Month: August 2021

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

After a fittingly fleeting time in the wild, Twitter is banishing its ephemeral stories feature known as Fleets, which debuted in November 2020.

Twitter began testing Fleets back in March of last year. The company thought that it might be able to lure people who were hesitant about collecting their stray thoughts into the platform’s semi-permanent format with a “lower-pressure” kind of a tweet. Many major social platforms have some form of disappearing content, so it made sense that Twitter would give things a try too — but after eight months live, Twitter is killing the feature.

Like Instagram Stories, Fleets lived on top of the timeline, highlighted in their own dedicated space. As fleets phase out, Spaces, Twitter’s Clubhouse-like audio rooms, will occupy the same slot in the app.

The company hoped that Fleets would bring new users under its wing, but the only people who really adopted the new feature were apparently already Twitter diehards. Twitter said it would go back to the drawing board to figure out how to get more people participating on Twitter and Fleets were an unfortunate casualty of that realization. Some members of the product team that built Fleets shared their thoughts on Twitter in the feature’s waning hours.

“If we’re not evolving our approach and winding down features every once in a while – we’re not taking big enough chances,” Twitter Consumer Product VP Ilya Brown said in a blog post.

We can only hope that Twitter’s future products continue the gay sex naming scheme that the company accidentally introduced when it named Fleets “fleets.” (Congrats, gay former intern!)

To the company’s chagrin, the feature’s swift demise apparently inspired more enthusiasm for the product than Fleets had enjoyed previously. Twitter’s tweet announcing the death of Fleets also somehow turned into an iconic enough moment that the company made it into a collectible hoodie that reads “We’re sorry or you’re welcome,” ensuring that Fleets will live on in our hearts until we inevitably forget they ever existed — perhaps the most fitting tribute of all.

Source: Tech Crunch

Advanced Technology Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm with more than $1.8 billion in assets under its management, was hit by a ransomware attack in July that saw cybercriminals steal personal information on the company’s private investors, or limited partners (LPs).

In a letter to the Maine attorney general’s office, ATV said it became aware of the attack on July 9 after its servers storing financial information had been encrypted by ransomware. By July 26, the ATV learned that data had been stolen from the servers before the files were encrypted, a common “double extortion” tactic used by ransomware groups, which then threaten to publish the files online if the ransom to decrypt the files is not paid.

The letter said ATV believes the names, email addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers of the individual investors in ATV’s funds were stolen in the attack. Some 300 individuals were affected by the incident, including one person in Maine, according to a listing on the Maine attorney general’s data breach notification portal.

Venture capital firms often do not disclose all of their LPs — the investors who have thrown millions into an investment vehicle — to the public. A number of pre-approved names may be included in an announcement, but overall, a company’s private investors try to stay that way: private. The reasons vary, but it comes down to secrecy and a degree of competitive advantage: The firm may not want competitors to know who is backing them, and an investor may not want others to know where their money is going. This particular attack likely stole key information on a hush-hush part of how venture money works.

ATV said it notified the FBI about the attack. A spokesperson for the FBI did not immediately comment when reached by TechCrunch. ATV’s managing director Mike Carusi did not respond to questions sent by TechCrunch on Monday.

The venture capital firm, based in Menlo Park, California with offices in Boston, was founded in 1979 and invests largely in technology, communications, software and services, and healthcare technology. The company was an early investor in many of the startups from the last decade, like software library Fandango, Host Analytics (now Planfun) and Apptegic (now Evergage). Its more recent investments include Tripwire, which was later sold to cybersecurity company Belden for $710 million; Cedexis, a network traffic monitoring startup acquired by Cisco in 2018; and Actifo, which was sold to Google in 2020.

Natasha Mascarenhas contributed reporting. Send tips securely over Signal and WhatsApp to +1 646-755-8849. You can also send TechCrunch files or documents using our SecureDrop.

Source: Tech Crunch

Swiss alternative protein company Planted has raised its second round of the year, a CHF 19M (about $21M at present) “pre-B” fundraise that will help it continue its growth and debut new products. A U.S. launch is in the cards eventually but for now Planted’s exclusively European customers will be able to give its new veggie schnitzel a shot.

Planted appeared in 2019 as a spinoff from Swiss research university ETH Zurich, where the founders developed the original technique of extruding plant proteins and water into fibrous structures similar to real meat’s. Since then the company has diversified its protein sources, adding oat and sunflower to the mix, and developed pulled pork and kebab alternative products as well.

Over time the process has improved as well. “We added fermentation/biotech technologies to enhance taste and texture,” wrote CEO and co-founder Christoph Jenny in an email to TechCrunch. “Meaning 1) we can create structures without form limitation and 2) can add a broader taste profile.”

The latest advance is schnitzel, which is of course a breaded and fried piece of pounded-thin meat style popular around the world, but especially in the company’s core markets of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Jenny noted that Planted’s schnitzel is produced as one piece, not pressed together from smaller bits. “The taste and texture benefit from fermentation approach, that makes the flavor profile mouth watering and the texture super juicy,” he said, though of course we will have to test it to be sure. Expect schnitzel to debut in Q3.

It’s the first of several planned “whole” or “prime” cuts, larger pieces that can be prepared like any other piece of meat — the team says their products require no special preparation or additives and can be dropped in as 1:1 replacements in most recipes. Right now the big cuts are leaving the lab and entering consumer testing for taste tuning and eventually scaling.

The funding round came from “Vorwerk Ventures, Gullspång Re:food, Movendo Capital, Good Seed Ventures, Joyance, ACE & Company (SFG strategy) and Be8 Ventures,” and was described as a follow-on to March’s CHF 17M series A. No doubt the exploding demand for alternative proteins and growing competition in the space has spurred Planted’s investors to opt for more aggressive growth and development strategies.

The company plans to enter several new markets over Q3 and Q4, but the U.S. is still a question mark due to COVID-19 restrictions on travel. Jenny said they are preparing so that they can make that move whenever it becomes possible, but for now Planted is focused on the European market.

(Update: This article originally misstated the new round as also being CHF 17M – entirely my mistake. This has been corrected.)

Source: Tech Crunch

MGA Thermal co-founders Erich Kisi and Alex Post. Image Credits: MGA Thermal

MGA Thermal wants to help utility companies transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources with shoebox-sized thermal energy storage blocks. The company says a stack of 1,000 blocks is about the size of a small car and can store enough energy to power 27 homes for 24 hours. This gives utility providers the ability to store large amounts of energy and have it ready to dispatch even when weather conditions aren’t ideal for generating solar or wind power. The modular blocks also make it easier to convert infrastructure, like coal-fired power plants, into grid-scale energy storage.

MGA Thermal announced today it has raised $8 million AUD (about $5.9 million USD), bring its total funding so far to $9 million AUD. The round was led by Main Sequence, a venture firm founded by Australia’s national science agency that recently launched a new $250 million AUD fund. Alberts Impact Capital, New Zealand’s Climate Venture Capital Fund, The Melt and returning investor CP Ventures participated, along with angel investors like Chris Sang, Emlyn Scott and Glenn Butcher.

Based in Newcastle, Australia, MGA Thermal was founded in April 2019 by Erich Kisi and Alexander Post after nearly a decade spent researching and developing miscibility gap alloys technology at the University of Newcastle. When asked to explain MGA tech in layperson’s terms, Kisi used a delicious analogy.

MGA Thermal’s blocks “essentially comprise metal particles that melt when heated embedded in an inert matrix material. Think of a block as being like a choc-chip muffin heated in a microwave. The muffin consists of a cake component, which holds everything in shape when heated, and the choc chips, which melt,” he told TechCrunch.

“The energy that goes into melting the choc chips is stored and can burn your mouth when you bite into the muffin,” he added. “Melting energy is more intense than merely heating something up and that melting energy is concentrated near the melting temperature so energy can be released in a consistent way.”

MGA Thermal’s modular energy storage blocks. Image Credits: MGA Thermal

Energy stored in MGA Thermal’s blocks can be used to heat water to power steam turbines and generators. In this scenario, blocks are designed with internal tubing for pumping and boiling water, or interact with a heat exchanger. Kisi said MGA Thermal’s blocks enable aging thermal power plans to continue running on renewable energy that would usually be switched off in situations like overheating caused by too much sun or high winds.

Other thermal energy solutions include heating low-cost solid materials in blocks or granules to high temperatures in an insulated container. But many of these materials aren’t good at moving thermal energy around and have temperature limitations, Kisi said. This means thermal energy decreases in temperature as it is discharged, making it less effective.

Another method for storing thermal energy involves molten salts that are heated by a renewable energy source and stored in a hot tank. The hot salt is then pumped through a heat exchanger to make steam, while colder (but still molten) salt is returned to a “cold” tank.

“These systems are widely used in concentrating solar thermal energy but have found little use elsewhere,” Kisi said. “That’s mostly because there is a large infrastructure cost for piping pumps and heaters, and a large amount of power is wasted keeping the salt from freezing.”

MGA Thermal is establishing a manufacturing plant in New South Wales to scale to commercial levels production of its blocks, and plans to double its team over the next 12 months so it can make hundreds of thousands of blocks each month. It is also currently working with partners like Swiss company E2S Power ASG and U.S.-based Peregrine Turbine Technologies to deploy its tech in Australia, Europe and North America. For example, E2S Power AG will use MGA Thermal’s tech to repurpose retired and active coal-fired thermal plants in Europe.

While MGA Thermal’s tech has many industrial use cases, like converting power stations, building off-grid storage and supplying power to remote communities and commercial spaces, it can also help consumers consume less fossil fuel. For example, MGA blocks can be used by households to store excess energy generated from rooftop solar panels or small wind turbines. Then that energy can be used to heat homes.

“Around the world an estimated three billion people heat their homes by burning fuel,” said Kisi. “That’s a lot of CO2, especially in very cold climates.”

In a statement, Main Sequence partner Martin Duursma said, “A core focus of our new fund is uncovering the scientific discoveries, and helping to turn them into real, tangible technologies so we can reverse our climate impact. Erich Kisi and Alexander Post’s impressive deep research backgrounds, their expert team and innovative technology are paving the way for grid-scale energy storage and boosting the capability of a renewable energy future globally.”

Source: Tech Crunch

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology predicts that U.S. companies will spend upward of $100 billion on AI R&D per year by 2025. Much of this spending today is done by six tech companies — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, IBM, Facebook and Apple, according to a recent study from CSET at Georgetown University. But what if you’re a startup whose product relies on AI at its core?

Can early-stage companies support a research-based workflow? At a startup or scaleup, the focus is often more on concrete product development than research. For obvious reasons, companies want to make things that matter to their customers, investors and stakeholders. Ideally, there’s a way to do both.

Before investing in staffing an AI research lab, consider this advice to determine whether you’re ready to get started.

Compile the right research team

Assuming it’s your organization’s priority to do innovative AI research, the first step is to hire one or two researchers. At Unbabel, we did this early by hiring Ph.D.s and getting started quickly with research for a product that hadn’t been developed yet. Some researchers will build from scratch and others will take your data and try to find a pre-existing model that fits your needs.

From there, you’ll need to hire research engineers or machine learning operations professionals. Research is only a small part of using AI in production. Research engineers will then release your research into production, monitor your model’s results and refine the model if it stops predicting well (or otherwise is not operating as planned). Often they’ll use automation to simplify monitoring and deployment procedures as opposed to doing everything manually.

None of this falls within the scope of a research scientist — they’re most used to working with the data sets and models in training. That said, researchers and engineers will need to work together in a continuous feedback loop to refine and retrain models based on actual performance in inference.

Choose the problems you want to solve

The CSET research cited above shows that 85% of AI labs in North America and Europe do some form of basic AI research, and less than 15% focus on development. The rest of the world is different: A majority of labs in other countries, such as India and Israel, focus on development.

Source: Tech Crunch