Month: January 2023

Salesforce has announced that it’s cutting some 10% of its workforce, impacting more than 7,000 employees, while it will also shutter offices in “certain markets.”

In a letter to employees and a corresponding filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff referenced the “challenging” environment in which it’s operating, pointing to the “more measured approach” its customers are making with their purchasing decisions.

Similar to other companies hit by significant layoffs over the past year, Benioff added that Salesforce had hired too many people through the pandemic during the boom times. For context, the company claimed 79,000 employees last February, a 30% increase on 2020.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about how we came to this moment,” Benioff wrote. “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that.”

Benioff said that those impacted in the U.S. will receive a “minimum” of almost five months worth of pay, as well as health insurance and “other benefits to help with their transition.” Outside the U.S., Benioff said workers can expect a “similar level of support.”

Tough times

The news follows just a few months after activist investorStarboard Value acquired a stake in the enterprise software company, with our analysis at the time concluding that Starboard was seeking cost-cutting measures as part of its investment. Certainly, Salesforce revealed an initial round of layoffs in early November affecting “hundreds” of workers, with co-CEO and co-chair Bret Taylor announcing shortly after that he would be stepping down.

With just four days into the new year, there is little sign of the economic headwinds easing, and today’s news follows a slew of major layoffs last year including Facebook parent Meta which laid off 13% of its workforce and Stripe which cut 14%. Already reports abound that Tesla is gearing up for a fresh wave of redundancies in Q1 2023, while Amazon this week secured an $8 billion loan as part of its broader measures to counter the “uncertain macroeconomic environment.”

As with just about every other tech company, Salesforce has been facing significant headwinds too. After hitting an all-time valuation peak of more than $300 billion in late 2021, Salesforce’s market cap has experienced something of a “correction” in the intervening months, now sitting at around $134 billion — roughly where it was at three years ago. The company also refused to provide a revenue forecast for 2023 at it most recent earnings report last year.

Salesforce said that the restructuring effort will cost it between $1.4 billion and $2.1 billion, which it expects to incur in Q4 of fiscal 2023.

Salesforce to cut workforce by 10% after hiring ‘too many people’ during the pandemic by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

Kurly, a South Korean startup that provides next-day grocery delivery service, just announced that it has called off its plan to go public amid worsening economic situations that have put startups’ market debuts on hold.

“We have decided to postpone listing on the Korea Exchange (KOSPI), considering market sentiment remained weak amid the global market uncertainties,” the company said in an emailed statement.

The startup passed the preliminary listing screening on August 22, 2022. In South Korea, a private company must complete the initial public offering (IPO) process within six months after it receives the initial approval for listing. Hence, the IPO deadline for Kurly is on February 22. Kurly will have to start from scratch should it wants to resume its listing.

“Kurly will resume the IPO at the optimal time when we can fully evaluate our valuation in the future,” the company said in its statement. “We have enough cash to carry out the new business we were planning.”

TechCrunch covered Kurly’s $210 million pre-IPO funding at a $3.3 billion valuation in December 2021. But now the online grocery startup is reportedly valued at approximately $669 million, which dropped about 78%.

Founded by Kurly CEO Sophie Kim, a former investment banker, the company expanded to non-grocery products like cosmetics, personal care products and health supplements as part of an effort to increase its revenue or gross merchandise volume (GMV) before listing. In an interview with Bloomberg in March last year, Kim said its non-grocery products account for more than 20 percent of Kurly’s total GMV.

Last August, Kurly made its first overseas foray into Singapore, enabling consumers in Singapore to buy ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook meals via an app called RedMart, owned by Alibaba’s Lazada.

Kurly has raised a total of about $761 million since its 2015 inception. Its investors include DST Global, Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse Capital, Aspex Management, MiraeAsset Venture Investment, Anchor Equity Partners and strategic investors such as CJ Logistics and SK Networks.

Online grocery startup Kurly scraps IPO amid market uncertainty by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch

Bird Buddy, the maker of a smart bird feeder that snaps photos of your bird visitors which are collected in a companion mobile app, is out today with another product for its nature enthusiast and birdwatching community. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company is showing off a prototype of its new A.I.-powered Smart Hummingbird Feeder, which is able to take photos and videos of 350 different hummingbird species with wing speeds of up to 60 mph.

Like its original smart bird feeder, the new feeder’s camera is triggered by motion which prompts it to take photos of the bird. Those are then run through an A.I. program to help identify the species, alerting the user to their visitor through the Bird Buddy mobile app.

Originally a crowdfunded startup through Kickstarter, Bird Buddy realized it couldn’t rely on open databases to help it properly identify bird photos. So in 2021, it built around 250 test cameras and sent them out to volunteer Kickstarter backers to help it develop its own A.I. tech. The company collected around 3 million photos, then hired an ornithologist and team of interns to manually process over 2 million photos to train its bird identification A.I. That has allowed Bird Buddy’s system to identify around 1,000 birds — now including hummingbirds.

Bird Buddy also comes with a nicely designed mobile app that gamifies the birdwatching experience. In the app, users build out their collection of birds, track birds’ visits over time, learn about their habits, and share bird photos with the community, giving a bit of modern-day flair to what’s often thought of as an older person’s hobby.

The company says there are now 100,000 users in the Bird Buddy community who have a smart feeder. A new Heartbeat Map website, also launching at CES, lets others outside of Bird Buddy’s own customer base track the bird sightings in real-time.

At CES, the company demonstrated its new Hummingbird Feeder, noting it plans to build the feeder with recyclable and sustainable materials while also offering new features to cater to hummingbirds, like ports with a lily-shaped red flower that provides access to the nectar the birds will eat. The two-part design snaps together with a seal to prevent mold and leaks, but can easily be unsnapped to clean. And like the original Bird Buddy smart feeder, the new feeder features a swappable camera module, optional solar roof, motion sensors, and A.I. tech.

The company’s original feeder is $199 or $269 with a solar roof and has only been shipping since September. The Hummingbird Feeder isn’t yet priced but will be comparable or maybe a little less, we’re told. The company hopes to launch the new feeder later this year.

Longer-term, Bird Buddy’s ultimate success may not be from its feeders themselves but from the data it collects.

“We get timestamps, and we know the species and we know — generally — the location based on the town that you put in,” explains Bird Buddy co-founder Kyle Buzzard, in a chat at CES. “We’re building the largest database of bird visits.”

He says the company wants to open-source this data to allow organizations like the Audubon Society and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, as well as universities, to have access. The team has also discussed allowing users to photograph and ID birds using just their phones.

In addition to Kickstarter funds the Slovenia- and Kalamazoo, Michigan-based startup raised $8.5 million from General Catalyst and Backed in a seed round last year.

Bird Buddy’s new smart hummingbird feeder can photograph and identify 350 different bird species by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) — an organization that overlooks wireless charging standards — announced a new standard called Qi2. The headline is that the WPC is working with Apple to bring Magsafe-like capabilities to Android.

It’s been over two years since Apple introduced MagSafe for iPhones — a wireless standard that opens up a ton of magnetically attachable accessories including chargers. The company’s primary purpose was to bump up the speed of wireless charging — from 7.5W for Qi-compatible chargers to 15W for MagSafe Chargers. Apple also wanted to get rid of the difficulty of having to perfectly align the phone with the wireless charging pad with magnets that snap to the back of the phone perfectly. However, the standard is still proprietary and the Apple-certified ecosystem of accessories hasn’t grown much.

The WPC said that Qi2 enables a Magnetic Power Profile — built on the basis of Apple’s MagSafe technology. So it’s likely that devices compatible with the Qi2 standard will work will both Android and iOS-based devices.

“Qi2’s Magnetic Power Profile will ensure that phones or other rechargeable battery-powered mobile products are perfectly aligned with charging devices, thus providing improved energy efficiency and faster charging,” the WPC said in a press release.

The consortium said that the new Qi2 standard will be released later this year and will replace the existing Qi standard. And Qi2 compatible accessories should be available before the end of the year. Notably, it said this new standard will pave way for accessories “that wouldn’t be chargeable using current flat surface-to-flat surface devices.” This could be used for charging different kinds of headphones or smartwatches.

