Cofactr co-founders Matthew Haber (l) and Phil Gulley (r). Image Credits: Cofactr (opens in a new window)

The investment round was led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Broom Ventures, Cathexis Ventures, Sweet Spot Capital, Pioneer Fund, Seed River, Litani Ventures, Correlation Ventures and a few angel investors.

“The big players on the cap table are Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) and Y Combinator. YC helped us focus on finding and providing the things that people really loved about Cofactr and set us up to meet Ajay Agarwal at BCV, which immediately felt like a match. The BCV team understood the opportunities that can come out of a business that integrates hardware, logistics and software into a single solution, as well as the challenges that come with building in many areas simultaneously,” says Gulley.

Cofactr is a logistics and supply chain tech company that provides scalable warehousing and procurement for electronics manufacturers. The company today announced it raised a $6 million round of seed funding, to “lead the next generation of agile hardware materials management.” The company raised on a SAFE note with a $25 million cap. We spoke to the company’s team to learn more about its vision of the future.

Cofactr addresses a suite of challenges for electronics producers through pre-manufacturing, third-party logistics services and supply chain automation. By providing these products as a unified strategic solution, the goal is to enable hardware manufacturers the ability to get to production volume without investing in the specialized facilities or headcount historically needed to manage electronic components.

“Both Phil [Gulley, the company’s CRO and co-founder] and I are driven by the desire to solve problems. Before Cofactr, we were working on the engineering and solutions side of hardware with our previous company, BeSide Digital, starting off in the entertainment industry and growing to support companies like Zoox, Google and CrowdStrike across product and custom hardware for marketing,” said Matthew Haber, co-founder and CEO of Cofactr in an interview with TechCrunch. “A challenge we had, and saw reflected in the processes of our clients, was that building and scaling hardware felt incredibly laborious in comparison to software. After we sold BeSide, electronic supply chain and logistics was the biggest and most personal problem we could address.”

The company told me that the journey to Cofactr’s current state wasn’t entirely linear. The company initially built and ran a contract manufacturer for circuit board assembly, but realized that wasn’t the right context to tackle these problems. From there, the company evolved to build electronics-specific third-party logistics and procurement automation.

“Having worked in hardware and software we had the opportunity to experience both ecosystems and knew how easy things could be when technology bridges gaps between ideas and scale,” said Gulley. “That was the insight that Cofactr was born out of. It’s the company we wished existed when we were on the engineering side of the table.”

The investment round was led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Broom Ventures, Cathexis Ventures, Sweet Spot Capital, Pioneer Fund, Seed River, Litani Ventures, Correlation Ventures and a few angel investors.

“The big players on the cap table are Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) and Y Combinator. YC helped us focus on finding and providing the things that people really loved about Cofactr and set us up to meet Ajay Agarwal at BCV, which immediately felt like a match. The BCV team understood the opportunities that can come out of a business that integrates hardware, logistics and software into a single solution, as well as the challenges that come with building in many areas simultaneously,” says Gulley.

The investors, in turn, see a future where the Cofactr team can put a dent in how electronics are manufactured.

“When we first met Cofactr founders, I was really impressed with their understanding of the challenges of electronic component procurement. We’ve never seen anything similar to the integrated software and logistics system they’ve built. It combines cloud procurement software, a network of suppliers and a turn-key logistics platform that handles shipping, customs management, counterfeit insurance, inventory, kitting and shipping management,” says Agarwal, partner at BCV, in an interview with TechCrunch. “With the Cofactr platform, hardware manufacturers can find electronic components, check pricing, order parts, handle replenishment and send parts to their partner manufacturers. Behind the scenes, Cofactr handles everything including the acquisition of the parts, storage and management of the inventory, control checks to ensure the inventory is not counterfeit and regular shipments of components to manufacturers.”

Cofactr appears to represent a continuation of BCV’s focus on logistics and supply chain. The investor has backed companies such as Kiva Systems (robotic fulfillment sold to Amazon); FourKites (supply chain visibility — which raised $30 million back in August); ShipBob (cloud fulfillment for e-commerce brands); TruckSmarter (mobile app to allow freight drivers to find and book their next load) and now Cofactr. In addition, it made an investment in Flux, which operates in a similar space, last year.

Of course, the pandemic, in particular, exposed many cracks in the supply chain. Ford, for example, warned its investors that it had to eat an additional $1 billion of costs in Q3 this year, largely due to supply chain challenges, and GM saw a 40% drop in profits in Q2 this year. It ain’t pretty out there, but that’s the fertile ground in which supply chain startups get to sow their opportunities.

“Electronics components were particularly hard to come by. That meant a lot of challenges for hardware companies, whether they’re building dishwashers, robots or smart speakers. In a handful of industries, we think there is an opportunity to create a vertically integrated software and logistics solution,” Agarwal explains. “A good example of this is ShipBob and what they built for mid-market e-commerce brands. Cofactr is doing this for procurement of electronic components, with a complete software-and-logistics solution for hardware manufacturers.”

The ultimate goal for Cofactr is to make hardware not-so-hard, the founders quip.

“There is starting to be a real groundswell of startups attacking the hardware engineering space, but we all have to interconnect and work together in the same way that software development tools do. You’ll be seeing more collaboration between Cofactr, other startups and well-established organizations that serve hardware,” says Gulley. “Fast-forward a few years and we see Cofactr as the cloud solution for pre-manufacturing infrastructure. Our vision feels something like the hardware manufacturing version of AWS; on-demand, cloud-based solutions for physical manufacturing. Today, companies can take a software product from MVP to massive scale without crippling infrastructure investments. In a decade, the same will be true for building hardware products and we believe that Cofactr will be a core enabler of that transformation.”

All of this makes a lot of sense in the context of the U.S. wanting to build a more reliable and resilient on-shore manufacturing capacity. The CHIPS act is making some real waves in the semiconductor industry, and there’s been a fair chunk of investment in logistics and electronics manufacturing in the past year. Last month, Makersite raised $18 million and Altana picked up $100 million.

Logistics and procurement on autopilot is the future Cofactr wants to live in by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/cofactr-seed-round/

Right on time for its annual post-Thanksgiving re:Invent festivities in Las Vegas, AWS last night announced its “AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge” — and before you click away, let me just point out that this is definitely more important than the prosaic name implies. As nations across the globe introduce legislation that governs how and where businesses can keep data on their local users, the large clouds either have to offer attractive solutions or run the risk of having their customers move to local clouds. Microsoft, with Purview, and Google, with Dataplex, also offer data governance tools, but none of them have gone quite as far as AWS in making digital sovereignty a core pillar of their cloud strategy.

Matt Garman, AWS’s senior vice president of Sales, Marketing and Global Services, notes that giving customers control over their data has always been a priority for AWS, but with constantly shifting and evolving legal requirements, managing all of this has become increasingly complex.

“In many places around the world, like in Europe, digital sovereignty policies are evolving rapidly. Customers are facing an incredible amount of complexity, and over the last 18 months, many have told us they are concerned that they will have to choose between the full power of AWS and a feature-limited sovereign cloud solution that could hamper their ability to innovate, transform, and grow. We firmly believe that customers shouldn’t have to make this choice,” he writes.

The idea of this pledge then is to tell these customers that AWS is fully committed to building out its set of sovereignty controls and features in its cloud. Some of these features are already here, including in AWS Control Tower, while others are obviously still in development. With re:Invent around the corner and this announcement preceding it, chances are we will hear a bit more about this later this week (or next year — AWS PR works in mysterious ways).

While the tools are still a work in progress, though, the pledge is not. The ideas here are straightforward, with AWS pledging to ensure that customers always have full control over the location of their data in AWS, with verifiable control over how it is accessed and the ability to encrypt it everywhere, be that in transit, at rest or in memory.

AWS also promises to make its cloud resilient against network disruptions and natural disasters. But that’s nothing new, of course, and in a way, neither are most of the other promises the company makes in this pledge. But it’s the fact that AWS spells all of this out that demonstrates that the company sees this as an opportunity to differentiate itself from the other cloud providers as it vies for lucrative public sector contracts. But it also clearly sees it as a threat, as these customers increasingly look to local cloud solutions that can help them navigate these data sovereignty challenges.

AWS announces Digital Sovereignty Pledge by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/aws-announces-digital-sovereignty-pledge/

To celebrate Cyber Monday, TechCrunch+ is having a sale! Until November 30th, take 25% off a subscription to secure access to all our work. 

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We’re working to cover the startup market from a host of perspectives. Our goal is to better understand, to quote something dear to my heart, the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

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Say hello to the TechCrunch+ Cyber Monday sale! by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/say-hello-to-the-techcrunch-cyber-monday-sale/

You wouldn’t drive a car or fly a plane if the only controls you had available were on/off switches for left and right or up and down, and yet that’s pretty much what gamers are stuck with when they control their virtual avatars with their keyboards. U.K. startup Peratech wants to change that with a new range of “force feedback” keyboards that are starting to turn up in Lenovo notebook computers. I spoke with the company’s CEO to learn more.

“We just launched a force-sensing keyboard. It’s not just the keys; it’s a user experience. We created a user interface that is both an application and a game bar widget so that new users can have out-of-the-box simplicity, and serious gamers get advanced controls to take the mechanics of using the keyboard,” explains Jon Stark, CEO at Peratech. “With our keyboards you have a tactile feedback loop. The keyboard knows how hard you press, and you can change that pressure profile. Say you want to have really progressive acceleration at first because you tend to hit the gas too hard when you go around corners: The profile is configurable, and influencers can configure and deliver those profiles to people, creating engagement with other followers. It goes beyond just delivering force and delivering a great user experience: I’m talking about community-based user-experience content that drives engagement and simplicity.”

The force feedback tech can be found in Lenovo’s Legion 7i and 7 gaming notebooks, which launched over the summer. To me, Lenovo isn’t necessarily the first brand that pops to mind when I think “gaming laptops,” but as a company, Peratech had a connection they could work to make these keyboards show up out in the real world.

“We have had a long relationship with Lenovo, and they really wanted to do something with the Legion to elevate it and innovate. It isn’t just for games; as we expand to a full notebook, other opportunities appeared. It works with video editing really well, for example,” says Stark, and he uses scrubbing through a video timeline as an example. “Imagine that as you scrub slower, might want want to zoom in at the same time. Imagine being able to do that just with one button and control that speed with your finger. And as you’re moving faster and pressing harder it zooms out. We are making controls where expert users would be really good with two hands, jumping back and forth to a mouse. We’re taking that cognitive load of doing all those activities and putting them into users’ hands where they can really focus on the content.”

The team hopes that its keyboard becomes another tool in the gamers’ tool belt for increased immersion and enjoyment when gaming.

“If you have a steering wheel that is basically for F1 or Forza, you have all the controls of an F1 car, but you also have all the complexity of an F1. It is immersive. But if you then go to play Call of Duty or GTA or Witcher, you have to unplug all of that and grab a joystick. And if you’re moving from flying to walking or driving to walking — it’s kind of impossible, and something like a steering wheel makes you sort of a one-game player,” Stark points out. “The other thing to note is that you can’t use these controllers on a plane. You can’t use them on a bus. You can’t use them in a coffee shop. And so for those who are buying a notebook, that makes a really big difference.”

The laptop keyboards have 400 or so levels of pressure, which the company claims gives users a large amount of fine control. The keyboards use a thin-film layer that sits within the mechanical key structure. Between 25 and 300 microns thick, the company claims its tech can be built into pretty much every keyboard out there.

“Whar we do is we take the signal [from the keyboard] and we drive that through our force control processor. Here, we condition the signal so it’s really easy for the computer electronics to use. We also use Windows-native driver. So it’s not like the PC feels it’s being hacked or you need this specialty API. We’re using keyboard, joystick, mouse, trackpad, track stick and other drivers to be able to give that experience through a keyboard: We disaggregate the input from the way you actually use an on/off switch on a keyboard,” says Stark. “So we offer a better keyboard experience.” 

The company’s tech can be described as software-enabled hardware, or hardware-enabled software, depending on the level of integration it has with a keyboard manufacturer. Peratech told me a story of how it was able to design a redesign for an existing keyboard design in CAD in just four days.

“There are a couple of different [microcontroller] chips that you could use. Depending on the architecture of the computer, you can use the embedded controller on the main board, and we have applications of both with Lenovo,” explains Stark. “You do need to have an ADC that captures the data, and then we have some processing that needs to happen, where we process the signal. And that’s what gives you the full dynamic range that you’re looking for.”

The company’s keyboard line is a pivot from its tech originally developed for smartphones, designed to add force feedback to smartphone screens. Obviously, the company is hoping the tech will catch on and show up in more applications in the near future; the team was tight-lipped on exactly where and when we might see it turn up next, but it suggested there might be automotive and smart home applications in the pipeline. For now, the Lenovo laptops are the easiest place to try it out — look for the “Force Sensor Technology” to see whether Peratech’s technology lives in its innards somewhere.

This startup is bringing precision control for gamers to the humble keyboard by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/peratech-force-feedback/

Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking system, Community Notes, just received an update that the company claims will help to identify more “low quality” fact checks — meaning, the notes written by Twitter users that are appended to tweets to provide further clarification and context. As a result, more of the contributors who write these unhelpful annotations will lose their writing ability, Twitter said, requiring those users to earn back their “contributor” status.

The algorithm change involves scoring notes where contributors explain why a tweet shouldn’t be deemed misleading. Twitter had earlier paused scoring these types of notes because the rating data was “noisy,” the company said in a series of tweets posted on Friday night. However, it found these notes could still be low quality and “annoying to contributors,” so it’s now resuming scoring these notes, aided by other recent changes that help it to identify the different types of notes. This latest update will better identify and lock out more contributors who aren’t writing helpful content, Twitter said.

The company itself is not determining the note quality, to be clear. Twitter VP of Product, Keith Coleman, clarified in a tweet that “low-quality” notes are rated as such if a “wide range of people” — including those who typically disagree with one another — all agree a particular note is not helpful.

“This prevents one-sided outcomes,” he explained.

The update follows a series of advertiser exits from Twitter as new Twitter owner Elon Musk promotes community-based moderation as the future of the platform. Given Twitter makes the majority of its money from ads, it’s unclear how long Twitter will be able to sustain itself with the reductions in revenue. Musk, too, is clearly concerned — even today publicly shaming Apple for its decision to pause adverting by asking if they “hate free speech in America,” he tweeted. The FT also reported Musk has been calling brands’ CEOs about their cuts ad spending.

Birdwatch, as Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-check system was previously called, rebranded to “Community Notes” shortly after Musk took ownership of Twitter, and is something the new CEO sees as key to the future of Twitter’s moderation. Musk has been highly critical of Twitter’s former content moderation efforts, which he saw as an overreach. Teams engaged in content moderation were also a sizable part of Twitter’s massive layoffs earlier this month, and were again cut in mid-November when Twitter eliminated a large number of contractor positions.

Community Notes takes a different approach to content moderation by putting much of those efforts in the hands of Twitter’s user base. The system is not as simple as having content upvoted or downvoted for accuracy — an algorithm that could easily be gamed if brigades of like-minded contributors teamed up to promote their own viewpoints. Instead, Community Notes uses a “bridging” algorithm that attempts to find consensus among people who don’t usually share the same views.

To become a contributor, users must first prove they’re capable of writing helpful “notes” by correctly assessing other notes as either Helpful or Not Helpful, which earns them points. Users start with a rating impact score of zero and have to reach at least a 5 to become a contributor, Twitter previously explained. After reaching contributor status, users must then continue to add quality contributions or they will have their contributor status removed.

The original idea behind Community Notes was to create a system that would add a layer of fact-checking and context to tweets that don’t necessarily violate Twitter’s rules. But in the Musk era, Community Notes may play an even larger role as Twitter now employs far fewer moderators following its layoffs.

Despite being designed to look for consensus, as more Twitter users flee to other platforms — like Mastodon, CounterSocial, Hive, Post, Tumblr and others — Twitter may lose access to potential contributors willing to do this kind of work. In that case, the “crowd” may not represent the voice of the wider public — much like how Wikipedia is open to editing by all, but most of it is ultimately written by only 1% of editors. In addition, if Twitter’s user base overall begins to largely lean to one side more than another — more conservative than liberal, e.g. — a bridging algorithm could become less useful in representing a true consensus.

Just ahead of the U.S. midterms (and Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, as it turned out), Community Notes, then called Birdwatch, expanded in the U.S., allowing its notes to become visible to all U.S. users.

The company said at the time it would add around 1,000 more contributors per week, on top of its 15,000 pilot testers. It’s not clear how many people actually write Community Notes now, how often, or when the system will be open for sign-up to all of Twitter’s global users — and Twitter no longer has a comms team to field such questions.

In more recent days, Musk has been touting this community fact-check system to advertisers who are concerned about the potential for increased misinformation, disinformation, and other toxic content on the platform in light of Musk’s “free speech” agenda. In a call with advertisers on Nov. 9, the exec referred to Community Notes as “epic” and a “gamechanger,” and something that would ultimately help improve the accuracy of what’s said on Twitter. Musk himself has been corrected by the community fact-check system, though he also often just deletes tweets rather than face the repercussions of being wrong.

Many advertisers, however, don’t seem convinced that crowdsourced moderation will make Twitter a safe place to promote their brands.

Several big advertisers have already pulled out, including General Mills, Audi and Pfizer, as well as automakers like General Motors. (Though the latter is more concerned about advertising on a site owned by a direct competitor, as Musk is also Tesla’s CEO). A report last week by The Washington Post also found that more than a third of Twitter’s top 100 clients had not advertised on the platform in the past two weeks — an indication that brands likely need more assurances of platform safety than something like Community Notes can provide.

Twitter says crowdsourced fact-checking system updated to better address ‘low quality’ contributions by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/twitter-says-crowdsourced-fact-checking-system-updated-to-better-address-low-quality-contributions/

The tunnel venture has repeatedly teased local officials with a pledge to ‘solve soul-destroying traffic,’ and then backed out when confronted with the realities of building public infrastructure.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel-traffic-11669658396?mod=rss_Technology

Legal trouble may be brewing for Microsoft in the European Union where an assessment by a working group of German data protection regulators that’s spent around two years looking into a swathe of privacy concerns attached to its cloud-based 365 productivity products — including by engaging directly with the tech giant to try to get it to fix compliance issues — has found Microsoft has still not been able to resolve any of the compliance problems they’ve raised with it.

The working group’s update could crank up pressure on Microsoft 365 customers in Germany — and elsewhere in the European Union where the same data protection framework applies and other regulators are also investigating cloud services’ GDPR compliance — to reassess usage of its software and/or seek out less compliance-challenged alternatives.

The EU’s data protection supervisor (EDPS), which oversees the bloc’s own institutions’ GDPR compliance, has been looking into the European Commission’s use of Microsoft Office 365 since May last year — as well as probing EU bodies’ use of Amazon’s cloud services.

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) also kicked off a related coordinated enforcement action in February that it said would focus on public sectors use of cloud services — which it said would take about a year to report, with the aim for the action to harmonize regulatory interventions in this area.

“Use of non-compliant ICT products and services by the public sector threatens the protection of personal data of all EU residents,” the EDPS wrote in an update on its probe in April (which also does not appear to have concluded and finally reported yet). “Public sector bodies at national and EU level have a duty to lead by example, including when it comes to outsourcing and transfers of personal data within and outside the EEA [European Economic Area].”

Microsoft announced some changes to its cloud contact terms in Europe back in 2019, following an earlier warning by the EDPS raising serious concerns — and after a Dutch ministry obtained some contractual changes and technical safeguards and settings in amended contracts it agreed with Microsoft that year after it requested changes — but it remains to be seen how the data supervisor will assess GDPR compliance for use of its cloud services now.

For one thing, it’s a more complicated situation for EU-US data transfers at present, in the wake of the July 2020 Schrems II CJEU ruling — and still with no replacement transatlantic data transfers agreement formally adopted by the bloc.

German working group weighs in

The German working group’s report is focused on assessing Microsoft 365 (née Microsoft Office 365)’s compliance with certain provisions of the pan-EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — after an earlier assessment by a local regulator, in January 2020, found that “no data protection-compliant use of Microsoft Office 365 is possible”.

Among the ongoing issues raised by the group are concerns over a lack of clarity and precision in Microsoft’s contracts and processing for 365, and the legal base it claims to process data — including for what it describes as “legitimate business purposes”.

The working group said a central theme of the talks was trying to determine in which cases Microsoft acts as a data controller, which carries a more expansive set of responsibilities under EU data protection law (e.g. accountability obligations), and in which scenarios it’s only a processor (as the 365 customer is the controller) — but their summary concludes: “This could not be conclusively clarified.”

They also query the viability of Microsoft relying on a “legitimate interest” ground as a legal base for processing data for its own purposes where 365 customers are public sector organizations like schools, with the group raising doubts that it can be applied in that context.

Their report also questions the sufficiency of additional technical and organizational measures added by Microsoft in response to concerns about the safety of exported data — arguing that legal uncertainties remain over the claimed security measures which it points out only cover a subset of personal data subject to the contract.

In a statement accompanying the report, the Datenschutzkonferenz (DSK) — a steering body for Germany’s decentralized application of data protection law — said it’s not possible for users of Microsoft’s cloud-based software to demonstrate compliance in spite of a series of changes it made to its 365 contracts in a data protection addendum from September 2022 which are assessed as being only “minor improvements” compared to the problems identified.

Or, put another way, the group’s conclusion is there’s currently no way to use Microsoft 365 in compliance with the GDPR.

Summarizing their assessment of Microsoft’s response to earlier compliance concerns, the group said it was not able to achieve “any significant improvements” in contract wording, as regards types and purposes of processing — noting that comprehensive descriptions and details are still lacking.

While it has taken the view that contractual amendments made by Microsoft as a result of this regulatory engagement — with regards to its own processing for so-called “business activities” (previously described in its contracts as “legitimate business purposes”) — are also superficial wording tweaks that do not bring any “substantial improvements”.

On that, the report refers to a statement made by Microsoft that it has not actually made any adjustments to its processing activities. The group’s assessment remains, therefore, that Microsoft continues to grant itself insufficiently limited rights for certain types of processing.

Microsoft’s large-scale collection of telemetry and diagnostic data — under what legal basis — is another concern for the regulators, with the group suggesting the data is processed by Microsoft “fundamentally for self-interested purposes” — which they point out is a particular challenge for public sector users of 365 to be able to justify under the GDPR.

Data transfers out of the EU are another area of focus, given ongoing legal uncertainties related to EU data exports to third countries like the US (and the group points out it’s not currently possible to use Microsoft 365 without data being processed in the US). As are concerns about legal issues arising as a result of US laws like the Cloud Act and FISA 702 — which could compel Microsoft to hand over customer data, which runs counter to EU privacy laws that require data to be adequate protected outside the bloc as well as within.

The working group points out that many 365 services require Microsoft to access customer data in the clear — meaning the obvious fix of applying strong encryption is not regularly available in this cloud service context.

Microsoft’s policies towards retention and deletion of data also do not always meet the requirements set out in the GDPR, per the group’s report.

They are also unimpressed by the level of notification and detail Microsoft provides to customers about sub-processors/sub-contractors — which is says falls below the specificity afforded in the updated Standard Contractual Clauses template provided by the European Commission last year.

Contacted for a response to the working group’s criticisms, Microsoft sent us this statement:

“Microsoft 365 products meet the highest industry standards for the protection of privacy and data security. We respectfully disagree with the concerns raised by the Datenschutzkonferenz and have already implemented many suggested changes to our data protection terms. We remain committed to working with the DSK to address any remaining concerns.”

It also pointed to a blog post it published in German (the same statement is here in English translation) in which it expands on its claim of no EU privacy law concerns attached to Microsoft 365 products — arguing that the DSK’s concerns “do not appropriately reflect” changes it claims to have already undertaken and making a further assertion that the working group has misunderstood how its services operate and measures (and “significant changes”) it says it’s already implemented.

Microsoft’s statement referenced above links to a second (7-page) statement, which it has only made available in German — which it says offers a “more detailed” response to some of the issues raised.

In this expanded statement (which we’ve translated using machine translation), Microsoft offers a point by point rebuttal to the DSK’s concerns and also claims the EU Data Boundary will “significantly reduce” data flows outside Europe and boost transparency by providing “detailed documentation on remaining, necessary data flows”.

The document also goes on the attack, accusing “some” German regulators of interpreting GDPR in what it couches as an “excessively risk-averse manner” — which Microsoft claims “overburdens and paralizes those responsible” as a result of “excessive expectations of accountability”.

It will be up to the EU’s regulators to determine whether anything Microsoft argues can really fix the raft of legal issues that keep surfacing over its cloud services’ compliance with GDPR — or whether it’s just more bluster from a data-mining tech giant that’s being called on excessive and unlawful access to customer data, and, therefore, whether more substantial reforms will be required before Microsoft will be the ‘safe’ choice for IT procurers in the EU in future.

Following the German working group’s statement, data protection experts in Europe have been calling for pan-EU enforcement over the problems identified by regulators — and questioning why Microsoft cannot apply meaningful limits on customer data processing, given it previously agreed to drop processing for business activities in government and public sector contracts agreed in the Netherlands, for example.

Microsoft’s lead data protection authority in the EU is Ireland’s Data Protection Commission — which would be responsible for leading any pan-EU enforcement of the GDPR against the company.

However the DPC told TechCrunch it does not currently have any open inquiries into Microsoft — so it appears more likely that regional enforcement of cloud compliance concerns will be pushed through via decentralized (but coordinated) attention to public sector contracts Microsoft has inked around the bloc by regulators in different Member States. Which sounds like, well, the kind of messy, multi-pronged, resource-draining enforcement nightmare for itself and customers of Microsoft 365 the company should really be doing everything it can to avoid…

Microsoft 365 faces darkening GDPR compliance clouds after German report by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/microsoft-365-faces-darkening-gdpr-compliance-clouds-after-german-report/

It’s me! Hi! (I’m not the problem, just the podcast’s host, here to bring you the latest greatest in startup and tech news this fine Monday morning). Welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. And for those of you who hummed the first sentence of this post, extra points to you.

I’m starting things off this week as a test run before Alex heads on paternity leave. We have lots to get to, so shake off the holiday feels and let’s remember how this ecosystem works?

Here’s what we got to:

•  The markets are broadly down, due to COVID-19 protests breaking out in China.
•  Blockfi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Our crypto reporter Jacquelyn Melinek has more on what happened – and she explains just how intertwined this universe is. I’ll also get to notes I took from our recent crypto conference and how the reality may be looking like Web 2.5 before it looks like Web 3.0.
• We also talk about Amazon’s three-pronged retreat, and the common thread of India between them all.
• After that, some good news from all-women led venture firm Pact and its debut fund. More funding for climate startups, please. Tim keeps writing about really cool ones.
• We end with a note on Pipe, a $2 billion fintech that announced all of its co-founders are stepping down from their roles last week. Soon after that decision was announced, rumors and allegations began flying about tensions under the hood at the fintech. Mary Ann Azevedo has the story and keep reading the site today for the follow up. As I said on Twitter, on one end, when three founders step down in a single moment, people are undoubtedly going to talk and worry (out loud) about the stability of the company.

That was fun. Thanks for letting me spend a bit of your Monday with you. More to come! You can follow me on Twitter @nmasc_ or on Instagram @natashathereporter. 

Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!

What’s the next on crypto’s chopping block? by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/blockfi-cryptos-chopping-block/

Cyber Monday savings are here — for today only book a pass to TC Sessions: Space 2022 and save 50% on all available passes. This one-day exploration event is focused on early-stage space startups, trends, science and technology across the private, public and defense universe takes place on December 6 in Los Angeles.

Don’t miss out: Book your 50%-off pass now before the savings expire on tonight at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Join some of the space industry’s leading voices to learn about the latest advances, goals and challenges — both technical and financial — from the people in the trenches building and funding the future of space. Consider this, too. We expect more than 1,000 attendees at this event; top founders, investors, engineers, executives, military and government officials — an unsurpassed celestial body for networking.

Here’s a small sampling of the day’s expert speakers and topics. Don’t forget to set your coordinates to “agenda” and explore all the interviews, panel discussions and partner sessions waiting for you.

Looking to Startups to Help Secure Space

The commercial space sector has succeeded in driving down the cost of space-based technology while massively increasing its capabilities. The U.S. defense apparatus has traditionally favored legacy industry partners, but it’s shown a growing interest in turning to startups and new space companies to secure the space domain for the U.S. and its allies, and we’ll hear why and how from Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisitions and Integration, Frank Calvelli.

Asking and Answering Humanity’s Biggest Questions

After six years heading up NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Thomas Zurbuchen is a familiar face to anyone who has followed the agency’s many interplanetary and orbital missions. Now ready to move on to his next chapter, Zurbuchen will speak to how NASA, its mission, and the science it performs are changing — but they’re more important than ever.

Building Out Commercial Operations in Orbit

A new crop of companies are working on establishing permanent commercial operations in orbit and on the moon. But they likely won’t be able to do it without partnerships with government and defense. We’ll talk to Steve Jurczyk, cc-founder and CEO at Quantum Space, and leaders from ispace and the United States Space Force, about how these partnerships can foster a thriving orbital economy.

Don’t miss seeing early-stage space startups exhibiting at the show, and make sure you’re in the room for the TechCrunch Space Pitch-off featuring a handful of space startups as they bring the heat in front of a live audience — and an expert panel of VCs, including Jory Bell (Playground Global), Mark Boggett (Seraphim Space), Tess Hatch (Bessemer Partners) and Emily Henriksson (Root Ventures).

TC Sessions: Space 2022 takes place on December 6 in Los Angeles, but you have only T-minus five days left to lock a tractor beam on savings. Buy your pass for just $99.50 before the deal disintegrates on tonight at precisely 11:59 p.m. PST. We can’t wait to see you in LA!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Space? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Cyber Monday sale – save 50% on passes for TC Sessions: Space by Lauren Simonds originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/cyber-monday-sale-save-50-on-passes-for-tc-sessions-space/

Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi filed for bankruptcy, making it the latest major digital assets company to fail since FTX, with which BlockFi is financially intertwined. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blockfi-files-for-bankruptcy-as-latest-crypto-casualty-11669649545?mod=rss_Technology