Gen Z’s favorite social app BeReal experienced a lengthy outage today, which the company only acknowledged with a brief — and fairly vague —  tweet, stating: “yup, we’re on it.” In recent months, the Paris-based app maker has seen its photo-sharing service climb to the top of the App Store, ousting competitors like Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok from the No 1 spot, at times. But the company has also developed a reputation for not being very communicative — a pattern that extends to its own users, it seems.

To date, the startup hasn’t officially offered an on-the-record interview with press, though it’s been willing to meet with some for off-the-record briefings. (Or apparently, on background if you’re the Financial Times.)

This hesitancy to communicate goes beyond the media, however. Today, when BeReal faced a lengthy outage — one that spanned multiple hours and frustrated its users who could no longer upload photos — the company had little to say.

Meanwhile, devoted users stormed the account’s Twitter replies asking for more information while others posted to the hashtag #BeRealDown with their complaints. Many just wanted to know if the problems they were experiencing with the app were also impacting others. They had no information.

Reached for comment, BeReal declined to answer a number of questions related to its outage, including things like what caused it, how widespread it was, and whether the company had a sense of when it would be resolved.

Understandably, its team may have been struggling to address the technical issues before responding to these inquiries. But when the outage was resolved hours later, we were only pointed to this tweet that stated: “all good now.”

This lack of transparency from a company that simultaneously pushes its user base of millions to “be real” with one another is starting to wear thin.

At this point, we have to wonder how a company like this would respond if there ever was a more serious issue impacting its platform. What if BeReal experiences a data breach or hack? What if bad actors engaged with the platform in some way — will BeReal have anything to say then?

The company cannot keep pretending it’s a tiny, indie app maker. It’s raised a $30 million Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel followed by a Series B from DST Global, valuing the startup, pre-money at $600+ million, reports said. The app has seen nearly 46 million installs, according to data from Sensor Tower. It’s still today the No. 3 app on the U.S. iPhone App Store’s non-game charts — having only temporarily lost its top spot to widget creation apps following the launch of iOS 16. It soon plans to monetize with subscriptions. 

While being press-avoidant may be a strategy BeReal is employing for now, being non-communicative with its own users seems like a mistep. BeReal has been on the rise, but it can’t count on its continued success just yet.

After all, young people are nothing if not fickle when it comes to trying out and abandoning new social experiences. And TikTok just outright cloned the entire BeReal format as did Instagram and Snapchat to some extent. If BeReal wants to be seen as a company and not just a feature to be copied, it’s time for it to act like one.

BeReal experiences a multi-hour outage, refuses to explain by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Salesforce is the most successful SaaS company in the world. AWS is the biggest infrastructure player, and the two giants have gotten together over the years whenever it makes sense. As a couple of examples, the two signed an agreement in 2016 for Salesforce to use AWS infrastructure. In 2018, they got together to make it easier to exchange data between the two platforms.

This year, they are extending the partnership yet again with an announcement this week at Dreamforce in San Francisco. This one involves moving Salesforce data to SageMaker where customers can build machine learning models based on that data. When they’re done, they can move it back to Salesforce where Einstein can use that model to drive intelligent tasks.

The whole process is made possible by Genie, the data integration layer the company announced yesterday.

Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM for unified data services and Einstein at Salesforce, says certain customers have built workflows in SageMaker and they wanted to make it easy for them to work where they are most comfortable, while taking advantage of the data inside Salesforce to build their models.

He says that it starts with moving the data from the Salesforce CDP into SageMaker using Genie as the data conduit. “From there you build the model and then we meet the data scientists where they are, essentially enabling data scientists to use their familiar tools on SageMaker to build their models. Then, they can bring the models into Einstein and run the inferencing there,” he said.

Liz Miller, an analyst at Constellation Research, says the partnership benefits Salesforce customers in a couple of ways. “For those who have data and analytics teams and have been working on AI and models, this makes it easy to bring those models to Genie and open up those models to the mass of data Genie can hold. This has been a request from customers, especially large enterprise customers, from what Salesforce execs have told me,” she said.

She adds, “For many customers, and we hear this often, models and especially AI models and projects can stall because they can only be let loose on limited data sets or not enough customer data to reach a satisfying level of decision velocity. So this partnership connects the models to the last mile of learning.”

It could also simply involve comfort with SageMaker as a customer’s model building tool of choice, or it could possibly be because the model uses both customer data and other external data. As an example, a healthcare company may use customer data in conjunction with clinical trial data stored in an external repository outside of Salesforce and they want to build the model using both types of data inside SageMaker.

“The SageMaker integration enables these organizations to use custom AI models that leverage real-time customer data from Salesforce and clinical trial research together,” a company spokesperson explained.

While Einstein comes with many intelligent processes such as finding the most likely customer to buy, or conversely, the most likely to churn, there are often going to be customized scenarios that won’t be available out of the box, and being able to move various types of data into a model in SageMaker and then back into Salesforce, could prove useful for a number of customers.

The Genie announcement this week will likely lead to similar partnerships over time beyond this one, as other companies look to take advantage of Salesforce data in their workflows.

Salesforce Genie brings data sharing to Amazon SageMaker and Einstein by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

This deep into 2022, you might think that SPAC deals were over, done, dusted, forgotten. And yet, TechCrunch recently reported that Intuitive Machines is pursuing a SPAC-led debut to the public markets as we speak.

You might not be familiar with the company if you don’t keep close tabs on the space business. Let me catch us all up.

Intuitive Machines is combining with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. in a deal that will see the moon-focused company valued at $1.15 billion in equity terms and $815 million when we consider its anticipated enterprise value.

The gap between the two is the company’s anticipated post-combination cash on hand; to reassure possible investors that that figure will not evaporate through redemptions as the combination date nears, Intuitive Machines has secured $55 million of what it calls “committed capital,” or funds that are pledged to non-redemption agreements or external funding (PIPE) from “entities affiliated” with the SPAC in question.

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Intuitive Machines will hit the public markets as a unicorn if things go as planned. A unicorn in space? Given the reported value of SpaceX, Intuitive Machines won’t be the first. But it’s also one of a sector that isn’t hyperdense, like, say, enterprise software.

Intuitive Machines bets the moon could be big business by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

In recent months, Google has been steadily adding new tools to help consumers choose more sustainable options when using its services like Google Maps, Google Flights, and hotel search. On Tuesday, the company announced it’s expanding these efforts with the addition of a handful of new features that allow travelers to better filter their searches to make sustainable choices when booking flights or hotels as well as improved options for trains.

The new features complement Google’s existing options that have allowed consumers to view eco-related information about their travel choices — like the estimated carbon emissions on flights, or whether or not the hotels carry an “eco-label” from a trusted third-party group, Google noted.

Now, web searchers will be able to directly filter their flight and hotel searches to remove non-sustainable options from their search results entirely, and they’ll be able to more easily book trains through Google’s services.

To address the needs of eco-conscious air travelers, Google Flights is adding a “Low Emissions” filter that will allow you to see only those flights that have lower emissions compared with similar trips when performing searches.

Image Credits: Google

Similarly, when searching for hotels on Google.com/travel, you can click on a new “eco-certified” filter to browse a list that only contains eco-certified properties.

Google noted it had worked directly with organizations including the U.S. Green Building Council, which provides LEED ratings, and the Global Sustainable Tourism Council in order to improve the accuracy of its travel search results by importing their databases of eco-certified hotels.

The company is also making it easier to book trains through its travel services — something that had been difficult to do previously as finding both prices and schedules required separate searches, it said. Now, a new module will appear when you search for a train-related search like “Berlin to Vienna trains” which will let you pick a departure date, then compare the various schedules.

This allows travelers to consider trains, which can be the more sustainable option over car or plane travel, but it’s only launching in select countries to start — Germany, Spain, Italy, and Japan.

Google said it would expand this feature to more locations over time as it onboarded other rail providers and is working to create a similar feature for bus tickets as well.

