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As Elon Musk attempts to operate a major social media platform with a fraction of its staff, Twitter users are reporting that certain key security features on iOS are not working. For some users, it’s impossible to protect your tweets or toggle direct message privacy settings — a pop-up will appear that says “some settings failed to save.”

These key privacy features appear to still work on the web, even if they aren’t working on a user’s iOS app. Sure, in most situations, if a user really wants to go private, they can just find a computer and make the switch to turn on protected tweets. But in emergencies, it can pose personal risk for users if these central privacy toggles are not available on the go. Moreover, these errors could be seen as a harbinger of what could come at Twitter: users worry that as Twitter’s team gets smaller, more features will break, and the site could become unsafe.

Last week, Twitter’s former Trust & Safety head Yoel Roth spoke at a Knight Foundation conference. When asked where he sees Twitter in a year, he said he doesn’t expect that there will be one specific moment in which the site implodes — rather, the user experience will worsen over time.

“What are the canaries in the coal mine that suggest that something’s not right?” Roth asked. “A couple of the things that I keep an eye out for are, have core safety features stopped working the way that you expect?”

Roth said that the site will be particularly unstable if the protected tweets feature stops working.

“That’s an easy one to screw up if you are building Twitter and you don’t know what you’re doing, and there have been a number of historical privacy breaches that Twitter has had to deal with related to protected tweets,” he said. “If protected tweets stop working, run, because that’s a symptom that something is deeply wrong.”

The current errors users are experiencing when trying to protect their tweets are not indicative of the entire feature not working — but of course, it’s not a good sign.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone even tweeted about issues he was experiencing on iOS yesterday. According to his screenshot, his mentions aren’t loading on iOS. Gizmodo reported that its staff has experienced this issue at least three times in the past week, and also reported that some users are experiencing glitches with Twitter Spaces.

These iOS issues are occurring in the midst of conflict between Apple and Twitter — Musk claimed last week that Apple threatened to withhold Twitter from the App Store, but he later characterized that as a “misunderstanding” after meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Musk had gone as far as to declare that he would make his own smartphone if Apple and Google removed Twitter from their App Stores.

Still, vulnerable communities on Twitter — like sex workers — have feared that Twitter could remove or demote their NSFW content to appease Apple, which has previously removed social platforms like Tumblr from the App Store for not adequately moderating child sexual abuse material (CSAM). But for adult creators who make consensual, safe content, Twitter is the only major social platform where they can promote their work without violating content guidelines. When these creators have been booted from platforms like Tumblr and Patreon, their livelihoods are threatened, since they have to start building their audience from scratch elsewhere.

Some sex workers have noticed that suddenly, their tweets are being flagged as containing sensitive content, and are unable to be viewed. On the web version of Twitter, you can click and unclick a box that says “Display media that may contain sensitive content.” On iOS, users do not have the option to toggle that setting on or off. Even SFW accounts of advocacy groups representing sex workers have been flagged as sensitive for some iOS users, even for those whose web settings indicate that they are willing to see sensitive media.

“We know what we are seeing is a bug, but I believe it to be of the botched roll out, A/B testing, rush job variety,” Ashley, a sex worker and community organizer, told TechCrunch. “This may not be intended functionality today, but we must seize on this glimpse of a possible future to make sure this disdain for basic human rights, user agency, and broad untransparent censorship is categorically unacceptable.”

Elon Musk has not explicitly commented on how Twitter will handle legal NSFW content going forward. But under Musk, Twitter has expressed interest in a paywalled video feature, which is reminiscent of platforms like OnlyFans, which allow NSFW creators to monetize. Paid DMs, also a common feature in online sex work, has been spotted in development by app researcher Jane Wong.

Twitter’s iOS app is riddled with privacy settings glitches by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

The Canadian branch of Amnesty International has confirmed it was the target of a “sophisticated” cyberattack carried out by Chinese state-sponsored hackers.

The human rights organization said it first detected the breach on October 5, when suspicious activity was discovered on Amnesty’s IT infrastructure. An investigation by forensic investigators and cybersecurity experts was immediately launched, and steps were taken to protect the organization’s systems. This involved taking all organizational and email systems offline for nearly three weeks, Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, told TechCrunch, which had a “significant impact” on Amnesty Canada’s operations, fundraising, and planned human rights work.

Amnesty said that there is no evidence that any donor or membership data was exfiltrated by the attackers, but Nivyabandi told TechCrunch that the threat actors had access to Amnesty’s working files. Nivyabandi added that while the breach was first detected in October, the attacker’s intrusion efforts first began in July 2021, though declined to share further information regarding the nature of the breach.

U.S. cybersecurity company SecureWorks, which was hired by Amnesty International to investigate the breach, has established that “a threat group sponsored or tasked by the Chinese state” was likely behind the attack. Its investigation found that the attackers used tools and techniques associated with specific advanced persistent threat groups (APTs), targeted information consistent with Chinese cyberespionage threat groups, and made no attempt to monetize the access.

Barry Hensley, chief threat intelligence officer at SecureWorks, declined to say if the company had linked the attack to a specific APT group. However, in a statement given to TechCrunch, he praised Amnesty’s “openness and transparency about recent events will undoubtedly help all organizations facing persistent and sophisticated threat actors.”

Amnesty said it is speaking out publicly about the attack to warn other human rights organizations. News of the breach comes just a day after a joint investigation by Amnesty International’s Security Lab and Human Rights Watch found that threat actors backed by the Iranian government were targeting human rights activists, journalists, diplomats and politicians working in the Middle East.

“As an organization advocating for human rights globally, we are very aware that we may be the target of state-sponsored attempts to disrupt or surveil our work. These will not intimidate us and the security and privacy of our activists, staff, donors, and stakeholders remain our utmost priority,” said Nivyabandi.

“This case of cyber espionage speaks to the increasingly dangerous context which activists, journalists, and civil society alike must navigate today. Our work to investigate and denounce these acts has never been more critical and relevant. We will continue to shine a light on human rights violations wherever they occur and to denounce the use of digital surveillance by governments to stifle human rights,” Nivyabandi added.

Amnesty Canada says it was targeted by Chinese state-sponsored hackers by Carly Page originally published on TechCrunch

Software engineers have a host of tooling to organize their projects, chief being Git software like GitLab or GitHub, but hardware engineers today lack that same organizing principle. They are stuck with a bunch of tech that doesn’t communicate well with each other, leaving them to build Excel spreadsheets to organize their work, a method which is prone to errors due to its manual nature.

Flow Engineering wants to fix that system and give hardware engineers, the folks who build complex systems like rockets and race cars, the same kinds of tools that their software counterparts have.

Today, the company announced an $8.5 million seed round.

Pari Singh, the founder and CEO at Flow, says they are replacing spreadsheets and helping bring automation, integration and collaboration to the hardware engineering process, which he says hasn’t evolved much over the last 30 years These engineers work in various modeling software, then have meetings or share changes via email and spreadsheets, none of which really takes advantage of the digital realm in any true sense.

“They might be working in Excel models, MATLAB models, simulation models or CAD models. The issue is that these models live in different tools, and they don’t speak to each other, which means there’s a problem around fragmentation. We haven’t got a single source of truth for design. So what Flow does is it glues all these models into one place, and helps engineering teams know if they’re meeting their core requirements or not,” Singh told TechCrunch

He says that most large companies try to roll their own, but the problem his startup is trying to solve requires a level of focus that large companies typically lack in spite of their vast resources. He says that what these companies typically do is roll their own automations, but he believes they are missing the real solution.

“And what these engineering teams need isn’t automation, but abstraction, and that’s a very subtle, very important shift in how we look at that problem space, but which completely changes the solution you build,” he said.

The product is currently in private beta, so they are in very early days of the company, but the plan is to use the money to continue building and refining the solution before they deliver a generally available solution next year.

The goal is to replace the spreadsheet for starters, and then layer on more features over time. “Today we have a really clear use case, which is to replace the Excel spreadsheet for engineering design parameters and requirements. And we help link those requirements to those design parameters. And over time, as we build out more and more integrations, we’re going to be able to provide more value in a fairly productized manner,” Singh said.

The startup has around a dozen employees and plans to round out at around 20 next year. As he builds the company, Singh says diversity is a key element for him, but it’s a challenge to find diverse talent, particularly because people experienced in this area ted to be male.

“When I talk about the specialty of the mechanical engineering hardware engineering market, the industry that I come from, has a real problem around diversity. And that’s a really important factor for us…and we really see ourselves as being a company that represents a new age of engineering. And we want to be able to do that in tool and in product and how we communicate to customers, but also who we are,” he said.

The $8.5 million seed investment was led by EQT Ventures with participation from Backed VC and several prominent industry angels.

Flow Engineering wants to modernize the hardware engineering design process by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

It’s tough in the current economic climate to hire and retain engineers focused on system admin, DevOps and network architecture. In a recent Gartner survey, IT executives cited talent shortages as the top barrier to adopting emerging technologies. Unfortunately for execs, at the same time recruiting is posing a major challenge, IT infrastructure is becoming more costly to maintain. Business monitoring company Anodot reports that nearly half of corporations are finding it difficult to get cloud costs alone under control.

Aiming to overcome some of the blockers to success in IT, Lucas Roh co-founded MetalSoft, a startup that provides “bare metal” automation software for managing on-premises data centers and multi-vendor equipment. MetalSoft allows companies to automate the orchestration of hardware, including switches, servers and storage, making them available to users that can be consumed on-demand.

MetalSoft spun out from Hostway, a cloud hosting provider headquartered in Chicago. Hostway developed software to power cloud service provider hardware, which went into production in 2014. In 2019, the software spun out as a separate company — MetalSoft — with the goal of broadening its capabilities to service additional service providers and enterprises.

“We provide a turnkey solution to service providers to offer … cloud services,” Roh told TechCrunch in an email interview. “We’re differentiated from others in that we automate and manage the full stack [of infrastructure], including switches, servers, storage and networking as well as cloud enablement.”

So how does that solve the talent shortage and cost overruns in tech? Well, Roh — who previously helped to launched cloud provider Bigstep and the aforementioned Hostway — asserts that MetalSoft’s software can eliminate many of the problems associated with hardware silos, reducing the complexity of managing them to the point where non-technical consumers can build their own infrastructure. By allowing customers to pull workloads back from the cloud and run them in-house if they so wish, MetalSoft can bring down IT costs while offering a higher level of control, including security posture, Roh argues.

For instance, MetalSoft can automatically deploy and configure operating systems and firmware upgrades while discovering running hardware on a network. It also can auto-configure storage volumes and storage-related system network settings, generating a visual blueprint that captures a company’s infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking.

Roh says that MetalSoft’s targeting both enterprises that have their own equipment (for example, in a data center or co-location facility) as well as cloud service providers that want to offer “bare metal as a service” or “private cloud as a service” products to their customers (think a provider deploying infrastructure to a client’s on-premises server room). It’s early days — MetalSoft landed its first customers last year, and the company isn’t talking revenue or operating cash flow at the moment — but Roh claims that MetalSoft’s solution is beginning to gain traction in the marketplace.

“We have some major enterprise customers with hundreds of thousands of devices that we are not revealing but include a major telco and major data center and cloud service providers, and have a strong partnership with major OEM,” Roh said. “In the past couple of years, we’ve especially focused on adding many enterprise features and support for more hardware vendors.”

While MetalSoft competes with heavyweights like Cisco and OpenStack, it’s likely to benefit from the recent uptick in investment in on-premises infrastructure. During the past year, 30% of organizations moved workloads or data from the public cloud back to a private cloud or on-premises or colocation facility, according to a report from the Uptime Institute. Their primary reasons were cost, regulatory compliance, performance issues and perceived concerns over security, the report said.

“We help reduce the cost of IT and we have become even more important in a more stringent spending environment … Our software can help reduce the technical labor requirements while significantly reducing cost while delivering the full functionality to their end-users.” Roh said. “After the spinout [from Hostway], we continue improving our product, especially in terms of the enterprise features that customers need.”

MetalSoft, which has around 40 employees, has raised $17 million in venture capital to date; $16 million came from its Series A that closed this week, led by DNS Capital. Roh says that the proceeds will be put toward growing MetalSoft’s sales and marketing functions and product development.

“We have done quite a bit of work on AI and machine learning that’s not yet part of our software stack,” Roh added. “We are currently working to incorporate AI and machine learning to intelligently manage and monitor bare metal hardware. We’ll be excited to introduce that product the second half of next year.”

MetalSoft aims to help manage server infrastructure through automation by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

All systems are go, and we have liftoff! TC Sessions: Space 2022 is live, and we can’t wait to meet the people building the technologies and creating new opportunities that will take us into and beyond the cosmos. As you can see from the event agenda, you’re in for an exciting day. Here’s a quick look at what you can expect.

Latecomers welcome: If you’re within striking distance of Los Angeles, why not join us? Buy a pass right here.

Bringing It to the Space Warfighting Domain

Space is playing an ever-greater role in modern warfare and in our broader national security. But delivering those critical space-based capabilities to warfighters and other end users is just one step in the increasingly complex mission life cycle.

From how to incorporate the latest innovations to what role commercial capabilities can play, the way our nation’s space programs acquire, deploy and operate next-generation systems is undergoing profound shifts. Charlie McGillis (Slingshot Aerospace), Jean L. Michael (the Aerospace Corporation), Pete Muend (National Reconnaissance Office), Col. Joseph Roth (USSF Space Systems Command) and Christopher A. Solee (United States Space Command) will discuss how these pieces fit together to deliver needed capabilities, as well as the opportunities to drive greater integration for the benefit of all. Sponsored by the Aerospace Corporation.

ISAM: A Commercial Linchpin for the New Space Economy

Large-scale commercial investments will dominate the next wave of space innovation, including commercial space stations in low Earth orbit (LEO) and technologies that will enable a permanent human presence on the moon. The United States has issued a national policy for developing In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) capabilities that can operationally sustain the new space economy with efficiency and scale. This session, led by Robert Hauge (SpaceLogistics) and Carolyn Mercer (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), encourages participants to roll up their sleeves, break past the 411 on ISAM and get practical about how to stimulate ISAM capability development. Sponsored by the Aerospace Corporation.

Space Workforce 2030: Inspiring, Preparing and Employing the Next Generation

The dawning space age offers enormous opportunities to explore new frontiers, grow the economy on orbit and strengthen our security. Making the most of this momentous time calls for an innovative workforce that can leverage diverse experiences and perspectives to solve the hard problems we’ll encounter.

The Space Workforce 2030 pledge is a first-of-its-kind effort launched earlier this year that is bringing together more than 30 of the country’s leading space companies to work collaboratively to increase diversity across our industry to build a vibrant workforce for the future.

Hear from Michael Edmonds (Blue Origin), Steve Isakowitz (the Aerospace Corporation) and Melanie Stricklan (Slingshot Aerospace) about the work they’re doing to inspire, prepare and employ the next generation of scientists and engineers and how you can play a part in supporting this vital mission. Sponsored by the Aerospace Corporation.

Growing the LEO Economy on Orbital Reef

As we look to commercial successors to the ISS, we see new market opportunities emerging on low Earth orbit (LEO) destinations. Join Shahir Gerges — Director of Business Strategy, Orbital Reef, Blue Origin — to learn more about how Orbital Reef, a commercial LEO destination ecosystem, is creating new opportunities in space and helping startups accelerate their businesses through Reef Starter, Orbital Reef’s newest initiative to lower barriers of entry to space for early-stage companies. Hear about the first set of startups to win the Reef Starter Innovation Challenge and learn how to get involved in the future. Sponsored by Orbital Reef.

Hardware? What’s That? Why Software Is the Future of the Space Economy

Launch gets all the press, but satellites and the software behind them are the workhorses of space. Hear from Antaris founder/CEO Tom Bartonand Epsilon3 founder/CEO Laura Crabtree about how SaaS, open source and cloud-based platforms are revolutionizing the satellite industry and accelerating the space economy. They’ll also share what it’s like to be first-time founders, what it really takes to put good code into space and tips for fellow spacepreneurs. Sponsored by Antaris.

That’s just a taste of the tech, topics and talent you’ll find on display today at TC Sessions: Space — where opportunity is nearly as infinite as the universe. Don’t have a ticket? That’s an easy fix — buy a pass and get on board this mission.

Here’s what’s happening today at TC Sessions: Space 2022 by Lauren Simonds originally published on TechCrunch

Snapchat announced today that it’s partnering with Adidas to launch a new Bitmoji Fashion Drop, giving users access to exclusive merchandise for a limited time. The partnership will allow users to use Snap Tokens to purchase an exclusive Adidas track jacket for their Bitmoji.

Snap Tokens, which were first introduced in 2020, can be purchased within the Snapchat app by clicking on your profile icon and scrolling down to “My Snap Tokens.” You can purchase 80 Tokens for $0.99, 250 Tokens for $2.99, 500 Tokens for $4.99 or 1,100 Tokens for $9.99. Users can claim the Adidas jacket by using 250 Snap Tokens. You have until Friday to claim the exclusive Adidas “Into The Metaverse” track jacket.

Snap Tokens can currently be redeemed for Gifts to send to Creators or for digital goods within games. With this new Bitmoji Drop, users will be able to use their Tokens to unlock exclusive merchandise for their Bitmoji.

Although this isn’t the first time that Snapchat has run a Bitmoji Drop, it’s the first time that users will have to use Tokens to claim an item in a Bitmoji Drop. The company launched its first Bitmoji Drop in September, giving users a chance to claim an exclusive pair of digital Air Jordan 2 Balvin sneakers. Snap says more than two million people claimed the exclusive digital merchandise before the Drop window closed. With this latest Bitmoji Drop, Snap is betting that some people are willing to pay for exclusive merchandise for their Bitmoji. If enough people are willing to pay, it will open up a new way for Snap to generate revenue.

As of October 2022, Snapchat has 363 Million daily active users. If only two million users claimed the free Bitmoji Drop, it will be interesting to see just how many users claim the Adidas jacket by redeeming 250 Tokens.

“We are thrilled to introduce this first-of-its-kind Bitmoji Drop in partnership with adidas,” said David Rosenberg, the Director of Bitmoji Strategy at Snap, in a statement. “Unlocking new Bitmoji Fashion experiences presents an exciting opportunity for Snapchatters to get access to exclusive digital fashion and express their unique digital identity, and a new frontier for innovative brand partnerships at Bitmoji scale.”

Users can claim the exclusive Adidas track jacket for their Bitmoji by clicking on their profile icon and tapping on the Adidas Bitmoji Drop banner. From there, you need to tap “claim and wear” to use Tokens to get the jacket. The jacket will then be added to your avatar’s outfit and saved to “My Closet.” If you don’t have enough Tokens to claim the jacket, you will be prompted to purchase more in the Token Shop via Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Given that Snap’s Bitmoji avatars are quite popular, it makes sense for the company to use them to further its push into e-commerce, and paid exclusive drops bring a new phase of e-commerce to the app.

Snapchat’s latest Bitmoji Drop features exclusive Adidas merch, but there’s a price tag by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

Online grocery delivery, a booming business at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, has definitely come down to earth with the shifts in the economy, public health and technology investing. Oda, one of the bigger players in online grocery delivery in Europe with operations in its home market of Norway as well as Finland and Germany, today announced that it had raised 1.5 billion Norwegian crowns in equity (about $151 million at today’s rates) — a big round, but executed under tough conditions.

The investment gives Oda a post-money valuation of NOK3.5 billion, or $353 million. This represents a big devaluation for the company, which says it is profitable in some (but not all) of its markets. In April 2021, Oda (known then as Kolonial) was valued at around $900 million when it raised $265 million from investors that included SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

SoftBank — one of the most prolific investors in the last several years fueled by its mega-capitalized Vision Funds — has been hit hard by the crunch in the tech world. Last month, it noted that it lost an eye-watering $7.2 billion due to write-downs on the valuations of a number of its technology investments. It still lists Oda among its portfolio companies on its site (as part of Vision Fund 2), although it’s not noted as an investor in Oda’s newest financing.

In addition to the equity investment from Kinnevik, Verdane and Summa Equity, Oda said that this latest round included existing backers Rasmussen Group, Prosus and Kinnevik contributing a further NOK621 million ($62.5 million) in equity through debt conversion.

To give some balance to Oda’s picture, things are not all dark. The company — which has been in business since 2013 and thus is one of the more seasoned players in the space with other notable, regional names in Europe including Ocado out of the U.K., Rohlik in the Czech Republic, Picnic in the Netherlands, and Everli in Italy — says that its Norway operations are profitable.

“In 2021, we made an operating profit of NOK 29 million in Norway, a concrete proof that our business model works,” said Kristin Thornes Woldsdal, managing director for Oda in Norway, in a statement. “The company has very satisfied customers who benefit from a wide range of products at low prices, delivered directly to their homes.” It notes that in recent months, it’s seen a growth in its business with sales up in its home market by 15-20% compared to the same period last year.

That’s been on the back of a lot of margin attrition though at a time when food prices are generally going up across Europe. “Last year we reduced our sales prices to fully match competitors in the discount market, which has resulted in a positive effect on sales,” she added.

Oda says that its focus now will be on getting profitable in Germany and Finland for expanding elsewhere.

Oda’s funding underscores some of the major challenges underfoot for the online grocery sector at the moment. During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, many online grocers came into their own as consumers turned away from shopping in person to reduce social contact.

That led to the rise of a number of different permutations in the online grocery model, including a profusion of “quick-commerce” companies, delivering a smaller section of essentials and indulgent treats in under an hour, as well as a number of more standard grocery propositions aimed at households and replacing their weekly trips to the supermarket. This also saw other kinds of players, like restaurant delivery platforms, move into the grocery space.

However, in more recent times, not only have consumers returned to physical stores, but in many cases, they are facing economic pressures of their own, and for many, paying a premium to have goods delivered to their doors, even if it saves busy people time, has not proven to have a lasting enough pull to sustain the number of companies out there trying to make a business from it.

Many of the quick commerce players have been the first to feel the impact, with the likes GoPuff, Getir, Jokr, and more all laying off workers and pulling out of markets where they’re facing too many costs and too little return.

But as Oda’s devaluation — and other developments, like Instacart’s layoffs — underscore, the restructuring and rationalizing is not limited to the quick-commerce upstarts.

Investors still see an opportunity, though, not least with players who have been around for longer than the latest grocery boom (and now bust).

“We are impressed by how Oda has reinvented grocery shopping. The company has developed a world-class logistics and distribution system, which makes online grocery profitable and sustainable,” said Martin Gjølme and Staffan Mörndal, of Summa Equity and Verdane, in a joint statement. “Customers that place orders through Oda reduce co2 emissions significantly and cut food waste by about a quarter when compared to shopping at a physical store. We are investing in Oda because we see great potential in its business and want to contribute to its continued growth.”

More to come.

Oda, the Norwegian grocery delivery startup, raises a fresh $151M, but at a lowered valuation of $353M by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

Startup funding continues to dwindle and layoffs keep making headlines as 2023 nears. And yet, pre-seed and seed companies don’t seem to be enduring the same state of panic as their more mature startup peers.

A recent survey of 450 early-stage founders in the U.S. and Europe by pre-seed-focused January Ventures found that despite current market conditions, many startups in their earliest stages still seem to feel largely insulated. Most don’t plan on the current macroeconomic environment changing their growth — both in terms of headcount and projected revenue — all that much.

Early-stage startups say no runway, no problem heading into 2023 by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

Autonomous trucking technology company Kodiak Robotics won a $49.9 million contract from the the U.S. Department of Defense to help the Army automate future ground vehicles to conduct high-risk missions like reconnaissance and surveillance.

The two year contract, which was awarded by the DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) on behalf of the Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) program in October, will see Kodiak develop, test and deploy autonomous software that can navigate complex, off-road terrain, diverse operational conditions and GPS-challenged environments. Ultimately, that software platform needs to be applicable to different formats and vehicle configurations to serve a variety of future use cases.

Kodiak beat 33 other companies that pitched for the contract. In the wake of Argo AI shutting down and questions about the future of the AV industry, this is an opportunity for Kodiak to stand out from the pack and demonstrate that its tech is capable of more than just driving trucks on highways.

“When markets are challenging, you need to be strategic about finding capital to continue to fund the company,” Don Burnette, CEO and co-founder of Kodiak, told TechCrunch. “And in this particular case, the DIU was specifically looking for a dual-use application; they wanted to find a company that was working on autonomy in the commercial space that could be translated and utilized in a military setting.”

DIU is leveraging this partnership to actively build a pipeline between the commercial and military deployment of autonomous vehicle technologies that will reduce the risk to troops in war zones.

“I spent a lot of time in the Army infantry, and I would task a Junior Leader to go from point A to point B and do that reconnaissance,” David Michelson, a project manager at DIU, told TechCrunch. “That’s a high risk mission that we want to automate with the RCV. In Ukraine I think we’re seeing how imperative that is and how dangerous it can be to move forward and commit precious resources — people — to get that reconnaissance. If you can do that with a small vehicle and gather probably more data because you can pack a lot of sensors on that’s helpful.”

Kodiak and DIU are already working together to build test tracks that mirror environments in which you’d expect to find the Army operating. The startup will develop a custom-designed ATV-like vehicle that can be driven by a human safety operator for the purposes of data collection, testing and evaluation.

As part of the contract, Kodiak will explore different sensor configurations for different mission profiles — one can imagine that the light emitted from lidar sensors might not be the best for stealth operations at night. Michelson said the project will pursue a “modular approach” to sensors, which will be important for the Army to stay paced with commercial technology.

From a technical standpoint, automating a vehicle for surveillance and recon is easier in a lot of ways than highway driving, said Burnette. Off-road environments won’t be full of other road users, so it won’t be hard to avoid collisions.

“The downside, of course, is that it’s unstructured, and often you’ll be in environments that the vehicles aren’t familiar with, which adds some complexity, as well,” said Burnette. “However, to combat that, one of the technologies that we’re offering as part of this contract is teleoperation and remote driving…We want to provide a seamless transition from autonomy mode to teleoperation mode and back again.”

Remote operation is important for filling in the gaps of what the autonomous system can do on its own and what it still needs help with. For sidewalk delivery robots, that’s often help crossing a street or navigating a construction zone. But even in developed areas there are latency issues that can cause delays. When questioned on how Kodiak and DIU would solve for that in harsh, off-road environments with nary a cell tower in sight, both Burnette and Michelson said they were working on solutions, but didn’t want to go into specifics.

If all goes well after 24 months, this partnership could lead to long-term collaboration between Kodiak and the Army as the latter works to set up the foundations for future years of autonomous applications beyond recon and surveillance.

Kodiak Robotics wins $50M to help US Army build AVs for recon, surveillance by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

Axiom, a Tel Aviv-based startup that focuses on automating identity and access management (IAM) for developer platforms, is coming out of stealth today and announcing a $7 million seed round led by S Capital.

The idea here is to provide a single platform that provides developers with easy access to the tools they need and security and operations teams with the security guarantees they require. Axiom promises to automatically orchestrate cloud and SaaS IAM and ensuring that developer get the least-privileged access that still allowing them to get their work down without hassle while reducing the potential attack surface and the blast radius of the inevitable security breach.

To achieve this, Axiom offers just-in-time access rights to developers, with a tight integration into collaboration tools such as Slack. The company’s services also integrate with all major clouds and tools, such as Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Jira and ServiceNow, as well as database and data lake services like MySQL, PostreSQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, and Databricks. Axiom currently mostly targets DevOps and DevSecOps teams in mid-market companies.

“Two megatrends are colliding to change the way we work,” said Haim Sadger, founding partner at S Capital (and founder of Sequoia Israel). “The evolution of the Cloud, where infrastructure has become far more elastic and scalable than ever, and the evolution of the workforce, where continued adoption of a hybrid IT model has made identity the new perimeter. Axiom works at the intersection of those megatrends to enable a new era of productive security for everyone.”

The company was founded by Itay Mesika (CEO) and Ilan Dardik (CTO), who first met in the technological unit of the Israeli Air Force. After working in a number of industry roles, the two co-founders decided to tackle a problem they regularly encountered in their day-to-day jobs. One major trend they both saw was that as the infrastructure has become more dynamic in recent years, identity management hasn’t kept up.

“You have that hybrid IT model that you’re starting to see more and more after COVID — and a plethora of dynamic identities because infrastructure has become far more elastic and scalable than ever,” Mesika said. “Both of these have led to a situation where identities have become the new perimeter of attacks. IAM is the glue that connects identities and the cloud and, unfortunately, it is the thing that has stayed behind and became a bottleneck for people.”

He noticed that the core ideas here are obviously not new, by the dynamic nature of cloud access left companies struggling to keep up, especially if they are still relying on manual processes. And while modern zero trust tools help businesses with managing who should have access to a given tool, they don’t necessarily help them decided which kind of access those users should get.

“We have more holistic way of solving the process of cloud access,” Mesika said.” We do this by providing dev, sec and ops teams with an easy-to-use platform that automatically orchestrates all the operations around IAM for cloud and SaaS. We’re minimizing the operational overhead for the security team and also minimizing, at the same time, the user friction and frustration for developers.”

Axiom launches its automated identity and access management platform by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch