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For all the U.K.’s contributions to research and aerospace, one thing it has never had is an actual orbital launch from its soil. That could change today with a mission going to space via a Virgin Galactic launch system, hoping to make history — and you can watch it right here.

The mission, called “Start Me Up” (and we may guess that Virgin’s Richard Branson got The Rolling Stones’ permission over breakfast), will take off at 10:16 PM local time (2:16 Pacific) from Spaceport Cornwall in Newquay.

It’s in Virgin Orbit’s “horizontal” launch style, meaning the rocket and payload will be strapped to the bottom of the modified 747 Cosmic Girl, which will take it up out of the thickest part of the atmosphere and give it a running start at reaching escape velocity. From there the rocket will accelerate and hopefully reach the target orbit.

The closest the Brits have come to this orbital achievement was in 1971, when a British satellite aboard a British rocket took off from… Australia — it’s the Commonwealth, at least.

They’re so excited they practically gave this mission its own coat of arms, rocket rampant upon a field orbital:

The rest of the heraldry:

The diamond shape of the emblem represents the “crown jewel,” the birthplace of Virgin in the United Kingdom. The number 1 indicates the first launch from the U.K. and the laurel leaves are Virgin Orbit’s good luck symbol. The amber borders are Spaceport Cornwall’s yellow color and red and black are Virgin Orbit brand colors. The United States flag represents Virgin Orbit’s country of origin and the United Kingdom flag marks the launch country.

Quite! On board the rocket are seven payloads, making this a first in a few other ways, too:

Prometheus-2: Two experimental cubesats from the Ministry of Defense designed with private partners
AMAN: Oman’s first orbital mission, a proof-of-concept Earth observation satellite
CIRCE: Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment, which says it all
DOVER: RHEA Group’s first satellite and a test global navigation system
ForgeStar-0: A “fully returnable and reusable” in-space manufacturing platform (intriguing…)
IOD-3: The first of a planned 20+ “Maritime Domain Awareness” satellites
STORK-6: “The next installment” from Polish manufacturer SatRev’s STORK series

You can find more details — launch attitudes and altitudes, details about the spaceport, etc — right here.

And of course you can watch along as well below:

“Like the great Sir Mick sang, we believe that once we start this up, it will never stop.”

Watch here: Virgin Orbit attempts the first orbital launch from British soil by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

Anime as a genre is always expanding, and with the streaming market growing just as quickly, it can be a hassle to find an anime streaming service that works for you. Whether you want to watch newer anime titles like “Chainsaw Man,” “Blood of Zeus” and “Bleach” or classics like “One Piece,” “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” and “Cowboy Bebop,” here is a roundup of streaming services that you can check out as we begin the new year.

Top Anime Streaming Service: Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll is a no-brainer for all anime lovers, whether you’re a die-hard fan or newbie.

Free to all users, popular shows on the platform include “One-Punch Man,” “Attack on Titan,” “My Hero Academia” “Death Note,” “Dr. Stone” and newer titles like “Spy X Family.” Plus, Crunchyroll recently added Funimation content, so subscribers have access to a vast anime library of over 40,000 episodes and more than 16,000 hours of content.

However, the Crunchyroll free ad-supported version has its downsides, such as limited access to titles that are only available in 480p resolution.

Fortunately, there are also three premium ad-free tiers, which give subscribers unlimited access to Crunchyroll’s content library (in HD), access to new episodes of series one hour after they air in Japan, as well as digital versions of manga. Each premium plan comes with a 14-day trial.

The cheapest premium tier is called “Fan” and costs $7.99 per month. The plan allows subscribers to stream on one device at a time. “Fan” subscribers don’t get offline viewing, nor do they get the same perks as “Mega Fan” and “Ultimate Fan.”

“Mega Fan” is $9.99 per month and allows subscribers to stream on 4 devices at once. It also offers offline viewing as well as perks like first access to Crunchyroll Expo events/lotteries and Crunchyroll Store discounts. Every 3 months, “Mega Fan” customers get $15 off $100 purchases in the Crunchyroll Store.

The most expensive plan is “Ultimate Fan” for $14.99 per month. Subscribers of this tier get the most perks, which include the ability to stream on 6 devices at one time, offline viewing, first access to Crunchyroll Expo events/lotteries, $25 off $100 purchases in the Crunchyroll Store every 3 months, and goodies like an annual “swag bag.”

Next Best Thing: Netflix

If you’re looking for the next best anime streaming option, it’sNetflix.

Most of you probably already have a Netflix subscription, since it has a whopping 223.09 million subscriber base, so you’re likely aware of all the anime content it has to offer. In 2021 alone, nearly 90% of its viewers watched Netflix anime titles, the company reported in March 2022.

The streaming giant has a ton of popular series to binge, including “Hunter x Hunter,” “Naruto,” “Castlevania,” “The Seven Deadly Sins,” “Neo Genesis Evangelion” and “The Promised Neverland.” From originals to fan favorites, there’s a lot for subscribers to explore.

While Netflix in general tends to be more expensive than Crunchyroll, the streamer recently launched a cheaper ad-supported version for only $6.99 per month. Meanwhile, its basic ad-free version is $9.99 per month, whereas the “Standard” plan is $15.49/month and the “Premium” plan is $19.99/month.

Another Great Alternative: Hulu

With over 300 anime titles, Hulu is probably the third-best option for fans. The streaming service has the majority of the same hits as Crunchyroll and Netflix offer, including “Attack on Titan,” “One-Punch Man,” “Naruto” and “Cowboy Bebop,” among others. It also offers “Sailor Moon,” “Tokyo Ghoul,” “Demon Slayer Kimetsu No Yaiba,” “The Rising of the Shield Hero” and more.

Plus, Hulu has a dedicated anime hub, which organizes content into categories such as the most popular titles, new releases, classics, recent simulcasts, and an alphabetical directory.

It’s important to note that Hulu raised its prices in October 2022. The ad-free plan is now $14.99 per month, and the ad-supported tier is $7.99 per month. On the plus side, Hulu offers a 1-month free trial. The streamer has a wide variety of content for everyone to watch, including comedy, drama, and reality TV, so it’s still a pretty good deal regardless of whether you’re an anime fan.

Most Affordable Anime Streaming Service: Hidive

At only $4.99/month, Hidive is a great inexpensive option for viewers. It also offers a 7-day free trial.

If you’re a hardcore anime buff, we recommend using Hidive to expose yourself to various anime that you may not find on other streaming services. While the content library is definitely more niche, it still has 500 titles for fans to discover.

Shows and movies on the service include “I’m Quitting Heroing,” “Gate,” “Call of the Night,” “Pantheon,” “Joshiraku,” “Vinland Saga,” “Alice in Borderland,” “Made in Abyss” and more.

Best Free Options: Tubi and RetroCrush

If you don’t mind commercial breaks, then Tubi and RetroCrush are for you.

Completely free to viewers, Tubi has a solid number of well-known Japanese animation titles in its collection, such as “Yu-Gi-Oh!,” “Fairy Tail,” “Ghost in the Shell,” “Lupin the 3rd” and “Dante’s Inferno.”

On the other hand, if you want to watch older titles then we suggest RetroCrush. The free streaming service is centered around vintage anime and has a smaller content library than other services. For instance, RetroCrush has titles like “Blue Seed,” “The Princess and the Pilot,” “City Hunter,” “The Twelve Kingdoms,” “Requiem from the Darkness” and “Demon City Shinjuku.”

RetroCrush also has an ad-free premium subscription for $4.99/month after the 14-day free trial. The premium plan includes exclusives such as “Wicked City,” “Goku Midnight Eye,” “Puppet Princess,” “Angel Cop,” “House of Five Leaves” and “Persia, The Magic Fairy.”

Anime streaming services to try in 2023 by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation.Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? Subscribe forfree.

Happy New Year (a few days late) and welcome back to The Station! your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

I kicked off 2023 in the same fashion as I have for a better part of a decade: I went to Las Vegas for CES.

Every year, I get asked the same questions: what really excited you this year? what stood out? And what does that mean for the future?

A few CES 2023 takeaways.

• Lidar companies dominated the show floor in West Hall (where most of the automotive tech was located). Everywhere I turned there was another lidar company, including Hesai, Innovusion, Luminar and Ouster (to name a few). My lingering hot take: all of these companies cannot survive.

• For all the talk about advanced driver assistance systems, there was a lot of autonomous vehicle technology on display. However, the vibe was different. I didn’t get the same hype-y ROBOTAXIS WILL BE EVERYWHERE messaging. Instead, autonomous vehicle technology popped up in a lot of commercial and industrial applications.

• Autonomous people movers and delivery vehicles shaped like giant toasters are still a thing. Holon, Hyundai Mobis and Zoox are just a few of the companies that displayed these kinds of vehicles.

• EV charging and energy storage were sprinkled throughout the show from the crowded Eureka Park to North and West Halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Not to mention a few EV charging news announcements as well like Mercedes’ plan to launch a global charging network.

• The car cabin continues to evolve into a digital, connected experience that includes augmented reality and even virtual reality from companies such as Holoride. BMW reimagined the head-up display, Chrysler gave its vision for your future car cabin, suppliers like Bosch, Forvia and Harman showed off its in-car tech, and GM and Microsoft demoed a new video game called Dash Runner to showcase the kind of entertainment consumers might want to interact with while they’re waiting for their new EV to charge.

• EVs in every form. Stellantis had perhaps one of the splashiest press conferences with its reveal of the Peugeot concept and the Ram 1500 Revolution truck concept. But I found EVs in all forms, particularly bikes, motorcycles and three-wheelers as well as obscure small off roaders.

• A bit unrelated to transportation, but I was surprised about how much robotics I encountered over at Eureka Park, the exhibition area for thousands of startups.

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Micromobbin’ at CES

Keeping on with the CES theme of this week’s newsletter, here’s a roundup of all the micromobility news and vehicles that were unveiled at the show this year:

It won’t technically get you from Point A to B, but Acer debuted a new desk-bike that powers your devices as you pedal.

AtmosGear came to play with some electric rollerblades, and they only cost $500.

Italian bike-maker Bianchi used Ansys simulation software to create more efficient e-bike designs. A 70% reduction in frame prototyping sped up time to market and reduced development costs for Bianchi’s E-Omnia e-bike.

Brightway, a micromobility tech company, launched its Navee V-series of electric scooters, the Navee e-bike and the Navee sharing scooter.

Cake launched the Åik utility bike, which starts at $6,470 and is expected to ship in May.

Davinci Motor showcased its futuristic DC100 electric motorcycle (and had a display where you could sit on them). It’s a chunky-looking thing, but the company says it can compete against the performance of 1,000 cc combustion-powered motorcycles, making it from 0 to 60 in three seconds and a top speed of 124 miles per hour.

GreenStreet EV debuted at CES with the first prototype of its 3-wheel electric Autocycle. The company plans to bring the little vehicle to market in 2024.

Heybike unveiled its folding e-bike made from a single piece of magnesium alloy.

Icoma unveiled the Tatamel Bike, a prototype for a folding bike that in classic Japanese style actually folds into a box that can be slipped under your desk at work. The exterior of the folded up moped can be customized in wood, fake grass or leather. It’s a cool concept, but probably will remain a concept.

MoonBikes showed off an electric snow bike. While this wasn’t a debut, it’s still cool. Prices start at $8,900 for the snow bike — removable batteries included. MoonBikes also launched its app at CES so riders can get real time data on their performance.

RCA, a consumer electronics brand most well-known for inventing the VCR, rode into the micromobility space at CES with new e-bikes and e-scooters designed to handle everything from commuting to off-roading.

Verge launched a new electric superbike, the Verge TS, which features an electric motor integrated into the back wheel, which the company says transfers power straight to the road. It also creates more space in the middle for the battery pack. It’s available for pre-order now at $26,900 with U.S. deliveries planned in late 2023.

Yadea, one of China’s biggest makers of electric two-wheelers, is making a push into the U.S. market. The manufacturer said it will begin launching a series of marketing campaigns and events geared at kickstarting the brand’s growth in the U.S., and will open stores in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and work with 100 other brand dealers, in the first half of 2023.

Other notable CES moments

Here is a handy overview of some of the announcements we covered and stuff we saw at CES 2023.

Autonomous vehicle tech

Goodyear and Gatik say tire tech will unlock autonomous driving in winter conditions.

Indy Autonomous Challenge returned to CES 2023 and the Las Vegas Speedway. I had the chance to check out some of the competing cars and watch one make its way around the track at night (and with the lights out). It was a neat demonstration to show what sensors, compute and software can accomplish. The autonomous racing team from mOve research groupo of Politecnico di Milano were the winners of this year’s competition.

Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua gave a talk on the company’s near and long-term vision. Advanced driver assistance systems were a focus, but Shashua spent considerable time talking about the path to automated driving, including how future consumer AVs will come to market at scale by using its driver assist system, Mobileye SuperVision.

Advanced driver assistance systems

I took a short ride with Comma.ai founder George Hotz (who recently fired himself again as CEO and claims he is now a marketing intern) for a ride in a Kia EV6 equipped with its Comma 3 dev kit, which runs on openpilot, an open source advanced driver assistance system. The Comma 3 device, now priced at $1,499, works on more than 200 models. The hardware, which mounts by the rearview mirror, has three HDR cameras, two that watch the road and one night-vision camera to see inside the car. It’s also equipped with cellular LTE, Wi-Fi, an IMU, high-precision GPS, and microphones.

Openpilot has continued to evolve and improve based on my personal experience. On this most recent drive at a location off the strip, the vehicle was able to recognize (and stop) for red lights, keep it centered in the lane, make assisted lane changes and keep a safe distance behind other cars and trucks. It was the smoothest ride I’ve had yet.

Electric vehicles, including eVTOLs

BMW revealed the i Vision Dee concept car, a four-door sedan came out onstage in a crisp white, but later morphed into a variety of colors and patterns to show off Dee’s E Ink technology.

Honda and Sony launch their new EV brand Afeela.

Stellantis debuted a futuristic (with a nod to the past) Peugeot Inception concept as well as the Ram 1500 Revolution EV truck concept. A production version of the truck is expected to be revealed later this year and come to market in 2024.

Stellantis also made a big eVTOL announcement. The automaker said it will mass produce electric aircraft for Archer in a $150 million deal.

Volkswagen unveiled the ID 7 outfitted with electroluminescent paint that lights up on command. But that wasn’t the most interesting part of this upcoming vehicle (magic paint not included).

In-car tech

Amazon Alexa-enabled cars are now able to ask Alexa to find the nearest public EV charging spot.

Chrysler shares what future car cabins might look like.

Google announced an HD version of its vehicle mapping solution that is an additional layer of data that’s served to a vehicle’s L2+ or L3 assisted-driving systems through Google Automotive Services. Volvo and Polestar will be among the first automakers to have Google HD mapping.

Google also rolled out new Android Auto features that make it easier for drivers to navigate, play podcasts and music, and communicate while on the go. The new user experience design update features a split-screen layout that displays directions, music and texts at the same time.

Hesai landed a a new design win with SAIC’s electric vehicle brand, Rising Auto (also known as “Feifan” in China). The new model of Rising Auto will carry Hesai’s long-range automotive lidar.

Holoride launches a new product to bring VR into any car. And we tested it.

Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell provided an update on the company and how its acquisition of Civil Maps fits into its long-term vision.

Nvidia’s on-demand cloud gaming service, known asGeForce Now, is headed to select Hyundai, BYD and Polestar electric vehicles. Nvidia made a number of other announcements ahead of CES, including that a partnership with Foxconn and that Mercedes will use its Omniverse Enterprise software platform to design, plan and optimize its factories in the metaverse.

Stellantis launched a new business unit called Mobilisghts dedicated to turning all that vehicle data into marketable products — and revenue.

Sharing economy

Bosch rolled out a security dashcam and accompanying support service designed for rideshare drivers.

Free2move, the mobility service brand under automaker Stellantis, plans to expand its car sharing, rental and subscription services in the U.S.

In-car tech and EVs dominated CES 2023 by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch

Despite a slowdown in deploying venture capital, U.S. venture capital firms had few problems attracting capital for new funds in 2022.

We now have a new opportunity to see if this trend will continue: Khosla Ventures is raising about $3 billion across three new funds, according to regulatory filings.

The firm, founded by Vinod Khosla in 2004, plans to raise $1.5 billion for a Fund VIII, $1 billion for a second opportunity fund and $400 million for a new seed fund.

Trying to go after such a large chunk of change is not unusual for Khosla Ventures, if last year told us anything. The firm raised over $550 million for its first Opportunity Fund after taking in $1.4 billion for its Fund VII.

Current VC chatter seems to say that many firms may not be able to raise their next fund. However, unlike other VC firms, Khosla does have decent returns. It invested in companies like Affirm, Square, DoorDash. It also has a stake in both Instacart and OpenAI.

As mentioned, this comes at a time when VC firms are doing well attracting money for new funds. We reported that $150.9 million was raised by U.S. VC firms across 593 funds through the third quarter of 2022.

Overall, firms raised a record $162.6 billion across 767 funds for the year even as deal activity dropped off, suggesting firms will continue this pattern of slowing down deployment of capital in 2023.

Khosla Ventures goes after $3B in new funds by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Welcome back toEquity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

Now that the weird “remember how to work” week is over, I’m feeling refreshed and ready to take on the year. My goal for this week is to collaborate more, whether that means asking for help or joining forces to tackle a big story. (I needed to say that out loud because it’s easy to play alone in a remote, distributed world).

Here’s what we got into for this week’s Monday episode:

Big Tech: Vista Equity Partners scooped up Duck Creek for $2.6 billion, and that’s not the only billion-dollar figure we’ve seen from them over the past twelve months. Enterprise deals to start off the year? Take notes, startups.
Big Idea: I’m thinking all about generative AI, especially thanks to Rebecca Szkutak’s latest piece: “Whoops! Is generative AI already becoming a bubble?” I talk through the thesis of the piece, why venture always needs a buzzword, and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
And Big Innovation: We end with our roots in the world of startups. I’m talking Magic Leap’s comeback story and a can’t miss Dominic-Madori Davis piece tracking Black founder funding trends.

And with that, goodbye until Wednesday! You can follow me on Twitter@nmasc_or on Instagram@natashathereporter. And, as always, follow Equity on Twitter @equitypod.

Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyandall the casts. TechCrunch also has agreat show on crypto, ashow that interviews founders, one thatdetails how our stories come together, and more!

Generative AI’s Magic Leap by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

Apple may skip some major changes with the release of iOS 17, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The report says Apple is going to spend most of 2023 focusing on its mixed-reality headset, which has been a work in progress for several years and may arrive this year.

As Apple’s main focus is said to be on the operating system for the mixed-reality headset, the tech giant is reportedly cutting back on some new features in iOS 17. The upcoming software update, currently codenamed Dawn, may have fewer major changes than originally planned. The report says this will also be the case for iPadOS 17 and macOS 14.

iOS 16 introduced many significant features, but the software update also saw somestability issues. As a result, it’s possible that Apple may want to focus on improving the stability of its software, as opposed to introducing additional major changes while also prioritizing the operating system for its upcoming mixed-reality headset.

Although we may not see major changes with iOS 17, the report says the new iPhone’s hardware could still be impressive. The sizes for the upcoming devices are said to be same as the iPhone 14 lineup, but the Dynamic Island will likely be available on all four models. In addition, the phone is said to switch to USB-C and faster processors.

As for the mixed-reality headset, Apple is reportedly planning to announce the new device at its Worldwide Developers Conference this year in June. The report says the device may be called Reality Pro, and the operating system could be called xrOS. Some developers have already started working on apps for the new Apple platform.

In terms of the rest of Apple’s roadmap for 2023, Gurman writes that you shouldn’t expect a lot of surprises beyond the company’s mixed-reality headset.

Apple’s iOS 17 may have fewer major changes than initially planned by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

There are now more Americans aged 65 and older than at any other point in history and that number is expected to rise, according to the National Institute on Aging (NIA). With longer lifespans come challenges like Alzheimer’s, which about one in nine of Americans aged 65 or older have.

The a2 Pilot Awards were created to encourage the development of tech for the elderly. Funded by the NIA with $40 million over the next five years, the awards announced today the first cohort of 33 projects selected for funding. The majority use artificial intelligence or machine learning tech, and 40% are led by women.

Stephen Liu, the managing director of a2 Collective, which oversees the awards, told TechCrunch he hopes it encourages more tech entrepreneurs to get into agetech.

“It’s a largely uncontested, growing, future-proof market that will have unprecedented opportunities driven by AI,” he said, adding “We have two big mega-trends, AI and the demographics of aging and it’s irrefutable that there is a large, growing, massive, future-proof market that they should focus on.”

The a2 Collective includes three Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories (AITC) that the projects will work with. The AITCs are housed at John Hopkins University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Pennsylvania.

Most of the 33 pilot projects address cognitive decline, but some are also tackling frailty, comorbidity, delirium, palliative care, social isolation and visual impairment. They will receive a total of $5 million and projects selected for funding will get up to $200,000 in zero equity grants to cover direct costs over a one year period.

About half of applications for the first awards came from private companies, while others are academic research projects. Many are also collaborations between the private sector and academia. A2 Collective reached out to startups, academic institutions, accelerator programs and venture capital firms focused on healthcare to find applicants.

“In this particular program, we definitely have an eye towards commercial use, or some kind of commercialization of the project,” said Liu. “Ideally you want to see an impact where it’s going to be used by someone, whether that’s a clinician, older American, caregiver or nurse, in the next several years.”

Some examples of projects selected include Autotune Me, which uses music to address symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and related conditions. Bestie Bot uses RGB-D depth cameras and thermal computer vision to perform monitoring and telehealth checkups of patients. And WellSaid.ai is using conversational AI to perform health assessments and detect signs of cognitive impairment and dementia for people in their homes.

In addition to the AITCs, a2 Collective’s partnerships also include health care systems, clinicians and researchers, venture capitalists and public health institutions that are focused on agetech and elder care.

Each AITC decides which projects get funding, and also gives them access to gerontologists, geriatricians, Alzheimer’s specialists and other experts. The idea is to give each project the same kind of mentoring and guidance as pre-seed startups in accelerator programs, Liu said.

The second a2 Pilot Awards are already in the works, with the next batch of finalists currently selected. They will be announced in spring. The a2 Collective will also accept applications for its third competition from May 1 to July 31.

Liu told TechCrunch he expects to see a dramatic increase in agetech.

“As the cost of computing goes down and our AI model capabilities go up, I think we can expect a Cambrian explosion of new technologies that will dramatically help older Americans, including those with Alzheimer’s, live longer and better lives and perhaps help out our beleaguered health care system,” he said. We’re in the early innings of it.”

Backed by the National Institute on Aging, the a2 Pilot Awards fosters agetech entrepreneurship by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is going to spend most of 2023 focusing on a brand new device — a mixed-reality headset that has been a work in progress for several years.

The new device could look like a pair of ski goggles, based on an earlier report from The Information. It will feature several cameras so that the device can track your movements in real time and see what’s happening in the real world.

Over the past few years, Apple CEO has stated several times that augmented reality is a promising technology. “I think the [AR] promise is even greater in the future. So it’s a critically important part of Apple’s future,” Cook told Kara Swisher back in 2021.

But it sounds like Apple’s upcoming product is going to offer a mixed-reality experience. Users will be able to experience both augmented and virtual reality. Details are still thin about the potential use cases and apps for the headset as it’s easier to control software leaks compared to product leaks.

According to Bloomberg, Apple is currently planning to announce the new device during the inaugural keynote of the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June — Apple could name it Reality Pro. Some developers have already started working on apps for the new Apple platform. The new operating system for the Apple headset could be called xrOS.

