Ockam raises $4.9 million in seed funding to make it easier for developers to secure and scale their IoT apps

Ockam, a two-year-old, Bay Area-based company that’s selling tools to developers so they can establish an “architecture for trust” within their connected device applications, has raised $4.9 million in seed funding, including from Core Ventures, Okta Ventures, SGH Capital, and Future Ventures.

This serverless platform for IoT development is being led by CEO Matthew Gregory and CTO Mrinal Wadhwa, two cofounders with noteworthy backgrounds.

Before launching Ockam in the fall of 2017, Gregory was an “intrapreneur” at Microsoft, where he says he helped lead Azure’s pivot into open source software and container services. He also spent a couple of years at Salesforce as a product manager and, interestingly, spent a few years years ago as a system engineer working for Stars & Stripes, a syndicate of the yacht-racing competition America’s Cup where he tells us he led an engineering effort to build custom systems of sensors, analytics software and wireless communications tools needed to help the racing team make better decisions.

Wadhwa was meanwhile the CTO of another privately held IoT company, Fybr, that promises real-time data analytics capable of decision making at the edge (versus in the cloud).

Some of what the startup is promising is that, using its technology, IoT systems developers will be able to build more scalable connected systems — as well, crucially, as more secure ones How? Partly through crytpographic keys and partly by assigning credentials to different entities, from devices to people to assets to services.

The company is one of a growing spate of companies hoping developers will increasingly turn to them instead of building out their own software infrastructure.

For example, Particle, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based platform for Internet of Things devices that has ambitions similar to those of Ockam, recently closed on $40 million in funding in a round that brought its total funding to $81 million).

Ockam raised its seed funding over two tranches, including a $3.2 million round that closed in May and an additional $1.7 million injection from Future Ventures in more recent weeks.


Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook bowed to a Singapore government order to brand a news post as false

Facebook added a correction notice to a post by a fringe news site that Singapore’s government said contained false information. It’s the first time the government has tried to enforce a new law against ‘fake news’ outside its borders.

The post by fringe news site States Times Review (STR), contained “scurrilous accusations” according to the Singapore government.

The States Times Review post contained accusations about the arrest of an alleged whistleblower and election-rigging.

Singapore authorities had previously ordered STR editor Alex Tan to correct the post but the Australian citizen said he would “not comply with any order from a foreign government”.

Mr Tan, who was born in Singapore, said he was an Australian citizen living in Australia and was not subject to the law. In a follow-up post, he said he would “defy and resist every unjust law”. He also posted the article on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Docs and challenged the government to order corrections there as well.

On the note Facebook said it “is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information”. They then embedded the note at the bottom of the original post, which was not altered. Only social media users in Singapore could see the note.

In a statement, Facebook said it had applied the label as required under the “fake news” law. The law, known as the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation bill, came into effect in October.

According to Facebook’s “transparency report” it often blocks content that governments allege violate local laws, with nearly 18,000 cases globally in the year to June.

Facebook — which has its Asia headquarters in Singapore — said it hoped assurances that the law would not impact on free expression “will lead to a measured and transparent approach to implementation”.

Anyone who breaks the law could be fined heavily and face a prison sentence of up to five years. The law also bans the use of fake accounts or bots to spread fake news, with penalties of up to S$1m (£563,000, $733,700) and a jail term of up to 10 years.

Critics say the law’s reach could jeopardize freedom of expression both in the city-state and outside its borders.


Source: Tech Crunch

Original Content podcast: Reasons to be thankful for streaming and Star Wars

Since it’s a holiday week for those of us in the United States, we’ve put together an (even more) unstructured episode of the Original Content podcast.

Among other things, this gives us a chance to update our initial review of “The Mandalorian” by acknowledging the Disney+ show’s breakout character, known unofficially as Baby Yoda — maybe that counts as a spoiler, but he’s all over social media already, and he’s even the subject of new Disney merchandise that seems to have been rushed into production.

Beyond our “Mandalorian” catch-up, Star Wars comes up again during our discussion of things from the streaming and entertainment world that we’re thankful for.

Despite some behind-the-scenes turmoil, the Disney era at Lucasfilm has brought us some delightful films, particularly “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi.” It might seem kind of redundant to praise two of the most commercially successful films of all time, but it’s also an opportunity to address the online backlash and criticism directed primarily at Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy.

Moving beyond the galaxy far, far away, we also discuss topics like Netflix shows (“Another Life”) that we’re excited to see return, plus the streaming series (“See”) and movies (“Marriage Story”) that we’re currently enjoying.

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

And if you want to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro/Thanksgiving plans
5:40 “Mandalorian” follow-up
18:33 What we’re thankful for


Source: Tech Crunch

This Week in Apps: Apple Arcade updates, TikTok distances itself from China, Kardashians send shady app to No. 1

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. What are developers talking about? What do app publishers and marketers need to know? How are politics impacting the App Store and app businesses? And which apps are everyone using?

This week, we’re discussing the impact of the CFIUS investigation into TikTok, the further fallout of Apple’s vaping app ban, updates to Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass subscription-based app stores, Apple’s breaking changes that rolled out without warning (thanks, Apple!) and a shady app that reached the top of the App Store thanks to a big Kardashians-led endorsement, among other things.

Headlines

TikTok separates further from its Chinese parent

One of the world’s most downloaded and used apps, TikTok, is under a national security review in the U.S. because of its Chinese roots. TikTok parent company, ByteDance, is a China-based operation — something that has raised concerns because of its significant access to U.S. users’ personal data and potential censorship issues.

The company was already working to separate itself further from China before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) began its investigation. For example, it separated the TikTok product, business development, marketing and legal teams from those of its Chinese app, Douyin, and hired consultants to audit how it’s storing U.S. users’ personal data. Following the investigation, it hired more U.S. engineers and set up a U.S.-based team to oversee data management, Reuters reported.

The question now is whether not these moves — along with a promise to not store U.S. user data in China — will be enough. The app collects data including profile information such as name, age, email and phone number, provided by users, as well as photos, videos, and location. Many of TikTok users are younger teens and college students.

Even if you’re “too old” to care about TikTok, CFIUS investigation’s conclusions here will have a larger impact on the global app industry, as they’ll set precedents as to how foreign powers can compete in U.S. app stores.

Oops: Apple releases breaking changes with no warning 

Apple this week introduced new server-to-server notifications for subscriptions that allowed developers to receive real-time updates in a subscription’s status, so they could provide customized experiences for subscribers. Only one problem with the release: Apple broke most server notifications implementations as a result. Developers weren’t given any warning about the APIs that were “scheduled for deprecation,” either, which is not typically how web APIs are managed. To add icing to the cake, not only were the changes released without warning, they were also rolled out on a Friday — there goes the weekend. Thanks, Apple.

The vaping app ban backlash continues

Has Apple crossed the line between protecting its users from dangerous apps to just turning into an overbearing parent policing adults’ ability to make their own choices? Over the past couple of weeks, several have said the latter. Now concerning are arising about what this means for the overall industry and whether or not decisions like this should even be in Apple’s hands in the first place.

As you may recall, Apple earlier made a controversial decision to remove all 181 vaping-related apps from its App Store in wake of news from the CDC about the 47 vaping deaths and thousands of lung injuries. Some early studies point to Vitamin E acetate, an addictive used in THC oil, as the cause. But Apple isn’t worrying about the details of what’s dangerous and what’s not — it just wiped out anything vaping-related, including things like Bluetooth-connected apps that let users control aspects of their vaping devices, like the lights, heat, and updates to the firmware. There’s no backup plan here for those app makers, since web apps don’t offer the same level of functionality. Plus, the ban is also impacting devices used to distribute medication as well as apps designed to help people cut down and eventually quit smoking and vaping by tracking their nicotine usage.

For app entrepreneurs, Apple’s decision in one fell swoop also just destroyed half the vaping app market as their apps will now only run on Android.

The question now is whether or not any of this should be Apple’s decision? While you may personally applaud a vaping app ban — or simply not care because it doesn’t affect you — Apple has made other controversial choices that have a more serious impact. Like when it kicked out the app that aided Hong Kong protestors, for example.

Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass expand their collections

Apple’s subscription-based gaming store and Google’s rival subscription app store, Google Play Pass, have both added new apps since their debuts. Now, the two companies are making users aware of their ongoing efforts to beef up their respective collections. Apple this week shared a video that highlighted over a dozen new Apple Arcade releases that hit this month — the first time it’s released a compilation video featuring multiple titles since its launch.

Meanwhile, Google Play Pass added 37 more apps to bring its total to 274.

What we don’t know yet, is how well the two services are working — or whether they will benefit developers in the long run. And because neither has a Top Charts section, it’s not even clear what apps are most popular or how many downloads they’re seeing.

Apple Arcade adds a “Top Games” chart… well, sorta… OK, not really

Apple took a step to address the above problem with a new section in Apple Arcade called “Top Arcade Games This Week.” We had argued earlier that the lack of visibility into the popularity of titles on Arcade was a disservice to users who wanted quickly and easily find the most popular titles.

But this new section, while fun, doesn’t solve the problem. Top Games, based on what? Downloads? Editorial curation? Both? Is there going to be an API for it?

It’s common knowledge that the App Store’s Top Charts are based on a combination of downloads and velocity. And that data is accessible to third parties like App Annie, Sensor Tower, Apptopia and others who use it to come up with download estimates.

But a “Top Games This Week” section is not the same thing as a real Top Charts section. And by limiting it to only a week’s time, it provides no real insight into whether or not the Arcade is able to produce a lasting hit the way the App Store can, or what those hit titles may be.

Apple has distanced itself from promoting the Top Charts as a means of app discovery for years now. With its big App Store makeover, it shifted its focus more to editorial, curation, and recommendations, rather than downloads. But for a smaller store like Arcade, Top Charts could have value as they would feature some of the best titles from an already exclusive collection — that’s something people would want to see.

Why was a shady photo editor the top app of October?


Source: Tech Crunch

As the new year beckons European investors start moving into new roles

As the Holiday Season approaches, new jobs for players in the tech ecosystem beckon. And this is no less true for investors. Two notable moves have recently happened that are worthy of note in the European scene.

The first is that GR Capital, a pan-European VC, is opening an office in London and has lured Jason Ball, who, earlier this year, left Qualcomm Ventures where had been European Managing Director for over a decade. Ball spent ten years as a mentor at Seedcamp and individually invested in more than ten companies. He was understood to be looking for new challenges, either building a new fund or joining another – so now we have our answer as to what he decided.

Founded in 2016 by Roma Ivaniuk in Ukraine, GR Capital specializes in late-stage VC investments. It has over $70M under management and has invested in Lime, Azimo, WeFox, McMakler, Glovo and Meero among others. The fund has traditionally been known for investing in Eastern Europe, but with a London office and the extremely well-networked Ball under its belt, we should be hearing more from them on the wider European scene in future.

Ivaniuk said in a statement that the move “means we can now drive our pan-European business activities from the continent’s most important VC hub, London.”

Ball said “We see a huge opportunity here to connect the dots between West and East. The London ecosystem is an exciting offering for investors in Eastern Europe, which in turn presents unique R&D and growth opportunities for portfolio companies.”

Meanwhile, Jon Bradford was most recently a partner of Motive Partners and a UK investment pioneer — having founded the Springboard Accelerator that merged with Techstars to become Techstars London, as well as helping to co-found F6S and Tech.eu. But he is also on the move, now joining Dynamo Ventures as its newest partner.

Bradford will be joining Dynamo on a full-time basis having previously been an advisor who helped launch the debut fund. He has invested in over 100 startups over the last decade including Apiary, Hassle, Tray.io, Flitto (that recently IPO’ed in Korea), Sendbird and Chainalysis. Dynamo is a US-EU based seed fund focused on B2B startups in supply chain and mobility. It has invested in 20 startups across the US and overseas, investing in including Sennder (Berlin), Skupos, Stord, Gatik and LEAF Logistics.


Source: Tech Crunch

Startups Weekly: Chinese investors double down on African startups

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about Airbnb’s issues. Before that, I noted Uber’s new “money” team.

Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you’re new, you can subscribe to Startups Weekly here.


China’s pivot to Africa

Three African fintech startups; OPay, PalmPay and East African trucking logistics company Lori Systems, closed large fundraises this year. On their own, the deals aren’t particularly notable, but together, they expose a new trend within the African startup ecosystem.

This year, those three companies brought in a total of $240 million in venture capital funding from 15 different Chinese investors, who’ve become increasingly active in Africa’s tech scene. TechCrunch reporter Jake Bright, who covers African tech, writes that 2019 marks “the year Chinese investors went all in on the continent’s startup scene” — particularly its fintech projects. Why?

“The continent’s 1.2 billion people represent the largest share of the world’s unbanked and underbanked population — which makes fintech Africa’s most promising digital sector,” Bright notes. “In previous years, the country’s interactions with African startups were relatively light compared to deal-making on infrastructure and commodities. Chinese actors investing heavily in African mobile consumer platforms lends to looking at new data-privacy and security issues for the continent.”

Active Chinese investors in Africa include Hillhouse Capital, Meituan-Dianping, GaoRong, Source Code Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, BAI, Redpoint, IDG Capital, Sequoia China, Crystal Stream Capital, GSR Ventures, Chinese mobile-phone maker Transsion and NetEase .

Here’s more of TechCrunch’s recent coverage of Africa startup activity:


VC Deals

It was a short week (Happy Thanksgiving, by the way). But here’s a quick look at the top deals of the last few days.


M&A (VR edition)

Last week, Facebook announced it was buying Beat Games, the game studio behind Beat Saber, a rhythm game that’s equal parts Fruit Ninja and Guitar Hero. Heard of the company? Maybe if you’re a gamer, but if you’re readying this newsletter because of your interest in VC, this company may not have come across your radar.

Why? It’s one of virtual reality’s biggest successes today, but it’s just an eight-person team with no funding.

“I’m really proud that we were able to build the company with this mindset of making decisions based on what is good for the game and not what is the most profitable thing,” Beat Games CEO told TechCrunch earlier this year. Read about Facebook’s acquisition here and an in-depth profile of the small team here.


Equity

If you like this newsletter, you will definitely enjoy Equity, which brings the content of this newsletter to life — in podcast form! Join myself and Equity co-host Alex Wilhelm every Friday for a quick breakdown of the week’s biggest news in venture capital and startups.

This week, we discussed Weekend Fund’s new vehicle, Cocoon’s new friend-tracking app and the unfortunate demise of a startup called Omni. You can listen here.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotify and all the casts.


Source: Tech Crunch

Mixcloud data breach exposes over 20 million user records

A data breach at Mixcloud, a U.K.-based audio streaming platform, has left more than 20 million user accounts exposed after the data was put on sale on the dark web.

The data breach happened earlier in November, according to a dark web seller who supplied a portion of the data to TechCrunch, allowing us to examine and verify the authenticity of the data.

The data contained usernames, email addresses, and passwords that appear to be scrambled with the SHA-2 algorithm, making the passwords near impossible to unscramble. The data also contained account sign-up dates and the last-login date. It also included the country from which the user signed up, their internet (IP) address, and links to profile photos.

We verified a portion of the data by validating emails against the site’s password reset feature.

The exact amount of data stolen isn’t known. The seller said there were 20 million records, but listed 21 million records on the dark web. But the data we sampled suggested there may have been as many as 22 million records.

The data was listed for sale for $4,000, or about 0.5 bitcoin. We’re not linking to the dark web listing.

Mixcloud last year secured a $11.5 million cash injection from media investment firm WndrCo, led by Hollywood media proprietor Jeffrey Katzenberg.

It’s the latest in a string of high profile data breaches in recent months. The breached data came from the same dark web seller who also alerted TechCrunch to the StockX breach earlier this year. The apparel trading company initially claimed its customer-wide password reset was for “system updates,” but later came clean, admitting it was hacked, exposing more than four million records, after TechCrunch obtained a portion of the breached data.

An email to Mixcloud’s press mailbox bounced, and its last listed public relations agency told TechCrunch it no longer represents the company.

As a London-based company, Mixcloud falls under U.K. and European data protection rules. Companies can be fined up to 4% of their annual turnover for violations of European GDPR rules.

Read more:


Source: Tech Crunch

Gift Guide: For the budding video creator

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2019 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’re here to help! We’ll be rolling out gift guides from now through the end of December. You can find our other guides right here.

If you’re interested in cameras and taking pictures, you should definitely check out our 2019 Photography Gift Guide, but if you’re specifically looking to encourage a developing creator who wants to work with video on their preferred platform of choice, be it YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or any other, you’ve come to the right place. From smartphone accessories to get the most out of their built-in cameras, to stuff for people with more expensive dedicated camera setups, we’ve got it all.

Hex Bags camera backpacks – $190-$240

A good camera bag is a necessary accessory for anyone who is shooting with something other than their phone, and the Hex Back Loader DSLR Backpack and Hex Cinema Backpack are great options that are actually less expensive than some of the bigger brand options out there, but with modern styling that means they look less like something designed for function alone, and more like a backpack that would actually draw compliments. The Back Loader is perfect for a mirrorless kit, and should easily slide under the seat in front of you on an airplane, while the Cinema has plenty of room for larger DSLRs and lenses.

Zhiyun Weebil-S gimbal – $350

A good gimbal is a creator’s best friend, since stabilized video footage beats shaky-cam nonsense. The Zhiyun Weebill-S is a new offering from the company that basically provides the perfect blend of size, power, connectivity and control features and more. Its unique design has real advantages in the field vs. other similar gimbals, and it’s not going to break the bank, either.

Mavic Mini – $350

Mavic’s latest drone is all about distilling the consumer drone down to the basics – and it’s great. The $350 Mavic Mini is way, way cheaper than any of their fancier consumer drones, and it offers really excellent 2.7K video that looks cinematic right out of the camera. For anyone publishing on social channels who aren’t concerned about producing 4K content (no one really should be prioritizing that, really), this is the one to get, since it’s small enough it doesn’t need to be registered with the FAA to fly.

Samsung T5 – $100-$400

Samsung’s tiny, portable SSDs have a long history of delivering great reliability and performance in a form factor that’s so portable it’s easily pocketable. The drives come in sizes ranging from 500GB to 2TB, and you should be able to find them on sale in at least one of these configurations going into the holiday season, which means that you can probably find them for even less than that cost range posted above. A good SSD is a must for offloading video captured in camera on SD cards, and some of the newer cameras will let you record directly to these drives via USB-C.

Backup batteries and SD cards – Starting at around $40

These are easy gifts to get video creatives, which never go out of style and which will always be appreciated. You can never have enough spare memory cards, or enough backup batteries. Just make sure you get the right ones for whatever camera system your giftee is using: And for memory, focus on cards like the SanDisk Extreme Pro with 170MB/S  transfer speeds to ensure good performance with 4K video capture.

GoPro Hero8 – $400

A GoPro is an extremely versatile piece of kit for a video creator. The ruggedness, portability, built-in stabilization and range of modes mean you can capture some amazing additional footage to compliment stuff you’re recording on your primary camera – or give you everything you need to capture a great travel vlog in the moment. The newest GoPro Hero8 has features including more advanced stabilization, compatibility with additional video accessories, digital lenses and more tat make it the best camera the company has ever made for creators.

Microphones – $25-$200

A good microphone is a necessity for making good videos, and there are a wide range of options available. To give you just a few options at very different price points, look at the Saramonic SR-XM1. It’s a generally not sold for more than $35, and is dead simple with a 3.5mm connector to plug directly into the camera port on a wide range of devices. Saramonic also makes iPhone mics with lightning connectors for similar prices. Then, at $200, the Rode Wireless Go is more expensive – but still a bargain for a totally wireless microphone system that can provide audio directly to your camera. Pair it with an optional lavalier mic and you’re going to get great results.

 


Source: Tech Crunch

Intel says Qualcomm’s business practices drove it out of the modem chip market

It’s not like this wasn’t among the reasons everywhere suspected when Apple suddenly announced it was buying Intel’s modem business, but now the chipmaker has filed a brief in support of the FTC in an ongoing appeal by Qualcomm of a decision made in May. That decision found in favor of the FTC’s allegations that Qualcomm’s licensing arrangements for its IP around CDMA and LTE technologies have choked out other potential competitors.

Intel, in the filing and a new blog post accompanying and explaining the filing from Intel EVP and General Counsel Steven R. Rodgers, says that “Intel suffered the brunt of Qualcomm’s anticompetitive behaviour, was denied opportunities in the modem market, was prevented from making sales to customers and was forced to sell at prices artificially skewed by Qualcomm.” It also specifically notes that it counts itself among the list of “competitors [Qualcomm] forced out of the modem chip market.”

Earlier this year, Apple and Qualcomm agreed to drop ongoing lawsuits the two sometime-partners had filed agains one another, settling a feud in the courts that had started back in 2017 when Apple accused Qualcomm of overcharging it for use of Qualcomm’s patents. The settlement included Apple paying Qualcomm sone-time sum, and the establishment of a six-year licensing agreement, as well as a supply agreement for Qualcomm chipsets to be used in Apple products.

At the same time, Intel announced it was exiting the modem business – an announcement that seemed timely, given that Apple has sought to use Intel modems in recent iPhones to bypass Qualcomm, which is an industry leader when it comes to the supply of wireless communication chips used in smartphones. Then in July, Apple announced that it was acquiring the majority of Intel’s smartphone business, which led many to speculate that eventually Apple will seek to develop its own wireless communication chips in-house in a longer-term play to reduce its reliance on Qualcomm.

Intel clearly isn’t content to just let the situation lie, and since its blog post notes that it has invested “billions” in the modem business it built and then sold to Apple, you get a clear idea of why – definitely sounds like it didn’t recoup all of its sunk costs in the Apple deal, which was worth around $1 billion all told.


Source: Tech Crunch

Pixpay is a challenger bank for teens focused on pocket money

Meet Pixpay, a French startup that wants to replace cash when you’re handing out pocket money to your kids. Anybody who is older than 10 years old can create a Pixpay account, get a debit card and manage pocket money.

Challenger banks are nothing new, but they’re still mostly targeted towards adults. If you want to create an N26 or Revolut account, you need to be at least 18 years old. You can create a Lydia account if you’re at least 14 years old with parental consent.

Pixpay, like Kard, wants to fill that gap and offer modern payment methods to teens so that you can ditch cash altogether. Parents and kids both download the Pixpay app to interact with the service.

A few days after creating an account, your child receives a Mastercard. It offers the same features that you’d expect from a challenger bank — you can customize the PIN code, lock it and unlock it, receive a notification with each transaction and restrict some features, such as limits, ATM withdrawals, online payments and payments abroad. Pixpay also lets you generate virtual cards for online payments.

In addition to some spending analytics, users can create projects and set money aside to buy an expensive thing after months of savings. Parents can also define an interest rate on a vault account to teach children how to save money. In the future, Pixpay wants to let teens collect money after a babysitting job for instance.

As for parents, they can send money instantly from the Pixpay app. You can top up your Pixpay account with your favorite debit card and send money on a regular basis (€4 per week for instance) or for one-off payment (here’s €15 for your movie ticket and fast food).

Parents can see an overview of multiple accounts in case you have multiple children using Pixpay. Eventually, the startup wants to let multiple parents manage the account of their child, which could be useful for separated couples.

Pixpay costs €2.99 per month per card. Payments and ATM withdrawals in the Eurozone are free. Transactions in foreign currencies cost 2% in foreign exchange and ATM withdrawals outside of the Eurozone cost €2.

The startup has raised $3.4 million (€3.1 million) from Global Founders Capital. The company partners with Treezor, a banking-as-a-service platform that lets you generate cards and e-wallet accounts using an API.


Source: Tech Crunch