Despite the rapid growth of e-commerce in India, Southeast Asia and other emerging markets, the vast majority of retail transactions there still happen offline in small stores that also serve as neighborhood hubs.

The central role these stores play in their communities led GGV Capital to develop what the firm refers to as its mom-and-pop shop investment thesis. This means backing startups that help small retailers digitize operations, tap into better supply chains and serve as delivery points in markets where logistics and online payment infrastructures are still developing. In turn, GGV’s managing partners believe this will lay the groundwork for stronger e-commerce growth.

Companies that GGV has already invested in under this thesis include B2B e-commerce platform Udaan and Telio, bookkeeping app KhataBook and social commerce startup Shihuituan (also called Nice Tuan) in China.

A sociological approach to e-commerce investment

GGV managing partner Hans Tung says the mom-and-pop shop thesis means looking at consumers’ shopping habits across countries and understanding why they are different from a historical and social perspective. During his career, Tung has observed e-commerce develop in markets including the United States, China, Japan, Taiwan, India, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Offline shopping habits, population density, transportation infrastructure and credit card penetration all played a factor in how e-commerce evolved in each of those places.

“You realize e-commerce doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists as a substitute for what is happening in the offline world,” he says. “Mobile payment doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It just fulfills the same needs with a different method. It was a substitution for what was happening in the offline world with credit card and debit card penetration.”

It’s been a dizzying few weeks following all the China news emanating from Washington DC these days. While a “phase one” trade deal with China has been signed and appears to be moving forward as of a month ago (we covered the origins of this trade war extensively on TechCrunch in 2018 and 2019), it has also become clear that the Trump administration and its various agencies are aggressively targeting China on a variety of fronts.

Here’s what’s been happening with startup funding, Huawei, university research labs, and cybersecurity breaches.

More challenges for startups fundraising Chinese dollars

As of a few weeks ago, the Trump administration completed the final rulemaking around its modernization of foreign investment rules. Those rules went into force today, and will help to define what startups can take money from which foreign nationals. Those rules will now be used by CFIUS – the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — which has authority to rule over major venture transactions.

Martin Chorzempa of the Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote an extensive overview of what’s changing here. The closest summary is that Silicon Valley startups that take significant money from overseas investors (significant here is generally about percentage ownership of a company rather than total dollars) will increasingly need to go through national security reviews in DC, which can vastly delay the closing of venture rounds.

While China is certainly in the crosshairs of these new rules, other investors have been hit by them as well. SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which had a very bad quarter this week, is also a target under these new rules, complicating that fund’s future investments in America.

Some firms though are preparing for the long haul. Sequoia hired a major CFIUS veteran to be its general counsel last year, and from what I hear, other venture firms are providing more advice to founders to actively avoid international investors that might trigger these sorts of national security reviews in the first place.

All this of course is in the context of a collapse in Chinese venture capital, which was already in dire straights even before the coronavirus situation the past few weeks put a massive brake on the Chinese economy. Chinese VC dollars flowing into the Valley hasn’t stopped, but it is a trickle from the sloshing free trade days of just a few years ago.

Huawei is coming to the West, despite the wishes of the Trump administration

The Trump administration has made it a high-priority to shut Huawei out of Western telecom systems. It first tried to do that by essentially shutting the company down along with China’s ZTE by banning the two companies from receiving U.S. export licenses to American technology critical to their products. That set of moves ultimately created blowback for the administration a few years ago and galvanized Xi Jinping and the Chinese government to create more indigenous devices.

The Trump administration is continuing to lose its war against Huawei though. In recent weeks, both the United Kingdom and Germany have indicated that they will accept Huawei equipment within their next-generation telecom networks, despite immense pressure from U.S. defense and intelligence officials pushing against that decision.

Part of the challenge for the Trump administration is that it isn’t even pushing forward with one voice. The Defense Department has actually supported Huawei’s position, arguing that fighting Huawei will ultimately undermine American chip market leaders like Intel, who need Huawei as a customer of their chips to continue funding their R&D efforts.

Meanwhile, Huawei late last week sued TechCrunch parent parent parent parent parent company Verizon (okay, maybe it’s only like three levels of corporate bureaucracy between us and them — I’ve honestly lost track in the reshuffles) over patent infringement. As the 5G race continually bubbles (it’s not really heating up despite attempts by telecoms to say otherwise), expect more of these patent fights.

Fighting Chinese influence in American university research labs

Most notably here, prosecutors at the Department of Justice charged Harvard University’s chairman of the department of chemistry Charles Lieber with failing to disclose payments he received from China totaling millions of dollars. Such disclosures are required since Lieber accepted federal research dollars through programs run by the National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense.

The payments described in the department’s complaint included a monthly honorarium of $50,000, hundreds of thousands of dollars for annual living expenses, and millions of dollars to build out a research lab at Wuhan University of Technology as a “Strategic Scientist.” Two other scientists were named in the complaint as well.

That’s not all though. We learned this morning that the Department of Education has launched new investigations into Harvard and Yale to look at billion of dollars of overseas funding for those universities over the past few years, attempting to triangulate exactly who gave money to those institutions and why. The Wall Street Journal reported that the prime targets of funding come from China and Saudi Arabia.

Finally, Aruna Viswanatha and Kate O’Keeffe of the Wall Street Journal compiled a number of university-level investigations, finding that dozens more scientists and other academics have failed to disclose overseas ties and funding, mostly from China.

These investigations have become a higher priority as the U.S. government increasingly feels that China has built an apparatus for stealing U.S. technology, particularly at the frontiers of science.

Justice indicts four Chinese nationals over Equifax breach

Finally, the other major story in the China influence operations beat is that the Department of Justice indicted four Chinese nationals over the 2017 Equifax breach that led to the loss of data for more than 150 million Americans.

According to the department’s complaint, four Chinese military hackers associated with China’s People’s Liberation Army broke into Equifax’s systems using an unpatched security vulnerability in Apache Struts.

The department’s indictment serves two purposes, even though the four alleged individuals in the indictment are highly unlikely to ever be prosecuted (China and the U.S. do not have an extradition treaty, nor is China likely to hand over the individuals to the U.S. justice system).

First, the indictments serve notice to China that the U.S. is watching its actions, and is able to determine with a high degree of precision who is breaking into these vulnerable technology systems and what they are taking. That’s important, as there are serious concerns in the defense community about identifying actors in cyberwar.

Second, the charges also help to connect the Equifax case to a similar breach at the government’s Office of Personnel Management, in which data on millions of government workers — including defense and intelligence personnel — was believed to be leaked to Chinese state-backed hackers.

Fighting Chinese influence has become a major project of DC officials, and therefore we can expect to see even more news on this front throughout the year, particularly with an election coming up in November.

It’s an end of an era — and you might just want to snap a photo of it, and just maybe upload it for others to purchase

Jon Oringer, who founded New York City-based Shutterstock in 2003, announced today that he would be stepping away from his duties as CEO at the photo sharing and commerce company, effective in April. He will move on to be Executive Chairman of the board, and says in a letter posted this morning that he intends “to continue to be involved in the strategy and direction of the business including yearly planning, regular off-sites, M&A, capital allocation, and other large initiatives.”

Shutterstock, a publicly-traded company that debuted on NYSE in October of 2012, has grown prodigiously from its humble origins as a startup. The company today has a market cap of just under $1.5 billion, and has seen reasonable revenue growth over the past few years, expanding from just shy of $500 million in 2016 to $623 million in 2018. The company has been profitable, posting a full-year net income of $31 million in 2018, according to Yahoo Finance.

In his letter this morning, Oringer says that his proudest accomplishment though was disbursing more than $1 billion in earnings to freelance photographers and other creatives through the platform since its founding.

The timing of the announcement coincided with Shutterstock’s Q4 and 2018 financial results yesterday, which were a mixed bag. Overall revenue increased by 4% compared to a year ago, but net income sank 63%, and net income per share also declined by nearly 22%.

Those middling results were in line with the company’s trajectory over the past few years. The company’s market cap peaked in early 2014 at nearly $3.5 billion but has since hovered between $1 billion and $2 billion since 2015. Oringer says in his letter that he is the largest shareholder today in the company.

In addition to the company’s somewhat lackluster financial results, Shutterstock has also gotten into hot water recently over its censorship of search results in China. Sam Biddle at The Intercept showed in November last year that the company plowed over internal employee concerns in its pursuit of additional revenues from the Middle Kingdom.

Challenges around censorship, representation, and ultimately business fundamentals like revenue growth and profit will be on the mind of Stan Pavlovsky, who has moved up through a number of roles at the company and will assume the CEO title upon Oringer’s departure.

After years of unsuccessful attempts to enter China’s massive $27 trillion payments market, Mastercard announced today it has won approval from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) to begin formal preparation to set up a bankcard clearing institution in China. The news is a significant step towards Mastercard being able to do business in China, where large, domestic players currently dominate.

Last year, Mastercard set up a joint venture with NetsUnion Clearing Corp., a clearing house for online payments whose stakeholders included the PBOC, The Wall Street Journal had reported. Mastercard together with NetsUnion then refiled its application as a joint venture called Mastercard NUCC Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. That application has now been approved, allowing preparatory work to begin.

According to regulations, the JV has to complete its preparation work within a year’s time for formal approval to begin domestic bankcard clearing activity, the bank said.

“We are delighted and encouraged by this latest decision from the PBOC,” said Mastercard president and CEO Ajay Banga, in a statement. “China is a vital market for us and we have reiterated our unwavering commitment to helping drive a safer, more inclusive and seamless payments ecosystem for Chinese consumers and businesses. We remain focused on working with the Chinese government and local partners to grow the overall payments infrastructure,” he added.

Mastercard is not the first U.S. credit card company to get the green light to begin building out a payments network in China. Instead, American Express was first to receive preliminary approval back in 2018 to clear credit card payments in China. In January, the People’s Bank of China then accepted Amex’s application to clear and settled payments domestically by way of its JV with Amex’s Chinese partner LianLian Group.

PayPal also last fall announced its intentions to enter China through the acquisition of a 70% equity stake in GoPay, making it the first foreign payments platform to provide online payments service in China.

The approvals are a part of the U.S.-China trade deal, which required Beijing to now accept and reviews payments firms’ applications in a timely manner, which hadn’t happened before. Specifically, applications from firms wanting to become bank card clearing houses in China must be accepted within 5 business days and responded to within 90 days of acceptance. And when the prep work is complete, China has to accept its license application within a month.

Assuming final approval is given to U.S. firms entering China, they’ll still have to compete with large, established players. China had 8.2 billion bank cards in circulation by the end of September, 90% of them debit cards, Bloomberg notes.

But traditional bank cards aren’t the only rival in a market where consumers are accustomed to paying by their phone, as with WeChat Pay. According to a report from Frost & Sullivan, mobile payments in China are expected to grow 21.8% from 2017 to $96.73 trillion by 2023, and the total number of active mobile payment customers is expected to reach 956 million by 2023, up from 562 million in 2017.

In other words, there’s no guarantee that Mastercard, Amex, Visa or other foreign firms will see success in China, in the years ahead, if and when their entry is officially granted.

The statement released by the PBOC notes its approval is “an important part of the opening up of China’s financial industry,” but didn’t reference the trade deal directly.

Japanese electronics firm Sony is the latest phone maker to announce it’s withdrawing from the Mobile World Congress (MWC) tradeshow — citing concerns about the coronavirus outbreak.

“As we place the utmost importance on the safety and wellbeing of our customers, partners, media and employees, we have taken the difficult decision to withdraw from exhibiting and participating at MWC 2020 in Barcelona, Spain,” Sony wrote in a press release.

MWC is due to take place in Barcelona between February 24-27.

Sony said it will now run a press conference planned for the event remotely, via its official Xperia YouTube channel, at the scheduled time of 8:30am (CET) on February 24.

“Sony would like to thank everyone for their understanding and ongoing support during these challenging times,” it added.

In recent days a number of companies have announced they’re pulling out or scaling back their presence at the conference as a result of concerns about the spread of the virus — including Amazon, Ericsson, LG, NVIDIA and ZTE.

The World Health Organization dubbed the emergence and spread of the novel coronavirus a global emergency late last month.

At the time of writing the majority of infections and deaths from the virus remain in China, where the virus was first identified — in the town of Wuhan in the Hubei province.

Several Chinese tech companies, including ZTE and Xiaomi, have said they will make changes to their participation in MWC related to coronavirus concerns, such as placing limits on staff travelling from China or requiring they self isolate in the period before attending.

Yesterday the organizers of MWC, the GSMA, also announced stringent rules to try to safeguard attendees, including a ban on travellers from Hubei and a requirement that all travellers who have been in China must be able to prove they have been outside the country 14 days prior to the event.

Attendees will also be required to self-certify they have not been in contact with anyone affected, the GSMA said. Temperature screening will also be implemented at the event.

Last year the annual mobile tech conference drew almost 110,000 attendees, from 198 countries.

“While further planning is underway, we will continue to monitor the situation and will adapt our plans according to developments and advice we receive. We are contending with a constantly evolving situation, that will require fast adaptability,” the GSMA also said.

Attendance at MWC has regularly broken 100,000 in recent years but 2020’s conference seems likely to mark a break with business as usual as companies face pressure to rethink their travel priorities.

Google and Facebook seem to have resigned themselves to losing part of the longest and highest profile internet cable they have invested in to date. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission last week, the two companies requested permission to activate the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) between the US and the Philippines and Taiwan, leaving its controversial Hong Kong and Chinese sections dormant.

Globally, around 380 submarine cables carry over 99.5 percent of all transoceanic data traffic. Every time you visit a foreign website or send an email abroad, you are using a fiber-optic cable on the seabed. Satellites, even large planned networks like SpaceX’s Starlink system, cannot move data as quickly and cheaply as underwater cables.

When it was announced in 2017, the 13,000-kilometer PLCN was touted as the first subsea cable directly connecting Hong Kong and the United States, allowing Google and Facebook to connect speedily and securely with data centers in Asia and unlock new markets. The 120 terabit-per-second cable was due to begin commercial operation in the summer of 2018. 

“PLCN will help connect US businesses and internet users with a strong and growing internet community in Asia,” they wrote. “PLCN will interconnect … with many of the existing and planned regional and international cables, thus providing additional transmission options in the event of disruptions to other systems, whether natural or manmade.”

Instead, it has been PLCN itself that has been disrupted, by an ongoing regulatory battle in the US that has become politicized by trade and technology spats with China.

Team Telecom, a shadowy US national security unit comprised of representatives from the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice (including the FBI), is tasked with protecting America’s telecommunications systems, including international fiber optic cables. Its regulatory processes can be tortuously slow. Team Telecom took nearly seven years to decide whether to allow China Mobile, a state-owned company, access to the US telecoms market, before coming down against it in 2018 on the grounds of “substantial and serious national security and law enforcement risks.”

Although subsidiaries of Google and Facebook have been the public face of PLCN in filings to the FCC, four of the six fiber-optic pairs in the cable actually belong to a company called Pacific Light Data Communication (PLDC). When the project was first planned, PLDC was controlled by Wei Junkang, a Hong Kong businessman who had made his fortune in steel and real estate.

In December 2017, Wei sold most of his stake in PLDC to Dr Peng Telecom & Media Group, a private broadband provider based in Beijing. That sent alarm bells ringing in Washington, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal last year. While Dr Peng is not itself state-owned or controlled, it works closely with Huawei, a telecoms company the Trump administration has accused of espionage and trade secret theft. Dr Peng has also worked on Chinese government projects, including a surveillance network for the Beijing police.  

PLCN has been legal limbo ever since, with Google complaining bitterly to the FCC about the expense of the ongoing uncertainty. In 2018, it wrote, “[any further holdup] would impose significant economic costs. Depending on the length of the delay, the financial viability of the project could be at risk.”

Google and Facebook finally secured special permission to lay the cable in US waters last year, and to construct, connect and temporarily test a cable landing station in Los Angeles. But while the network itself is now essentially complete, Team Telecom has yet to make a decision on whether data can start to flow through it. 

In the past, Team Telecom has permitted submarine cables, even from China, to land in the US, as long as the companies operating them signed what are called network security agreements. These agreements typically require network operations to be based in the US, using an approved list of equipment and staffed by security-screened personnel. Operators are obliged to block security threats from foreign powers, while complying with lawful surveillance requests from the US government.

In 2017, for example, Team Telecom gave the green light to the New Cross Pacific (NCP) cable directly connecting China and the US, despite it being part-owned by China Mobile, the state-owned company it later denied US access to on national security grounds.

“Normally there wouldn’t be so much fuss over a cable to China,” says Nicole Starosielski, a professor at New York University and author of The Undersea Network. “We’ve had cables to China for a long time and all of these networks interconnect, so even if they don’t land directly in China, they’re only a hop away. It is just one of those moments where it is more difficult to land a cable, no matter who the Chinese partner is, because of the political situation.”

In September, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), who sits on Senate committees for technology, communications and homeland security, sent a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai urging him to block PLCN. “[PLCN] threatens the freedom of Hong Kong and our national security,” wrote Scott. “This project is backed by a Chinese partner, Dr Peng Telecom & Media Group Co., and would ultimately provide a direct link from China into Hong Kong … China has repeatedly shown it cannot be trusted … We cannot allow China expanded access to critical American information, even if funded by US companies.”

Google and Facebook saw the writing on the wall. On January 29 last week, representatives from the two companies – but not PLDC – met with FCC officials to propose a new approach. A filing, made the same day, requests permission to operate just the two PLCN fiber pairs owned by the American companies: Google’s link to Taiwan, and Facebook’s to the Philippines. 

“[Google] and [Facebook] are not aware of any national security issues associated with operation of US-Taiwan and US-Philippine segments,” reads the application. “For clarity, the [request] would not authorize any commercial traffic on the PLCN system to or from Hong Kong, nor any operation of the PLCN system by PLDC.”

The filling goes on to describe how each fiber pair has its own terminating equipment, with Google’s and Facebook’s connections arriving at Los Angeles in cages that are inaccessible to the other companies. “PLDC is contractually prohibited from using its participation interest in the system to interfere with the ownership or rights of use of the other parties,” it notes.

Neither company would comment directly on the new filing. A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch, “We have been working through established channels in order to obtain cable landing licenses for various undersea cables, and we will continue to abide by the decisions made by designated agencies in the locations where we operate.” 

A Facebook spokesperson said, “We are continuing to navigate through all the appropriate channels on licensing and permitting for a jointly-owned subsea cable between the US and Asia to provide fast and secure internet access to more people on both continents.”

“I think stripping out the controversial [Hong Kong] link will work,” says Starosielski. “But whenever one of these projects either gets thwarted, it sends a very strong message. If even Google and Facebook can’t get a cable through, there aren’t going to be a ton of other companies advancing new cable systems between the US and China now.”

Ironically, that means that US data to and from China will continue to flow over the NCP cable controlled by China Mobile – the only company that Team Telecom and the FCC have ever turned down on national security grounds.

Lizhi, one of China’s biggest audio content apps, is debuting on Nasdaq today under the ticker symbol LIZI. It is the first of its major competitors, Ximalaya and Dragonfly, to go public (though Ximalaya is expected to also list in the United States later this year). Lizhi is offering 4.1 million shares at an IPO price of $11 per share.

Though Lizhi, Ximalaya and Dragonfly each host podcasts, audiobooks and livestreams, Lizhi, whose investors include Xiaomi, TPG, Matrix Partners China, Morningside Venture Capital and Orchid Asia, has differentiated itself by focusing on user-generated content created with the app’s recording tools.

According to market research firm iResearch, it has the largest community of user-generated audio content in China. The company said that in the third quarter of 2019, it had a base of 46.6 million average monthly active users on mobile and 5.7 million average monthly active content creators. While podcasts in the U.S. typically use revenue models based on ads or subscriptions, creators on Lizhi and other Chinese podcasting apps monetize through virtual gifts, similar to the ones given by viewers during video livestreams.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Lizhi CEO Marco Lai said the company plans to use proceeds from the IPO to invest in product development and its AI technology. Lizhi uses AI tech to distribute podcasts, which it says results in a 31% click rate on content. AI is also used to monitor content, give creators instant user engagement data and provide features that allow them to fine-tune recordings, reduce noise and create 3D audio.

Despite its quick growth, Lai says online audio in China is still an emerging segment. About 45.5% of total mobile internet users in China listened to online audio content in 2018, but adoption is expected to increase as IoT devices like smart speakers become more popular, especially in smaller cities. Lizhi has a partnership with Baidu for its Xiaodu smart speakers, and develop new ways of distributing content for IoT devices, says Lai.

Joby Aviation has raised a $590 million Series C round of funding, including $394 million from lead investor Toyota Motor Corporation, the company announced today. Joby is in the process of developing an electric air taxi service, which will make use of in-house developed electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that will in part benefit from strategic partner Toyota’s vehicle manufacturing experience.

This brings the total number of funding in Joby Aviation to $720 million, and its list of investors includes Intel Capital, JetBlue Technology Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures and more. Alongside this new round of funding, Joby gains a new board member: Toyota Motor Corporation EVP Shigeki Tomoyama.

Founded in 2009, Joby Aviation is based in Santa Cruz, California. The company was founded by JoeBen Bevirt, who also founded consumer photo and electronics accessory maker Joby. Its proprietary aircraft is a piloted eVTOL, which can fly at up to 200 miles per hour for a total distance of over 150 miles on a single charge. Because it uses an electric drivetrain and multi rotor design, Joby Aviation says it’s “100 times quieter than conventional aircraft during takeoff and landing, and near-silent when flying overhead.”

These benefits make eVTOL craft prime candidates for developing urban aerial transportation networks, and a number of companies, including Joby as well as China’s EHang, Airbus and more are all working on this type of craft for use in this kind of city-based short-hop transit for both people and cargo.

The sizeable investment made by Toyota in this round is a considerable bet for the automaker on the future of air transportation. In a press release detailing the round, Toyota President and CEO Akio Toyoda indicated that the company is serious about eVTOLs and air transport in general.

“Air transportation has been a long-term goal for Toyota, and while we continue our work in the automobile business, this agreement sets our sights to the sky,” Toyoda is quoted as saying. “As we take up the challenge of air transportation together with Joby, an innovator in the emerging eVTOL space, we tap the potential to revolutionize future transportation and life. Through this new and exciting endeavor, we hope to deliver freedom of movement and enjoyment to customers everywhere, on land, and now, in the sky.”

Joby Aviation believes that it can achieve significant cost benefits vs. traditional helicopters for short aerial flights, eventually lowering costs through maximizing utilization and fuel savings to the point where it can be “accessible to everyone.” To date, Joby has completed sub-scale testing on its aircraft design, and begun full flight tests of production prototypes, along with beginning the certification process for its aircraft with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at the end of 2018.

We may have moved on from a nearly-daily cycle of news involving tech giants sparring in courts over intellectual property infringement, but patents continue to be a major cornerstone of how companies and people measure their progress and create moats around the work that they have done in hopes of building that into profitable enterprises in the future. IFI Claims, a company that tracks patent activity in the US, released its annual tally of IP work today underscoring that theme: it noted that 2019 saw a new high-watermark of 333,530 patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The figures are notable for a few reasons. One is that this is the most patents ever granted in a single year; and the second that this represents a 15% jump on a year before. The high overall number speaks to the enduring interest in safeguarding IP, while the 15% jump has to do with the fact that patent numbers actually dipped last year (down 3.5%) while the number that were filed and still in application form (not granted) was bigger than ever. If we can draw something from that, it might be that filers and the USPTO were both taking a little more time to file and process, not a reduction in the use of patents altogether.

But patents do not tell the whole story in another very important regard.

Namely, the world’s most valuable, and most high profile tech companies are not always the ones that rank the highest in patents filed.

Consider the so-called FAANG group, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google: Facebook is at number-36 (one of the fastest movers but still not top 10) with 989 patents; Apple is at number-seven with 2,490 patents; Amazon is at number-nine with 2,427 patents; Netflix doesn’t make the top 50 at all; and the Android, search and advertising behemoth Google is merely at slot 15 with 2,102 patents (and no special mention for growth).

Indeed, the fact that one of the oldest tech companies, IBM, is also the biggest patent filer almost seems ironic in that regard.

As with previous years — the last 27, to be exact — IBM has continued to hold on to the top spot for patents granted, with 9,262 in total for the year. Samsung Electronics, at 6,469, is a distant second.

These numbers, again, don’t tell the whole story: IFI Claims notes that Samsung ranks number-one when you consider all active patent “families”, which might get filed across a number of divisions (for example a Samsung Electronics subsidiary filing separately) and count the overall number of patents to date (versus those filed this year). In this regard, Samsung stands at 76,638, with IBM the distant number-two at 37,304 patent families.

Part of this can be explained when you consider their businesses: Samsung makes a huge range of consumer and enterprise products. IBM, on the other hand, essentially moved out of the consumer electronics market years ago and these days mostly focuses on enterprise and B2B and far less hardware. That means a much smaller priority placed on that kind of R&D, and subsequent range of families.

Two other areas that are worth tracking are biggest movers and technology trends.

In the first of these, it’s very interesting to see a car company rising to the top. Kia jumped 58 places and is now at number-41 (921 patents) — notable when you think about how cars are the next “hardware” and that we are entering a pretty exciting phase of connected vehicles, self-driving and alternative energy to propel them.

Others rounding out fastest-growing were Hewlett Packard Enterprise, up 28 places to number-48 (794 patents); Facebook, up 22 places to number-36 (989 patents); Micron Technology, up nine places to number-25 (1,268), Huawei, up six places to number-10 (2,418), BOE Technology, up four places to number-13 (2,177), and Microsoft, up three places to number-4 (3,081 patents).

In terms of technology trends, IFI looks over a period of five years, where there is now a strong current of medical and biotechnology innovation running through the list right now, with hybrid plant creation topping the list of trending technology, followed by CRISPR gene-editing technology, and then medicinal preparations (led by cancer therapies). “Tech” in the computer processor sense only starts at number-four with dashboards and other car-related tech; with quantum computing, 3-D printing and flying vehicle tech all also featuring.

Indeed, if you have wondered if we are in a fallow period of innovation in mobile, internet and straight computer technology… look no further than this list to prove out that thought.

Unsurprisingly, US companies account for 49% of U.S. patents granted in 2019 up from 46 percent a year before. Japan accounts for 16% to be the second-largest, with South Korea at 7% (Samsung carrying a big part of that, I’m guessing), and China passing Germany to be at number-four with 5%.

1. International Business Machines Corp 9262
2. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd 6469
3. Canon Inc 3548
4. Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC 3081
5. Intel Corp 3020
6. LG Electronics Inc 2805
7. Apple Inc 2490
8. Ford Global Technologies LLC 2468
9. Amazon Technologies Inc 2427
10. Huawei Technologies Co Ltd 2418
11. Qualcomm Inc 2348
12. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co TSMC Ltd 2331
13. BOE Technology Group Co Ltd 2177
14. Sony Corp 2142
15. Google LLC 2102
16. Toyota Motor Corp 2034
17. Samsung Display Co Ltd 1946
18. General Electric Co 1818
19. Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson AB 1607
20. Hyundai Motor Co 1504
21. Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co Ltd 1387
22. Boeing Co 1383
23. Seiko Epson Corp 1345
24. GM Global Technology Operations LLC 1285
25. Micron Technology Inc 1268
26. United Technologies Corp 1252
27. Mitsubishi Electric Corp 1244
28. Toshiba Corp 1170
29. AT&T Intellectual Property I LP 1158
30. Robert Bosch GmbH 1107
31. Honda Motor Co Ltd 1080
32. Denso Corp 1052
33. Cisco Technology Inc 1050
34. Halliburton Energy Services Inc 1020
35. Fujitsu Ltd 1008
36. Facebook Inc 989
37. Ricoh Co Ltd 980
38. Koninklijke Philips NV 973
39. EMC IP Holding Co LLC 926
40. NEC Corp 923
41. Kia Motors Corp 921
42. Texas Instruments Inc 894
43. LG Display Co Ltd 865
44. Oracle International Corp 847
45. Murata Manufacturing Co Ltd 842
46. Sharp Corp 819
47. SK Hynix Inc 798
48. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP 794
49. Fujifilm Corp 791
50. LG Chem Ltd 791

Today in regular trading, shares of American electric car manufacturer Tesla surged past the $500 mark.

Tesla, perhaps the most famous electric vehicle company in the world, has had tumultuous last twelve months on the public markets. The company’s shares have traded as low as $176.99 in the past 52 weeks, and, as has high as $507.50 today.

The company is worth $507.28 per share at the moment, valuing Tesla at $91.38 billion according to Google Finance. As is often pointed out Tesla is worth more than Ford and General Motors combined. In a slightly more exotic forumation, Tesla is worth just under 64 times as much as Aston Martin.

What’s going on?

Why is Telsa surging? We presume that it’s not the latest from Musk, that “Teslas will soon talk and make fart noises” according to CNBC. (At least we hope not.)

Instead, an investor upgrade this morning could be the key reason for the company’s gains today. As IBD points out, the new target from Oppenheimer is over $600 per share

That’s today’s runup explained. The morning’s rally, nowver is tied to the company’s rising growing operations in China and global delivery figures.

China’s automotive market is moribund and shrinking at the moment, and the Chinese government’s incentives for electric cars have fallen. Small issues, it appears, for Tesla bulls. (Tesla’s success allowed NIO to go public, a China-based electric car company; another is hoping to follow in its footsteps.)

Since delivering its first China-produced cars earlier this month, Tesla shares have shot higher. After cracking $400 in early December, Tesla is now up another 20%.

There is more good news to point to at Telsa, like its recent car delivery results. As TechCrunch’s own Kirsten Korosec reported earlier this month:

Tesla  said Friday that it delivered 367,500 electric vehicles in 2019 — 50% more than the previous year — a record-breaking figure largely supported by sales of the cheaper Model 3. More than one-third of those deliveries — about 112,000 vehicles — occurred in the fourth quarter. The electric automaker reported production also grew 10% from the previous quarter, to 105,000 vehicles.

That said, the company’s detractors point to mix shift harming year-over-year revenues, and lower-margin cars taking over its sales volume. Maybe.

Today, however, the longs have it and shorts are eating their, well, pants.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week we had TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm and Danny Crichton on hand to dig into the news, with Chris Gates on the dials and more news than we could possibly cram into 30 minutes. So we went a bit over; sorry about that.

We kicked off by running through a few short-forms to get things going, including:

• Alex wanted to talk about his recent story on Lily AI’s $12.5 million Series A. Canaan led the round into the ecommerce-focused recommendation engine that has a cool take on what people care about.
• Danny talked about the acquisition of Armis Security to Insight for $1.1 billion, the VC round for self-driving forklift startup Vecna, and an outside-the-Valley round for Houston-based HighRadius.

Turning to longer cuts, the team dug into the latest from SoftBank, its Vision Fund, and the successes and struggles of its enormous startup bets. Leading the news cycle this week were layoffs at Zume, a robotic pizza delivery venture that is no longer pursuing robotic pizza delivery. Now it’s working on sustainable packaging. Cool, but it’s going to be hard for the company to grow into its valuation while pivoting.

Other issues have come up — more here — that paint some cracks onto the Vision Fund’s sunny exterior. Don’t be too beguiled by the bad news, Danny says, venture funds run like J-Curves, and there are still winners in that particular portfolio.

After that, we turned to China, in particular its venture slowdown. The bubble, in Danny’s view, has burst. The story discussed is here, if you want to read it. The short version for the lazy is that not only has China’s venture scene slowed down dramatically, but startups — even those with ample capital raised — are dying by the hundred. But one highly caffeinated Chinese startup continues to find growth in the world’s greatest tea market.

Finally we hit on the Sam Altman wager and the latest from Sisense, which is now a unicorn. All that and we had some fun.

Aerial passenger drone startup EHang flew its EHang 216 two-seat self-flying taxi fully autonomously in North Carolina last night, a first for the company both in the U.S. and North America. EHang, which is based in Guangzhou, China, has already demonstrated its vehicle in flight both at home, and in different parts of Europe and Asia, but this is the first time its aircraft has received approval to fly by the FAA, and EHang is now working towards extending that approval to flying with passengers on board which is a key requirement for EHang’s eventual goals of offering commercial service in the U.S.

This demonstration flight, which took place in Raleigh, included flying North Carolina governor Roy Cooper on board the two-seat aircraft. Eventually, EHang hopes to deploy these for use across a number of different industries, for transportation of both passengers and cargo along autonomous, short-distance routes in and around urban areas.

EHang had a busy 2019, too – the company began trading publicly on the Nasdaq in December. It also revealed plans to begin operating an aerial shuttle service in Guangzhou, with a pilot citywide drone taxi service intended to show off not only its individual autonomous vehicle capabilities, but also how it can deploy and operate multiple EHang aircraft working in concert with one another and with other aircraft sharing the air space over the city.

Towards the end of 2019, EHang actually completed two trial flights of its 216 vehicles flying simultaneously as an early step towards building out that pilot. The company has already delivered around 40 of its aircraft to paying customers, too, and if all goes to plan, by next month it will have completed a pilot program with the Civil Aviation Administration of China that will allow it to move on to full approval of the airworthiness of its aircraft in the country for commercial flight.