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The UK government has confirmed it will expand criminal liability powers contained in draft online safety legislation which is currently making its way through parliament with the aim of preventing platforms from intentionally flouting child-safety rules.

The current version of the (already muchamended) Online Safety Bill, which is set to return to parliament today for the report stage ahead of its third reading, does include criminal liability for execs who fail to comply with duties to provide the regulator, Ofcom, with information it requests from them.

However the government has now bowed to pressure from some its own backbenches — as well as calls from online child safety campaigners — to include expanded criminal liability provisions by making senior management at in-scope platforms criminally liable for repeat breaches of child safety duties.

This means that Ofcom will get additional powers that could — at least on paper — result in jail time for social media bosses who deliberately flout child safety rules.

The Telegraph broke the news of the looming government reversal late yesterday, reporting that Michelle Donelan, the secretary of state in charge of digital issues, had accepted changes to the bill which will make senior managers at tech firms criminally liable for persistent breaches of their duty of care to children.

A spokesman for the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirmed the development, telling TechCrunch that DCMS minister Paul Scully will set out details in a speech to parliament this afternoon. The development follows meetings between Donelan and backbench Conservative Party MPs who, in recent weeks, had been pushing a more wide-ranging amendment to expand criminal liability for senior execs.

The DCMS spokesman said backbench MPs have agreed to withdraw their amendment in exchange for the government introducing its amendment to expand criminal liability provisions.

The opposition Labour Party had signalled support for the backbenchers’ amendment, meaning the government could have faced an embarrassing defeat on the bill — hence it’s backing down to avoid a rebellion.

Backbench Conservative MPs have argued the legislation needs more teeth if it’s to rein in powerful tech giants and ensure children are protected from exposure to harmful content, with MPs pointing to other sectors — such financial services or construction — that already have criminal liability for senior execs and questioning why the execs in the tech sector should get a free pass.

In other recent changes late last year, the government revised the bill to remove a clause related to legal but harmful content — in response to concerns the legislation could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

However that move was decried by child safety campaigners and appears to have fuelled the backbench dissent on criminal liability.

The wording of the government amendment has not yet been published but DCMS’ spokesman emphasized that the expanded criminal liability will only apply for repeated breaches of child safety duties in the legislation — describing the target as execs who “go rogue” and “willingly ignore” Ofcom’s investigations and enforcement of child safety rules.

So a sort of ‘Elon Musk liability clause’, if you will.

The backbenchers’ proposed amendment would have gone further than that — extending criminal liability for any breaches of child safety duties. So the government appears to have won a concession by squeezing liability to deliberate breaches only. And DCMS’ spokesman suggested the amendment is “more targeted and proportionate to the risks” than the one proposed by rebel MPs.

The liability will kick in for senior management “if they repeatedly and knowingly and willingly ignore Ofcom’s enforcement notices in relation to their safety tech duties”, the DCMS spokesman added. “It will be commensurate to other senior manager liability provisions that are currently in law elsewhere… Senior manager liability was currently already in the bill if they failed to give Ofcom information when it was asking for it.”

“We’re confident that it won’t affect the UK’s attractiveness as a place to invest. Because it won’t penalize responsible and reactive tech bosses who are focused on making sure their platforms are safe. This is about people who are deliberately and willingly going against what Ofcom are telling them to do to make their sites safer for kids,” the spokesman also claimed.

“So it gives tech bosses a lot more certainty about when this could be used. And… as ever, with the fines that are in the bill — with Ofcom’s powers to fine them, with Ofcom’s powers to block access to sites [that break the law], these are a suite of powers that Ofcom has that it’s been very clear it will only use these in the worst case scenarios. In the extreme cases where it has to use these powers it will but it’s got a load of other options to use before that point.”

Since the deadline for introducing amendments in the House of Commons has passed, the government’s amendment to the bill will be introduced when scrutiny moves to the House of Lords next month — so full details remain to be seen.

We asked DCMS whether the expanded criminal liability provision for senior management will apply only to larger platforms (so called “category 1” services) — or whether all in-scope services (so, potentially, tens of thousands of companies and/or entities that provide user-to-user services) will face this risk — but the spokesman was unable to confirm how broadly the change will apply at this time.

While child safety campaigners are likely to welcome the government’s change of heart on beefing up criminal liability on tech bosses, digital rights groups are likely to be more cautious over risks to freedom of expression, with groups like the ORG also warning about the impact of compulsory age-gating on websites to access to content and to web users’ privacy.

Tech bosses who willingly flout UK online child safety rules to face criminal liability by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

Soundboxes — hardware used by merchants that emits sounds every time a mobile payment is made — have taken off in India, where point of sale activity can get busy and voice alerts from the soundbox help alert multitasking shopkeepers and assistants to a transaction going through. Now, to keep pushing ahead to build out its own payments business in the world’s second-largest internet market, Google is getting in on the act.

The internet giant, which is currently one of the mobile transaction leaders in India with Google Pay, is piloting a soundbox of its own in the country to alert sellers of confirmations for UPI payments — a mobile payment standard developed and now ubiquitous in India for instant payments and transfers between banks, or two mobile users, or a customer and a merchant. With UPI payments, providers typically do not take any cut on UPI transactions, so soundboxes have emerged not just as a convenience for merchants, but as a monetizing tool for payments providers, too.

Sources tell us that Google has started distributing its white-labeled speakers — branded Soundpod by Google Pay — in a few markets across North India, including New Delhi, working initially with a limited group of shopkeepers. Google’s soundboxes come with a QR code on the front — linked to the business owner’s bank-registered phone number — which can be used to make any UPI-based payment. These Soundpods are being built by Amazon-backed ToneTag, TechCrunch has learned.

The hardware features a built-in speaker that announces payment confirmations in different languages. Like its competitors’ soundboxes, Google’s device also includes a small LCD panel that shows the payment amount, battery and network status and manual controls. The soundbox is accompanied by a QR code of a merchant linked with their Google Pay for business account. Users can use any UPI-based app to make a payment by scanning the code. Typically, these soundboxes don’t support NFC payment as tap-and-pay is not a popular method for transactions in India. Plus, a lot of low-end smartphones don’t have integrated NFC hardware.

People familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that Google is distributing the speakers to selected merchants without any additional cost. In some instances, Google Pay representatives have given merchants a timeframe of some days to receive and set up the speakers at their registered location.

Google’s move into this piece of hardware is somewhat overdue.

The search giant has been slogging it out in India’s crowded payments landscape for some time now, and while a soundbox may sound novel to people outside of India, in the country it’s quickly become tablestakes in the mobile payments game. Google Pay competes directly with Paytm,Walmart-owned PhonePe and Tiger Global-backed BharatPe — all of which have already launched their own branded soundboxes with support for multiple languages.

That Google has had no presence on the soundbox front speaks (no pun intended) to how it has struggled to build fast enough to keep up with its rivals, and arguably to meet consumer demands in a timely way, too.

Roadside sellers, small merchants and hawkers have started using payment soundboxes to get audio confirmation of customer payments. And while the Google Pay for Business app already has an audio notification function, and Google also lets a business add an agent number so the agent can receive a confirmation on their phone; these features might not be helpful for a shop with multiple attendants and a loud environment, or where the cashier is not using a smartphone or tablet to facilitate transactions. In this scenario, a device that “announces” payments loudly can be useful.

Soundboxes also serve other roles to promote more and faster transactions for merchants. They typically support different languages — critical for a multilingual country like India — offer multi-day battery life and a quick daily transaction summary.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment for this story, but when we asked Sharath Bulusu, the director of product management for Google Pay at Google, about the development at the sidelines of a Google India event in December, he did not deny the effort and replied that the company piloted “all sorts of things.”

“If the person doesn’t have a smartphone, and they’re running a small business, the chances [are] that they will actually pay for a speaker product,” he said. “You can look up publicly available prices that Paytm has been using… I think the chances are low. So, that is not the way to solve it,” he said when asked whether Google targets the soundbox merchants who don’t have smartphones.

“But do we want to solve for that user? Yes,” he added.

Fintech startups take a low upfront fee and a monthly rental from merchants using their soundbox solutions. However, they also sometimes give the device away for free to many sellers to get them onboard. Paytm charges an average rental of $1.53 (125 Indian rupees) per month, while PhonePe charges $0.60 (49 Indian rupees) per month. The charges are relative to the merchant size and promotional schemes offered by agents.

According to data from the UPI-umbrella organization National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI transactions have seen significant growth, reaching 7.82 billion in December with a value of $157 billion. This represents a nearly 100% increase in transaction volume and a 55% increase in transaction value compared to December 2021. But despite this growth, companies facilitating UPI payments do not have a direct means of monetizing these transactions as they do not require merchants to pay a merchant discount rate or a small transaction fee.

Fintech companies have advocated for introducing transactional fees to change this model. Last week, the government announced spending $320 million to promote UPI transactions and its indigenous RuPay cards. However, the companies still have no direct avenue to generate revenues from UPI transactions.

As UPI has so far been a no-fee payments network, fintech players in this market offering compatible apps have to rely on other sources of revenue, such as lending and speaker rentals. In 2021, Google Pay started monetizing its service through user data, almost three and a half years after launching it in India.

Paytm was the first in the race to introduce soundboxes, which it did in 2020. That early mover status has been to its advantage so far: it is now a leader in the soundbox category, with the company claiming to have distributed more than 5.8 million devices to date. Earlier this month, the Indian payment company claimed it had distributed 1 million soundboxes each in its last two quarters.

Last September, Paytm said that its soundbox devices processed 5 billion transactions in FY 2022. A note from brokerage firm CSLA published last November noted that soundbox accounts for the company’s 38% net payment revenue.

Both Walmart-owned PhonePe and BharatPe launched their soundboxes last year. Last November, PhonePe said it deployed 1 million payment speakers across the country.

In addition to soundboxes, companies such as Google and Paytm provide businesses with QR code stickers and banners for easy UPI payments. However, there has been intense competition in the UPI market, as companies aim to reach the masses for small-ticket transactions, even without direct revenue generation. This is because the large user base can later be converted to customers for other products and services.

Per the National Payments Corporation of India, PhonePe and Google Pay command nearly 85% of the total UPI market in terms of transactions and own over 81% of the total UPI transaction volume. The government had planned to limit their market domination and provide other participants an opportunity to gain some share by setting a threshold of 30% of total UPI transactions per month. However, this rule was recently postponed until 2025.

Many merchants are eager to adopt the soundboxes once they understand their features, but some choose to return them once companies begin charging a rental fee. That points also to the issue of transparency and whether providers are being clear with customers over how fees are charged.

“I do not want it once I understood that the device is charging me over a hundred rupees a month just for speaking out payment updates,” said a chemist shop owner using a Paytm soundbox until last month.

Companies including PhonePe have begun taking cancellation fees in response to this behavior. Google’s model of how it will differentiate the game to retain merchants is yet to be revealed.

Google is piloting its own ‘soundbox’ in India for merchants to get audio-based payment alerts by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Alice Delahunt believes the future of fashion is in web3 and created Syky (pronounced “psy-key”) to put the wheels in motion.

She launched the company in November after a career in marketing at luxury fashion houses, serving in roles including chief digital and content officer at Ralph Lauren and digital and social marketing director at Burberry.

In 2017, Delahunt was at Ralph Lauren and had her first look at the blockchain, but it wasn’t until years later while working to pioneer some digital wardrobe projects with companies, like Snap, Bitmoji and Roblox, that she had an opportunity to see that web3 was going to be “more than a niche community” for luxury fashion.

“It felt like there was potential for virtual fashion and digital fashion to really take off,” she told TechCrunch. “I believe that the luxury fashion houses of tomorrow are being built today.”

That’s when Delahunt left Ralph Lauren and started developing Syky, which she said will serve as an incubator, marketplace and social community for the next generation of fashion designers and consumers.

As my colleague, Dominic-Madori Davis recently noted, “if there is one industry that could use web3, that industry is fashion,” especially when it comes to taking the industry in a new direction or helping it become more sustainable.

This is much of Delahunt’s focus. Her company’s name was inspired by the mythological Greek goddess of soul, Psyche, who she said personified “how designers use fashion to express the intangible parts of ourselves and themselves.”

“Designers inspire us to dream through fashion,” Delahunt added. “And those dreams come from the innermost parts of our psyche, so it was important for me for the name to reflect that.”

The company is kicking off the community part of its platform by releasing its first NFT, called The Keystone, of which 987 will be available on January 20. Fifty Keystones will be reserved for and granted to aspiring designers, Delahunt said.

The Keystone is a membership pass that provides exclusive access to Syky’s membership space, where they can network and collaborate with other creators and be able to attend digital and in-person fashion events. Keystone holders will also be the first to hear about designer collection drops, company alpha and beta feature releases and partner projects. In addition, they will receive periodic insights and reports on fashion and technology.

Syky is still very much in its early stages, but is buoyed by a $9 million Series A investment, led by Seven Seven Six, which also included Brevan Howard Digital, Leadout Capital, First Light Capital Group and Polygon Ventures.

The investment marks Seven Seven Six’s foray into web3 fashion, and Alexis Ohanian told TechCrunch via email that the attraction to Syky came from his obsession with the intersection of technology and culture.

“Creating and growing Reddit gave me a front-row seat to the power of culture creation through technology, even if it’s internet culture, and fashion is one more core element to that,” Ohanian added.

Meanwhile, Delahunt intends to deploy the new capital into building up the Syky team, incubating the designers into the community and on product and technology development.

She plans for the future marketplace to be a revenue driver for the company. It will be a place for emerging designers and unestablished designers to sell and trade their collections with consumers. It will also be a place where designers and consumers can curate spaces to showcase their fashion passions.

Delahunt was secretive about some of the next steps of the company, which includes an announcement for designers in February, and another part of the platform launching in the second quarter of this year.

“We’re going to build the luxury space environment in the digital world and then in the physical world,” Delahunt added.

Luxury fashion meets blockchain on Syky, the Seven Seven Six-backed web3 platform by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

In an age when almost everything can be bought online, watch resale is done in a surprisingly archaic way, namely, face-to-face with little price transparency. Wristcheck, a startup based out of Hong Kong, is taking a shot at digitizing the industry.

Traditional secondhand watch dealing is a “buy low sell high” business that often puts the buyer and seller in a “predatory” position, says Austen Chu, co-founder and CEO at Wristcheck, in an interview. An auction house, for example, typically charges the buyer up to 26% and up to 12% for sellers in transaction fees, he says.

“There’s no standardized way for buying and selling in the luxury watch space. Part of the reason is the high barrier to entry because it’s a super knowledge-based hobby,” the founder observes.

In comparison, Wristcheck takes 8% from the seller and 4% from the buyer. Rather than buying watches from sellers upfront, Wristcheck acts as a consignment platform and does away with inventory costs. The platform allows users to put in a bidding price for a watch they want — buyers know what sellers net, and sellers know what buyers pay.

The startup had been bootstrapping for the last three years or so until closing its first outside investment recently. It raised $5 million in a funding round led by Gobi Partners, a prominent Chinese venture capital firm that has in recent years focused more on the Greater Bay Area, which encompasses megacities like Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Singapore-based K3 Ventures also participated in the round.

Wrist awareness

Ever since he was given his first watch — a Flik Flak — at the age of five, Chu has been obsessed with watches. But collecting fine watches, like artworks, is too expensive for most young people, so the hobby is normally associated with an older, older crowd.

Wristcheck is attracting a different demographic. Forty-three percent of its customers are under 30 years old, according to Chu. While he’s not able to disclose the firm’s revenue size, he says the platform has sold “multiple watches that transacted over a million USD.” All told, Wristcheck has gathered a “community” of 80,000 members, meaning people it has interacted with online and at offline events.

“We see [Wristcheck] as the future for watch enthusiasts who can’t really get anything from retail,” Chu says. More young consumers are getting into watches, he adds, partly thanks to Apple. Contrary to the popular belief that Apple Watch spelled the end for the luxury watch industry, Chu argues that it actually helps raise “wrist awareness” among Gen Z who grew up with smartwatches.

“Apple Watch is the greatest thing that has happened to the watch industry,” the founder asserts.

Location matters

The company is strategically based in Hong Kong, known as the capital of watches thanks to its friendly tax policy. During COVID, the bulk of Wristcheck’s customers are local, but as Hong Kong reopens its border, the city is gradually welcoming back international travelers. Growing in tandem is the Wristcheck’s overseas consignors and buyers, which are seeing a big uptick.

As of today, over 15% of Wristcheck’s consigned pieces are from overseas customers. Many of its customers prefer to pick up their purchases in Hong Kong, taking advantage of the city’s tax-free scheme.

The city’s vicinity to the tech hub Shenzhen, which is just across the border in mainland China, will also make it easier for Wristwatch to hire engineers, a common strategy for Hong Kong-headquartered tech firms. As of today, the startup is actively looking for a CTO to build out its AI infrastructure.

Powered by AI

With the fresh capital boost, Wristcheck aims to develop its proprietary image recognition tool that can authenticate watches in photos uploaded by sellers. Secondhand watches, says Chu, are one of the most counterfeited categories across the board.

“The more zoomed in [a photo] is, the more obvious whether the watch is genuine. So we just need to train a collection of real and fake watches,” he explains. In addition, the platform cross-checks for stolen watches registered with police stations around the world.

Applying image recognition to e-commerce is nothing new. Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace has long let people look up products by uploading photos. But timing is key for digitizing luxury watch trading. During COVID, much of the luxury watch research and shopping moved online. At the same time, multimillion-dollar NFT sales have made consumers, especially Gen Z, more comfortable about spending large amounts of money online, Chu suggests.

Eventually, the startup aims to be the “benchmark for watch prices.” To that end, it plans to spend portions of its new funding on building an engine that gleans real-time as well as historical price data, which is supposed to bring more transparency to the used watch industry.

Wristcheck wants to make used luxury watches more affordable by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Cumul.io, the company behind a low-code business intelligence (BI) analytics platform for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, has raised €10 million ($10.8 million) in a Series A round of funding.

Founded out of Belgium in 2015, Cumul.io works in a similar space to well-established BI incumbents such as Tableau and Looker, but sets itself apart with a focus on bringing embedded analytics to SaaS applications specifically.

Embedded analytics, for the uninitiated, is where companies offer data reporting and visualizations directly inside their software, rather than having to use a separate, standalone BI application — this brings convenience and simplicity to growing companies that would rather focus their resources on their core competencies.

“More and more users of SaaS products or software platforms expect insights and data to be made available directly inside their core apps, as a native component,” Cumul.io CEO and cofounder Karel Callens explained to TechCrunch. “SaaS companies are looking for solutions that can be rolled out and marketed quickly, are easy to use, and can be scaled and adapted with minimal effort to keep costs low.”

With Cumul.io, its customers — which include venture-backed SaaS scale-ups such as Dixa — can integrate white-labeled analytics and dashboards into their software by connecting just about any data source, drag-and-drop specific features to customize their dashboards, and then copy-paste a snippet of code into their application to serve thousands of end-users.

Misconceptions

While Cumul.io is certainly comparable to the likes of Looker and Tableau in terms of the sphere in which it operates, Callens reckons its most direct competitor is actually engineering teams who might have a general aversion to third-party embedded analytics providers, choosing to stitch their own solution together instead.

“Many product and engineering teams still have the misconception that using an embedded analytics vendor will limit their flexibility, compared to building it out on their own,” Callens added. “There’s still a lot of education involved on how powerful and flexible low-code tools nowadays can be.”

Prior to now, Cumul.io had raised around €3.1 million ($3.4 million) in funding, and with its fresh cash injection the company said that it plans to bolster its headcount across its offices in Leuven and Genk in Belgium, as well as its New York hub. Indeed, the company said that more than a third of its revenue already emanates from the North American market.

Cumul.io’s Series A round was led by France-based early stage VC firm Hi Inov-Dentressangle, with participation from Axeleo Capital, LRM, and SmartFin.

Cumul.io, a low-code embedded analytics platform for SaaS companies, raises $10.8M by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

Before founding The Edit LDN, Moses Rashid frequented sneaker festivals and exhibitions to buy limited edition shoes. But Rashid, who describes himself as a “huge sneakerhead,” was often disappointed by the shopping experience. “I found it crazy that I was dropping $850 on a pair of sneakers but I wouldn’t even get a bag to bring them home in!” he said. He started The Edit LDN out of his home two years ago to give other sneakerheads the kind of premium experience they’d expect from luxury brands like Louis Vuitton or Dior.

Now Rashid says The Edit LDN’s revenue is growing 525% year-over-year, hitting $12 million in 2022. The London-based platform, which carries sneakers, streetwear and collectibles from pre-vetted resellers, announced today it has raised $4.8 million in seed funding. The round will be used to expand into the United States and the MENA region, and was led by Regah Ventures, with participation from sports players like New York Giants captain Xavier McKinney, the Philadelphia 76ers’ P.J. Tucker and Premier League club Nottingham Forest’s Jesse Lingard.

Rashid compares The Edit LDN to designer clothing and bag platform Farfetch because both work with premium resellers, and have an audience of shoppers who are willing to spend a lot of a lot of money on fashion. The Edit LDN’s services include same-day shipping in the United Kingdom, which it plans to expand to five more countries this year, and a personal shopping team that helps customers find sneakers, put together outfits and pre-order items. Rashid said that The Edit LDN is able to source hard-to-find items, like Off-White X Air Jordan 1 High Chicagos signed by designer Virgil Abloh and Louis Vuitton Air Force 1s, which it got access to three months before they were released.

In 2022, The Edit LDN sold 20,000 pairs of sneakers and had 3,500 active sellers, who usually have more than 50 units for sale at a time and are able to get early access to products, Rashid said. The Edit LDN’s key demographic is aged 18 to 40 and split evenly between male and female. Customers buy up to five times a month, with an average order value of $425 per transaction. The startup’s goal is to double revenues in 2023 and grow to over $100 million over the next three years, with a partial exit proposed for 2026.

To enable The Edit LDN to scale, and resellers to sell faster, the platform has a proprietary tech stack, including a feature that automatically applies margins to products. When resellers use The Edit LDN’s selling app, it suggests prices based on historical sales data and market tracking through AI algorithms. It also performs attribution tracking to increase sales, and suggest products a reseller should carry. The performance of resellers is tracked, including sales, shipping time and fulfillment levels, and depending on how they are doing, they can unlock new benefits like lower seller rates, free storage and fulfillment and access to The Edit LDN’s concession stores in high-end department stores.

As with other high-value collectibles, an important part of selling premium sneakers is authentication. The Edit LDN’s in-house authentication team uses techniques like visual inspection, material and packaging checks, smell and UV/blacklight. Rashid said they can authenticate a product every one to three minutes.

The platform’s competitors include StockX and GOAT, other designer sneaker and streetwear marketplaces that have raised venture capital funding.

“The battleground for customers is providing a premium retail environment, user experience, product curation, speed and service,” said Rashid. He added that resellers are able to make a 10% to 20% higher pay out per product on The Edit LDN then other platforms, because it gives them administrative support, storage and fulfillment options and marketing through its personal shopping service.

The Edit LDN’s plans include expanding its product range and working with more retailers for physical locations. It currently has concessions in Galeries Lafayette, Harvey Nichols and Harrods.

In terms of geographical expansion, the U.S. was picked because items can be sent there from the U.K. in 24 hours for a $30 shipping fee. Rashid said the platform has gained traction among celebrity clients there and about 15% of its revenue now comes from the U.S. despite little marketing. MENA is its target for expansion because it has emerging markets that are growing quickly. The Edit LDN will launch next month in Galeries Lafayette in Doha and Harvey Nichols in Riyadh.

The Edit LDN raises seed round to serve sneakerheads around the world by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Cell phone connectivity from space

Multiple players in the industry have recently set their sights on direct-to-mobile connectivity from space. While it’s still a very early market with limited existing capabilities, companies such as Apple, T-Mobile, Globalstar, SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile and Lynk Global are targeting this area. Multiple mobile network operators are already on board, even before some of the first operational spacecraft have been launched.

Apple has partnered with Globalstar to provide SOS connectivity with its new iPhone 14, and T-Mobile is planning to begin low-earth orbit (LEO) connectivity in 2023 through SpaceX, which recently filed an application with the US FCC to include direct-to-cellular capabilities in its Gen 2 Starlink satellites. Amazon is also set to launch its first batch of LEO satellites for Project Kuiper.

Most of these early projects will not provide high-speed broadband from space, and will instead offer low-bandwidth connectivity suitable for emergency calls and texts. All of this aims to service the currently underserved population around the world, which does not live within reach of traditional cell tower networks.

Commercialization of the moon begins in earnest

Extensive government and commercial efforts are underway to head “back to the Moon” decades after the Apollo program finished in 1972. This has been kicked off by NASA’s Artemis program, which saw the Artemis 1 mission’s Orion capsule returning to Earth after spending almost a month traveling around the Moon.

At almost the same time, the first fully-privately-funded lunar mission was launched by SpaceX for Japanese company iSpace, which is taking a fuel-efficient trip to the Moon and is due to get there in April. This would be the first fully commercial mission to land on the Moon, a milestone in the cooperation between Japan and the U.S. in space. Other commercial companies, such as Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic, are also targeting Moon landings.

With the first commercial companies headed moonward alongside national efforts, we expect 2023 to be a breakthrough year for the cislunar ecosystem.

Three drivers underpin revenue growth

Developments in the defense, cybersecurity and climate sectors will prove to be strong tailwinds for revenues in spacetech in 2023. Record growth in defense budgets driven by the war in Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions will drive business, and governments’ increasing desire for sovereign capability from space assets will lead to some huge orders in the sector. And, since cybersecurity is another tool in the geopolitical toolbox, satellite resilience against attacks is a priority.

A growing reliance on datasets generated in orbit means the security demands for the flow of data from the satellite to the cloud and ground stations are growing exponentially. We see 2023 as the year when the industry embraces quantum capabilities.

7 space tech predictions for 2023 by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

Late last week, in a rare sit-down before a small audience, this editor spent an hour with Sam Altman, the former president of Y Combinator and, since 2019, the CEO of OpenAI, the company he famously co-founded with Elon Musk and numerous others in 2015 to develop artificial intelligence for the “benefit of humanity.”

The crowd wanted to learn more about his plans for OpenAI, which has taken the world by storm in the last six weeks owing to the public release of its ChatGPT language model, a chatbot that has educators and others both dazzled and alarmed. (OpenAI’s DALL-E technology, which enables users to create digital images by simply describing what they envision, generated only slightly less buzz when it was released to the public earlier last year.)

But because Altman is also an active investor — one whose biggest return to date comes from the payments startup Stripe, he said at the event — we spent the first half of our time together focused on some of his most ambitious investments.

To learn about these, including a supersonic jet company and a startup that aims to help create babies from human skin cells, you might tune in for the 20-minute-long video below. You’ll also hear Altman’s thoughts about Twitter under the stewardship of Elon Musk, and why he is “not super interested” in crypto or web3. (“I love the spirit of the web3 people,” Altman said with a shrug. “But I don’t intuitively feel why we need it.)

We’ll feature more from our fuller conversation soon. In the meantime, below is an excerpt from our discussion about Altman’s biggest bets: a nuclear fusion company called Helion Energy that, like OpenAI, is aiming to turn a long-elusive promise — this one of abundant energy — into reality. The excerpt has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

What makes a Sam Altman deal?

I tried to just do things that I’m interested in at this point. One of the things I have realized is, all of the companies I think I have added a lot of value to are the ones that I sort of like to think about in my free time on a hike or whatever, and then text the founders and say, ‘Hey, I have this idea for you.’ Every founder deserves an investor who is going to think about them while they’re hiking. And so I’ve tried to hold myself to the stuff that I really love, which tends to be the hard tech, [involving] years of R&D, [is] capital intensive or is sort of risky research. But if it works, it really works.

One investment that’s particularly interesting is Helion Energy. You have been funding this company since 2015, but when it announced a $500 million round last year, including a $375 million check from you, I think that surprised people. There aren’t many people who can write a $375 million check.

Or many people who would [invest it] in one risky fusion company.

Which have been your most successful investments to date?

I mean, probably on a multiples basis, definitely on a multiples basis: Stripe. Also I think that was, like, my second investment ever, so it seemed a lot easier. This was also a time when valuations were different; it was great. But, you know, I’ve been doing this for, like, 17 years, so there’ve been a lot of really good ones, and I’m super grateful to have been in Silicon Valley at what was such a magical time.

Helion is more than an investment to me. It’s the other thing beside OpenAI that I spend a lot of time on. I’m just super excited about what’s going to happen there.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had a nuclear fusion breakthrough last month. (Using an approach involving giant lasers, its scientists announced the first fusion reaction in a laboratory setting that produced more energy than was used to start the reaction.) I wonder what you think of its approach, which is very different froms that of Helion (which is building a fusion machine that’s reportedly long and narrow and will use aluminum magnates to compress fuel, then expand it to get electricity out of it).

I’m super happy for them. I think it’s a very cool scientific result. As they themselves said, I don’t think it’ll be commercially relevant. And that’s what I’m excited about — not getting fusion to work in a lab, although that is cool, too, but building a system that will work at a super-low cost.

If you look at the previous energy transitions, if you can get the costs of a new form of energy down, it can take over everything else in a couple of decades. And then also a system where we can create enough energy and enough reliable energy, both in terms of the machines not breaking, and also not having the intermittency or the need for storage of solar or wind or something like that. If we can create enough for Earth in, like, 10 years — and I think that’s actually the hardest challenge that Helion faces as we sketch out what it takes operationally to do that, to replace all the current generative capacity on Earth with fusion and to do it really fast and to think about what it really means to build a factory that’s capable of putting out two of these machines a day for a decade — that’s really hard, but also a super fun problem.

So I’m very happy there’s a fusion race, I think that’s great. I’m also very happy solar and batteries are getting so cheap. But I think what will matter is who can deliver energy the cheapest and enough of it.

Why is Helion’s approach superior to what dozens of nations are working on in Southern France?

Yeah, well, that thing, Iter, I think probably will work, but to what I was just saying earlier, I think it will be commercially irrelevant. They [those involved with Iter] also think it’ll be commercially irrelevant.

The thing that is so exciting to me about Helion is that it’s a simple machine at an affordable cost and a reasonable size. There’s a bunch of different elements of it other than the giant [experimental machine being developed by these nations], but one that is very cool is that what comes out of the reaction is charged particles, not heat. Almost all other [alternatives], like a coal plant or natural gas plant or whatever, makes heat that drives a steam turbine. Helion makes charged particles that push back on the magnet and drive an electrical current down a wire. There’s no heat cycle at all. And so it can be a much simpler, much more efficient system.

I think is missed out of the whole discussion on fusion but [is] really great. It also means we don’t have to deal with much nuclear material. We don’t ever have dangerous waste or even a dangerous system. You could touch it pretty shortly after it turns off.

It’s building a big facility right now. Has it proven its thesis yet?

We’ll have more to share there shortly.

A peek into the future as Sam Altman sees it by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Last week wasn’t the most successful for spaceflight missions. We’ll get into that a bit more below.

In this issue:

First up, a botched launch from Virgin Orbit…
…followed by one from ABL Space Systems
News from Rocket Lab, World View and more

Virgin Orbit’s botched launch highlights shaky financial future

After Virgin Orbit’s launch failure last Monday, during which the mission experienced an“anomaly” that prevented the rocket from reaching orbit, I went back over the company’s financials — and things aren’t looking good.

For Virgin Orbit, this year has likely been completely turned on its head. The company was aiming for three launches this year, but everything will remain grounded until the cause of the anomaly has been identified and resolved. It’s unclear how long that will take, but likely at least three months. Add this delay to Virgin’s dwindling cash reserves and you have a foundation that’s suddenly much shakier than before.

ABL Space Systems’ rocket experiences simultaneous engine shutdown shortly after lift-off

Launch startupABL Space Systems’ first orbital launch attempt ended in failure last Tuesday after all nine engines on the RS1 rocket’s first stage shut down simultaneously. The rocket subsequently hit the launch pad and was destroyed on impact.

ABL President Dan Piemont told TechCrunch that while the investigation into the failure is still in its early stages, “The simultaneity of the shutdown is a strong piece of evidence but it will take more time for the team to narrow down contributing factors and a root cause.”

More news from TC and beyond

Capella Spaceadded $60 million in growth equity financing to its Series C through investor Thomas Tull’s US Innovation Technology Fund. (Capella)
Elon Musksaid that SpaceX has a “real shot” at attempting Starship’s first orbital flight test as soon as next month. (Twitter)
Europe’sfirst spaceport on the mainland, in Sweden, was inaugurated by Swedish dignitaries and other officials. (High North)
ispace’sHAKUTO-R lander completed its second orbital control maneuver, and has now been in deep space for over one month. (ispace)
Israel’sAir Force will set up its own “space administration,” similar to the U.S. Space Force. (i24)
Planet Labscompleted acquisition of Salo Sciences, a climate tech company. (Planet)
Rocket Factory Augsburgand the U.K.’s SaxaVord Spaceport have signed a multi-year launch agreement, which includes RFA conducting its first launch from that site as soon as the end of this year. (RFA)
Rocket Labis now targeting January 23 for its inaugural Electron launch from Virginia. The launch will carry three satellites for HawkEye 360. (Rocket Lab)
Russiawill send an uncrewed Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station to bring three astronauts back to Earth, after a coolant leak was discovered on the Soyuz currently attached to the ISS. (The New York Times)
Slingshot Aerospacehas brought on Thomas Arend, who was most recently VP and head of product management at Astra, as its new chief product officer. (Slingshot)
The Federal Communications Commissionvoted to establish a brand-new Space Bureau that will handle all business related to satellite communications and more. (TechCrunch)
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and SpaceWERX are backing a Space Regulatory Bootcamp for founders and regulatory professionals looking for guidance on navigating the complex world of space regulation. The Bootcamp will be held in February. (ACSP)
United Launch Alliance’sVulcan Centaur rocket is starting to make its way to the launch pad prior to its first test flight. (ULA)
World View, a startup that uses stratospheric balloons for earth observation (and soon…tourism?!) is going public via SPAC merger. (TechCrunch)

Max Q is brought to you by me, Aria Alamalhodaei. If you enjoy reading Max Q, consider forwarding it to a friend.

Max Q: Anomalous by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

The connected home gym gear craze probably experienced its zenith during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with indicators like Peloton’s fortunes pointing to waning interest as people get back to using their gym memberships. But the category still has plenty of potential, especially if the gear in question can combine smarts with other key value propositions, including a small footprint that can fit into anyone’s home. Vitruvian’s Trainer+ offers that and more, nailing the tricky proposition of offering a comprehensive weight training experience at home while keeping things small and simple.

The basics

The Vitruvian Trainer+ is not cheap. At $2,990, it’s around the cost of six years of gym membership at the average rate paid in the U.S. per month, and that doesn’t include the Vitruvian All Access recurring subscription fee for access to advanced workout features including guided sessions, which is a hefty $39 per month after the first 12 months, which are included free with the purchase of the machine.

That the recurring sub is itself more expensive than the average American pays for their monthly gym membership is a very steep hill to climb, and clearly Vitruvian knows it since they don’t make it very easy to find that pricing on their website — even in the FAQ question that specifically asks how much the membership costs. You can opt to pay for a subscription that lasts the lifetime of your machine for a one-time fee of $990, which is definitely a better deal if you actually are using the machine consistently and plan to continue. Finally, you can always opt not to use the subscription features, which still gives you a very capable piece of workout hardware as long as you’re good at charting your own workout path.

Speaking of the hardware, it’s actually easy to see why even with a base price of nearly $3K, Vitruvian needs to also ask a hefty recurring fee from its users: The Trainer+ is a fantastic piece of kit that no doubt incurred high development and production costs.

What you get is a compact but solid platform with two clips that connect external accessories including various handles, a barbell and ropes to an active resistance mechanism contained within. The platform itself is easy to tuck under a couch or table, and measures just around 46 by 20 inches and weighs only 80 lbs. Considering the range of workouts the Trainer+ offers, and the fact that it can provide anywhere up to 440 lbs of resistance, the fact that it comes in such a relatively small package is incredibly impressive.

The Trainer+ is super easy to set up and pair with your smartphone using a QR code on the machine itself, and the quick clipping system it uses to connect to handles and other accessories is incredibly smart and useful for rapidly switching between different items during a structured workout.

Resistance is controlled by the app, and every time you start a workout the machine requires three setup reps to establish your proper range of motion before you get into doing the exercises with actual weight. Once you do get into an actual exercise, there are three possible modes for each, including one that adds 1 kg (2.2 lbs) with each clean rep, once that decreases weight over time, and a sustained mode where weight stays the same.

Design

On the surface, there’s not much too the Trainer+’s design: The flashiest thing about it is the customizable LED lighting that also offers some helpful visual cues about whether you’re competing reps properly or not. Otherwise, it looks like an overgrown Wii Balance board if you’re old enough to remember what that is, or basically just an elevated stand. The Trainer+’s top surface is made from a carbon-fibre composite, which is fine to use on its own with training shoes, but you can also opt to get the additional soft, tacky mat that is included in either the Entry or Pro level accessory kit (I received the $500 Pro kit in my sample package).

As mentioned, the Trainer+ is around 80 lbs, and it comes in one solid pre-assembled piece. Setup is therefore a breeze compared to just about any other home gym equipment, but you probably should get another person to help you moving it, say, up and down stairs. For moving it around your space, there are wheels on the underside that come in contact with the ground when you tip one end up, making it easy to slide across floors for storing under a couch or desk.

The key to Trainer+’s versatility are its two recessed “Quick Connection System” receptors, which are themselves permanently connected to retractable cables that tie into the device’s programmable active resistance system. The quick connectors allow the included handles and ankle straps to easily snap in, and they release via a simple collar push mechanism that won’t come loose in use but that is dead simple to change out between exercises. This replaces a much more cumbersome carabiner system on the Trainer+’s predecessor, and it’s a fantastic, intuitive upgrade.

Another area where Trainer+’s overall cost of ownership creeps higher still is with the various attachments on offer. There’s a ‘Basic’ kit that adds a long bar, a tricep rope, “premium” handles, the aforementioned workout mat and safety cables. Then the ‘Pro’ kit that I tested the Trainer+ with includes all that, along with a short bar, a belt, and even a bench. You can accomplish a lot with the Trainer+ without any of these things, but the truth is that the experience is greatly enhanced by adding them in – especially the bench and bar – and you can’t buy them piecemeal.

The Trainer+ works with a dedicated Vitruvian companion app, which connects to your machine via Bluetooth. The good thing about the expensive All-Access membership is that it’s tied to the machine, not the individual – meaning anyone in your household (or even visitors) can create their own profile in the app on their own phone and pair with your machine to access all training options and guided workouts. The app itself is great, offering multi-week programs you can follow, trainer-led classes, and a wide range of individual exercises that you can assemble into your own custom workouts if you’re a subscriber, too. I used the app’s guided video on my gym Apple TV via AirPlay and that worked flawlessly as well.

Performance

The Trainer+ is probably going to feel different from other workouts you’ve tried if you haven’t used an active resistance machine in the past: it’s different from either all-in-one cable and weight-based equipment, or free weights. To Vitruvian’s credit, though, the learning curve is not at all steep, and it only takes a couple of sessions before using the Trainer+ feels like second nature.

Vitruvian’s app provides everything you need to use the Trainer+ to max effectiveness, too, whether you’re just starting out, or you’re experienced with personal fitness and looking fro something to fit into or supplement your existing routine. It’s basically as guided or as self-directed as you want, and anywhere in between.

The Trainer+ is also great at making real-time adjustments to your workout based on your strength and performance level. There’s a strength assessment that the app will ask you to do initially to establish your baseline suggested weights for all the various workouts, and you can jump back into that at any point to change that calibration, which is useful to do every few weeks as you progress with your training.

In a month of testing, with near daily use, the Trainer+ had been incredibly consistent. Once you’re done with a workout, you can just let the handles or attachments drop and the cables retract, without having to worry about damaging the durable carbon composite material of the hardware itself. The clips come in and out easily, and the platform is easy to wipe down with simple soap and water when needed. The connection is rock solid and remembers your phone so long as you toggle that option in the app, and the Trainer+ automatically sleeps so you can leave it plugged in all the time if you want.

One issue I found with the machine: The power cable seems to sit rather lightly in the socket on the machine, and until I learned how to steer well clear of it, it was relatively easy to cut power to the Trainer+ just by even lightly brushing the cord itself. That hasn’t been an issue since identifying it as a problem and avoiding any contact with the cord, and it’s possible this was included intentionally as a kind of safety backup, but I’d appreciate a more snug fit between cable and machine.

Bottom line

There’s no question that the Trainer+ is a fantastic piece of home workout hardware, with a smart, useful app that’s at once far more approachable than something like Peloton, but also much more flexible for people who take working out very seriously and want to be able to customize their experience to match.

The real sticking point with Vitruvian’s offering, however, is the price: With the Pro kit, which I do recommend, you’re already at $3,500, and that’s before you start adding in the ongoing cost of the app subscription. That could pay for a fair amount of gym membership, along with some personal training thrown in.

With the Trainer+, however, you get a number of things that are basically impossible to get anywhere else, including a solution that’s so portable it not only works in just about any home or condo setting, but can also easily pack into the car for a road trip – or fit into your #vanlife if that’s what you’re into. It’s much more versatile in this regard vs. other similar active resistance products like the Tonal, too.

If you place a premium on flexibility with almost zero sacrifices vs. a full set of free weights or a much more cumbersome home tower or complete gym, then the Trainer+ is easy to recommend. It’s clearly well-engineered and designed, with a focus on delivering value to actual athletes and fitness buffs who can be notoriously hard to please, and yet it’s also a great place for people to start out their home exercise journeys – so long as they want to commit the the upfront cost that comes with it.

Where to buy: Vitruvian’s website

Vitruvian’s Trainer+ is an all-in-one home gym that actually lives up to its promises by Darrell Etherington originally published on TechCrunch