Ideaforge

BMW has joined the cohort of investors that are backing Boston Metal’s carbon dioxide-free production technology for steel.

The Boston-based startup had targeted a $50 million raise earlier in the year, as TechCrunch reported, and BMW’s addition closes out that round, according to a person familiar with the company.

Through a commitment from BMW iVentures, the automaker’s investment arm, Boston Metal will have an in to a company with massive demands for more sustainably manufactured metal. For instance, BMW Group press plants in Europe process more than half a million tonnes of steel per year, the company said.

“We systematically identify the raw materials and components in our supplier network with the highest CO₂ emissions from production,” said Dr Andreas Wendt, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG responsible for Purchasing and Supplier Network, in a statement. “Steel is one of them, but it is vital to car production. For this reason, we have set ourselves the goal of continuously reducing CO₂ emissions in the steel supply chain. By 2030, CO₂ emissions should be about two million tonnes lower than today’s figure.”

Conventional steel production requires blast furnaces that generate carbon dioxide emissions, but using Boston Metal’s process, an electrolysis cell produces the pig iron that gets processed into steel, the company said.

The addition of BMW to its investor group, which already includes Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and other strategic and financial investors, caps the fundraising process with another corporate partner wielding incredible industry influence.

“Our investors span across the steel value chain, from the upstream mining and iron ore companies to the downstream end customer, and validate Boston Metal’s innovative process to produce high-quality steel, cost-competitively, and at scale,” said chief executive officer and founder, Tadeu Carneiro.

Source: Tech Crunch

Spring may be just around the corner (in the U.S., anyway), but it’s never too early to start planning for TechCrunch Disrupt 2021, which takes place on September 21-23. This all-virtual conference allows makers, innovators, entrepreneurs and investors from around the world to connect, collaborate and grow.

Startup Alley is a huge part of every Disrupt — it’s where hundreds of innovative, ground-breaking early-stage startups showcase their tech talent, products, platforms and services. This year, we’re shaking things up a bit to help exhibiting founders make the most of a virtual environment.

What’s new and different about exhibiting in Startup Alley at Disrupt 2021? Plenty. When you apply for a Startup Alley Pass, you stand in a giant spotlight of opportunity:

• Pitch it. Pitch it real good. Bring the heat, because every exhibiting startup gets a guaranteed spot to deliver a 60-second elevator pitch during a breakout feedback session. Your audience? TechCrunch staff and thousands of Disrupt attendees around the world.
• The Startup Alley Crawl. Every startup category will have an hour-long crawl in the agenda, where we’ll go live from the Disrupt Stage to interview a select number of founders in Startup Alley from that category.
• Startup Battlefield Wild Card. The Startup Battlefield is the stuff of legend. Past winners include the likes of Vurb, Dropbox, Mint and Yammer. Two Startup Alley exhibitors — chosen by the TechCrunch Editorial team — will compete in this year’s Battlefield and have a shot at the $100,000 (equity-free) cash.
• Startup Alley+. Every Startup Alley exhibitor is eligible, but only up to 50 companies will make the final cut to participate in Startup Alley+. These founders receive, at no additional cost, a curated experience to set them up for additional opportunities, learnings, exposure and success before Disrupt even starts. They’ll receive access to a series of founder masterclasses, take part in a pitch-off at Extra Crunch Live, and get introductions to elite investors in the TechCrunch community. Get your Startup Alley Pass soon because StartupAlley+ shifts into high gear at TC Early Stage: Marketing and Fundraising in July, where all Startup Alley+ companies get to attend this virtual event for free.

Pro Tip: Early-bird pricing to apply for Startup Alley ($199) ends May 13 at 11:59 pm (PST). The sooner you apply, the more you save.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place on September 21-23. Don’t miss an opportunity to exhibit in all-new Startup Alley and apply now! Snag extra exposure, build your network and make connections that can alter the trajectory of your startup in the best possible way.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Source: Tech Crunch

Investors often say they don’t just invest in products, but in the right teams to solve a particular problem. With Steady, Adam Roseman built the platform based on his own personal experience. His father hadn’t saved enough for retirement and needed to work part-time. Steady, a platform that helps people find flexible jobs quickly, get financial advice and save money through deals on things like healthcare plans and tax help.

Today, Steady has more than 2 million registered users.

So it’s no surprise that Emmalyn Shaw, co-manager of the $500 million Flourish Ventures fund, was eager to invest. She led the company’s Series A back in 2018.

We’re thrilled to have Roseman and Shaw join us on an episode of Extra Crunch Live on Wednesday at 3pm ET/noon PT.

We’ll interview Shaw and Roseman about what made them want to work with one another, advice on how to make the most out of pitch meetings, and what it takes to secure capital and be successful in the fintech space.

This episode of Extra Crunch Live will also feature the Pitch Deck Teardown. Decks sent in by audience members will be featured on the show, and Shaw and Roseman will give their live feedback on those decks about what works and what doesn’t.

Audience members are welcome to ask questions.

Extra Crunch members have always had free access to Extra Crunch Live (and always will), both live and on demand. But, we’ll also be selling tickets à la carte to the show. That’s right! Anyone can come hang out, ask their own questions to Shaw and Roseman, and learn a thing or two from the seasoned experts.

You can hit up this link to either register (if you’re logged into Extra Crunch, the ticket is free) or purchase a ticket.

A full library of past episodes can be found here, and folks interested in checking out our future slate can find everything they need right here.

See you there!

Source: Tech Crunch

It seems that every week a new agribusiness, consumer packaged goods company, bank, technology corporation, celebrity or Facebook friend announces support for regenerative agriculture.

For those of us who have been working on climate and/or agriculture solutions for the last couple of decades, this is both exciting and worrisome.

With the rush to be a part of something so important, the details and hard work, the incremental advancements and wins, as well as the big, hairy problems that remain can be overlooked or forgotten. When so many are swinging for the fences, it’s easy to forget that singles and doubles usually win the game.

As a managing partner and founder of DBL Partners, I have specifically sought out companies to invest in that not only have winning business models but also solve the planet’s biggest problems. I believe that agriculture can be a leading climate solution while feeding a growing population.

At the same time, I want to temper the hype, refocus the conversation, and use the example of agriculture to forge a productive template for all business sectors with carbon habits to fight climate change.

First, let’s define regenerative agriculture: It encompasses practices such as cover cropping and conservation tillage that, among other things, build soil health, enhance water retention, and sequester and abate carbon.

The broad excitement around regenerative agriculture is tied to its potential to mitigate climate impact at scale. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimates that soil sequestration has the potential to eliminate over 250 million metric tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to 5 percent of U.S. emissions.

It is important to remember that regenerative practices are not new. Conservationists have advocated for cover cropping and reduced tillage for decades, and farmers have led the charge.

The reason these practices are newly revered today is that, when executed at scale, with the heft of new technology and innovation, they have demonstrated agriculture’s potential to lead the fight against climate change.

So how do we empower farmers in this carbon fight?

Today, offset markets get the majority of the attention. Multiple private, voluntary markets for soil carbon have appeared in the last couple of years, mostly supported by corporations driven by carbon neutrality commitments to offset their carbon emissions with credit purchases.

Offset markets are a key step toward making agriculture a catalyst for a large-scale climate solution; organizations that support private carbon markets build capacity and the economic incentive to reduce emissions.

“Farming carbon” will drive demand for regenerative finance mechanisms, data analytics tools, and new technology like nitrogen-fixing biologicals – all imperatives to maximize the adoption and impact of regenerative practices and spur innovation and entrepreneurship.

It’s these advancements, and not the carbon credit offsets themselves, that will permanently reduce agriculture emissions.

Offsets are a start, but they are only part of the solution. Whether generated by forestry, renewable energy, transportation or agriculture, offsets must be purchased by organizations year after year, and do not necessarily reduce a buyer’s footprint.

Inevitably, each business sector needs to decarbonize its footprint directly or create “insets” by lowering the emissions within its supply chain. The challenge is, this is not yet economically viable or logistically feasible for every organization.

For organizations that purchase and process agricultural products – from food companies to renewable fuel producers – soil carbon offsets can indirectly reduce emissions immediately while also funding strategies that directly reduce emissions permanently, starting at the farm.

DBL invests in ag companies that work on both sides of this coin: facilitating soil carbon offset generation and establishing a credit market while also building fundamentally more efficient and less carbon-intensive agribusiness supply chains.

This approach is a smart investment for agriculture players looking to reduce their climate impact. The business model also creates demand for environmental services from farmers with real staying power.

Way back in 2006, when DBL first invested in Tesla, we had no idea we would be helping to create a worldwide movement to unhinge transportation from fossil fuels.

Now, it’s agriculture’s turn. Backed by innovations in science, big data, financing and farmer networking, investing in regenerative agriculture promises to slash farming’s carbon footprint while rewarding farmers for their stewardship.

Future generations will reap the benefits of this transition, all the while asking, “What took so long?”

Source: Tech Crunch

The alternative asset market showed promise pre-pandemic but amid a broader rally among traditional asset classes, the number of investors searching for and promoting value in the space has exploded. That has, in turn, promoted a pretty major influx of VC dollars into startups building platforms that wrangle these buyers into specific communities.

Enter, Alt. The young startup has received more than $31 million from top investors intrigued by the particularly hot space it has bulked up its expertise in — physical sports trading cards. The company provides a Goat-like marketplace for the cards, authenticating the transactions and providing buyers with the peace of mind that the slice of cardboard they’re dropping several thousands of dollars on is no fake. While entities like NBA Top Shot have rallied a new generation of buyers around blockchain era digital trading cards, its success has been enabled by the excitement that traditional collectibles markets have been garnering recently.

After years of stocking up on sports trading cards, Alt CEO Leore Avidar is just happy to have more people to talk about his obsession with. Like many in the sports card community, Avidar has spent years collecting cards and engaging with forums online, but it’s been an interest he hasn’t been able to share with friends and family given its somewhat fringe appeal. This isn’t the case today, Avidar says, with old collectors re-entering the market as they dust off aged collections and new collectors intrigued by skyrocketing prices and a more connected online community.

“I’ve talked with a lot of people in the community and one of the things I love is how intergenerational this is, I see a lot of like kids and their parents doing this together,” Avidar tells TechCrunch.

As the market has moved more mainstream, platforms like Alt have also begun seeing more investor interest. In the span of a few months, Alt wrapped a pair of funding rounds from investors hungry to embrace a play in the market — a seed round led by First Round and a Series A led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s new firm Seven Seven Six. Other Alt investors include John and Patrick Collison, Kevin Durant, SV Angel, BoxGroup, Sue Wagner, and Jeff Morris’s Chapter One.

Avidar wants Alt’s platform to increase transparency and liquidity in the alternative assets space and make acquiring assets here just as easy as platforms like Robinhood have made buying and selling stocks. Avidar’s central strategy to capturing this market and bringing it to his platform is by significantly undercutting the fees structure of other sites, with Alt charging 1.5% of the total sales price including processing fees.

In addition to authenticating its stock, Alt has had to build some infrastructure that’s somewhat custom to the trading cards market. Users that are less concerned with holding their physical cards and more worried about them being lost or damaged over time can opt to have Alt store their physical cards in a temperature and light-controlled vault (for a fee), ensuring that physical degradations of the card don’t affect its value. One of Alt’s key features that Avidar expects to be popular with collectors is their Zestimate-like Alt Value rating which will give card buyers and sellers a closer idea of what the market value of their card is based on historic transactions and the trending growth metrics.

The team is launching the Alt market with sports trading cards, but plans to expand its reach to other alternative assets as the marketplace matures further, with Avidar highlighting markets like watches, sneakers and art as potential growth areas.

Source: Tech Crunch

Pakistan has banned TikTok again in the country after reviewing a complaint that said the popular video app hosted immoral and objectionable content.

A high court in the city of Peshawar on Thursday ordered the nation’s telecom authority — Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) — to ban TikTok.

In a statement Thursday evening, Pakistan Telecom Authority said it was complying with the order and had “issued directions to the service providers to immediately block access to the TikTok app.”

TikTok had about 33 million users in Pakistan last month, according to mobile insight firm App Annie (data of which an industry executive shared with TechCrunch). There are about 100 million internet users in the South Asian nation.

The Peshawar High Court’s Chief Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan described some videos on TikTok as “unacceptable for Pakistaini society,” and said these videos were “peddling vulgarity,” according to local media reports.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This isn’t the first time ByteDance’s app has been banned by Pakistan. PTA had briefly banned TikTok in the country last year, saying at the time that the Chinese social app hadn’t addressed concerns about the nature of some videos on its platform despite warnings spanning several months.

Pakistan’s move follows its neighboring nation, India, also banning TikTok last year. New Delhi banned TikTok — and eventually 200 additional apps with links to China — over cybersecurity concerns. Prior to the ban, India was the biggest international market for TikTok, which had amassed over 200 million users in the world’s second largest internet market.

Like India, the government in Pakistan has also sought to assume more control over content on digital services operating in the country in recent years.

While global tech giants, most of which count India as a key overseas market, haven’t made much fuss about New Delhi’s new rules for social media, they banded together in Pakistan late last year and threatened to leave the country over rules proposed by Islamabad.

Through a group called the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), the tech firms said in November that they were “alarmed” by the scope of Pakistan’s new law targeting internet firms.” In addition to Facebook, Google and Twitter, AIC represents Apple, Amazon, LinkedIn, SAP, Expedia Group, Yahoo, Airbnb, Grab, Rakuten, Booking.com, Line and Cloudflare.

Source: Tech Crunch

As Roblox began to trade today, the company’s shares shot above its reference price of $45 per share. Currently, Roblox is trading at $71.10 per share, up just over 60% from the reference price that it announced last night. That effort finally set a directional value of sorts on Roblox’s shares before it floated on the public markets. 

Roblox, a gaming company aimed at children and powered by an internal economy and third-party development activity, has had a tumultuous if exciting path to the public markets. The company initially intended to list in a traditional IPO, but after enthusiastic market conditions sent the value of some public-offering shares higher after they began to trade, Roblox hit pause.

The former startup then raised a Series H round of capital, a $520 million investment that boosted the value of Roblox from around $4 billion to $29.5 billion. TechCrunch jokes that, far from IPOs mispricing IPOs, that $4 billion price set in early 2020 was the real theft, given where the company was valued just a year later. Sure, the pandemic was good for Roblox, but seeing a 5x repricing in four quarters was hilarious.

Regardless. At $45 per share, Roblox’s direct listing reference price, the company was worth $29.1 billion, per Renaissance Capital, an IPO-focused group. Barron’s placed the number at $29.3 billion. No matter which is closer to the truth, they were both right next to the company’s final private price.

So, the Series H investors nailed the value of Roblox, or the company merely tied its reference price to that price. Either way, we had a pretty clear Series H → direct listing reference price handoff.

The company’s performance today makes that effort appear somewhat meaningless as both prices were wildly under what traders were willing to cough up during its first day of trading; naturally, we’ll keep tabs on its price as time continues, and one day is not a trend, but seeing Roblox trade so very far above its direct listing reference price and final private valuation appears to undercut the argument that this sort of debut can sort out pricing issues inherent in more traditional IPOs.

To understand the company’s early trading activity, however, we need to understand just how well Roblox performed in Q4 2020. When we last noodled on the company’s valuation, we only had data through the third quarter of last year. Now we have data through December 31, 2020. Let’s check how much Roblox grew in that final period, and if it helps explain how the company managed that epic Series H markup.

Gaming is popular, who knew

Source: Tech Crunch

British electric vehicle subscription service Onto has partnered with Shell to give its users access to charging stations in preparation for a wave of new EVs coming to market over the next several years. 

The partnership, which Shell announced Tuesday, will give Onto customers access to more than 3,400 Shell Recharge charge points in the UK, plus over 17 charging partners within Shell’s network. 

“Buying an electric car is a big, scary switch for most drivers,” Onto CEO Rob Jolly told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “Charging anxiety is an issue for them, so we’re trying to make EVs as accessible and affordable as possible, and the Shell partnership is a step up from that.”

This isn’t Onto’s first partnership. The company, which is an “all-inclusive” subscription model that covers servicing, road tax, insurance and charging in its monthly fee, has already locked up network partnerships with BP and Tesla. Onto has been expanding its electric fleet beyond its base of Tesla, BMW, Jaguar and Renault vehicles to Hyundai, which joined last month.

Sales of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids climbed to more than 3 million and reached a market share of more than 4%, according to preliminary estimates from the IEA. While 4% can hardly be considered market saturation, automakers, charging network companies and energy experts expect existing infrastructure to be squeezed as new electric vehicles come to market. VW, GM, Ford, Hyundai and Rivian are just a few of the automakers that are introducing new electric vehicles in 2021. 

A subscription (ev)olution

In the UK, more than 90% of new car buyers finance their vehicles, a transition from a decade ago when the common practice was to buy a car outright. Jolly believes the EV subscription model is going to be the next evolution in the auto market, especially as the UK and other countries move to ban gas and diesel cars and drivers cozy up to the idea of having a flexible, accessible, all-inclusive means of getting into an electric car. Jolly’s pitch to consumers is that the startup’s EV subscription prices are competitive with premium financing deals, but they don’t include the big upfront deposits or the hassle of having to locate and pay for charging. 

“Forty percent of the UK population doesn’t have access to off road parking,” said Jolly. “They’re going from knowing exactly how and where to refuel to being unsure of how charging works. Will they leave it on a street nearby their house or will they charge it on the way to work, or will they charge it at work? That’s the ambition of working with Shell. It’s making the options available to them and making sure our charging infrastructure footprint is as far and wide as possible.”

Shell’s British network includes more than 950 charge points, including Shell Recharge rapid and high-powered chargers (50 kWh and 150 kWh respectively), which are powered by renewable energy sources, and the Shell Recharge and Ionity network of ultra-high power (350 kWh) charge points. Customers can find all of Onto’s participating charging stations through the company’s app or online map, and all customers have been issued Shell Recharge cards so they have fast access to energy company’s network. 

Shell’s move to partner with the EV subscription startup is in line with the company’s plans to move away from gas stations and towards charging stations. The energy giant made its first move in this space in 2019 when it acquired Los Angeles-based EV charging developer Greenlots. Earlier this year, Shell also acquired Ubitricity in the U.K. and announced its plans to launch 500,000 new EV charging stations in the next four years.

Source: Tech Crunch