Month: May 2021

Almost exactly a month ago, researchers revealed a notorious malware family was exploiting a never-before-seen vulnerability that let it bypass macOS security defenses and run unimpeded. Now, some of the same researchers say another malware can sneak onto macOS systems, thanks to another vulnerability.

Jamf says it found evidence that the XCSSET malware was exploiting a vulnerability that allowed it access to parts of macOS that require permission — such as accessing the microphone, webcam or recording the screen — without ever getting consent.

XCSSET was first discovered by Trend Micro in 2020 targeting Apple developers, specifically their Xcode projects that they use to code and build apps. By infecting those app development projects, developers unwittingly distribute the malware to their users, in what Trend Micro researchers described as a “supply-chain-like attack.” The malware is under continued development, with more recent variants also targeting Macs running the newer M1 chip.

Once the malware is running on a victim’s computer, it uses two zero-days — one to steal cookies from the Safari browser to get access to a victim’s online accounts, and another to quietly install a development version of Safari, allowing the attackers to modify and snoop on virtually any website.

But Jamf says the malware was exploiting a previously undiscovered third zero-day in order to secretly take screenshots of the victim’s screen.

macOS is supposed to ask the user for permission before it allows any app — malicious or otherwise — to record the screen, access the microphone or webcam, or open the user’s storage. But the malware bypassed that permissions prompt by sneaking in under the radar by injecting malicious code into legitimate apps.

Jamf researchers Jaron Bradley, Ferdous Saljooki, and Stuart Ashenbrenner explained in a blog post, shared with TechCrunch, that the malware searches for other apps on the victim’s computer that are frequently granted screen-sharing permissions, like Zoom, WhatsApp and Slack, and injects malicious screen recording code into those apps. This allows the malicious code to “piggyback” the legitimate app and inherit its permissions across macOS. Then, the malware signs the new app bundle with a new certificate to avoid getting flagged by macOS’ built-in security defenses.

The researchers said that the malware used the permissions prompt bypass “specifically for the purpose of taking screenshots of the user’s desktop,” but warned that it was not limited to screen recording. In other words, the bug could have been used to access the victim’s microphone, webcam or capture their keystrokes, such as passwords or credit card numbers.

It’s not clear how many Macs the malware was able to infect using this technique. But Apple confirmed to TechCrunch that it fixed the bug in macOS 11.4, which was made available as an update today.

Source: Tech Crunch

Over the last year, Instagram has added a slew of features to help independent creators make a living, like Instagram Shop and Shopping in Reels. Today, Instagram launched new Insights for Reels and Live on its Professional Dashboard, giving businesses and creators essential data about the reach of their content. These tools will help Reels catch up with its competitor TikTok, which already offers users detailed analytics. As Instagram and TikTok continue trying to keep up with one another, it can only be a good thing for influencers and small businesses that use these platforms to bolster their income. 

Previously, Instagram creators could only view publicly available metrics, like the views, likes, or comments on a Reel. Now, they will be able to access data like Accounts Reached, Saves, and Shares for their Reels. Instagram will also share the number of Peak Concurrent Viewers that tune in to watch their Live videos. Plus, in the Account Insights section of the app, Instagram will add breakdowns that show users what kinds of accounts they are reaching, and which content formats are generating their strongest engagement. 

For entrepreneurs and content creators whose businesses run on social commerce, these analytics might not change the game, but they certainly make it easier to play. Shopping in Reels makes in-app sales more convenient, but until now, scant data was available to help businesses tailor their Reels to reach potential customers. On the other hand, TikTok’s analytics have long provided creators with data on their videos’ average watch time, types of traffic sources, and performance by geographic location. The viral video app announced earlier this month that it would work with specific brands, like the streetwear label Hype, to test in-app sales. This would deepen its competition with Instagram, but it’s still unclear when the feature will be widely available. So, Instagram’s Insights, combined with established in-app shopping, can create a perfect storm for content creators to better reach and monetize their target audiences.

“I always thought it was weird that there were no Insights for Reels. Sometimes it feels like shooting in the dark,” Quinn Jones told TechCrunch. Jones is one of the owners of KIKAY, a handmade jewelry business based in Los Angeles. With over 90,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, the Gen-Z creators rely on social media to expand their audience and increase their sales. Though KIKAY has gone viral on TikTok, Jones said that Instagram has been the best way for the small business to gain followers.

“Insights are definitely going to be useful going forward,” said Jones. “It’s currently hard to tell the actual effective reach your videos have, and seeing Insights means more feedback to help improve content.”

For influencers, these analytics are also helpful for collaborating with brands on sponsored content. 

“I’ve been wanting Insights for Reels for the longest time. All we know now is views, likes, and comments,” said Cara Cochran, an LGBTQ+ content creator and microinfluencer. She notes that brands have already been pushing creators to make videos on Reels ever since Instagram redesigned its interface to place the short videos front-and-center. 

“Now that they are rolling out analytics, I think we will see a lot of brands push for more and more Reels instead of just static posts,” she says. “I think it brings their products to life in a whole new way, and it almost works like a commercial for them instead of just a static ad.” 

Instagram will begin rolling out Insights today. The company also says that over the coming months, it will add tools to help creators measure engagement over a preset time frame and begin to support Insights on desktop. 

Source: Tech Crunch

How’s your Monday going? If you’re Apple, the answer is probably somewhere between “very busy” to “gaaaaaaah.” The company just dropped a whole bunch of new OS updates today, including iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS, all ahead of the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off (virtually) on June 7.

Indeed, iOS and iPadOS are the headliners here — if for no other reason than the fact that they’ll impact the most devices. The public release of iOS/iPadOS 14.6 brings a couple of biggish features, including the addition of paid podcast subscriptions and Apple Card Family, both announced at a recent hardware event.

The former allows podcasters to charge for subscriptions to their show (imagine that!), with Apple taking a 30% commission for the first year. That will halve in a year. The latter, meanwhile, makes it possible for Apple Card owners to effectively split a card, with the various responsibilities that entails.

CEO Tim Cook noted at the time of announcement:

One of the things that became apparent to us in the beginning [of launching Apple Card] was a lack of fairness in the way the industry calculated credit scores when there were two holders of a credit card. One of you got the benefit of building a good credit history, and the other did not. We want to reinvent the way this works.

MacOS 11.4 brings support for additional graphics cards, a number of bug fixes and, like the new iOS, support for paid podcast subs. Ditto that last part and Apple Card Family for the new watchOS 7.5, along with support for additional health features in Malaysia and Peru, as well as expense tracking for the Apple Card. TVOS/HomePod 14.6, meanwhile, are getting bug fixes and some color balance changes for the former.

Along with all of this, the company also announced the slate of programming for this year’s virtual WWDC. Things will kick off on June 7 at 10 a.m. PT with the keynote. That’s where the big news on the latest version of all of the above will be announced — and, hopefully, some hardware, as well. At 2 p.m. the company will be offering more information with its annual Platforms State of the Union.

The full schedule is available here.

Source: Tech Crunch

Solidus Labs, a company that says its surveillance and risk-monitoring software can detect manipulation across cryptocurrency trading platforms, is today announcing $20 million in Series A funding led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Hanaco Ventures, Avon Ventures, 645 Ventures, the cryptocurrencies derivative exchange FTX,  and also a sprinkling of government officials, including former CFTC commissioner Chris Giancarlo and former SEC commissioner Troy Paredes.

It’s pretty great timing, given the various signals coming from the U.S. government just last week that it’s intent on improving its crypto monitoring efforts — such as the U.S. Treasury’s call for stricter cryptocurrency compliance with the IRS.

Of course, Solidus didn’t spring into existence last week. Rather, Solidus was founded in 2017 by several former Goldman Sachs employees who worked on the firm’s electronic trading desk for equities. At the time, Bitcoin was only becoming buzzier, but while the engineers anticipated different use cases for the cryptocurrency, they also recognized that a lack of compliance tools would be a barrier to its adoption by bigger financial institution, so they left to build these.

Fast forward and today Solidus employs 30 people, has raised $23.75 million altogether, and is the process of doubling its head count to address growing demand. We talked with Solidus’s New York-based cofounder and CEO Asaf Meir — who was himself one of those former Goldman engineers — about the company late last week. Excerpts from chat follow, edited lightly for length.

TC: Who are your customers?

AM: We work with exchanges, broker dealers, OTC desks, liquidity providers, and regulators — anyone who is exposed to the risk of buying and selling cryptocurrencies crypto assets or digital assets, whatever you want to call them.

TC: What are you promising to uncover for them?

AM: What we detect, largely speaking, is volume and price manipulation, and that has to do with wash trading, spoofing, layering, pump and dumps, and an additional growing library of crypto native alerts that truly only exist in our unique market.

We had a 400% increase in inbound demand over 2020 driven largely by two factors, I think. One is regulatory scrutiny. Globally, regulators have gone off to market participants, letting them know that they have to ask for permission not forgiveness. The second reason — which I like better — is the drastic institutional increase in appetite toward exposure for this asset class. Every institution, the first question they ask any executing platform is: ‘What are your risk mitigation tools? How do you make sure there is market integrity?’

TC: We talked a couple of months ago, and you mentioned having a growing pipeline of customers, like the trading platform Bittrex in Seattle. Is demand coming primarily from the U.S.?

AM: We have demand in Asia and in Europe, as well, so we will be our opening offices there, too.

TC: Is your former employer Goldman a customer?

AM: I can’t comment on that, but I would say there isn’t a bank right now that isn’t thinking about how they’re going to get exposure to crypto assets, and in order to do that in a safe, compliant and robust way, they have to employ crypto-specific solutions.

Right now, there’s the new frontier —  the clients we’re currently working with, which are these crypto-pure exchanges, broker dealers. liquidity providers, and even traditional financial institutions that are coming into crypto and opening a crypto operation or a crypto desk. Then there’s the new new frontier; your NFTs, stablecoins, indexes, lending platforms, decentralized protocols and God knows what [else] all of a sudden reaching out to us, telling us they want to do the right thing, to ensure the users on their platform are well-protected, and that trading activities are audited, and [to enlist us] to prevent any manipulation.

TC: How does your subscription service work and who is building the tech?

AM: We consume private data from our clients — all their training data —  and we then put it in our detection models, which we ultimately surface through insights and alerts on our dashboard, which they have access to.

As for who is building it, we have a lot of fintech engineers who are coming from Goldman and Morgan Stanley and Citi and bringing that traditional knowledge of large trading systems at scale; we also have incredible data scientists out of Israel whose expertise is in anomaly detection, which they are applying to financial crime, working with us.

TC: What do these crimes look like?

AM: When we started out, there was much more wholesale manipulation happening whether through wash trading or pump-and-dumps — things that are more easy to perform. What we’re seeing today are extremely sophisticated manipulation schemes where bad actors are able to exploit different executing platforms. We’re quite literally surfacing new alerts that if you were to use a legacy, rule-based system you wouldn’t be able to [surface] because you’re not really sure what you’re looking for. We oftentimes have an alert that we haven’t named yet; we just know that this type of behavior is considered manipulative in nature and that our client should be looking into it.

TC: Can you elaborate a bit more about these new anomalies?

AM: I’m conflicted about how much can we share of our clients’ private data. But one thing we’re seeing is [a surge in] account extraction attacks, which is when through different ways, bad actors are able to gain access to an account’s funds and are able in a sophisticated way to trade out of the exchange or broker dealer or custodian. That’s happening in different social engineering-related ways, but we’re able, through account deviation and account profiling, to alert the exchange or broker dealer or financial institution we’re working with to avoid that.

We’re about detection and prevention, not about tracing [what went wrong and where] after the fact. And we can do that regardless of knowing even personal identifiable information about that account. It’s not about the name or the IP address; it’s all about the attributes of trading. In fact, if we have an exchange in Hong Kong that’s experiencing a pump-and-dump on a certain coin pair, we can preemptively warn the rest of our client base so they can take steps to prepare and protect themselves.

TC: On the prevention front, could you also stop that activity on the Hong Kong exchange? Are you empowered by your clients to step in if you detect something anomalous?

AM: We’re bomb sniffing dogs, so we’re not coming to disable the bot. We know how to take the data and point out manipulation, but it’s then up to the financial institution to handle the case.

Pictured above: Seated left to right is CTO Praveen Kumar and CEO Asaf Meir. Standing is COO Chen Arad.

Source: Tech Crunch

Three months after air transport data giant SITA reported a data breach, we are still learning about the damage.

Air India said this week that personal data of about 4.5 million passengers had been compromised following the incident at SITA, Indian flag carrier airline’s data processor. The stolen information included  passengers’ name, credit card details, date of birth, contact information, passport information, ticket information, Star Alliance and Air India frequent flyer data, Air India said in a statement (PDF).

CVV/CVC data of credit cards were not held by SITA, said Air India as it urged passengers to change passwords “wherever applicable to ensure safety of their personal data.”

