The cost of cybercrime has been growing at an alarming rate of 15% per year, projected to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025. To cope with the challenges that this poses, organizations are turning to a growing range of AI-powered tools to supplement their existing security software and the work of their security teams. Today, a startup called Cymulate — which has built a platform to help those teams automatically and continuously stress test their networks against potential attacks with simulations, and provide guidance on how to improve their systems to ward off real attacks — is announcing a significant round of growth funding after seeing strong demand for its tools.

The startup — founded in Tel Aviv, with a second base in New York — has raised $70 million, a Series D that it will be using to continue expanding globally and investing in expanding its technology (both organically and potentially through acquisitions).

Today, Cymulate’s platform covers both on-premise and cloud networks, providing breach and attack simulations for endpoints, email and web gateways and more; automated “red teaming”; and a “purple teaming” facility to create and launch different security breach scenarios for organizations that lack the resources to dedicate people to a live red team — in all, a “holistic” solution for companies looking to make sure they are getting the most out of the network security architecture that they already have in place, in the worlds of Eyal Wachsman, Cymulate’s CEO.

“We are providing our customers with a different approach for how to do cybersecurity and get insights [on]  all the products already implemented in a network,” he said in an interview. The resulting platform has found particular traction in the current market climate. Although companies continue to invest in their security architecture, security teams are also feeling the market squeeze, which is impacting IT budgets, and sometimes headcount in an industry that was already facing a shortage of expertise. (Cymulate cites figures from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology that estimate a shortfall of 2.72 million security professionals in the workforce globally.)

The idea with Cymulate is that it’s built something that helps organizations get the most out of what they already have. “And at the end, we provide our customers the ability to prioritize where they need to invest, in terms of closing gaps in their environment,” Wachsman said.

The round is being led by One Peak, with Susquehanna Growth Equity (SGE), Vertex Ventures Israel, Vertex Growth and strategic backer Dell Technologies Capital also participating. (All five also backed Cymulate in its $45 million Series C last year.) Relatively speaking, this is a big round for Cymulate, doubling its total raised to $141 million, and while the startup is not disclosing its valuation, I understand from sources that it is around the $500 million mark.

Wachsman noted that the funding is coming on the heels of a big year for the startup (the irony being that the constantly escalating issue of cybersecurity and growing threat landscape spells good news for companies built to combat that). Revenues have doubled, although it’s not disclosing any numbers today, and the company is now at over 200 employees and works with some 500 paying customers across the enterprise and mid-market, including NTT, Telit, and Euronext, up from 300 customers a year ago.

Wachsman, who co-founded the company with Avihai Ben-Yossef and Eyal Gruner, said he first thought of the idea of building a platform to continuously test an organization’s threat posture in 2016, after years of working in cybersecurity consulting for other companies. He found that no matter how much effort his customers and outside consultants put into architecting security solutions annually or semi-annually, those gains were potentially lost each time a malicious hacker made an unexpected move.

“If the bad guys decided to penetrate the organization, they could, so we needed to find a different approach,” he said. He looked to AI and machine learning for the solution, a complement to everything already in the organization, to build “a machine that allows you to test your security controls and security posture, continuously and on demand, and to get the results immediately… one step before the hackers.”

Last year, Wachsman described Cymulate’s approach to me as “the largest cybersecurity consulting firm without consultants,” but in reality the company does have its own large in-house team of cybersecurity researchers, white-hat hackers who are trying to find new holes — new bugs, zero days and other vulnerabilities — to develop the intelligence that powers Cymulate’s platform.

These insights are then combined with other assets, for example the MITRE ATT&CK framework, a knowledge base of threats, tactics and techniques used by a number of other cybersecurity services, including others building continuous validation services that compete with Cymulate. (Competitors include the likes of FireEye, Palo Alto Networks, Randori, AttackIQ and many more.)

Cymulate’s work comes in the form of network maps that detail a company’s threat profile, with technical recommendations for remediation and mitigations, as well as an executive summary that can be presented to financial teams and management who might be auditing security spend. It also has built tools for running security checks when integrating any services or IT with third parties, for instance in the event of an M&A process or when working in a supply chain.

Today the company focuses on network security, which is big enough in itself but also leaves the door open for Cymulate to acquire companies in other areas like application security — or to build that for itself. “This is something on our roadmap,” said Wachsman.

If potential M&A leads to more fundraising for Cymulate, it helps that the startup is in one of the handful of categories that are going to continue to see a lot of attention from investors.

“Cybersecurity is clearly an area that we think will benefit from the current macroeconomic environment, versus maybe some of the more capital-intensive businesses like consumer internet or food delivery,” said David Klein, a managing partner at One Peak. Within that, he added, “The best companies [are those] that are mission critical for their customers… Those will continue to attract very good multiples.”

Backed by investors including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and CDC Group, Cropin is set on digitizing the agricultural industry. Today, the company announced the launch of Cropin Cloud, a cloud platform with integrated apps. Founded in 2010, Cropin’s other products are live in 92 countries, it is partnered with over 250 B2B customers and has digitized 26 million acres of farmland. It claims the world’s largest crop knowledge graph of more than 500 crops and 10,000 crop varieties.

Krishna Kumar, the founder and CEO of Cropin, told TechCrunch that Cropin Cloud was developed because the agriculture industry does not have access to a “unified, coherent platform that can enable and help build a wide variety of solutions,” even as it faces disruptions caused by climate change, geo-political tensions, food supply chain disruptions and a growing global population.

“The global ag ecosystem is gigantic in depth and breadth, but strangely, the tools to capture and share data coherently are sorely missing,” he added.

Cropin Cloud can be used by agribusinesses of all sizes. It has three sub-platforms that allow farmers and other stakeholders in the food value chain to access tools for earth observation, remote sensing and data and machine learning to help them better manage crops and harvests.

Cropin’s leadership team

The first sub-platform is Cropin Apps, which covers a wide range of uses cases: global farming operations management, food safety measures, supply chain visibility, predictability and risk management, tracing food from the farm to table, research and development and production management. It also helps farmers track deforestation and carbon emissions.

Cropin Data Hub, meanwhile, gathers data from different sources for analysis, including on-field farm management apps, IoT devices, drones, remote sensing satellites and weather reports. And finally, Cropin Intelligence uses the company’s 22 contextual deep-learning and AI models to help agribusinesses with data points like crop detection, crop stage identification, yield estimates, irrigation scheduling, pest and disease prediction, nitrogen uptake and harvest date estimation.

Some examples of how Cropin’s technology has been utilized include Unilever’s work with coconut farmers who used the company’s SmartFarm Plus app to record information about how mature trees were, issues they were facing and productivity levels. The app then used that data to provide location-specific advice, like how much coconut sugar farmers were likely to produce.

Cropin also provided insights about the weather, crop management, pest and disease forecasts, nutrient management and soil and water management practices to the World Bank and Government of India in a project that spanned 244 villages, 30,000 farm plots and 77 crop varieties. Cropin says this resulted in a 30% average increase in yield and productivity, with nearly 37% increase in farm revenue.

Since its launch 12 years ago, Cropin has raised a total of $33 million. In addition the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Strategic Investment Fund and CDC Group, its other investors include ABC World Asia, Chiratae Ventures, Ankur Capital, Beenext and Kris Gopalakrishnan’s family office. Kumar said Cropin is now in the process of fundraising for its Series D round, and aims to raise investments in the range of $50 million to $75 million in the next six months.

Headquartered in Bangalore, Cropin has subsidiaries in the United States, Singapore and the Netherlands. Earlier this year, co-founder and COO Kunal Prasad relocated to the Netherlands to oversee European operations. Kumar says Cropin’s committed annual recurring revenue is $15 million to $25 million and that the company has grown 2.5x over the past few years, and expects to see similar growth this year. “With the launch of Cropin Cloud, we expect 2023 will be a game changer for Cropin in terms of revenue growth,” Kumar said.

Fermentation has a long, rich history in food production, from beer and wine, to yogurt and cheese, leavened bread and coffee, miso and tempeh, sauerkraut and kimchi, to name just a few of the tasty things we can consume thanks to a chemical process thought to date back to the neolithic period. But if this 2017-founded Finnish startup, Solar Foods, has its way fermentation could have a very special place in the future of human food too.

The industrial biotech startup is working on bringing a novel protein to market — one it says will offer a nutritious, sustainable alternative to animal-derived proteins. The product, a single cell protein it’s branding Solein, is essentially an edible bacteria; a single cell microbe grown using gas fermentation. Or, put another way, they’re harvesting edible calories from hydrogen-oxyidizing microbes.

“Technically it’s like a brewery,” explains CEO and co-founder Dr Pasi Vainikka in an interview with TechCrunch. “Like fermentation technologies are. It’s not that strange [a process] — there is this one difference, which is the feedstock.”

The production of Solein requires just a handful of ‘ingredients’: Air, water and energy (electricity) — which means there’s no need for vast tracts of agricultural land to be given our to making this future foodstuff. It could be produced in factories located in remote areas or inside cities and urban centers.

Nor indeed are other foods needed to feed it to create an adequate yield, as is the case with rearing livestock for human consumption. So the promise looks immense. (As Vainikka argues: “Land use and energy use are the two main problems of human kind — and the rest follows from these two.)

Nutritionally speaking, Solein resembles some existing foodstuffs — sitting between dried meat, dried carrot or dried soy in terms of the blend of vitamins, amino acids, proteins (overall, it’s 65% protein), per Vainikka. “So it’s very familiar but it’s a bit [of a] new combination,” he suggests, adding: “The taste is very mild, very neutral.” (A mild taste may not sound especially scintillating for the tastebuds but it means it’s easy to include as an ingredients in a wide range of foods without the need for a strong flavor to be masked.)

While Solar Foods has essentially discovered a new species through its fermentation process, the microbe itself obviously hasn’t just appeared on planet Earth — and is likely very ancient; perhaps even hundreds of millions of years old. So there’s a fascinating blend of old and new coming together in the startup’s bioreactor.

Why is finding new forms of protein important? The problem Solar Foods is aiming to tackle is that the environmental costs of livestock-based meat production are indisputably massive — whether you’re talking unsustainable land and water use; climate-heating emissions and pollution; and animal welfare concerns. But what if you could produce billions of nutritious meals without the need to deforest huge swathes of land and slaughter masses of livestock to produce the food? What if humanity could feed itself and stop consuming the planet in the process?

That’s the promise and the core differentiator that Solar Foods claims vs animal-derived proteins.

A Solar Foods bioreactor for producing Solein (Image credits: Solar Foods)

If you compare Solein to the growing gaggle of plant-based meat alternatives, they do still rely upon land being farmed to produce the necessary plants — whether soy or pea or oat etc — that form the basis of their products. Although they need far less land than meat production requires so the environment upside is still very real. But Solar Foods sees itself blending into this competitive mix — selling Solein to companies producing plant-based foods as another ingredient they can use to cook up nutritious, environmentally friendly meals.

“Cereals, vegetables, fruits, herbs aren’t going anywhere,” says Vainikka, discussing how Solein might fit into an evolved food production system. “So if we go back to the original problem — 80% of all the problems that have to do with food, whether it’s loss of natural habitat or forest loss or whatever, has to do with the industrialized animal production… So actually Solein could solve 80% of the problem but 20% of the calories because mostly we are, on a calorie basis, eating carbohydrates.”

And if you’re excited about the promise of lab-grown meat — which is also seeking to de-link protein production from land use — Vainikka says the startup is supportive of such efforts since, once again, it’s spying potential customers as he says cultivated/lab-grown meat producers could use Solein to feed the cell cultures they’re using to grow slaughter-free steaks.

So use-cases for Solar Foods’ edible bacteria look broad, provided people are willing to eat it (or have it fed to something in their food chain). Conceivably it could even be used as a feedstock for livestock — although the startup’s messaging is focused on the need to transform a broken food system and enter “the era of sustainable food production”, as its website puts it.

It is also working on developing a closed-loop system in which the sole byproduct of its production process — water containing bits of the Solein protein — would be continuously recycled back into production of more of the foodstuff. And if it can pull that off, the edible bacteria could potentially function as a life support system for humans on space missions where the timescales are too long for astronauts to rely on food supplies brought with them from Earth (such as, for eg, a mission to Mars).

“The specific thing that we think is different in what we’re doing — compared to anything else on the market today — is that we don’t use any agriculture in the foods,” Vainikka tells TechCrunch. “Electricity and carbon dioxide are the main ingredients — instead of sunlight and carbohydrates or oils. So that’s the fundamental point where the disconnection of food production from agriculture happens.

“That’s our thing. And the reason to do that is once you can de-link the connection between use of land and land-use impacts and food production then basically all the environmental benefits fall on your lap that there can be in relation to food production.”

Down here on Earth, being able to unhitch food production from the vagaries of seasonal weather and other factors that can have major impacts on agricultural yields — such as pests, natural disasters, issues with supply chains specific to farming, and so on — is another touted advantage for Solar Foods’ approach. “Security of supply… consistency and quality,” says Vainikka, checking off some of the added advantages he says the edible protein offers vs traditional farming, i.e. on top of the massive heap of land-delinking-based environmental gains which could — for example — support a mass reforestation of farm land, promoting biodiversity and fighting global warming since trees suck up CO2.

Europe’s energy crisis bites

Solein looks like a no brainer on the environmental front. But one key component of its production — energy; electricity — is facing supply issues of its own in Europe at present, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (Russia being a major but unreliable supplier of gas to Europe.)

Solar Foods’ long term bet is on energy production costs being brought down (or, well stabilized) by widespread access to cheap renewables — such as wind and hydro energy in the north of Europe and solar in the sunny south. Thing is, for now, the European energy markets are typically structured so that the wholesale price of energy is linked to the cost of the most expensive type of energy (fossil fuel derived), despite there already being a fair amount of renewable energy available which is far cheaper to produce. (Hence why if the price of gas goes up the wholesale price of energy rises, and the bill payer must pay more, even if their energy supplier sources their energy from cheaper to produce renewable sources.)

Since the Ukraine war started, Europe has been facing an exacerbated supply vs demand issue. And over the past several months it’s been hard for Europeans to escape energy price spikes as their governments have sought to reduce reliance on Russian gas imports — shrinking energy supply options and helping keep war-spiked wholesale prices high.

The coming winter looks very grim, with Russia recently electing to entirely shutter gas exports via its Nord Stream pipeline to Germany in what looks like an attempt to weaken Western support for the pro-Ukraine sanctions. So energy supply in Europe has become a weapon of economic war.

It’s an incredibly volatile situation but one thing is clear: Europe’s ‘competitive’ marginal-cost-based energy markets are in desperate need of structural reform — to reflect the cheaper production costs of renewables and ensure consumers and businesses aren’t at the mercy of fossil fuel volatility and cripplingly high prices linked to Russian aggression.

But, in the meanwhile, with electricity being a key component of Solar Foods’ process, the startup is having to manage what Vainikka — who has a background in energy economics that he says allows him to understand where the markets are headed — refers to with classic Nordic understatement as “turbulence”.

Solar Foods CEO, Dr Pasi Vainikka (left) and CTO Juha-Pekka Pitkanen (Image credits: Solar Foods)

He suggests Solar Foods may therefore need to wait out the current energy crisis before it’s able to scale commercial production of Solein in a way that’s economically viable — though it’s banking on Europe being able to find a way through to more stable electricity prices in the not too distant future. (In recent days, the Commission has said it will be coming with an emergency reform plan to curb energy prices — both in the short term and over the longer run, to ensure prices reflect cheaper renewables.)

“At the moment we shouldn’t make electricity supply agreements for our factory. We can’t be on the market today to make those agreements,” confirms Vainikka. “Because of this [energy price volatility] — it’s a fact. The second [thing] is we are quite happy that we are not fermenting natural gas — we are fermenting electricity. So we have an opportunity to make a good deal after turbulence.”

“We need to replace fossil fuels with electricity so we need a lot of new generation capacity which is also a problem in the market but we’re confident that this works,” he adds. “Unfortunately there is this turbulence now.”

Solar Foods is pressing on regardless of the current energy crisis.

It’s in the process of building its first factory — actually a demo facility, as a step on the road to future commercial scaling up of Solein production — at a cost of around €40M, drawing on backing from a number of VC funds since 2017, over seed and Series A rounds, as well as raising debt financing (such as €15M from Danske Bank Growth earlier this year).

The demo facility at least won’t have major energy requirements to run. (Although he says it’s still holding off on signing an energy supply contract for now.)

“We’ll manage the turbulence but of course it would be better for it not to continue too long,” says Vainikka. “We’re using this demo [facility] operated by one wind turbine to prove that this scales — but the real factories would be 100x larger in terms of energy use, 50x larger — and it would need rather 50 turbines to run a huge facility that will produce half a billion meals. Then you must get a good [energy supply] contract and if we were investing into that factory now it might be postponed because of the turbulence.”

Good food and food for good?

With the demo factory set to come on stream in 2023, Solar Foods’ hope is the first consumer product containing Solein will be on the market by the end of next year (or, failing that, in early 2024). Which global market will get the first commercial taste of the novel protein will depend on regulatory clearances.

Solar Foods has applied for clearance in multiple jurisdictions but can’t predict whether regulators in Europe or the US or Asia will be first with approval, given variances in this process. (But Vainikka says it’s possible the first clearance could happen this year.)

What the first product for sale to consumers that contains Solein will be also isn’t yet clear.

Vainikka suggests a few possibilities — such as that it could be added to existing foods like breakfast cereals or vegan meals for fortification purposes (owning to its vitamin and mineral content, such as iron and B vitamins); or as a main ingredient in plant-based meat replacement products, replacing stuff like pea protein. Or he says it could be used as an egg-replacement in pasta or pastry production. Or as a principle ingredient in ice cream or yogurt (or even to make a spreadable faux cheese).

“We leave the final formulation and product development for our customers so that we can empower them to renew categories,” he suggests. “And make having a food an act for good.”

Some of the demo foods the startup has cooked up in its labs (Image credits: Solar Foods)

“Frankly as a company we think that it might be a good idea to focus on what we master — which is this conversion-fermentation; producing this ingredient and so that it would have the functionalities needed for food products,” he continues, expanding on Solar Foods’ decision to stay in its biotech lane. “There are so many, so huge, or so experienced or so old [food] companies on the market who have already access to the consumer, all the experience regarding textures, product development regarding all kinds of plant-based ingredients and so on. So when we introduce Solein into the market you would not only need to get everything right, what we are doing and mastering now, but also the final product — of course taste and texture is decisive.”

“So that’s a heavy investment program that we’ve dived into,” he adds, emphasizing the still extensive range of requirements for developing a product that’s designed even to be an ingredient in processed foods that people eat.

“Nutrition must be there… then second is safety, then functionality, of course — how it works and forms texture — and then scaling and production technology; who has it, how does it work, is it scalable, and how does the supply chain work — so who’s really the gatekeeper? So this we are in the middle of now… A lot will happen in the next 12-16 months.”

While Solar Foods won’t be a food product maker itself it does have an R&D lab where it carries out culinary experiments with its product — and images on its website show a selection of demo foodstuffs, from chicken-style chunks served with pasta, to soup, bread and a breakfast smoothie, all with a distinctive rich yellow hue.

In its refined form — i.e. after it’s passed through Solar Foods’ electrolysing and fermenting bioreactors and been dried — Solein takes the form of a yellow powder (the hue is down to betacarotene it naturally contains).

The strong color makes it looks a bit like a custom blend of turmeric and cumin. But taste-wise it’s nothing like that strong. Per Vainikka, one expert taster who sampled it suggested it was akin to dried carrot. But whether or not you’re a fan of carrots is besides the point; he emphasizes that the taste is mild enough that it can be easily masked in whatever food product it was being incorporated into — just without the added nutrients going anywhere.

For example, in the sample case of adding Solein to pasta, Vainikka says it would — nutritionally speaking — be akin to eating, say, a plate of spaghetti bolognese with all the nourishment derived from an animal-based ingredient but without the need to have any minced meat on the plate. Which, well, might take some swallowing for those used to consuming traditional (and oftentimes culturally significant) recipes. (An Italian I described this meat-less but nutritionally meat-like pasta dish to at a dinner party I attended recently was visibly shocked at the prospect and a second Italian she started to explain the concept to responded by suggesting we should focus on having fun eating the actual food on our plates instead of talking about, er, such high concept stuff, so, well, there may be some acceptance humps in the short term.)

But as plant-based faux meats advance in taste and texture it’s easy to envisage creative food producers being able to whip up something that has a meat-like taste and texture and — thanks to the addition of Solein — is also imbued with similar levels of protein, iron and vitamins as actual meat. And that could be a strong selling point for consumers, especially with the current food fad for high protein eating.

Other food ideas Solar Foods has been experimenting with in its labs are ‘cheese’ ball lollypops, mayonnaises and dressings, pancakes and plenty more besides.

Image credits: Solar Foods

Vainikka says he hopes the first commercial food to contain the ingredient won’t be a burger — since there are so many meat-alternative patty options out there already. But he suggests it could be a “meat like bite” — something akin to a nugget — such as might be be served in an Asian hot-pot or similar. “Then yogurt, ice cream, soup, bakery pastry application is something that might go first,” he postulates.

“You could imagine it could be a frozen food, fresh or even on the street kitchen of Asian city,” he also suggests, saying the startup is keen to branch out and “appreciate different food cultures on the planet” — so it can “try to explain how Solein could be an ingredient in different kinds of dishes from the Asian hot pots to burger patties to soups or pastries or whatever”.

Food is of course not only cultural but individual tastes can be hugely personal — and/or political. So once Solein leaves Solar Foods’ factories and arrives in customers’ commercial kitchens that’s where all these localizing product and branding challenges will really kick in — as buyers will have to work on figuring out how best to blend it in with other taste and cultural considerations or indeed make its presence stick out loudly (at least on the packet) where shouting about sustainability benefits might be the best way to reap big sales in their particular target market.

One thing looks clear: The future of food won’t be dull — or even uniformly yellow-hued. A full rainbow of possibilities for alternative eats are coming down the pipe — and the environmental challenges we face, as a species, demand we find appetite to consume them.

I have yet to type on a keyboard that feels as good as Mode Designs’ Sonnet. There have definitely been a few days in the last few weeks since the company sent me a prototype unit to test where getting to type on the Sonnet was one of my main motivators to start writing.

With prices starting at $299 without switches and keycaps, it’s not the most expensive of custom keyboards out there (though the price can quickly creep up to double that as you add a few options), but Mode got virtually everything right here, and thanks to its range of options, the Boston- and San Francisco-based company allows you to put together a mechanical keyboard that is just right for you. If you want it to feel nice and flexible, something a lot of mechanical keyboard enthusiasts strive for these days, you can do that — but if you prefer a firmer typing experience you can opt for a stack mount, which also offers a more muted sound.

For most people, keyboards are keyboards — a basic piece of equipment that comes with their desktop or is built into their laptop. As long as it works, no thought is ever given to it. But for mechanical keyboard enthusiasts, the keyboard is what it’s all about, and there are few rabbit holes that run deeper than keyboards because the amount of variations even for a single board is never ending, thanks to the plethora of switches, stabilizers, keycaps, switch plates and other things most people never think of (and how does lubing that switch with Krytox 205G or Krytox 105 change its sound and feel? What about Tribosys 3204?).

The basics for the Sonnet are pretty straightforward: It’s a 75% board, meaning there’s no numpad but a full row of function keys, arrow keys and a few extra buttons on the right side like Home, PageUp, PageDown and End (or whatever else you want those to be, thanks the Sonnet’s Via/QMK compatibility). Top is made from beautifully machined aluminum in the color of your choice, with a few more options for the bottom, ranging from aluminum to polycarbonate, brass and copper. And then you have options — lots of options. You can choose which kind of internal weight you want to use, what kind of plate you prefer (which has a major impact on the feel and sound) and which accent color you want (which has no impact on the feel and sound, but which does look rather nice).

In the variation I received, with half plates and no plate foam, the sound and feel was close to my platonic ideal of what a mechanical keyboard should be like. In this variation, with a set of GMK White-On-Black keycaps, every keypress sounds like two billiard balls colliding. To me, that’s exactly the sound I want to get from my keyboard. I’m also a sucker for a little bit of flex, but without going to an extreme — and that’s exactly what I got.

It’s a hefty board, something that’s generally associated with quality in the mechanical keyboard world and also something that often surprises newcomers to this hobby. Your basic Logitech board isn’t likely to weigh in at a few pounds, after all.

The Sonnet is available from Mode Designs, though if you order now, you won’t get your keyboard before December. That’s a long time to wait, but it’s important to note that this is not a limited-group buy. Mode expects to sell the Sonnet for the foreseeable future.

Indonesia’s credit bureaus currently have about 92 million credit records, but the founders of SkorLife say many people have trouble accessing their own data. That’s why they built the app, which not only lets people see their credit histories for free, but also gives personalized advice on how to improve data. The Jakarta-based startup announced today it has raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding.

AC Ventures participated in the round, which also included Saison Capital and angel investors like all the founders of OneCard; Advance.ai’s Jefferson Chan; KoinWorks’ Will Arifin of KoinWorks; Lummo’s Krishnan Menon; Evermos’ Arip Tirta of Evermos; Qoala’s Harshet Lunani; Init-6’s Willy Arifin; Lummo’s Krishnan Menon; Evermos’ Arip Tirta; Qoala’s Harshet Lunani; Init-6’s Achmad Zaky; and executives from Northstar Group, Stripe, Google, Boston Consulting Group, Gojek and CreditKarma.

SkorLife says the private, alpha version of its app has been downloaded more than 3,000 times and is growing organically by 50 to 60 new users a day. That surpasses its internal target by 7x and the app will be available for public download soon. The company’s new funding will be used on product development, new hires and marketing. SkorLife currently has 10 employees, with plans to increase headcount to 40.

CEO Ongki Kurniawan was previously country head of Stripe Indonesia and also held leadership positions at Grab, telcoXL Axiata and Line, while COO Karan Khetan is a serial entrepreneur whose past startups include 5x and BookMyShow Southeast Asia. The two met in 2018 while setting up a partnership between Grab and BookMyShow to offer ticketing services through Grab’s super app.

SkorLife founders Ongki Kurniawan and Karan Khetan

Kurniawan tells TechCrunch the two spent a lot of time exploring different ideas. The first was to digitize the “pawn broker”/secured loan industry, but the unit economics did not work.

“However, we found that many Indonesians resort to pawning their items because they believe they will get rejected if they approach banks,” he said, adding that seven out of 10 loan applicants do indeed get rejected. “This was further validated after speaking with a number of industry experts. We learned that Indonesia’s consumer borrowing pool is small.”

While doing their research, Kurniawan and Khetan also saw that many Indonesians don’t have access to their credit scores and other data that would help them see how banks determine their creditworthiness, which in turn means they lose the opportunity to access affordable loans.

SkorLife’s founders say that creditworthiness is underused in Indonesia, where most financial institutions score a person’s ability to get lines of credit based on their “income worthiness.”

“The thing to remember is not everyone who has high income will pay their debt and not everyone who has a low income will not pay their debt,” Kurniawan said.

Kurniawan said that most people in Indonesia are unaware they can access their own credit history and credit scores, and believe that only financial institutions and banks have access to that information.

If they do figure out how to access it, they have two options. The first is the free route, where they request data from OJK (Indonesian Financial Services Authority). But the problem with this is that they either have to go to an OJK office, or wait days for an online appointment. The second, paid route involves customers going to three licensed credit bureaus in Indonesia to get their credit reports. But these reports cost money, and Kurniawan says they are many pages long “and not designed to be digested by consumers because it is intended to be used by analysts in financial institutions.”

SkorLife solves those problems by giving people free access to credit scores they would otherwise have to jump through hurdles to get. Its main product is a credit builder application that enables people to instantly see and monitor their credit scores, credit reports and other data from credit bureaus, for free. It also helps users dispute inaccurate information on their credit reports. If someone doesn’t have a credit history yet, the app will help them start building scores.

Through the app, customers can see their BI Checking Score, or Indonesia’s nationally-recognized credit information that is used by almost all financial institutions to make credit decisions, as well as their credit score, which is generated by credit bureaus to determine the possibility of someone defaulting on a loan in the next 12 months.

They also see what factors go into their credit score, including their payment history, credit utilization, the balance versus their secured versus unsecured credit accounts, the age of each of their credit accounts, ID monitoring to see if a financial institution is doing a hard check on their data, the total number of credit accounts they have, both active and inactive, and outstanding balances.

That data is then used to create AI-based, personalized insights for each customer that they can use to improve their credit scores. The app also has educational content and a features that makes it easy for customers to dispute inaccurate data.

Some examples of insights include payment history, and allowing customers to check bill dates and set reminders, age of credit (or encouraging customers not to close a card that has been open for a long time), and utilization. SkorLife recommends that customers maintain a credit card limit utilization beneath 30% to improve their score.

In a statement, AC Ventures founder and managing partner Adrian Li said, “The opportunity in Indonesia is massive. Even as the space is relatively untapped, the consumer credit market size is already north of US$185 billion. That said, it has always been a challenge here because lenders have never been able to draw holistic conclusions about borrowers based on limited and fragmented information. But with these data troves just waiting to be unlocked and used meaningfully in a consumer-facing app, we are excited about SkorLife’s vision and mission of putting people back in charge of their financial futures.

A call between doctors can save lives. That’s what Docquity co-founder Indranil Roychowdhury learned when his father was hospitalized with a life-threatening condition in India. An emergency room doctor initially told him that there was no chance of survival, but then another doctor called one of his peers in the United States, and they came up with an alternative treatment plan that worked. Docquity was created to help doctors collaborate in the same way, at scale, even if they live in different countries.

The Singapore-based company announced today it has raised $44 million in Series C funding led by returning investors Itochu Corporation, which put in $32 million. The rest of the round came from investors including iGlobe Partners, Alkemi, Global Brain, KDV and Infocom.

Roychowdhury told TechCrunch that after his father’s experience, he and his co-founders, Amit Vithal and Abhisek Wadhwa, wondered why “in today’s day of social media, it took a phone call to save someone’s life.” Docquity was founded in 2015 so doctors and other healthcare professionals have an easier way of working with one another.

The new capital brings Docquity’s total raised to $57.5 million. It says it is the largest community of healthcare professionals in Southeast Asia, with more than 350,000 doctors on board. The funding will be used to grow Docquity in its existing markets, like Indonesia and the Philippines, and enter new ones, including Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It recently launched in Taiwan, where more than 2,000 doctors have signed up so far. The company claimed two-fold revenue growth in 2021.

The company now has a team of 300 people and aside from its Singapore headquarters, also has a tech and engineering hub in Gurgoan, India, and other offices in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan.

In addition to giving doctors tools to connect and collaborate, Docquity has partnered with more than 250 medical associations in Southeast Asia to develop learning modules, which can be used to earn compulsory continuing medical education (CME) credits. The company says that so far, its platform has enabled doctors to earn a total of 4.2 million CME credits.

Docquity has three core features. The first, Docquity Academy, partners with universities and senior medical practitioners to create learning tools for doctors. The second, Docquity Clinic, allows doctors to have follow-up consultations with their patients. Finally, Docquity Insights takes data about user engagement on the platform to understand what they need.

Roychowdhury said that on average, about 50,000 doctors take courses on its platform every month, and that it was one of the first companies to launch online lectures and symposiums when the pandemic started in 2020. It now hosts about 500 lectures a month. Doctors taking the courses can also join private groups to discuss real world cases and the best treatment plans.

“While teaching and exam-style education is a key component, we believe that experiential learning through case discussions among peers in a major learning source for doctors,” said Roychowdhury.

Docquity ensures patient privacy through several measures. It’s a closed, GDPR and HIPAA-compliant network that only allows in doctors verified by medical associations. It has also set up internal compliance and pharma co-vigilance team to ensure privacy and security. It lets pharmaceutical and medical device companies to engage with doctors, but no advertisements are allowed on the platform.

Another Docquity initiative is making healthcare more affordable. It recently launched its Patient Adherence Program (PAP) to help doctors bring care to underserved patients. “Making treatments more affordable is a key objective of the platform and we have started working in breast cancer as a therapeutic area with one of our clients, and have already served close to 600 breast cancer patients in the Philippines,” said Roychowdhury.

Hello again! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the last week’s worth of TechCrunch’s most read posts. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here.

Ready? Let’s just dive right in.

most read

What to expect from Apple’s iPhone event: Apple events tend to suck all the air out of the room in the days leading up to them because…well, no one wants to announce some big new thing just to have it immediately overshadowed by the iPhone 37. Our most read post this week, by far, was Brian’s roundup of what we’re maybe/likely/definitely going to see announced at Apple’s event on September 7.

Rogan interviews Zuck: If you’re on the internet in 2022, you probably know who both Joe Rogan and Mark Zuckerberg are. Does a three-hour conversation between them sound like your kind of thing? If so, check out Zuck’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. If not but you still want the highlights, check out Devin’s on-the-fly recap of Zuck’s thoughts on art, the evolution of social media, and why waking up each day feels like getting “punched in the stomach.”

WhatsApp gets built-in grocery ordering in India: Half a billion people use WhatsApp in India each month, and those folks can now use the platform to order groceries thanks to a new venture between Meta, Jio Platforms, and India’s largest retailer, Reliance Retail.

Twitter halts its attempt to monetize porn: Twitter reportedly wanted to build something of an OnlyFans competitor into its platform but has slammed on the brakes for now. “Twitter apparently put this project on hold,” writes Amanda, “after an 84-employee ‘red team,’ designed to test the product for security flaws, found that Twitter cannot detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and non-consensual nudity at scale.”

Royal Caribbean + SpaceX: Just a few days after announcing a partnership to bring Starlink to T-Mobile phones, SpaceX’s satellite-based internet endeavor has another big new customer: Royal Caribbean. The cruise line announced this week that it’s adding Starlink connectivity to its entire fleet. It’ll only work near the coasts at first, but they expect it to work mid-ocean in the next few years.

Image Credits: Royal Caribbean

audio roundup

What’s up this week in TC podcast land? Darrell and Jordan sat down with the founder of Abridge on Found to hear about the company’s efforts to help patients better understand their often jargon-filled doctor appointments, the Chain Reaction crew spent some time digging into the maze that is Ethereum’s big “Merge” network upgrade, and Matt Burns learned all about how to pitch a Series A (and how the process differs from raising a seed round) on TechCrunch Live.

techcrunch+

While we publish a ton of stuff — news, reviews, interviews, and more — entirely for free on TechCrunch, our members-only section TechCrunch+ is where we get to go deep on the topics readers tell us they care about most. Want to check it out without paying full price? The marketing team tells me the promo code “WIR” will get you 15% off an annual membership. Oh! And while we’re talking promo codes, here’s a link that’ll get you 15% off passes (excluding Online/Expo passes) to our biggest show of the year, TechCrunch Disrupt.

Here’s what TC+ members were clicking on most this week:

Why most early-stage VC deals fall apart: What are investors looking for at the due diligence stage? Haje sat down with a few early-stage investors to get a better understanding of the process, and the main reasons deals tend to fall through.

Investors detail their red (and green) flags: Meanwhile, Rebecca caught up with another set of investors to find out the things that sent them running away from — or, hopefully, running toward — a potential investment.

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

Twitter gets editable… do we still care?

After years of user demand for an edit button, Twitter’s news this week that such a feature was now entering testing felt a little anticlimactic.

Twitter broke its own embargo over the impending launch. There weren’t any interviews. Instead, Twitter just casually noted the edit feature was being tested internally, it said in a tweet published ahead of its blog post announcement. Here’s a feature you wanted. I guess we’ll ship it. 

And though the feature will roll out to users later this month, it won’t be broadly available. Instead, users can pay for a Twitter Blue subscription to access the edit feature, Twitter said. But only “some” Twitter Blue subscribers will even see the option, as it will still be in a test mode at first. Then there’s the fact that Twitter Blue subscribers have already been somewhat placated by the “Undo Tweet” feature — an option that lets you quickly unsend a tweet when you spot a typo. (It’s actually a delay to post, which makes the “unsending” possible.) This reduces the need for an edit button in many cases, as it turns out.

A true edit feature, meanwhile, introduces a layer of complexity on top of the increasingly cluttered social app. Although Twitter says the feature will have an edit log to minimize abuse, there’s concern that people will re-write tweets knowing that many won’t ever look at the past versions.

If anything, the demand for an edit button had become more a meme than a true user request. It was just sort of unfathomable to some Twitter users that a basic feature like this was not being built. But over the years, people have learned to work around the lack of editing. We’d delete and retweet things. We’d reply with a correction, cursing the lack of an edit button as we did. And then we moved on. Now Twitter wants everyone to pay for this long-requested functionality? Ouch.

Here come the BeReal clones

Image Credits: Snapchat

Remember when every social app was copying Snapchat’s Stories — Instagram successfully so? More recently, that sort of copy-and-paste development cycle has been focused on shoehorning a TikTok-like vertical video feed into every other social app, including Instagram and Facebook (Reels), YouTube (Shorts), Snapchat (Spotlight) and others — even Twitter gave it a shot for a time.

But now, the top social apps have set their sights on BeReal, the scrappy social app for unfiltered sharing that’s been sitting just a bit too long at the top of the App Store to keep calling it a “trend.” That has the major social platforms worried about the impact the newcomer is having on their respective user bases. In particular, BeReal seems to be succeeding in appealing to a younger, Gen Z audience in search of a more authentic social networking experience. It allows them to connect with their friends without all the embellishments that, for years, have been the hallmarks of social apps — filters, AR and advanced editing tools resulting in a curated, idealized feed. Instead, BeReal users are in search of imperfection — yet another nail in the coffin for the old “Instagram aesthetic” that’s since been replaced by intentionally poorly shot photos and lo-fi selfies.

Last week, we saw Instagram building out a new feature that’s clearly designed to be a BeReal clone, as it would send Instagram users a notification after which they’d have two minutes to capture and share an “IG Candid” photo to their Story. This is essentially the same mechanic BeReal uses today. Before that, it built a Dual camera feature that lets users shoot from both cameras at once. But that one missed the key component to BeReal’s draw: connecting with friends.

Now Snapchat is jumping on the BeReal bandwagon, with the launch of its own Dual Camera feature. Similar to BeReal, the new mode also lets users capture photos and videos from both their front and back cameras at the same time. But in its case, the app allows users to customize where and how their selfie photo appears — either picture-in-picture, in a horizontal or vertical side-by-side layout or in a unique “image cutout” mode. This latter option cuts out your selfie from the background, then overlays it on top of the footage from the back camera. This differentiates Snap’s feature from BeReal as it could inspire a different type of image-sharing experience to emerge.

It’s also the latest example of how advances in machine learning technologies have been allowing technology companies to do more with users’ photos. Apple, for instance, is introducing an image cutout feature in iOS 16 that lets you cut and paste the subject of a photo into other apps — like texting a picture of your dog’s image cutout in iMessage. This technology is also powering other areas involving photos across iOS — like the “copy subject” feature in mobile Safari or “remove background” in Files, for example.

Elsewhere, Pinterest’s buzzy new app Shuffles is also using image cutouts to allow users to grab images from their Pins for use in collages.

But whether or not an image cutout feature will prove a draw for Snapchat users is still unknown. After all, the dual camera photo-taking tech itself is not driving demand for BeReal — it’s the social connections it enables.

California advances an age-appropriate design code bill for apps

Lawmakers in California have passed a bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, that would require apps and websites to increase protections for children, in the absence of any sort of federal standards. The legislation supports the implementation of a range of design changes and features across sites and apps. For instance, companies would have to turn on the highest privacy settings for minors by default — something apps like Instagram have begun doing for minor users (at least new ones), in anticipation of such legislation.

It would also restrict companies from collecting users’ precise locations — a privacy protection that, coincidentally, just went viral on TikTok, as users warned each other how to disable precise location for Instagram’s app in their phone’s Settings. This prompted Instagram head Adam Mosseri to refute the claims users were making, noting that the app was not actually tracking users or sharing their location with others.

Additionally, the bill calls for protections around data collection, prohibiting companies from collecting any data beyond what’s absolutely necessary or using the data collection in a way that would negatively impact the physical or mental health of minors. Apps and sites would also have to have the strongest privacy protections in place, disabling features that personalize the experience based on prior behavior or browsing history, which could affect numerous apps using recommendation algorithms, like TikTok. And it could restrict apps in other ways, like limiting messaging with strangers, and disallowing techniques designed to addict kids into spending hours with the service, among other things.

While such guidelines sound good on paper, the broad and vague language used in the bill could create complications in implementing some of the changes, critics have argued. In addition, privacy advocates pointed out that this could increase the use of age-verification tech, which often requires users to submit personal data in order to use a service.

If signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, the bill could become law by 2024.

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

• Ahead of next week’s event, Apple released iOS 16, beta 8 to developers with additional bug fixes and performance improvements.
• It also rolled out Xcode Cloud subscriptions to developers using Xcode 13.4.1 or later and are members of the Apple Developer Program. The subscription offers 25 compute hours per month for free (until the end of 2023 when it will become $15/mo). Pricing kicks in starting at $49.99/mo for 100 hours and goes up to 1,000 compute hours at $400/mo. Account holders can start, upgrade or downgrade a subscription at any time, Apple says.
• An app developer’s lawsuit over App Store rejections, scams and fraud has ended in a settlement agreement after court filings show a request to dismiss the suit earlier this summer. The plaintiff, app developer and former Pinterest engineer Kosta Eleftheriou, made a name for himself in recent months calling out some of the worst App Store scams. This later culminated in a lawsuit of his own against Apple, filed in California’s Superior Court in Santa Clara County in March 2021, where he alleged his own app had been unfairly rejected from the App Store and then later targeted by scammers, leading to lost revenues. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Platforms: Google

• Google blocked Trump’s social media app, Truth Social, from launching on the Play Store over its content moderation issues. Specifically, Google found the app contained physical threats and incitements to violence, which are banned by its policy. But the app remains live on iOS despite hosting some of the same dangerous content in violation of Apple’s rules. Meanwhile, Google has now reinstated the Parler app to the Play Store after initially removing it over similar content moderation issues following the January 6 Capitol attack.

• Google rolled out third-party in-app billing in the Play Store to additional markets, including India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the European Economic Area, making the option available to end users. Interested non-gaming developers can apply for the program and, if they qualify, will be able to use third-party payment systems in their apps. The company announced the program earlier this year. It notes that “reasonable service fees” will still apply to those who make the switch, but didn’t disclose the percentages involved.

E-commerce

Image Credits: WhatsApp

• Meta partnered with India’s Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms to bring grocery shopping to WhatsApp. The launch will allow customers in India to browse JioMart’s grocery catalog on WhatsApp, then add items to a cart and make the payments via local payments rail UPI without leaving the messaging app.
• Block’s Cash App will now allow users to make payments on e-commerce sites outside the Square network, including with new partners American Eagle, Aerie, Tommy Hilfiger, Finish Line and JD Sports. Other merchants will join in the following months, like Romwe, Savage x Fenty, SHEIN, thredUP and Wish.

Social

Image Credits: Meta

• Facebook and Instagram now let users post NFTs to their profiles by connecting their wallets, like Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet. NFTs minted on the Ethereum, Polygon and Flow blockchains are supported.
• Facebook said it’s shutting down its Nextdoor clone called Neighborhoods next month after realizing that Facebook Groups was actually just fine for this purpose. It also recently shut down live shopping and its standalone gaming app.
• Instagram began testing new features that will help users better control what they see on the app. This includes the option to mark multiple posts on the Explore page as “Not Interested,” and another option that will let you tell Instagram you want to stop seeing posts with content you’re no longer interested in.
• Twitter launched its “close friends” feature, Twitter Circle, to global users. The feature allows users to add up to 150 people to their Twitter Circle in order to make some tweets available only to those they know and trust instead of to the wider public.

Image Credits: Twitter

• Twitter was reportedly working on an OnlyFans competitor, The Verge reported, but ended those efforts due to issues with CSAM on the platform.
• TikTok laid off employees from its U.S. ad department, amid a restructuring, The Information reported. The head of the ad sales team, former Meta executive Blake Chandlee, had forewarned about layoffs earlier this month.
• Snap also confirmed it would lay off around 20% of its 6,400-plus staff, after The Verge reported on its plans. The company also said it would cancel its original shows and in-app games, and would shut down its Zenly and Voisey apps. The Zenly shutdown is most surprising, given the app is still fairly popular with 35 million MAUs.

• Last summer’s hit social app Poparazzi’s parent company, TTYL, is prepping a new social app that adds the ability for users to post not only photos but also videos, and answers to questions and prompts to their friends’ profiles. The app, called Made With Friends, is due out in October.

Image Credits: Made With Friends

Messaging

• Google brought back the Duo icon with an update to its Google Meet Android app after recently consolidating the Meet and Duo apps, making “Meet” the surviving brand. The company said this would help people who were searching for “Duo” to find and launch the newly merged application.
• An Indian court ordered Telegram to disclose details of channels violating copyright in a lawsuit filed by a teacher. The teacher shared a list of channels circulating her lectures and books on competitive exams, which were being sold on these channels at discounted prices, she said.
• Researchers at the University of Washington made an underwater communication app, AquaApp, that uses sonic signals to pass messages. The system uses the phone’s speaker to create high-frequency audio signals to communicate.

Streaming & Entertainment

• Alongside its announcement of NBC’s Dateline as its latest podcast subscription, Apple shared that the number of Apple Podcast subscribers had grown by 300%+ since June 2021 and 25%+ of the top 100 shows in its Top Shows chart now offer a subscription.
• Sony Music sued Triller over copyright infringement after missing payments, its lawsuit alleges.
• Netflix snatched up two Snap executives to lead its new ad-supported business: Chief Business Officer Jeremi Gorman and VP of Sales for the Americas Peter Naylor, according to The Verge.

Dating

• Video dating app Filter Off described to TechCrunch how it used GPT-3 to create a number of chatbots combined with a script to create human-like faces to trick scammers into interacting with fake dating app profiles. These profiles weren’t seen by normal app users, only by those the algorithm identified as scammers. This ended up with scammers trying to scam each other or scam other bots. Read the full story here.

Gaming

• Facebook is shutting down its standalone Facebook Gaming app on iOS and Android on October 28, 2022 and will transfer games, content and groups over to the main Facebook app. The move comes as the company prioritizes its investments around discovery and recommendations in the main Facebook feed, leading to other closures like live shopping and its specialized neighborhood groups product.
• Epic Games defeated another copyright infringement lawsuit over its Fortnite dances. This one had claimed Fortnite ripped off a choreographer’s routine for the “It’s Complicated” emote in the game. A judge ruled the two dances didn’t share enough creative elements for the emote to be considered infringement.
• Meta renamed its Oculus Mobile app to “Meta Quest” as its continues it transition away from the Oculus branding to take on the Meta name.

Health & Fitness

• Streaming music service Deezer entered the wellness market with the launch of an app called Zen featuring guided yoga, meditation and other inspiration that can be recommended based on mood or goals. The app will roll out more broadly in 2023, offering the company the opportunity to cross-sell content, it said.

Utilities

• Keyboard tech licensing startup Fleksy expanded its SDK to indie devs and app makers who want to add more text input features — like text input autocorrection, prediction and swipe — to their apps.
• Truecaller released an update to its iOS app featuring better spam detection, faster performance, quick onboarding and a smaller app size. The new app also addresses user concerns over call detection and spam identification that had previously worked better on Android.

Travel & Transportation

• Uber updated its app with new safety features, including a new way to text 911 and others in partnership with ADT. Now, tapping the shield-shaped icon will bring up four options: contact 911, contact an ADT safety agent, share trip status or report a safety issue to the company.

Government & Policy

• The U.S. Department of Justice is in the early stages of drafting an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, according to sources cited by Politico. While the report suggested a potential suit could arrive by the end of the year, it also stressed that a final decision about if or when to sue Apple had not yet been made.
• The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against data broker Kochava Inc. for selling geolocation data from “hundreds of millions of mobile devices,” it says, which could be used to trace the movements of individuals, including those to and from sensitive locations.

Security & Privacy

• Microsoft revealed how a high-severity vulnerability impacted TikTok users on Android. Though now patched, the vulnerability could have allowed attackers to take over user accounts that clicked on a malicious link.

Funding and M&A

Sony acquired mobile game developer Savage Game Studios for an undisclosed sum. The company will join Sony’s newly created and independently operating PlayStation Studios Mobile Division, which will focus on creating games based on new and existing PlayStation IP.

OneSignal, a startup that helps businesses automate SMS, email and in-app campaigns, raised $50 million in Series C funding, led by BAM Elevate. The company has raised $80 million to date and counts around 6,000 paying customers.

Investing app Landa, which lets users make fractional investments in rental properties, emerged from stealth with an $8 million seed and $25 million Series A, co-led by NFX, 83North and Viola. To date, users have invested in around 400 properties in the app across NYC and Atlanta. It’s soon launching in Charlotte, Birmingham, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida.

PsycApps, a gamified mental health app for teens and adults, raised $1.7 in seed funding from U.S.-based Morningside Ventures. The startup has been through clinical trials, allowing it to secure contracts with schools in the U.K., including Regional College and Paragon Skills.

Reddit acquired audience contextualization company Spiketrap to boost its ads business for an undisclosed sum. Reddit says Spiketrap’s AI-powered contextual analysis and tools will help Reddit to improve in areas like ad quality scoring and will boost prediction models for powering auto-bidding.

Grocery delivery app Instacart is acquiring Eversight, an AI-powered pricing and promotions platform for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands and retailers, for an undisclosed sum.

Triller reportedly raised $200 million in debt and equity per a report by The Wrap, and is targeting a $3 billion valuation in its expected IPO this year.

Downloads

Robin Games’ PLAYHOUSE

Image Credits: Robin Games

Women-led mobile gaming startup Robin Games raised funding around the idea of carving out a new niche in the market of “lifestyle gaming” by creating a fantasy gaming experience that’s more sophisticated and stylish — something more in line with the sort of content you’d typically find in a lifestyle magazine or Instagram influencer’s profile. This week, the startup released its first title to tackle this concept with the launch of a mobile game, PLAYHOUSE, which combines both gameplay and shopping in one experience.

Available on iOS and Android, PLAYHOUSE is a DIY design game that allows players to drag-and-drop furniture and décor into spaces to create original looks for rooms using elements like wall art, sofas, chairs, tables, plants and more. Unlike some competing design games, the pieces can be moved, rotated, resized or layered to create a unique look. But what makes this experience even more interesting is that users can shop the items in the game by clicking through to the retailer’s website. At launch, it’s partnering with over 100 brands like Arhaus, Article, 1stDibs, Chairish, One Kings Lane, ABC Carpet & Home, Jenni Kayne, Society6, Bloomscape, Room & Board and Lulu & Georgia, and others.

The app monetizes as a free-to-play title with in-app purchases, however, not affiliate commissions. (Read the full review on TechCrunch.)

Duolingo’s new Math app (waitlist)

Language learning app maker Duolingo has launched its latest creation, Duolingo Math, announced during its Duocon conference — after first being teased at the event the year prior. Similar to how Duolingo turns language learning into mini-games, the new app will teach third-grade math to users in a snack-sized experience aimed at making learning fun and accessible. The company says the new app will initially be available to iPhone and iPad users who sign up for the waitlist.

The UK could be gearing up to hit a handful of tech firms with enforcement orders (and potentially fines) related to a children’s online privacy and safety Code which has been in force for a year.

“The ICO are currently looking into how over 50 different online services are conforming with the code, with four ongoing investigations. We have also audited nine organisations and are currently assessing their outcomes,” the data protection watchdog said in a blog post yesterday marking the one-year anniversary of the Code coming into application.

The Telegraph, which has interview with information commissioner, John Edwards — who heads up the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) — in today’s paper reports that two of the four social media and tech firms under investigation are household names.

Its reports says decisions by the ICO on whether to prosecute are expected to be announced within weeks.

“This code makes clear that children are not like adults online, and their data needs greater protections,” Edwards told the Telegraph. “We’ll use our enforcement powers where they are required.”

The companies in question have not been named — either by the newspaper or the ICO — but last November, the watchdog wrote to Apple and Google after concerns had been raised with it about how the pair assess apps on their respective mobile app stores to determine which age ratings they apply.

The ICO described its outreach then as an “evidence gathering process to identify conformance with the code” — although it remains to be seen whether the two tech giants are among the four firms facing possible enforcement, or if they’re just among the wider group whose compliance the watchdog has been eyeing.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to name the companies at the minute due to ongoing investigations,” a spokeswoman for the ICO confirmed when asked if it can share any more details.

The ICO first published the children’s Code back in 2020. It contains 15 standards for what’s billed as “age appropriate design” — essentially it’s a set of design recommendations for web services that are likely to be accessed by kids, containing recommendations such as setting high privacy defaults and not using heavy-handed engagement tactics that could keep kids unhealthily hooked on using a digital service.

The overarching aim is for the Code to encourage to platforms to safeguard kids from accessing inappropriate content and prevent them being commercially data-mined, although the ICO regulates personal data (rather than content) — the latter responsibility will fall to Ofcom under the incoming Online Safety Bill (assuming another change of UK prime minister does not lead to a legislative rethink on that front).

This division of regulatory responsibilities has led to some friction from children’s safety campaigners who, while supportive of the Code — and, indeed, even more than that in the case of 5Rights’ chair and life peer, Baroness Kidron, who was a fundamental driver for adoption of the standards (and continues to press for amendments from her seat in the House of Lords) — have complained of “gaps”, as they wait for content-focused safety laws to make their way through parliament.

The ICO has therefore faced pressure to also be looking at adult websites — i.e. by requiring that porn sites also comply with the Code — not just auditing the sorts of games and social media apps that are most obviously popular with children.

Age checks for porn sites?

The overarching push by child safety campaigners is to force adult websites to apply robust age checks to prevent children accessing online pornography — so, basically, a revival of a mandatory age checks for porn sites policy that’s been kicked about by UK lawmakers for years — most recently revived (earlier this year) as an(other) addition to the Online Safety Bill after a standalone age check scheme was dropped in 2019 after facing criticism that it was unworkable.

Campaigners may finally be scenting victory on this front, via the Online Safety Bill, as the government said in February that it will mandate the use of “age verification technologies” on adult sites to make it harder for children to access or stumble across pornography. But they’re evidently not sitting on their hands waiting for that legislation to pass — not when the Children’s Code and UK data protection law already exists for them to leverage…

And in what looks to be a related change to its approach, announced yesterday, the ICO has bowed to pressure to expand its interpretation of the Code to cover pornography websites — or at least those that are “likely” to be accessed by children (whatever that means) — writing in its blog post that: “We have… revised our position to clarify that adult-only services are in scope of the Children’s code if they are likely to be accessed by children.”

The ICO says this evolution in how it applies the Code follows petitions by child safety campaigners and others warning of the risk of “data protection harms” when kids access porn sites.

“We will continue to evolve our approach, listening to others to ensure the code is having the maximum impact,” it goes on. “For example, we have seen an increasing amount of research (from the NSPCC, 5Rights, Microsoft and British Board of Film Classification), that children are likely to be accessing adult-only services and that these pose data protection harms, with children losing control of their data or being manipulated to give more data, in addition to content harms.”

This change in application does not (cannot) entail an expansion of what the ICO regulates to include content itself. (“We don’t regulate content,” its spokeswoman confirmed. “We regulate how children’s personal data is used or processed in order for content to be served to children. It’s the step before children see the content.”)

However it’s clear that porn sites’ data collection habits are not the primary concern for child safety campaigners — rather it’s, yep, the content — but if campaigners can leverage children’s privacy rules to force porn sites to implement age checks they don’t look too fussy.

In a statement welcoming the ICO’s revision to include adult-only sites in scope of the Code, children’s safety campaign group, the 5Rights Foundation, said:

“The UK Age Appropriate Design Code applies to all services that are likely to be accessed by under-18s, even if they are not intended for children. Through its investigative work submitted to the ICO last year, 5Rights uncovered that sites including gambling, dating and pornography sites are being accessed by children and are not complying with the Code, in particular profiling children to serve detrimental material.”

“The ICO’s announcement on adult-only sites will provide much needed clarity to those companies who think they are beyond the law,” added Duncan McCann, its head of policy implementation, in another supporting statement. “They will no longer have grey lines to exploit, and we hope that this development will serve to further improve the online lives of young people.”

While the UK children’s Code itself is not legally binding, it is attached to the country’s wider data protection rules — which include the Data Protection Act and UK GDPR — and ICO guidances notes that applicable online services “need to follow” the standards in order to “ensure they are complying with their obligations under data protection law to protect children’s data online”.

Under the GDPR, the ICO has extensive powers to enforce against privacy breaches — with the ability to fine infringers up to 4% of their global annual turnover (or up to £17.5M, whichever is higher). So the subtext here is basically ‘comply with the code or risk GDPR-level enforcement’ — giving the ICO a big stick to encourage in-scope digital services to apply goldplating rules that could end up in an age-gated Internet, since who knows which other services might be “likely” to be accessed by kids?

Asked how adult websites should assess whether children are likely to access their services, the ICO’s spokeswoman responded with this: “Services must be accountable for their decisions, and be able to provide evidence to support their views on whether they are likely to be accessed by children. To determine if they fall within the scope of the code, adult services will need to understand who their users are, and identify if children make up a significant number of those users. To do this, online service could undertake research about their users, review academic research or commission market research, consideration of the types of content and activities children are interested in and the attractiveness of their services to children; or consider if children are known to like similar services.”

The phrase “understand who their users are, and identify if children make up a significant number of those users” is doing a lot of work in that sentence — although the ICO has not explicitly suggested the use of age verification technology as a way for a service to determine whether it falls in scope of the Code. That comes next…

“If an adult only online service is likely to be accessed by children, the service needs to take measures to restrict children from accessing the service, such as by implementing age assurance measures, or it must implement the standards of the code in a proportionate, risk-based manner to protect children’s privacy online,” the ICO’s spokeswoman also told us, adding: “It’s vitally important to look after children online and not treat them in the same way adults are treated. It is a long term, transformative process to embed the Children’s code but we are seeing more and more change which is good for children, it allows the online industry to be more innovative and it’s the right thing to do.”

The ICO’s blog post also notes that the (privacy) regulatory will be working with Ofcom (the incoming content regulator) and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to “establish how the code works in practice in relation to adult-only services and what they should expect”. So expect further implementation ‘evolution’ as more pieces of the UK’s digital regulation strategy land (or, well, fall away).

The ICO is already taking credit for a number of policy tweaks applied by major platforms to children’s accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google and Nintendo, over the past year — such as the Meta-owned platforms limiting targeting to age, gender, and location for under-18s; and YouTube turning off autoplay by default and turning on take a break and bedtime reminders by default for Google Accounts for under 18s, to name two of the actions it flags.

The UK Code has also been credited with encouraging similar policy moves in other jurisdictions — reportedly inspiring a California bill that was passed by lawmakers just this week (and will, if it’s gets signed into law, apply a similar set of protections for under-18s in the state), among a number of other moves by other regulators and policymakers focused on safeguarding kids online.

Google’s decision to block the Truth Social app’s launch on the Play Store over content moderation issues raises the question as to why Apple hasn’t taken similar action over the iOS version of the app that’s been live on the App Store since February. According to a report by Axios, Google found numerous posts that violated its Play Store content policies, blocking the app’s path to go live on its platform. But some of these same types of posts appear to be available on the iOS app, TechCrunch found.

This could trigger a re-review of Truth Social’s iOS app at some point, as both Apple’s and Google’s policies are largely aligned in terms of how apps with user-generated content must moderate their content.

Axios this week first reported Google’s decision to block the distribution of the Truth Social app on its platform, following an interview given by the app’s CEO, Devin Nunes. The former Congressman and member of Trump’s transition team, now social media CEO, suggested that the holdup with the app’s Android release was on Google’s side, saying, “We’re waiting on them to approve us, and I don’t know what’s taking so long.”

But this was a mischaracterization of the situation, Google said. After Google reviewed Truth Social’s latest submission to the Play Store, it found multiple policy violations, which it informed Truth Social about on August 19. Google also informed Truth Social as to how those problems could be addressed in order to gain entry into the Play Store, the company noted.

“Last week, Truth Social wrote back acknowledging our feedback and saying that they are working on addressing these issues,” a Google spokesperson shared in a statement. This communication between the parties was a week ahead of Nunes’s interview where he implied the ball was now in Google’s court. (The subtext to his comments, of course, was that conservative media was being censored by Big Tech once again.)

The issue at hand here stems from Google’s policy for apps that feature user-generated content, or UGC. According to this policy, apps of this nature must implement “robust, effective and ongoing UGC moderation, as is reasonable and consistent with the type of UGC hosted by the app.” Truth Social’s moderation, however, is not robust. The company has publicly said it relies on an automated AI moderation system, Hive, which is used to detect and censor content that violates its own policies. On its website, Truth Social notes that human moderators “oversee” the moderation process, suggesting that it uses an industry-standard blend of AI and human moderation. (Of note, the app store intelligence firm Apptopia told TechCrunch the Truth Social mobile app is not using the Hive AI. But it says the implementation could be server-side, which would be beyond the scope of what it can see.)

Truth Social’s use of AI-powered moderation doesn’t necessarily mean the system is sufficient to bring it into compliance with Google’s own policies. The quality of AI-detection systems varies, and those systems ultimately enforce a set of rules that a company itself decides to implement. According to Google, several Truth Social posts it encountered contained physical threats and incitements to violence — areas the Play Store policy prohibits.

Image Credits: Truth Social’s Play Store listing

We understand Google specifically pointed to the language in its User Generated Content policy and Inappropriate Content policy when making its determination about Truth Social. These policies include the following requirements:

Apps that contain or feature UGC must:

• Require that users accept the app’s terms of use and/or user policy before users can create or upload UGC.

• Define objectionable content and behaviors (in a way that complies with Play’s Developer Program Policies), and prohibit them in the app’s terms of use or user policies.

• Implement robust, effective and ongoing UGC moderation, as is reasonable and consistent with the type of UGC hosted by the app.

And:

• Hate Speech — We don’t allow apps that promote violence, or incite hatred against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, caste, immigration status, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.

• Violence — We don’t allow apps that depict or facilitate gratuitous violence or other dangerous activities.

• Terrorist Content — We don’t allow apps with content related to terrorism, such as content that promotes terrorist acts, incites violence, or celebrates terrorist attacks.

And while users may be able to initially post such content — no system is perfect — an app with user-generated content like Truth Social (or Facebook or Twitter, for that matter) would need to be able to take down those posts in a timely fashion in order to be considered in compliance.

In the interim, the Truth Social app is not technically “banned” from Google Play — in fact, Truth Social is still listed for preorder today, as Nunes also pointed out. It could still make changes to come into compliance, or it could choose another means of distribution.

While Truth Social decides its course for Android, an examination of posts on Truth Social’s iOS version revealed a range of anti-Semitic content, including Holocaust denial, as well as posts promoting the hanging of public officials and others (including those in the LGBTQ+ community), posts advocating for civil war, posts in support of white supremacy, and many other categories that would seem to be in violation of Apple’s own policies around objectionable content and UGC apps. Few were behind a moderation screen.

It’s not clear why Apple has not taken action against Truth Social, as the company hasn’t commented. One possibility is that, at the time of Truth Social’s original submission to Apple’s App Store, the brand-new app had very little content for an App Review team to parse, so it didn’t have any violative content to flag. Truth Social does use content filtering screens on iOS to hide some posts behind a click-through warning, but TechCrunch found the use of those screens to be haphazard. While the content screens obscured some posts that appeared to break the app’s rules, the screens also obscured many posts that did not contain objectionable content.

Assuming Apple takes no action, Truth Social would not be the first app to grow out of the pro-Trump online ecosystem and find a home on the App Store. A number of other apps designed to lure the political right with lofty promises about an absence of censorship have also obtained a green light from Apple.

Social networks Gettr and Parler and video sharing app Rumble all court roughly the same audience with similar claims of “hands-off” moderation and are available for download on the App Store. Gettr and Rumble are both available on the Google Play Store, but Google removed Parler in January 2021 for inciting violence related to the Capitol attack and has not reinstated it since.

All three apps have ties to Trump. Gettr was created by former Trump advisor Jason Miller, while Parler launched with the financial blessing of major Trump donor Rebekah Mercer, who took a more active role in steering the company after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Late last year, Rumble struck a content deal with former President Trump’s media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), to provide video content for Truth Social.

Many social networks were implicated in the January 6 attack — both mainstream social networks and apps explicitly catering to Trump supporters. On Facebook, election conspiracy theorists flocked to popular groups and organized openly around hashtags such as #RiggedElection and #ElectionFraud. Parler users featured prominently among the rioters who rushed into the U.S. Capitol, and Gizmodo identified some of those users through GPS metadata attached to their video posts.

Today, Truth Social is a haven for political groups and individuals who were ousted from mainstream platforms over concerns that they might incite violence. Former president Trump, who founded the app, is the most prominent among deplatformed figures to set up shop there, but Truth Social also offers a refuge to QAnon, a cultlike political conspiracy theory that has been explicitly barred from mainstream social networks like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook due to its association with acts of violence.

Over the last few years alone, that includes a California father who said he shot his two children with a speargun due to his belief in QAnon delusions, a New York man who killed a mob boss and appeared with a “Q” written on his palm in court and various incidents of domestic terrorism that preceded the Capitol attack. In late 2020, Facebook and YouTube both tightened their platform rules to clean up QAnon content after years of allowing it to flourish. In January 2021, Twitter alone cracked down on a network of more than 70,000 accounts sharing QAnon-related content, with other social networks following suit and taking the threat seriously in light of the Capitol attack.

A report released this week by media watchdog NewsGuard details how the QAnon movement is alive and well on Truth Social, where a number of verified accounts continue to promote the conspiracy theory. Former president Trump, Truth Social CEO and former House representative Devin Nunes, and Patrick Orlando, CEO of Truth Social’s financial backer Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC) have all promoted QAnon content in recent months.

Earlier this week, former president Trump launched a blitz of posts explicitly promoting QAnon, openly citing the conspiracy theory linked to violence and domestic terrorism rather than relying on coded language to speak to its supporters as he has in the past. That escalation paired with the ongoing federal investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of high-stakes classified information — a situation that’s already inspired real-world violence — raises the stakes on a social app where the former president is able to openly communicate to his followers in real time.

That Google would take a preemptive action to keep Truth Social from the Play Store while Apple is, so far, allowing it to operate is an interesting shift in the two tech giant’s policies over app store moderation and policing. Historically, Apple has taken a heavier hand in App Store moderation — culling apps that weren’t up to standards, poorly designed, too adult, too spammy, or even just operating in a gray area that Apple later decides now needs enforcement. Why Apple is hands-off in this particular instance isn’t clear, but the company has come under intense federal scrutiny in recent months over its interventionist approach to the lucrative app marketplace.

Venture capital data thus far in the third quarter indicates that investment into blockchain-focused startups is on pace to contract dramatically compared to recent quarters and the heady 2021 period.

Data from Crunchbase and PitchBook indicate that after totaling around $10 billion in some recent quarters, the total dollar value of web3 investments could more than halve — with some datasets implying an even sharper fall when we compare Q3 2022 with earlier quarters of the same year.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

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It’s canon in the blockchain world that rapid business cycles are part of the game, with periods of hype and spending followed by periods of lower consumer activity. A common perspective is that boom periods bring in new users for web3 products and related services while ensuing busts allow for quieter, building-focused work. Here’s how Coinbase described the pattern in its most recent earnings deck:

Image Credits: Coinbase

I’ve been tracking PsycApps, a startup that came up with a gamified mental health game ‘eQuoo’, since 2016, and this company – and its founder – is nothing if not persistent in ‘pivoting into the wind’. The last we heard it had been approved by the UK’s National Heath Service and was even distributed by Unilever. And, of course, the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has only created a greater need for startups addressing mental health.

But now it is winning approval from the investment community in the shape of a $1.7 seed capital raise from US-based Morningside Ventures.

Describing itself as an ‘evidence-based gamified mental health game for teens and young adults’, eQuoo is now aiming its platform at the 50% of teens and tweens who self-report struggling with one or more issues of mental health.

PsycApp’s platform offers a mental health intervention game aimed at higher education institutions, many of which are now legally obliged to take care of students’ mental health. And because eQuoo has gone through clinical trials, it’s securing contracts with schools that need that validation in order to offer it to students. In theory, this means that any other platform trying to do the same thing will meet a barrier to entry into this market.

In a statement, Stephen Bruso of Morningside Ventures commented that low engagement in mental health apps is a problem, but he thinks eQuoo has cracked the model: “Digital health interventions will be critical in the way that our society addresses the second, ongoing pandemic of mental health issues. However, designing these interventions to maximize long-term engagement and outcomes will be critical to making a difference. Silja and her team have shown robust engagement and outcomes data in large clinical studies.”

Clinical Psychologist and Founder Silja Litvin – together with Co-Founder Vanessa Hirsch-Angus – points out that 70% of 16 to 28-year-olds are casual gamers, hence why she eQuoo has had staying power amongst young adults used to the gaming mechanic.

eQuoo’s EdTech appeal – it says – is that secondary schools, colleges, and universities are legally required to keep their students healthy, and that increasingly means mental – as well as physical – health as well. In the UK, Ofsted, the UK’s education regulator and schools and colleges assessor, has made it a requirement for schools and colleges to include a ‘resilience and personal growth program’ within their curriculum before they can achieve a top rating.

eQuoo claims it is the only tool covered by Ofsted that has clinical trials ‘proving positive impact on student’s resilience, anxiety, and depression,’ it says.

Regional College and Paragon Skills are two of eQuoo’s newest clients, covering nearly 20,000 students and apprentices in the UK.

Speaking to me over a call, Litvin said the startup had gained traction after switching from a short-term game to a long-term one, a move which tipped the balance for Morningside’s investment.

“We’ve done a complete reboot of the game, adding multiple stories, an in app arcade, and an in-app chat bot that gives you feedback on your well-being. We went from five weeks to 52 weeks. We have an in-app arcade with many games and many exercises that are all mental health related,” she told me.

“With this funding, we’ll make sure that it never ends. You could potentially use the game for the rest of your life if you wanted to, which is not an issue because it’s also in the domain of personal growth. So it’s not just about addressing mental health.”

I put it to her that selling into the education market is notoriously difficult, especially for startups.

She countered: “Ofsted just published an update that said if a school wants a full rating, it needs to have a resilience and personal development product program in place. We are the only evidence-based, indefinitely scalable product made specifically for that youth age bracket, that has clinical trials to prove its efficiency in resilience and personal development… Schools are scrambling to find a programme and most of the programmes aren’t evidence based and aren’t scalable, as eQuoo is.”

She added that Moningside has lines into “all the major universities in the US” which will help it to scale in North Amervia.

Litvin also added that the company had had to “run on fumes” for a while before securing the Seed round: “We scaled down. We didn’t pay ourselves for quite a few months. With this money, we can go into growth mode.”