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Scoring that high-end, brand-name outfit — but you know, the kind you find from a secondhand store — can be a thrill. Much of that has traditionally been driven by individuals looking to cash in, but companies like Archive are helping brands themselves grab some of that revenue stream through their own resale programs.

We first spoke to the resale operating system startup’s co-founders Emily Gittins and Ryan Rowe in January when they announced $8 million in new funding to not only help brands resell their wares, but divert clothing from landfills.

When Archive launched in February 2021, it was deploying peer-to-peer resale models for brands, essentially facilitating a marketplace for buyers and sellers. However, Rowe told TechCrunch that as he and Gittins spoke more with bigger and bigger brands, they realized there was more that could be done.

Following the initial funding round, the company started building out a warehouse management system that enables what he called “managed resale.” Now brands can, at scale, sell inventory that has been either returned, damaged or exchanged online. Brands, or their third-party logistics partners, can process the inventory, identify if anything needs repair and get it up for sale.

The model has taken off: Archive has seen its revenue increase by nearly 10x in the last 12 months, is working with 32 brand partners and expects to divert hundreds of thousands of items from landfills in the next year. Some of those partners include The North Face, Oscar de la Renta, Cuyana and Marimekko.

This also comes as the luxury resale market is forecasted to double in size to nearly $200 billion over the next three years.

“The market for resale continues to accelerate very quickly,” Gittins told TechCrunch. “We’ve seen very large brands getting very serious about resale and making big commitments on how much of their business they want to be circular in the next few years. We’ve had a lot of positive reception to the resale programs and our existing brand partners continue to scale programs with us.”

Today, the company bags another $15 million, this time in Series A capital. The new investment gives Archive more than $24 million in total funding.

Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Bain Capital Ventures and a group of minority investors. As part of the investment, Alex Taussig, a partner at Lightspeed, will join the company’s board.

Gittins and Rowe intend to deploy the new capital into product development and building out the implementation and success teams to meet demand from customers. They are also looking at new verticals, including home goods and furniture, and with that, new partnerships with different types of logistics providers.

Ultimately, the company would like to move the retail industry toward the manufacture of fewer, but better quality clothing so there is a longer lifecycle for one piece of clothing through resale.

“We see a world where customers can resell something, through a brand, through multiple different ways,” Gittins said. “We are expanding our product internationally and working with brands, particularly in Europe, and will see a lot of expansion opportunities there in the near term. We will also be expanding our partnership network to do things like cleaning, repair and managing the warehouses.”

Archive lands $15M as more clothing brands ‘get serious about resale’ by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Coordinating people, projects and their various locations, has become a headache for companies in the post-pandemic world of remote and hybrid working.

There is expensive office space to maintain, logistics to figure out which employees are going to actually be in, and who’s working remotely each day. Let’s face it, earlier, hot-desk management software – if it was ever used – is no longer up to the task.

Into this world, the Chargifi — which we wrote about in 2015 — start-up found itself. They had been building Chargifi for seven years, enabling users to access mobile power using the free app in any public location with a ‘Chargifi Spot’ – such as a bar, stadium, hotel or office. But when the pandemic hit, demand completely dried up, for obvious reasons.

The team decided to repurpose the software and products they had already built for managing wireless charging networks in offices.

Relaunching as Kadence, the startup now coordinates people, places, and projects to enable hybrid co-working inside teams.

It’s now raised a $10M Seed funding round led by Kickstart Fund with participation from Manta Ray, Hambro Perks and Vectr7 as well as Shadow Ventures and Forward VC.

Kadence also attracted angel investors including Cal Henderson, Co-Founder and CTO at Slack, Shaun Ritchie, CEO and Founder of Teem, and Nick Bloom, Stanford professor, research leader, and worldwide authority on remote work.

Dan Bladen, CEO and Founder of Kadence said in a statement: “Companies are now trying to figure out how to move from ‘order’ to ‘optimization’ and make the ‘way’ they work a competitive advantage. Companies that will win in the hybrid age will understand that the office is no longer the platform for work; the platform for work is now time (the working week) – companies that don’t get hybrid right won’t survive.”

He says the company now has now pulled in 300 customers in the last 18 months, among them companies like Collibra and Starling Bank.

It claims its software can reduce office space by 68% while also increasing the number of employees coming into the office to collaborate by 25% month over month, with the consequent environmental benefits.

Nick Bloom, a Stanford Economics Professor, remote working expert and Kadence investor, said in a statement: “There is no doubt hybrid is now the way the world is going to work going forwards, and Kadence has honed in on the most important aspect of hybrid—that hybrid should enable better outcomes for companies as a whole, not just facilities managers. Their focus on the coordination of people is where the market is heading.”

Cal Henderson, Co-Founder and CTO at Slack and a new Kadence investor added: “And as the world goes hybrid, it’s important that teams find a rhythm for meeting in-person for collaboration and creativity. Kadence is an important part of helping companies make hybrid work, and I’m excited to be involved.”

How Chargifi pivoted to Kadence, a platform to enable hybrid co-working, then pulled in $10M by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch

Retail trading app Robinhood is entering the retirement game.

The Menlo Park, California-based company today launched a waitlist for its new offering, Robinhood Retirement, which it describes as the “first and only” individual retirement account (IRA) with a 1% match on every eligible dollar contributed.

The move is a big bet on the part of the fintech giant that the traditional 9-to-5 employee is no longer the norm. It is targeting gig workers and contractors, for example, who have historically found it challenging to save for retirement without the benefit of a full-time job and access to an employer-sponsored plan.

In an interview with TechCrunch, CEO and co-founder Vladimir “Vlad” Tenev said Robinhood is addressing the current trend away from a single employer model:

There are a lot of people who are contractors or who are working multiple jobs that don’t have access to a traditional safety net pension plan or 401(k)s with a match. Employer-sponsored 401(k)s are a really huge force behind getting people to save for retirement. But not everyone is privileged enough to be eligible for one – either they don’t have full-time employment or if the day, their employer is too small or doesn’t offer a match…We’re building this for them.

The company has “been thinking about what a retirement product could be for Robinhood for a while,” Tenev added, saying the new offering is representative of the company’s focus on expanding products “to meet customers at every stage of their financial journey.” Earlier this year, for example, it also rolled out stock lending and a cash card.

The retail investment behemoth’s plan to diversify isn’t shocking, considering the turbulent year it has had in terms of both its stock and the company’s performance. (It was also previewed earlier this year.)

In early August, Robinhood slashed 23% of its workforcejust three months after it cut 9% of full-time staff in two rounds of layoffs that were believed to have impacted some 1,000 workers. Also in early August, Robinhood was slapped witha $30 million fineby a New York financial regulator, specifically on its cryptocurrency trading arm.

Robinhood’s stock price has been volatile over the past year, as well. Shares closed down 3.2% at $9.67 on December 5, down from a 52-week high of $23.74.

To get the product up and running as soon as possible, Robinhood is inviting anyone with an existing Robinhood account or who is eligible to create a Robinhood account — meaning they are 18 and over and meet other standard criteria — to join the waitlist. (Waitlisting users is a move that Robinhood has used numerous times, including with its crypto product, to both build buzz and ensure a smoother experience for users as they are moved past the figurative velvet rope.)

Robinhood doesn’t charge any fees to maintain an account and says the retirement accounts will have “zero commissions or account minimums,” but that “other fees may apply (referring to any current fees in the company’s fee schedule).

Users will have one login to access both their primary investing and retirement accounts.

Historically, Robinhood has been the target of lawsuits and criticism that it wasn’t doing enough to educate its client base about what they were doing with their money. To head off similar criticism with this new product, the company is taking early steps to provide what Tenev described as in-app guidance, education and guardrails for users.

“A lot of the regulatory backdrop on what makes an IRA different and unique is unclear and opaque . . .” said Tenev. “So we want to make sure that people are not putting money in the wrong way, or taking it out the wrong way, without being fully aware of the tax penalties.”

The plan is for the bulk of customers to be onboarded by the end of January, so that those who are interested in making a contribution can do so before filing taxes. Meanwhile, users who are “really excited to use it early” will get an instant access option — but only if they refer someone, even existing Robinhood customers, to the waitlist using their referral code, said Sam Nordstrom, Robinhood’s manager of product management.

Once onboarded, users will have the choice of investing in stocks and ETFs through either a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA, says Robinhood. Customers can build a “custom” portfolio through “tailored” in-app recommendations or by choosing their own investments — or a mix of both. They also can earn interest on cash stock lending.

Adding to its bottom line

Robinhood needs the product to work. It reported losing 1.8 million monthly active users over the three-month period, a quarterly decrease of 12.8% to 12.2 million, “the lowest level since it listed as a publicly traded company,” according to Yahoo News.

On a positive note, in early November, Robinhood reported third-quarter financials that beat revenue and earnings estimates mainly due to higher interest earned from rising rates. Specifically, it notched revenue of $361 million on a net loss of $175 million, or 20 cents diluted earnings per share versus expectations of $357.7 million on expectations of 27 cents diluted earnings per share.

It’s easy to see how retirement accounts could quickly add to its bottom line. Robinhood has several revenue streams, including through subscriptions via a “Gold” product. But much of the money it makes from its taxable brokerage accounts is through payment for order flow, a controversial practice that last year, the Securities & Exchange Commission threatened to ban, before reversing course this fall.

Layering retirement accounts into the mix will only increase the amount of orders flowing through its platform. Indeed, the expectation is that Robinhood will see a “a significant increase in assets on the platform, and activity, over time,” Tenev says.

Robinhood is also banking on the fact that there are plenty of Gen Z and millennials who are interested in retirement but have not yet started amassing assets toward that end. And it’s hoping to entice them to do so during a down market.

The decision to add a retirement offering, the company claims, is in part based on customer feedback of the desire to have “all their financial investment accounts in one place,” according to Tenev.

“We’re building a product home for all your money,” Tenev said.

TechCrunch’s weekly fintech newsletter, The Interchange, launched on May 1! Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Got a news tip or inside information about a topic we covered? We’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at maryann@techcrunch.com. Or you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

Robinhood banks on retirement to slow user attrition by Mary Ann Azevedo originally published on TechCrunch

The growing demand for AI, particularly generative AI (i.e., AI that generates images, text and more), is supercharging the AI inferencing chip market. Inferencing chips accelerate the AI inferencing process, which is where AI systems generate outputs (e.g., text, images, audio) based on what they learned while “training” on a specific set of data. AI inferencing chips can be — and have been — used to yield faster generations from systems such as Stable Diffusion, which translates text prompts into artwork, and OpenAI’s GPT-3, which extends a few lines of prose into full-length poems, essays and more.

A number of vendors — both startups and well-established players — are actively developing and selling access to AI inferencing chips. There’s Hailo, Mythic and Flex Logix, to name a few upstarts. And on the incumbent side, Google’s competing for dominance with its tensor processing units (TPUs) while Amazon’s betting on Inferentia. But the competition, while fierce, hasn’t scared away firms like NeuReality, which occupy the AI chip inferencing market but aim to differentiate themselves by offering a suite of software and services to support their hardware.

On the subject, NeuReality today announced that it raised $35 million in a Series A funding round led by Samsung Ventures, Cardumen Capital, Varana Capital, OurCrowd and XT Hi-Tech with participation from SK Hynix, Cleveland Avenue, Korean Investment Partners, StoneBridge, and Glory Ventures. Co-founder and CEO Moshe Tanach tells TechCrunch that the tranche will be put toward finalizing the design of NeuReality’s flagship AI inferencing chip in early 2023 and shipping it to customers.

“NeuReality was founded with the vision to build a new generation of AI inferencing solutions that are unleashed from traditional CPU-centric architectures and deliver high performance and low latency, with the best possible efficiency in cost and power consumption,” Tanach told TechCrunch via email. “Most companies that can leverage AI don’t have the funds nor the huge R&D that Amazon, Meta and other huge companies investing in AI have. NeuReality will bring AI tech to anyone who wants to deploy easily and affordably.”

NeuReality was co-founded in 2019 by Tzvika Shmueli, Yossi Kasus and Tanach, who previously served as a director of engineering at Marvell and Intel. Shmueli was formerly the VP of back-end infrastructure at Mellanox Technologies and the VP of engineering at Habana Labs. As for Kasus, he held a senior director of engineering role at Mellanox and was the head of integrations at semiconductor company EZchip.

From the start, NeuReality focused on bringing to market AI hardware for cloud data centers and “edge” computers, or machines that run on-premises and do most of their data processing offline. Tanach says that the startup’s current-generation product lineup, the Network Attached Processing Unit (NAPU), is optimized for AI inference applications, including computer vision (think algorithms that recognize objects in photos), natural language processing (text-generating and classifying systems) and recommendation engines (like the type that suggest products on e-commerce sites).

NeuReality’s NAPU is essentially a hybrid of multiple types of processors. It can perform functions like AI inferencing load balancing, job scheduling and queue management, which have traditionally been done in software but not necessarily very efficiently.

NeuReality’s NR1, an FPGA-based SKU within the NAPU family, is a network-attached “server on a chip” with an embedded AI inferencing accelerator along with networking and virtualization capabilities. NeuReality also offers the NR1-M module, a PCIe card containing an NR1 and a network-attached inference server, and a separate module — the NR1-S — that pairs several NR1-Ms with the NR1.

On the software side, NeuReality delivers a set of tools, including a software development kit for cloud and local workloads, a deployment manager to help with runtime issues and a monitoring dashboard.

“The software for AI inference [and] the tools for heterogeneous compute and automated flow of compilation and deployment … is the magic that supports our innovative hardware approach,” Tanach said. “The first beneficiaries of the NAPU technology are enterprises and cloud solution providers that need infrastructure to support their chatbots, voice bots, automatic transcriptions and sentiment analysis as well as computer vision use cases for document scans, defect detection, etc. … While the world was focusing on the deep learning processor improvements, NeuReality focused on optimizing the system around it and the software layers above it to provide higher efficiency and a much easier flow to deploy inference.”

NeuReality, it must be noted, has yet to back up some of its performance claims with empirical evidence. It told ZDNet in a recent article that it estimates its hardware will deliver a 15x improvement in performance per dollar compared to the available GPUs and ASICs offered by deep learning accelerator vendors, but NeuReality hasn’t released validating benchmarking data. The startup also hasn’t detailed its proprietary networking protocol, a protocol that it has previously claimed is more performant than existing solutions.

Those items aside, delivering hardware at massive scale isn’t easy — particularly where it involves custom AI inferencing chips. But Tanach argues that NeuReality has laid the necessary groundwork, partnering with AMD-owned semiconductor manufacturer Xilinx for production and inking a partnership with IBM to work on hardware requirements for the NR1. (IBM, which is also a NeuReality design partner, previously said it’s “evaluating” the startup’s products for use in the IBM cloud.) NeuReality has been shipping prototypes to partners since May 2021, Tanach says.

According to Tanach, beyond IBM, NeuReality is working with Lenovo, AMD and unnamed cloud solution providers, system integrators, deep learning accelerator vendors and “inference-consuming” enterprises on deployments. Tanach declined, however, to reveal how many customers the startup currently has or what roughly it’s projecting in terms of revenue.

“We see that the pandemic is slowing companies down and pushing for consolidation between the many deep learning vendors. However, for us it doesn’t change anything, since late next year or sometime through 2024 inference deployment is expected to explode — and our technology is exactly the enabler and driver of that growth,” Tanach said. “The NAPU will bring AI for a broader set of less technical companies. It is also set to allow large-scale users such as ‘hyperscalers’ and next-wave data center customers to support their growing scale of AI usage.”

Ori Kirshner, the head of Samsung Ventures in Israel, added in an emailed statement: “We see substantial and immediate need for higher efficiency and easy-to-deploy inference solutions for data centers and on-premises use cases, and this is why we are investing in NeuReality. The company’s innovative disaggregation, data movement and processing technologies improve computation flows, compute-storage flows, and in-storage compute — all of which are critical for the ability to adopt and grow AI solutions.”

NeuReality, which currently has 40 employees, plans to hire 20 more over the next two fiscal quarters. To date, it’s raised $38 million in venture capital.

NeuReality lands $35M to bring AI accelerator chips to market by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Rezonate, a Boston- and Tel Aviv-based startup that offers an agent-less cloud identity protection platform that aims to help DevOps teams minimize attackers’ opportunities to breach cloud identity and access, is coming out of stealth today and announcing an $8.7 million seed funding round, led by State of Mind Ventures and Flybridge, with participation from toDay Ventures, Merlin Ventures and a number of angel investors.

Founded in January 2022, Rezonate is part of a group of modern identity and access management (IAM) startups that aim to modernize the current state of affairs in this space, which is struggling to meet the demands of modern cloud infrastructure systems. This shift is creating new attack surfaces, especially as enterprises move to the cloud — and more dynamic infrastructure systems — at an ever-increasing rate. The number of security breaches stemming from issues with identity and access management is already on the rise. Indeed, Gartner expects that by 2023, “75% of security failures will result from inadequate management of identities, access, and privileges.”

Co-founder and CEO Roy Akerman was previously the head of the Israeli Cyberdefense Operations, while Rezonate co-founder and CTO Ori Amiga previously led R&D for this unit. Both received the Medal of Honor for their contributions to Israel’s National Security.

“The rapidly-changing cloudscape together with the proliferation of human and machine identities requires a different approach,” said Akerman. “Modern infrastructures require a precise and nimble way to outsmart attackers. One that prioritizes cloud identities and access at its core and is constantly adapting to current dynamics over yesterday’s snapshots and, for the first time, gives defenders and builders the means to act confidently.”

Rezonate promises to discover all of a company’s cloud and identity providers and the corresponding access privileges of its employees. The platform automatically detects security gaps and abnormal access attempts in real time. Rezonate promises that within minutes of deploying its solution, its platform can identify cloud identity and access risks and provide guidance for remediating them, or even automatically remove access and terminate sessions.

At the core of all of this is what Rezonate calls its ‘Identity Storyline,’ which aims to provide DevOps and security teams with a context-rich dashboard that helps them understand the security risk across a company’s cloud estate. With this, users get an easy-to-read dashboard that clearly lays out what kind of access every user has — and where there are potential issues.

“The fact that in just ten months from our first line of code we already have active customers, solving key gaps daily, affirms the criticality of the cloud identity and access issue. In a cloud world where everything is changing all of the time, DevOps teams need a solution as dynamic and automated as the infrastructure they need to protect is,” said Amiga.

Rezonate raises $8.7M and launches its cloud identity protection platform out of stealth by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

Apple has announced that its Self Service Repair store for iPhones and MacBooks is now open for business in Europe.

First announced last November, the repair program essentially enables anyone to purchase genuine Apple components to repair their damaged devices, while the Cupertino company also provides online manuals to guide consumers through the self-service repair process.

It’s worth noting that while the program is open to anyone where the repair store is available, repairing iPhones and MacBooks probably isn’t for the average consumer, as just getting into the devices to being the repairs is a complex process. But for any have-a-go-heroes out there willing to invest a bit of time and money learning, Apple is also selling the tools necessary to carry out fault-specific repairs, with an option to rent a repair kit for $49 if they only have a one-off repair they wish to carry out.

Apple first opened its Service Service Repair store to iPhone users in the U.S. back in April, with support for the full range of iPhone 12 and 13 models, as well as the third edition SE model. The company then extended the program to include a selection of MacBook Air and Pro models in August.

From today, Apple is opening Self Service Repair to eight European countries, including the U.K., France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Sweden.

Apple expands Self Service Repair to iPhone and MacBook users in Europe by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

A year ago, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook operated a two-tiered content moderation system. Normal users were subject to the platforms stated rules while VIP users were secretly flagged into special in a program internally called “cross check.”

That list included everyone from Brazilian soccer star Neymar and former President Donald Trump to conservative commentator Candace Owens and the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Per the WSJ, that system was designed to minimize instances in which Facebook might moderate content from a VIP in the normal course of moderation and kick off a firestorm of bad press in the process.

“If Facebook’s systems conclude that one of those accounts might have broken its rules, they don’t remove the content—at least not right away, the documents indicate,” the WSJ reported. “They route the complaint into a separate system, staffed by better-trained, full-time employees, for additional layers of review.”

Cross-check came to light in mid September of last year and by the end of the month the company was asking the Oversight Board, Meta’s semi-independent policy-making council, to review the system and suggest ways to fix it. “Specifically, we will ask the board for guidance on the criteria we use to determine what is prioritized for a secondary review via cross-check, as well as how we manage the program,” Meta VP of Global Affairs Nick Clegg wrote.

The Oversight Board is now back with their recommendations, calling for “significant improvements” to the cross-check program.

“For years, cross-check allowed content from a select group of politicians, business partners, celebrities, and others to remain on Facebook and Instagram for several days when it would have otherwise been removed quickly,” the group wrote in a blog post, noting that some content that fell under cross-check has remained up for 7 months before the company made a decision about whether to remove it.

The Oversight Board offered 32 recommended changes to that process, including a few steps that would make a previously secret program much more transparent. The board called on the company to publish “clear criteria” describing what accounts are eligible for cross-check’s extra review process, to visibly mark accounts that are in the program and to allow people who might meet the requirements to apply for the special account status.

The board also requested that Meta prioritize “users who are likely to produce expression that is important for human rights” like journalists and civil rights groups in the cross-check system rather than making those calls based on its business interests. “While the number of followers can indicate public interest in a user’s expression, a user’s celebrity or follower count should not be the sole criterion for receiving additional protection,” the board wrote. “If users included due to their commercial importance frequently post violating content, they should no longer benefit from special protection.”

The full set of recommendations, which is published on the Oversight Board’s blog, calls on Meta to dramatically realign its content moderation priorities for high profile users. How much of this the company will actually implement remains to be seen, but this whole process certainly looks like a well-oiled machine compared to the policy setting going on over at Twitter these days.

Meta’s Oversight Board wants Facebook to be more transparent about VIP accounts by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

Hackers backed by the Iranian government targeted human rights activists, journalists, diplomats and politicians working in the Middle East during an ongoing social engineering and credential phishing campaign, according to Human Rights Watch.

In an analysis published on Monday, Human Rights Watch said it had attributed the espionage campaign to APT42, an Iran-backed hacking group first identified by cybersecurity firm Mandiant in September. Mandiant said APT42 – also referred to as TA453, Phosphorus and Charming Kitten – supports Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence collection efforts and has launched over 30 confirmed operations against various non-profit, education and government targets globally since 2015.

Human Rights Watch said it first became aware of APT42’s latest espionage campaign after one of its employees received suspicious messages on WhatsApp from someone pretending to work for a think tank based in Lebanon. The advocacy group found that a link included in the message directed the target to a fake login page that captured their email password and multi-factor authentication code.

In its analysis, conducted alongside Amnesty International’s Security Lab, Human Rights Watch identified 18 additional victims who had been targeted as part of the same campaign, and 15 of these targets confirmed that they had received the same WhatsApp messages between September 15 and November 25. On November 23, a second Human Rights Watch staff member received the same WhatsApp messages from the same number that contacted other targets.

For the three people whose accounts were known to be compromised — a correspondent for a major U.S. newspaper, a women’s rights defender based in the Gulf region, and an advocacy consultant for Refugees International based in Lebanon — the attackers gained access to emails, cloud storage drives, contacts and calendars. In at least one case, the attackers also performed a Google Takeout, a service that exports all of an account’s activity and information, including web searches, payments, travel and locations, ads clicked on, YouTube activity, and additional account information.

“Iran’s state-backed hackers are aggressively using sophisticated social engineering and credential harvesting tactics to access sensitive information and contacts held by Middle East-focused researchers and civil society groups,” said Abir Ghattas, information security director at Human Rights Watch. “This significantly increases the risks that journalists and human rights defenders face in Iran and elsewhere in the region.”

In light of its investigation, Human Rights Watch is calling on Google to strengthen its Gmail account security warnings to protect better its most at-risk users, including journalists and human rights defenders, after it uncovered “inadequacies” in Google’s security protections.

“Individuals successfully targeted by the phishing attack told Human Rights Watch that they did not realize their Gmail accounts had been compromised or a Google Takeout had been initiated, in part because the security warnings under Google’s account activity do not push or display any permanent notification in a user’s inbox or send a push message to the Gmail app on their phone,” Human Rights Watch said in its analysis.

“Google’s security activity revealed that the attackers accessed the targets’ accounts almost immediately after the compromise, and they maintained access to the accounts until the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International research team informed them and assisted them in removing the attacker’s connected device.”

Google spokesperson Kimberly Samra told TechCrunch that Google implements protections for high-risk users so their Google accounts are “protected against threats against Google services, or on other platforms as seen in this case.”

“Some of these protections include our Advanced Protection Program (APP) and 2-Step Verification (2SV) auto enrollments,” Samra said. “Google also remains committed to threat collaboration and sharing our ongoing research to raise awareness on bad actors across the industry, as it helps to more quickly respond to attacks and protect online users.”

Iran-backed hackers linked to espionage campaign targeting journalists and activists by Carly Page originally published on TechCrunch

The Discovery+ app is getting one of the most anticipated feature — and frankly, a must-have feature for today’s streaming apps — offline viewing. The company announced Monday that users of the ad-free plan in the U.S. will be able to download content for offline viewing on the service’s iOS and Android apps.

This move comes after the company tested this feature with users in Brazil. Discovery+ mentioned that the service has more than 58,000 episodes — including popular shows “House of Hammer,” “Fixer Upper,” and “90 Day Fiancé” — that are eligible for downloads.

Users with the ad-free plan will see a “Download” button next to the content title. They can also choose the quality of the download and whether to download it over Wi-FI or cellular data.

Discovery+ noted that the downloaded title will live on the device for 30 days in the unplayed state or 48 hours after you hit the play button. Plus, you can renew the title download once you’re online after it expires.

The company is not putting any geo-restriction on the downloaded content. So if you are visiting another country, you can watch it if you are offline. The app will default to the downloads section when a user is offline.

Warner Bros. Discovery is set to merge HBO Max and Discovery+ services into one app next year. But until then, Discovery+ users will get to enjoy this feature that was missing for the longest time. Competitors like YouTube and Netflix have had an offline viewing option for years. While Discovery+ launched just last year, it’s a feature that streaming service users have come to expect.

Discovery+ brings the offline download feature to the US by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

There’s a prevailing logic (or you might say hope) in tech that says there is no better time to invent and invest than when the market appears to be in a bad place. With companies like Google and Apple born out of fallow periods, that way of thinking may be understandable — and it is leading to a number of fresh venture funds, pushing capital into the market.

In the latest development, One Peak, a firm out of London that focuses on growth stage rounds in B2B startups across Europe and Israel — is today announcing that it has closed its latest, and biggest-ever fund of $1 billion.

The fund is the third from eight-year-old One Peak. First launched in March of this year, One Peak described the $1 billion ‘hard cap’ as oversubscribed and now the largest focused on B2B software companies in Europe. It plans to use the money to invest between $15 million and $100 million in growth rounds.

One Peak’s portfolio includes the likes of Cymulate, PandaDoc, DataGuard, Paysend, Deepki, Neo4j and Spryker — a list focused on scaling enterprise startups across a range of categories like cybersecurity, e-commerce, and data management and analytics — and the plan is both to continue doubling down on those while also looking for others to join the stable.

David Klein, who co-founded One Peak with Humbert de Liedekerke Beaufort, believes that even with global markets contracting and expected to continue that pattern next year, B2B tech will continue to remain a “recession-proof” category, in his words.

And contrary to its name, One Peak is not alone in that line of thought. Even as we look at how prices for tech stocks are crashing, and anecdotally and verifiably are seeing evidence of investors and startups talking about the lack of activity and pressure on the market, ironically, compared to the rest of the market, investors (and in the case of venture funds, LPs) appear to be putting more of their money into tech, a category they see longer term outperforming the rest of the market.

Beaufort notes that while there is definitely a slowdown in the wider market and the sales cycles in B2B — a category some believe will also be hit, but perhaps in a more delayed way — “Currently we’ve seen no impact on the performance of our companies,” he said.

One Peak’s $1 billion fund III comes amid a number of other VCs raising capital this year both in Europe and further afield. EQT Ventures has closed two different funds in the last couple of months, $2.2 billion for growth-stage investments mostly in Europe and a further $1 billion for early-stage bets. Index Ventures has committed $300 million in the last month specifically to fund new startups in the downturn. Northzone also announced its latest fund, a record $1 billion for the firm, in the last quarter. Atomico is also reportedly raising $1.3 billion in new funds this year, although the close of those has not been confirmed.

Dealroom analysis notes that in all, the first three quarters of 2022 saw VCs in EMEA raise some $24 billion in funds. Meanwhile, PitchBook analysis found that nearly $151 billion was raised by U.S.-based firms in the first three quarters of this year, although it also pointed out that deal-making out of that money was not matching that exuberance.

The message is clear: those looking to make money out of their money may see tech as a relatively safe harbor, but those who hold the purse strings are generally being a lot more cautious how they distribute those funds.

One Peak is following some of that pattern itself.

“We believe multiples are down to 2018 levels,” said Beaufort. Klein added that the highest-growth companies are reasonable investments at 12-13 times the revenue run rate. And he added that the firm recently passed on at least one big deal that’s in the works because the valuation multiple — 20 times the revenue run rate — was just too high.

Still, with a number of B2B startups hatched during more bullish years now looking for their next capital injection, and One Peak’s own portfolio including at least a few startups that haven’t raised in over a year, there appears to be no shortage of targets for aiming its money.

One Peak scales up and closes $1B fund aimed at European and Israeli growth rounds by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch