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At its traditional evening keynote at re:Invent, AWS tonight announced quite a bit of new hardware in its cloud, starting with a new version of its Nitro hypervisor, new instance types, and a new version of its custom Arm-based Graviton chips which was specifically designed for powering high-performance computing workloads. This new Graviton3E chip — a variant of the existing Graviton line — promises significant performance improvements, including 35% better performance for workloads that heavily depend on vector instructions.

These new chips will obviously power new AWS EC2 instance types, starting with the logically dubbed Hpc7G. This new instance type will come in a variety of sizes, with up to 64 vCPUs and 128 GiB of memory. It’ll take until early 2023 before these instances become available, though. For more network-intensive workloads, AWS is also launching a new Graviton 3E instance type (c7gn).

For Intel fans, there are also new Ice Lake-based Xeon-based machines, too.

All of these new instances will make use of AWS’s new Nitro 5 hardware hypervisor, which the company also announced today. Nitro v5 promises significantly improved latency, up to 40% better performance per watt, and 60% higher PPS. The AWS team made this possible by roughly doubling the number of transistors in the custom Nitro chips.

“Performance can be hard to achieve when you refuse to budge on things like security and cost,” Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President of AWS Utility Computing, said in tonight’s keynote. And in many ways, that’s long been the story of AWS’s compute platform and its work on its custom processors.

AWS launches Graviton3E, its new Arm-based chip for HPC workloads by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

On November 22, alternative financing startup Pipe announced that its three co-founders were stepping down from their executive roles and that a search for a new, “veteran” CEO had commenced.

In an exclusive interview, co-founder and former co-CEO Harry Hurst told TechCrunch that the trio were “0-1 builders, not at-scale operators.” He said the company’s revenue was growing year-over-year and that the company had five years of runway.

Finding the right successor could take a while, however. For starters, Pipe — which has raised more than $300 million from investors since it was founded in 2019 — has just one outside board member in Peter Ackerson, a general partner at Fin Capital who himself became a VC just three years ago. Hurst and fellow founders Josh Mangel and Zain Allarakhia are the only other directors on the board.

More, detractors seem bent on raising questions about the way the business has been run. Since that article was published, several sources who wished to remain anonymous — including one investor who says he passed on investing in the startup in its early days — have said that they have “heard” that Pipe made roughly $80 million in loans to one or several crypto mining companies. The outfit or outfits have since gone out of business and the $80 million is believed to have been completely written off, said these individuals.

Asked about the allegations, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Pipe did not issue $80 million worth of loans to crypto mining companies and that Pipe did not have to completely “write off” any related receivables. Instead, she confirmed that Pipe “has provided access to financing to crypto mining hosting companies” and said — when asked if Pipe has lost any amount of money on loans to crypto mining entities — that as a private company, Pipe does not share its company financials.

The startup declined to name its crypto mining-related customers, but notably, Pipe had a public partnership with Compass Mining, a now beleaguered crypto mining company that is reportedly facing its own fair share of struggles.

There are other grumblings. One source alleged that Hurst and the other two founders sold millions of dollars’ worth of their own shares in a secondary sale, a practice that became fairly common during the pandemic across numerous young companies. (The founder of Hopin, also founded in 2019, has reportedly cashed out shares worth at least $195 million.) When we asked Hurst last week just how much investors had let the co-founders take off the table already, he declined to answer.

One fintech investor also raised questions about the sophistication of Pipe’s technology. Asked whether there was any related issue with Pipe’s underlying loans, the company’s spokesperson said, “While we’ve seen some delinquencies on the platform like many fintechs in this current macro environment, we do not expect buy-side investors to experience losses that haven’t already been communicated to them or a part of the larger risk profile communicated by the company.”

Hurst has apparently been hearing about the conjecture around his company. In a Twitter thread last night, he ranted against “VCs and others hating on our company based on rumors. Pretty obvious there are bad actors with their own agendas spreading BS with no regard for the people it damages.” He also wrote: “As a leader, I won’t let this noise distract us or undermine the incredible hard work our team puts into achieving our mission to empower companies everywhere to grow on their terms.”

Meanwhile, the CEO search continues. Indeed, Pipe’s spokesperson reiterated today what the company said publicly last week, that “Josh [Mangel] is now interim CEO and Harry is still at the company in his new capacity as Vice Chairman. They both want to see Pipe reach its ultimate potential and are committed to finding a new CEO as reported and announced…” 

Once Pipe’s new CEO is named, she added, that individual will assume Hurst’s seat on the board.

As for who is helping with the search, she said the answer is that “many of Pipe’s stakeholders are part of the CEO search process, including senior management and investors.”

 

Besides Fin Capital, other VCs to lead investments in Pipe on the part of their investment firms include Marlon Nichols, a managing director at MaC Venture Capital, and Ashton Newhall, a longtime investor with Greenspring Associates and now a partner with StepStone Group, which acquired Greenspring in September of last year.

None responded to requests for comment.

Another investor in Pipe, Matthew Cowan of Next47 Capital, told TechCrunch that he was “not allowed to comment.” 

Other backers in the company include Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global, CreditEase FinTech Investment Fund, 3L, Japan’s SBI Investment, Marc Benioff, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, Republic and Craft Ventures, which led the company’s $6 million seed funding in February 2020.

Meanwhile, a Form-D signed by Pipe Senior Counsel Peter Chiaro with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in late September reveals that the company recently secured $7.12 million in debt financing, which could be construed as a positive alternative to the kind of highly structured inside round that many startups are closing currently.

Pipe co-founder and chief business officer Michal Cieplinski, whose name was absent from the company’s announcement last week, was listed as Pipe’s “executive officer” in the filing, which declined to disclose its revenue range.

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As Pipe’s founding team departs, tensions rise over allegations by Mary Ann Azevedo originally published on TechCrunch

Igloo, a Singapore-based insurtech focused on underserved communities in Southeast Asia, announced it has raised a Series B extension of $27 million, bringing the round’s total to $46 million. The first tranche of $19 million was announced in March, and led by Cathay innovation with participation from ACA and returning investors OpenSpace.

The newest round was led by the InsuResilience Investment Fund II, which was launched by the German development bank KfW for the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and is managed by impact investor BlueOrchard. Other lead investors were the Women’s World Banking Asset Management (WAM), FinnFund, La Maison and returning investors Cathay Innovation.

Igloo develops its insurance products and then partners with insurers who underwrite their policies. Igloo currently works with 20 global, regional and local insurers across Southeast Asia. It distributes its insurance products through partnerships, and is partnered with over 55 companies in 7 countries. It now offers 15 products, including policies for gig workers, gamers, cars and farmers in Vietnam, and says it has facilitated more than 300 million policies and increased gross written premiums by 30 times since 2019.

Co-founder and CEO Raunak Mehta told TechCrunch that Igloo decided to raise a Series B extension because of investor interest after the first tranche of funds. The extension will give the startup a multiyear runway and will be used for hiring, infrastructure and merger and acquisitions opportunities.

Mehta said that the penetration rate of insurance in much of Southeast Asia is low, less than $100 USD per capita across Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Igloo was created to make insurance more affordable and relevant to the needs of communities in Southeast Asia. Igloo distributes insurance products that range from 2 cents USD for phone screen protection to $600 USD for comprehensive motor insurance.

Igloo provides the tech stack for its products across Southeast Asia, which Mehta says means the entire insurance value chain, from product discovery to claims, is available on one platform. This makes it faster for it to brings the policies it distributes to market more quickly, and significantly reduce the operational cost of claims.

Mehta said more than 80% of claims are currently managed in an automated or semi-automated way, and that big data management, along with machine learning and artificial intelligence, has enabled it to reduce anti-selection risks, false positives and fraudulent claims. By bringing down the cost of managing claims, Igloo is able to offer lower premium to customers.

An example of Igloo’s insurance policies include ones for gig economy riders that it sells through its partnership with Foodpanda in Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines, and Lozi and Ahamove Vietnam. Its policy for Foodpanda, called PandaCare, includes motor, personal accident and hospitalization income protection for workers.

Another, more recent one, is is Weather Index Insurance product in Vietnam. The policy uses blockchain-backed smart contracts and automates claims payouts by using pre-assigned values for crop losses caused by weather and other natural events. Igloo says the Weather Index Insurance is Vietnam’s first parametric insurance (or a policy that agrees to make pre-agreed payouts based on trigger events like a flood) and its first integration of smart contracts into insurance.

Igloo also provides products that Mehta says directly or indirectly benefits women, through a partnership with Philinsure in the Philippines. They have distributed more than 5 million policies that cover credit default, personal accident, family relief and natural calamity support to women micro-entrepreneurs and their families. In Vietnam, more than 65% of the agents who use Igloo’s Ignite digital platform to sell insurance policies are women, and they are also the main beneficiaries of the Weather Index Insurance product.

The insurtech’s distribution partners include telecoms like Telkomsel, AIS and Mobifone, and e-commerce platforms like Shopee, Lazada, Bukalapak and JD.ID. It also works with financial service providers, like AEON, Gcash and UnionBank, to sell policies for their customer base, and provides products for insuring goods in transit and protecting fleet drivers through logistics platforms like Ahamove, Shippit, Loship and Locad.

Other Southeast Asia-based insurtechs that want to increase insurance penetration in the region and have raised large Series B rounds include Indonesia’s Fuse and PasarPolis and Thailand’s Sunday.

Southeast Asia insurtech Igloo increases its Series B to $46M by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Faraday Future, the troubled EV startup-turned-publicly-traded company has shuffled its executive ranks once again.

The board fired its CEO Carsten Breitfeld, according to a regulatory filing posted Monday after the markets closed. Brietfeld, who was the former co-founder of failed EV startup Byton, took the leadership role at Faraday Future in September 2019.

The board said Monday it appointed Xuefeng Chen, a former and longtime Chery Jaguar Land Rover Automobile executive who most recently led the Faraday Future’s China-division, as its new CEO.  As Faraday’s new global CEO, Chen will receive a base annual salary of $900,000, a performance-based bonus of up to $600,000, and a cash signing and retention bonus of $500,000. The retention bonus must be returned if Chen resigns or is terminated without cause in the next 36 months. Chen will also receive restricted stocks and performance-based restricted stock units.

The CEO upheaval is the latest in a string of internal drama and financial problems that have plagued the company for years. Even its public debut at CES 2016 was controversial.

The messiness at the company has only ramped up since it ,  went public through a merger with Property Solutions Acquisition Corp. in July 2021. Investigations, a restructuring and a going concern warning are just a few of the dramatic turn of events in the past 18 months.

Brietfeld’s dismissal comes just a week since the company warned it might not be able to continue operating over the next year and that it was uncertain when its first FF 91 luxury EVs would be delivered.

The company has repeatedly delayed the FF 91 vehicle, which as of November 17, only had received 369 non-binding preorders. While Faraday Future did appear to snag a $350 million lifeline in recent weeks, it may not be enough to sustain its operations or deliver on its long-promised vehicle.

EV SPAC Faraday Future ousts its CEO by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch