.”

The company was bootstrapped for the first few years of its life, building out early product/market fit to prove its idea before shopping it out to institutional investors. Headline came in as the lead, along with Acadian Ventures and a handful of other investors rounding out the round. The company aims to continue internationalizing beyond The Netherlands, starting with Germany, and broaden its integration ecosystem so more customers can use their existing tools to integrate with their HR and learning tools.

The company raised $6 million at a “sizable” valuation, although the company declined to name the exact terms of the deal.

In a previous startup, AG5’s founders were working on the same problem through a different lens, building tools for emergency responders, including firefighters.

“Firefighting requires highly specialized training. In the same way that the operation of different firefighting vehicles requires very different skills, the same happens on a factory floor. Each machine and task require specific know-how. I was shocked to realize how manual and inefficient the whole process was,” says van Echtelt. “On a much larger scale, organizations struggle to maintain an overview of which frontline workers are qualified to operate a certain tool or work in a certain production line. They use large HR systems, but this software is not built for skills management. So each company builds its own spreadsheets. It’s cumbersome, it doesn’t scale and it’s prone to error. We help organizations get rid of these and offer them a turnkey skill management solution that integrates with the software they use already.”

Macro economics may be on its side, as upskilling is the name of the game.

“The European Commission has made 2023 the European Year of Skills. Twenty-eight occupations ranging from construction and healthcare to engineering and IT had shortages, showing a growing demand for both high and low-skilled workers,” says van Echtelt. “The issue is such a threat to our way of life that the Commission has set aside €85 billion investment in the development of digital skills in the workplace since it’s such a severe issue that receives a disproportionally low amount of attention. This is a particularly felt issue in Germany, where 19% of the Country’s GDP comes from manufacturing.”

Over time, the company wants to establish itself as a skills management system for its workers, to ensure the teams are trained and deployed efficiently.

“Ultimately we want to lead to happier and healthier workers, regardless of whether they work at a fixed desk with a computer, or on the factory floor with heavy machinery,” explains van Echtelt. “This lead to more personal empowerment, more job opportunities, and reduce work-related injuries and illnesses.”

The company currently has 31 employees, and an impressive lineup of early customers, including Douwe Egberts coffee and beverages, KLM Air France, TataSteel and Toyota Boshoku.

AG5 throws a lifeline to a manufacturing industry drowning in spreadsheets by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/ag5-fundraise/

Rethink Ventures just announced a €50 million specialist fund focused on mobility, automotive and logistics. With keywords “clean, safe, and digital,” the Munich-based firm is focusing especially on Europe-based startups at the early stage, stretching into Series A financing. LPs include ZF Ventures, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, KION Group, Berylls and HAVI, as well as the European Investment Fund and a handful of family offices.

“The transportation sector faces significant challenges as the global demand for mobility and logistics continues to grow. With more than 25% of greenhouse gas emissions coming from this sector and additional negative externalities such as congestion and the significant usage of physical space, there is a lot of pressure to rapidly change the way we move people and goods,” says Jens-Philipp Klein, general partner at Rethink. “Our mission is to back early-stage startups that address these challenges and help them scale their technologies and products using our capital, deep expertise and access to a strong network of corporates. Together with all stakeholders in the industry, we aim to foster solutions that eventually will provide clean, digital and safe mobility for everyone.”

The fund says that its top priority is to provide unparalleled support to its portfolio companies while adding long-term value to their corporate partners, creating a mutually beneficial ecosystem that creates a positive impact for all.

The fund’s thesis-driven investment focus is on next-generation vehicle technologies (software defined, autonomously operated, new powertrains), mobility (providing comfortable, safe and affordable mobility for everyone), logistics (digital, automated and sustainable operations) and energy (infrastructure to power a clean, emission-free future of transportation).

The new fund has made three investments to date: Deftpower, an automotive charging platform that enables companies to launch, manage and scale electric charging offerings to their customers; Shipzero, a data-driven platform to measure and reduce CO₂ emissions in global freight transportation; and Rydes, a SaaS solution for corporations to foster sustainable employee mobility by giving their employees access to various transport offerings.

Rethink rethinks mobility and logistics with new €50M fund by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/rethink-logistics-fund/

Flat6Labs is amongst the most active VCs in Africa, having invested in over a hundred startups to date, across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. And now, after 11 years, the Egypt-based seed-stage accelerator is setting out on a foray into East and West Africa through a $95 million Africa Seed Fund investment vehicle that will mark its first venture outside MENA.

“We’re embarking on a new phase for the organization by expanding into sub-Saharan Africa through Africa Seed Fund,” the firm’s CEO Ramez El-Serafy told TechCrunch, adding that the expansion will be gradual, with two-thirds of its allocations still going to enterprises in North Africa. Flat6Labs is eyeing an initial close before the year ends.

“We are adding Kenya and its neighboring markets in East Africa, and the Anglophone and francophone sides of West Africa, including Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Cameroon,” said El-Serafy.

Flat6Labs, also a seed accelerator, has previously administered country-specific funds, including a $10 million Anava Seed Fund for Tunisian startups, and it is only now that it is running a fund for startups in multiple countries.

“With markets across the region maturing a little bit, it makes sense that we start looking at cohesive regions in terms of the average purchasing power, and opportunities — the products that you see being created in these markets are very similar and easy to take from one country to the next,” said Flat6Labs CIO Dina El-Shenoufy.

Flat6Labs $95 million Africa Seed Fund is sector agnostic

The fund is sector agnostic and plans to invest in fintechs, healthtech, logistics, mobility, cleantech, agtech, retail and e-commerce startups.

Flat6Labs will invest between $150,000 and $400,000, and make follow-on investments of up to $500,000 to ensure continued support for the startups. It invested between $30,000 to $100,000 in previous funds.

“We provide the capital, but there’s a huge value in terms of how we work with the company because of how we position ourselves as an institutional co-founder of the company by helping them set up the company, register it, and provide access to our networks. We are one of the few players in North Africa that is expanding south in Africa, so this is also something that also adds a lot of value when it comes to our geographic exposure,” said El-Serafy.

The cohort, he says, will have founders from different regions, creating an opportunity for individuals from different cultures, and backgrounds to interact, share ideas, work together, and gain the opportunity to access new markets. Flat6Labs will admit 10 to 15 startups every six months in its seed program. The accelerator plans to back up to 170 startups over the next five years.

El-Shenoufy said that: “About 60 percent of the checks will probably be checks that happen alongside the [seed] program whereas the rest will be straight checks for more mature founders.”

Flat6Labs, which claims to have $100 million in assets under management, was founded in Egypt, and has over the years deployed several country-specific funds, and accelerator programs with partners in seven countries including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Lebanon.

Some of its partners in previous funds include the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the MSME Development Agency, Egypt Ventures and the Egyptian American Enterprise Fund.

With the new program, the accelerator hopes to be part of the support that startups across Africa need, especially in the wake of a tough fundraising environment.

“We’re very excited about Africa, it is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. It is very unique in terms of its young population, and the need for technology to resolve many of the challenges that we face on the continent. It makes a lot of sense for us also as an organization to be expanding south,” said El-Serafy.

“We also know emerging markets very well. I’ve been working in the Middle East for the last 11 years investing in founders in the middle of revolutions like the Arab Spring.It’s amazing to work with all these founders and support them during these times,” he said.

MENA VC Flat6Labs’ new fund to back startups in East, West Africa by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/mena-vc-flat6labs-new-fund-to-back-startups-in-east-west-africa/

A California appeals court on Monday reversed a lower-court ruling that found Proposition 22, the ballot measure passed in November 2020 that classified Uber and Lyft drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, to be illegal.

The decision by three appeals court judges, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is a win for app-based companies that rely on gig workers to ferry passengers and deliver meals, but do not pay for costs that an employer would, like unemployment insurance, sick leave and other business expenses.

In August 2021, Frank Roesch, a superior court judge, ruled that Prop 22 was unconstitutional and therefore “unenforceable.” Roesch said Prop 22 limited the state legislature’s authority and its ability to pass future legislation. The companies appealed that decision, which led to today’s ruling in the California First District Court of Appeal.

The reversal of that decision not only preserves the independent contractor model in California, but could push the efforts of companies like Uber, DoorDash and Lyft in other states. All three companies saw shares jump in after-hours trading following the court decision.

Still, the battle over Prop 22 isn’t yet over. The Services Employees International Union (SEIU), which filed a lawsuit challenging Prop 22 in early 2021, is expected to appeal the decision to the California Supreme Court. The higher court would have several months to decide whether to hear the case, but in the meantime, Prop 22 will remain in effect.

Prop 22 made it to California’s 2020 ballot after the state sued Uber and Lyft that year, saying they were in violation of AB-5, the state’s new law that sought to reclassify drivers as employees. After several legal squabbles, the companies — including DoorDash and Instacart — asked state voters to exempt them from the law. They spent a collective $200 million advertising the ballot measure and convincing drivers that Prop 22 would provide them with more flexibility as well as some benefits. California voters passed the proposition roughly 59% to 41%.

California court upholds Prop 22 in win for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/california-court-upholds-prop-22-in-win-for-uber-lyft-doordash/

TuSimple’s co-founder, Xiaodi Hou, resigned from the company’s board of directors last week amid an internal investigation which sought to verify claims that Hou approached TuSimple employees about leaving the company to join his new venture, per an SEC filing.

Sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch a “whistleblower” informed upper management about Hou’s solicitations of employees over the past few months to join a company he was starting. Hou had allegedly been pressuring certain employees to stop working so hard, either because they would soon join his new venture or because he wanted to see the autonomous trucking company fail without him, the sources say.

TuSimple began an internal investigation, during which it confirmed at least two employees — top talent in “high tech” teams — had been approached by Hou, but the co-founder resigned from the board before TuSimple could conclude the investigation.

TuSimple has not decided whether to move forward with the investigation, but if it does, it will be to determine if any other employees had been compromised, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Hou did not respond to TechCrunch’s requests for comment, but the co-founder could certainly be accused of having an axe to grind. In November, TuSimple’s board fired Hou from his CEO, president and CTO posts following the board’s discovery that TuSimple had transferred confidential information to Hydron, a hydrogen-powered trucking startup led by TuSimple co-founder and controlling shareholder Mo Chen and backed by Chinese investors.

At the time, Hou said he was removed “without cause,” and called the board’s processes and conclusions “questionable at best.”

“As the facts come to light, I am confident that my decisions as CEO and Chairman, and our vision for TuSimple, will be vindicated,” Hou said in a LinkedIn post in November.

TuSimple’s board had conducted its own investigation in response to a probe from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). CFIUS reviews foreign investments for national security concerns and can impose safeguards and recommend that the president block certain investments. The Biden administration is actively working to prevent U.S. technology from advancing China’s military power, including the use of autonomous vehicles.

That investigation is still ongoing, and it has prompted potential criminal charges. Last month, representatives who are part of the CFIUS review panel urged the Justice Department to consider economic-espionage charges against Hou and Chen, as well as current CEO Cheng Lu.

Lu previously served as TuSimple’s CEO from September 2020 to March 2022 before he was ousted. He returned to the helm in November. At the same time, four independent directors were removed from the board, and Chen was appointed executive chairman of the board.

While TuSimple likely hopes Hou’s resignation will help the company close the chapter on national security investigations, TuSimple has other concerns on its plate. Earlier this month, the company received a non-compliance warning from the Nasdaq for failing to file its fourth quarter and full year 2022 financial results in time. TuSimple is still bringing on a new auditor after KPMG resigned due to the company’s risk factor, sources say. The company hopes to report earnings by May, which is the deadline the Nasdaq provided to regain compliance.

TuSimple co-founder resigns, accused of poaching staff for new venture by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/tusimple-co-founder-resigns-accused-of-poaching-staff-for-new-venture/

(left to right) Andreas Sutanto, co-founder & CFO ; Pandu Adi Laras, co-founder & CEO; Claussen Sindhuwinata, COO. Image Credits: Broom

Broom says more than 5,000 used car dealers, its main target customers, now use its platform in Indonesia, contributing approximately 30.6% of new automotive sales in Southeast Asia. On average, using its Buyback platform has enabled dealers to increase 3x their inventory size, sales and profitability, according to Broom. The company focuses on Indonesia, where the used car market is estimated at $65 million and is expected to reach $70.3 billion by 2027. Broom has the opportunity to provide its solution to dealers and later direct customers. 

Some automotive marketplaces, such as Carro, Carsome and OLX Indonesia, cover direct customers’ trade and financing. Broom has tried to differentiate itself by aiming to empower existing dealers, which number more than 50,000 in Indonesia.

Broom’s technology plans include building an intelligence model for assessing car quality.

The outfit employs 120 people.

“Indonesia’s used car market is huge but fragmented and disorganized,” Nobutake Suzuki, president and chief executive officer of MUFG Innovation Partners, said. “Broom is taking a novel approach to developing asset-backed lending solutions that are more flexible, lower cost and accessible, helping to empower the small-sized dealers that dominate used car transactions in Indonesia.” 

The Indonesian used car market is on a course for growth fueled by a number of trends: the increasing digitization in used car sales; a larger variety of finance options; and the COVID-19 pandemic, which pushed the idea of private car ownership. 

Broom, an Indonesia-based auto-financing startup that wants to help used car dealers work more efficiently by applying the asset-backed lending model to their businesses — offering in-app trading among dealers and providing new financing to do so — said Tuesday it has closed a $10 million pre-Series A financing round led by Openspace Ventures.

Other investors, including MUFG Innovation Partner, BRI Ventures and its previous backers like AC Venture and Quona Capital, also participated in the latest round. (Broom declined to comment on whether it or its investors have been affected by the unravelling Silicon Valley Bank crisis.)

The startup was founded when Pandu Adi Laras, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Broom, wanted to sell his car a few years ago, which he was doing because he needed cash to renovate his house. However, the used car dealers Laras visited told him they could not afford to repurchase Laras’ car due to limited money in hand and working capital, only offering trade-ins instead. 

“The traditional approach is more like opening mom and pop stores, where sellers need to wait for their inventory to get sold [to end customers], and then they can use the money to get new inventory to sell,” Laras said. 

The issue was quite common among used car dealers in Indonesia, according to Laras, and that was how he came up with the idea of Broom. 

Co-founder and chief financial officer (CFO) Andreas Sutanto and Laras started Broom in 2021. The following year, it launched its flagship service, Buyback, to help used car dealers in Indonesia, many of whom lack access to capital. 

“With Buyback, [car dealers] can optimize their inventory and accelerate the turnover, thus increasing their revenue; our app lets them manage the in and out flow easily and trade with other dealers in our ecosystem,” Laras said. 

Buyback provides dealers with “short-term working capital through a temporary car sale service with a repurchasing option” and dealer-to-dealer trading, making inventory management more efficient. The startup explained Buyback is “not a loan per se, but it’s more of a temporary sale, which includes a change of ownership. The dealers then can repurchase their item at a slightly higher price.”  

The latest funding, bringing its total raised to $13 million in equity, will enable Broom to diversify its product offering and accelerate inventory turnover for Broom and its dealers. The company recently soft-launched its first offline showroom where its dealer partners can showcase their inventory to more end customers. Besides the equity financing, Broom secured a $12 million loan from DBS Indonesia and BRI last year. The startup aims to double its credit facility from external lenders to handle more transactions. 

Broom says more than 5,000 used car dealers, its main target customers, now use its platform in Indonesia, contributing approximately 30.6% of new automotive sales in Southeast Asia. On average, using its Buyback platform has enabled dealers to increase 3x their inventory size, sales and profitability, according to Broom. The company focuses on Indonesia, where the used car market is estimated at $65 million and is expected to reach $70.3 billion by 2027. Broom has the opportunity to provide its solution to dealers and later direct customers. 

Some automotive marketplaces, such as Carro, Carsome and OLX Indonesia, cover direct customers’ trade and financing. Broom has tried to differentiate itself by aiming to empower existing dealers, which number more than 50,000 in Indonesia.

Broom’s technology plans include building an intelligence model for assessing car quality.

The outfit employs 120 people.

“Indonesia’s used car market is huge but fragmented and disorganized,” Nobutake Suzuki, president and chief executive officer of MUFG Innovation Partners, said. “Broom is taking a novel approach to developing asset-backed lending solutions that are more flexible, lower cost and accessible, helping to empower the small-sized dealers that dominate used car transactions in Indonesia.” 

Indonesia’s Broom builds out automated asset-backed lending for used car dealers by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/indonesian-used-auto-finance-platform-broom-raises-10m-to-build-out-automated-asset-backed-lending/

After a handful of eclectic recent chapters, Fortnite’s latest is taking a theme and running with it. Chapter Four, Season Two of Fortnite went live over the weekend, revamping the game’s central island (which got a full makeover last season) while going full futuristic.

The result is a cyberpunk fever dream, with Fortnite’s bucolic rolling hills punctuated by 20-story tall glowing skateboard rails, neon katakana and towering holographic samurai, because cyberpunk aesthetics in this particular genre of fantasy future still necessitate a melange of Japanese imagery, apparently.

With the exception of a few less fun dud seasons here and there, Fortnite generally brings a lot to the table for casual players, who can either play for free or buy its seasonal battle pass for $9.50. The new season is no different, with a new area featuring hot springs and cherry blossoms (Japan again!), a handful of new inscrutably-named weapons and some unique perks known as “reality augments” to make gameplay more interesting. So far, it’s as fun as it is chaotic, which of course is Fortnite’s raison d’être (that and selling a bunch of irresistible virtual stuff).

The new season continues the recent theme of expanding mobility across the island, with street bikes replacing last season’s dirt bikes and a wild new version of aerial parkour that makes for dynamic battles high up in Mega City, the new Tokyo-ish futuristic hot drop combat hub. Epic’s ongoing upgrades to the battle royale mode’s means of getting around make the game feel more dynamic (i.e. less running from the storm on foot) and serve as a showcase for whatever Unreal Engine is capable of at the moment, from more fluid in-game movement to increasingly destructible environments and the like.

That Epic has managed to keep the game feeling fresh for this long without any kind of thematic identity beyond Fortnite’s polished cartoon look and zany vibes is pretty remarkable. Other long-running live service games (think Final Fantasy XIV, Destiny 2, World of Warcraft and even relative newcomers like Genshin Impact and Apex Legends) generally hew more closely to a genre or theme, whether it’s sci-fi, high fantasy or post-apocalypse lite.

Epic changes up the live service battle royale’s feel from chapter to chapter and often even within the shorter three-month seasons in between each of the game’s major shakeups. But unlike more traditional games, Fortnite doesn’t need to maintain any ongoing theme, particularly coherent story or visual identity from season to season. One of Epic’s cleverest turns is that the game’s unifying feature can be summed up as “more is more.”

One season might center medieval knights or shirtless body building catmen while the next is about shimmery goo you can scoot around in. That model also lends itself well to Epic’s relentless and surely lucrative smorgasbord of tie-ins with major pop culture touchstones, from the Mandalorian and the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Indiana Jones and a whole cast of anime favorites. For an idea of the breadth of these crossovers, at the time of writing the Fortnite store was selling an avatar of Horizon Zero Dawn’s Aloy and a very solid likeness of Michael B. Jordan from the Creed films that steered well clear of the uncanny valley.

Other games have taken a bite out of the live service shooter pie in recent years (Valorant and Apex Legends, to name a few), but Fortnite’s formula still works six years after its battle royale mode debuted. There’s way more stuff in the game these days — ads for virtual concerts, avatar packs, TV characters, wild boar — but Epic seems to be successfully leveraging that maximalism to keep the game relevant. A few seasons ago, how could you not tune in on Twitch or drop in from the battle bus to see Dragon Ball Z’s Goku leap onto a cel-shaded cloud and blast Darth Vader into atoms?

Fortnite’s recent focus on quests and in-game errands is another bit of the puzzle. There’s a lot of stuff to do each season beyond just shooting other players. You can grab a few friends, hop into the game and roll around the map in a giant hamster ball, knocking off whatever unhinged tasks wind up on the game’s weekly to-do lists. By doing that stuff and unlocking the skins and other virtual miscellany on the seasonal battle pass in the process, you wind up having a good time, even if your crew can’t aim to save your life.

It’s a good game loop and one that’s fun to dip in and out of as a casual player every few months so things don’t get too stale (or too tense — no stakes Fortnite tends to be the most fun, from my experience). Hardcore players can bicker over gun balancing and SBMM formulas, but the game’s real appeal is just bouncing around the map and seeing what happens. It’s usually something funny or dumb, most often both.

These days, it’s hard to get a read on just how many people are playing Fortnite, particularly in light of its app store absence, but the game remains popular enough to stay in Twitch’s most-watched rotation along with a handful of other online multiplayer hits similarly powered by regular infusions of fresh content. The player base may ebb and flow, but Epic likely banks on the fact that the right character can pull plenty of intermittent players back into a seasonal subscription. And Fortnite’s creative mode is a whole other world unto itself, with about half of Fortnite playtime already spent in player-made maps, even though Epic’s creator monetization options aren’t exactly inspiring at the moment. We’ll definitely be hearing more about Fortnite Creative as approachable game design systems continue to unfurl in the coming years.

Fortnite still has a place in the esports world, of course, but at its heart the game is a playground for unexpected pop culture crossovers and viral moments. A battle royale inexplicably full of Disney IP really should feel like a cynical cash grab, but mostly it winds up being a good time. And if we’re still talking about the metaverse (are we still talking about the metaverse?), Epic has laid some serious groundwork here with a technically impressive virtual amusement park — complete with gift shops, of course — which years after launch still doubles as one of the most fun shooters around.

Fortnite’s maximalism still works in its new cyberpunk season by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/fortnite-new-season-still-got-it/

Microsoft laid off an entire team dedicated to guiding AI innovation that leads to ethical, responsible and sustainable outcomes. The cutting of the ethics and society team, as reported by Platformer, is part of a recent spate of layoffs that affected 10,000 employees across the company.

The elimination of the team comes as Microsoft invests billions more dollars into its partnership with OpenAI, the startup behind art- and text-generating AI systems like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, and revamps its Bing search engine and Edge web browser to be powered by a new, next-generation large language model that is “more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search.”

The move calls into question Microsoft’s commitment to ensuring its product design and AI principles are closely intertwined at a time when the company is making its controversial AI tools available to the mainstream.

Microsoft still maintains its Office of Responsible AI (ORA), which sets rules for responsible AI through governance and public policy work. But employees told Platformer that the ethics and society team was responsible for ensuring Microsoft’s responsible AI principles are actually reflected in the design of products that ship. The team had been recently working to identify risks posed by Microsoft’s integration of OpenAI’s technology across its suite of products.

The ethics and society team wasn’t very large — only about seven people remained after a reorganization in October. Sources who spoke with Platformer said pressure from the chief technology officer Kevin Scott and CEO Satya Nadella was mounting to get the most recent OpenAI models, as well as next iterations, into customers hands as quickly as possible.

Last year, the reorganization saw most of the ethics and society team transferred to other teams. On March 6, John Montgomery, corporate vice president of AI, told the remaining members that they’d be eliminated after all. Members of the team told Platformer they believed they were let go because Microsoft had become more focused on getting its AI products shipped before the competition, and was less concerned with long-term, socially responsible thinking.

Teams like Microsoft’s ethics and society department often pull the reins on big tech organizations by pointing out potential societal consequences or legal ramifications. Microsoft perhaps didn’t want to hear “No,” anymore as it became hell bent on taking market share away from Google’s search engine. The company said every 1% of market share it could pry from Google would result in $2 billion in annual revenue.

Microsoft couldn’t be reached for comment.

Microsoft lays off an ethical AI team as it doubles down on OpenAI by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/microsoft-lays-off-an-ethical-ai-team-as-it-doubles-down-on-openai/

Silicon Valley Bank’s clients received a surprising email in their inboxes late Monday evening from the bank’s new CEO Tim Mayopoulos stating that the institution was not only open, it was also business as usual.

“Silicon Valley Bank, N.A. is open and conducting business as usual,” the email, obtained by TechCrunch from multiple sources, read. At the time of publication, SVB’s website has been restored. Still, some founders tell TechCrunch that they are struggling to access their accounts and waiting for wires to officially clear.

Mayopoulos, who joined the company as CEO on Monday, said that new deposits — as well as existing ones — are protected by the FDIC in the new bank, called Silicon Valley Bank, N.A.

The explanation behind the surprising return of SVB is that the FDIC transferred deposits and assets of the former SVB “to a newly-created, full-service FDIC-operated ‘bridge bank,” the e-mail describes. “All wire payments entered on March 9 or 10 that have not already been processed have since been canceled. If you wish to consummate those transactions, you need to reinitiate them.”

Mayopoulous, meanwhile, is tapping into his experience during the 2008 recession to guide the new bank through the crisis.

The executive was part of the leadership suite at mortgage financing company Fannie Mae in 2008, and then went on to serve as chief executive of that same business. Most recently, he was the president of Blend, which brings software to the consumer banking industry. Mayopoulous shared his prior experience with clients in the email adding that he’s “very proud of work we did there to restore the company to profitability and to stabilize the housing finance system in a period of unprecedented challenge.”

SVB’s new CEO says he wants to restore confidence, and it’s only been days since the the bank’s deposits were taken over by regulators and its previous chief executive, Greg Becker, stepped down amidst a historical bank run. SVB was seen as the second-biggest US bank failure ever. Its UK arm was acquired by HSBC UK for a symbolic £1, saving it from insolvency.

Regulator intervention provided relief to the tech sector, including startup founders who have been scrambling to make payroll and keep operations running despite uncertainty of their access to funding.

“We look to restore your confidence and support you and your companies at this time,” the email ends. The FDIC’s latest statement confirmed SVB’s new track, adding that senior management has been removed from the bank.

By resuming U.S. operations, SVB may now have a better chance to convince an institution – whether that’s another bank or private equity firm – to buy its assets – especially after the last attempt to do so failed. There are still, of course unanswered questions, including what will happen to SVB’s assets and whether customers will return to the bank.

The big questions ahead are what happens to the rest of SVB’s assets, and are founders going to turn back to the institution at the same clip in which they left it?

TechCrunch reached out to SVB for further information and will update the story accordingly. TechCrunch has not been able to reach FDIC for comment and will update story if this changes.

How are you reacting SVB’s crash? What are you telling your fellow employees, portfolio companies, founders, and investors? For tips and thoughts, you can reach Natasha Mascarenhas on Twitter @nmasc_ or on Signal at +1 925 271 0912. Her e-mail is natasha.m@techcrunch.com. Anonymity requests will be respected.

Silicon Valley Bank’s new CEO sends letter to clients: ‘We are conducting business as usual’ by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/svb-new-ceo-tim-mayopoulos-business-as-usual/