VividQ, a UK-based deeptech startup with technology for rendering holograms on legacy screens, has raised $15 million to develop its technology for next-generation digital displays and devices. And it’s already lining up manufacturing partners in the US, China and Japan to do it.

The funding round, a Seed extension round, was led by UTokyo IPC, the venture investment arm for the University of Tokyo. It was joined by Foresight Williams Technology (a joint collaboration between Foresight Group and Williams Advanced Engineering), Japanese Miyako Capital, APEX Ventures in Austria, and the R42 Group VC out of Stanford. Previous investors University of Tokyo Edge Capital, Sure Valley Ventures, and Essex Innovation also participated.

The funding will be used to scale VividQ’s HoloLCD technology, which, claims the company, turns consumer-grade screens into holographic displays.

Founded in 2017, VividQ has already worked with ARM, and other partners, including Compound Photonics, Himax Technologies, and iView Displays.

The startup is aiming its technology at Automotive HUD, head-mounted displays (HMDs), and smart glasses with a Computer-Generated Holography that projects “actual 3D images with true depth of field, making displays more natural and immersive for users.” It also says it has discovered a way to turn normal LCD screens into holographic displays.

Darran Milne, Co-Founder and CEO of VividQ, said: “Scenes we know from films, from Iron Man to Star Trek, are becoming closer to reality than ever. At VividQ, we are on a mission to bring holographic displays to the world for the first time. Our solutions help bring innovative display products to the automotive industry, improve AR experiences, and soon will change how we interact with personal devices, such as laptops and mobiles.”

VividQ

Mikio Kawahara, Chief Investment Officer of UTokyo IPC, said, “The future of display is holography. The demand for improved 3D images in real-world settings is growing across the whole display industry. VividQ’s products will make the future ambitions of many consumer electronics businesses a reality.”

Hermann Hauser, APEX Ventures’ advisor, and co-founder of Arm added: “Computer-Generated Holography recreates immersive projections that possess the same 3D information as the world around us. VividQ has the potential to change how humans interact with digital information.”

Speaking on a call with me, Milne added: “We have put the technology on gaming laptops that can actually take make use of holographic displays on a standard LCD screen. So you know the image is actually extending out of the screen. We don’t use any optical trickery.”

“When we say holograms, what we mean is a hologram is essentially an instruction set that tells light how to behave. We compute that effect algorithmically and then present that to the eye, so it’s indistinguishable from a real object. It’s entirely natural as well. Your brain and your visual system are unable to distinguish it from something real because you’re literally giving your eyes the same information that reality does, so there’s no trickery in the normal sense,” he said.

If this works, it could certainly be a transformation, and I can see it being married very well with technology like UltraLeap.

Microsoft will soon launch a dedicated device for game streaming, the company announced today. It’s also working with a number of TV manufacturers to build the Xbox experience right into their internet-connected screens and Microsoft plans to bring build cloud gaming to the PC Xbox app later this year, too, with a focus on play-before-you-buy scenarios.

It’s unclear what these new game streaming devices will look like. Microsoft didn’t provide any further details. But chances are, we’re talking about either a Chromecast-like streaming stick or a small Apple TV-like box. So far, we also don’t know which TV manufacturers it will partner with.

It’s no secret that Microsoft is bullish about cloud gaming. With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, it’s already making it possible for its subscribers to play more than 100 console games on Android, streamed from the Azure cloud, for example. In a few weeks, it’ll open cloud gaming in the browser on Edge, Chrome and Safari, to all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers (it’s currently in limited beta). And it is bringing Game Pass Ultimate to Australia, Brazil, Mexico and Japan later this year, too.

In many ways, Microsoft is unbundling gaming from the hardware — similar to what Google is trying with Stadia (an effort that, so far, has fallen flat for Google) and Amazon with Luna. The major advantage Microsoft has here is a large library of popular games, something that’s mostly missing on competing services, with the exception of Nvidia’s GeForce Now platform — though that one has a different business model since its focus is not on a subscription but on allowing you to play the games you buy in third-party stores like Steam or the Epic store.

