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Cislunar space is quickly becoming ripe for government and civil use. This is particularly true in light of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon in the long-term. But a ton of critical infrastructure will need to be in place before that happens: everything from communication systems to space domain awareness, and more.

That’s where Quantum Space comes in. The startup, headed by former NASA acting administrator Steve Jurczyk, is developing a fleet of platforms that would operate in cislunar space and provide a range of services. Just 10 months after announcing its plans, the company said Tuesday it had closed $15 million in funding from Prime Movers Lab to further develop its core product.

Jurczyk, who announced onstage at TC Sessions: Space last week that the company was in the process of closing this Series A round, said it was challenging transitioning from fundraising as a high-level leader in a government agency to the head of an early-stage startup. He added that the pace of decision-making proved to be another major difference to the two worlds.

“At NASA, we’ve got to have 10 meetings and a counsel and a board and several reviews, and then all the information would come to me and I would ultimately pull the team and make a decision,” he said. “Then we get into meetings at Quantum Space and it’s like, ‘Okay, Steve, we have option A, B and C. Which one do you want to do?’”

“It was freeing and refreshing and also a little scary.”

The company said it would use the new capital to continue the development of QuantumNet — its name for the constellation of platforms, or “Scouts,” that will operate in cislunar space — starting with the launch of the first Scout in October 2024. That mission, which Quantum Space announced this past October, will carry a situational awareness payload from GEOST and payloads from additional customers. Blue Canyon Technologies will provide the spacecraft bus.

That first mission, dubbed QS-1, will launch as a rideshare, but the company is developing an in-space tug called Ranger that it plans to use to carry Scouts to their final destination in orbit. The company plans to put more than 40 Scout vehicles in cislunar space by 2032.

“We started off really focused on what we call the ‘robotic outpost,’ a fairly large spacecraft for robotic capability with rendezvous proximity operations, to do servicing, but then we saw there was a need for more capabilities than that in cislunar space,” Jurczyk said. “So now we have a broader strategy […] and that significantly increased our funding needs and our funding timeline.”

Quantum Space was founded in 2021 by Kam Ghaffarian, who also founded Axiom Space and Intuitive Machines. Prime Movers Lab is also an investor in Axiom.

Quantum said in a statement that it would use the funds to develop integration and test facilities, a mission operations center and to continue development on the company’s customer-facing data platform and software.

Quantum Space picks up speed with $15M in funding for cislunar space vehicles by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

Apple has confirmed that an iPhone software update it released two weeks ago fixed a zero-day security vulnerability that it now says was actively exploited.

The update, iOS 16.1.2, landed on November 30 and rolled out to all supported iPhones — including iPhone 8 and later — with unspecified “important security updates.”

In a disclosure to its security updates page on Tuesday, Apple said the update fixed a flaw in WebKit, the browser engine that powers Safari and other apps, which if exploited could allow malicious code to run on the person’s device. The bug is called a zero-day because the vendor is given zero days notice to fix the vulnerability.

Apple said security researchers at Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which investigates nation state-backed spyware, hacking and cyberattacks, discovered and reported the WebKit bug.

WebKit bugs are often exploited when a person visits a malicious domain in their browser (or via the in-app browser). It’s not uncommon for bad actors to find vulnerabilities that target WebKit as a way to break into the device’s operating system and the user’s private data. WebKit bugs can be “chained” to other vulnerabilities to break through multiple layers of a device’s defenses.

Apple said in its Tuesday disclosure that it is aware that the vulnerability was exploited “against versions of iOS released before iOS 15.1,” which was released in October 2021. As such, and for those who have not yet updated to iOS 16, Apple also released iOS and iPadOS 15.7.2 to fix the WebKit vulnerability for users running iPhones 6s and later and some iPad models.

The bug is tracked as CVE-2022-42856, or WebKit 247562. It’s not clear for what reason Apple withheld details of the bug for two weeks. Neither Apple nor Google returned a request for comment.

Apple has since released iOS 16.2, which includes end-to-end encryption for data backed up in iCloud and other new features.

Apple fixes ‘actively exploited’ zero-day affecting most iPhones by Zack Whittaker originally published on TechCrunch

Boom Supersonic is working hard to upend the status quo in commercial flight with its Overture airliner — a supersonic craft that will be propelled by brand-new engines the company just revealed. Building from scratch shows that Boom is doubling down on setting itself apart from the rest of the industry.

Building a new aircraft is hard work, and one tough decision is which parts you want to source off the shelf, customize, or design yourself. Why reinvent the flap system if you can buy one that works perfectly well?

But in the case of Boom, they are attempting to build “an economically and environmentally sustainable supersonic airplane—a combination unattainable with the current constraints of derivative engines and industry norms,” as CEO and founder Blake Scholl put it in a news release. If you want to leapfrog your competition, you can’t ask them to do it themselves, in other words.

The Symphony engine will be designed from scratch by Boom’s partners: Florida Turbine Technologies (a subsidiary of Kratos) will do the engine design proper, GE Additive will consult on manufacturing, and StandardAero is on maintenance duty.

Symphony will be a medium-bypass, twin-spool, turbofan engine sans afterburner, with 35,000 pounds of thrust at takeoff. Its intake and exhaust are designed to thrive under supersonic flight and reduce noise. And it is built specifically for use with Sustainable Aviation Fuel, a cleaner alternative to ordinary jet fuel — albeit one that costs several times more right now.

It’s about this big:

Boom claims that Overture will “operate at net zero carbon,” though considering the aircraft is essentially still on the drawing board, we may as well take that as aspirational rather than factual.

At least they’re realistic about the roadmap: production of the engine is planned to start in 2024, with rollout and testing in 2026 and first flights in 2027, and if all goes as planned the airliner could be certified for operations in 2029.

Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

TikTok is testing a new horizontal full screen mode with select users globally, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Users who have access to the test feature will see a new “full screen” button appear on square or rectangle videos in their feed. Once you click the button, the video will shift into a horizontal full screen mode that takes advantage of all of the real estate on your phone.

The test feature marks yet another way that TikTok is steadily inching into YouTube’s territory. Earlier this year, TikTok rolled out the ability for users to upload videos up to 10 minutes in length. The move was seen as a way for TikTok to attract the same sort of longer-form video creators that normally post content on YouTube. With the expansion, creators gained more flexibility to film things like cooking demos, beauty tutorials, educational content, comedy sketches and more, without having to worry too much about the video’s length.

Now that TikTok has been supporting long-form content for awhile, it makes sense for the company to enhance the viewing experience for users who are watching these sorts of videos, while also making the creative experience better for creators. Oftentimes creators will add a “turn your phone” message at the start of a video to get users to fully enjoy the content that’s about to play if they recorded a video horizontally. With this feature, creators would no longer have to do that.

Although some people may welcome the test feature and the opportunities that it brings, others may not. TikTok is the app that largely popularized the vertical video scrolling format that other companies were quick to copy, so its users may not exactly be fond of the new full screen mode after being accustomed to the vertical format.

As with any test feature, it’s unknown when or if TikTok plans to release the full screen mode widely to all users. It’s also worth noting that if TikTok does decide to release the feature officially, the final product may look different than the test product.

One way that TikTok could possibly change the feature before an official roll out is by making it more intuitive. You currently have to click the button to switch to full screen mode, but maybe in the future users will just have to turn their phone sideways to watch in full screen, which is something that other apps allow users to do.

The test feature comes at a time when data has shown that kids and teens now spend more time watching TikTok than YouTube. This has been the case since June 2020, when TikTok began to outrank YouTube in terms of the average minutes per day people ages 4 through 18 spent accessing these two competitive video platforms. By enhancing its viewing experience, TikTok is continuing to inch further into YouTube’s territory.

But on the other hand, YouTube is also continuing to rival TikTok with Shorts, its TikTok competitor. In September, YouTube announced major changes to its YouTube Partner Program, allowing creators to earn ad revenue on Shorts. Prior to this, no short-form video platform quite figured out how to share ad revenue, which gives Shorts a leg up on the competition.

TikTok inches further into YouTube’s territory with a new horizontal full screen mode by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

Komodo Health, a health-care enterprise in the business of making data-driven maps, has laid off 9% of staff, or 78 people, according to sources. The personnel change comes around a month after the company internally announced that its CFO would be leaving the company at the end of the year for personal reasons, and just months after the Tiger Global-backed company was once rumored to be planning to go public.

But, as IPO season continues to be frigid, the not-yet-profitable business has clearly opted to make cuts ahead of any 2023 movement. Sources say the restructuring could be the company’s attempt to look more profitable ahead of an anticipated public market debut.

TechCrunch reached out to Komodo Health for comment but did not yet hear back at time of publication. The company did, however, confirm the layoffs through a LinkedIn post.

Co-founders Arif Nathoo and Web Sun wrote a memo to staff, obtained by TechCrunch, which describes the layoffs as part of a broader restructuring as the world changes “again.”

“We believe that this is the beginning of a change that may last for many more months, if not years,” the co-founders wrote in the email, sent to all full-time employees. “We have always prided ourselves on running a capital efficient business, and today we’re taking steps to ensure that we are well positioned for the current world around us.” Axios last reported that Komodo’s ARR, as of March, was around $150 million; investors, meanwhile, valued the company at $3.3 billion during its last funding round, a $220 million Series E announced in March 2021.

After the email was sent, Komodo Health’s co-founders also held a meeting with remaining employees, adding that the company has closed a structured equity infusion from Dragoneer and Coatue for around $200 million, sources said. The co-founders also stressed that the layoff would be the first and last at the company. It is unclear whether this round was raise at the same valuation of its March 2021 round.

Komodo Health is joining a number of late-stage companies that have announced workforce reductions in the final innings of the year, including Stripe, Plaid and Airtable. It conducted a previous round of layoffs in April 2020, just months after raising a $50 million round from Andreessen Horowitz.

Current and former Komodo Health employees can reach out to Natasha Mascarenhas on Signal, a secure encrypted messaging app, at 925 271 0912. You can also DM her on Twitter, @nmasc_.

Komodo Health, once tipped for a looming IPO, has cut staff as CFO departs by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee held a hearing Tuesday morning focused on FTX’s collapse, mere hours after the crypto exchange’s former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested in the Bahamas.

Bankman-Fried was originally scheduled to testify at the hearing, an appearance that was scuttled after he was taken into custody by Bahamian authorities in light of charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice’s Southern District of New York.

John J. Ray III, FTX’s CEO of four weeks, sat as the only witness for the hearing as Bankman-Fried reportedly made an appearance in a Bahamian court for his arraignment.

The four-hour hearing covered a lot of ground and left many questions unanswered, but several parts stood out from Ray’s testimony. Below, we’ve collected points that matter. Given that we presume you couldn’t catch the entire session live, crib off of our notes:

There aren’t yet exact numbers detailing the extent to which funds were misused, but it’s in “excess of $7 billion.”
There were 7.6 million accounts on FTX and 2.7 million accounts based in the U.S., but it is unclear how many lost money.
Over $1 billion in crypto assets have been recovered and secured. The new FTX leadership group has also secured “cash” in its bank accounts. But it will take weeks, if not months, to secure all the assets, he added.
Ray confirmed customer funds were deposited directly into Alameda Research, as opposed to FTX accounts.
The operations of FTX group were not segregated from sister company Alameda; they operated as one company. As a result, there’s no distinction, virtually, between the operations of the companies and who controlled those operations.
When discussing Bankman-Fried receiving a $1 billion loan from Alameda, Ray said, “The loans that were given to Mr. Bankman-Fried were not just one loan, there were numerous loans. … There’s no description of the purpose of what the loan was. In one instance he signed as both the issuer of the loan as well as the recipient of the loan. We have no information at this time for what the purpose or use of those funds were. That’s part of our investigation.”
The use of FTX capital at Alameda was not incidental or accidental. “The operation of Alameda really depended on the use of customer funds. That’s the major breakdown here. Funds from FTX.com, which was the exchange for non-U.S. citizens, those funds were used at Alameda to make investments and other disbursements,” Ray said.
Alameda was effectively a customer of FTX.com and Bankman-Fried owned 90% of Alameda, Ray said.
When asked if FTX had significant risk management systems, Ray said, “There were virtually no internal controls and no separateness whatsoever.” Later in the hearing, Ray disclosed that there was no board overseeing FTX, aside from Bankman-Fried. FTX, once valued at $32 billion, didn’t have an accounting or human resources department. It did, however, have a legal department and employees with compliance titles — but no department for them to call home.

FTX’s new CEO, John Ray, details crypto exchange’s downfall in US House testimony by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Zeekr, the premium electric car brand under China’s Geely, said Tuesday it has confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering. If it goes through, it’ll be the first major Chinese listing in the country in nearly two years, following China’s effective ban of foreign IPOs.

Zeekr filed last week with regulators, but didn’t provide any details like the number of shares to be offered, the price range or listing date. Reuters reported that Zeekr, which will be spun out from Geely, aims to raise more than $1 billion through its debut and is seeking a valuation of more than $10 billion, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

The filing comes a few weeks after Zeekr held a joint event with autonomous vehicle company Waymo in Los Angeles to show off its Autonomous Mobility Platform, an electric minivan-type vehicle that is built with Waymo’s AV stack for future robotaxi and logistics operations. Waymo and Zeekr first announced their partnership to co-develop a purpose-built AV a year ago.

Zeekr has also partnered with Mobileye, a company developing advanced driver assistance systems and AV technology, to build an all-electric autonomous vehicle for consumers. While those vehicles are being developed for the Chinese market, it’s clear Zeekr is pursuing a dual path to commercialization and global expansion — one that involves partnering with AV companies while also producing its own luxury EV model.

The EV-maker counts Tesla and Chinese peer Nio as competitors, and is currently marketing its 001 crossover, its flagship and only model, in Europe next year.

Zeekr’s filing comes a few months after Washington and Beijing struck a deal that lowers the likelihood of delisting for more than 200 Chinese firms listed on New York exchanges by allowing American officials to review audit documents of Chinese businesses that trade in the U.S.

Geely’s electric car brand Zeekr files US IPO confidentially by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

Multiple U.S. government agencies held a press conference Tuesday afternoon regarding the indictment of FTX’s former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried.

When asked whether the entities will bring charges against other individuals allegedly involved in the FTX collapse, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said during the event, “I can only say this: Clearly, we are not done.”

The meeting convened hours after the U.S. attorney’s office, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) all filed charges against Bankman-Fried earlier in the day.

This transpired after Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday night. The SEC charged Bankman-Fried for an alleged “years-long scheme to defraud investors of FTX,” Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said during the conference. Bankman-Fried is being investigated for other securities violations. The U.S. attorney’s office and the CFTC filed charges against him in “parallel actions.”

Williams declined to comment on which FTX-related individuals have cooperated in the investigations to date, but reiterated the importance for those who haven’t to “do so and do so quickly.”

“As alleged in our complaint, starting in 2019 continuing through November 2022, Bankman-Fried raised more than $1.8 billion from equity investors on the basis of lies,” Grewal said. “FTX operated behind a veneer of legitimacy that Bankman-Fried created among other things … but as we allege in our complaint, that veneer wasn’t just thin, it was also fraudulent.”

Grewal said since FTX’s inception in 2019, Bankman-Fried had been secretly diverting customer funds to his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research. “As alleged in our complaint, he then misused those funds to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases and large political donations.”

When asked during the conference whether the FTX downfall is relatable to what happened with the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, Williams said, “It’s hard to compare these things, but this is one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”

Grewal added that Bankman-Fried’s prior statements that the crypto exchange operated with “sophisticated risk controls and other customer protections” were “simply bogus.”

“He frequently claimed that Alameda was just another customer with no special privileges,” Grewal said. “[But] he provided Alameda virtually an unlimited line of credit funded by FTX customers and he also diverted billions of dollars of customer funds from FTX to Alameda.”

Grewal’s takeaway surrounding the FTX collapse was simple: Non-compliant trading platforms pose dramatic risks to both investors and customers. “Among other things, they don’t provide them with the same robust level of disclosures and protections against fraud and conflicts of interest. That’s what traditional U.S.-registered exchanges provide, so it’s imperative that non-compliant platforms come into compliance.”

“The runway is getting shorter for them to come in and register with us,” Grewal said. “For those who do not, the enforcement division is ready to take action.”

In separate news, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee held a hearing Tuesday morning focused on FTX’s collapse. The four-hour hearing covered a lot of ground and left many questions unanswered, but several parts stood out from new FTX CEO John J. Ray III’s testimony, which you can read about in detail here.

US attorney says ‘we are not done’ charging individuals for FTX collapse by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

It’s official: A U.S. Department of Energy lab produced a controlled nuclear fusion reaction that released more energy than it consumed.

On December 5, just after 1:03 a.m. PT, 192 lasers at the National Ignition Facility converged on a small gold cylinder that contained a tiny bead of fuel composed of two isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. In a flash, the cylinder vaporized, emitting X-rays that bombarded the fuel pellet, turning its outer diamond layer into an expanding plasma that compressed the fuel inside to the point where its nuclei fused and released a tremendous amount of energy.

How much energy?

When the BB-sized fuel pellet ignited and produced a sustained fusion reaction, it released about 50% more energy than was imparted by the experiment’s lasers — the world’s largest and most energetic laser system. The lasers’ energy heated the fuel pellet to 150 million degrees Celsius and compressed it with a pressure over twice that found at the sun’s center.

In specific terms, the lasers put in 2.05 megajoules of energy and the fusion reaction released 3.15 megajoules. That’s even better than leaked reports suggested. The team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory spent the last week deciphering the data to determine the exact results.

Only 4% of the deuterium-tritium fuel burned in the fusion reaction, suggesting plenty of room for improvement. The gold cylinder took about two weeks to manufacture, and the diamond-coated fuel pellet took about seven months to produce.

In scientific and technical terms, the reaction is considered net positive. In real-world terms, it produced far less power than what would be expected of a commercial power plant. To produce the 2.05-megajoule shot, the laser system required 300 megajoules of power, Kim Budil, director of LLNL, said in a press conference today.

Still, Budil said that the team sees a way to get to “hundreds of megajoules of output” per shot, an amount that would be required for a commercial-scale power plant using the technique, known as inertial confinement.

“We need the private sector to get into the game,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

World-record fusion experiment produced even more energy than expected by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch

Amid backlash over the intrusion of algorithmic, recommended content into Instagram’s feed, Instagram today introduced a number of new features designed to make it easier for users to keep up with their real-world friends. The company is now rolling out several significant changes, including most notably an addition called Notes — a feature Meta had considered turning into a Twitter competitor, according to a recent news report. With Notes, users can update their friends using just text and emoji, adding a different format for social updates beyond the images and videos Instagram is best known for. Other new features are also rolling out to Stories and will introduce new ways to share with groups.

Of all the new features being announced, Instagram Notes is perhaps the most interesting as it adds a way to communicate with others publicly, using just text. While that’s obviously reminiscent of a platform like Twitter, the current implementation has a much different user interface. In Instagram, users can leave notes by going to the top of their inbox, then selecting the followers they follow back (aka mutuals) or others from their existing “Close Friends” list. They’ll then type out the note itself using 60 characters of just text or emoji. The note will appear at the top of friends’ inboxes for 24 hours and replies will arrive as DMs.

Instagram said that during testing it found people appreciated having a way to start conversations in a lightweight way.

So while the format itself differs from Twitter’s real-time feed, the use case for Notes could have some overlap as the company described the feature as a way for users to share “what they’re up to” or ask for recommendations. Twitter today prompts users for similar input. When you go to compose a tweet, for example, the app asks you to share “What’s happening?” And like Notes, it has a contained text input limit. (Though that limit will now grow substantially, Twitter owner Elon Musk said.)

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported last week how Meta was considering turning Instagram Notes, which has been in testing for many months, into a more fully-fledged Twitter rival to capitalize on the chaos at Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition. The report said the company had been weighing whether Notes should even be its own standalone app or another feed inside Instagram. For the time being, however, it appears Instagram is launching Notes as is.

Another set of new features targets Instagram Stories.

One is an update to the “Add Yours” feature launched last year, which encourages others to participate in your trend by sharing their own variation. Now, Instagram is testing an update where you can specifically invite friends to participate by tapping “pass it on” when you see a trend that you think they’d like. This feature is meant to combat one of the bigger threats from TikTok where users replicate trends, whether dances or skits or AI effects set to music, by posting their own take.

Instagram is also now testing “Candid,” a way for friends to share Stories that are only visible to others who also share their own Candids. This feature is an obvious competitor to BeReal, which also locks friends’ content behind a blurred screen until you also post. And like BeReal, Candid sends out daily notification reminders. (TikTok is trying a similar feature with its TikTok Now posts that appear in users’ feeds.)

This isn’t the first time Instagram has tried to take on BeReal, which has been gaining a following among younger Gen Z users. The company earlier this year tested other features including one called IG Candid Challenges which is similar to what’s now become Candid. It also more shamelessly duped BeReal with a dual camera feature it simply called Dual.

Instagram says users can capture a Candid from the Stories camera, the multi-author Story at the top of the feed, or from the daily notification reminder.

Two other features focus on improvements to group sharing.

The new “Group Profiles” are a new type of profile on Instagram for sharing posts and stories with friends. Content shared to a Group Profile is shared with group members instead of your followers and gets posted only to the Group Profile, not your own profile. This seems to respond to how many younger people are already using Instagram — to post content to groups for their school, for example, or around some sort of theme. Before, these accounts would be managed by only select people with the account login who would may curate content from submissions. Group Profiles could prompt greater participation as they reduce the barrier to posting.

Collaborative Collections are another new way to connect with a group of friends. In this case, the idea is to allow a group to connect over a shared interest by saving posts to a new “collaborative collection” in a group or via 1-to-1 direct messages (DMs). Users can add to a collaborative collection by saving a post they come across in their feed or by sharing it with a friend over DM, then saving it from there.

It’s essentially an expansion of the over five-year-old Collections feature, but one that helps you build that collection with others. This could be useful for gathering together travel ideas for a group trip or sharing recipes, among other things.

The new features were announced by Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram itself.

The company confirmed to TechCrunch that Notes will be coming to both iOS and Android users, while the rest of the features are still early stage tests. Group Profiles are testing in Canada, Chile, and Taiwan, while the other features are in testing with a small percentage of people around the world, we’re told. The one exception is Collaborative Collections — in this case, if you’re in the test group and start a collection with someone who’s not in the test and invite someone new — they will then be automatically added to the test.

“Connecting with others is why people come to Instagram,” the Meta blog post stated — an acknowledgment, of sorts, of the backlash the app saw from users who are unhappy with the irrelevant and intrusive content in their Instagram feeds. This culminated in Instagram actually rolling back some changes after Kylie Jenner and other celebs publicly complained about the app trying to be too much like TikTok. The company decided to pause tests of full-screen posts and decrease the amount of recommended content as a result of users’ complaints.

The new set of features refocuses on social sharing with friends, and seems to be a better move in terms of acknowledging what people actually want from Instagram — to connect with friends, not to just be entertained, as on TikTok.

Instagram now supports text updates with launch of Notes, adds other new sharing features by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch