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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried talked from an undisclosed location in the Bahamas today with reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin for a DealBook event, a discussion that his legal team “very much” did not approve of, he told Sorkin with a boyish grin.

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman tweeted afterward that he felt “SBF” was “telling the truth.” But we’re not so sure. In fact, having watched the live-stream, we’re still wrestling with whether he was credible.

Throughout the back-and-forth, Bankman-Fried sounded almost studiously amateurish, insisting he didn’t knowingly commingle funds between FTX and the trading firm he controlled, Alameda Research, where it has since been discovered that the exchange had funneled $10 billion in customer assets to Alameda for use in trading, lending and investing activities.

Though between $1 billion and $2 billion appears to be missing, and though company executives reportedly set up a bookkeeping “back door” to circumnavigate red flags, when Sorkin asked about the outfits’ reliance on one another, Bankman-Fried said that he was “frankly surprised by how big Alameda’s position was, which points to another failure of oversight on my part, and a failure to appoint someone to be chiefly in charge of that.”

Notably, Bankman-Fried ultimately used “oversight” nine times, even as he appeared to blame others. Asked if he should have taken money from FTX’s users’ accounts at all, he pointed the finger at Alameda, saying, “I wasn’t running [it], I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I didn’t know the size of their position. A lot of these are things that I’ve learned over the last month that I learned as I was sort of frantically digging into this.” Obviously, he added, “that’s a pretty big mistake. I mark that as a pretty big oversight that I wasn’t more aware of.”

At many points during his back and forth with Sorkin, Bankman came across, too, as delusional. He said that before FTX filed for bankruptcy — a move he authorized grudgingly four days after it was first proposed — “There had been a lot of interest in financing [FTX]. A lot of fairly strong interest, you know, many billions of dollars’ worth.”

It really didn’t seem that way on the outside(!). There wasn’t interest from Binance, as was well-documented. There wasn’t interest from his scorched venture backers, who, by the way, Bankman-Fried spared today in the interview. (Asked by Sorkin whether “Sequoia Capital, Paradigm and some very big venture capital firms” that funded FTX ever asked Bankman-Fried about how much risk he was taking on and “whether they bear any responsibility,” he answered, “I don’t think that they’re responsible . . . most of what they were focused on was . . .what might FTX become . . .”)

Indeed, in many ways, Bankman-Fried behaved today very much like someone who doesn’t comprehend that his life just changed dramatically and who instead believes he can still steer the outcome of FTX, despite the fact that he was forced to resign. (FTX’s new chief executive, a corporate turnaround specialist, has called Bankman-Fried’s stewardship a “complete failure of corporate control.”)

He talked of “a lot of assets that are on hand [still at FTX], although many of them are not liquid. They were worth quite a bit more than the new liabilities a month ago, even, a lot of them a year ago.” Bankman-Fried relatedly suggested that he hasn’t accepted that his customers will lose everything.

He said toward the end of the interview, “I can’t promise you and I can’t promise anyone anything there, and it’s not really in my hands to a large extent. But I would think that it would make sense to be exploring [a pathway forward] because I think there’s a chance that customers could end up a lot more whole — I don’t know, maybe even fully whole — if there was a really strong, concerted effort.”

It was such a strange showing, it made us wonder why some of the most sophisticated investors in the world put him on a pedestal in the first place.

Sure, he has “had a bad month,” as he told Sorkin, to audience laughter. Yet it’s just as likely that Bankman-Fried and his circle are busily making the argument that he was simply inept — in over his head — and never intentionally participated in artifice.

It makes a big difference. U.S. prosecutors can pursue a civil action against someone accused of ineptitude or negligence, and that individual might face significant financial consequences. But if it’s proven that an individual schemed to mislead others, then fraud crimes are on the table, which also means jail time is on the table. It could mean a far bleaker future for Bankman-Fried.

Already, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan has reportedly launched an investigation into FTX; the SEC and the Justice Department are also, naturally, poking around and trying to determine whether Bankman-Fried’s maneuverings intended to deceive or were instead an astonishing series of blunders.

It’s tempting to conclude the former, that Bankman-Fried made his decisions knowingly. Given his “crypto genius” status until recently, it’s hard to imagine he was so in the dark. But it was quite a performance today if so.

Was Sam Bankman-Fried’s appearance a performance? by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch

Badili, a Kenya-based smartphone re-commerce startup, has raised $2.1 million pre-seed funding to scale its operations within Africa; one of the fastest-growing mobile phone market in the world.

The Venture Catalysts, V&R Africa, Grenfell holdings, and SOSV, participated in the round, as did family offices and angel investors from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and India.

Buoyed by the new funding, Badili plans to explore new growth opportunities in West Africa, where it hopes to tap an increasing demand for affordable second-hand smartphones, even as it scales its operations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

“We are launching in Uganda and Tanzania and have established strong partnerships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Within the next six months, we will be expanding to a few West African markets to get our foot in the door of some of the major markets in Africa,” said Rishabh Lawania (CEO), who co-founded the startup with Keshu Dubey (CTO) early this year.

Badili carries out trade-ins and buybacks on behalf of major OEMs and phone dealers, and has, so far, signed partnerships with key brands like Samsung. It buys devices from individuals too.

Lawania told TechCrunch he launched the startup after noticing that re-commerce did not exist in Kenya as a legitimate and trustworthy industry, yet demand for pre-owned devices was high.

“One of my ex-employees in Kenya got arrested for buying a stolen phone, and it struck me that most people can’t really buy pre-owned electronics here because the only option they have is the grey market, which is risky. That is when Badili idea kicked-in. I thought something really needs to change,” said Lawania, also the founder of Wee Media (parent company of WeeTracker news site) and gadgets Africa.

Lawania said 60% of Badili customers are individuals upgrading from a feature to smartphone, adding that Badili devices cost less than half their original prices.

“We are providing an alternative to people who don’t want to pay full price for a device, and I am more excited about the fact that we are able to help a lot of consumers buy their first smartphone,” said Lawania.

Affordability remains a key barrier to smartphone penetration, which is key to powering Africa’s digital economy, in most countries across Africa including Kenya where feature phones still dominate the handset market. Recent data from the Communications Authority of Kenya indicates that while smartphone penetration is deepening, feature phones market share currently stands at 55.1 percent.

Across Africa, latest data from International Data Corporation (IDC) also shows that consumers opted for cheaper options as feature phones shipments grew by 10.6% while smartphone consignments dropped by 7.9% in the second quarter of the year owing to growing inflation and toughening economic outlook.

While the report predicted that smartphone shipments will recover, affordability and consumers buying power will continue to play a huge role in smartphone penetration in the continent.

Besides, Badili is tapping the growing refurbished and used mobile phones market, which is expected to hit $146 billion by 2030, growing at CAGR of 11%, partly driven by smartphone adoption in emerging nations.

Badili buys the phones through its platform, and network of shops and agents spread across the country. It uses its price estimation algorithm, that takes into account various factors including the age of the phone and model, to calculate the value of the phone. The phones are revamped, repackaged and resold with one year warranty.

Lawania said Badili takes details, including the I.D and mugshot, of the sellers, and also requires them to sign an affidavit stating that they are the rightful owners of the devices. For extra caution, he said, Badili has also setup a system that can flag frequent sellers.

He said he is setting up and scaling technology, systems, partnerships and networks needed to build Africa’s most trusted and biggest re-commerce consumer electronics marketplace.

Smartphone re-commerce startup Badili raises $2.1M pre-seed funding by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Huel, the European provider of nutritional products, has sold more than 270 million meals across the globe since Julian Hearn started the company in 2015. Now with $24 million in fresh capital, it plans to do even more.

It’s been a while since we covered Huel, which originally launched in the United Kingdom in 2017 with a low-sugar, plant-based and low-carbon-footprint protein powder product and has since expanded into ready-to-drink, snack bars and hot lunch options.

In 2019, we reported on them when they launched their nutritional bars in the U.S. At the time, the company was buoyed by a Highland Europe-led $20 million venture round, at a $260 million valuation, it raised in 2018. There was even talk of Huel going public in 2021.

Today, much of the company’s sales are outside the U.K., with U.S. “Hueligans,” the company’s loyal fans, representing Huel’s second-biggest market, followed by Germany and Japan, CEO James McMaster told TechCrunch.

The company has now grown to 250 people, including a small office in New York. Year over year revenue growth is 40%, up to $170 million, which McMaster attributes to that strong new customer growth, the ready-to-eat hot lunch product launch (among others) and the company’s transition from solely direct-to-consumer to also retail stores.

“We’re at the stage where having this second round of funding allows us to keep focusing on that growth,” he said. “We are going to keep innovating with new products, and are really proud of where we’re heading. We’re now the business that we hope can be a truly global brand.”

Highland Europe is back to lead that new $24 million infusion, which now values Huel at $560 million. Joining the venture fund this time is a star-studded group of new investors, including actor and UN Goodwill Ambassador Idris Elba and his wife, Sabrina Dhowre Elba, also a UN Goodwill Ambassador, television presenter Jonathan Ross and sustainable activewear brand TALA’s CEO Grace Beverley.

“I’ve been a Hueligan for several years now, starting my journey while preparing for my role in ‘Thor,’ so to come on board with Huel was an easy decision,” Idris Elba said in a written statement. “I believe in their mission to deliver nutritionally complete food, sustainably. We have some exciting projects coming up and I look forward to spreading the message and raising awareness around healthy, low carbon food.”

Meanwhile, the new funding will also be deployed in continued international expansion, with a focus on the U.S. The investment will also support new product innovation, and continued expansion online and in retail stores.

As part of the Elbas’s investment, one of the new projects will include Huel working with them on their climate change initiative to help people eat at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the global warming limit the Paris Climate Accord is trying to reach.

Huel meals fit within a diet aligned with supporting that reduction, and the company “is excited to work with Idris and Sabrina as we’re equally trying to be a force for good in the world,” McMaster added.

Plant-based food brand Huel valued at $560M following Idris Elba-backed round by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

As new Twitter owner Elon Musk tinkers around with the social network’s feature set, more algorithmic recommendations are apparently on the way.

Twitter’s support account tweeted about the change on Wednesday, noting that the platform was “expanding recommendations to all users.” This is of course under the guide of giving users the “best” content (Instagram likes to use this line too), but in reality splicing more recommendations into a social feed primes users to expect more paid content too.

Twitter provided no other details about the change to recommendations, but links to a previous blog post explaining how they algorithmic content works and where it might show up. According to the post, “recommendations can appear in your Home timeline, certain places within the Explore tab, and elsewhere on Twitter.” As it stands, you can switch between the home feed and “latest tweets” by clicking the sparkle button in the upper right corner of the timeline.

It’s not immediately clear if Twitter plans to stream more recommended tweets into the “home” timeline or if this is something more aggressive, but we’ve tweeted into the void to ask the company for more clarity. Some users have already noticed changes, which seem to be affecting home feeds for now.

Twitter offers two different feeds: “latest tweets” which displays tweets from people you follow in chronological order and “home,” a curated collection of popular tweets from your follows. From our experience, the latter occasionally mixed in some recommendations from beyond our following lists but was mostly a non-chronological collection of tweets from people we did follow.

Given Musk’s habit of quickly rolling out major feature changes (and then rolling them back), we wouldn’t be surprised to see Twitter get heavy-handed with recommendations or even switch the default feed in that direction, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled for anything major.

Pre-Musk, the platform planned to make recommendations more prominent but reversed course after a backlash from users. On Instagram, users have expressed a similar weariness at seeing their feeds cluttered with content from people they don’t follow. For TikTok, serving algorithmically-curated content is in the app’s DNA, but many other social platforms have to tread more carefully.

Because they were originally designed to let users follow people they already know (or know of), apps like Twitter and Instagram have to turn the algorithmic spigot on slowly and hope that users don’t notice any sudden changes. In this case, we’ll have to wait and see.

Twitter is going to show you more tweets from people you don’t follow by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

DeHaat, a startup that offers a wide-range of agricultural services to farmers in India, has raised $60 million in a new funding round as it looks to deepen its penetration in the country and reach break-even profitability within two years.

Sofina Ventures and Temasek co-led the Patna and Gurgaon-headquartered startup’s Series E funding, it said, at a valuation between $700 million and $800 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. Existing backers RTP Global Partners, Prosus Ventures and Lightrock India also participated in the new round.

Farming is a $350 billion industry in India, but farmers face a myriad of challenges in the country that were largely unaddressed until upstarts such as DeHaat arrived on the scene. Farmers struggle with securing agri-inputs, finding buyers for their produce and in maintaining enough runway.

Giants such as Reliance and Adani Group offer some services to farmers, but their involvement in the agriculture sector remains largely limited. A fast-growing population and climate change mean Indian farmers need to adopt technology quickly to improve – and maintain – their yields.

DeHaat uses artificial intelligence to help 1.5 million farmers across 11 states, 110,000 villages and over 150 zip codes in India source raw materials, find advisory and credit services, and sell crops.

The startup has onboarded over 2,000 agricultural institutions including input manufacturers, food and consumer goods giants, banks, insurance firms. It works with over 10,000 micro-entrepreneurs who help the startup run a maze of last-mile supply chains.

In the past two years, DeHaat has aggressively expanded across several key Indian states, and co-founder and chief executive Shashank Kumar told TechCrunch in an interview that the startup will focus on deepening its presence across the zip codes where it’s already operational in the immediate future and reaching break-even profitability in 12 months.

The new funding provides DeHaat with up to 40 months of runway, during which time Kumar said the startup will be profitable. “At least for the next three to five months, we are not adding any new geographies. We will continue to serve more farmers and broaden our network of centers in the states where we are operational,” he said. DeHaat is currently doesn’t have presence in the Southern Indian states. Kumar said the startup is hopeful to start expanding to those states after about a year.

Kumar acknowledged that raising funds in the current market scenario isn’t a walk in the park. Funding inflows to local startups has shrunk by more than 80% as investors grow cautious following a sharp reversal in the global market conditions.

“The lens is different – everyone is looking for assets that have a clear path to profitability,” said Kumar. “In that way, DeHaat had its own advantage – our unit economics are very strong, whatever burn we have is for adding geographies. We raised the round to be ready for all the future opportunities,” he said, adding that DeHaat still has about two-thirds of the funds left from the previous $115 million funding round.

He said the startup, whose name means village in Hindi, has acquired half a dozen firms in the recent quarters and sees more m&a potential on the horizon and is ready to execute when it finds the right partners.

(More to follow)

Indian agritech DeHaat tops $700 million valuation in $60 million funding by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Password manager LassPass said it’s investigating a security incident after its systems were compromised for the second time this year.

LastPass chief executive Karim Toubba said in a blog post that an “unauthorized party” recently gained access to some customers’ information stored in a third-party cloud service shared by LastPass and its parent company, GoTo. Toubba said the unauthorized party used information stolen from LastPass’ systems in August, which the company disclosed at the time.

Toubba did not say what specific customer information was taken, but said it was working to “understand the scope of the incident and identify what specific information has been accessed.”

GoTo, formerly LogMeIn, which acquired LastPass in 2015, said in a similarly vague statement that it was investigating the incident. It’s not yet clear if both LogMeIn and GoTo customers are affected by the breach.

LastPass said in August that an unauthorized party “gained access to portions of the LastPass development environment through a single compromised developer account and took portions of source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information.” LastPass said that its system design and controls “prevented the threat actor from accessing any customer data or encrypted password vaults.”

Toubba added in the blog post Wednesday that “customers’ passwords remain safely encrypted.”

GoTo spokesperson Elizabeth Bassler declined to comment beyond LastPass’ blog post.

LastPass says it was breached — again by Zack Whittaker originally published on TechCrunch