The WPC hasn’t released full specifications related to Qi2, so we don’t know about its capabilities just yet. A WPC spokesperson told The Verge that while initially Qi2 will cap charging speeds at 15W, it plans to work on higher power profiles for the standard at a later stage.

The Qi2 standard might set the stage for a faster magnet-enabled wireless charging experience, but it won’t ensure the quality of magnets used in the chargers or phones. So it is hard to guarantee a secure magnetic fit with Qi2-compatible chargers. It’s also not clear if chargers with this new standard will work perfectly with iPhone 14 or older models. Apple didn’t comment on the story at the time of writing.

As Apple will adopt USB-C for iPhones due to regulations in the EU and India, it might look for another standard to control. Right now, wireless charging — especially something like MagSafe — is nowhere near wired charging speeds. By having MagSafe be the base for a Qi2-like standard that will be widely adopted, Apple might be setting the ground for having iPhones rely more (or even completely) on wireless charging in the future.

Wireless Power Consortium is working with Apple to bring MagSafe-like capabilities to Android by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Twitter users in Australia and New Zealand have been facing issues accessing the service for over 12 hours, they say, as the Elon Musk-owned social network continues to grapple with reliability challenges amid cost-cutting measures.

The outage began at around 2 p.m. Pacific Time Tuesday, according to user tweets and DownDetector (Australia and New Zealand), a web monitoring tool that tracks reliability issues.

The glitch, which is causing tweets to not load up for users and the service to be very laggy for others, appears to be only affecting those in Australia and New Zealand.

DownDetector’s global website shows very few complaints. It’s unclear what caused the outage.

Many users say they are able to access the service after using a VPN app. Though some users report sporadic improvements to Twitter service, complaints are still pouring in.

Twitter suffered a global outage last week after Musk said he had rolled out “significant backend server architecture changes” and that it should result in Twitter feeling “faster.”

Muskacquired Twitter for $44 billionin late October. He has sought to cut Twitter’s expenses by eliminating thousands of employees, many of whom worked to maintain the service’s infrastructure. Musk has also focused on making the Twitter experience faster for users by removing bloat code from the service.

Twitter goes down for many in Australia, users say by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Snaptrude, a young startup, is attempting to disrupt Autodesk in the building design space, giving customers modern and broader sets of features at more affordable cost. The early progress by the New York City-headquartered firm has helped it court thousands of customers and now, a seed funding.

The startup — which has raised $6.6 million in a seed funding co-led by Accel and Foundamental VC — is taking a similar approach as Figma to take on an industry that has relied on decades-old code and where cloud-based collaboration is still elusive.

“The problem has been that the industry is very backward in nature. It’s dominated by companies like Autodesk, humongous companies, software built largely in the 90s. So, the software stack is very old,” said Altaf Ganihar, founder and CEO of Snaptrude, in an interview.

Popular Building Information Modeling (BIM) solutions including Autodesk’s Revit have lagged in many areas. They lack interoperability and require high-end computers. Architects, engineers, construction firms and industry groups have raised these concerns in numerous open letters to the $40 billion Autodesk to little to no success.

Snaptrude is not alone in taking on the giants. Startups including Arcol, which started in January 2021 and we covered in March last year, is also trying to solve the same problem with their models. Ganihar said that Snaptrude is offering a full-fledged solution in the market, which is different from Arcol and other startups that may take a couple of years to bring their products out.

“There are hardly any players in a full-stack scenario,” he told TechCrunch.

Ganihar, who has a computer graphics and computer vision research background, got the idea to found Snaptrude after he had a terrible experience with legacy software while working on a national-level project to reconstruct the UNESCO world heritage site Hampi in India’s Karnataka.

He initially built plugins to work with existing software. But in 2017, the engineer started prototyping the idea of a cloud-based design tool. He showcased his prototype at TechCrunch Disrupt that year which got him some visibility and brought initial funding of $1.2 million in early 2018.

The initial funding helped build a team to bring Snaptrude to reality and add companies including WeWork and Square Yards to its list of over 6,000 customers across more than 30 countries worldwide.

Unlike Revit and other legacy solutions, Snaptrude works on a browser and offers collaboration for designing buildings in 3D as naturally as using Google Docs. It also comes with the ability to generate real-time data to inform about the impact of changing construction size on cost, climate and energy utilization. Additionally, the platform, available in a freemium model, supports all widely used file formats, including DWG, RVT, IFC, SKP, FBX, PDF and OBJ.

“The AEC [architecture, engineering and construction] industry is currently being held back by antiquated software systems & hasn’t undergone a modern cloud disruption. This is baffling, especially in an industry in which collaboration between teams and specialists is necessary. This is where Snaptrude is changing the game — enabling true collaboration, and access to real-world data in a huge, global market. We are bullish on Snaptrude’s strategy and category leadership ahead,” said Prashanth Prakash, Partner at Accel, in a prepared statement.

The startup has cumulatively raised $7.8 million to date. It plans to utilize the fresh funds to bring product enhancements and eventually implement and allocate money for its future growth. The all-equity seed round also saw participation from Possible Ventures, Clark Valberg (Founder, Invision), RFC, CapitalX and Thilo Konzok (co-founder Home).

Snaptrude has a globally-distributed workforce of 35, including geometry engineers and mathematicians. It plans to slightly expand the engineering team this year to bolster its market presence.

“Online collaboration tools have emerged as a necessity for businesses and professionals in today’s landscape and 3D design is no different. Snaptrude’s forward-looking suite of collaboration design tools is serving this vital need and, in the process, revolutionizing workflows in the AEC industry across the globe. We are thrilled to partner with Altaf and Snaptrude on their journey to create a more collaborative world of 3D design,” said Shubhankar Bhattacharya, General Partner at Foundamental.

Snaptrude gets VC backing to take on Autodesk in building design space by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Food waste and food packaging take up a significant portion of the world’s landfills. AlterPacks is tackling both issues with technology that turns food waste into takeout boxes and other containers. The Singapore-based startup has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding led by Plug and Play APAC and Seed Capital, with participation from Earth Venture Capital and angel investor Alice Foo.

The new funding will be used for AlterPacks’ commercialization, including production and supply, in markets like Asia, Australia and Europe.

Founded in 2019 to tackle single-use plastics, AlterPacks’ main raw material are spent grains, a by-product of manufacturing foods like beer. Spent grains are usually used for animal feed, fertilizer or disposed of. Through its manufacturing process, AlterPacks turns spent grains into food containers that can be molded into different shapes, are freezer and microwave-friendly and home compostable.

Founder and CEO Karen Cheah told TechCrunch that she became interested in developing alternatives to disposable containers when she was traveling and saw communities struggling with the amount of plastic containers and food waste thrown away. AlterPacks uses spent grains because they are easily available.

“The properties of spent grains and the volume of grains available globally were two key factors,” she said. “By upcycling the grains, we are creating new economic value and putting what would have been a by-product disposed as animal feed, or headed to landfills and compost, back into the supply chain as food containers that can be used to replace plastic disposables.”

Cheah explained that the process of converting spent grains into AlterPacks’ food containers is similar to paper pulp manufacturing. AlterPacks can manufacture containers at scale with automated machines that clean raw materials, mix its formulation and then press it into different shapes of containers.

AlterPacks’ containers have been available commercially since December. Its go-to-market strategy is a B2B model and includes working with distribution partners that sell supplies to F&B businesses like restaurants and hotels. AlterPacks containers have been on the market since December. The startup is also in the process of developing bio-pellets as a replacement for petroleum-based resins use in manufacturing machines. They are made out of spent grains, and other agricultural waste like coconut shells.

In a statement about Plug and Play APAC’s investment, managing partner Jupe Tan said, “We got to know AlterPacks while sourcing for relevant startups for the Alliance to End Plastic Waste Innovation Program and they have gained significant interest from the members of the Alliance, which is naturally a signal for us to do further due diligence for investments. We are glad that we managed to tap into our partnership with SEEDS Capital to co-lead and invest in our very first sustainability startup in APAC and we hope this will be the first of many other sustainability investments with SEEDS Capital.”

Singapore-based AlterPacks turns food waste into food containers by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch