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Tesla in 2019 opened a factory in China that officials hoped would stir the country’s EV makers into action. Now, some of those local carmakers are emerging as strong rivals to the U.S. automaker. See them here.
Another cell-based meat company is poised to have its meat products introduced in restaurants.
Vow’s first product brand, Morsel, which was created from its cultured meat technology, will go into Singapore restaurants by the end of this year. Singapore was the first nation to approve cultured meat products for sale, with Eat Just being one of the first companies to sell its lab-grown chicken there.
This milestone comes as the three-year-old Australian company, which touts itself as “Australia’s first cell-based meat company,” raised $49.2 million in Series A funding.
Cell-based technology is one of the solutions increasingly used that creates meat from the cells of animals instead of the animals themselves. This is not only to save animals from slaughter, but to provide a more sustainable method of food production.
Vow co-founder and CEO George Peppou told TechCrunch that scaling and manufacturing are the biggest single costs for the company and a driver for going after funding.
“Before the round, we had an underlying product and customers who were interested,” he said. “We had built Factory 1 and had everything in place going into the regulatory process in Singapore, Australia and the U.S. However, there was way more demand than supply. If we could raise a large Series A, we could introduce Morsel to multiple markets and prove out the big view on what the food looks like.”
Morsel is a cultured umami quail product, and the way chefs are experimenting with it is to position it on the menu, not as quail, but as a new type of meat. It has a roasted umami flavor with aromatic seafood notes, providing a more unique experience and something that you would expect to see on a fine-dining menu, Peppou said.
Blackbird and Prosperity7 Ventures, an Aramco Ventures growth fund, co-led the Series A and was joined by Toyota Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Grok Ventures, Cavallo Ventures, Peakbridge, Tenacious Ventures, HostPlus Super, NGS Super and Pavilion Capital.
The new capital comes nearly two years after Vow grabbed $6 million in seed funding. The company was focusing its technology on more exotic meats, like buffalo, kangaroo or alpaca.
At the time, it was also building a design facility and laboratory in Sydney, and in October announced that the facility was open. When it is fully operational, the company said it will produce “as much as 30 tonnes” or 66,100 pounds of cultivated meat each year.
But as we’ve discussed many times within this publication, scale continues to be a challenge for cultured meat producers due to the cost of the materials and volume needed to reach price parity with current meat products and eventual company profitability.
To put this in perspective, it is feared that as the human population nears 9 billion by 2050, a meat-centric diet will not yield enough calories to feed everyone. Giant food producers and startups alike are collectively trying to find a way to produce more food, and plant-based has been identified as one of the ways to do it.
Currently, Vow’s Factory 1 is working on producing between one kilo, or two pounds, and tens of kilos every few days, Peppou said. He believes the company has a good strategy for achieving a bigger scale, and with the new capital will speed up getting its Morsel product to market, future product development and hiring across new divisions, like product and marketing.
Peppou expects to grow the manufacturing team from four people to between 15 and 20 people in the next few months. By the middle of next year, the overall Vow workforce will be around 80 people.
It is also expanding manufacturing by beginning the development of its second factory that the company said will be “100x larger” than its first.
“Currently, every part of the process is a long way before hitting the factory’s physical limits, which is intentional,” he added. “We will continue to test with a high margin for error and then ramp up close to capacity while also looking at what Factory 2 needs to look like.”
Singapore and Australia currently have a bespoke approval process for cultured meat products and a clear regulatory framework for that approval, Peppou said. He expects to be able to get Morsel to market within a year in both of those countries. The U.S., however, is “a bit more ambiguous because there isn’t a specific regulatory framework, so the timeline for introducing products is less clear,” Peppou added.
Vow’s first cultured meat product close to Singapore unveiling after $49.2M Series A by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/14/vow-cultured-meat-singapore/
Klarna is expanding into the competitive world of price comparisons, with the launch of a new tool that compares prices across thousands of retailers.
The company quietly rolled out the price comparison service in the U.S. a few weeks back, and is now extending this into additional markets in Europe including The U.K. and the Nordics.
The European “buy now, pay later” fintech has had a turbulent year, laying off 10% of its workforce in May followed by a second round of layoffs in September. Sandwiched in between, news emerged that Klarna had raised $800 million in funding, albeit at a valuation 85% lower than the previous year, a trend that has echoed elsewhere across the fintech sphere and beyond.
With today’s announcement, Klarna is building on an acquisition that closed just six months ago, when it snapped up comparison shopping service PriceRunner in a $1 billion deal. At the time, it said that it would use the acquisition to power new features in the core Klarna app, including produce search and price comparisons — and that is what it has been rolling out over the past few weeks.
It’s a notable expansion for Klarna, which has hitherto been better known for a service that allows consumers to buy goods through third-party retailers in instalments. Moving forward, the Klarna app will not only serve as a payment network, but a “single shopping destination” for finding the cheapest deals and paying.
Digging into the specifics, the new price comparison smarts allow customers to filter their searches by criteria such as size, color, ratings, availability, shipping options, and more. On top of that, Klarna shows shoppers historical pricing data, which shows how the cost has fluctuated over time and whether they should buy now, or wait a little longer to see if the price goes down.
The company said that the tool is designed to serve as a “credible alternative” to other shopping services from the likes of Google and Amazon. Indeed, PriceRunner is in fact in the process of suing Google for more than $2 billion in Europe, alleging that the internet giant continues to breach a 2017 antitrust enforcement order against Google Shopping. The long and short of that case involves Google allegedly giving prominence to its own comparison shopping service in Google Search results. And this is why Klarna is pushing the message here that its own price comparison product is “unbiased” in the results that it serves up.
“You could spend the whole day comparing offers at conventional search engines or marketplaces, but you’ll always have doubts — have I really found the best product at the best price?,” Klarna cofounder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in a press release. “Klarna’s new search and compare tool does the hard work for consumers and compares thousands of websites in real time to ensure they have all the information they need to make informed and confident purchase decisions.”
And perhaps more importantly from the perspective of Klarna’s business in light of everything that has gone on this year, this rollout bolsters the company’s existing affiliate marketing programs and enhances its potential revenue if it helps drive traffic and sales for its retail customers.
“For retailers, the search and compare tool becomes a key acquisition channel, boosting their visibility, traffic, and sales with an engaged audience,” the company wrote. “This provides retailers with a clear alternative to Google and Amazon when it comes to attracting traffic to their websites, and provides Klarna with an important additional revenue stream.”
A ‘credible alternative to Google and Amazon’: Klarna brings its price comparison tool to Europe by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch
Many small to mid-sized food distributors still run on pen and paper. This makes it difficult to pinpoint things like how certain products are performing and customer churn. It also makes it hard for businesses to comply with the FDA’s new food traceability regulations. Butter’s solution is an all-in-one management system that helps distributors run their businesses while serving as a system of record to help them comply with food safety rules.
Butter announced today that it has a $9 million Series A led by Google’s AI-focused Gradient Ventures. Other participants included Uncommon Capital, Notation Capital and angel investor Jack Altman. The new funding will go toward hiring for Butter’s sales and engineering teams.
Butter was founded by Winston Chi and Shangyan Li in 2020, during the height of the pandemic. COVID’s impact on the food industry highlighted how outdated the supply side is, Chi told TechCrunch. While companies like Toast, DoorDash and Square addressed different parts of sales and management, there was still little innovation on the supply side, and many businesses relied on paper systems and phone calls.
Chi is familiar with the challenges faced by food businesses because his parents ran a battery-cage chicken farm in China for more than twenty years.
“They’d wake up between 3-4AM every day waiting for deliveries and collecting payments. I witnessed firsthand the cumbersome process of logging orders and tracking receivables. My dad rarely would have a night that didn’t involve calling customers or tracking down misplaced orders or payments,” Chi told TechCrunch. “If my parents were still doing wholesale, we would’ve had to shut down our business due to COVID. With my tech background, I feel a need to help this industry.”
Butter was created to digitize the process for food distributors who sell to restaurants and supermarkets, while also giving food businesses analytics to help them run their businesses more efficiently. Butter manages many parts of operations, from sales and inventory to payment and e-commerce storefronts. This way, the platform can tell users when they need to restock products, in what quantity and on what date.
Analytics available through the platform for distributors include how much money they make per day. Chi said many only have a rough idea.
“For example, the second day after we onboarded a seafood distributors, the distributor asked ‘is it true that I only make 20% on salmon?’ We were able to quickly point to our data and show this to him,” Chi said. He told he spent over half of his time on salmon everyday and after this, he was able to make necessary adjustments to scale his business.”
Butter tells distributors which customers are active, who is ordering less and who is churning, so they know before customers stop making purchases. It also analyzes which products sell best in revenue and profit, including what products are being returned the most often, which causes distributors to lose money.
The platform also makes it easier for them to comply with the new FDA traceability rule, because it acts as a system of record for distributors’ inventory. Chi explained that before the new regulations, only a few products, like oysters, had strict traceability rules. But the new traceability regulations cover more than 30 categories.
“Recently, a Butter customer told me it used to take him 8-10 hours of there was a recall,” Chi said. “He’d have to sift through piles of paperwork to pinpoint certain orders, buyers and transaction dates,” Chi said. “Now with Butter, we can do that in a few clicks.”
Butter is currently used by 6,000 restaurants across California and in total manages $300 million in cash flow and sales operations. Chi says that customers who have worked with Butter over the last 12 months have seen an average of 47% growth in sales revenue.
Butter onboarded many customers by working with distributors, who send invitations to customers to use Butter for free. Once they log in, their previous transaction history, customized order guide and updated pricing is available in the Butter account.
In a statement about the investment, Gradient Ventures partner Wen-Wen Lam said, “Butter has a huge opportunity to revolutionize the entire food supply chain. We’re impressed with Winston and Shangyan’s attention to detail in building their product. They are deeply in tune with their customer’s pain points and dedicated to solving less obvious problems for distributors, which is why they’ve had great adoption by suppliers including major wholesalers. We’re excited to support their team as they build and scale.”
Gradient backs Butter’s operating system for food distribution businesses by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch
It’s no secret that VC spending in 2022 did not take a page from the wild funding spree that was 2021. This year’s more measured approach has had a cooling effect — particularly on space-related startups.
In Q3 alone, investments in 79 space companies hit $3.4 billion — down 44% from Q3 2021. Still, some prognosticators report that while space investments continue to decline, some sectors are more resilient than others.
This is why we’re thrilled that Jory Bell, general partner at Playground Global; Mark Boggett, CEO and managing partner at Seraphim Capital; and Emily Henriksson, principal at Root Venture, will join us onstage for a panel discussion at TC Sessions: Space on December 6 in Los Angeles.
In a session called “Backing Big Bets in Uncertain Times,” these panelists will discuss the current mindset and priorities of investors who have previously backed space startups. We’re curious to get their take on whether sectors — like remote sensing, which provides critical information to both governments and enterprises during increasingly uncertain times — might be better insulated from macroeconomic trends like high interest rates and inflation.
And, if we are in for an extended economic downturn, what should startups expect from private space capital in 2023? We have questions, and these folks should provide valuable insights during a compelling discussion.
Jory Bell sourced some of Playground Global’s earliest investments, including Nervana Systems (acquired by Intel). His first three investments at the firm are now unicorns and one, Velo3D, went public last year.
Bell leads the firm’s investment efforts in deep tech areas, including advanced manufacturing, aerospace, computational therapeutics, energy, genomics, materials, next-gen computing, quantum and synthetic biology. His investment portfolio includes Mangata Networks, Relativity Space and Strand Therapeutics to name a few.
Mark Boggett, a pioneer in space tech investment, co-founded the Seraphim Space Fund and invested in a portfolio that includes three companies that have achieved billion-dollar valuations. Previously, Boggett served as director at YFM Equity Partners, the firm behind the high-profile British Smaller Companies VCT 1 and 2.
Boggett also worked at Brewin Dolphin and Williams de Broë. He completed his undergraduate degree in accounting and finance, and he received a master’s in economics and finance from the University of Leeds.
Emily Henriksson is a principal at Root Ventures, a firm focused on investing in three areas: tools and infrastructure, low-cost robotics, and hardware and data science. Prior to joining Root, she worked as a propulsion engineer and designed flight hardware for the SpaceX Falcon and supervised vehicle build for schedule-critical missions.
Henriksson also worked on the Model 3 battery module team at Tesla. She holds MS and BS degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
TC Sessions: Space takes place on December 6 in Los Angeles. Buy your pass today, join us to learn about the latest space investment trends, see cutting-edge technology, and network for opportunities to help you build a better, stronger startup.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Space? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
Playground, Seraphim and Root VCs talk funding trends at TC Sessions: Space by Lauren Simonds originally published on TechCrunch
Hulu is expanding its Live TV line-up with 14 new channels, such as Hallmark Channel, The Weather Channel, Comedy.TV, JusticeCentral.TV, TheGrio Television Network, and six channels from the music video network Vevo. The new channels bring the total to over 85 channels, which include entertainment, live sports, and national and local news.
Today, November 14, Hulu Live TV added Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries to the platform. Hallmark Drama is also available, however, it’s only part of the Entertainment Add-on, which is an additional $7.99/month.
The Weather Channel and Comedy.TV have been on the platform since November 1.
On December 1, subscribers can stream channels such as Vevo Pop, Vevo Hip-Hop, Vevo Country, Vevo ‘80s, Vevo ‘90s, Vevo Holiday, TheGrio Television Network, JusticeCentral.TV, and The Weather Channel en Español.
As announced in August, Hulu will increase the subscription prices of the Hulu Live TV bundle on December 8. For the base plan, subscribers get Disney+’s new ad-supported plan, Hulu Live TV (Ads) and ESPN+ (Ads), for $69.99 per month. The Legacy plan will increase to $74.99 per month, which includes Hulu Live TV (Ads), ESPN+ (Ads), and Disney+ (No Ads). The premium plan with Hulu Live TV (No Ads), ESPN+ (Ads), and Disney+ (No Ads) will jump to $82.99 per month.
While many subscribers will be unhappy with the price hike, the new programming might make it easier for some to stomach.
“We have been listening to our subscribers and are thrilled to bring some of their most requested channels to our service just in time for the holidays,” said Reagan Feeney, Senior Vice President, Live TV Content Programming and Partnerships for Hulu, in a statement.
Hulu Live TV adds 14 channels including Hallmark and The Weather Channel by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch
Although FTX collapsed last week, raises their ventures team contributed to are still being announced.
Joepegs, an NFT marketplace on the Avalanche blockchain, raised $5 million in a seed round led by now-defunct FTX Ventures and the Avalanche Foundation, its co-founders who go by the pseudonyms Cryptofish and 0xMurloc, exclusively told TechCrunch.
“The funding from FTX Ventures was completed in June, and have since been transferred out of FTX prior to recent bankruptcy events,” the team said in a statement.
The marketplace launched in May and has grown rapidly to the largest NFT marketplace on Avalanche with over $3.4 million in secondary NFT sales and 12,000 users. It also has an in-house production unit, Joe Studios, as well as an NFT Launchpad, which has on boarded over 50 projects to the Avalanche ecosystem, the company said.
The co-founders also founded and remain involved in the operations of Trader Joe, a decentralized exchange on Avalanche (not to be confused with the American supermarket chain), which launched in early July 2021 and has a total trading volume over $88 billion.
“As we started building this, we realized very quickly that in order to deliver a platform that really helps users discover great NFTs we have to invest in a lot more platform capabilities so that’s what the fundraise will go toward,” 0xMurloc said. “On top of that, we also create a lot of content on our end. We did this at the start to fill a need. Marketplaces are only as good as the content in the ecosystem.”
Joepegs also invests in the operational side, beyond Avalanche, to partner with different traders, projects and artists “across the ecosystem,” 0xMurloc said. “That is something we do ferociously.”
Earlier this year, Avalanche dove further into the NFT space after partnering with the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, which now operates on the blockchain alongside other platforms like Joepegs and Kalao. With about $408.2 million in total sales, Avalanche is the seventh-largest blockchain by NFT sales volume, CryptoSlam data shows.
“People are focused on what is happening to the greater market,” 0xMurloc said. “Yes, there are less people playing with crypto and the NFT market as a whole right now, but, we do see that the interest from creators, brands and projects to dive deeper into web3 and NFTs – that appetite is not softening.”
There are a lot of companies, creators and artists who are “eager to explore this form of commerce and community building,” 0xMurloc added.
“We’re very bullish on the future of NFTs and what it could bring,” Cryptofish said. “The idea that you can have clothing backed by NFTs is very bullish. You see that with Azuki with their skateboards and Nike sneakers and we want to be on the forefront of NFT innovation with digital stuff and clothing.”
As more alternative NFT products come out, NFT markets will have to adapt to accommodate, Cryptofish added. “Our vision on NFT marketplaces will have to be like Amazon over time. Initially it was a bookstore and now they’ve branched out to sell everything. That’s how I see things going.”
In the short term, the team plans to continue driving in-house content and has new collections coming up in the near future, 0xMurloc said.
“Longer term, we want to branch into different flavors of NFTs and explore what Fish mentioned, whether it’s fashion, physical merchandise or gaming. We’re excited about what’s to come.”
FTX and Avalanche co-led $5M round for Joepegs NFT marketplace by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/14/ftx-and-avalanche-co-led-5m-round-for-joepegs-nft-marketplace/
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Here’s what we got into on our Monday episode, a weekly kick-off of sorts:
And that’s all the time we had this morning! More Wednesday!
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!
Cleanup, aisle FTX by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the fintech phenomenon.
Companies such as E*TRADE, Rocket Mortgage, and TurboTax began to disrupt the established financial services sector well before 2012, but that year marked the turning point when fintech morphed into a sustained movement that would drastically change how most people manage their money.
If you’re a fintech startup, you will face four main types of competitors over the next decade:
Your firm will need a very strong value proposition to compete with all four types of competitors.
This leaves most firms with two options over the next decade. One avenue is to specialize in a handful of products or services that you believe will have value on their own that consumers will sign up for despite robust competitor ecosystems. Alternatively, you need to develop a comprehensive strategy to compete and build a compelling suite of products, services and perks.
How can fintech startups prepare to compete in the next decade? Here are four steps you can take to remain competitive.
Any corporate strategy document will remain a fantasy on paper if your tech infrastructure is outdated and incapable of meeting your future needs.
The foundational step of any long-term strategy for the 2020s is to revamp your firm’s tech stack to support future needs. You will need modern tech infrastructure that can support greater cross-product automation, a sophisticated AI assistant, more integrations with external parties such as the crypto ecosystem, and non-financial perks/benefits.
The process for improving your tech stack varies based on the type of firm. If you work for a large bank still running COBL, the first step is likely a massive investment in a multi-year process to migrate to a modern and streamlined tech infrastructure. If you are a relatively young fintech company, you generally have more “white space” to design your stack. The challenge for smaller companies isn’t dealing with decades of tech debt; rather, it’s optimizing limited engineering resources to build the best possible tech stack.
Modernizing tech infrastructure is a difficult and expensive proposition. Generally speaking, the best way to get company leadership on board with such investments is to highlight what competitors are doing to help them understand the competitive threat.
Preparing for fintech’s second decade: 4 moves your firm must make now by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch
Micromobility company Bird said Monday it had overstated its revenue for more than two years by recognizing unpaid customer rides.
Bird’s audit committee found on Friday that the company’s financial reports spanning the first quarter of 2020 through the second quarter of 2022 “should no longer be relied upon,” according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.
The committee discovered the discrepancy while preparing Bird’s financial statements for the quarter ended September 30, 2022. The Santa Monica–based e-scooter and e-bike sharing company also said it will delay filing its third-quarter financial report, originally scheduled for Monday.
Bird said it had recorded revenue on certain trips even when customers lacked sufficient “preloaded ‘wallet’ balances.” The company said it should have reported the unpaid balances on its financial statements as deferred revenue.
An internal investigation found that the company’s “disclosure controls and procedures are not effective at a reasonable assurance level.”
Bird, which went public in a November 2021 SPAC deal that valued the company around $2.3 billion, said it plans to file its third quarter results as soon as possible and restate its previous financial results.
In August, Bird reported that it missed Q2 revenue estimates slightly, with a net loss of $310.4 million on revenue of $76.7 million. It said that its total number of rides doubled over the year-ago period but that its average fare and number of rides per vehicle dropped.
Overall, the company suffered a tumultuous second quarter, announcing plans to dismantle its retail business, shut down operations in unprofitable markets and laying off close to 140 workers. CEO Travis VanderZanden stepped down as president in June, shortly after the New York Stock Exchange warned that the company could be delisted for trading below $1.
Bird said during its second-quarter financial report that it would realize savings from the cost-cutting measures in the third quarter.
Bird tells SEC it overstated revenue for two years by Jaclyn Trop originally published on TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/14/bird-tells-sec-it-overstated-revenue-for-two-years/
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