Category: Tech news

Space Force’s Lt. Gen. John Thompson spoke at TC Sessions: Space earlier this week. Throughout the wide-ranging interview, General Thompson explained the various ways and means for how private companies like startups should interact with Space Force.

Gen. Thompson knows what he’s talking about. As the commander of the Space and Missiles Systems Center, he oversees research, design, development and acquisition of satellites and their associated command and control systems for the U.S. Space Force. His role puts him in direct contact with some of the most ambitious and innovative startups.

He pointed to three things when asked what’s a good first step for interfacing with the Space Force:

1) Join the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC). He describes it as “a purpose-built consortium that values partnerships between government, traditional industry partners, and non-traditional partners like academia, small businesses and startups” that’s grown to more than 440 members in three years.

At the end of the interview, Gen. Thompson notes that he’s working on expanding the deployment of SpEC’s funds to reach more “game-changing technologies that those non-traditional small businesses and startups are bringing to SpEC.

2) Watch for Space Pitch Days. The next event is in the spring of 2021. These pitch days give startups an inside track to government contracts. Apparently, after the first event held with the Air Force, which Gen. Thompson hosted, contracts were offered within three minutes of the pitches.

3) Look into SpaceWERX; a program launched this December to help Space Force work with private sector companies to field new technology for military applications. Like its Air Force counterpart, this “werx” center is a key component for Space Force’s acquisition strategy.

“Dr. Roper just announced it last week at the Space and Missile System Center,” Gen. Thompson said, “[This] is an integral part of the acquisition enterprise of the United States. Space Force is a full partner in the SpaceWERX endeavor. And using the WERX model, we hope to inject more small businesses and startups into our innovation ecosystem.”

Following numerous reports that the U.S. government was seeking to crack down on DJI, the Department of Commerce today will be adding the drone giant to its “Entity List.”  Reuters and Drone DJ have issued early reporting based on a conference call with a state official. The full list of 77 impacted companies is available here.

The news comes as a pretty massive blow to DJI. The 14-year-old Chinese company has been an utterly dominant force in the drone category. Here in the States, it commands an estimated 77% of the market.

Increased tensions between the U.S. and China have long been a looming concern for DJI’s presence in the States, with surveillance capabilities being a particular sticking point. Along with their wildly successful consumer drones, DJI also has a wide reach in both industrial and governmental applications. In fact, the company specifically offers a government line of products as part of its enterprise offerings.

DJI is one of dozens of companies added to the list. Also of note is chipmaker SMIC. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross didn’t mince words in a statement issued after the list went public:

China’s corrupt and bullying behavior both inside and outside its borders harms U.S. national security interests, undermines the sovereignty of our allies and partners, and violates the human rights and dignity of ethnic and religious minority groups. Commerce will act to ensure that America’s technology—developed and produced according to open and free-market principles—is not used for malign or abusive purposes.

China actively promotes the reprehensible practices of forced labor, DNA collection and ubiquitous surveillance to repress its citizens in Xinjiang and elsewhere. Over the last two years this administration has added nearly 50 entities to the Entity List for their support for the Chinese Communist Party’s despicable offensive against vulnerable ethnic minorities. With these new additions, we are applying those principles to the rest of China, including in Tibet, and to the authoritarian regimes to which these practices are being exported.

The DOC notably placed Huawei and several of its affiliates on the list last year, a move that has severely hamstrung the hardware giant. Among other things, it’s cut off the company’s access from key U.S. technologies like Google’s Android and other software. Huawei has opted to develop its own operating system, but the landing has been a difficult one to stick.

There’s been a good deal of talk around restricting use of the company’s technology by federal and state departments, but this update could prove even more sweeping. DJI has been bracing for this manner of revelation over the past year and change. The drone maker has spent a lot of time and resources lobbying on Capitol Hill. There’s been a good deal of speculation around the shape these bans will take after a new president is sworn in on January 20.

Surprisingly, DJI was flagged as part of the report’s focus on “wide-scale human rights abuse.” Likely that specifically revolves around issues of “high-technology surveillance”:

The ERC determined to add the entities AGCU Scientech; China National Scientific Instruments and Materials (CNSIM); DJI; and Kuang-Chi Group for activities contrary to U.S. foreign policy interests. Specifically, these four entities have enabled wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance, and/or facilitated the export of items by China that aid repressive regimes around the world, contrary to U.S. foreign policy interests.

We’ve reached out to DJI for comment.

Competitor Skydio has offered this rather celebratory response to today’s news:

Based apparently on DJI’s support for abhorrent human rights violations, today’s addition of DJI to the entity list sends an unmistakable message: DJI does not share our values and cannot be trusted. DJI had already acknowledged its obligation to share sensitive information collected in the U.S. and around the world with the Chinese Communist Party–a serious security risk. Now we learn that DJI has profited for years by supporting the suppression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province–the world’s most egregious example of human rights abuses. Today’s news also sends an unmistakable signal to the marketplace: companies should think twice about doing business with a known violator of human rights.”

You might not know yet of XYZ Venture Capital, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm, but many veterans of Palantir are surely aware of it. XYZ says it has already backed 22 startups whose founders came out of the data analysis company, including most notably, Anduril, Lucky Palmer’s defense tech startup. In fact, the founder of XYZ, Ross Fubini, says his firm wrote Anduril its first check.

It all dates back to a key introduction. Fubini is a Carnegie Mellon grad who cofounded an enterprise company, CubeTree, that a dozen years later, sold to SuccessFactors, which was itself acquired by SAP the next year, in 2011.

Then, like a lot of founders, he started writing checks.

First, Fubini linked up with Mitch Kapor, another software mogul turned investor and a friend of Fubini who bought him into his venture firm and taught him the ropes. During his one year spent with the outfit, Fubini says, he wrote seed checks into the digital care company Omada Health, the optimization platform Optimizely (acquired this fall), and LendUp, the payday loan company that was split into two businesses back in 2018.

From Kapor Capital, it was onto Canaan Partners as a venture partner and, just three years later, to Village Global, the early-stage venture firm that was founded in 2017 with the backing of prominent founders like Bill Gates and Reid Hoffman. (Fubini helped cofound the outfit with a handful of others.) At the same time, Fubini began raising his own pool of capital under the brand XYZ Ventures, eventually launching a $70 million fund.

Now he’s turning the enterprise into a bigger organization.

For starters, this year, XYZ closed its second fund with $80 million in capital commitments from what Fubini says is predominately institutional investors, and it has been investing actively. Fubini says the firm has already written checks to 30 different startups that range in size from $500,000 to $4 million in exchange for 12% to 20% ownership.

He also brought aboard a partner: Chauncey Kerr Hamilton, who spent more than five years as a partner operations manager with First Round and was looking for a new challenge when a mutual friend introduced her to Fubini. “I kept hearing about Ross from founders and other investors and we met for coffee, then we kept meeting week after week,” she says of their earlier conversations.

Hamilton says she realized over time that “we’re kindred spirits.” But she has also pushed Fubini to be more public for the sake of XYZ’s portfolio companies.

As a former projects editor at Wired before leaping into venture capital, she half-kiddingly refers to the “mystique” of XYZ Ventures, but she also wondered if it might be easier for founders to discuss their lead investor if they could point to more than Fubini’s LinkedIn page.

Certainly, it makes sense as XYZ widens its aperture beyond Palantir, which was itself long known for keeping a low profile and where Fubini’s relationship began when he introduced Palantir’s first business hire to its first engineer. The first, a personal friend, is today Palantir’s chief operating officer, Shyam Sankar; the second, Akash (“Aki”) Jain, a former colleague of Fubini, is now the company’s president.

“It’s the highest value thing I’ve done,” Fubini says of bringing the two together, which led to an early and lasting advisor role at the company, where he helped develop senior talent and work through challenges (and received advisor shares in return).

Indeed, he has since become a first call for some who spin out of the company. In addition to Anduril —  cofounded by former Palantir execs Matt Grimm, Trae Stephens, and Brian Schimpf — XYZ has more recently backed the the San Diego-based financial planning platform Mosaic (cofounder Bijan Moallemi, a former finance exec at Palantir).

It also wrote the first check for Saltbox, an Atlanta-based startup that’s building co-working units for founders needing warehouse space. Saltbox’s founder, Tyler Scriven, previously spent more than seven years as a chief of staff at Palantir.

Fubini and Hamilton stress that while a meaningful portion of XYZ’s capital has flowed into the “Palantir diaspora,” the company has other areas of interest, too, mostly enterprise related.

XYZ is very focused, for example, on fintech, betting on Bond Technologies, a company that helps brands and banks integrate their offerings. It has insure-tech investments, like the brokerage Newfront Insurance. And it is focused on security and counts among its portfolio companies, a now highly valued outfit that poorly handled a sexual harassment situation but seems to have survived it.

XYZ even made a direct-to-consumer bet recently, though Fubini and Hamilton aren’t talking about it just yet.

Mostly, they say, they’re focused on “trends we believe are exploding,” says Hamilton. Think video, she says. Think fintech infrastructure, she adds. “For fintech that’s building a new bank, we think three companies will replace the crappy software” that supports them, says Fubini.

As for how they wins deals against VCs when it comes to founders to whom they aren’t already connected in some way, Fubini says it’s not so complicated. Being “bizarrely honest” has proved helpful, he says. But also, he says, “If you’re good, and you work goddamn hard, you start seeing more stuff.”

Just six month after raising its first bit of outside funding, ClickUp has closed $100 million in new funding and reached a $1 billion valuation, a report in Bloomberg first reported.

The company has seen plenty of growth in the past several months to justify that new unicorn status, including doubling the amount of users to 2 million. In a press release the company also detailed it had grown revenue nine times over since the beginning of the year.

This latest $100 million round was led by Canadian firm Georgian with participation from Craft Ventures, which led the startup’s $35 million Series A back in June. The high valuation showcases just how eager investors are to find winners in the productivity software space, which has seen massive customer gains as an industry this year, partially as a result of shifting corporate attitudes toward working from home.

ClickUp is aiming to further capitalize as it scales its team and product. The company of 200 has doubled in size since its last raise and is hoping to double again in the next several months, CEO Zeb Evans tells TechCrunch.

ClickUp sells productivity software, but their main sell has been tying several products in that space into a single platform, aiming to reduce the number of tools their customers use. The team has recently begun integrating tools like email into their platform so that users can complete workflows inside the product.

“It’s not just like a value play of using one app instead of three or four, it’s an efficiency play by saving so much time and frustration from having all the other different solutions,” Evans tells TechCrunch.

Even as the company continues scaling the product through weekly updates to the company’s apps, including a newly revamped iOS app which launched today (Android launches tomorrow), the team is looking toward how they can build for the long-term.

As to how long this cash will last, Evans isn’t making any promises. “I think this will keep us going for a while, though to be honest with you I would’ve said the same thing with the Series A,” Evans says.

Fintech startup Revolut is tweaking its subscription plans with a new mid-tier offering called Revolut Plus — it costs £2.99 per month. Like N26 Smart and Monzo Plus, the new plan is a pandemic-proof package that doesn’t focus as much on travel.

For the past couple of years, challenger banks and alternatives to traditional bank accounts have been packaging additional services into paid plans. Essentially, those fintech startups are slowly becoming freemium software-as-a-service companies.

The majority of users don’t subscribe to paid plans. But a small portion is willing to pay a fixed monthly fee to access advanced features, get an insurance package and pay less in variable fees.

Revolut already has two paid plans — Premium and Metal. Premium increases limits on free ATM withdrawals and foreign exchange. You also get overseas medical insurance, delayed baggage and flight insurance and winter sports coverage. You can also access advanced features, such as disposable virtual cards and Revolut Junior accounts

With a Metal plan, your insurance package is a bit more thorough, with purchase protection and car hire excess. You get a tiny bit of cash back on purchases (0.1% in Europe, 1% outside of Europe capped at the monthly subscription price) and higher limits across various products.

Another big selling point has been card designs. With the Metal plan, as the name suggests, you get a metal card. It’s not that useful but some people like it. Premium subscribers can also choose between premium card designs.

Revolut Premium costs £6.99 per month and Revolut Metal costs £12.99 per month (or €7.99 and €13.99, respectively in Europe). You pay a bit less if you pay upfront for a year.

So what is Revolut Plus? It costs £2.99 per month, which makes it a lot more affordable than Revolut Premium. The main selling point is purchase protection provided by Qover. All paid plans now get purchase protection with different limits on damaged or stolen goods (up to £1,000, £2,500 and £10,000 depending on your plan). You can get a refund on purchases up to 90 days after buying eligible products. If you book a ticket and your event is cancelled, you could also get a refund.

In addition to a new card design, Revolut Plus subscribers can also use virtual cards. You can also create junior accounts with the new mid-tier plan.

As you can see, there’s no overseas travel insurance. You also don’t get unlimited free currency exchange (other than spread). Revolut Plus is focused on people who mostly use their Revolut account in their home country.

Revolut is also tweaking other plans, so it’s going to be important to check the terms and conditions before you renew your paid plan. The new Plus plan is available today in the U.K. and will be rolled out next week in the European Economic Area.

Image Credits: Revolut

When Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, formerly of Pinterest’s policy team, alleged racial and gender discrimination at Pinterest in June, the hope was for Pinterest to make them whole and address its culture of alleged discrimination, Ozoma told TechCrunch. But that’s not what happened.

Just two months later, former Pinterest COO Françoise Brougher sued Pinterest, alleging gender discrimination, which yesterday resulted in a $22.5 million settlement. As part of the settlement, Pinterest will pay $20 million to Brougher and her attorneys, the company wrote in a filing.

“It’s about as plain a case of disparate treatment and discrimination as you can come up with,” Ozoma said.

On a call with TechCrunch today, Ozoma and Banks described a double standard in their experiences compared to Brougher’s. While Brougher received a $20 million payout, Ozoma and Banks received less than one year’s worth of severance.

“This follows the time-honored tradition in America where Black women come forward, blazing a trail, revealing injustice and white women coming in and reaping all the benefits of that,” Banks told TechCrunch.

Earlier this month, a group of shareholders filed a lawsuit against Pinterest executives, including CEO Ben Silbermann, alleging they enabled a culture of discrimination. The complaint goes on to allege that culture of discrimination has harmed Pinterest’s reputation and led to financial harm.

For Ozoma and Banks, however, they say they’ve exhausted all of their legal options and will not pursue a lawsuit. Banks said it is important to keep in mind the fact that Brougher, a former COO, had far more resources to pursue litigation.

“So we, like in many, many, many other cases, Black women put ourselves on the line, shared absolutely everything that happened to us, then laid the groundwork for someone else to swoop in and collect ‘progress,’ ” Ozoma said. “No progress has been made here because no rights have been made with people who harm has been done to.”

As a part of the settlement, both Pinterest and Brougher will commit $2.5 million toward “advancing women and underrepresented communities” in the tech industry.

“Francoise welcomes the meaningful steps Pinterest has taken to improve its workplace environment and is encouraged that Pinterest is committed to building a culture that allows all employees to feel included and supported,” Pinterest and Brougher said in a joint statement detailing the settlement.

Ozoma took issue with Pinterest and Brougher donating $2.5 million to charity. She said, “it smells rotten,” noting that she herself is an individual and not a charity.

TechCrunch reached out to Pinterest regarding Ozoma and Banks’ recent statements. Pinterest declined to comment, saying the company doesn’t comment on legal matters. In June, however, Pinterest said in a statement to TechCrunch:

We took these issues seriously and conducted a thorough investigation when they were raised, and we’re confident both employees were treated fairly. We want each and every one of our employees at Pinterest to feel welcomed, valued, and respected. As we outlined in our statement on June 2nd, we’re committed to advancing our work in inclusion and diversity by taking action at our company and on our platform. In areas where we, as a company, fall short, we must and will do better.

Pinterest employees staged a walkout in August shortly after Brougher filed her suit. In addition to the walkout, a petition circulated throughout the company demanding systemic change. The change they sought entailed full transparency about promotion levels and retention, total compensation package transparency and for the people within two layers of reporting to the CEO to be at least 25% women and 8% underrepresented employees.

Periscope is shutting down, Samsung has plans for more foldable devices and Airbnb sets new diversity goals. This is your Daily Crunch for December 15, 2020.

The big story: Goodbye, Periscope

It’s official: Twitter -owned live-streaming app Periscope is shutting down by March of next year.

That’s not hugely surprising, both because Jane Manchun Wong spotted some app code suggesting that a shutdown could be coming and also because … when was the last time you thought about Periscope?

In an open letter, Periscope said that its current operations are “unsustainable,” and that “leaving it in its current state isn’t doing right by the current and former Periscope community or by Twitter.”

The tech giants

2021 holds even more Samsung foldables — Whether that means an additional device or something more meaningful remains to be seen.

AWS introduces new Chaos Engineering as a Service offering — Chaos engineering tools help simulate worst-case scenarios. (Also, “chaos engineer” is the best job title imaginable.)

Airbnb sets new diversity goals — By the end of 2025, Airbnb is aiming for 20% of its U.S. workforce to consist of underrepresented minorities.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Social stock trading services Public raises $65M Series C — The startup says it has expanded its userbase by 10x this year.

Financial aid-focused Frank expands into helping students take online classes — The company is helping students deploy their financial aid money to open digital slots at more than 100 colleges.

Parsec raises $25M from a16z to power remote work and cloud gaming — Parsec started out by helping gamers access their gaming PCs from other devices, but it was a natural transition to other use cases.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Inside Zoox’s six-year ride from prototype to product — Unlike its rivals, Zoox is developing the self-driving software stack, the on-demand ridesharing app and the vehicle itself.

2020 was a disaster, but the pandemic put security in the spotlight — Many of the security headaches exposed by the pandemic will linger into the new year.

Startup valuations have recovered from summer lows — New data shows that down rounds are dying out.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Among Us launches on the Nintendo Switch — Among Us just launched on the Switch after becoming a surprise hit during the pandemic.

Bandcamp Fridays will continue through next May — On the first Friday of every month, the service has waved its fees, letting artists and labels reap the benefits.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Nine months into the pandemic, one of the first states to institute a shut down is back at square one. Following a major spike in COVID-19 cases, California governor Gavin Newsom reinstituted major closures across the state, leaving many residents in search of new avenues to acquire essentials without leaving their home.

Robomart is seemingly still a long ways away from being a fully finalized offering, but the startup has begun offering limited service in Los Angeles’ West Hollywood neighborhood. Currently being offered as an invite-only beta, the service offers essential deliveries in the back of a van. Users purchase goods from the Robomart app and the vehicle will drive out to meet them.

Image Credits: Robomart

The offering is launching as a mobile pharmacy, offering 500 packs of 50 products. The list includes over-the-counter meds, toiletries and household and kitchen products, among others. A grocery version of the service is also set to launch in the neighborhood in “the coming weeks,” per Robomart.

The eventual plan is to make deliveries via autonomous vehicles when all of the necessary regulatory and technological hurdles have been cleared. For now, however, the startup is partnering with fleet leasing company Zeeba Vans for deliveries. The plan is to increase to 100 vans within two years. Checkouts are performed with RFID tags.

Investors include Wasabi Ventures, SOSV, HAX, Hustle Fund, Automation Fund and Archetype.

Image Credits: Robomart

“The startup world has been a bit myopic on fully autonomous driving as the only path to profitable on-demand commerce,” HAX’s Garrett Winther says in a statement to TechCrunch. “The reality is that a few shifts in the underlying local distribution model and clever operational integrations allows for ‘store hailing’ to scale much sooner than everyone expects.”

At the very least, the company appears to be striking while the iron is hot on this one.

Rocket launch startup Astra has joined an elite group of companies that can say their vehicle has actually made it to orbital space — earlier than expected. The company’s Rocket 3.2 test rocket (yes, it’s a rocket called “Rocket”) passed the Karman line, the separation point 100 km (62 miles) up that most consider the barrier between Earth’s atmosphere and space, during a launch today from Kodiak, Alaska.

This is the second in this series of orbital flight tests by Astra; it flew its Rocket 3.1 test vehicle in September, but while that flight was successful by the company’s own definition, since it lifted off and provided a lot of data, it didn’t reach space or orbit. Both the 3.1 and 3.2 rockets are part of a planned three-launch series that Astra said would be designed to reach orbital altitudes by the end of the trio of attempts.

Astra is a small satellite launch startup that builds its rockets in California’s East Bay, at a factory it established there which is designed to ultimately produce its launchers in volume. Their model uses smaller craft than existing options like either SpaceX or Rocket Lab, but aims to provide responsive, short turnaround launch services at a relatively low cost — a bus to space rather than a hired limousine. They compete more directly with something like Virgin Orbit, which has yet to reach space with its launch craft.

The view from Astra’s Rocket 3.2 second stage from space.

This marks a tremendous win and milestone for Astra’s rocket program, made even more impressive by the relatively short turnaround between their rocket loss error in September, which the company determined was a result of a problem in its onboard guidance system. Correcting the mistake and getting back to an active, and successful launch, within three months, is a tremendous technical achievement, even in the best of times, and the company faced additional challenges because of COVID-19.

Astra was not expecting to make it as far as it did today — the startup has defined seven stages of reaching orbital flight for its development program; today it expected to achieve 1) count and liftoff; and 2) reaching Max Q, the point of maximum dynamic pressure undergone by a rocket in flight in Earth’s atmosphere. Third, they were looking to achieve nominal main-engine cutoff for first stage — and this is where they would’ve pegged success today, but the “rocket continued to perform,” according to CEO and founder Chris Kemp on a call following the launch.

Rocket 3.2 then performed a successful stage separation, and then the second stage passed through the Karman line, reaching outer space. After that, it went farther still, achieving a successful upper-stage ignition, and a nominal upper-stage engine shut off six minutes later. Even then, the rocket reached 390 km, which is its target orbital height, but then reached a velocity of 7.2 km per hours, just one half km/hour less than the 7.68 km required for orbital velocity.

Astra emphasized that the mix for the propellant for this stage is basically only to be nailed down while testing in situ in space, so they say this will just require some upper-stage propellant mixtures to achieve that extra velocity, and Kemp said they’re confident they can do that in the next couple of months, and start reliving payloads early next year. This won’t require any hardware or software changes, the company noted, just a tweak in the variables involved.

Image Credits: John Kraus for Astra (opens in a new window)

He added that this is a big win for the underlying theory behind Astra’s approach, which focuses on using significant amounts of automation in order to reduce costs.

“We’ve only been in business for about four years, and this team only has about 100 people today,” Kemp said. “This team was able to overcome tremendous challenges on the way to this success. We had a member of the team quarantining, and tested positive on the way to Kodiak, which meant they had to quarantine the entire team, and then sent an entire backup team to replace them.” This was possible because they only use five people on the launch team.

“We now are at a point where just five people can go up, and set up the entire launch site and rocket, and launch in just a couple of days,” Kemp said. The team is literally just five people — including labor, rocket unloading, setup and everything on-site — the rest is run remotely from mission control in California via the cloud.

Now they will do some tuning for Rocket 3.3, which is currently in California at the Astra factory, before soon attempting that final orbital test flight with a payload on board to deploy. After that, they intend to continue to iterate with each version of Rocket launched, focusing on reducing costs and improving performance through rapid evolution of the design and technology.

While it doesn’t appear to be completely down like it was yesterday morning, we’re hearing many reports from Gmail users that the email service is having major issues right now.

Some users are reporting that Gmail is particularly slow, while others are reporting constant error messages. One TechCrunch writer, meanwhile, noticed that emails he was sending to Gmail accounts appeared to immediately bounce, with Gmail’s server responding with an error reading “550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist.”

Google confirms the issues on its services dashboard, writing at 1:30 PM Pacific that they’re impacting a “significant” number of users:

We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.

In a second update at 2:30 PM, Google says its teams are “continuing to investigate this issue”; as of 3:30 PM, the company says it expects the issues to be fixed by 4:00 PM while noting that time may change.

Update, 4:15 PM Pacific: Google now says the problems have been resolved.

Meanwhile, encrypted email service ProtonMail tweets that the email bouncing issue mentioned above is widespread, with many emails sent to Gmail users bouncing permanently:

If you’re sending an email of any importance to a Gmail user right now, you’ll want to wait until this is fully fixed; if you’ve sent one in the last few hours, double check it was actually received.

On Monday, Pluralsight, a Utah-based startup that sells software development courses to enterprises, announced that it has been acquired by Vista for $3.5 billion.

The deal, yet to close, is one of the largest enterprise buys of the year: Vista is getting an online training company that helps retrain techies with in-demand skills through online courses in the midst of a booming edtech market. Additionally, the sector is losing one of its few publicly traded companies just two years after it debuted on the stock market.

Investors and founders told Techcrunch that the Pluralsight acquisition is largely a positive signal that shows the strength of edtech’s capital options as the pandemic continues.

“What’s happening in edtech is that capital markets are liquidating,” said Deborah Quazzo, managing partner of GSV Advisors.

Quazzo, a seed investor in Pluralsight, said the ability to move fluidly between privately held and publicly held companies is a characteristic of tech sectors with deep capital markets, which is different from edtech’s “old days, where the options to exit were very narrow.”

Over the icy tundra of Siberia in 2009, a derelict Russian military satellite, Kosmos-2251, slammed into an active communications satellite, Iridium 33, at speeds in excess of 26,000 miles per hour. Both were immediately smashed to smithereens.

As a result of this single collision, approximately 1,800 large pieces of space debris, each capable of destroying any spacecraft unfortunate enough to cross its path, remain in orbit to this day and for the foreseeable future.

Depending on who you ask, space debris is either a nonissue that will solve itself or a critical problem that threatens the future of space exploration. We interviewed dozens of experts across industry, academia and the regulatory landscape to better understand which of these viewpoints is closer to the truth, and to consider what ought to be done going forward.

What is space debris?

Far from homogenous, space debris includes any nonfunctional human-made object in space, including rocket parts that have been abandoned in orbit after having completed their mission, defunct satellites, fragments from unintentional and intentional orbital collisions and items released during operations. These sources have multiplied to create a large amount of space debris orbiting Earth.

This debris is spread across all three of the main regions of space around Earth: low-Earth orbit (LEO), medium-Earth orbit (MEO) and geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO). As its name suggests, LEO is the closest to us, extending up to 2,000 km from the Earth’s surface.

It is the most crowded region of the three and, in addition to hosting the International Space Station, it is the region where SpaceX, OneWeb and other well-funded companies are currently sending tens of thousands of new satellites as part of their constellations. Perhaps not surprisingly, LEO is the region with the most debris. As a result, it tends to be the focus of much of the discussion around the issue.

Above LEO, satellites in MEO and GEO are also threatened by space debris. This is important because these orbits host a number of crucial satellites, including navigation systems in MEO such as the American GPS and European Galileo, and critical GEO-based communication satellites. Satellites in GEO are able to maintain a single point above the Earth (this special orbit is possible because the satellite is orbiting around Earth at the same speed the Earth is rotating).

Given the altitude of both MEO (2,000 km-36,000 km) and GEO (~36,000 km), de-orbiting the satellite is not a viable option — the current solution when satellites retire is to move them to unused orbits called “graveyard orbits,” further contributing to the growth of space debris above us.

Why does space debris matter?

The existence of space debris is concerning for many reasons, with physical collisions being the most obvious. The possible risk caused by space debris is magnified by the incredible speed at which debris typically travels. According to NASA, there are over 30,000 objects larger than a softball in orbit, traveling at speeds up to 18,000 miles per hour. At that speed, any one of these objects is capable of completely destroying a spacecraft.

Even debris just 1 cm in diameter can disable an operational spacecraft, while even smaller fragments can cause huge problems as well. Indeed, a fleck of paint was enough to damage a window on the International Space Station, which has been forced into maneuvers to avoid larger, potentially catastrophic debris 28 times since 1999, including three times in 2020 alone.

Unfortunately, tracking all of this debris has proven to be an arduous challenge. For starters, only objects larger than 10 cm in diameter are currently tracked by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). However, there are likely 900,000 objects less than 10 cm but larger than 1 cm, and tens of millions of objects smaller than 1 cm that are not tracked by the current system but that are still capable of causing significant damage. Of particular concern is the range between 1 cm and 10 cm, which has appropriately earned the moniker of lethal nontrackable debris, or LNT.

Space junk poses other challenges as well. Astronomers lament that light pollution from objects in orbit hampers observation of the night sky. The reliance of observatories — often involving equipment costing hundreds of millions of dollars — on long exposures makes debris particularly problematic. Another worry is “Kessler syndrome,” which takes its name from NASA scientist Donald Kessler.

In 1978, Kessler postulated that more space debris would increase the likelihood of collisions, which in turn would lead to more space debris, and so on, in an exponential growth that may end up compromising orbital operations. In other words, the issue could evolve into a never-ending spiral that eventually renders LEO unusable and possibly impenetrable.

Stakeholders

Before considering how to respond, it is important to understand the landscape of those affected by space debris.

Launch providers are among the most crucial players — after all, their business models hinge on their ability to put payloads into orbit. They are also part of the problem. Launcher parts (i.e., spent upper stages) left in orbit have been, in the words of professor Lorenzo Casalino of the Polytechnic University of Turin, “piling up for decades.”

He believes launch providers have been “among the most critical contributors to space debris.” However, some newer launch companies, such as Rocket Lab, do not leave any piece of their rockets in space. Instead, they de-orbit the stages, which causes them to burn up upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Satellite operators are also a crucial component of the ecosystem. On one hand, they are the ones most responsible for the overcrowding of space; on the other, they are the most likely victims of space debris. Mike Safyan of Planet, which has over 150 satellites in orbit, notes that mitigating space debris is “in the interest of satellite operators,” and that many are already incorporating maneuverability and de-orbiting technologies into their satellites.

For example, OneWeb, a large constellation operator, is designing its satellites to be “de-orbit ready.” Darren McKnight, Technical Director at Centauri, a satellite operator, explains that operators are faced with a “significant decline in overall reliability” as their systems are increasingly affected by a constantly growing space debris cloud, and thus incentivized to act. Sara Spangelo, CEO and co-founder of Swarm Technologies, says many private companies have already started to implement measures for space debris mitigation. Swarm Technologies has proven that it can consistently track its tiny satellites and recently added active attitude and propulsion control to maneuver out of the trajectory of debris.

These strategies help ensure that while the 10 cm by 10 cm by 2.8 cm (the size of a grilled cheese sandwich) satellites are providing connectivity around the world, they do not contribute to the growth of the space debris cloud.

An interesting role is played by insurance companies. Chris Quilty, a commercial space expert, notes that while satellite insurance remains relatively uncommon — fewer than a tenth of satellites in LEO are covered by insurance — insurers are likely to play an increasingly large role as the risk of collisions becomes more likely. Chris Kunstadter, global head of space at AXA XL, a major commercial insurance provider, adds that insurers have been active in terms of pushing for stricter regulation, as insurance is often a key component of regulatory proposals.

One group that is often overlooked, but that has the potential to strongly affect the future path toward the sustainable use of space, is comprised of the end users of space-based services. This encompasses anyone from telecommunications customers to users of imaging data to transportation companies relying on satellites to track their ships and planes. As OneWeb’s VP of Regulatory Affairs Ruth Pritchard-Kelly points out, if end users demand sustainability, as they have in other sectors (e.g., retail, mining, etc.), it would likely force launch providers and satellite operators to act.

Finally, there is a new stakeholder that is trying to solve the challenge of space debris. Startups such as Astroscale and D-Orbit are making progress toward commercializing the removal, or at least mitigation, of space debris. Another example is LeoLabs, a ground-based space mapping provider, whose phased-array radars are capable of tracking debris as small as 2 cm. Dan Ceperley, founder and CEO of LeoLabs, believes his company’s advanced tracking capabilities will allow launch providers and satellite operators to be responsible for the objects they put into space. If mapping, mitigating and removing space debris turn out to be profitable endeavors, the private sector may already have the incentives it needs to clean up its act.

Regulatory considerations

Notwithstanding the promise of space debris mitigation technology, it is possible that regulators will be forced into action. Due to the intricacies of the space sector and the many stakeholders, regulatory bodies could provide stability and a guiding framework for companies around the world. However, the regulatory picture is uncertain given how decentralized space regulation tends to be.

While the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) exists to promote international cooperation in outer space, it is lacking in its ability to enforce regulations at the international level, being limited to providing secretarial support to the COPUOS (Committee for Peaceful Use of Outer Space). As a result, regulation in the industry has always been a tricky patchwork of country-level rules, with parties occasionally resorting to adopting “flags of convenience” in search of the nation offering the most favorable regulatory conditions.

In spite of this patchwork, the United States has emerged as the most powerful potential source of regulation given both its weight within the industry as well as its International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). ITAR is a U.S. regulatory regime controlling the manufacture, sale, distribution and use of defense and space-related articles that has made it costly and difficult — if not impossible — for U.S. players in the space industry to flag-shop or otherwise do business without adhering to U.S. regulations. As a result, any effective regulations governing space debris are likely to emerge from the U.S.

One of the many observations that has echoed through numerous interviews revolves around how U.S. regulations have not kept up with the rapid development of technology, with rules and guidelines dating back to a period when only NASA and the Soviet space program launched satellites into space, and when the idea of private entities possessing the ability to easily and inexpensively access space was “unthinkable,” in the words of Alessandro Rossi of the Italian National Research Council.

Over the last decade, launch costs have decreased by an order of magnitude; this, combined with the development of CubeSats and other miniature satellites, has dramatically lowered the cost of sending payloads to space. The private sector has responded by promising to send thousands of satellites into LEO over the next few years. It is unlikely that rules designed to regulate a handful of satellites the size of school buses will be adequate for this new reality.

Within the U.S., several agencies deal with the use of space, and the best source of future regulation remains a point of contention. A 2018 White House directive sought to make the Commerce Department the “traffic cop” of space. Meanwhile, some believe the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which already regulates launches and reentries, is in the best position to effect change. Another key player is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is responsible for regulating satellite transmissions.

According to Laura Montgomery, an expert in space law and the former head of the FAA’s space law branch, the FCC “certainly interprets its regulatory mandate as extending to space debris.”

The experts we spoke to generally seemed to believe that these agencies are unlikely to aggressively pursue new regulations in the near term. Professor Montgomery noted that regulators “tend to move slowly,” and that the collisions that have happened to date have “yet to lead to Congressional action” on this issue. Professor Zac Manchester of Carnegie Mellon University suggested regulatory agencies are “often understaffed and lacking the technical expertise” to address the problem of space debris anytime soon.

Others noted that while the FCC implemented new rules to mitigate orbital space debris back in April, these rules did little to change the status quo — operators will now be required to submit more safety disclosures, but the body “stopped short of introducing stricter orbital debris criteria.” To summarize, it appears that new overarching regulations are unlikely to be implemented anytime soon.

Where many see regulatory bodies as the ones holding the stick, there has been a push toward the creation of a carrot, an incentive for stakeholders to play an active role in addressing space debris. This is what the World Economic Forum (WEF), together with MIT’s Space Enabled Research Group at their Media Labs, European Space Agency, University of Texas at Austin, and Bryce Space and Technology, has been working on with the development of the Space Sustainability Rating (SSR).

WEF’s Nikolai Khlystov describes the SSR as a voluntary rating system for space (not dissimilar to what already exists for the energy class of home appliances or LEED for buildings) that aims at incentivizing good behavior. The hope is that the SSR, or a similar system, will be widely adopted by the industry. As an example, the WEF sees insurance companies making good use of the rating, as it could be used to determine premiums, offer discounts or even refuse insurance for underperformers.

The case for action

At this point, the space industry and its stakeholders have two options. They can either set up a framework that can address the problem of space debris, or continue on the current path, with little regulatory oversight and even less enforceability on a global level surrounding the sustainable use of space.

Looking at the history of space debris, we can safely assume that if nothing changes, the amount of debris will continue to grow, particularly within the more crowded LEO orbits. Without a comprehensive framework for end-of-life, it is only a matter of time before more collisions like the Kosmos-Iridium one will cause an order of magnitude increase in space debris, making it nearly impossible to clean up LEO.

There is a saying in aviation: “Regulations are written in blood.” The implication is that regulations are often founded on lessons learned from events that cost property or lives. One more major collision could force the hand of the international space community and lead to harsh regulations that could be negative for those within the private space industry that have not already adopted sustainability as a business imperative.

The case for caution

On the other hand, the space industry and regulatory bodies could come together to shape guiding transparent rules to deal with the challenges posed by space debris without hindering progress in the private space sector.

Any framework addressing the issue of space debris should be a cooperative, international effort. Regulatory bodies can leverage the fact that the sustainable use of space is in the interest of all market participants — after all, space debris is a costly problem, as well as a potential safety issue, for both operators and users. Today, many companies in the private space sector are in favor of greater accountability for this reason.

In addition, the case could be made that private companies would be more effective than governments at removing space debris from highly congested orbits. The technology of space debris removal is still in its early stages — Astroscale and other startups have not yet launched their services. However, they are beginning to make significant progress, and it is hard to imagine a future where this industry will not be critical in cleaning up space debris.

The path forward

Ideally, we hope to see the private sector rise to the occasion. Surely market participants acknowledge the long-term importance of keeping space free of debris, and we believe this represents an attractive problem for startups to tackle. We would also welcome creative ideas, such as prizes for researchers who come up with the best solutions for removing space debris.

However, at some point, it is likely that the issue of space debris will need to be addressed with regulation. In particular, we would urge the regulators best-positioned to act — those in the United States — to tackle the issue, as they stand the best chance of crafting enforceable regulation.

One of the biggest obstacles currently is that different agencies touch different parts of the satellite ecosystem (e.g., the Commerce Department, the FAA and the FCC) and responsibilities often overlap. We would encourage Congress to clarify this issue and empower a single agency to take the lead in setting rules to address the issue of space debris.

We would, however, caution against sweeping regulation that fails to consider the long-term consequences of such action. Professor Montgomery puts it best, “As a former writer of regulations, I know that they tend to get set in stone, and this has the potential to hamper innovation.”

This was the key issue with the debacle surrounding the Kicksat-2 project, says Professor Manchester. The project was meant to demonstrate the cutting-edge technology of microsatellites in a safe manner, but was delayed for years due to concerns from the FCC before being approved in 2019 with zero modifications to the original design. Montgomery adds that, “If regulators act too quickly, they run the risk of creating rules that are not ideal and that are almost impossible to fix.”

For this reason, we would encourage regulators to take their time to understand the issue and to work closely with other stakeholders to develop a set of guidelines over time, rather than rushing to a conclusion too soon.

Ultimately, we hope regulators and the commercial players can work together to find a lasting solution in the relatively near future, rather than waiting for a catastrophic failure before taking action.

BoxCast, a Cleveland-based company aiming to make it easy to live stream any event, has raised $20 million in Series A funding.

Co-founder and CEO Gordon Daily said that when the company first launched in 2013, “streaming wasn’t something that everyone understood,” and you needed professional help to live stream anything. BoxCast is supposed to make that process accessible to anyone.

The company has created several different video encoder devices, but Daily said the “small box” is just a one piece of BoxCast platform, which is designed to cover all your live-streaming needs, with support for 1080p broadcasting; streaming to Facebook Live, YouTube and your own website; analytics and more — plus there are add-ons like automatic scoreboard displays and event ticketing.

Pricing starts at $99 per month for the “essential” streaming plan, plus $399 for a BoxCast encoder. (You can also just stream from an iOS device.)

And it’s no surprise that 2020 has been a “watershed moment” for the company, as Daily put it, with BoxCast now live streaming millions of events per year — everything from sports to religious services to virtual safaris offered by Sri Lanka’s tourism board.

BoxCast dashboard

“When you can’t even meet in-person … we knew that there was going to be higher usage,” he said. “What caught me off-guard was the volume increase — it’s new customers, it’s existing customers, at peak times there’s a 10x increase [from pre-pandemic usage].”

And while in-person events will hopefully become more common next year, Daily said live streams will still be a valuable tool to reach audiences who can’t attend, and to promote your business or organization with new kinds of programming.

COO Sam Brenner added that while BoxCast employed fewer than 40 people before the pandemic, the team has grown to 56, and will likely double within the next 12 months.

The Series A was led by Updata Partners, with participation from audio equipment manufacturer Shure.

Video game companies are increasingly putting restrictions on what reviewers can show, widening the gap between expectations and reality.

Following recent reports, Periscope announced today that it will end operations as a standalone app by March 2021. The Twitter -owned company referred to its current operations as “unsustainable” in an open letter posted today. It also cited a decline in usage in recent years as a driving factor.

“Leaving it in its current state isn’t doing right by the current and former Periscope community or by Twitter,” the company noted.

Twitter, which acquired the livestreaming app back in 2015, has been building out its own video offerings in recent months, rendering much of Periscope’s features redundant as a standalone app. A line of code that popped up in the Twitter app last week appeared to point to periscope’s eventual closure. At the time, however, Twitter refused to comment.

Periscope was purchased in its infancy, as Twitter looked to address the rapid growth of competitor Meerkat. Of course, the live video landscape has evolved by leaps and bounds in recent years, and eventually it made the most sense to begin to incorporate such features directly into the native Twitter app. But even as livestreaming has grown, Periscope’s own fortunes as a standalone app have been diminishing for a number of years, as the company itself notes.

The company adds that all of this likely would have occurred even sooner, but the worst year ever got in way of those plans. “We probably would have made this decision sooner if it weren’t for all of the projects we reprioritized due to the events of 2020,” Twitter explains.

Sensor Tower notes that Periscope has had around 101 million installs over its life time, including the App Store and Google Play. It also tells TechCrunch, “Year-to-date, Periscope has seen approximately 6.8 million installs globally, down 7% year-over-year from about 7.3 million during the same period from January to December 14, 2019.”

Periscope will be removed from app stores in March, and the ability to create new accounts will be disabled with the next software update. Existing Broadcasts that were shared on Twitter will continue to exist on that app as replays. The company is also offering users the ability to download an archive of their content before it all goes away in March.