What Microsoft clearly wants to do is expand the overall Xbox ecosystem, even if that means it sells fewer dedicated high-powered consoles. The company likens this to the music industry’s transition to cloud-powered services backed by all-you-can-eat subscription models.

“We believe that games, that interactive entertainment, aren’t really about hardware and software. It’s not about pixels. It’s about people. Games bring people together,”
said Microsoft’s Xbox head Phil Spencer. “Games build bridges and forge bonds, generating mutual empathy among people all over the world. Joy and community -that’s why we’re here.”

It’s worth noting that Microsoft says it’s not doing away with dedicated hardware, though, and is already working on the next generation of its console hardware — but don’t expect a new Xbox console anytime soon.

Max Q is a weekly newsletter from TechCrunch all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox.

This week actually includes two, since I was out last week for a Canadian national holiday (and back today for the U.S. one, ironically). There’s plenty to cover, including Blue Origin’s bidding process, lunar landers, spaceships launching at sea and the return of our very own space event.

Blue Origin’s big bid

Blue Origin is auctioning off one seat on its first ever human spaceflight, and the bidding got started at $1.4 million — or at least, the public bidding started there. Before last week, people had been submitting blind bids, but now Blue Origin is posting the top current bid to its website whenever it hits a new high. It’s currently set at $2.8 million, meaning it’s doubled since the bids opened up to public scrutiny, and presumably FOMO.

Everything’s building up to June 12, when the auction will conclude with a live, real-time online competitive bidding round. Seems likely it’ll at least cross the $3 million mark before all’s said and done, which is good news for Blue Origin, since run-of-the-mill tickets for the few minutes in suborbital space going forward will probably end up more in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range.

The winning bidder will be flying on July 20, if all goes to the current plan, and will be accompanied by other passengers selected by Blue Origin through some other mechanism. We don’t yet know who else will be on the ride. Bezos maybe?

SpaceX’s Deimos spaceport is under construction

ENSCO offshore oil rig like the one SpaceX is converting.

SpaceX is really flexing its sci-fi-made-real muscle with its latest move: The company is turning two offshore oil rig platforms into floating spaceports, and one of the two, codenamed ‘Deimos’ after one of Mars’ moons, is already being worked on. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared that the company is hoping to have it ready for operations next year, meaning it could host actual launches in 2022.

Eventually, Deimos and its twin, Phobos, will provide launch and landing services to SpaceX’s first fully reusable launch vehicle — Starship. Starship only just managed to land successfully after a high, but still very much atmospheric flight test, however, so it has a way to go before it’s making amphibious departures and arrivals using the converted oil platforms.

Putting these in the ocean presumably helps solve some key issues, not least of which is being mindful of the impact of launching absolutely massive rockets on land anywhere near people. Ditto the landings, which at least early on, are bound to be risky affairs better carried out with a buffer of surrounding ocean.

Landers; lunar ones

Concept graphic depicting ispace’s HAKUTO-R lander and rover.

There’s quite a bit of lunar lander news this week, including Japan’s ispace revealing that it’ll provide commercial lunar lander service to both Canada and Japan, with a ride for both provided by SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket. These will be two separate missions, with the first one set for next year, and the second one set to take place in 2023.

Both will use ispace’s Hakuto-R lander, which it originally developed to take part in the Google-backed Lunar XPRIZE competition. That ended without a winner, but some companies, including ispace, continued to work on their landers with an eye to commercialization. The Hakuto-R being sent on behalf of JAXA will carry an adorable ball-shaped Moon robot which looks like a very novel take on a rover.

Meanwhile, GM announced this past week that it’s working with space industry veteran Lockheed Martin to develop a next-gen Moon rover that will provide future lunar astronauts with more speed and greater range. GM and Lockheed will still have to win a NASA contract in order to actually make the thing, but they’re clearly excited about the prospect.

TC Sessions: Space is back in December

Last year we held our first dedicated space event, and it went so well that we decided to host it again in 2021. This year, it’s happening December 14 and 15, and it’s once again going to be an entirely virtual conference, so people from all over the world will be able to join.

We had an amazing line-up of guests and speakers at last year’s event, including Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck, NASA’s Kathy Lueders and more, and we’re already working on a fantastic follow-up agenda that’s sure to thrill all kinds of space fans.

You can already get tickets, and if you get in early, you save $100.

Farmers and food businesses, like restaurants, deal with the same issue: a fragmented supply chain. Secai Marche wants to streamline agricultural logistics, making fulfillment more cost-efficient and enabling food businesses to bundle products from different farmers into the same order. The company is headquartered in Japan, with operations in Malaysia, and plans to expand into Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. This week, it announced 150 million JPY (about $1.4 million USD) in pre-Series A funding from Rakuten Ventures and Beyond Next Ventures to build a B2B logistics platform for farmers that sell to restaurants, hotels and other F&B (food and beverage) businesses.

This round brings Secai Marche’s total raised to about $3 million. The capital will be used to expand its fulfillment infrastructure, including a network of warehouses and cold chain logistics, hire more people for its engineering team, and sales and marketing.

Secai Marche was founded in 2018 by Ami Sugiyama and Shusaku Hayakawa, and currently serves 130 farmers and more than 300 F&B businesses. Before launching the startup, Sugiyama spent seven years working in Southeast Asia, including managing restaurants and cafes in Malaysia. During that time, she started to import green tea from Japan, intending to sell it directly to customers in Malaysia. But she realized supply chain inefficiencies not only made it hard to meet demand, but also ensure quality for all kinds of ingredients.

Meanwhile, Hayakawa was operating a farm in Japan and working on agriculture control systems that predicted weather and crop growth to help farmers maintain consistent quality.

Both Sugiyama and Hayakawa ended up at consulting firm Deloitte, researching how to create a more efficient supply chain for Japanese agricultural exports to Singaporean F&B businesses. Policies implemented by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s administration aim to increase Japanese agricultural exports from 922.3 billion JPY (about $8.5 billion) in 2020 to 2 trillion JPY (about $18.5 billion) by 2025, and 5 trillion JPY (about $46.1 billion) in 2030.

Seche Marche’s goal is to make it easier for farmers to sell their crops to F&B businesses domestically or overseas.

“We found that not only farmers in Japan, but also all farmers in Southeast Asia have the same problem in terms of the current supply chain,” Sugiyama told TechCrunch. “So we left Deloitte and started our own business to connect not only farmers in Japan, but farmers in all Asian countries.”

Secai Marche’s logistics management tech is what differentiates it from other wholesaler platforms. It uses an AI-based algorithm to predict demand based on consumption trends, seasonal products and farmer recommendations, said Hayakawa. Secai Marche runs its own warehouse network, but mostly relies on third-party logistics providers for fulfillment, and its platform assigns orders to the most efficient transportation method.

This allows F&B businesses to consolidate orders from farmers, so they can order smaller batches from different places without spending more money. About 30% of Secai Marche’s products are shipped to other countries, while the rest are sold domestically.

Secai Marche is reaching out to farmers who want to increase their customer base. About 30% of its products currently come from Japanese farms, 50% from Malaysia and the rest from other ASEAN countries. Sugiyama and Hayakawa said the COVID-19 pandemic affected Secai Marche’s expansion plans because it originally planned to enter Singapore this year, but had to slow down since they were unable to travel and meet with farmers.

On the other hand, many farmers have started selling directly to consumers through social media like Instagram or Facebook, and have approached Secai Marche for help with fulfillment, logistics, repacking and quality control.

The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), a deep-tech investment firm, announced the first close of its fifth fund, which is expected to total 30 billion JPY (or about $275 million USD) by June 2021. UTEC currently has about $780 million in total assets under management, and says this makes it one of the largest venture capital funds focused on science and tech in Japan, and one of the largest deep-tech funds in Asia.

UTEC is an independent firm that works closely with universities. It is associated with The University of Tokyo (UTokyo), where it has a partnership with its Technology Licensing Office (TLO) to spin-off and invest in companies that originated as research projects. It has also worked with researchers from Waseda University, Kyoto University, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Cambridge University, the National University of Singapore and the Indian Institute of Technology, among other institutions.

UTEC’s deep-tech investments around the world

Broadly speaking, UTEC focuses on three areas: healthcare and life sciences, information technology and physical sciences and engineering. More specifically, it is looking for tech that addresses some of the most important issues in Japan, including an aging population; labor shortage; and the digitization of legacy industries.

“UTEC 5 will allow us to provide more funds from seed/early to pre-IPO/M&A stages in Japan and worldwide, on a wider scale and in a more consistent manner,” said managing partner and president Tomotaka Goji in a statement. “I believe this will further help our startups expand to address the global issues of humankind.”

The firm also partners with other funds, including Arch Venture Partners and Blume Ventures, to find investment opportunities around the world.

UTEC’s portfolio already includes more than 80 Japanese startups and 30 startups from other places, including the United States, India, Southeast Asia and Europe. So far, 25 of its investments have exited. Thirteen went public and now have an aggregated market cap of about $15 billion, and 12 were through mergers and acquisitions.

Some of its exits include 908 Devices, a mass spectrometry company that went public on Nasdaq last year; Fyusion, a computer vision startup acquired by Cox Automotive; and Phyzios, which was acquired by Google in 2013.

About half of UTEC’s portfolio are university spin-offs. For companies that originated in academic research, UTEC supports their commercialization by helping hire crucial talent, including executive positions, business development and go-to-market strategies. The firm’s first check size is about $500,000 to $5 million, and it also usually provides follow-on capital.

“We typically double-down on our investment in subsequent funding rounds of the company and can invest up to about $23 million per company over its lifecycle,” UTEC principal Kiran Mysore, who leads their global AI investments, told TechCrunch.

UTEC’s other investments include personal mobility robotics company BionicM, which started at UTokyo and spatial intelligence solution developer Locix, spun-off from U.C. Berkeley. The firm also helps startups collaborate with academic institutions. For example, Indian biotech Bugworks collaborates with the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Japanese industrial robotics startup Mujin now works with Carnegie Mellon.

SmartNews’ Vaccine Alert and Map features for its Japanese app

SmartNews announced today that its tools to help Japanese users find nearby COVID-19 vaccine bookings have reached more than one million users just a week after launching. The news discovery unicorn decided to create Vaccine Alert and Map features for its Japanese app because many people there are frustrated by the speed of vaccine rollouts. In the United States, where vaccinations are going much faster, SmartNews just released a feature that lets people find appointments by zip code today.

The company has more than 20 million monthly active users combined in Japan and the United States.

According to a public opinion poll by Nippon TV, more than 70% of Japanese people are dissatisfied with its slow vaccine rollout. That sentiment was echoed in SmartNews’ own research, which surveyed 900 people aged 65 to 79 at the beginning of April, and found that more than 90% felt there was insufficient information available about when and where they could get vaccinated. Challenges included the lack of a central portal for vaccine booking information, meaning local government offices and healthcare providers were inundated with questions.

A screenshot of SmartNews’ vaccine finder feature for the American version of its app

To create its Vaccine Alert and Map, SmartNews aggregated information from 1,741 municipalities across Japan. The Vaccine Alert lets users know when they are eligible to get a shot based on their location, age, occupation and health conditions. The Vaccine Map combines data from about 37,000 facilities, so people can see where bookings are available near them or get notified when their healthcare providers begin taking reservations.

The features were released on April 12, the day vaccinations began for elderly people in Japan, and had more than one million users a week later. This is in part because SmartNews is one of the country’s most popular news aggregator apps and also because the new features were covered by TV Asahi, a major TV station.

A company representative told TechCrunch that many people who signed up for the vaccine features were already SmartNews users, but it has also seen new downloads as people share their vaccination appointments with friends and family.

NGK Spark Plug, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of automative spark plugs, announced a new $100 million fund to invest in startups and find potential merger and acquisition deals. The fund was launched with Pegasus Tech Ventures, the “venture capital as a service” firm that has also worked with corporations like Sega Sammy Holdings, Asus and Aisin Seiki to launch venture funds.

While best known for its automotive components, NGK Spark Plug also manufacturers many other hardware components, including for semiconductor production equipment, cutting tools, medical equipment, industrial ceramics. In recent years, the Nagoya, Japan-headquartered company has begun focusing on new technologies, like solid-state electric vehicle batteries.

NGK Spark Plug’s new corporate venture fund is an opportunity to work with startups and expand into new businesses, said Anis Uzzaman, general partner and chief executive officer of Pegasus Tech Ventures.

The company is looking for software and hardware startups in the United States, Europe, Israel and Asia and will focus on three themes: smart health, decentralized utilities and smart mobility.

“The selection of those areas is based on global trends and data. The global rate of poverty is decreasing and more people need healthy food, clean water, access to energy, mobility and easy access to healthcare,” Uzzaman told TechCrunch in an email.
“NGK is using its material and sensors expertise, as well as its sales channels in automotive, to establish systems and solutions to address major pain points in those areas.”

For smart mobility, this means tech like charging solutions, solid state batteries, ADAS systems, service platforms and power inverters. In decentralized utilities, NGK Spark Plug will look at food tech and agriculture startups, with the goal of creating safer and more sustainable food supplies and reducing pollution. It is also interested in air purification technology.

The fund will invest in early to late stage startups, with check sizes ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to a few million dollars. NGK Spark Plug plans to work closely with portfolio companies, helping bring their tech to maturation, investing in them at multiple stages and remaining open to potential mergers and acquisitions, Uzzaman added.

LINE completed its merger with Yahoo! Japan owner Z Holdings last month, and now the two firm’s venture capital arms have also combined. Z Holdings announced today that its subsidiary, YJ Capital, has merged with LINE Ventures to form Z Venture Capital.

The new firm also announced the launch of a 30 billion JPY (about $271 million USD) fund, which it claims makes it one of the largest corporate venture capital funds in Japan. The fund will look in Japan, as well as global markets like South Korea, the United States, China and Southeast Asia, for investment opportunities, with the aim of creating collaborations between startups and Z Holdings’ commerce, media and fintech services.

In Japan, Z Venture Capital will focus on data and AI technologies in sectors like healthcare, cybersecurity and B2B, investing in all stages of startups from seed to late-stage.

The firm will take a “sector-agnostic in principal” approach to its global investments based on local market trends, but plans to hone in on consumer internet, e-commerce, fintech and mobility companies. In the United States, it will also look for robotics, deep tech and blockchain opportunities.

Chih-Han Yu, chief executive officer and co-founder of Appier Group Inc., right, holds a hammer next to a bell during an event marking the listing of the company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, at the company’s office in Taipei, Taiwan on Tuesday, March 30, 2021. Photographer: Billy H.C. Kwok/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Appier’s initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday was a milestone not only for the company, but also Sequoia Capital India, one of its earliest investors. Founded in Taiwan, Appier was the fund’s first investment outside of India, and is now also the first company in its portfolio outside of India to go public. In an interview with TechCrunch, Sequoia Capital managing director Abheek Anand talked about what drew the firm to Appier, which develops AI-based marketing software.

Before shifting its focus to marketing, Appier’s founders—chief executive officer Chih-Han Yu, chief operating officer Winnie Lee and chief technology officer Joe Su—worked on a startup called Plaxie to develop AI-powered gaming engines. Yu and Su came up with the idea when they were both graduate students at Harvard, but found there was little demand at the time. Anand met them in 2013, soon after their pivot to big data and marketing, and Sequoia Capital India invested in Appier’s Series A a few months later.

“It’s easy to say in retrospect what worked and what didn’t work. What really stands out without trying to write revisionist history is that this was just an incredibly smart team,” said Anand. “They had probably the most technical core DNA of any Series A company that we’ve met in years, I would argue.” Yu holds a PhD in computer science from Harvard, Wu earned a PhD in immunology at Washington University in St. Louis and Su has a M.S. in computer science from Harvard. The company also filled its team with AI and machine learning researchers from top universities in Taiwan and the United States.

At the time, Sequoia Capital “had a broad thesis that there would be adoption of AI in enterprises,” Anand said. “What we believed was there were a bunch of people going after that problem, but they were trying to solve business problems without necessarily having the technical depth to do it.” Appier stood out because they “were swinging at it from the other end, where they had an enormous amount of technical expertise.”

Since Appier’s launch in 2012, more companies have emerged that use machine learning and big data to help companies automate marketing decisions and create online campaigns. Anand said one of the reasons Appier, which now operates in 14 markets across the Asia-Pacific region, remains competitive is its strategy of cross-selling new products and focusing on specific use cases instead of building a general purpose platform.

Appier’s core product is a cross-platform advertising engine called CrossX that focuses on user acquisition. Then it has products that address other parts of their customers’ value chain: AiDeal to help companies send coupons to the customers who are most likely to use them; user engagement platform AIQUA; and AIXON, a data science platform that uses AI models to predict customer actions, including the likelihood of repeat purchases.

“I think the number one thing that the company has spent a lot of time on is focusing on efficiency,” said Anand. “Customers have tons of data, both external and first-party, that they’re processing to drive business outcomes. It’s a very hard technical problem. Appier starts with a solution that is relatively easy to break into a customer, and then builds deeper and deeper solutions for those customers.”

Appier’s listing is also noteworthy because it marks the first time a company from Taiwan has listed in Japan since Trend Micro’s IPO in 1998. Japan is one of Appier’s biggest markets (customers there include Rakuten, Toyota and Shiseido), making the Tokyo Stock Exchange a natural fit, Anand said, even though most of Sequoia Capital India’s portfolio companies list in India or the United States.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange also stood out because of its retail investor participation, liquidity and total volume. Some of Appier’s other core investors, including JAFCO Asia and SoftBank Group Corp., are also based in Japan. But though it has almost $30 billion in average trading volume, the vast majority of listings are domestic companies. In a recent report, Nikkei Asia cited a higher corporate tax rate and lack of potential underwriters, especially for smaller listings, as a potential obstacles for foreign companies.

But Appier’s debut may lead the way for other Asian startups to chose the Tokyo Stock Exchange, said Anand. “Getting ready for the Japanese exchange meant having the right accounting practices, the right reporting, a whole bunch of compliance stuff. It was a long process. In some ways we were leading the charge for external companies to get there, and I’m sure over time it will keep getting easier and easier.”

Google today announced that it is rolling out Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), a crucial part of its Privacy Sandbox project for Chrome, as a developer origin trial.

FLoC is meant to be an alternative to the kind of cookies that advertising technology companies use today to track you across the web. Instead of a personally identifiable cookie, FLoC runs locally and analyzes your browsing behavior to group you into a cohort of like-minded people with similar interests (and doesn’t share your browsing history with Google). That cohort is specific enough to allow advertisers to do their thing and show you relevant ads, but without being so specific as to allow marketers to identify you personally.

This “interest-based advertising,” as Google likes to call it, allows you to hide within the crowd of users with similar interests. All the browser displays is a cohort ID and all your browsing history and other data stay locally.

Image Credits: Google / Getty Images

The trial will start in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and the Philippines. Over time, Google plans to scale it globally. As we learned earlier this month, Google is not running any tests in Europe because of concerns around GDPR and other privacy regulations (in part, because it’s unclear whether FLoC IDs should be considered personal data under these regulations).

Users will be able to opt out from this origin trial, just like they will be able to do so with all other Privacy Sandbox trials.

Unsurprisingly, given how FLoC upends many of the existing online advertising systems in place, not everybody loves this idea. Advertisers obviously love the idea of being able to target individual users, though Google’s preliminary data shows that using these cohorts leads to similar results for them and that advertisers can expect to see “at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared to cookie-based advertising.”

Google notes that its own advertising products will get the same access to FLoC IDs as its competitors in the ads ecosystem.

But it’s not just the advertising industry that is eyeing this project skeptically. Privacy advocates aren’t fully sold on the idea either. The EFF, for example, argues that FLoC will make it easier for marketing companies that want to fingerprint users based on the various FLoC IDs they expose, for example. That’s something Google is addressing with its Privacy Budget proposal, but how well that will work remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, users would probably prefer to just browse the web without seeing ads (no matter what the advertising industry may want us to believe) and without having to worry about their privacy. But online publishers continue to rely on advertising income to fund their sites.

With all of these divergent interests, it was always clear that Google’s initiatives weren’t going to please everyone. That friction was always built into the process. And while other browser vendors can outright block ads and third-party cookies, Google’s role in the advertising ecosystem makes this a bit more complicated.

“When other browsers started blocking third-party cookies by default, we were excited about the direction, but worried about the immediate impact,” Marshall Vale, Google’s product manager for Privacy Sandbox, writes in today’s announcement. “Excited because we absolutely need a more private web, and we know third-party cookies aren’t the long-term answer. Worried because today many publishers rely on cookie-based advertising to support their content efforts, and we had seen that cookie blocking was already spawning privacy-invasive workarounds (such as fingerprinting) that were even worse for user privacy. Overall, we felt that blocking third-party cookies outright without viable alternatives for the ecosystem was irresponsible, and even harmful, to the free and open web we all enjoy.”

It’s worth noting that FLoC, as well as Google’s other privacy sandbox initiatives, are still under development. The company says the idea here is to learn from these initial trials and evolve the project accordingly.

IBM has installed a couple of its own Quantum System One machines across the world in recent years, but today it announced its first private-sector U.S. deployment thanks to a new ten-year partnership with the Cleveland Clinic. This not only marks IBM’s first U.S. install of one of its quantum computers outside of its own facilities, but also the first time a healthcare institute purchases and houses a quantum computer. And thanks to this deal, Cleveland will also get access to IBM’s upcoming next-gen 1,000+ qubit quantum system.

We’re still in the very early days of commercializing quantum computing and for most current users, having access to a system over the cloud is sufficient for the experiments they are running. But increasingly, we are seeing research institutes and even some commercial users who are looking to install on-premises quantum computers to have full access to a dedicated machine.

This new deal is part of a larger partnership between IBM and the Cleveland Clinic, which also involves IBM’s hybrid cloud portfolio for high-performance computing and its AI tools. The partnership also forms the foundation of Cleveland Clinic’s new Center for Pathogen Research & Human Health, which is supported by $500 million in investments from the State of Ohio, Jobs Ohio and Cleveland Clinic.

“What we’re announcing here is the first — I’m going to call them private sector or nonprofit — but still, it’s the first sort of non-government organization that is going to have not only fully dedicated systems, but what is really, really remarkable is our commitment for the decades,” Dario Gil, IBM’s SVP and Director of IBM Research, told me. “In a way, they are partnering with us for the entire roadmap. So it’s not only taking receipt and getting access to a fleet of quantum computers and the next-generation quantum computer for next year. They’re also the first ones who are signing up and says, ‘I want the first 1,000+ qubit system.”

He noted that it takes a very forward-looking organization to invest heavily in quantum computing today. It’s one thing for a nation-state to start working with this nascent technology, given the potential it has in a wide variety of fields, but it’s another for a non-profit to make a similar bet. “The level of ambition is really, really high on their end because they’re thinking about the future,” Gil said of the Cleveland Clinic’s leadership.

Gil noted that as part of the overall deal, Cleveland Clinic’s researchers will also get access to IBM’s entire quantum portfolio in the cloud. IBM will maintain and support the on-premises quantum computer and they will remain IBM-owned machines, similar to its deals with government research labs in Japan and Germany, he explained.

“Maintaining it and supporting it is really critical,” Gil said about why that’s the case. “And they need us and our expertise to be able to do that. And also, you know, we do it because it’s like one of the most sensitive technologies that we have in IBM. So we are exquisitely focused on maintaining the security and safety for the machines.”

As part of the overall deal, IBM and Cleveland Clinic will also work on building skills among Cleveland Clinic’s researchers in quantum computing, but also AI and high-performance computing.

“Through this innovative collaboration, we have a unique opportunity to bring the future to life,” said Tom Mihaljevic, M.D., President and CEO of Cleveland Clinic. “These new computing technologies will revolutionize discovery in the life sciences and ultimately improve people’s lives. The Discovery Accelerator will enable our renowned teams to build a forward-looking digital infrastructure and transform medicine, while training the workforce of the future and growing our economy.”

Japan is often under discussed as an expansion target for American startups, but in the past few years it has become a top market for companies like Slack, Salesforce, Twitter and, more recently, Clubhouse. Today SIP Global Partners is announcing a new fund to invest in early-stage U.S. startups that have the potential to expand into Japan, and potentially other Asian markets, too. The fund has raised a $75 million first close of its $150 million target, and already invested in five companies.

SIP’s new fund will look at late seed to Series B-stage companies that have a product, or one about to come to market, that is ready to expand internationally. The team will work closely with portfolio companies, helping them launch operations in Japan and other Asian markets.

Managing partner Justin Turkat told TechCrunch that Japan is a promising market for foreign startups partly because an undercapitalized venture capital ecosystem means there is a smaller pool of entrepreneurs, with many of the country’s top tech talent opting to join conglomerates or the government instead.

While Japan’s startup market has a lot of potential, he added, it is still nascent. On the other hand, Japan is now the largest source of outward foreign direct investment in the world, and with about 125 million consumers and large corporations in need of scalable solutions, it’s a ripe market for new tech.

“If you look at what’s happened in the last couple of years, I think Japan is open for business with U.S. startups with an urgency that I’ve never seen before, and we think there is a lot of tailwinds around it. You look at investments and partnerships with U.S. startups, it’s at record levels over the last five years and deal counts are increasing every year,” Turkat said.

The fund is being launched by four investors, based in the U.S. and Japan. Turkat and founder and managing partner Shigeki Saitoh, former director of the Japan Venture Capital Association, are in Tokyo, while general partner Jeffrey Smith and founder and managing partner Matthew Salloway are in Boston and New York, respectively.

“The reason we started this really has to do with the team. We’ve all dedicated our careers to cross border, as both operators and investors, across the U.S. and Asia,” Turkat said. “All the four partners on average have about 20-plus years of experience doing this.”

Over the years, they’ve observed global expansion happening earlier in a startup’s life, he added. “I think it used to be an axiom that if you’re a U.S. startup and you’re venture-backed, you’re not thinking of expanding overseas until your Series D round,” but companies are now eyeing foreign markets as early as their seed rounds.

SIP’s new fund is looking for startups in three areas: creativity (augmented and extended reality, synthetic media and web-based platforms), productivity (artificial intelligence and machine learning, edge computing, the Internet of Things and semiconductors) and safety (digital health and information security).

Turkat said it is focusing on companies that provide core infrastructure or the economic layer for emerging technology.

For example, “on the infrastructure layer, we’re looking at 5G being rolled out globally simultaneously, then the edge computing, semiconductors, security and AI and machine learning, all around this infrastructure layer,” he said. Companies in the fund’s current portfolio that fit into this category include OpenRAN startup Parallel Wireless and Croquet, an ultra-low latency collaboration platform.

“Then you have the economic layer with all of these advancements, the platforms and applications sitting on top of it,” Turkat added. These include the fund’s three other investments so far: Fable, a browser-based motion design platform, Tilt Five, an AR gaming platform, and Kinetic, an industrial IoT startup focused on workplace safety.

As a strategic investor, SIP works closely with startups as they expand into new countries. This includes hiring talent and finding initial business partners, including for distribution channels or potential joint ventures. After Japan, SIP also helps startups enter other Asian markets, especially in ASEAN, including Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.