WWDC seems like the right stage for this kind of product announcement as a lot of developers working on third-party apps for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch are paying attention to this event. Having popular apps and games for this new Apple platform will be key when it comes to ensuring the long-term success of the Apple headset.

Apple’s 2023 could involve a 15-inch MacBook Air and a new Mac Pro

Mark Gurman also spent some time discussing Apple’s roadmap for 2023. And it seems like you shouldn’t expect a lot of surprises beyond the company’s mixed-reality headset.

For instance, the MacBook Pro, the Apple Watch, the AirPods, the iPad mini, the iPad Air and the base iPad model will only receive better components that should improve overall specifications. Don’t expect major design updates or new features. The Apple TV and iPad Pro aren’t going to be updated at all.

The most significant changes in Apple’s various lineups could be a 15-inch MacBook Air, the return of the big HomePod and a brand new Mac Pro. Apple has yet to update the Mac Pro with its own ARM-based chip — it still sports an Intel CPU. According to Bloomberg, the new Mac Pro would look a lot like the existing Mac Pro.

It will feature the M2 Ultra that you can find in the Mac Studio. Unfortunately, users won’t be able to upgrade RAM due to the company’s unified memory approach. On paper, it’s going to be hard to convince people to buy a Mac Pro instead of a Mac Studio. But that doesn’t matter too much as the Mac Pro has never been a significant revenue-making product.

Of course, there’s one product that is more important than everything else for Apple — that’s the iPhone. According to 9to5mac, iPhone 15 production is going as planned. The Dynamic Island could make its way to all four models — the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

There’s one thing for sure. This year, Apple will comply with EU’s mandate and change the iPhone’s charging port from the Lightning connector to USB-C. And many iPhone users have been waiting for a simple change like this to upgrade their phone.

Apple’s mixed-reality headset could arrive this year by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

Updating CRMs after each call is an important task for sales representatives, but it means a lot of administrative work that takes time away from actually selling. Attention wants to fix that with its sales assistant, which uses AI tech and natural language processing to automatically fill in CRMs after calls and draft follow-up emails.

The New York-based startup announced today it has raised $3.1 million led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from institutional investors Frst, Liquid2 Ventures, Maschmeyer Group Ventures and Ride Ventures. The round also included the founders of Ramp, Pawp, Truework and CBInsights.

Attention was founded in September 2021 by CEO Anis Bennaceur and CTO Matthias Wickenburg. The two met while running Swipecast and Mixer, competing job platforms for creative professionals. After five years of being rivals, the two got coffee and realized they face many of the same challenges with sales, like needing to constantly update Salesforce and onboarding new sales reps as quickly as possible.

“After many back-and-forths, we decided to work together,” said Bennaceur. “I had hundreds of conversations with sales leaders and junior sales reps, asking about their pain points, digging into potential desired solutions, and continuously iterating, while Matthias would build those solutions in parallel. After numerous iterations, we knew that we were onto something.”

One of the things Attention helps with is CRM hygiene, which means making sure CRM software is updated with clean and accurate data. Bennaceur explains this is important because chief revenue officers and vice presidents of sales rely on their organization’s CRM to track interactions with customers, manage leads and analyze sales data. This lets them make decisions on how to increase revenue.

But there are several barriers to maintaining CRM hygiene. For one thing, it’s a lot of administrative work for sales reps and takes time away from actually selling. It’s also easy to miss data when sales reps leave their jobs or pass accounts onto other reps. This results in lost leads and customer attrition. Finally, without any way to track what is said during sales calls, revenue leaders have a harder time deciding how to advance potential deals.

Attention fixes this by automatically exporting data from calls into CRMs. For example, if a sales team uses the MEDDIC sales methodology, a framework of questions that includes six steps, Attention knows if each step has been covered in a conversation, and exports that information into the relevant Salesforce or Hubspot fields. This reduces the amount of busywork sales reps need to do, while giving revenue leaders more insight into sales leads and revenue opportunities.

By using natural language processing, Attention is also able to identify content for sales coaching in calls. During a call, it displays battlecards in real-time to help sales reps figure out what to say. “Let’s say a prospect asks you a question on how compare to your competitor on a specific capability. A battlecard would contain the elements to answer that question appropriately, and appears on your screen during your conversation,” says Bennaceur.

To increase deal velocity, or the speed at which a sales organization is able to negotiate and sign contracts, sales teams need to send a lot of emails, quickly. But the followup email templates they often rely on are impersonal, while catered emails sometimes leave out important data, says Bennaceur. Attention is able to draft emails after calls based on what was said during the conversation. For example, a sales rep can ask Attention to “write an email recapping our conversation. Mention our prospect’s challenges and how our product can help them. And talk about next steps.”

Attention’s competitors include Gong and Chorus, both of which analyze customer conversations. Bennaceur says that Attention’s advantage is its ability to flexibly understand conversations, display real-time prompts during calls and provide A/B testing for its coaching. “We haven’t seen any of these players flexibly export conversations into CRMs, and this is a strong edge that we currently have,” he said.

In a statement about the funding, Eniac Ventures’ Hadley Harris said, “We’re thrilled to partner with Anis and Matthias as they leverage the latest developments in AI generation and natural language understanding to superpower sales organizations. We love working with repeat founders and couldn’t be happier with the strong pull they’re already getting from the market.”

Attention uses natural language processing to help sales reps sell faster by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Seattle-based XetHub, a startup that makes it easy for businesses to use Git for data management, today announced that it has raised a $7.5 million seed financing round led by Madrona. The basic idea here is to allow developers to work with data the same way they work with code, including all of the collaboration features a tool like Git enables. The team describes XetHub as a “collaborative storage platform for data management.”

The company was co-founded by Yucheng Low (CEO), Ajit Banerjee and Rajat Arya, a team with years of experience working with large data platforms. Indeed, Low previously co-founded ML startup Turi, where Arya was the first employee. Apple acquired the company in 2016, allowing Low and Arya to work on various parts of Apple’s ML platform stack, with Arya leading Apple’s data platform team, for example. It was also at Apple that the two met Banerjee, who previously worked at Inktomi, Amazon and Facebook. He also previously founded two startups.

During their time working on the data platform at Apple, the team realized that there was still a lot of room for improvement in the data management realm.

“It really shouldn’t come as a surprise, but data is far more important than everything else. More important than the model — than anything else,” Low told me. “Managing where you store this data, how you collaborate on this data is really fundamental. However, what we see is that the way we manage data today really feels like how source code was done 30 years ago — which means version control or collaboration is done by copy-and-paste — sometimes there’s a more elaborate version of it, but it’s still ultimately copy-and-paste if I want to make sure no one else is touching what I’m doing.”

Just like developers have moved to tools like Git for collaborating on their source code, XetHub wants to allow them to use these same familiar primitives for working with data.

“The way we think about it is that for the first time, we truly enable developers to work on data in exactly the same way as code,” Low said. He noted that the team aimed to create a tool that doesn’t just mimic a Git-like experience but one that preserves the core Git user experience — including all of the integrations that developers are familiar with.

Currently, the service can handle repositories with up to 1TB of data, with plans to expand this to 100TB soon. Few developers will want to clone a large repository like this, so one nifty feature here is that developers can also mount these repositories and make them behave like a local file system, no matter whether that’s on their laptop or a large GPU cluster. It’s also worth noting that the tool is agnostic to file formats.

From a marketing perspective, the team is focusing its efforts on AI/ML teams, but users can obviously use XetHub for managing any kind of data.

Xethub is now publicly available with a free community edition that you can use to manage up to 20 GB of deduplicated storage. Low tells me the company is already talking to some enterprise customers, but the team isn’t quite ready to name names yet.

“Yucheng and the exceptional XetHub team have been innovating with machine learning for well over a decade, and then applying their skills at the most iconic consumer technology company – Apple. XetHub enables developers to work with large datasets, in collaboration with others, to build intelligent and generative applications,” said Matt McIlwain, Managing Director, Madrona. “Developing and deploying these applications is constrained by legacy infrastructure and complex data workflows, and XetHub addresses these pain points from the developer point of view.”

XetHub raises $7.5M for its Git-based data collaboration platform by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch