Month: January 2023

Though investment in food technology has slowed in line with the rest of the venture capital world, the industry recently achieved some milestones that suggest the sector and the government are moving into alignment.

In fact, some investors feel that 2023 will be the year when alternative seafood companies and products make notable strides.

More than $178 million was pumped into alternative seafood in the first half of 2022, and the market’s value is poised to reach $1.6 billion over the next 10 years. One of the sector’s biggest investments was Wildtype, which raised $100 million in a Series B round for its “sushi-grade” cultured salmon.

If this momentum held in the past six months, funding into the sector would meet or exceed the $306 million invested in all of 2021, despite the slowdown last year.

“Investment has been growing steadily, and we expect this to continue,” said Christian Lim, managing partner at SWEN Capital Partners’ Blue Ocean. “We see the alternative seafood industry achieving key technical and economic milestones faster than the alternative meat space, which indicates a potential for continued acceleration,” he said.

Many companies say they are in this for the sustainability factor, and even with the initial blessing from the FDA to Upside Foods for its cultivated chicken making process, the focus is on getting these alternative foods close to the scalability and cost of traditional meat.

“The cultivated seafood industry is beyond needing to solve for the technology — the technology is there and it continues to improve with every iteration,” said Kate Danaher, managing director, S2G Ventures. “Now we need to think about brand-building, labeling, consumer education, scaling production, and developing and improving the supply chain and inputs that will support a scalable industry.”

And like other plant-based, cultured and fermented food companies, alternative seafood companies also must figure out the best way to get people to not only give their products a try, but to ask for seconds.

As we kick off 2023, investors say regulation will help alternative seafood make additional strides, and they are optimistic that traction will be found. Read on to find out how active investors are thinking about alternative seafood, where they see growth, what they are keeping their eye on, and more.

We spoke with:

Kate Danaher, managing director of ocean and seafood, S2G Ventures
Friederike Grosse-Holz, director, Blue Horizon
Christian Lim, managing director, SWEN Capital Partners’ Blue Ocean
Amy Novogratz, co-founder and managing partner, Aqua-Spark

Kate Danaher, managing director of ocean and seafood, S2G Ventures

What will it take for the alternative seafood industry to have its first unicorn? Do you think 2023 is the year for it? Which companies do you think are close to achieving this milestone?

I do not expect the first alternative seafood unicorn to happen in 2023. The first goal we should all be focused on is demonstration of repeated production runs at viable price points.

Cultivated protein companies have made tremendous progress in the development of their products, but the big hurdle is getting a product of consistent quality and cost to the market.

To date, we have seen big dollars flowing to support the first wave of cultivated protein products, including in seafood. To achieve the step up in valuations that will eventually lead to a unicorn, companies will have to demonstrate a quality product with margins that fit within a viable business model at scale.

There have been some strides in the U.S. towards approving the process for producing alternative protein. How can founders work with regulators and investors to bring more proof-of-concept projects to fruition?

Many constituencies need to be “won over” to mitigate the headwinds that cultivated protein is likely to meet as it goes to market, such as industry groups, consumer groups and regulators.

Startup founders can support industry growth, commercialization and acceptance by building bridges with industry groups to show that cultivated seafood can be complementary to wild and farmed seafood.

Additionally, they should provide transparency into the production process to win over consumer groups and join an association, such as AMPS or Good Food Institute, who are doing important regulatory work on behalf of the industry.

Depending on who you ask, mainstream production of alternative proteins, like beef, chicken, and pork, is still years away. How can the alternative seafood industry achieve this faster?

I feel confident that alternative protein products will be available for purchase in the U.S. in the next 12 months, both cultivated seafood and other animal proteins. But for the foreseeable future, that product will be niche, premium and in limited production. Once production capacity constraints are resolved and costs come down, I expect these products to be as widely available as their animal protein counterparts.

One area where seafood may have an advantage in speed to market is related to regulation, given the FDA has sole jurisdiction over alternative proteins whereas the USDA and FDA share jurisdiction over animal protein.

In addition, seafood has a higher price point and its muscle structure is simpler in comparison to other animal proteins, making it more straightforward to grow a product that more easily replicates wild/farmed species.

Many alternative seafood startups aim to solve for the climate crisis as well, but this industry has unique challenges such as cost and appealing to consumers. What will be key in helping companies produce sustainable products at scale?

For cultivated seafood, the technology is there and it continues to improve with every iteration. Now we need to think about brand-building, labeling, consumer education, scaling production, and developing and improving the supply chain and inputs that will support a scalable industry.

If these products can be more affordable and meet consumer expectations, they can achieve impact at scale — for the animal through less wild fishing, for humans by delivering a seafood product with no toxins or microplastics, and for the environment through less waste.

Additionally, consumer education will be key. This, in part, includes driving awareness around the true cost of our food beyond what we pay in the grocery store. Consumers are becoming more aware of the externalities and factoring that into their purchasing decisions, but there is much more work to be done in that respect.

What does the future look like for investment in this space? Which areas are you highlighting as future growth indicators?

The good news is that cellular seafood products have reached a stage where they are approaching readiness to go to market from a regulatory, taste and performance perspective.

Cellular seafood companies are making amazing advancements in reducing the price and nearing the stage where they are ready for growth capital to scale the business. I expect to see more innovation and investment into the advancement of consumer experience and 3D structures.

What is needed to attract more institutional investment for later-stage funding to help scale the market?

I fully expect cellular seafood companies to be in a sold-out position in the future, because there is demand from a large early adopter consumer segment. The next wave of investments will be into infrastructure and companies that build adjacent inputs to outsource parts of the supply chain.

We have strong indications that FDA clearance is coming, and that will tick a big box for institutional and later-stage investors. Once this is behind us, it will be about who is in the market showing traction and producing a product at a price point that makes a compelling business case.

Friederike Grosse-Holz, director, Blue Horizon

What will it take for the alternative seafood industry to have its first unicorn? Do you think 2023 is the year for it? Which companies do you think are close to achieving this milestone?

It will take a clean label and healthy nutritional composition equivalent to seafood, including protein and omega-3 fatty acids.

4 investors discuss the next big wave for alternative seafood startups by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced it was laying off 10,000 people. Alphabet added to the misery with another 12,000 this morning. We’ve previously seen 18,000 job cuts at Amazon and another 11,000 at Meta. You could also throw in Salesforce, which slashed 7,000 jobs at the beginning of the month.

You’ll notice one company is conspicuously missing from this wretched list, and that’s Apple, which at least until now, has remained on the sidelines when it comes to layoffs.

It’s worth noting that the company hasn’t had a history of big layoffs, and the last big one was back in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to run things and laid off 4,100 employees. That was a time when Apple was in dire straits before Jobs led a massive turnaround that began a steady march to the company we see today.

One of the biggest reasons we’ve heard for these layoffs has been over hiring, as the chart below illustrates:

Company

Employee numbers at time of layoffs

Employee growth 2020-2021
Employees laid off

Amazon
1.5 million
800,000
18,000

Alphabet
187,000
52,000
12,000

Meta
87,000
27,000
11,000

Microsoft
221,000
58,000
10,000

Apple
164,000
17,000
–

Source: Macrotrends. Click employee growth numbers to access source data.

These companies grew like gangbusters during the height of the pandemic for various reasons depending on the company, but each boosted their employee base significantly over the period between 2020 and 2022. As the economy slowed throughout 2022, these companies decided it was time to make a correction, and we’ve seen these massive layoffs as a result.

While the other organizations were adding gobs of employees, Apple has hired at a much more modest rate than its large tech company counterparts, adding only 17,000 employees during 2020-2022 (per Statista), and perhaps because it didn’t bring in so many employees as the others, that could account for the fact that it has yet to make big layoffs.

The only layoff news so far from Apple was a pretty modest one. In August Forbes reported that the company quietly laid off 100 contract tech recruiters. In a company of over 160,000 employees that feels insignificant, but it could have been a sign that at least the company was slowing hiring.

And that’s exactly what happened when the company announced a hiring freeze in November. While Apple indicated that it intended to keep hiring in certain roles, it was a general freeze as a reaction to the overall economic uncertainty that all these companies are reacting to.

The shifting economic climate, and overall uncertainty heading into the new year has also been a big driver of the job cuts, but Apple has avoided using layoffs as a tool to this point.

All that said, with Apple scheduled to report earnings on February 1, we’ll probably get a clearer picture of the company’s overall financial performance. Nobody can predict what will happen here, and certainly given the overall pattern of layoffs we’ve seen recently at the other companies, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect something similar, but perhaps their hiring prudence will help prevent a comparable fate and Apple will spare its employees from this trauma.

While layoffs keep coming, so far Apple has steered clear by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

In an industry obsessed with making everything huge (at least here in the U.S.), you may not’ve expected GM to show interest in an electric baby pickup, but here we are.

GM is considering a pickup design that’s “smaller than the Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Cruz,” with a “low roofline” and a 4 to 4.5-foot bed, according to Automotive News. The publication reportedly saw a prototype of the truck at a GM workshop, and said it could feature a sub-$30,000 price tag (that’d be pretty dang cheap compared to most new EVs these days). Judging by this description, the small-ish truck could serve as a spiritual successor to the Chevrolet S-10 EV, which briefly made history as one of the first electric pickups in the late 90s.

The design is definitely not final, GM design director Michael Pevovar reportedly indicated to Automotive News, saying the automaker is “creating these to get a reaction and then to try to modify it or move on.”

While it seems there’s no chance that American firms will embrace ultra-teeny Kei truck-sized vehicles, I’m pleased to see that GM is at least considering something that’s not honkingly huge.

The baby-pickup report preceded a busy day for GM. Though the automaker claims it will rid its lineup of gas guzzlers by 2035, on Friday it announced a plan to pump $579 million into its Flint facility to crank out another generation of its V-8 engines. GM’s manufacturing boss Gerald Johnson explained the somewhat contradictory move in a statement to reporters.

“Our commitment is to an all-EV future, no doubt about it,” he said, with a major caveat: “There are a lot of internal combustion engine customers that we don’t want to lose.”

GM also said it plans to invest another $339 million into three other facilities, which will produce EV components. We also learned that GM has shelved a plan to partner with LG on a fourth U.S. battery plant. One such plant is already active in Ohio, while two others are still in the works in Tennessee and Michigan.

GM, please build the baby EV pickup of my dreams by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch

When Microsoft announced this week that it was laying off 10,000 employees, it wasn’t exactly a shock. Other big companies, including Salesforce, Amazon and Meta, have already been down that road, and the news leaked far and widebefore the official announcement on Wednesday. Alphabet joined in today, announcing another 12,000 job cuts.

Like these other companies, Microsoft is facing a shifting economic landscape and making adjustments to a workforce that was pumped up after the early days of the pandemic. Each of these companies added tens of thousands of employees to the payroll, and with the current economic uncertainty, they decided to dial it back (or at least use it as an excuse to cut costs).

Consider that Microsoft had over 220,000 employees at the end of last year, according to Statista. That’s up from 163,000 in 2020 and 181,000 in 2021, meaning the company added more than 57,000 employees in a two-year period before cutting 10,000 this week.

It’s not clear where the cuts are coming from, and there has been no official word from Microsoft. Bloomberg reported that engineering groups would be cutwhile also reporting that the HoloLens group took a hit after losing a big defense contract. Geekwire reported that there were big cuts to the Nokia group. Microsoft wouldn’t comment when asked by TechCrunch where the cuts were taking place.

Microsoft hasn’t exactly been doing poorly, earning over $200 billion last year while committing $69 billion to pay for gaming company Activision Blizzard almost exactly a year ago. Today, it has a market cap of over $1.7 trillion — that’s with a T. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reporting the layoffs, the company indicated that it will write off $1.2 billion in costs related to the layoffs in the second quarter.

All of this is to say that this layoff represents a drop in the bucket for Microsoft financially, but it has a very real impact on the 10,000 people who were told they would be let go this week. If it was to impress investors, so far it’s not working — its stock ticked down in the days following the announcement before rebounding Friday.

With all of those financial resources, the question is why. What does Microsoft gain by cutting its workforce 5%? We spoke to a few analysts to try to figure it out.

A pretty good year

First, let’s take a quick look at Microsoft’s financials. Companies usually cut costs because the business no longer supports the workforce, but Microsoft has had a pretty decent year, as the chart below shows:

Microsoft joined the layoff parade. Did it really have to? by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

You know what it’s like – you’ve been on vacation and you’ve taken twenty-eight million photos, and you just want to select the best 12 so you can make a calendar. Ain’t nobody got time for that – and that’s what GoodOnes is here to help you with. The app is in early access mode at the moment, and just closed a $3.5m round of seed funding to continue its march toward launch.

In a nutshell, GoodOnes connects with your Google Photos or iCloud Photos account and helps you select the ‘best’ photos from your enormous library of images. The idea isn’t new, we’ve seen a number of apps try to clean up the mess of images. One example was EyeEm’s The Roll, which made a similar attempt, fueling its business model of turning everyone into a stock photographer.

At least The Roll made sense as a marketing stunt for EyeEm’s core business. What is less clear is how GoodOnes has a path to generating revenue.

“We’re really thinking about a subscription layer on top of this product. We saw a lot of willingness to pay from users, especially for the target segment of parents, and grandparents,” explains Israel Shalom, co-founder at GoodOnes, in an interview with TechCrunch. “We have not finalized our subscription model yet. Our primary focus at this point is to build a good user base and get all the feedback to improve it.”

The company raised its round from TLV Partners with participation from Liquid2 Ventures (Joe Montana’s fund), as well as Rich Miner (former co-founder of Android), and Peter Welinder (founder of Carousel, sold to Dropbox), as well as many more seasoned operators and funders. With the funding, the company is planning to expand its engineering team.

In a world where Google, Apple, and the other photo-keeping apps are already making efforts to surface good and interesting photos, is there really space for GoodOnes in the market?

“The reality that these apps have been around for a decade, both on the Apple side and on Google side. What they are doing well is offering safe storage for all your photos,” says Shalom, pointing out that to the degree that the competitor apps are surfacing photos, they aren’t doing a particularly good job, and that his solution is much more customizable. “What’s different about what we’re doing, is that we are leaving you in the driver’s seat.”

The app works by learning your preferences, and using your swipe-left-i-love-this and swipe-right-ugh-get-out-of-my-face to train your tastes on an AI. From there, it starts creating galleries of photos that it thinks you like the best. The final gallery or album is created and presented back to the user.

“We’re thinking that there’s a room for another player big player here. The same way that Netflix is synonymous with streaming and Spotify synonymous with music,” says Shalom,” We would like GoodOnes to be the place where you consume your most personal and most valuable information, which is your personal photos and videos.”

“With the creation of mobile platforms, we ended up delivering powerful computers, digital cameras and streaming devices in everyone’s pocket– we could never have anticipated the volume of new content that would be created,” says Rich Miner, who co-founded Android, and is an angel investor into GoodOnes’ round, said in a statement. “GoodOnes brings powerful curation to the deluge of photos we’ve all come to accumulate. I’m very excited about this tool & tech, which is why I was thrilled to invest.”

GoodOnes raises to help make sense of your mess of a camera roll by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Due to a phenomenon called semantic satiation, if you repeat a word or phrase too frequently, it can sometimes lose all meaning.

That’s what happened to “unicorn:” We wore it out like a pair of sneakers that leak in the rain but are too comfortable to part with.

In fact, most of the startups in CB Insights’ unicorn index are on the bubble and “are actually hovering right at the $1 billion mark,” reports Rebecca Szkutak.

“How many of these will stay unicorns through this calendar year?” Out of 35 investors she surveyed, “the vast majority felt the herd has likely already been winnowed,” she found.

Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members
Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription

“It’s not just about whether they’ll still command ‘unicorn status,’ but rather whether or not they will be fundable, at any value, period,” said Harley Miller, founder and managing partner at Left Lane Capital.

By all accounts, the IPO window is nailed shut. Any startups that hope to weather this downturn must raise additional funds.

I’m sure the hunt is already on for another mythical animal that best represents startup attainment in a down market, like ‘ARRmadillo.’ You can have that one for free.

My greater hope: investors and founders will use this era of austerity as an opportunity to create value, and not just wealth.

Thanks very much for reading,

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

Teach yourself growth marketing: How to boot up an email marketing campaign

In the third article of a five-part series, growth marketing expert Jonathan Martinez (formerly of Uber, Postmates and Chime) explains how to create and optimize email campaigns that will “push consumers through your funnel and drive conversions.”

Martinez shares fundamentals for segmenting customers and anticipating where leaks will occur along the funnel you’re developing. Startups that recapture these users can eke out higher ARR, and every little bit counts.

“It is crucial to distill user segments as much as possible because we must ensure that we’re sending the right messaging to the right consumers.”

Putting numbers on the global venture slowdown

According to CB Insights’ State of Venture report, VC funding fell 35% in 2022. Although estimated deal count didn’t drop proportionately, “global venture funding was down by 19% quarter over quarter in Q4 2022,” reports Anna Heim.

“How long things will take to improve is anyone’s guess, so we will be looking forward to more data as the year progresses,” she writes.

Dear Sophie: What are some fast options for hiring someone on an expiring grace period?

Dear Sophie,

I’m a co-founder of a very early-stage startup. My co-founder and I are considering bringing on a third co-founder, who was recently laid off. She is currently in the United States on an H-1B with a grace period that will expire soon.

What are the fastest, least risky immigration options that we should consider? What’s going on with potential increases to USCIS filing fees?

— Careful Co-founder

Pitch Deck Teardown: Scrintal’s $1M seed deck

Visual collaboration tool Scrintal says it has more than 40,000 people on its waitlist, but that didn’t stop its founders from raising €1 million.

Co-founders Ece Kural and Furkan Bayraktar shared their pitch deck with TC+ — click through to learn why their value proposition, vision and product plans connected with investors:

Cover slide
Problem slide part 1
Problem slide part 2
Solution slide part 1
Solution slide part 2
Value proposition slide
User testimonials slide
Traction slide
Revenue slide
Retention slide
User profile slide
Growth projection slide
Vision slide
The ask slide
Contact slide
Appendices cover slide
Appendix 1: Why now?
Appendix 2: Competitive landscape
Appendix 3: Product and growth model

TechCrunch+ roundup: 2023 unicorn slump, global VC slowdown, email marketing 101 by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch

Even as VC funding dries up across the world, development finance institutions (DFIs) from Europe are looking to African startups to deploy their dry powder.

British International Investment (BII), a DFI from the UK, told TechCrunch recently that it will deploy $500 million into startups by the end of 2026, and half of that amount has been earmarked for African tech companies. In addition to backing VC funds in the region, the organization aims to make more direct equity investments in startups, adding to the four African companies it invested in last year.

Formerly known as the Commonwealth Development Corporation, the BII is not alone: The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Netherlands’ Dutch Entrepreneurial Bank (FMO) have each invested in more than 10 startups over the last four years. The IFC also recently launched a $225 million fund to back early stage startups in Africa, Central Asia, Middle East, and Pakistan.

Often attached to countries that had colonized big parts of the continent and still have financial, social and historical ties to countries in the region, these funding initiatives are complementing and offsetting slowing investment from VC funds and other institutional investors.

“It’s a paradigm shift, where ‘development finance’ looks at private enterprise as a vehicle of socio-economic development,” said Dario Giuliani, founder and director of research firm Briter Bridges.

BII’s decision follows plans to double down on its efforts and invest some $6 billion in Africa across five years, and invest $100 million in Egyptian startups. The organization has invested in eight African startups since 2020.

But what’s driving these organizations to invest in Africa despite investors across the world preferring to invest only in safer bets? It seems they’re attracted to tech that enables wider socio-economic development because it offers a scalable and efficient way to make an economic impact.

Investing in tech to meet development goals

Usually deploying capital from national or international development funds, DFIs back development and private-sector projects in less industrialized economies to promote job creation and sustainable economic growth. Keen to align with those missions, these organizations seek to back tech startups that can make an impact — for example, tech that grants and increases marginalized populations’ access to financial services, food and energy.

Why international DFIs are looking to African startups to scale impact investing efforts by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Netflix reported its Q4 2022 financial results yesterday, topping 230 million global subscribers, up from 223.09 million, thanks to the addition of 7.7 million subs. During the earnings call, Netflix co-CEO Sarandos said the company is “keeping an eye” on a free ad-supported TV (FAST) option, a move that many media companies are considering as more consumers shift to FAST services.

“We’re open to all these different models that are out there right now, but we’ve got a lot on our plate this year, both with the paid sharing and with our launch of advertising and continuing to this slate of content that we’re trying to drive to our members. So, we are keeping an eye on that segment for sure,” Sarandos said.

While a Netflix FAST channel offering probably won’t happen anytime soon, Sarandos isn’t dismissing the possibility that there’ll be one in the future. When and if Netflix goes through with a FAST option, the move will most likely boost its ad business significantly. According to nScreenMedia, the FAST industry will reach 216 million monthly active users in 2023, driving $4.1 billion in ad revenue.

Netflix is known to be slow to follow industry trends. It took many years for former co-CEO Reed Hastings, who just announced he would step down yesterday, even to consider launching a cheaper ad-supported plan. Hulu is the third-oldest streaming service next to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video (formerly Amazon Unbox) and has offered an ad tier for over a decade.

Netflix is counting on its ad business to be a big source of income, estimating $8.17 billion in revenue for Q1 2023.

However, it’s looking like Netflix’s “Basic with Ads” plan isn’t paying off as much as it anticipated, according to a recent Kantar report. Despite being satisfied with the growth of its ads business, which Netflix President of Worldwide Advertising, Jeremi Gorman noted during an interview at Variety’s Entertainment Summit atCES, Kantar data shows that Netflix “Basic with Ads” now accounts for 12% of its subscriber base. Although Netflix intended for the new tier to entice new subscribers, it appears only a few current customers traded down to the $3 plan.

In the letter to shareholders yesterday, Netflix wrote that the launch of its ad-supported tier was successful, however, the company admitted it had “much more still to do.”

It’s likely that more subscribers will consider the cheaper tier when the company adds all its content to the plan. As of now, 85% to 95% of Netflix’s content is available. The company is currently renegotiating deals with studios.

Also, the ad tier is not available in every region. “Basic with Ads” is only available in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Canada and Mexico. The company has no immediate plans to expand, but it has future plans to target larger ad markets.

Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann said in yesterday’s earnings call, “We wouldn’t get into a business like this if we didn’t believe it could be bigger than at least 10% of our revenue and hopefully much more over time in that mix as we grow.”

Overall, the company admits that “2022 was a tough year,” Netflix wrote in its letter to shareholders. The streaming giant had two painful quarters in 2022, losing over a million global subscribers.

In Q4, the company reported $7.85 billion in revenue, adding to its recent trend of slowing revenue growth. For comparison, the company brought in $7.93 billion in Q3 2022 and $7.97 in Q2.

“We believe we have a clear path to reaccelerate our revenue growth: continuing to improve all aspects of Netflix, launching paid sharing and building our ads offering,” the company added in yesterday’s letter.

This year and beyond are shaping up to be a pivotal time for Netflix. The company is set to launch its password-sharing offering and livestreaming capability in 2023.

Netflix says it’s open to adding free streaming ‘FAST’ channels to grow its ads business by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

While the bulk of commercial space launch activity is happening just south of its border, Canada is tired of watching from the sidelines and wants in on the action: The country’s federal transport ministry announced that it intends to support commercial space launches in the near future.

The plan is for Canada to hose commercial launch activities starting essentially immediately on a “case-by-case basis,” using the existing regulatory framework to govern how, where and when those launches take place. That ad-hoc method is expected to last approximately three years, with the intent bing that Transport Canada will spend that time working with other relevant federal agencies and regulators to create a framework specific to modern space launch activities within the country.

It’s not as if Canada doesn’t already participate in the space economy: To the contrary, Transport Canada said that aerospace commercial activity contributed more than $22 billion to in GDP to the country’s economy in 2020. The commercial launch sector is obviously heating up, however, and Canada believes that its geographically and strategically well-positioned to capitalize.

Already, some homegrown startups are experimenting with the possibilities of small payload launch from Canada, including SpaceRyde, which uses ballon-lofted small rockets to make the relatively short trip to low-Earth orbit. But opening up commercial activities more broadly could help Canada court existing commercial launch entities, including SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and the other companies looking to join their ranks, as an additional North American take-off option.

Canada wants to support commercial space launches by Darrell Etherington originally published on TechCrunch

Starting on February 21, Amazon’s Music Unlimited streaming service will increase by $1/£1 in the U.S. and the U.K. The Amazon Music Unlimited Individual Plan is increasing from $9.99 (£9.99) to $10.99 (£10.99) per month, whereas the student plan is changing from $4.99 (£4.99) to $5.99 (£5.99) per month.

The company noted the price changes on its support page, which was first noticed by Billboard. “To help us bring you even more content and features, we’re updating the prices of select Amazon Music Unlimited plans,” Amazon wrote.

While the company mentions price hikes to its Individual Plan and Student Plan, the prices for the Family Plan ($15.99/month) and Single-Device Plan ($4.99/month) appear to remain unchanged.

It’s only been eight months since Amazon last raised its prices. In May, the discounted Amazon Music Unlimited plan for Amazon Prime customers increased from $7.99 to $8.99 per month. Non-Prime members didn’t experience a change this time and still had to pay $9.99 per month.

Amazon also offers an Amazon Music Prime tier, which is included free with Prime subscriptions and offers ad-free listening. However, if users want HD, Ultra HD and Spatial Audio, they have to subscribe to Music Unlimited.

The e-commerce giant is currently in the middle of a cost-cutting spree, which includes the recent closure of its charity donation program AmazonSmile, and the decision to lay off 18,000 employees earlier this month.

Amazon’s decision to jack up the cost comes on the heels of Apple increasing its rival music streaming subscription, Apple Music, by $1 for individual subscribers and $2 for families in the U.S. Apple Music alsoquietly increased the price of its student planin the U.S., Canada and the U.K. in June 2022.

Spotify is also considering raising its subscription price in the U.S., which CEO Daniel Ek noted during the company’s earnings call in October. “[Price increases] is one of the things that we would like to do,” Ek said. “I feel really good about sort of this upcoming year and what that means in pricing in relation to our service.” This would be a notable move for the company since it hasn’t raised its standard subscription cost since launching in 2011 at $9.99 per month in the U.S.

Amazon’s Music Unlimited quietly gets a price hike in the US and UK by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch