Category: Tech news

Twitter today is introducing a new feature that will allow accounts to self-identify as bots by adding a label to their profile. This feature is designed to help people better differentiate between automated accounts — like bots that retweet the news, public service announcements or other updates — from those operated by humans. It’s not, however, designed to help users identify the “bad bots,” which are those that pose as people, often to spread misinformation or spam.

The company has been contemplating labeling bots for years.

In 2018, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was asked during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing whether he believed users had a “right to know” if they were speaking to a bot or a human on Twitter’s platform. He agreed that Twitter should add more context to tweets and was considering identifying bots, to the extent that it could. However, Dorsey also pointed out it would be more difficult to identify bots that were using scripting to give the appearance of being a human, compared with those that were leveraging Twitter’s API.

Last year, the company finally solidified those plans, saying it would later introduce new features that would allow users to be able to distinguish between human-run accounts and those that were automated. When Twitter launched its account verification system in May, it reminded users that it would soon offer other ways to identify different types of accounts beyond the long-coveted blue badge — such as labels for bots.

Image Credits: Twitter

Today, Twitter says its new “Automated Account” label that identifies “good bots” will be made available to over 500 Developer Accounts. This group will test the feature and provide feedback before it’s opened up more broadly to all Twitter developers. As it’s still a test for the time being, the label won’t be required.

However, when Twitter updated its Developer Policy last year, it did ask developers to indicate in their account profile or bio whether the account was a bot, what the account is and who’s behind it. These account labels would allow developers an easier way to comply with that policy rather than having to handwrite this information in their bio.

Twitter tells TechCrunch that based on what it learns during this experiment, it may decide to make adopting the label a requirement for all developers who run automated accounts in the future, once it becomes broadly available.

Image Credits: Twitter

To be clear, Twitter doesn’t have any problem with those who run good bots, as it understands how automation can allow accounts to update people with helpful, relevant or, sometimes, just fun information. The company even celebrated a few of its favorite bots when announcing today’s developer news, including the public service account @earthquakesSF; a bot offering COVID-19 updates, @vax_progress; a bot that offers an ongoing breakdown of the last 100 bills introduced in Congress, @last100bills; an accessibility-focused bot, @AltTxtReminder; and others that just add value in their own way, like @met_drawings, which shares public domain works from The Met’s Drawings & Prints department, or the goofy @EmojiMashupBot, among others.

All these will be a part of the initial test group.

Twitter is also less concerned with how consumers may use automation to update their own accounts, perhaps by using third-party tools like IFTTT to post links or other content.

“You are ultimately responsible for the actions taken with your account, or by applications associated with your account,” Twitter’s policy advises Twitter users. “Before authorizing a third-party application to access or use your account, make sure you’ve thoroughly investigated the application and understand what it will do.” It also adds that Twitter users that adopt automation will still need to adhere to Twitter’s guidelines.

The company has been on a tear lately in terms of rolling out new features. Just this week, it has launched Communities, tests of emoji reactions, support for full-width photos and videos and a way to “soft block” followers, among other things.

Twitter has not said how long the test would run before the Automated Account labels are rolled out more broadly.

The JioPhone Next, the much-awaited smartphone designed by Google and India’s Jio Platforms to tap hundreds of millions of users in the world’s second-largest internet market, won’t launch on Friday, the Indian technology giant said Thursday midnight.

In a statement issued just now, Jio Platforms said it has been testing the smartphone with a “limited set of users for further refinement” and is “actively working to make it available more widely” around the time of Diwali festival, which is scheduled for early November.

The Indian firm, which operates the largest telecom network with over 400 million subscribers, blamed global semiconductor shortages for the launch delay and said it expects the additional two months “will” mitigate that.

The JioPhone Next smartphone, unveiled in June this year, was scheduled to launch on Friday. Neither of the firms had given any indication in recent days that they may have to postpone the launch. “The companies remain committed to their vision of opening up new possibilities for millions of Indians, especially those who will experience the internet for the very first time,” the Indian firm said in a press statement.

Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and the chairman of Reliance Industries, which operates Jio Platforms, unveiling JioPhone Next at an event in June this year Image Credits: Jio Platforms

Powered by “extremely optimized Android” mobile operating system, the JioPhone Next phone is marketed to be an “ultra-affordable 4G smartphone” to tap the roughly 300 million users in India who are still on slower networks. The two firms have said that they plan to eventually launch the smartphone in other markets as well.

At an event in June, the two firms said the JioPhone Next will feature a “fast, high-quality camera” which will support HDR, and will be protected by the latest Android releases and security updates. It will also ship with a range of features, including Read Aloud and Translate Now that will work with any text on the phone screen, including web pages, apps, messages and even photos, the two firms have said.

Analysts have said in recent weeks that the JioPhone Next — whose price and tech specifications are yet to be revealed — could disrupt the Indian smartphone market — the world’s second largest — and help the telecom network further solidify its dominance in the country.

“At present, there are 430 million smartphone users, 115 million JioPhone users [Jio’s “smart” featurephone] and 320 million featurephone (2G) users in India. We believe smartphone users with devices priced above $100 are unlikely to opt for a sub $100 device,” analysts at Jefferies wrote in a report to clients this week. “That leaves 25% of smartphone users, i.e. 105 million smartphones, 115 million JioPhone users and 320 million featurephone users as the addressable market for JioPhone Next. Assuming replacement cycle of 2 years for smartphones and 3 years for JioPhone/featurephones, the addressable market for JioPhone Next could be 200m devices annually.”

The smartphone is the latest collaboration between the two firms. Last year, Google invested $4.5 billion in Jio Platforms and that’s where it first announced the plans to develop cheap smartphones with the Indian telecom operator. Facebook and scores of other firms have also bought stakes in the Indian firm. Jio Platforms operates a number of businesses, including telecom giant Jio Infocomm, which competes with Airtel and Vodafone Idea; and e-commerce firm JioMart, which competes with Tata-owned BigBasket, SoftBank-backed Grofers and Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart.

Southeast Asian tech companies are drawing the attention of investors around the world. In 2020, startups in the region raised over $8.2 billion, about four times more than they did in 2015. This trend continued in 2021, with regional M&A hitting a record high of $124.8 billion in the first half of 2021, up 83% from a year earlier.

This begs the question: Who exactly is investing in Southeast Asia?

Let’s explore the three key types of investors pouring money into and driving the growth of Southeast Asia’s tech ecosystem.

Big tech

Southeast Asia has become an attractive market for U.S. and Chinese tech firms. Internet penetration here stands at 70%, higher than the global average, and digital adoption in the region remains nascent — it wasn’t until the pandemic that adoption of digital services such as e-wallets and online shopping took off.

China’s tech giants Tencent and Alibaba were among the first to support early e-commerce growth in Southeast Asia with investments in Sea Limited and Lazada, and have since expanded their footprint into other internet verticals. Alibaba has backed Akulaku, M-Pay (eMonkey), DANA, Wave Money and Mynt (GCash), while Tencent has invested in Voyager Innovations (PayMaya), SHAREit, iflix, Ookbee and Sanook.

U.S. tech firms have also recently entered the scene. In June 2020, Gojek closed a $3 billion Series F round from Google, Facebook, Tencent and Visa. Google, together with Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, invested some $350 million in Tokopedia in October. Meanwhile, Microsoft invested an undisclosed amount in Grab in 2018 and has invested $100 million in Indonesian e-commerce firm Bukalapak.

Venture capitalists

In Q1 2021, Southeast Asian startups raised $6 billion, according to DealStreetAsia, positioning 2021 as another record year for VC investment in the region.

The region is also rising in prominence as a destination for investment capital relative to the rest of Asia. Regional VC investment grew 5.2 times to $8.2 billion in 2020 from $1.6 billion in 2015, as we can see in the table below.

Image Credits: Jungle VC

Southeast Asia also has many opportunities for VC investment relative to its market size. From 2015 to 2020, China saw VC investment of nearly $300 per person; for Southeast Asia — despite a recent investment boom — this metric sits at just $47.50 per person, or just a sixth of that in China. This implies a substantial opportunity for investments to develop the region’s digital economy.

The region’s rising population and growth prospects are higher due to China’s population growth challenges, alongside the latter’s higher digital economy market saturation and maturity.

In 2021, corporations are expected to take a stand on even the most divisive issues.

A battle between Box and its majority shareholder Starboard Value over control of the board ended today when the company’s slate of directors easily defeated Starboard’s. It culminated months of maneuvering on both sides as they battled for control of the company.

Box, in a somewhat generic statement, expressed gratitude for the results:

Box appreciates the support and perspectives we have received from our stockholders throughout this process. The Board and management team will remain focused on continuing to transform Box and executing Box’s strategy to grow profitably and deliver significant value to all Box stockholders.

Starboard on the other hand, as you might expect, was unhappy with the outcome and didn’t hide that in a letter to shareholders released earlier today.

“We are certainly disappointed by the results of this election, which were heavily skewed by the voting rights tied to the preferred equity financing and the use of stockholder capital to aggressively repurchase shares ahead of the record date from stockholders likely to support change. At this juncture, the future of Box is in the Board’s hands, and there is a significant amount of work left to be done. Many commitments have been made, and we hope that Box will finally be able to follow through on its promises to drive improved results, accountability, governance, and compensation practices,” managing director Peter A. Feld wrote in the letter.

This all began when Starboard Value invested in Box, taking a 7.5% stake, which would eventually grow to 8.8% in the company. With that stake, it became one of the largest shareholder, but it remained relatively quiet until March of this year. That is when public rumblings began that Starboard was unhappy with the direction of the company, a conflict that could have ultimately resulted in the ouster of founder and CEO Aaron Levie or the sale of Box.

The situation took an interesting turn when Box announced it was taking a $500 million investment from KKR, a move that Starboard took great exception to and made clear in a letter published at the beginning of May that it wanted significant changes to take place. As we wrote at the time:

While they couched the letter in mostly polite language, it’s quite clear Starboard is exasperated with Box. “While we appreciate the dialogue we have had with Box’s management team and Board of Directors (the “Board”) over the past two years, we have grown increasingly frustrated with continued poor results, questionable capital allocation decisions, and subpar shareholder returns,” Starboard wrote in its letter.

Less than a week later Starboard made a move for board seats and the battle was on for control. Box’s position was strengthened by two decent earnings reports prior to the vote; the company took the unusual move of delivering the results early in order to give the voters that information prior to the vote.

The company also made the unusual move of filing a document with the SEC that pushed back against Starboard’s slate of candidates. In the end, Box won the battle. Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder and principal analyst at Deep Analysis, who has been watching the content management space where Box operates for years, sees this as a victory for Levie and Box.

“It was not a surprise to me that Box won the day. In my opinion, Starboard misread and underestimated the loyalty that Aaron Levie generates. The fact is that to most Box employees and investors, the company is a success story, and they also know that the customer base is pretty engaged and that there is plenty of room for future growth,” he said.

“For Box this vote of confidence will mean that they can (if they want) make some acquisitions and invest more in R&D moving forward, without constantly having an aggressive investor looking over their shoulder,” Pelz-Sharpe added.

It’s hard to know what happens next, but Starboard still maintains its shares for now, and it still has some clout in those numbers. Throughout its ownership tenure, Box has performed better, as the recent earnings results have shown, and the firm says that this remains the ultimate goal.

“As we have repeatedly stated, our only goal has been to help Box perform better and adopt best-in-class practices across operating performance, financial results, governance and compensation in order to create long-term value for the benefit of all stockholders. We will continue to monitor progress at Box, and we hope to see the company embrace the changes catalyzed by our involvement and create long-term value,” Starboard’s Feld wrote.

For years, algorithms have driven workers to meet punishing quotas. A state bill trying to reinject humans into the workflow has cleared a big hurdle.

