Category: Tech news

If you paid a visit to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ Sand Hill Road headquarters on any given day, you’d likely bump into Chi-Hua Chien. Chien, who has emerged as one of the firm’s most accessible public figures since joining Kleiner some six years ago, is known for being a particularly engaged and responsive VC — always ready to pop into the office, provide advice to an entrepreneur, or talk shop with his fellow investment partners.

But aside from continuing his workaday routine, things are changing for Chien and other partners at the storied Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Sources say that Chien is in the process of transitioning out of his role at Kleiner, amid recent changes in the firm’s partner structure.

Both Chien and Kleiner Perkins declined to comment on this story.

Last month, Fortune’s Dan Primack reported that Chien was “thinking about launching his own venture capital fund” that would focus on early-stage consumer technology companies. Two other seed investing sources we spoke to backed up this story and said Chien has continued to look into building his own fund, as part of his plan to transition out of Kleiner. Another person familiar with the situation says that early interest from potential limited partners in a new Chien-led fund has been solid.

Chien, who joined Kleiner in 2007, has led the firm’s investments in a number of consumer web startups including Path, Klout, Zaarly, and Chill. Some people have speculated that it is partly the lackluster performances of these kinds of consumer web investments that led to Kleiner’s restructuring in October, which left Chien and several other partners off of the investment committee in charge of Kleiner’s latest fund. At that time, however, it was reported that no partners were leaving Kleiner as part of the changes.

Chien’s ongoing departure is said to be amicable on a personal level — he was in attendance at the firm’s holiday party, and continues to be active at other Kleiner events. People with knowledge of the situation say a more full exit will likely happen over the course of 2014.

We’ll be sure to keep tabs on Chien’s next moves, since he’ll no doubt continue to be someone to watch in the startup investing space. It’s just the latest example that as much as industries like venture capital can seem to take on an air of staid permanence, technology is at its heart about constant change — and the world of those who invest in the sector is no different.

Opscode has raised $32 million and changed its name to Chef, after the configuration management and IT automation “cookbook” that has become very popular in the enterprise market. Scale Venture Partners led the round. Citibank and Amplify Partners also participated, as well as existing investors Battery Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), and Ignition Partners. The Series D funding brings the company’s total amount raised to $65 million.

As part of the news, Chef also announced that Scale Venture Partners’ Rory O’Driscoll has joined the company’s board of directors. In addition, the company has hired Curt Anderson as its CFO. Anderson comes from Microsoft where he worked  as CFO for Microsoft’s Manufacturing and Supply Chain Division.

Companies like Nordstrom are using Chef to build a code-centric platform for automating the practices between different groups in the IT organization so the company can adapt and move faster in the overall market. The retailer has used Chef’s cookbook of automation scripts to give it the predictability it needs at a speed and scale that it can’t do manually. With Chef, Nordstrom can integrate its heterogeneous infrastructure, allowing the company to make the most of its engineers. For example, the retailer has a number of Unix engineers who can now work on Windows systems. Chef automates the underlying infrastructure so engineers can work on code to make changes that are automatically propagated to the Windows-based systems.

Chef, founded by engineers from Amazon and Microsoft, plays in a booming market. For instance, retail is learning that it has to treat its stores like showrooms connected to mobile apps that provide a clear way to compare different products. That’s not just something these traditional companies can do without thinking of their IT investment, which is often more than 20 years old.

The shift for many is from old, middleware software to a new services environment that abstracts old systems. A number of companies are seeking a piece of this market by offering continuous integration services. Chef will use its funding to build out its own version of a continuous integration platform that leverages its IT automation platform.

The challenge for the company will be less about its name and more about the competitive market it faces. Puppet Labs, another IT automation provider, is Chef’s biggest foe but there are also a number of new challengers rising in the market, including SaltStack and AnsibleWorks.

This week on TechCrunch TV’s Ask A VC show, Accel Partners’ Ping Li and Foundation Capital’s Charles Moldow will be joining us, separately, in the studio. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or here and we’ll ask them during the show.

Li focuses on early-stage growth software and data-center investments for Accel and is also responsible for the firm’s Big Data Fund. He’s a board member of Blue Jeans Network, Cloudera, Code42, Lookout, Nimble Storage, Origami Logic, RelateIQ, Tenable Network Security and Trifacta. Prior to Accel, Li worked at Juniper Networks as a Senior Product Line Manager for their flagship M-series router products, as well as Director of Corporate Development.

Moldow has made 14 investments since joining Foundation in 2005, of which five have been acquired: PowerSet to Microsoft; Xoopit to Yahoo; Adwhirl to Google; Weblistic to Spot Runner; and Therative to Phillips.

His current portfolio includes: BancBox, CloudOn, Copious, Everyday Health, Fanhood, HomeRun, LendingClub, Luminate, Motif Investing, Revel Touch, and SunRun. Previously Moldow spent five years with Tellme Networks and was a member of the founding executive team.

Please send us your questions for Li and Moldow here or put them in the comments below!

Foursquare no longer allows users to check in privately with the iOS version of its app. The change was made with the recent 7.0 release and ‘iOS 7 refresh’ last week and appears to be a play to demonstrate the value of its network by making sure check-in data is accessible to users of the product, its API partners and any possible suitors for acquisition.

The explanatory privacy listing, tipped to us by user Mel Tajon, appears on Foursquare’s site, and lists growth as the reasoning behind the change.

“As Foursquare continues to grow, we have decided to remove the ability to privately check in,” the entry states. “If you don’t wish to share your location, we’d encourage you to still use Foursquare to get out and explore awesome places nearby!”

Foursquare clarifies that all past check-ins that were made privately will continue to be private. The entry notes that private check-ins will still be available on its desktop other platforms like Android (and older versions of the iOS app?) for now, but we’d expect this option to start disappearing across all offerings sooner or later.

We discussed Foursquare’s recent 7.0 update last week, and found it to be a nice step forward. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to use it for my normal ‘Foursquaring’ and it holds up really well.

The private check-in was a feature that allowed you to tag a location as having been visited without exposing it to your network of friends. If you’re not a Foursquare user, it’s important to note that detailed check-in info was and is only visible to your friends on the network. A private check-in was an additional layer of privacy that allowed you to create a personal list of ‘been there’s’ without broadcasting those locations.

Foursquare notes that you’re more than welcome to continue getting value out of the network without checking in if you don’t want to share your location.

This decision speaks to Foursquare’s current direction on several levels. First of all, it coincides with the overall shift of the service away from a ‘check-in game’ to a recommendation engine. Removing the private option means that you can no longer use Foursquare as a ‘personal diary’ of visits either. It is firmly a public network of curated locations in the vein of Yelp now.

It’s also interesting in the light of the questions about profitability that seem to surround Foursquare with a low hum of acquisition talk these days.

Foursquare is a great product in and of itself, it’s just built well. But its database of locations which are verified by personal check-in and user activity like reviews, photos and ‘likes’ is unmatched by almost any other competitor in that space. There are databases with more locations, but I have a hard time thinking that any of them are so rich in signals. The Foursquare API is one of the go-to location feeds for independent developers that I speak to, and many big-name apps that don’t have skin in the ‘Google v. Apple’ game (and they’re getting fewer by the day) use it because it’s just really dang good.

Increasing the addressable surface area of public check-in data only makes sense if Foursquare wants to increase its attractiveness for acquisition. Of course, it probably won’t hurt the amount of public signal when it comes to powering its own product too.

Qualcomm has just announced the Snapdragon 410 chipset series, which is Qualcomm’s first announced processor with 64-bit support, but it’s actually more interesting because it aims to make integrated 4G LTE support a lot more affordable for device manufacturers. They plan to launch the 410 as a manufacturing sample by the first half of next year, which means it could be in shipping phones by this time in 2014.

The 64-bit component is a key part of these new chipsets and should make it possible for devs to take advantage of improved processing capabilities in future Android software. But the LTE support being made available to devices like the Moto G, which currently uses a Snapdragon 400 as its powerhouse, and even more affordable devices sold in emerging markets like India and other places is bound to be far more exciting to device makers, app developers and service operators. Access to broadband is often cited as a key factor in helping determine not only income but quality of life, so making LTE affordable, even if only on the consumer hardware end, could have a tremendous impact on the global economy.

It’s not just Android that stands to benefit here, either – Qualcomm calls out specifically Windows Phone and Firefox OS as supported by the Snapdragon 410, too. But for a North American audience, I’d be watching this very closely as used by the newly rejuvenated powers at Google-owned Motorola: As of right now, the Nexus 5 is probably the best deal in a 4G-capable off-contract phone, but Motorola could convert the remaining non-smartphone users domestically into both smartphone and LTE users in one fell swoop.

Over the past couple of months, there have been a few Bitcoin app rejections by Apple that have made some waves. First, the venture-backed startup Coinbase had its app removed entirely from the App Store. Today, a blog post from peer-to-peer messaging and payments app Gliph highlights its own rejection and the subsequent removal of its ability to transact in Bitcoin.

Gliph’s Rob Banagale talks about a few aspects of the rejection, including the technical details of how Gliph handles Bitcoin, Apple’s motivations for rejecting the app and the possibility that it could change its mind.

The rejection, Banagale notes, was based largely off of section 22.1 of Apple’s App Store review guidelines. The rule states that “apps must comply with all legal requirements in any location where they are made available to users. It is the developer’s obligation to understand and conform to all local laws.”

Bitcoin is not illegal, but it is also not legal. This gray area is what is leading Apple to reject Bitcoin-transaction apps.

We reached out to Banagale to talk about the way that Gliph functions, and how it differs from apps like Coinbase. He notes that the app works with wallets like those from Coinbase and BIPS, but doesn’t function as a wallet itself. Instead, it passes along requests for wallet addresses (just strings of numbers) to the wallets themselves, and back to the recipient. The setup also means that Gliph does not deal with exchanges.

“We didn’t want to specify which wallet you had to use,” Banagale says. “By doing it that way we aren’t really manipulating Bitcoin directly.”

This method means that Gliph isn’t actually processing Bitcoin transactions, just facilitating them. It’s a distinction that may either be lost on Apple, or that isn’t evident enough to differentiate Gliph from other Bitcoin wallet apps.

Banagale notes that Apple itself may be planning on entering the payments game outside of its own stores, and that this may have influenced their decision to reject Bitcoin apps. But that’s probably pretty unlikely. It is clear, though, that Apple isn’t acting as any real advocate of Bitcoin at this point, something that Banagale says it’s in a good position to do.

In the end, the answer is likely fairly simple. From our understanding, Apple rejected both Coinbase and Gliph based on rule 22.1 specifically. Yes, the interpretation of the rule is fairly narrow, as Bitcoin has not been declared legal or illegal in most of the areas that the apps have been available. But this is not a matter of speculation about whether Bitcoin will become legal, it’s a simple matter of whether or not it is currently legal. Since there is no clear-cut government acknowledgement of Bitcoin’s legality, Apple is simply taking the safest, most protective path by disallowing transaction functionality in App Store apps — for now.

Google has similar rules related to illegal activity on its Google Play store, but has chosen not to enforce them on Bitcoin apps at this point. The stance there appears to be one of lenience or, as Banagale puts it, ‘optimism’ about the future legal status of Bitcoin.

Still, Banagale feels that Apple got this one wrong. He points out that Gliph does not actually handle transactions, but only facilitates the triggering of them via online wallets. Yes, it’s a technicality, but there are plenty of apps that function as a basis of a small technical twist. Literally billions have been spent and earned by companies based on technicalities. So, in the case of Gliph, perhaps the functionality merits another look by Apple, but we wouldn’t hold our breath.

This is a case where the rules that Apple uses to govern its store have to take into account the probable byproducts of litigation or legal ramifications, not just current complaints. And for a company with as big a target painted on it as Apple, caution is likely the better part of valor here.

We’ve heard, but don’t know exactly why, Apple has been issuing stern comments to developers about legal notices in apps. They’ve been instructing app makers to ensure that any links to legal info about using Apple assets or other items with terms and conditions of use attached are visible and links are accessible when appropriate.

It could be that the stance on Bitcoin is tied into that, but Apple has had a fairly standard approach to transaction functionality in the App Store for years when it comes to the crypto currency. The recent rejection of Coinbase and Gliph doesn’t represent an about-face so much as perhaps ‘enhanced awareness and activity’ when it comes to rejecting apps based on rule 22.1.

With the recent loss by Apple in the courts related to the e-book case and the installation of a government-appointed monitor, the company is under more scrutiny than ever. Whether that’s coloring their handling of Bitcoin apps is a matter of conjecture, as we’ve gotten no information that indicates one way or another.

As to how Apple might handle Bitcoin transactions in apps in the future, look to how it handles gambling apps, also covered in the App Store rules. For states or countries that allow gambling — like Nevada or the UK — Apple allows apps to use geo-fencing to restrict activities to those regions. A similar system could be put in place to allow Bitcoin transactions in places where it has been deemed ‘legal’ by a government entity.

Is there a personal vendetta towards Bitcoin because Apple could expand its Apple ID-based payment system? That’s not our understanding. But will its attitude towards Bitcoin be one of caution for the foreseeable future? Yes. And any developers looking to include core transaction elements would do well to note that stance for now.

Disclosure: Author owns a very, very small amount of Bitcoin.

Image credit: Zach Copley

Amazon today added support for video uploads in the new iOS version of its Cloud Drive Photos app, which also now natively supports iPad and iPad mini. The update comes over a year and a half after Amazon first introduced the capability to store videos in its Cloud Drive Photos service via the app’s Android counterpart. Its slow progress to introduce the feature on Apple devices goes to show how much Amazon values its iOS customer base. (Or rather, how it doesn’t).

The company quietly released the updated app this afternoon, which, like the Android version, now supports the ability to upload videos up to 2 GB in size or 20 minutes in length. That’s long enough for the majority of personal videos, and still slightly longer than YouTube’s default setting of 15 minutes (ahead of account verification).

Also like the Android app, those who have turned on Cloud Photos’ Auto-Save functionality in the iOS version will now see support for video uploads, too. That means that both new and existing videos and photos from the iPhone or iPad will be automatically uploaded to Amazon Cloud Drive when the device is connected to Wi-Fi (or Wi-Fi and cellular, if you choose).

It’s handy that Amazon will retroactively upload your media collection when you switch this feature on, as that’s not always the case. For example, when Flickr rolled out an auto-upload feature of its own earlier this fall, it would only begin auto-uploads from that point forward, making it troublesome for new or lapsed users wanting to move their entire photo collections over to Yahoo’s photo-sharing site.

Amazon has a few other tricks up its sleeve, too. For example, a “large upload mode” setting lets you disable the iOS device’s lockscreen in order to allow large uploads (like all your videos) to complete. And you can switch on an “Auto Save” option which allows progress to continue in the background.

In addition, the Settings screen shows an indicator of how much Cloud Drive storage you’ve used, with separate colors for files, photos and now videos.

Still, the app feels very basic compared with competition from Flickr or Google, for example, or other popular mobile photo-sharing apps. You can’t organize your photos or videos in any real way, tag them, search through them, or edit them using built-in tools. It’s merely an interface that connects the phone or iPad to Amazon’s online storage. Still, with 5 GB of free storage available, it’s worth it to back up your content to the cloud, if you haven’t already done so using another service, like Google, Facebook, or Apple’s iCloud.

Now with video support across both iOS and Android platforms, Amazon may need to rethink the name of this app, since Cloud Drive Photos is no longer quite right.

The updated version of the iOS app is here on iTunes.

Microsoft watchers Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott recently detailed a number of changes that could be coming in the next major version of Windows, something that Foley is hearing called “Threshold.” It could be heading towards our waters in 2015.

Unsurprisingly, Threshold continues the trend of unification inside the Windows aegis. The platform becomes more tightly locked, with a common core sporting several faces, or SKUs. One, as described by Foley as “Modern,” is akin to Windows RT, and would focus on Windows Store apps.

Also potentially coming with Threshold is a “more traditional consumer SKU,” which would include “some semblance of productivity and familiarity with Windows.” That makes sense. And, finally, an enterprise facing SKU that would suit organizations of scale and their needs. This should all make sense, as the builds that Foley is describing mirror closely Windows 8.1 RT, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7.

Microsoft declined to comment.

The real force behind what Foley is discussing is the idea of having one core Windows regardless of SKU or device, that would allow developers to build once and deploy broadly. You can see the outlines of this in WinRT, and so forth. So, not surprising, but also encouraging. Now, to something that does surprise: The Start menu could be coming back.

According to Thurrott, the Start menu – not just the Start button, which has already returned – could come back to Windows. It would probably “appear only on those product versions that support the desktop,” which makes sense given that sans desktop, you wouldn’t need the damn thing.

All this kicks together to imply that in the Windows RT/Windows Phone OS we are not going to have the desktop at all. Office will go Metro, ending the need for the desktop on those devices. Naturally, there needs to be more user interface integration and so forth, but I think the writing is on the wall.

So the story of Windows unification could contain new wrinkles that bring back old functionality in some SKUs. Thurrott likes this:

 When you combine this information with Mary Jo’s SKU info, you can see that Microsoft is, if not moving forward per se, at least continuing to do the right thing and responding to complaints. And given the changes in the groups responsible for Windows, this wasn’t a given at all. It’s a good sign.

I agree with that, mostly, though any focus on the desktop comes at the expense of Metro, which means the Windows Store. Still, Microsoft has to assuage enterprise customers and consumers alike, which requires sacrifice.

Top Image Credit: Flickr

The Crunchies are almost here and time is running out to nominate your favorite startup, founder, CEO and technology of the year. You have less than a week.

Co-hosted by TechCrunch, VentureBeat and GigaOm, the annual “Oscars of Tech” celebrates the best of the past year. But it’s you, the tech community, that nominates who among us will be most deserving to take the stage at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco on February 10th.

Included in the 20 categories are the Best Startup, Best Design, and Angel of the Year with GitHub, FiftyThree, and Chris Dixon taking those top prizes home last year, respectively. New for 2013 is the Best Heath Startup in which we will recognize the company that best epitomizes the future of medicine.

Nominations will close on December 15th, 2013 at 11:59PM PST. General admission tickets are now available and start at $80.

This weekend a taxi driver dropped me off at Twitter HQ and, as I paid my $7 fare with Square, he asked me if I worked at Twitter. When I responded “No,” he said, “Ok, I usually charge those people more.”

Depending on who you ask, tech’s hyper-gentrification is either causing an economic cold war, or is blown out of proportion. Any way you slice it, the tech industry, paying proportionally higher salaries because of VC funding and creating millionaires through lucrative IPOs, has caused housing prices and everything else influenced by housing prices in the Bay Area to skyrocket.

And it’s spreading.

No one likes paying 3k rent for a 1 bedroom, rich or poor…—
Justin Kan (@justinkan) December 09, 2013

The rising housing prices and sense of inequity led to community protests this morning at Valencia and 24th Street, with the intent of blocking a Google private bus, for many a symbol for all that is wrong with the tech bubble. The protestors demanded $1 billion dollars from the tech giants in order to fund affordable housing.

Of course, no one, tech rich or not, wants to pay $3,000 in rent for a one-bedroom apartment. The collective startup world cringed as news broke of a particularly insensitive response to the protestors: “Why don’t you go to a city where you can afford it? This is a city for the right people,” screamed someone who purported themselves to be a Googler.

According to the reporter who originally uploaded the video, the confrontation was actually a staged performance by who looks to be University of California union organizer Max Alper. (Update: Alpers confirms it was a stunt.)

The most comical part of Alper’s act was his declaration that he had been living in SF for six months! Honestly, if he really wanted to piss people off, he should have borrowed a pair of Google Glass.

Despite the myths, oblivious outliers and dumb Op-Eds, few people working in tech think that tech is a meritocracy. Sergey Brin has been secretly buying up property and engaging in a sort of private rent control down South. And Google, Facebook, Apple and Genentech are working with the City of San Francisco to pay for permits to use the MUNI stops, taking their proposal to the MTA board in January.

You don’t need Glass to see there’s a problem, and the solution isn’t Social Darwinism.

Another exit for a new media startup into the arms of the old media industry: E.W. Scripps, the storied owner of 19 local television stations and daily newspapers in 13 markets across the U.S., today announced that it has acquired Newsy, a digital video news platform, for $35 million in cash. Newsy will become a subsidiary of Scripps.

To mark the video-friendly event, Newsy and Scripps posted a YouTube video.

The deal is expected to close January 1, Scripps said.

This represents a pretty impressive exit for Newsy, which was founded in 2008 and raised under $5 million. It also represents an interesting evolution for Scripps: back in 2007, in a moment of digital chicken that it lost, it spun off its Scripps Interactive division (full of hundreds of millions of dollars in acquired and homegrown assets) and remained E.W. Scripps the publishing company. Since then, it has quietly been building that digital effort back up, with more cautious footing.

This is about Scripps, which was founded in 1879, buying an asset that gives it a digital video component to complement its existing TV and online services — effectively a bridge between the three areas where it already does business if you also count newspapers.

It also gives the company access into an audience that consumes their news (and video) on devices like tablets, and has largely turned away from some of those more traditional platforms where Scripps still bases a majority of its business.

“Newsy adds an important dimension to our video news strategy,” Rich Boehne, Scripps chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement. “It’s a next-generation news network designed and built exclusively for digital audiences. Newsy’s uncommon approach to curation and storytelling has helped it build a strong national brand, which fits well with both our current media assets and our ambitions to further develop digital media businesses.”

Newsy’s ad-supported videos are currently delivered to web, mobile, tablet and connected TV platforms, both direct to consumer and via partnerships with (TC’s owner) AOL, Microsoft and Mashable, among others.

The fact that these were named in the release might hint that those partnerships will continue post-acquisition, although this wasn’t specified. What has been is where the service will expand, which will be into more city- and region-based content: “Newsy will become an important news source on the Scripps digital products in local markets,” the company said.

“Scripps is committed to participating in the future of digital media,” said Adam Symson, senior vice president and chief digital officer for Scripps, in a statement. “Newsy is built for the digital audience, especially on the platforms we’re seeing emerge now with highly connected consumers.”

Newsy’s 35 full-time employees and its part-time employees will remain in Columbia, MO, the company says. That will include founder and CEO Jim Spencer. “We are proud to be joining with Scripps, which shares our values of innovation and editorial integrity,” he noted.

If you thought that the days of Samwer brothers e-commerce investments with the eBays and Groupons of the world were over, think again. Today, their Berlin-based incubator Rocket Internet announced a new and strategic investment partner, the UK physical and online retail giant Tesco. Tesco, which is the world’s second-largest retailer by revenues (after Walmart) will now work in “close cooperation” with the brothers’ incubator. That will begin by leading a $250 million round in Lazada, an Amazon-like online marketplace with operations across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Other Rocket regulars Access Industries, Kinnevik and Verlinvest also participated.

Other aspects of the deal, Rocket says, will include “customer analytics, private label development and supply chain management.” And as another part of the news, it has also expanded operations in the region with Lamido in Indonesia and Vietnam — a social commerce effort “to tap into the large informal e-commerce market of C2C transactions which includes thousands of shops on social networks such as Facebook.”

It comes on the heels of a $100 million round in Lazada only six months ago and brings the total invested into Lazada to $486 million.

Rocket Internet — which is known mainly for incubating e-commerce startups — notes that this is the first time that Tesco has invested in a pure-play e-commerce operation. Up to now, Tesco has built an empire on Walmart-style supermarkets, primarily in the UK, using that to expand as a strong and early player in e-commerce in grocery and home goods delivery and later digital goods to complement the sale of electronics.

But the investment news comes at a tricky time for Tesco: the company has long been seen as an aggressive and successful retailer, but its strategy has stumbled in the past two years. In the last quarter sales were down 1.5% in its main UK stores, and sales in other markets in Europe were down 4%, and in Asia 5.1%. In September, it put its U.S. Fresh & Easy stores into bankruptcy (so, maybe not so Easy to crack the U.S., after all).

In that context, a focus on new, emerging markets that ride on operations that have already been seeded is a sign to investors that Tesco is now betting big on new opportunities. Emerging markets like Southeast Asia are a key target because they are large, and fast-growing. Southeast Asia as a region has some 600 million consumers who are only now really getting turned on to smartphones and shopping online.

Indeed, this seems to be the rationale for Tesco’s investment. “This investment in Southeast Asia’s largest e-commerce retailer continues our strategy of developing leading multichannel businesses in core growth markets,” said Robin Terrell, group multichannel director of Tesco, in a statement. “Lazada is an exciting, pioneering business which has developed a market-leading offer in each of its five markets in just 18 months.”

Notably, Rocket Internet has established e-commerce businesses spanning home goods, fashion, financial services and much more across every continent. It has put a particularly strong focus on operations in emerging markets in recent years because they are growing faster and are less crowded with competition, Oliver Samwer told me earlier this year in an interview. It has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors to build out these operations, often from repeat investors — something that could either point to sustained success if you are a Samwer believer or ponzi-like tendencies focused around clones, if you are one of their detractors.

The real truth is that it’s hard to tell, because as is usual with Rocket Internet, it is not revealing the revenues, net income/loos or any other financial metrics of its operations. However, Tesco is a publicly-traded company, and that will likely lead to demands for greater transparency in the future. (For now Rocket tells us that the operation has some 1,500 employees across five Southeast Asian countries and that Lazada is the “leading online general merchandiser across the region.”

Although Access Industries, controlled by Russian-born (now U.S. citizen) tycoon Len Blavatnik, is a regular Rocket Internet investor, this will be Access’ first investment in Lazada. “We are delighted to welcome Tesco and Access to join our investor group through this funding round,” said Maximilian Bittner, CEO of Lazada Group, in a statement.

Stealthy payments startup Clinkle which raised $25 million in outside funding before its product ever launched, has terminated around 25% of its staff (16 people), according to a report posted this morning by Fortune. The news of the layoffs comes amid speculation that there’s internal trouble, and even potentially issues with Clinkle leadership, which has raised doubts about the company’s future.

The news of the layoffs comes shortly after the unearthing of a scathing review of Clinkle operations and its founder, 22 year-old Lucas Duplan, which was left on Q&A site Quora in late November. Reportedly authored by two former employees, the post lists 31 ex-employees at the startup, though it didn’t clarify who among that list was terminated, versus those who quit or who may have been working part-time or had to return to school – or so points out Business Insider, which found the Quora post originally.

Similar anonymously-posted lists of ex-staff have also showed up on web before, like this list on Pastebin. 

The anonymous Quora posters allege that they put in long workweeks, having been promised equity, but never received it. That post had to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt at the time, however, as it seemingly came from someone(s) with an axe to grind. However, combined with this new report, doubts about Clinkle grow. 

The company has had a hard time keeping news of its goings-on under wraps, choosing to remain “stealthy” even as large-scale leaks, including screenshots of the interfaces and functionality emerged on sites like YouTube and Tumblr. (We reached out to Clinkle to provide comment, but the company has yet to respond to inquiries. See below for Clinkle’s response.)

Fortune says there had been a plan to disclose the Clinkle layoffs by announcing it alongside the news of high-profile new hires. The company had added COO Barry McCarthy formerly of Netflix, earlier this fall, and last week two of McCarthy’s former Netflix colleagues joined, including former Walmart and Netflix exec Andy Rendich as Clinkle’s VP of operations, and Allison Hopkins, formerly of Palo Alto Networks and Netflix, as VP of talent.

There was some hint from McCarthy that Clinkle needed work on its operations side of the business. As he told TechCrunch at the time, the company needed to build out its customer support team. “We need to build it from scratch, build it to scale, and built it to operate at scale,” he had said. There was not anyone at the company until Rendich who really understood how to do this, though.

Meanwhile, Hopkins was added to help Clinkle pick the right people and teach those already there how to manage. Reading between the lines, it’s a hint that those in charge weren’t ready to drive a company with $25 million in funding and the ambitious idea that it could replace your physical wallet with a mobilized version.

The layoffs then could be very well the result of McCarthy’s work – coming in, clearing house, and installing the right team. And that may be something Clinkle really needed. But as he told Fortune, the layoffs shouldn’t necessarily signal trouble for Clinkle:

“Some young people are leaving, and some very reasoned executives are joining. It’s reasonable to assume that these execs wouldn’t be joining if something was chronically wrong or broken.”

UPDATE: The following is a statement from Clinkle about the layoffs:

Our objective in today’s organizational restructuring is to better allocate our resources and work towards ensuring that we have the right people in the right roles. While turnover is a normal part of any business, especially in the startup world, it’s not easy or enjoyable for anyone. In all cases, we’re committed to managing these things as professionally and as considerately as possible. Today’s moves will better position our executive team to focus on adding the experience and functional expertise that we need.

16 employees (about 25% of the company) were affected in the areas of ops, growth, and human resources. This is in addition to the 30+ employees that were already reported to have left Clinkle by Business Insider.

With regards to the 30+ employees, to put it in perspective, some were part-time, some were students, some were contractors – as we grow, there are going to be changes in business strategy that result in people seeking opportunity elsewhere. As I said, in all situations, we’re committed to managing things as professionally as possible.

By teaching a computer to think, Facebook hopes to better understand how its users do too. So today the company announced that one of the world’s leading deep learning and machine learning scientists, NYU’s Professor Yann LeCun, will lead its new artificial intelligence laboratory.

MIT Technology Review first reported that Facebook would launch an Artificial Intelligence lab back in September, but now it has something of a celebrity scientist at its helm. Facebook’s AI research will be split across its Menlo Park headquarters, London office, and a new AI lab built just a block from NYU’s campus in Manhattan.

LeCun has been pioneering artificial intelligence breakthroughs since the 1980s when he developed an early version of the “back-propagation algorithm” that became the top way to train artificial neural networks. He went on to work for AT&T Bell Laboratories where he created the “convolutional network model” that mimics the visual cortex of living beings to create a pattern recognition system for machines. This model was used for optical character recognition and handwriting recognition that powered how many banks read checks in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

LeCun’s expertise is in “deep learning” speech and image recognition systems has driven his research in building visual navigation systems for self-driving cars, autonomous ground robots, drones, and more.

Now, LeCun’s knowledge could help Facebook determine exactly what people want to see in their News Feeds, how they want to organize their photos, and possibly more exotic projects.

Building a smart home is hard. First you have to install all the hardware then you have to figure out a platform for controlling lights, sensors, and the like. Thankfully the Owl Platform has got your back.

The platform is aimed at hackers who want to experiment with various sensor arrays around their premises. It includes a base station and a number of sensors – door open/close, water level, temperature, etc. – that last for about 10 years and connect wirelessly to the base station and Owl Platform service. They are looking for $50,000 to help build a real base station, (they’ve been using Raspberry Pis so far) and to finalize their open source server software. The system will send email and text alerts when various sensors hit their maximums or minimums or when the open/close sensors are activated.

For a pledge of $150 you can get a basic sensor package including a water sensor and open/close sensor. The sensors, called Pips, are ready to ship and they will build the final Owl hardware by July 2014. I’ve played with an early edition and was impressed with the size of the Pips and the ease of setup. While this probably isn’t for the casual user, I could see this as being valuable to a homeowner with a more DIY bent. Just as the body is getting all sorts of quantified self hardware, perhaps this is the start of the quantified home?