Month: February 2019

Electrify America, the entity set up by Volkswagen as part of its settlement with U.S. regulators over its diesel emissions cheating scandal, plans to install Tesla Powerpack battery systems at more than 100 of its electric vehicle charging stations this year.

Electrify America aims to use the Tesla Powerpacks to offset the cost of charging for customers. Owners of electric vehicles face high costs if they charge their vehicles during peak demand hours. The Tesla Powerpack battery systems store energy drawn from the grid during off-peak hours. That stored energy can then be used during peak demand hours when charging costs are higher. Each site will consist of a 210 kW battery system with roughly 350 kWh of capacity, according to Electrify America.

“Our stations are offering some of the most technologically advanced charging that is available,” Electrify America CEO Giovanni Palazzo said in a statement. “With our chargers offering high power levels, it makes sense for us to use batteries at our most high demand stations for peak shaving to operate more efficiently. Tesla’s Powerpack system is a natural fit given their global expertise in both battery storage development and EV charging.”

Electrify America has committed to investing $2 billion over 10 years in clean energy infrastructure and education. The VW unit expects to have 484 electric vehicle charging stations with more than 2,000 charging dispensers installed or under construction by July 1.

The company will begin the next phase of installations this summer.

Electrify America’s bet on Tesla battery systems illustrates the deep need for electric vehicle charging infrastructure that is low cost, easy to access and as fast as possible. It’s not enough to simply dot highways and urban areas with public chargers.

The deal also represents a small, yet possibly fruitful area for Tesla as it tries to grow its energy storage business.

Electrify America says it has designed its sites and electrical systems to enable future upgrades. Fast charging is part of that vision. The Electrify America charging system features liquid cooled-cable 350 kW chargers.  These chargers — which currently no EV can actually use — can theoretically charge a vehicle at speeds up to 20 miles per minute – seven times faster than today’s most commonly used 50 kW fast chargers.

Porsche Taycan, the automaker’s first all-electric vehicle, is designed to have an 800-volt battery that can take a 350 kW charge. The Taycan is coming out late this year.

Electrify America’s charging locations will have an average of five charging dispensers, with some having as many as 10. The highway stations will have a minimum of two 350 kW chargers per site, with additional chargers delivering up to 150 kW.

Source: Tech Crunch

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:

1. Google intros a pair of Android accessibility features for people with hearing loss

Live Transcribe is, perhaps, the more compelling of the two offerings. As its name implies, the feature transcribes audio in real time, so users with hearing loss can read text, in order to enable a live, two-way conversation.

Meanwhile, Sound Amplifier is designed to filter out ambient and unwanted noise, without boosting the volume on already loud sounds.

2. Amazon’s Audible brings Choose Your Own Adventure stories to Alexa devices

These are professionally performed, voice-controlled narratives from the publisher of the original Choose Your Own Adventure book series, ChooseCo.

3. Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

“2018 was about scaling,” he said. “2019 is about really focusing on the unit economics of the business.”

4. Crypto exchange Kraken acquires Crypto Facilities

This nine-figure deal is Kraken’s biggest acquisition to date. Following the deal, some Kraken users can now access both spot and futures trading.

5. Why no one really quits Google or Facebook

Danny Crichton weighs in on the latest Facebook and Google scandals. Rather depressingly, he argues that nothing will change.

6. Watch the tech-centric Super Bowl ads from Amazon, Microsoft and others

This year’s theme: Sad robots.

7. Your Monday podcast roundup

This week, Equity looks at $100 million funding rounds for everyone, Mixtape discusses allegations that Oracle underpaid minority employees and Original Content reviews the creepy Netflix series “You.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Sony Pictures is taking audiences back to Punxsutawney… this time in virtual reality.

Whether it’s an abomination and a perversion of one of the best movies in the Bill Murray oeuvre or a great way to immerse a viewer in one of the most perfectly realized worlds brought to the silver screen (I unrepentantly love Groundhog Day) is TBD. That’s for players to decide.

In Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son players embody Phil Connors Jr., the son of Groundhog Day’s central character.

For anyone not familiar with the film, Bill Murray’s character was forced to relive the same day until he made all of the right choices to change the trajectory of his life.

In the sequel, his kid faces the same dilemma, reliving the same day over and over until, as Sony’s messaging puts it, “he learns the true value of friends and family.”

Published and produced by Sony Pictures Virtual Reality, the VR Groundhog Day sequel is co-produced by MWM Immersive, the division of Madison Wells Media — which also made Chained: A Victorian Nightmare — and developed by Tequila Works, the Madrid-based video game developer behind Deadlight and RiME.

Source: Tech Crunch

2019 has been good to the Austin startup scene so far.

Combined, Austin startups have raised $240.3 million in January. That’s not much less than the nearly $300 million raised in all of Q4 2018. And since the beginning of the year, the Texas capital has seen a number of double-digit funding rounds and a nearly quarter of a billion dollar acquisition.

Out of 10 known rounds, six were for $10 million or over. In recent years, Austin has historically been known for having more early-stage companies that raised more seed and Series A rounds. But if this month is any indication, its venture scene is maturing.

Just today, RigUp — an on-demand staffing platform for the oil and gas industry — announced it has secured $60 million in a Series C round. The financing was raised at a $300 million post-money valuation, according to Axios. Founders Fund led the round, which also included participation from existing backers Bedrock Capital and Quantum Energy Partners.

Also of interest is who has been investing in the city. Silicon Valley-based Bessemer Venture Partners put money into at least two of the 10 rounds: legal tech software provider DISCO’s $83 million Series E and ScaleFactor’s $30 million Series B. So, Austin startups are definitely attracting money outside of the local venture ecosystem.

Paul O’Brien, CEO of Austin-based MediaTech Ventures, believes the past few weeks provide validation for venture capitalists who have invested in the area.

“The timing is right on the mark. Just a few years into the nascent local startup scene, we witnessed the growth and enthusiasm of local mentorship and angel investment, and years later, the presence of sophisticated startup programs like Techstars, Mass Challenge and Founder Institute… and now, as if on schedule for investors, we’re seeing substantial outcomes,” he told Crunchbase News. “What’s most exciting about being a part of the local startup community is experiencing that this is really just the beginning.”

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the other big deals that were announced in Austin this month:

• On January 3, AlertMedia closed on a $25 million Series C. The company has created a cloud-based mass notification system that aims to streamline notifications across devices and platforms.
• Pensa Systems announced a $5 million Series A toward its mission of making retail more efficient with the use of drones.
• On January 17, as mentioned above, back office automation startup ScaleFactor closed on a $30 million Series B led by Bessemer. The company told me at the time it saw 700 percent customer growth from 2017 to 2018, and its headcount grew by four times during the same period.
• Dosh, maker of a cashback app, on January 22 closed on a $20 million Series B.
• On January 23, Cision, a public relations software company, acquired Austin-based TrendKite, a media monitoring company that leverages AI, for $225 million. TrendKite will continue to be based in the Texas capital and will keep its name, according to this Austin Business Journal piece. And, its CEO Erik Huddleston, becomes president of publicly traded, Chicago-based Cision.
• And, on January 24, Houston transplant DISCO revealed it had raised $83 million. Now, with more than $133 million in VC raised to date, DISCO says it has raised “more than any other enterprise legal tech company.”

With such a great month, Austin now has a lot of pressure to continue the momentum for the rest of the year.

Featured image credit: Mary Ann Azevedo

Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in Europe has asked the company for an “urgent briefing” regarding plans to integrate the underlying infrastructure of its three social messaging platforms.

In a statement posted to its website late last week the Irish Data Protection Commission writes: “Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing this proposal.”

Last week the New York Times broke the news that Facebook intends to unify the backend infrastructure of its three separate products, couching it as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg asserting control over acquisitions whose founders have since left the building.

Instagram founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, left Facebook last year, as a result of rising tensions over reduced independence, according to our sources.

While WhatsApp’s founders left Facebook earlier, with Brian Acton departing in late 2017 and Jan Koum sticking it out until spring 2018. The pair reportedly clashed with Facebook execs over user privacy and differences over how to monetize the end-to-end encrypted platform.

Acton later said Facebook had coached him to tell European regulators assessing whether to approve the 2014 merger that it would be “really difficult” for the company to combine WhatsApp and Facebook user data.

In the event, Facebook went on to link accounts across the two platforms just two years after the acquisition closed. It was later hit with a $122M penalty from the European Commission for providing “incorrect or misleading” information at the time of the merger. Though Facebook claimed it had made unintentional “errors” in the 2014 filing.

A further couple of years on and Facebook has now graduated to seeking full platform unification of separate messaging products.

“We want to build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private,” a spokesperson told us when we asked for a response to the NYT report. “We’re working on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks.”

“As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work,” the spokesperson added, confirming the substance of the NYT report.

There certainly would be a lot of detail to be worked out. Not least the feasibility of legally merging user data across distinct products in Europe, where a controversial 2016 privacy u-turn by WhatsApp — when it suddenly announced it would after all share user data with parent company Facebook (despite previously saying it would never do so), including sharing data for marketing purposes — triggered swift regulatory intervention.

Facebook was forced to suspend marketing-related data flows in Europe. Though it has continued sharing data between WhatsApp and Facebook for security and business intelligence purposes, leading to the French data watchdog to issue a formal notice at the end of 2017 warning the latter transfers also lack a legal basis.

A court in Hamburg, Germany, also officially banned Facebook from using WhatsApp user data for its own purposes.

Early last year, following an investigation into the data-sharing u-turn, the UK’s data watchdog obtained an undertaking from WhatsApp that it would not share personal data with Facebook until the two services could do so in a way that’s compliant with the region’s strict privacy framework, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Facebook only avoided a fine from the UK regulator because it froze data flows after the regulatory intervention. But the company clearly remains on watch — and any fresh moves to further integrate the platforms would trigger instant scrutiny, evidenced by the shot across the bows from the DPC in Ireland (Facebook’s international HQ is based in the country).

The 2016 WhatsApp-Facebook privacy u-turn also occurred prior to Europe’s GDPR coming into force. And the updated privacy framework includes a regime of substantially larger maximum fines for any violations.

Under the regulation watchdogs also have the power to ban companies from processing data. Which, in the case of a revenue-rich data-mining giant like Facebook, could be a far more potent disincentive than even a billion dollar fine.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment on the Irish DPC’s statement and will update this report with any response.

Here’s the full statement from the Irish watchdog:

While we understand that Facebook’s proposal to integrate the Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram platforms is at a very early conceptual stage of development, the Irish DPC has asked Facebook Ireland for an urgent briefing on what is being proposed. The Irish DPC will be very closely scrutinising Facebook’s plans as they develop, particularly insofar as they involve the sharing and merging of personal data between different Facebook companies. Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing this proposal. It must be emphasised that ultimately the proposed integration can only occur in the EU if it is capable of meeting all of the requirements of the GDPR.

Facebook may be hoping that extending end-to-end encryption to Instagram as part of its planned integration effort, per the NYT report, could offer a technical route to stop any privacy regulators’ hammers from falling.

Though use of e2e encryption still does not shield metadata from being harvested. And metadata offers a rich source of inferences about individuals which, under EU law, would certainly constitute personal data. So even with robust encryption across the board of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp the unified messaging platforms could still collectively leak plenty of personal data to their data-mining parent.

Facebook’s apps are also not open source. So even WhatsApp, which uses the respected Signal Protocol for its e2e encryption, remains under its control — with no ability for external audits to verify exactly what happens to data inside the app (such as checking what data gets sent back to Facebook). Users still have to trust Facebook’s implementation but regulators might demand actual proof of bona fide messaging privacy.

Nonetheless, the push by Facebook to integrate separate messaging products onto a single unified platform could be a defensive strategy — intended to throw dust in the face of antitrust regulators as political scrutiny of its market position and power continues to crank up. Though it would certainly be an aggressive defence to more tightly knit separate platforms together.

But if the risk Facebook is trying to shrink is being forced, by competition regulators, to sell off one or two of its messaging platforms it may feel it has nothing to lose by making it technically harder to break its business apart.

At the time of the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp Facebook promised autonomy to their founders. Zuckerberg has since changed his view, according to the NYT — believing integrating all three will increase the utility of each and thus provide a disincentive for users to abandon each service.

It may also be a hedge against any one of the three messaging platforms decreasing in popularity by furnishing the business with internal levers it can throw to try to artifically juice activity across a less popular app by encouraging cross-platform usage.

And given the staggering size of the Facebook messaging empire, which globally sprawls to 2.5BN+ humans, user resistance to centralized manipulation via having their buttons pushed to increase cross-platform engagement across Facebook’s business may be futile without regulatory intervention.

Source: Tech Crunch

Japan, still suffering the consequences of its ‘Lost Decade’ of economic stagnation, is eyeing a transformation more radical than any the industrialized world has ever seen.

Boldly identified as “Society 5.0” Japan describes its initiative as a purposeful effort to create a new social contract and economic model by fully incorporating the technological innovations of the fourth industrial revolution. It envisions embedding these innovations into every corner of its ageing society. Underpinning this effort is a mandate for sustainability, bound tightly to the new United Nations global goals, the SDG’s. Japan wants to create, in its own words, a ‘super-smart’ society, and one that will serve as a roadmap for the rest of the world.

Japan hosts its first ever G20 summit in 2019 and this grand initiative will be on the agenda at the official B20 (Business 20) summit headed by the chairman of Hitachi .

Components of Society 5.0 and its implications for the US

Society 5.0 addresses a number of key pillars: infrastructure, finance tech, healthcare, logistics, and of course AI. The markets being grown in Japan are impressive. In robotics they predict $87 billion in investments and the IoT market is poised to hit $6 Billion in 2019

This means we are behind. We have not put enough focus on what AI can do not only for industry, but what it can do to move society forward and solve many of our most pervasive problems.

It isn’t just a problem of lack of investment by the United States government. Just this past September the Department of Defense announced a commitment of  $2 billion over the next five years toward new programs advancing artificial intelligence. This issue lies in the lack of a complete partnership between the United States Government and the private sector. But, why is Japan in the lead?

Full Fledged Embrace of AI and Cutting Edge Technology

Along with $1.44 billion from the government for AI funding, the Innovation Network Corp. of Japan is reorganizing to focus on AI and big data. They are projected to grow to $4 billion and operate to at least 2034. Much like in Britain and France, the government has made it a point to team with the private sector to move all of society forward.

Fresh Ideas to address Persistent Societal Problems

Along with the governmental and private partnership, Society 5.0 harnesses AI to address problems that continue to plague society. They are looking at how AI can help with the trappings of an aging population, pollution, and most importantly, how create such a sweeping initiate that is also agile enough to adjust to constant change of society everyday.

The goal of the work being done at Hitachi now on Society 5.0 is to create a Human-Centered Society. Technologies and innovations need to be leveraged to aid humans and our advancement, not to replace us in anyway.

How do American Technologists Close the Gap and partner with Japan?

First, in Silicon valley and beyond, American technologists and entrepreneurs must create a partnership between themselves and the U.S. government. Only when working together can we reach our full potential.

Take the British government as a model. This past April they announced a that it had put together “an AI deal worth more than £1 billion” that includes public and private funding.

France sees the opportunity and is betting on AI as well. This past spring President Emmanuel Macron announced an AI plan that includes $1.6 billion in funding, new research centers, data-sharing initiatives. The road has been clearly mapped for the U.S., just follow the path.

Next, American technologists and entrepreneurs must focus on certain industries and their ability to improve society in its entirety. There are 4 major industries technologists and entrepreneurs can focus on, and disrupt by modeling Japan’s Society 5.0 ideas and approach.

Healthcare

Japan’s society is more heavily weighted towards people over 60 than the rest of the world. In turn, more healthcare is needed to support people for a longer period of time as people live longer.

American technologists and entrepreneurs can capitalize by investing in and developing cognitive AI technologies that will greatly lessen the time needed to complete administrative tasks to allowing medical professionals to concentrate more on actually providing healthcare.

A UK  report suggests approximately 10% of NHS operational expenses could be saved through AI and automation. If this can be mirrored and then improved in the US the rising cost of healthcare, and declining public health can be tackled simultaneously.

Mobility

While the population in urban centers is growing, rural areas are being left with diminished access to everyday needs like, transportation, stores, hospitals, and community centers.
Continue to invest and develop autonomous vehicles, drones and single-driver cargo truck convoys. Access to basic everyday needs will not be a given for those residing far from urban centers. Here lies another dual opportunity for technologists and entrepreneurs, service those in need while simultaneously moving tech and society forward.

Infrastructure

28 percent of major U.S. roads are rated “poor” or in need of a complete rebuild. AI and other technologies such as robots, drones, sensors and IoT will help solve these problems. How? If only 10 percent of cars in the  U.S. became self-driving, those 26 million vehicles would generate 38.4 zettabytes of data annually.  In one year that would create over eight times the volume of the world’s current data.

Not only must we increase investment in autonomous vehicles, but we must make a concerted effort to leverage the data they will produce. Technologists and entrepreneurs will have an unprecedented advantage to leverage this data to predict everything from needs of infrastructure improvements to all bridges and roads being used by the autonomous vehicles. Companies like Hitachi are the ones you should look to work with. They’re doing amazing things in infrastructure today. How can this be translated to the U.S.? That is a question for you to ask and ultimately solve.

Mass transit is far ahead in Japan as well. Japan’s maglev train set a world record speed of 375 mph. With vast expanses of the United States landscape, and the ever growing challenges of flying, the rail transport industry is ripe for the picking. Plans for the midwest and the west coast have seem to come and go. What will be the plan that actually works?

Fintech

Blockchain is a  solution that will advance security, transparency and fraud prevention in society. Cognitive AI is producing results towards the goals of Society 5.0, ether it be a cashless society or a consumer focused one. Voice prompted AI assistants are currently providing consumer support by depositing money, performing trades, mastering trading platforms, networking, and onboarding of customers. This Omni-channel integration will result in finance and banking evolving to grow around customers needs. With this evolution we will see far less needs for cash and brick and mortar banks.

In the end, data alone is just code without meaning to its user. But, when technologists and entrepreneurs implement AI to its max potential a true difference will be seen. In Society 5.0, humanity and machines will solve the greatest issues society faces in the 21st century. We must embrace what Japan is creating with Society 5.0, or we will simply become a vestige of the technological past.

Source: Tech Crunch