Houseparty, the social video chat app acquired by Fortnite maker Epic Games for a reported $35 million back in 2019, is shutting down. The company says Houseparty will be discontinued in October when the app will stop functioning for its existing users; it will be pulled from the app stores today, however. Related to this move, Epic Games’ “Fortnite Mode” feature, which leveraged Houseparty to bring video chat to Fortnite gamers, will also be discontinued.

Founded in 2015, Houseparty offered a way for users to participate in group video chats with friends and even play games, like Uno, trivia, Heads Up and others. Last year, Epic Games integrated Houseparty with Fortnite, initially to allow gamers to see live feeds from friends while gaming, then later adding support to livestream gameplay directly into Houseparty. At the time, these integrations appeared to be the end goal that explained why Epic Games had bought the social startup in the first place.

Now, just over two years after the acquisition was announced, and less than half a year since support for livestreaming was added to the app, Houseparty is shutting down.

The company didn’t offer any solid insight into what, at first glance, feels like an admission of failure to capitalize on its acquisition. But the reality is that Epic Games may have something larger in store beyond just video chat. That said, all Epic Games would say today is that the Houseparty team could no longer give the app the attention it required — a statement that indicates an executive decision to shift the team’s focus to other matters.

While none of the Houseparty team members are being let go as a result of this move, we’re told, they will be joining other teams where they will work on new ways to allow for “social interactions” across the Epic Games family of products. The company’s announcement hinted that those social features would be designed and built at the “metaverse scale.”

The “metaverse” is an increasingly used buzzword that references a shared virtual environment, like those provided by large-scale online gaming platforms such as Fortnite, Roblox and others. Facebook, too, claims the metaverse is the next big gambit for social networking, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg having described it as an “embodied internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at.”

To some extent, Fortnite has begun to embrace the metaverse by offering non-gaming experiences like online concerts you attend as your avatar, and other live events. Ahead of its shutdown, Houseparty also toyed with live events that users would co-watch and participate in alongside their friends.

An Epic Games spokesperson tells TechCrunch the Houseparty team has worked on (and continues to work on) a number of other projects that focus on social. But some of the “multiple, larger projects” Epic Games has in the works remain undisclosed, we’re told.

In terms of social products, Houseparty’s technology now underpins all of Fortnite voice chat and the features they built are widely available for free to developers through Epic Games Services. They also worked on building out new social experiences, which have ranged from the social RSVP functions for Fortnite’s global events, like the recent Ariana Grande concert, to the upcoming “Operation: Sky Fire” event for collaborating quests and other game mechanics. More social functionality and new experiences are also being built into Fortnite’s user-generated content platform, Create Mode.

While it may seem odd to close an app that only last year experienced a boost in usage due to the pandemic, it appears the COVID bump didn’t have staying power.

At the height of lockdowns, Houseparty had reported it had gained 50 million new sign-ups in a month’s time as users looked to video apps to connect with family and friends while the world was shut down. But as the pandemic wore on, other video chat experiences gained more ground. Zoom, which had established itself as an essential tool for remote work, became a tool for hanging out with friends after-hours, as well. Facebook also started to eat Houseparty’s lunch with its debut of drop-in video chat “Rooms” last year, which offered a similar group video experience. And bored users shifted to audio-based social networking on apps like Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces.

Image Credits: Apptopia

According to data from Apptopia, Houseparty has been continually declining since the pandemic bump. To date, its app has seen a total of 111 million downloads across iOS and Android, with the majority (63 million) on iOS. The U.S. was Houseparty’s largest market, accounting for 43.4% of downloads, followed by the U.K. (9.8%), then Germany (5.6%).

Epic Games, meanwhile, said the app served “tens of millions” of users worldwide. It insists the closure wasn’t decided lightly, nor was the decision to shutter “Fortnite Mode” made due to lack of adoption.

Houseparty will alert users to the shutdown via in-app notifications ahead of its final closure in October. At that point, Fortnite Mode will also no longer be available.

Earlier today, as part of a private event, this editor was afforded the opportunity to talk with some of the biggest names in the world of private equity, including Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein; Bain Capital co-chair Steve Pagliuca; Jean Salata, the CEO and founding partner of Baring Private Equity Asia; and Sheila Patel, the vice chairman of B Capital Group AGM and formerly the chair of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

We covered a lot of ground, from how interested Carlyle and the other firms are in blockchain technologies (the feedback here was a little mixed), to how focused they are on sustainable and socially responsible investing. On this front, Rubenstein claimed that “private equity people are very focused on it,” and predicted that when a financial metric emerges to better assess companies on this front “within the next five years,” it will become a routine factor in evaluating companies.

Patel — who previously served on Goldman’s inclusion and diversity committee — agreed, noting upward of one-third of investors right now find it impossible to measure so-called ESG criteria (though she expects this to change quickly).

Naturally, too, we discussed the current market, including how the investors differentiate their firms’ offerings when everyone these days has a money cannon — and how long they expect to be operating at hyperspeed. In feedback that might surprise some readers and will seem obvious to others, the PE execs suggested that this go-go market could easily continue into 2023, if not beyond.

Only attendees of the event will have access to the full interview, but some notes from this last part of our discussion follow:

Steve Pagliuca:

[P]art of the reason we’re doing so well has been massive government intervention, which I think was warranted. As that starts to wane, we may see an effect from that. The unemployment rate right now is just over 5.2%, which is, to me, astounding in the middle of a pandemic, and it looks like there are lots of jobs out there still unfilled. Part of that is because the [government] payments came out, and less workers were looking for work, so we might see unemployment continue to go down as those payments stop, and the impact of that is going to be a key issue.

David Rubenstein:

They say this is the best of times and the worst of times. It’s the best of times for investors, because if you’re in the tech world, if you’re in the investing world and you’re investing in India, China and the United States, you’ve made a lot of money and you’re beginning to think you’re a genius because you made so much money, and you just don’t realize that it’s the worst of times for people that don’t have internet access, [or who] work with their hands and not with their minds as much, [or who] aren’t educated [or] have childcare [needs]. Really, in the United States and probably other parts of the world, we are further and further creating [an] economic divide unfortunately and greater income inequality and a lack of social mobility, and that’s a real problem.

For those for whom it’s been the best of times, eventually something will end. At some point, the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates —  probably not until 2023, but maybe before — and at some point, people begin to say, “I’m taking more of my chips off the table. I’m not going to invest as much at these valuations.” I just got off a call this morning [regarding] a small deal in Asia where people want to pay things like 25 times projected revenues.

Jean Salata:

You cannot separate the context of where we are with interest rates from where valuations are. At some point, interest rates are going to go up, but at the moment, what we have is a Fed that has bought something like $4 trillion worth of bonds over the last 18 months. I think right now, $120 billion a month is going into the system, which is depressing rates. [Meanwhile] people need to find a home for their investments to generate some kind of return, [meaning] pension funds, endowments, individual investors.

If you look at valuations today, they’re probably in the 99th percentile or near the peak as far as multiples go. But if you look at them relative to the rates and earnings yield, less the say the 10-year [Treasury] rate, I think that’s probably only in the 20th or the 30th percentile —  it’s something like that. And as I look back to 1999 and 2000, which I lived through and barely survived, the difference today is that although valuations are similar in terms of the frothiness, in terms of multiples, [that] interest rates back then were about 5% or 6%, and today, they’re 1%. That is a big difference.

There are also structural things going on, and it comes back to this point about income inequality, which is a big issue everywhere in the world, including in China, by the way, and is self-perpetuating. People with financial assets are benefiting from what’s going on with [the Federal Reserve’s bond purchases]. Valuations are rising, and then the people who have all that money save more, so savings rates are going up, and as you save more because you don’t need to spend that much money, [that cycle] depresses rates even further. [So] I believe that even when the Fed starts to taper off and starts reducing [how much it’s spending on bonds], you’ll see rates staying lower than they have been in the past, which could support higher valuations levels for quite some time.

Steve Pagliuca:

If you look at the ballooning national debt, if you applied a 5.5% interest rate to that, the interest that the government would be paying would be close to half the budget. So I just don’t see the politicians saying, “We’re going to [raise interest] rates really high.” Instead, they’re going to keep them down as long as they can, because the taxes will go up enormously if rates go back to historic [levels]. They can handle the spending because rates are so low, so you’re going to [continue to] see low interest rate trends, which props up these valuations.

The aviation industry is notoriously difficult to decarbonize, in part because airplanes use a petroleum-based fuel to fly.

Alder Fuels wants to change that. The new clean tech company, headed by Bryan Sherbacow, is developing a low-carbon jet fuel that can be used as a 100% drop-in replacement for petroleum fuel, without needing to adapt existing aircraft or engines. That’s notable because the only commercially available sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) still requires a 50-50 blend with conventional fuel.

The technology has piqued the interest of the aviation industry. Alder Fuels said Thursday it has inked a multimillion dollar investment from aviation giants United and Honeywell — as well as a purchase agreement from United for 1.5 billion gallons of fuel, the largest known agreement for SAF in aviation history.

United consumes around 4 billion gallons of fuel per year, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch, so the purchase agreement would account for nearly 40% of the airline’s overall annual fuel consumption.

Before the fuel starts powering United airplanes, it must meet specifications outlined by ASTM International, an international organization that sets the standards for a wide range of materials and products. From there, Alder and Honeywell expect to commercialize the technology by 2025.

Alder Fuels was formally launched earlier this year, but Sherbacow has been assessing the technology for around five years, he said in a recent interview with TechCrunch. It became clear through his previous work that the technology behind the low-carbon fuel — and especially the raw materials — needed to be scalable and widely available.

“What we’re all looking for is [ … ] how do you access these carbon oil precursors and efficiently convert them into something that works within the existing refining infrastructure?” Sherbacow said.

To solve that problem, he’s turned to carbon-rich woody biomass, like agricultural waste, which is turned into crude oil that can be used to make aviation fuel. The company uses a pyrolysis-based technology that transforms the biomass into a liquid and treats it in such a way that it can be put into existing refineries. Alder Fuels will initially use Honeywell’s proprietary “Ecofining” hydroprocessing technology. The ultimate aim is to make the new fuel compatible with all refining assets.

“There’s significant amount of [woody biomass] that’s already industrially aggregated but has either no or very low economic value today,” Sherbacow explained. “But it’s a great opportunity for us because it’s a store of carbon that we can utilize.” It could even open up new markets for companies in forestry, agriculture and even the paper industry, which are already generating plenty of biowaste.

Alder Fuels’ research is supported by the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency and the Department of Energy, and Sherbacow stressed the importance of public-private partnerships to decarbonizing the aviation industry. Climate change has been of particular interest to President Joe Biden’s administration, and incentives for sustainable aviation fuel will likely end up in the $3.5 trillion spending bill currently being debated by Congress.

“That’s one of the roles of government … to help the transition,” he said. “You need to incentivize the incumbents to change their behavior, or they’re going to resist a disruptive change.”

GM has extended a shutdown at its Orion Assembly Plant another two weeks due to a battery pack shortage related to the widespread Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV safety recall.

GM said the extended downtime at the Orion plant will last through September 20. Orion Assembly Plant in Michigan has been shut down since August 23.

The recall, which now includes all Chevy Bolt EV and EUV models made since 2017, was issued after the automaker discovered two manufacturing defects in the battery cell that could increase the risk of fire. The possible fire risk prompted GM to recommend Bolt owners set the vehicle to a 90% state of charge limitation and avoid depleting the battery below 70 miles of range. The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration recommends Bolt drivers park their vehicles away from their homes to reduce fire risk.

The automaker said it is working with its supplier LG Chem to “update manufacturing processes.”

Orion was initially shuttered in August because of a shortage of semiconductor chips. GM later notified employees that the plant would continue to be down because of a shortage of batteries related to the recall.

The recall is expected to cost GM $1.8 billion. A GM spokesperson did not provide an update on whether this extended downtime would push that number higher. The automaker has said it will seek reimbursement from LG Chem.

Chip shortages

While the global shortage of semiconductor chips has persisted, GM said it will be able to resume production at several of its plants over the next two weeks.

Full production will begin at its Fort Wayne Assembly and Silao Assembly plants, which produces the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra 1500 models, beginning September 13 after being briefly impacted by the global semiconductor shortage, GM said.

All of GM’s full-size truck and full-size SUV plants in North American will be running full production next week.

GM’s Spring Hill Assembly plant in Tennessee will resume production of the GMC Acadia and Cadillac XT5 and XT6 on September 20, after being shuttered since mid-July. That plant will be shut down again as part of a previously scheduled extended downtime beginning the week of September 27 through the week of November 22 for new-model tooling installation.

Cadillac XT4 production, which has been down since February 8, will resume at the Fairfax Assembly in Kansas. GM said production of the Chevrolet Malibu, which is also at Fairfax, will remain down.

The company extended downtimes by one week at Lansing Delta Township and Wentzville, along with an additional week of Chevrolet Blazer production downtime at its Ramos facility.

The quest to make fusion power a reality recently took a massive step forward. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced the results of an experiment with an unprecedented high fusion yield. A single laser shot initiated reactions that released 1.3 megajoules of fusion yield energy with signatures of propagating nuclear burn.

Reaching this milestone indicates just how close fusion actually is to achieving power production. The latest results demonstrate the rapid pace of progress — especially as lasers are evolving at breathtaking speed.

Indeed, the laser is one of the most impactful technological inventions since the end of World War II. Finding widespread use in an incredibly diverse range of applications — including machining, precision surgery and consumer electronics — lasers are an essential part of everyday life. Few know, however, that lasers are also heralding an exciting and entirely new chapter in physics: enabling controlled nuclear fusion with positive energy gain.

After six decades of innovation, lasers are now assisting us in the urgent process of developing clean, dense and efficient fuels, which, in turn, are needed to help solve the world’s energy crisis through large-scale decarbonized energy production. The peak power attainable in a laser pulse has increased every decade by a factor of 1,000.

Physicists recently conducted a fusion experiment that produced 1,500 terawatts of power. For a short period of time, this generated four to five times more energy than what the whole world consumes at a given moment. In other words, we are already able to produce vast amounts of power. Now we also need to produce vast amounts of energy so as to offset the energy expended to drive the igniting lasers.

Beyond lasers, there are also considerable advances on the target side. The recent use of nanostructure targets allows for more efficient absorption of laser energies and ignition of the fuel. This has only been possible for a few years, but here, too, technological innovation is on a steep incline with tremendous advancement from year to year.

In the face of such progress, you may wonder what is still holding us back from making commercial fusion a reality.

There remain two significant challenges: First, we need to bring the pieces together and create an integrated process that satisfies all the physical and technoeconomic requirements. Second, we require sustainable levels of investment from private and public sources to do so. Generally speaking, the field of fusion is woefully underfunded. This is shocking given the potential of fusion, especially in comparison to other energy technologies.

Investments in clean energy amounted to more than $500 billion in 2020. The funds that go into fusion research and development are only a fraction of that. There are countless brilliant scientists working in the sector already, as well as eager students wishing to enter the field. And, of course, we have excellent government research labs. Collectively, researchers and students believe in the power and potential of controlled nuclear fusion. We should ensure financial support for their work to make this vision a reality.

What we need now is an expansion of public and private investment that does justice to the opportunity at hand. Such investments may have a longer time horizon, but their eventual impact is without parallel. I believe that net-energy gain is within reach in the next decade; commercialization, based on early prototypes, will follow in very short order.

But such timelines are heavily dependent on funding and the availability of resources. Considerable investment is being allocated to alternative energy sources — wind, solar, etc. — but fusion must have a place in the global energy equation. This is especially true as we approach the critical breakthrough moment.

If laser-driven nuclear fusion is perfected and commercialized, it has the potential to become the energy source of choice, displacing the many existing, less ideal energy sources. This is because fusion, if done correctly, offers energy that is in equal parts clean, safe and affordable. I am convinced that fusion power plants will eventually replace most conventional power plants and related large-scale energy infrastructure that are still so dominant today. There will be no need for coal or gas.

The ongoing optimization of the fusion process, which results in higher yields and lower costs, promises energy production at much below the current price point. At the limit, this corresponds to a source of unlimited energy. If you have unlimited energy, then you also have unlimited possibilities. What can you do with it? I foresee reversing climate change by taking out the carbon dioxide we have put into the atmosphere over the last 150 years.

With a future empowered by fusion technology, you would also be able to use energy to desalinate water, creating unlimited water resources that would have an enormous impact in arid and desert regions. All in all, fusion enables better societies, keeping them sustainable and clean rather than dependent on destructive, dirty energy sources and related infrastructures.

Through years of dedicated research at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility, I was privileged to witness and lead the first inertial confinement fusion experiments. I saw the seed of something remarkable being planted and taking root. I have never been more excited than I am now to see the fruits of laser technology harvested for the empowerment and advancement of humankind.

My fellow scientists and students are committed to moving fusion from the realm of tangibility into that of reality, but this will require a level of trust and help. A small investment today will have a big impact toward providing a much needed, more welcome energy alternative in the global arena.

I am betting on the side of optimism and science, and I hope that others will have the courage to do so, too.

Supabase, the backend-as-a-service startup, announced this week that it raised a $30 million Series A.

Supabase is often described as an open source alternative to Google’s Firebase … which is a pretty good way to put it for those who know what Firebase is. For those who don’t: Supabase is a collection of tools that helps developers build projects more quickly by automatically handling a whole lot of the behind-the-scenes work and wiring.

Create a project, and Supabase will give you a Postgres database; an API for interacting with said database that automatically evolves (and documents itself!) as your database changes; a user authentication system that plays friendly with the popular login providers (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, etc.); a storage system for handling things like image and video uploads; and a UI for overseeing and managing it all. It takes a bunch of work you’d need to do to build just about any modern app or service and waves it away with a couple of clicks.

Supabase is free for hobby projects (or when you just want to tinker with it). Once you start needing bigger databases or data backups, the price scales starting at $25 per project per month. Alternatively, you can deploy it yourself, though that’s a bit tougher and currently means losing the management UI.

This Series A comes pretty quickly following the company’s last raise — a $6 million round announced in December 2020. I’m told this round was funded predominantly by Coatue, with some of it reserved for a few new key angel investors, including GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner, PagerDuty co-founder Alex Solomon and Docker co-founder Solomon Hykes.

Supabase co-founder Paul Copplestone tells me that the team is now made up of 24 people, distributed all over the world. “We were born remote,” he said.

This reasoning is twofold: The company started growing just as the pandemic began to spread, and it’s largely hiring people who are already working on and contributing to the tools that make Supabase possible. Why make them move around the world when they’re already doing a good job?

“We use, I think, six different tools,” Copplestone said. “And we employ lead maintainers of several of those tools. We employ open source contributors, anyone who’s contributing, no matter where they live.”

Supabase was part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 class, the accelerator’s first cohort to be entirely remote. Meanwhile, YC classes are growing increasingly large; the S20 batch, for example, came in at over 200 companies. It can be hard to stand out in a group like that, but Supabase seemed to do it — I was hearing chatter about them early and often.

Here’s what it looks like to fire up a Supabase backend:

The game’s art team reveals the “80 percent beautiful, but mysterious” ethos that has guided the franchise’s evolution.

The company has partnered with Ray-Ban to make a pair of video-capturing Wayfarers. They’re everything you hoped for and feared in smart glasses.

It also looks awesome AF.