Ideaforge

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

The whole crew was back today, with Natasha and Danny and I gathered to parse over what was really a blast of news. Lots of startups are raising. Lots of VCs are raising. And some unicorns are shooting to go public. It’s a lot to get through, but we’re here to catch you up.

Here’s what we got into:

• A Media Roundup: The Juggernaut raised $2 million in a round that we found to be both cool and timely. The news of a media startup raising money was paired with rumors of an exit for email media darling Morning Brew for a price tag of up to $75 million. Undergirding each story was recent reporting concerning the revenue success that Axios is enjoying. It’s nice to report on some media news that isn’t fresh layoffs.
• A cluster of wellness startups raising capital: If you like to work out your mind and body, it was a good week of news for you. Calm is looking for new funds at a fresh, higher valuation. TechCrunch has coverage here. Coa did raise, adding $3 million to its coffers for mental health group classes. And Playbook put together $9.3 million for its fitness instructor platform.
• VCs raised lots: It’s a hot time for VCs themselves to raise money, with OpenView, Canaan, True Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, First Round and Khosla either closing rounds or announcing new fundraises.
• Also on the VC beat: Terri Burns was made an investing partner at GV.
• Finally, we got into the recent GetAround funding and turnaround story, which segued us into Airbnb’s own recovery. TechCrunch has more here.

And with that, we’re off until Monday morning. Chat soon, and stay safe.

Source: Tech Crunch

Google today unveiled Journalist Studio, a set of online tools for journalists.

Most of the products included in Journalist Studio, such as Google Trends and the Fact Check Explorer, were already available elsewhere. But in addition to bringing everything together into a new suite of products, Google also announced two new tools: Pinpoint and The Common Knowledge Project.

Megan H. Chan, Google’s news ecosystems lead, demonstrated Pinpoint for me yesterday. Chan previously served as an editor and digital executive at publications like Politico and The Washington Post, and she recalled moments when reporters would get access to a large trove public records — those documents could be crucial, but it was also a huge chore to go through them.

Pinpoint is designed to make the process simpler by identifying the people, organizations and locations that are mentioned most frequently, and to make it easy to jump to each of those references. Chan noted that this should be less tedious than simply hitting CTRL-F over and over again for different terms. And because it uses Google’s Knowledge Graph technology, Pinpoint can also find group related terms, or distinguish between two similar-looking ones, such as “John F. Kennedy” and “John F. Kennedy, Jr.”

Chan added that these tools are “no replacement for a human journalist,” but they can make those journalists more effective. And she suggested that this could be useful during the fact-checking process, allowing journalists to more quickly and reliably back up their assertions with editors, rather than simply relying on their notes.

Image Credits: Google

Also, because of Google’s speech-to-text capabilities, Pinpoint can be used to sift through audio as well.

Although the product is only being released publicly today, some journalists have already been using it in their reporting, for example allowing USA Today to aggregate data on COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes across the United States.

Asked whether users should feel comfortable uploading sensitive documents to the service, Chan said, “Google, we believe, has best-in class privacy and security practices, and Pinpoint is absolutely no exception.”

She acknowledged that journalists sometimes have access to documents that are “extremely sensitive” and they won’t even upload them to their own internal networks. But she argued in that most cases, Google’s security practices should be sufficient.

As part of Pinpoint, Google is also partnering with The Center for Public Integrity, Document Cloud, Stanford University’s Big Local News program and The Washington Post to create shared document collections.

The Common Knowledge Project, meanwhile, allows journalists to explore a variety of public datasets (from Data Commons, which collects data sets from organizations like the U.S. Census and the CDC) and then create their own interactive visualizations, which can then be embedded in their stories.

Simon Rogers, the data editor at the Google News Initiative’s News Lab, told me that one fo the goals of the project is to encourage “data literacy” by creating defaults around how the numbers can be visualized in informative (rather than misleading) ways: “We will try not to show things in a way they shouldn’t be shown.”

All of the tools in Google’s Journalist Studio are either available for free, or journalists can sign up for a complimentary account.

Source: Tech Crunch

The Tesla Model S is about to get a bit less expensive.

Tesla CEO and resident meme maker, Elon Musk just tweeted that the Model S sedan will soon be priced at $69,420. This pricing wasn’t done on a whim and a joint. The price cut is likely in response to Lucid undercutting Tesla on pricing a few hours ago.

As you can see in the tweet above, Elon Musk declares that “The gauntlet has been thrown down.”

Earlier today, Lucid announced that its entry level sedan will cost $77,400 minus a $7,500 U.S. tax credit. Since most buyers qualify for the credit, that brings the effective price down to $69,900. You see where this is headed, right?

With a new starting price of $69,420, this would be the second Model S price cut this week. Roadshow by CNET reported yesterday the automaker quietly cut $3,000 off the Model S earlier this week, potentially in a bid to outdo Lucid before its announcement today. Earlier this year, Tesla cut $2,000 off the starting price of the Model 3.

The Lucid Air is shaping up to be a serious contender to Tesla’s Model 3. The Air has all of the range of the Model 3 — even the entry-level version priced today matches the Model S’s 400+ range. The Air is also lighter, faster, and, frankly, newer. The Model S still has the same overall shape and feel since its 2012 introduction.

During a recent interview with TechCrunch, Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson told editor Darrell Etherington that the Air would be available at a price “surprisingly lower than $80,000.” Though today’s pricing is hardly “surprising,” it puts the Lucid Air in the same price range as well-equipped mid-size European sports cars and, more importantly, the Tesla Model S.

Source: Tech Crunch

I’m an immigrant, and since arriving from India two decades ago I’ve earned a Ph.D., launched two companies, created almost 100 jobs, sold a business to Google and generated a 10x-plus return for my investors.

I’m grateful to have had the chance to live the American dream, becoming a proud American citizen and creating prosperity for others along the way. But here’s the rub: I’m exactly the kind of person that President Trump’s added immigration restrictions that require U.S. companies to offer jobs to U.S. citizens first and narrowing the list of qualifications to make one eligible for the H-1B visa, is designed to keep out of the country.

In tightening the qualifications for H-1B admittances, along with the L visas used by multinationals and the J visas used by some students, the Trump administration is closing the door to economic growth. Study after study shows that the H-1B skilled-worker program creates jobs and drives up earnings for American college grads. In fact, economists say that if we increased H-1B admittances, instead of suspending them, we’d create 1.3 million new jobs and boost GDP by $158 billion by 2045.

Barring people like me will create short-term chaos for tech companies already struggling to hire the people they need. That will slow growth, stifle innovation and reduce job creation. But the lasting impact could be even worse. By making America less welcoming, President Trump’s order will take a toll on American businesses’ ability to attract and retain the world’s brightest young people.

Consider my story. I came to the United States after earning a degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), a technical university known as the MIT of India. The year I entered, several hundred thousand people applied for just 10,000 spots, making IIT significantly more selective than the real MIT. Four years later, I graduated and, along with many of the other top performers in my cohort, decided to continue my studies in America.

Back then, it was simply a given that bright young Indians would travel to America to continue their education and seek their fortune. Many of us saw the United States as the pinnacle of technological innovation, and also as a true meritocracy — somewhere that gave immigrants a fair shake, rewarded hard work and let talented young people build a future for themselves.

I was accepted by 10 different colleges, and chose to do a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois because of its top-ranked computer science program. As a grad student, I developed new ways of keeping computer chips from overheating that are now used in server farms all over the world. Later, I put in a stint at McKinsey before launching my own tech startup, an app-testing platform called Appurify, which Google bought and integrated into their Cloud offerings.

I spent a couple of years at Google, but missed building things from scratch, so in 2016 I launched atSpoke, an AI-powered ticketing platform that streamlines IT and HR support. We’ve raised $28 million, hired 60 employees and helped companies including Cloudera, DraftKings and Mapbox create more efficient workplaces and manage the transition to remote working.

Stories like mine aren’t unusual. Moving to a new country takes optimism, ambition and tolerance for risk — all factors that drive many immigrants to start businesses of their own. Immigrants found businesses at twice the rate of the native born, starting about 30% of all new businesses in 2016 and more than half of the country’s billion-dollar unicorn startups. Many now-iconic American brands, including Procter & Gamble, AT&T, Google, Apple, and even Bank of America, were founded by immigrants or their children.

We take it for granted that America is the destination of choice for talented young people, especially those with vital technical skills. But nothing lasts forever. Since I arrived two decades ago, India’s tech scene has blossomed, making it far easier for kids to find opportunities without leaving the country. China, Canada, Australia and Europe are also competing for global talent by making it easier for young immigrants to bring their talent and skills, often including an American education, to join their workforces or start new businesses.

To shutter employment-based visa programs, even temporarily, is to shut out the innovation and entrepreneurialism our economy desperately needs. Worse still, though, doing so makes it harder for the world’s best and brightest young people to believe in the American dream and drives many to seek opportunities elsewhere. The true legacy of Trump’s executive order is that it will be far harder for American businesses to compete for global talent in years to come — and that will ultimately hamper job creation, slow our economy and hurt American workers.

Source: Tech Crunch

Elon Musk has shared some updated info about the timeline for the seven-seat version of the Model Y, Tesla’s more affordable electric SUV. The Model Y began deliveries to customers in March of this year in the U.S., but Musk said in June that he anticipated the company would start shipping seven row variants of the vehicle by sometime in the fourth quarter of this year.

A seven-seater Model Y would up the total passenger capacity of the vehicle by two, and we’ve known that it supports such a configuration ever since its official unveiling in 2019. The seven seat version will include a third row, though it isn’t yet entirely clear what that will look like in the vehicle. The larger Model X offers a third row, but there’s less space to work with in the Model Y. There’s also a seven-seat Model S design for the Plaid variant that Tesla showed off last year.

Still, additional seats could be a key addition for anyone looking for a premium, but lower-priced SUV that can handle the whole family – including a couple young kids. And if production sticks to Musk’s timeline, it won’t be long before we start to see the seven seat version of the Model Y on roads. Typically, his timing projections have been overly optimistic, but the Model Y actually started being delivered earlier than anticipated, so maybe these dates will stick.

Source: Tech Crunch

From now until October 25, TechCrunch readers in the U.S. can save 10% on an annual plan for Extra Crunch. If you aren’t familiar, Extra Crunch is our membership program focused on startups, founders and investors with more than 100 exclusive articles published per month.

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Source: Tech Crunch

Apple introduced its latest flagship iPhone models, the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max, at its iPhone event on Tuesday. Among other things, the devices sport a new LiDAR Scanner designed to allow for more immersive augmented reality (AR) experiences. Snapchat today confirms it will be among the first to put the new technology to use in its iOS app for a LiDAR-powered Lens.

As Apple explained during the event, the LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) Scanner measures how long it takes for light to reach an object and reflect back.

Along with iPhone’s machine learning capabilities and dev frameworks, LiDAR helps the iPhone understand the world around you.

Apple adapted this technology for its iPhone 12 Pro models, where it’s helping to improve low-light photography, thanks to its ability to “see in the dark.”

Image Credits: Apple presentation, screenshot via TechCrunch

The technology can also be used by app developers to build a precise depth map of the scene, and help speed up AR so it feels more instantaneous, while enabling new app experiences that use AR.

In practice, what this means for app developers is the ability to use LiDAR to enable things like object and room scanning — think, better AR shopping apps, home design tools, or AR games, for example.

It can also enable photo and video effects and a more exact placement of AR objects, as the iPhone is actually able to “see” a depth map of the room.

Image Credits: Apple presentation, screenshot via TechCrunch

That can lead to new AR experiences like what Snapchat is prepared to introduce. Already known for some best-in-class AR photo filters, the company says it will soon launch a LiDAR-powered Lens specifically for the iPhone 12 Pro models.

Apple gave a brief peek at Snapchat’s LiDAR-powered feature during the LiDAR portion of the iPhone event today.

Here, you can see an AR Lens in the Snapchat app where flowers and grasses cover the table and floor, and birds fly towards the user’s face. The grasses towards the back of the room looked as if they were further away than those closer to the user, and vegetation was even climbing up and around the kitchen cabinets — an indication that it saw where those objects were in the physical space.

The birds in the Snapchat Lens disappear as they move behind the person, out of view, and even land precisely in the person’s hand.

It’s not clear if this is the exact Lens Snapchat has in the works, as the company is holding details for the time being. But it shows what an LiDAR-enabled Snapchat experience would feel like.

You can see the Snapchat filter in action at 59:41 in the Apple iPhone Event video.

Source: Tech Crunch

Earlier today Apple announced a slew of new hardware. In case you’ve not yet caught up, there’s a $99 HomePod Mini coming, new iPhones, a new method for shouting at your electronics, the return of MagSafe, some cost-cutting masquerading as environmentalism and, of course, new flagship phones.

And in a move that caused telecom investors to sit up straight and pay attention, Apple trotted out Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg for part of the presentation — which is why we add our parent company’s parent company to our usual post-Apple-event share price reaction roundup.

Market reaction

Shares of Apple were mixed before the event, managing to work their way back to flat during morning trading ahead of the event. Down before Apple kicked off its iPhone shebang, equity in the phone giant dipped and then rallied as the event got underway.

But the partial erasure of losses were short-lived, and Apple wound up losing ground during the presentation (chart via YCharts, annotations via TechCrunch):

For Apple shareholders then, not a day worth writing home about.

The Apple event appeared to have a more electric impact on my employer. See if you can spot the point at which Verizon appeared as part of the event (chart via YCharts, annotations via TechCrunch):

Now that is the sort of reaction that we hope to see from events of this sort. Why? Because it implies that the company on stage has managed to do something so notable that its share price moved; this is another way of saying that investors were surprised by what they learned.

Apple events tend to leak in advance these days, so perhaps the usual lack of share price movement from the company’s equity is to be expected.

Verizon’s news, in contrast, was more of a surprise. The company “announce[d] its nationwide 5G network” in the words of The Verge. Investors liked that, but later sold the company’s shares back down a bit.

Source: Tech Crunch

At Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday, the company introduced a range of new phones, led by the just-announced flagships: the iPhone 12 Pro, starting at $999, and iPhone 12 Pro Max, starting at $1099. The new 5G-ready devices sport an all-screen Super Retina XDR display, the A14 Bionic chip, a Ceramic Shield front cover, LiDAR Scanner, and of course, the iPhone line’s best camera system.

iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max will be available in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB configurations and four stainless steel finishes, including graphite, silver, gold, and pacific blue.

5G, of course, will be one of the bigger selling points for the devices as the new technology will boost speeds, meaning faster downloads and uploads, higher quality streaming, more responsive gaming and faster responses in apps, among other things.

Of course, some of the immediate demand for new 5G phones may be tempered by the coronavirus pandemic, which is causing economic hardships for many — particularly in markets like the U.S. where the virus is still spinning out of control. Work-from-home users may also not feel as strong a need for an immediate upgrade to the technology, as they would have before the pandemic, given that many are now spending a larger portion of their time indoors on their home Wi-Fi.

Image Credits: Apple

In the U.S., Apple says the iPhone 12 Pro models will be able to reach speeds of up to 4Gbps, even in densely populated areas. A “Smart Data” feature will also help with the transition to faster speeds, by intelligently balancing data usage and battery power in real-time.

Inside, the new devices also include the A14 Bionic chip, featuring a 16-core Neural Engine — for an 80% increase in performance, Apple claims. It’s capable of completing 11 trillion operations per second, and is faster and more efficient than prior iterations.

Aesthetically, the new iPhones will look somewhat different too.

The 6.1-inch iPhone 12 Pro and 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max will now have a flat-edge design and an edge-to-edge OLED display with reduced borders. These “squarer” edges give the device a more classic look reminiscent of older model iPhones.

On the Pro Max, iPhone gets its biggest-ever screen and the highest resolution, at neary 3.5M pixels.

The back for these new devices is matte glass and the phone sports at stainless steel band, around the edges. But what’s new is something Apple is calling “Ceramic Shield.” This tougher front cover aims to improve the “shatterability,” so to speak, which Apple claims improves drop performance by 4x compared with iPhone 11 Pro. (Oh, we’ll see!)

Image Credits: Apple

The iPhone 12 Pro models are also water resistant for up to 6 meters for 30 minutes (or the IP68 rating, as it’s known.)

Another key reason people opt for the high-end models is the camera system, of course.

This time around, Apple says it’s aided by a new image signal processor (ISP), the A14 Bionic, and the models will feature “Apple ProRAW” later this year. This format combines Apple’s multiframe image processing and computational photography capabilities with the versatility of the RAW format. In practice, this means users will be able to exert creative control over color, detail and dynamic range both natively on the iPhone and using third-party photo editing tools.

The iPhone 12 Pro features also a new 7-element lens Wide camera with an ƒ/1.6 aperture, the fastest now available in the iPhone line, and promising improvements in low-light video and photos. The Ultra Wide camera has a 12-degree field of view, while the Telephoto camera has a 52 mm focal length, bringing the optical zoom range to 4x.

The iPhone 12 Max ups things further with a 47% larger sensor with 1.7μm pixels for a 87% improvement in low-light conditions, Apple claims. It also has the Ultra Wide camera and a Telephoto camera with a 65 mm focal length, for a 5x optical zoom range.

Night mode has also now been expanded the to TrueDepth and Ultra Wide cameras, and Night mode Time-Lapse promises sharper videos, better light trails, and smoother exposure when used with a tripod.

Deep Fusion is also now faster, and Smart HDR 3 is an update for more true-to-life images, says Apple.

Image Credits: Apple

For video, the new models offer HDR video with Dolby Vision, up to 60 fps, and improved video stabilization. Users can even share their 4K Dolby Vision videos on AirPlay.

Also new is the LiDAR Scanner, which matters for AR (augmented reality).

The improvement here means faster and more realistic AR with an improved autofocus by 6x in low-light scenes. That could lead to some interesting new apps and experiences within apps, like Snapchat filters. (We spotted Snapchat in the demo briefly, though it wasn’t specifically mentioned.)

Another consumer-friendly feature coming to the new iPhone models is MagSafe, which helps with wirelessly charging as well as allowing users to snap on magnetic accessories, like Apple’s new Leather Wallet with MagSafe. These will go on sale along with the MagSafe Charger and iPhone 12 Pro Silicone Case and Clear Case on Oct. 16. Leather Cases will go on sale Nov. 6. A MagSafe Duo Charger and Leather Sleeve will later follow.

Image Credits: Apple

Pre-orders for iPhone 12 Pro begin Friday, October 16 at 5 AM PDT, with availability beginning Friday, October 23. iPhone 12 Pro Max will be available for pre-order Friday, November 6 at 5 AM PST, and in stores beginning Friday, November 13.

Source: Tech Crunch