Latest and Hotest Technology Updates

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for October 29, 2021. If you feel a little snowed-under after all the news from the week, we understand. This week saw Facebook change its name, new hardware from Google and Samsung, Apple laptops reviews, Sequoia revamping its entire structure, Big Tech earnings, issues at Ro, and eighty-eleven startup funding rounds and product launches.

But we made it through, so let's go back over today's biggest news and then get right into this weekend! —Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Public cloud revenues reach $45B: In the third quarter, the value of public cloud revenues from Google, Microsoft and Amazon hit $45 billion, a figure good for a $180 billion run rate. That figure underscores how far the cloud has come in recent years and represents spend from a host of companies big and small, tech and otherwise. TechCrunch dug into what impact the chip shortage is, and isn't, having on growth amongst the public cloud lords, in case you were curious about that particular dynamic.
• Trump's social network already in trouble: Sure, it was mocked when it was announced. And, yes, pranksters got busy in a hurry. But the biggest threat to former U.S. President Trump's Truth Social product is an open source project that you've not heard from in some time, namely Mastodon. Per TechCrunch, the social project "alleges that Truth Social is passing open source software off as its own and has given them 30 days to fix this."
• The American heartland is startup-central: After our look into the larger Midwest startup market in the United States, TechCrunch took the time today to parse results from the city of Denver. Along with regional siblings, startups in the Mile High City are raising huge amounts of capital. But what we learned is that Denver's startup boom came after a long period of investments in its local technology scene from the industry's biggest players.
• And, for something lighter, Google's partnership with Jio to create and sell a budget smartphone in India is bearing hardware fruit.

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Leading brands like CB2, Pura Vida, and Coach use Attentive to grow subscriber lists, send interactive campaigns, and drive 20.5% of online revenue. Learn how Attentive powers real-time SMS conversations.

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Startups/VC

• Kurly targets $5.9B IPO: Grocery delivery comes in a few forms. There's the "instant" players, the two-hour delivery crew and then what Kurly is up to in Korea, namely delivering foodstuffs the next day. The slower model hasn't harmed the unicorn, which intends to list next year at a valuation that could reach nearly six billion dollars.
• Celebrities back electric boat venture: A bit like how venture capitalists will keep backing email startups in hopes of eventually solving their personal communications crisis, a number of celebrities are backing Arc, which makes a very snazzy, if expensive electric boat. With a price tag around $300,000, it's not a surprise that well-known celebrities-cum-investors Will Smith, Kevin Durant and Diddy are backing the company given that its product is inside their price range. You and I will have to get by with a Matchbox version.
• Patreon wants to say yes to crypto: Creator payments and content platform Patreon may get in on the crypto boom. TechCrunch repots that the company is looking into how crypto might intersect with its creator-heavy user base.
• Social Chat bets consumers want higher-touch digital shopping experiences: Personally one of the best things about online shopping is not having to talk to other humans. However, many consumers disagree, Social Chat appears to be arguing. The company just raised $6 million to help make online shopping more like buying stuff IRL.
• And in case you want to know which three funding rounds the Equity crew thought were the hottest of the week, well, we have your back.

Predicting the next wave of Southeast Asia tech giants

Is Southeast Asia about to hit an inflection point for tech startups?

Four hundred million people in the region already use the internet, but by year’s end, one estimate suggests that 80% of the population over the age of 15 in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam will be digital consumers.

“As per Jungle Ventures' calculations, the total value of the region's digital companies is around $340 billion today and is estimated to grow to $1 trillion by 2025,” says founding partner Amit Anand.

E-commerce, fintechs and the rapid digitization of the region’s SME workforce are a few of the factors reshaping the landscape for Southeast Asia’s startups, but supply chain technology is also a major opportunity, Anand says.

“With new deals and intentions to list in the U.S. being announced more frequently, the region shows no sign of slowing down and the birth of many more unicorns is on the horizon.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Read More

Big Tech Inc.

• If you are on iOS, you now have access to Super Follows: Twitter's product barrage has generated hits (Spaces) and flops (Fleets). But Twitter is forging ahead with more product work on its Super Follow product, regardless of early momentum or a lack thereof. Now all iOS users – globally! – can pay to "Super" follow creators.
• German company to invest more in chip production: In the future, chip independence will replace food independence in terms of national security precedence. And Germany might sit pretty when it does, as domestic concern Robert Bosch GmbH is dropping nearly a half-billion into boosting chip output. More of this, please.

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Read one of the testimonials we've received below!

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Recommended by: Stuart Harris, AltaFoodcraft

Testimonial: "They excel at defining the problem, mapping out a strategy, setting expectations and managing the project to completion. They allowed us to complete and launch new products on time and within budget. Having a reliable partner that can uphold their piece of the project is critical to successful execution."

• Security Architect, IT Security-Senior/Specialist at Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA, USA)
• ASIC Architects and Hardware Engineers at D. E. Shaw Research at D. E. Shaw Research (New York, New York, USA)
• Systems Administrators: Servers, Clusters and Supercomputers for Computational Biochemistry at D. E. Shaw Research (New York, New York, USA)
• Information Systems Analyst II/III (Drupal Developer) at Valley Water (San Jose, CA, USA)
• Technical Co-Founder at plotr (Anywhere)

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for October 29, 2021. If you feel a little snowed-under after all the news from the week, we understand. This week saw Facebook change its name, new hardware from Google and Samsung, Apple laptops reviews, Sequoia revamping its entire structure, Big Tech earnings, issues at Ro, and eighty-eleven startup funding rounds and product launches.

But we made it through, so let's go back over today's biggest news and then get right into this weekend! —Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Public cloud revenues reach $45B: In the third quarter, the value of public cloud revenues from Google, Microsoft and Amazon hit $45 billion, a figure good for a $180 billion run rate. That figure underscores how far the cloud has come in recent years and represents spend from a host of companies big and small, tech and otherwise. TechCrunch dug into what impact the chip shortage is, and isn't, having on growth amongst the public cloud lords, in case you were curious about that particular dynamic.
• Trump's social network already in trouble: Sure, it was mocked when it was announced. And, yes, pranksters got busy in a hurry. But the biggest threat to former U.S. President Trump's Truth Social product is an open source project that you've not heard from in some time, namely Mastodon. Per TechCrunch, the social project "alleges that Truth Social is passing open source software off as its own and has given them 30 days to fix this."
• The American heartland is startup-central: After our look into the larger Midwest startup market in the United States, TechCrunch took the time today to parse results from the city of Denver. Along with regional siblings, startups in the Mile High City are raising huge amounts of capital. But what we learned is that Denver's startup boom came after a long period of investments in its local technology scene from the industry's biggest players.
• And, for something lighter, Google's partnership with Jio to create and sell a budget smartphone in India is bearing hardware fruit.

Use SMS to build stronger relationships with your customers

Sponsored by Attentive

Leading brands like CB2, Pura Vida, and Coach use Attentive to grow subscriber lists, send interactive campaigns, and drive 20.5% of online revenue. Learn how Attentive powers real-time SMS conversations.

Try it free

Startups/VC

• Kurly targets $5.9B IPO: Grocery delivery comes in a few forms. There's the "instant" players, the two-hour delivery crew and then what Kurly is up to in Korea, namely delivering foodstuffs the next day. The slower model hasn't harmed the unicorn, which intends to list next year at a valuation that could reach nearly six billion dollars.
• Celebrities back electric boat venture: A bit like how venture capitalists will keep backing email startups in hopes of eventually solving their personal communications crisis, a number of celebrities are backing Arc, which makes a very snazzy, if expensive electric boat. With a price tag around $300,000, it's not a surprise that well-known celebrities-cum-investors Will Smith, Kevin Durant and Diddy are backing the company given that its product is inside their price range. You and I will have to get by with a Matchbox version.
• Patreon wants to say yes to crypto: Creator payments and content platform Patreon may get in on the crypto boom. TechCrunch repots that the company is looking into how crypto might intersect with its creator-heavy user base.
• Social Chat bets consumers want higher-touch digital shopping experiences: Personally one of the best things about online shopping is not having to talk to other humans. However, many consumers disagree, Social Chat appears to be arguing. The company just raised $6 million to help make online shopping more like buying stuff IRL.
• And in case you want to know which three funding rounds the Equity crew thought were the hottest of the week, well, we have your back.

Predicting the next wave of Southeast Asia tech giants

Is Southeast Asia about to hit an inflection point for tech startups?

Four hundred million people in the region already use the internet, but by year’s end, one estimate suggests that 80% of the population over the age of 15 in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam will be digital consumers.

“As per Jungle Ventures' calculations, the total value of the region's digital companies is around $340 billion today and is estimated to grow to $1 trillion by 2025,” says founding partner Amit Anand.

E-commerce, fintechs and the rapid digitization of the region’s SME workforce are a few of the factors reshaping the landscape for Southeast Asia’s startups, but supply chain technology is also a major opportunity, Anand says.

“With new deals and intentions to list in the U.S. being announced more frequently, the region shows no sign of slowing down and the birth of many more unicorns is on the horizon.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Read More

Big Tech Inc.

• If you are on iOS, you now have access to Super Follows: Twitter's product barrage has generated hits (Spaces) and flops (Fleets). But Twitter is forging ahead with more product work on its Super Follow product, regardless of early momentum or a lack thereof. Now all iOS users – globally! – can pay to "Super" follow creators.
• German company to invest more in chip production: In the future, chip independence will replace food independence in terms of national security precedence. And Germany might sit pretty when it does, as domestic concern Robert Bosch GmbH is dropping nearly a half-billion into boosting chip output. More of this, please.

TechCrunch Experts

If you have a software consultant that you think other startup founders should know about, fill out the survey here.

Read one of the testimonials we've received below!

Consultant: 729 Solutions

Recommended by: Stuart Harris, AltaFoodcraft

Testimonial: "They excel at defining the problem, mapping out a strategy, setting expectations and managing the project to completion. They allowed us to complete and launch new products on time and within budget. Having a reliable partner that can uphold their piece of the project is critical to successful execution."

• Security Architect, IT Security-Senior/Specialist at Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA, USA)
• ASIC Architects and Hardware Engineers at D. E. Shaw Research at D. E. Shaw Research (New York, New York, USA)
• Systems Administrators: Servers, Clusters and Supercomputers for Computational Biochemistry at D. E. Shaw Research (New York, New York, USA)
• Information Systems Analyst II/III (Drupal Developer) at Valley Water (San Jose, CA, USA)
• Technical Co-Founder at plotr (Anywhere)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for October 28, 2021. With our SaaS event now behind us — a big thanks to the TechCrunch events and sales teams who keep crushing it for the publication — we can pivot our focus back to, well, the metaverse? — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Facebook goes Meta: By creating a brand above its preceding corporate domicile, Facebook has created a meta-entity to include its various projects. And one of those is the metaverse. Thus, the new name for the company — Meta — makes pretty good sense. Most folks don't seem to like it much, but it's hard to weed the General Facebook Snark from the Actually About The Name Snark, if that makes sense. More in our Big Tech section down below.
• NerdWallet writes its way to unicorn valuation: As online finance content empire NerdWallet approaches the public markets, the writing-centric company will garner a valuation north of $1 billion, per its latest IPO filings. TechCrunch, a words-first publication, had thoughts on the matter.
• Facebook is cross with Apple: Facebook — Meta, I suppose — took a few potshots at Apple during its big event today. They are worth considering apart from the larger branding and VR efforts that the company announced. Apple's changing privacy rules have taken a toll on Facebook, and the social giant is not pleased about it.

Clouds that compete can still connect

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Startups/VC

Before we get into the startup news, former startup Allbirds is going public, and TechCrunch has the details on just what it is worth. And, in the wake of Rent the Runway, we are starting to see a valuation band created for tech-enabled IPOs.

• Atlys wants to make visa applications quicker: And it just raised $4.25 million for its work. Sure, fewer of us than normal are flying overseas, but eventually we'll get back on planes and go places. And when we do, well, the paperwork will beckon. Perhaps Atlys can take some of the sting out of stapling photos of yourself to a packet that you then mail to the black hole of an embassy.
• Soon we shall all live in pods: Prefab pods, if Cover gets its way. The startup creates walls and other similar home components in its factory. Those bits are then shipped to building sites and set up sans a crane. Frankly, let's hope this works? We have a housing crisis in the United States, and any movement toward alleviating it is welcome. The company also just raised $60 million.
• Inrupt's plans to reclaim internet privacy raising capital: The deal isn't done yet, but TechCrunch broke news today that Tim Berners-Lee's Inrupt startup, a company that wants to build "a platform that gives users control of their data" online, is looking to raise between $30 million and $40 million.
• What if Nextdoor was even more insular? Well, that's what OneRoof is building, an even more hyperlocal Nextdoor, the social network known to bring neighbors together so that they can argue and throw racist invective at one another. Now you will be able to do so in even tighter-knit circles. The company just raised $1.25 million.
• Healthcare remains a lucrative market: That's our takeaway from Hinge Health raising $400 million in a new round. The company is focused on chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, which encompass things like aching backs and knees. Given how large the American healthcare market is, the company's $6.2 billion valuation may make a mote more sense than you are mentally giving it credit for.
• Alchemy raises $250M in competitive round: Every venture investor is in awe of Amazon's AWS group, because it eats growth and shits operating profit. It's worth a zillion dollars. So it's perhaps not surprising that the competition to put capital into Alchemy was more than hot. The firm provides basic infra to other crypto companies, and a grip of crypto companies that you know of are already Alchemy customers.
• Yugabyte raises yuge venture round at yuger valuation: Yugabyte is now a unicorn, which feels like a very 2021 sentence. The database company just added $188 million to its own financial database at a valuation of $1.3 billion.
• Dragos raises $200M, soars to $1.7B valuation, sadly isn't about dragons: Dragos works in industrial cybersecurity, which matters. Keeping IRL infra safe is a pretty big deal. But when I read the company’s name I was frankly hoping for mythical beasts. Alas.
• And to close out our startup notes, TechCrunch's Neesha Tambe has notes from a chat with Sequoia concerning fundraising tips for today's startups.

Credit card and payments companies compete for a slice of the growing BNPL market

Giving consumers the convenience of deferring payment for a product is not a new idea, but now that upstarts like Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm have taken the concept to the next level, legacy credit card companies and payment firms are taking notice.

Mary Ann Azevedo and Ryan Lawler have identified a “slow emergence” in the BNPL space “of a symbiotic relationship between traditional financial institutions, payments upstarts and leading companies.”

Visa announced yesterday that many companies are using its technology to power point-of-sale BNPL solutions; last month, its rival rolled out Mastercard Installments, its bespoke offering.

“It's not really a surprise that these credit card companies are stepping it up when it comes to BNPL,” reported Ryan and Mary Ann. “If anything, it's a wonder that it took them this long.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Read More

Big Tech Inc.

Before we get to our Facebook News Roundup, Twitter also made a bit of noise today. Users will now be able to record Spaces, its audio chat rooms. And its subscription "Blue" service will include early feature access.

The rest of what Facebook announced:

• Facebook teases Polar, a mobile app for creating AR filters
• Facebook Messenger audio calls are coming to Oculus Quest
• Facebook opens Oculus Store to 2D progressive web apps
• Slack is coming to the Oculus Quest
• Company formerly known as Facebook unceremoniously kills off 'Oculus' brand

And from the rest of Big Tech:

• Digging into majors attacking the BNPL market: While Affirm is best known as an early BNPL startup that made it to the public markets, Big Finance is not going to let tech have all the fun. Mary Ann and Ryan investigate.
• And in news that is sure to make other companies as happy as the privacy changes, Apple's "App Privacy Report" is now in beta. Do note, please, that the more Apple pisses off other companies regarding data privacy, the better off consumers may be — but also that Apple is only doing this for its own results, not because it likes us.

TechCrunch Experts

TechCrunch wants to help startups find the right expert for their needs. To do this, we're building a shortlist of the top growth marketers. We've received great recommendations for growth marketers in the startup industry since we launched our survey.

We're excited to read more responses as they come in! Fill out the survey here.

• ASIC Architects and Hardware Engineers at D. E. Shaw Research at D. E. Shaw Research (New York, New York, USA)
• Systems Administrators: Servers, Clusters and Supercomputers for Computational Biochemistry at D. E. Shaw Research (New York, New York, USA)
• Information Systems Analyst II/III (Drupal Developer) at Valley Water (San Jose, CA, USA)
• Technical Co-Founder at plotr (Anywhere)
• Lead Product Manager at Brivo (Bethesda, MD, USA)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.