Tech News

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here.

We’ve made it to Friday! If you are looking for a good podcast episode, I highly recommend today’s Equity where Natasha M, Mary Ann and Becca talk about CES, NYE, SBF and FTX — oh my! Also, shout-out to you Daily Crunchers out there for reading yesterday’s newsletter and helping it be one of today’s top-read stories. It warms my heart, and I hope today’s news is equally enthralling. Without further adieu… — Christine

The TechCrunch Top 3

Knock, knock, it’s guaranteed renters at the door: Property owners don’t always have peace of mind while renting out their spaces, but Doorstead believes its approach is solving that. Mary Ann reports on the company securing $21.5 million new funding to not only tell you how much in rent you can expect, but also to make sure you always have a tenant for your rental property.
Credit buzz: Indian fintech KreditBee’s business model of underwriting to help people get microloans attracted even more venture capital — $100 million, in fact — to boost the company’s valuation to nearly $700 million, Manish writes.
Seeing is believing: Haje reports on “Lumus’ bid to make AR glasses a little bit less cringe.”

TechCrunch @ CES

If you liked that item above on Lumus, then you’ll love what else the TechCrunch team has in store for you today as they continue to cover the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. There’s two more days to go!

Gadgets and gizmos aplenty:

Tim Stevens doesn’t have a strong stomach, but he got in the back of a ’67 DeVille with a VR headset to test out Holoride’s new VR kit just for you.
If you don’t have your own camera crew, Studiobox has you covered with its interview-studio-in-a-box that Haje calls “a remote video team’s high-def dream.”
Kirsten has details on how Stellantis’ new business unit will turn vehicle data into cash.
Brian writes that Qualcomm deviated from its usual CES news to announce a new partnership with Iridium to bring satellite messaging to Android phones.

Will record levels of dry powder trigger a delayed explosion of startup investment?

There’s a subtext for the waves of layoffs and Craigslist ads for discounted office furniture: tech investors have amassed approximately $290 billion in dry powder.

“Despite the downturn, strong cash supply and tailwinds for spending on digitization are leading some market participants to believe we’re in a strong investment cycle,” says Raphael Mukomilow and Pierre Bourdon at Picus Capital.

After they tracked uninvested capital by year going back to 2006, the pair found that “a crisis within the investment landscape has often been followed by years of systematic outperformance of returns, and history has a way of repeating itself.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

Capital conundrum: It’s no secret that there was a venture capital slowdown in 2022. Kyle details PitchBook’s latest report on VC deal activity to see what happened and what’s likely to happen next.
Your art on a Mastercard: Credit card giant Mastercard is pairing up with blockchain startup Polygon to launch a web3-focused incubator for musicians. Jacquelyn has more.
Some good capital news: Though Black founders again raised just 1% of all VC funds in 2022, Dominic-Madori reports that total funding experienced an uptick. She speaks to founders and investors who agree there is still plenty of work to be done.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

If you use Snap’s desktop camera to give yourself a fun filter during video calls, start saying your goodbyes to it now. Ivan reports that Snap is shutting down the camera app on January 25 to focus on its Camera Kit for Web feature. He also notes there might be more behind the move, writing, “The discontinuation of the Snap Camera app — spotted first by The Verge — is not entirely surprising. Last year, it cut 20% of its staff and shuttered its drone product months after first launching it.”

And we have five more for you:

We’re slashing prices left and right: Matt reports that Tesla slashed pricing for its Model 3 and Model Y in China for the second time in three months.
Plagiarism in the world of AI: If you were in school in the late 1990s or early 2000s, you might remember your teacher telling you not to use the internet because it was full of misinformation. Well, technology has come a long way, and even longer now that ChatGPT is a thing. Amid news that New York City public schools are blocking ChatGPT, OpenAI says it’s working on “mitigations” to help spot ChatGPT-generated text, Kyle reports.
TikTok, it’s time to go to bed: We’ve heard of alarms to wake you up, but that phone screen was meant to keep you engaged when you should be sleeping. “No problem,” says TikTok, which is testing a “sleep reminder” feature that nudges you when it’s bedtime, Aisha writes. And that’s not all — she also reports that TikTok has video scrubbing thumbnails now to make it easier to find specific parts of videos.
It’s enough to make you Twitch: Website and app outages happen all the time, but when Amanda saw it happened to Twitch for the second time in a week, she decided to get to the bottom of it.
Samsung not singing a happy tune: Kate reports on Samsung’s preliminary estimates of its quarterly profit, which don’t look good. The memory chip and phone maker says quarterly profit hit an eight-year low amid weak demand for its products.

Daily Crunch: Property management startup Doorstead raises $21.5M Series B by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

HealthAtom is aiming to be the go-to cloud-based operations system for small and midsize healthcare companies across Latin America (LatAm). Although the company has been around since 2012, this is the first time it has announced fresh capital, in the amount of $10 million.

HealthAtom’s medilink and dentalink software suites let clinics create schedules, manage electronic health records, handle inventory, administer payroll, and provide budgeting breakdowns and regulatory filings. They also have telehealth capabilities that allow patients to access their records on a mobile device.

Provider will contact HealthAtom with information on the size of their operations and their needs and wants. After a consultation, a plan will be established and information can be transferred to the cloud platform, adhering to local regulations. According to the founders, a clinic can have its operations up and running on the system within 3 hours.

Depending on the size of the operation and local regulations a clinic can pay anywhere from $20 to $20,000 monthly. Today, HealthAtom has close to 6,500 clients across 20 countries with main operations in Chile, Colombia and Mexico. Additionally, 50 thousand doctors and dentists use the company’s services and process over 42 million appointments yearly.

“We are the point where the sales tension occurs, at an information level,” said co-founder and CEO Roberto León in an interview with TechCrunch (conducted in Spanish and translated by the author). “It is a tool that could transcend beyond the SaaS and transform us into a technology solution that has the whole ecosystem integrated to increase the transparency of health processes.”

According to a report conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute, digital adoption within healthcare systems in LatAm has catered to larger hospitals and disregarded small and medium buisinesses. Additionally, offerings available to SMBs are often less affordable and don’t provide what a clinic needs. HealthAtom wants to be a part of the solution by being the “one-stop-shop” for small and midsize healthcare clinics to run their operations.

Although there are some local and country-specific companies providing similar services, HealthAtom remains the only LatAm-wide provider. Though the company provides a continental outreach, the founders told TechCrunch it has been a challenge to cater to every country’s regulations.

“There is regulation and compliance regarding how things are signed, how information is stored, how certain health data should be recorded,” said co-founder and CPO Daniel Guajardo. “All this has country-to-country variations and has allowed us, in these 10 years of bootstrapping, to be able to focus on having a very regionalized product.”

HealthAtom has garnered support in the form of a $10 million Series A led by Kayyak Ventures, with participation from FJ Labs, Soma, Amador, Taram and a (number) of Angels.

This round’s funds will go toward incorporating embedded payments in its software, forming partnerships with insurance companies and developing a loan program for patients.

HealthAtom empowers LatAm’s small healthcare offices with cloud-based ops by Andrew Mendez originally published on TechCrunch

The NFT marketplace SuperRare is cutting 30% of its staff, according to a Slack message from CEO John Crain. Crain posted a screenshot of the message on Twitter.

“During the recent bull run, we grew in tandem with the market. In recent months, it’s become clear that this aggressive growth was unsustainable,” Crain wrote. “We over-hired, and I take full ownership of this mistake.”

TechCrunch reached out to Crain for comment.

SuperRare raised a $9 million Series A in March 2021, led by Velvet Sea Ventures and 1confirmation. The round also included celebrity investors like Mark Cuban, Marc Benioff and Ashton Kutcher.

SuperRare differentiates itself from competitors by focusing more closely on working with artists, but broader platforms like OpenSea were more successfully able to take advantage of the bull market. Yet even though OpenSea has managed to raise at a possibly inflated valuation of over $13 billion, it has not been immune to the downmarket. The company laid off 20% of its staff, or about 230 employees, in July.

“We know that there is still much innovation and transformation yet to come for Web3, NFTs, cryptoart, decentralized finance and governance,” Crain wrote. “We are facing headwinds, yes — but there remains an incredible uncaptured opportunity as we continue building something totally new.”

NFT marketplace SuperRare cuts 30% of staff by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

We’ve met with Mojo Vision for several CESes, watching the startup’s AR contact lenses develop, year by year. These sorts of things take a lot of time and money, of course – and these days it seems increasingly difficult to find either. Today, the California -based firm announced that it is “decelerating” work on the Mojo Lens, citing, “significant challenges in raising capital.”

In an announcement posted to it site, CEO Drew Perkins blames insurmountable headwinds, including the bad economy and the “yet-to-be proven market potential for advanced AR products” in its ability to raise the necessary funding required to keep the project afloat.

“Although we haven’t had the chance yet to see it ship and to reach its full potential in the marketplace, we have proven that what was once considered science fiction can be developed into a technical reality,” Perkins writes. “Even though the pursuit of our vision for Invisible Computing is on hold for now, we strongly believe that there will be a future market for Mojo Lens and expect to accelerate it when the time is right.”

Instead of focusing on Lens, Mojo is focusing its resources on the Micro-LED technology that powers it. The company had developed a 14,000 ppi microLED display as the product’s foundation. “We believe Micro-LED will disrupt the entire $160B display industry and our unique technology puts us at the forefront of this disruption,” Perkins adds.

Along with the pivot, the company has also made a dramatic cut to head count, reducing its staff by 75%. The lays will impact roles and divisions across the startup.

Perkins adds that the Mojo may return to the project, writing,

Although we haven’t had the chance yet to see it ship and to reach its full potential in the marketplace, we have proven that what was once considered science fiction can be developed into a technical reality. Even though the pursuit of our vision for Invisible Computing is on hold for now, we strongly believe that there will be a future market for Mojo Lens and expect to accelerate it when the time is right.

The company’s most recent funding round was a $45 million Series B-1 announced a year ago tomorrow. The company declined further comment.

Mojo Vision puts contact lens production ‘on hold’ as it lays off 75% of staff by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

Market headwinds continue to dog startups chasing venture backing. That’s the top-level finding of a new PitchBook report that looked at VC trends toward the end of 2022, specifically Q4, including investments made at the seed, late-stage and nearing-the-exit levels.

First, the good news: “On an annual basis, angel- and seed-stage deal activity remained relatively resilient in 2022, with $21.0 billion invested across an estimated 7,261 deals,” the report said. Last year set an annual record for capital raised, in fact, with $162.6 billion closed across 769 funds — the second consecutive year to exceed $150 billion.

But the year was ultimately mixed. Q4 2022 marked the fourth consecutive quarter of declining deal counts while exit activity for the entire year fell to $71.4 billion — the first time the figure dipped below $100 billion since 2016. Acquisition volume also took a nosedive, with Q4 posting only $763 million in total acquisition deal value — the lowest quarterly value in more than a decade.

“Public exits of VC-backed companies have slowed to almost nonexistent levels, with just 14 public listings occurring in Q4, demonstrating how drastically institutional-investor appetite has been affected by rising interest rates and volatile macroeconomic factors,” the authors of the PitchBook report wrote.

Why the instability? PitchBook blames a variety of factors, including nontraditional investors slowing their capital deployment to VC amid less attractive risk/return profiles. According to the report, relative to 2021, the upside potential for VC-backed startups fell precipitously in 2022, which turned many investors away from the space.

VC deal activity fell in 2022, signaling tough times ahead by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Mastercard, one of the biggest financial payments providers in the world, is launching a web3-focused incubator to help artists connect with fans through a new medium, the company shared at CES 2023 on Friday.

“The core of this program is providing emerging artists with the web3 tools and skills they need to excel and advance their music careers in this digital economy,” Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard, said to TechCrunch. “By providing access to experts and innovators in the space, the artists will be guided on how to incorporate web3 into their work throughout the entire program and then beyond.”

Mastercard partnered with Polygon, a scaling blockchain built on top of Ethereum, which has been making huge strides in the Web 2.0 ecosystem lately. In the past year, Polygon partnered with a number of other big brands like Starbucks for its Odyssey digital collectible rewards program and Disney for its accelerator program, while also having major clothing brands like Prada and Adidas launch NFT projects through its blockchain.

After joining the incubator, participating artists should know how to mint NFTs, represent themselves in virtual worlds and establish a community, Rajamannar said. “We see that web3 holds tremendous promise for artists and creators to create, own and monetize their content, but only if they know how to leverage it.”

This announcement points to the company’s expansion further into the digital asset world as it joined forces with a number of crypto-focused companies to launch credit cards and partnered with Coinbase to help expand the NFT ecosystem, among other things.

“This past year was big for us, with experimental web3 activations around the world,” Rajamannar said.

For example, Mastercard hosted the first Grammy week with Roblox in the metaverse, where it provided immersive activations, in-game branding, artist meet and greets, red-carpet photo opportunities and more.

In the past, high-level employees at Mastercard have been vocal about their bullish sentiments toward the crypto space.

“I feel like once you get the momentum for an institution up and running, it’s hard to get them to turn their head and pivot,” Grace Berkery, director of startup engagement at Mastercard, said at Benzinga’s Future of Crypto event in December. “So if [institutions are] going to enter, they’re going to stay in the space.”

Mastercard launches web3-focused artist incubator with Polygon by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Given Logan Paul’s dubious history on YouTube, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that his CryptoZoo NFT project has allegedly turned out to be a scam. Some investors ended up losing up to half a million dollars, according to independent YouTube reporter Coffeezilla. The development of CryptoZoo has been stalled due to alleged nonpayment of coders.

The twenty-seven-year-old Paul rose to prominence in 2013 by posting sketches on Vine; but when the short video platform shut down, he transitioned to YouTube and even fights in the WWE. In August 2021, Paul took to his YouTube podcast to announce his NFT project.

“It’s so fun. It provides a yield with a token, it can earn you money, and as a person who understands, I think, the NFT space enough to know what works, what people want and what they’re looking for, I think my game is going to make some waves,” Paul said.

Between his main YouTube channel and his podcast, Paul has around 28 million subscribers, plus another 24.6 million followers on Instagram and 16.6 million on TikTok. In other words, he had the audience necessary to generate hype around a new collection of NFTs.

Paul’s fans could buy an NFT of an egg, which hatches into an animal that is assigned one of five levels of rarity. These animals can be bred to produce more eggs that hatch hybrid animals, which also have specific rarity levels. When animals are hatched, they yield $ZOO tokens — the rarer the animal, the more it yields.

Paul promised fans that they could play games with their animals, which would eventually “enter the metaverse,” according to CryptoZoo’s product roadmap. But most of the goals on the product roadmap have not been achieved.

The independent reporter Coffeezilla released a three-part video series at the end of December, chronicling his research into what went wrong with CryptoZoo. As it turns out, Paul had employed multiple conmen to work on the project.

TechCrunch has reached out to Paul’s manager Jeff Levin for comment.

Coffeezilla interviewed Cryptozoo’s developer “Z,” who is holding the code hostage for $1 million, since he claims that Paul never paid him. In a response video, Paul claimed that “Z” is actually Zach Kelling, a convicted felon.

“I know what you’re thinking. What type of idiot would work with an unsavory individual like Zach Kelling?” Paul says in his response video. He blames this hire on Eddie Ibanez, the former lead developer of CryptoZoo. “I guess that’s what I get for trusting the team that I relied on to vet and manage Eddie’s hiring process, who has turned out to be a professional con man.”

But Ibanez’s scammy past is not new information. In February 2022, Philadelphia culture blog Billy Penn — part of the regional NPR network — reported an investigation into the tech founder’s past.

While operating a data analytics company called Zenabi in 2019, Ibanez was accused of sharing sensitive data about one of his clients, the Mormon church, with another client, the International Champions Cup. He also claimed on his website to have worked with the CIA and two NFL teams — he even said that he had a Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl ring from their victory in 2018. But Billy Penn reported that Ibanez never even met with anyone from the Eagles until after the Super Bowl, and though Ibanez did have some meetings with the team, these conversations never turned into an actual partnership. Ibanez also claims to have studied at MIT, but the MIT News Office told Billy Penn that he was never enrolled at the university.

Then, Zenabi received a total of $1.5 million in PPP loans from the federal government. Around the same time, Ibanez’s landlord sued for $118,000 in back rent and property damage. According to a former Zenabi employee who spoke to Billy Penn, Zenabi is being investigated by the FBI about its PPP loans.

Despite a laundry list of suspicious claims, Paul continued working with Ibanez until July 2022.

This isn’t the first time that Paul has been accused of promoting crypto scams — in July 2021, he promoted the “shitcoin” called Dink Doink, which almost immediately lost all of its “value.”

Other influencers like Kim Kardashian have faced consequences for promoting crypto to their followers without the necessary disclosures. The SEC settled with Kardashian for $1.26 million over her partnership with EthereumMax. Though she wrote “#ad” at the bottom of her Instagram post, the SEC said she should have disclosed that she was paid $250,000 for the promotion.

What does the future hold for CryptoZoo? Well, nothing, until Logan Paul manages to get that code back from Zach Kelling, who Coffeezilla says fled to Switzerland. But Paul ended his response video with a promotional screen, stating that CryptoZoo is coming in 2023 or 2024.

YouTuber Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo NFT project is a total mess by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

After surpassing 1.02 billion total hours viewed in the third week of its debut, Netflix’s “Wednesday” has been renewed for a second season, the company announced today.

The series originally premiered in November with eight episodes. It’s centered around the popular “Addams Family” character, Wednesday Addams (played by Jenna Ortega), as she begins her first year as a Nevermore Academy student. There, she hones her psychic ability and tries to solve a supernatural mystery that haunts the town.

Netflix tweeted the announcement alongside a video that shows a recap of season one, with Wednesday being hunted by the Monster of Nevermore Academy (a.k.a the Hyde), haunted by her ancestor, Goody, and more spooky antics. In the video, Ortega says, “Over the past few weeks, I’ve been hunted, haunted, and mimicked millions of times across the internet. It’s been pure torture. Thank you.”

(Note that this TechCrunch story contains spoilers.)

“Wednesday” Season 2 should be a shocker to no one as the first season was streamed by more than 150 million households, making it the second most popular English-language series on Netflix.

Since the Season 1 premiere, the show took the internet by storm, becoming a trending hashtag on TikTok and the culprit behind the revival of The Cramps song, “Goo Goo Muck.” It also managed to earn two Golden Globe nominations, a noteworthy accomplishment for a family-friendly title. Fans can tune into the award ceremony next Tuesday, January 10, to see if the comedy series gets a Thing-friendly thumbs up or not.

Needless to say, many Netflix subscribers will be pleased to watch another round of adventures from their favorite outcasts and freaks.

“We can’t wait to dive headfirst into another season and explore the kooky, spooky world of Nevermore,” the co-showrunners of “Wednesday,” Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, said in an interview to Tudum, the official Netflix blog. “It’s been incredible to create a show that’s connected with people across the world. We’re thrilled to continue Wednesday’s torturous journey into Season 2.”

Millar also pointed to the season one finale as a hint of what viewers can expect in the next season. For those that watched the finale, we know that Wednesday gets a text from an unknown stalker, signifying that threat of the Hyde still remains.

“[The stalker proves] that threats remain out there… to both Wednesday and the school,” Millar added. “Not all not loose ends have been tied up neatly as she thinks they have.”

A release date for Season 2 has yet to be revealed. Hopefully, we’ll soon find out what awaits for the characters of Nevermore.

Netflix’s ‘Wednesday’ gets a second season by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Being driven around the gridlocked-streets of Las Vegas during CES can be nauseating — at the best of times. But doing so with a virtual reality headset blocking your view? Certainly, it’s a recipe for disaster.

I don’t have the strongest of stomachs; and I pack Dramamine wherever I go. So it was with more than a little trepidation that during CES 2023I agreed to experience morning traffic on The Strip in the back of a car while wearing a VR headset.

This wasn’t just any car, though, and it wasn’t just any VR system. The car was a 1967 Cadillac DeVille, remarkable in so many ways but, in this context, notable for its abject lack of technology. (Worryingly, it also lacked seatbelts, thankfully not needed on this day.) The headset was an HTC VIVE Flow, paired with a Holoride’s new retrofit kit, a $199 add-on that allows you to get in-car VR experiences in literally any car.

Holoride’s initial launch was in partnership with Audi, which started integrating the company’s tech into its cars last year.

Holoride CEO Nils Wollny told me, while they have more OEM partnerships coming (“we can’t announce this yet”) this retrofit kit makes for an instant, massive expansion for the product’s market reach. Wollny calls it “an easy way for people that want to go on a Holoride to equip their car that they have, so they don’t need to have the latest Audi.”

All you do need is a place to mount the Holoride device, a puck-shaped thing that contains an accelerometer, a high-quality GPS, and a wireless module to connect to the HTC Vive Flow. Stick it on the windshield, turn it on and you’re good to go. Data from that module drives the various app experiences provided by Holoride, experiences that all include some sort of visual cues to prevent motion sickness.

I sampled what the retrofit pack had to offer while sitting in the generous back seat of the Cadillac, a broad stretch of vinyl that’s probably seen some experiences of a very different sort.

I started with Pixel Ripped 1995: On the Road. This is a Holoride-specific spin-off of the indie VR darling. Here, you’re playing a 2-D platformer on a virtual handheld gaming system (a “Gear Kid Color”), sitting in the virtual back seat of a virtual car while your virtual parents exchange idle banter up front.

As you really drive through traffic, the game simulates a world around you, an endless, idyllic neighborhood. It looks nothing like the hulking excess of Sin City. It does match the general street layout, so that when the real car stops at an intersection the virtual car does the same. The game is basic but fun, miles better than looking out at the gridlock.

In Cloudbreakers: Leaving Haven, a roguelike shooter that’s exclusive to Holoride, you pilot a giant robot through digital clouds, blasting wave after wave of geometric opponents. Around and beneath you, vertical and horizontal sweeping lines give a visual representation for streets. As the car makes a turn, the action in the game swings left or right to match.

The good news is that, while playing those experiences and more, I never felt even a little nauseous. In fact, I got more car sick after 10 minutes in the back of a cab on the way to my next appointment than I did in the 30 minutes I spent in that Cadillac wearing a VR headset.

The bad news is that none of the titles right now seem compelling enough to justify the $19.99 monthly or $180 per year to get access to Holoride’s service. Wollny says that they’re working with developers to add more titles to its library with an expected rate of new content every two weeks.

More of these simple experiences may not be the answer. To my eye, the killer app here is media consumption. Exit the games and you can mirror your smartphone into VR, jumping into any streaming app that you like. The Holoride software again renders a virtual landscape, like a giant theater screen floating across a moving background, meaning you can enjoy your content free from both distractions and motion sickness.

The next step? Wollny says they’re working to get the smartphone out of that equation: “We’re currently planning to have a native movie app or streaming app where you can also download the latest movies or the TV shows and then just relax, sit back on a virtual 180 inch screen.”

The retrofit kit is a great way to bring this tech to more people, and for Holoride to access far more customers.

However, Wollny told me that adding OEM partnerships are still very much the focus with Holoride working to make integration as seamless as possible.

With more cars packing accelerometers and high-quality GPS, adding support often just requires some software.

“We lowered the barrier as much as we could for car manufacturers to integrate our solution, because for them it’s an attractive solution for their passengers,” Wollny told TechCrunch. “And, it’s an additional revenue stream for mobility data they have. They provide us with the data we do a rev-share with them.”

More recurring revenue plus happier back-seat stomachs sounds like a proper win-win.

Finding Vegas VR nirvana in the backseat of a ’67 DeVille at CES 2023 by Tim Stevens originally published on TechCrunch