The attack compromised data of passengers who had registered with the Indian airline over the past decade, between August 26, 2011 and February 3, 2021, Air India said in a statement.

The revelation comes months after SITA said it had suffered a data breach that involved passenger data. At the time, SITA said it had notified several airlines — Malaysia Airlines, Finnair, Singapore Airlines, Jeju Air, Cathay Pacific, Air New Zealand, and Lufthansa — of the breach.

The Geneva, Switzerland-headquartered firm — which is said to serve 90% of the world’s airlines — had declined to reveal the specific data that had been compromised at the time of disclosure in early March, citing an investigation — which is still ongoing.

Air India said that it was first notified about the cyber attack by SITA on February 25, but the nature of the data was only provided to it on March 25 and April 5.

The struggling Indian airline, which has been surviving on taxpayer’s money, claimed that it had investigated the security incident, secured the compromised servers, engaged with unnamed external specialists, notified the credit card issuers, and had reset passwords of its frequent flyer program.

Air India is the latest Indian firm to disclose a data breach in recent quarters. Payments giant MobiKwik said in late March that it was investigating claims of a data breach that allegedly exposed private information of nearly 100 million users.

Alleged records of nearly 20 million BigBasket (a top grocery delivery startup in India that is now owned by local conglomerate Tata) customers leaked on the dark web for anyone to download in late April. A security lapse at Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms exposed results of some users who had used its tool to check their coronavirus symptoms. Indian state West Bengal and giant blood test firm Dr Lal PathLabs suffered similar breaches. Air India’s peer, Spicejet, also confirmed a data breach last year.

Read more:

• MobiKwik investigating data breach after 100M user records found online
• Breach at Indian airline SpiceJet affects 1.2 million passengers
• Dr Lal PathLabs, one of India’s largest blood test labs, exposed patient data
• Security lapse at India’s Jio exposed coronavirus symptom checker results
• Alleged records of 20 million BigBasket users published online

Source: Tech Crunch

Startups used to be obsessed with billboards. It was the first thing I noticed when I moved to San Francisco: venture-backed companies including Eaze, Airbnb, and notoriously, Brex, would post large billboard advertisements all over the city to grab attention and eyeballs. When I dug into it more, I learned this type of old school, outdoor advertising was a response to the increasingly crowded online channels, such as Facebook and Instagram advertisements.

Well, folks, years later, we have a new response to crowded marketing channels: Ditch the billboards and just buy a media company instead. There has been a recent push for startups and venture capital firms to acquire or create media companies, which I’d argue is them finding a creative way to position content marketing. This past week, Axios discovered that Coinbase is launching a media operation about cryptocurrency. At the same time, Clubhouse wants to hire freelance writers, while its biggest lead investor to-date, Andreessen Horowitz, has ambitions to open up an opinion desk. Other news bits like The Skimm exploring a potential sale and Hubspot acquiring the Hustle also add to the narrative of broader media ambitions across tech.

We got into the impact of a venture-backed media push on Equity, our award-winning (!) podcast, this week. My take, as you can tell by this introduction, is that it’s not a rush to compete with journalism. It’s a rush to compete with a noisy world, and rebrand advertisements to media operations.

I could talk about journalism and tech and media forever, but that is all on that topic today. In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll get into new IPOs, startups providing upfront revenue to other startups and tactical advice on building versus buying a tech stack. As always, you can find me podcasting @Equitypod and tweeting at @nmasc_.

IP(Oats)

Oatly went public this week, and there entirely weren’t enough jokes or puns about it. (Although I did appreciate this one). My complaint aside, it’s been a busy week for the public markets.

Here’s what to know: Marqueta, which is focused on card issuing and payments tech, has a fascinating S-1 filing — including what I’d say it’s a Peloton-Affirm relationship with Square. Alex dug into the numbers and told you what to think about its filing in The Exchange.

And a splash of oat milk please:

• Can Squarespace dodge the direct listing value trap?
• Fast growth pushes an unprofitable no-code startup into the public markets: Inside Monday.com’s IPO filing
• WalkMe is going public: Let’s stroll through its numbers

Image Credits: Getty Images / Eugene Mymrin

Build or buy?

Telemedicine needs to prepare for a post-pandemic world, which comes with its own upfront costs, risks, and, as Marcela points out, opportunities. Around $3.1 billion in funding flowed into the sector in 2020 — about three times what we saw in 2019, according to her latest story. In order to get money and impact out, startups have some work to do.

Here’s what to know: It’s time for you to read a marketmap about telemedicine, from its current state, to different tensions, to affordability and the out-of-pocket dynamics that no one talks about.

And here’s some dessert to finish your healthy meal:

• Should startups build or buy telehealth infrastructure
• Ro acquires modern fertility in a reportedly $225 million deal 

Image Credits: MoMorad / Getty Images

Pipe’s get burst

Everyone is paying attention to Pipe, which just raised $250 million at a $2 billion valuation. As Mary Ann puts it, the company is claiming to be the Nasdaq for revenue, and it gives SaaS companies a way to get their revenue upfront by “pairing them with investors on a marketplace who will pay a discounted rate for the annual value of those contracts.”

Here’s what to know: That wasn’t the only check that went into startups providing other startups with upfront revenue this week. Uncapped, which is the European equivalent of Pipe, raised $80 million in funding. Put differently, in less than 24 hours, TechCrunch reported that nearly $330 million went into backing the concept of startups providing other startups with upfront revenue.

Other dollar signs to pay attention to:

• Bain Capital Ventures raised $1.3 billion to fund young startups, and young VC firms, too
• Gojek and Tokopedia merge to form GoTo Group

Image Credits: MirageC / Getty Images

Around TC

TechCrunch is looking for 20 early-stage companies to feature in Startup Battlefield at TC Disrupt 2021 this year. Startups receive a feature article on TechCrunch.com, intensive pitch training from the TC team, the chance to win $100,000 in equity free prize money, and the attention of thousands of global press and investors.

So, what are you waiting for? Apply by May 27!

Across the week

Seen on TechCrunch

• Crypto and blockchain must accept they have a problem, then lead in sustainability
• What has four wheels and loses money?
• Twitter launches account verification applications
• Everything Google announced at I/O today

Seen on Extra Crunch

• Mapping out one edtech company’s $200M bet on lifelong learning
• For companies that use ML, labeled data is the key differentiator
• The battle for voice recognition inside vehicles is heating up
• How Expensify got to $100M in revenue by hiring ‘stem cells’ and not ‘cogs in a wheel’

Thanks for reading! Do something that requires zero technology this week. After, of course, you share this newsletter with at least two people.

Always,

N

Source: Tech Crunch

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.

Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors.

The huge sale of Utah-based startup Divvy to Bill.com is still bouncing around my head this week, not only because the $2.5 billion exit was huge for both the company and its local scene, but also because its target market is exciting to watch.

Divvy competes in what we call the corporate spend market with a few other unicorns, including Ramp and Brex. Now with Divvy taken off the table, the pair of competitors are differentiating in a few ways that matter.

And Brex is getting back on its billboard game.

This week Brex announced that it is rolling out IRL advertising in a few American cities. Residents of San Francisco back when Brex was a baby will recall how the startup plastered its brand all over the city. Essentially, it was a cheap way to get a lot of impressions.

Now the startup is taking the strategy to Houston and Miami and D.C. Why? The Exchange caught up with Brex CEO Henrique Dubugras this week to chat about the matter. Per the executive, his company has two goals for its renewed meatspace marketing push. First, Brex wants to talk up its software game over its initial branding as a corporate card for startups. And, second, it wants business owners to know that it works with all types of companies now, not merely those with Sand Hill Road on speed dial.

The push to get the Brex name out in markets less known for their startup activity than overall business climate makes sense, if the unicorn wants to attract more nonstartup customers. But it’s the software element of its efforts that unsurprisingly caught our attention.

That’s because Brex recently rolled out Brex Premium, a package of software services that it charges around $600 per year for. Brex and rivals like Ramp and Divvy have spent lots of energy and money in recent quarters building out increasingly sophisticated software around their traditional corporate card products. The result thus far are codebases more and more able to supplant other pieces of enterprise software, like expense software.

But as Brex looks to double down via an advertising push on its decision to charge for Brex Premium — which Dubugras says is performing better than his company had initially anticipated — competitor Ramp is pushing its free software as an edge.

Ramp CEO and co-founder Eric Glyman pointed The Exchange to his company’s refreshed pricing page, which highlights its zero-cost software. And, he said in an email, the new page was “powering the fastest growth month we’ve ever had.”

Broadly, what we’re seeing with Ramp and Brex and Divvy — along with Airbase and others that also compete in the space — is a cohort of startups attacking an aged corporate issue with more nimble, lower-cost products. And proving while doing so that there was huge untapped demand for something different and better. The various players competing for the startup crown in the corporate spend world wouldn’t all be growing as rapidly as they are if that weren’t the case.

If you want more, here’s our dig into the Divvy-Bill.com deal.

More from startup-land

The Exchange was lathered up in SPACs this week, which means that we missed a host of interesting news that we otherwise would have loved to poke into. For example, here are some very neat venture rounds that it would have been fun to dig into more deeply:

• ProducePay raised a $43M Series C: LA-based ProducePay helps food growers access capital, software and market data, linking them to food demanders (importers, etc.). Per its website, ProducePay funded a Bajío, Mexico-based asparagus growing operation to the tune of a half million dollars to hire labor and invest in its growing operation. Repayment, again per the company, starts when product ships.
• Farming is hard, fickle, expensive and not always aligned with traditional banking requirements. Throw in an increasingly global production/consumption food network, and you can see why G2VP and IFC co-led the round.
• Oh, and The Exchange learned that ProducePay’s reported 2020 doubling was measured in GAAP revenue terms. The startup’s gross margins “grew by over 75% from 2019 to 2020, thanks to improved underwriting policies and a more attractive cost of funds as volume scaled,” per its PR team. That’s super cool.

Another neat company that raised this week was Panther, which put together a $2.5 million round. Panther wants to help companies hire in 160 different countries. Our read of the company and its round is that, as more companies go remote-first, this sort of service is going to become a must-have. Gusto also competes in the market, so it should be an active one to watch from both VC and M&A perspectives.

Panther is based in Florida, and raised funds from, per its release, “Tribe Capital, Eric Ries, Naval Ravikant and Carta Ventures.”

One more round: Lance, a freelancer-focused neobank, raised $2.8 million this week. The round was led by, per the company, “Barclays, BDMI, Great Oaks Capital, Imagination Capital, Techstars, DFJ Frontier, New York Venture Partners” along with some angels.

Now that the fintech world has created Chime and other broad-remit neobanks, it’s not surprising to see more targeted efforts get put together. And Lance CEO Oona Rokyta is betting that the freelance world is set to grow further. Given how the labor market has evolved in the last few years, I’d hazard she’s making an intelligent bet.

To close out today, a quick note on Alpaca. It’s a startup that TechCrunch has dug into here and there, as it fits into both our general focus on API-delivered services (on-demand pricing is hot), and it exists in the consumer fintech world (powering other companies’ equities trading services). We caught up with CEO Yoshi Yokokawa this week to chat about what’s been going on at his company since we last tracked its growth rates.

After all, whatever we can learn about the world of consumer investing — and Robinhood told us quite a lot this week — is useful given the somewhat global savings/investing boom that we’ve seen in the last year or so.

Per Yokokawa, Alpaca has global plans, including rolling out with new partners on a few continents in the coming months. The company is handling 1,000 new accounts daily outside the United States, which Yokokawa expects to rise sharply in the coming months. And the company recently built out a broker API to make onboarding users simpler for its partners.

Sounds like growth to us. More when we can milk it out of, er, the alpaca.

Alex

Source: Tech Crunch

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Welcome to Daily Crunch for May 21, 2021. Closing out the week, bitcoin dropped sharply today on (more?) news from China about possible restrictions on cryptocurrencies more broadly. Depending on your priors, the most recent news is purely FUD, or it’s indication that Bitcoin and friends are terrible inflation hedges. Pick your poison! Regardless, we have a grip of startup news to get to, so off we go! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Snap spends a half billion on AR: Yesterday’s news from consumer photo giant Snap didn’t stop with the company plunking down $500 million for WaveOptics, which we reported “makes the waveguides and projectors used in AR glasses.” That sure sounds like Snap gearing up for eventual mass production? Right?
• Startups heart farming: TechCrunch covered a huge $65.5 million Series B for Indonesian startup TaniHub Group today. Part of what it does is loan capital to farmers ahead of their harvests. In related news, ProducePay raised $43 million earlier this week to do something similar in Latin America. There’s notable startup activity, then, at the intersection of agtech and fintech.
• Mobile gaming is bigger than you thought: Did you know that former gaming darling Zynga is in the midst of a comeback? Mobile gaming, its core focus, had a huge 2020, leading to the company posting record Q1 results. Riding the same way is Jam City, another mobile gaming shop is going public. More here.

Startups and VC

To round out the week, how about a few smaller venture capital rounds? We have a number from today that are well worth our time:

Secai Marche raises $1.4M for farm-to-table food distribution: We don’t cover enough Japanese startups, frankly, but here’s to doing better. Tokyo-based Secai Marche is building a B2B “logistics platform for farmers that sell to restaurants, hotels and other” food and beverage companies, and we think it’s neat. Rakuten and Beyond Next supplied the capital.

Mio raises $1M to bring social commerce to rural Vietnam: Quickly growing e-commerce market Vietnam is seeing rising penetration in major cities. Mio wants to bring e-commerce to smaller cities and rural areas. Per our reporting, it is “building a reseller network and logistics infrastructure that can offer next-day delivery to Tier 2 and 3 cities.” Our present may be someone else’s future, so it’s swell to see startups bring the latest to more folks.

To round out our round coverage today, a slightly larger deal for a mental-health focused service:

Wysa raises $5.5M for AI-powered mental health: This is at a minimum cool on paper. We’ll have to get some time with the service as it evolves through time, but TechCrunch reports that “Jo Aggarwal, the founder and CEO of Wysa, is hoping you’ll find it easier to confide in a robot. Or, put more specifically, “‘emotionally intelligent’ artificial intelligence.” I, for one, welcome our robot mental-health overlords. Jokes aside, there is a therapist shortage in the world, and if Wysa can help more folks handle their mental health better, we’re all for it.

5 predictions for the future of e-commerce

The United States is one of the world’s most advanced economies, but until quite recently, South Korea and China had much higher e-commerce penetration.

American consumers and companies are closing that gap. In 2016, the percentage of total retail spend where the goods were bought and sold online in the U.S. was about 8%. Today, that figure is closer to 17%.

Despite the last two decades of disruption, we’re still in the early days of e-commerce. But as more merchants of every size start making their goods and services available online, we’ve reached an inflection point.

In an exclusive report for Extra Crunch, Ethan Choi, a partner at Accel, offers five well-researched predictions about where e-commerce is heading in terms of D2C and the overall enablement landscape.

“We’re entering what we at Accel believe is ‘the golden age of D2C e-commerce,’” says Choi.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Today we have to stretch the Big Tech portion of this newsletter to include entities even larger than the largest technology companies, namely governments.

The Indian government is mad at tech companies yet again. This time it’s Twitter’s turn. Per TechCrunch, New Delhi “has expressed strong objection to Twitter for classifying tweets by Indian politicians as ‘manipulated media,’ and separately asked social media firms to remove posts that refer to an ‘Indian variant’ of the coronavirus.”

A few thoughts here: One, Twitter is going to have to navigate an increasingly complicated global climate for free speech in general. And figure out how to handle governments’ reactions to its decisions on labeling content. That’s going to be hard. And asking a social service to blanket-ban a particular phrase is going to be essentially impossible. After all, even in China, where banned phrases on social media are common, individuals have found myriad ways around the restrictions. So, good luck, Indian government.

On a related note, if you are interested in privacy more generally, what’s going on in the European Union regarding data protection is fascinating.

Moving back to the world of corporate news, Spotify is finally bringing offline listening to the Apple Watch. For runners, this is big news. Our own Brian Heater is hype about the update.

To close us out today, the Equity podcast team has thoughts on the growth in corporate “media” and what it means for unicorns and other large technology companies.

Community

Two quick things heading into the weekend: Ford’s new electric truck looks cool, but you, our readers, are hodling out for Tesla’s Cyber Truck. If you’re a founder of a startup of any stage and want to try your pitch out on some really cool investors … then Extra Crunch Live is the place to go. Check out this week’s pitch by Capri Money. From the audience to the stage, just like that! See you there next week.

TechCrunch Experts: Email Marketing

Image Credits: Getty Images

We’re thrilled with the responses to our survey about the top email marketers. It’s not too late to weigh in: Fill out the survey here.

In addition to giving founders who respond to the survey a discount to a new Extra Crunch subscription, we’ll be featuring a couple of nominations in Daily Crunch starting next week!

If you’re a growth marketer, pass the survey on to your clients — we’d love to hear from them!

To find out more details about this project and how we plan to use it to shape our editorial coverage, visit techcrunch.com/experts.

TC Eventful

The Extra Crunch Live party carries on into June, with new episodes connecting you with some of tech’s biggest names.

Source: Tech Crunch