Google rolls out a new set of search tools for eco-conscious travelers by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Envoy launched in 2013 with the promise of bringing visitor management for individual companies into the modern age. When the pandemic hit, it quickly pivoted to control who could come into an office based on factors like local regulations, their state of health and vaccination status.

Today, the company announced the next step in the system, an interconnected building management system for all the tenants in a high-rise building. The ultimate goal is developing an entire building management platform, one where at some point, customers can build add-ons and customizations on top of the existing software.

But company CEO Larry Gadea says that today’s announcement lays the foundation for this future vision for the company.

“What we’re launching right now is the first step that’s mandatory before [we can let customers eventually build apps on top of the platform], which is that the building has all of the tenants using the same software and they’re all linked together. And then we’re proving it out with this visitor’s product that is now able to automatically synchronize all the tenants together and to the downstairs,” Gadea explained.

Writing in a blog post announcing the changes, he described the new system this way: “We’re addressing most of the major pain points our customers have today with high-rises to make things much easier for everyone: visitors won’t need to sign in twice anymore, invitations made by employees for their office will propagate instantly to the building security lobby, changes to invitations will sync in real-time, turnstile and elevator access control will be automatically provisioned, and much more.”

Prior to today’s announcement, Envoy concentrated on helping individual tenants within a building manage visitors, but with Envoy Connect the tenants, the building owners, and the security desk downstairs, can be in sync in an automated way without having to explicitly tell security a visitor is coming.

All of this will be displayed for property managers in a centralized dashboard, making it easier to see and understand who is in the building across tenants at any given time.

Envoy Connect visitor dashboard Image Credits: Envoy

The company has spent the last couple of years adding pieces like Desks to manage desk assignments and Deliveries to manage building deliveries that in many ways were a reaction to the changing office environment. At the beginning of the pandemic offices shut down, then there was limited access and finally today even as we return to some semblance of normalcy, the hybrid office remains a reality, and understanding who’s in the building becomes even more important.

The broad vision is that Envoy won’t have to continually build these components themselves, but will provide a software development kit or API access that lets customers build the pieces they need themselves, but Gadea says that could be a year or two away. In addition, the company wants to make it easier to eventually create more fluid office environments that building tenants and owners can manage through the platform to take advantage of the changing nature of work. That could involve reserving desks, conference rooms and even ordering food and coffee, even when they don’t necessarily having a permanent space in the building.

Earlier this year, the company announced a massive $111 million strategic investment from Brookfield Growth, the investment arm of Brookfield Properties. The investment valued the company at $1.4 billion.

Matt Murphy from Menlo Ventures, which led the company’s $43 million Series B in 2018, says today’s announcement is a big reason for the money being directed at Envoy.

“Connect ​​is Envoy’s multi-tenancy product that was one of the primary drivers behind Brookfield leading the $111M Series C. Eventually it will lead to a marketplace for desks/rooms/parking, etc and Connect is the big first step to that,” Murphy told TechCrunch.

Envoy Connect brings automated visitor management to high-rise buildings by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

TikTok has announced an incoming tightening of its policies around political accounts using its video-sharing platform, such as those belonging to political parties, politicians and governments.

The changes look intended to limit, er, political grifting (for want of a better term) — with an incoming ban on use of monetization features (like tipping, gifting and ecommerce) or on using the video-sharing platform to solicit campaign donations directly.

Political accounts will also be ineligible for TikTok’s Creator Fund, as well as being unable to access ad features by default.

A spokeswoman for the company said the changes are designed to promote a positive environment and reduce polarization in line with its mission of being an entertainment platform. TikTok said the changes will roll out and/or start being enforced in the “coming weeks”. It also confirmed the new policies are being applied globally.

In a blog post about the policy update, it added:

TikTok is an entertainment platform where people come to share their stories, and understand other people’s experiences too. Those stories can touch on all aspects of their lives, including current events like elections and political issues. As we have set out before, we want to continue to develop policies that foster and promote a positive environment that brings people together, not divide them.

While TikTok has banned political advertising since 2019 it is going a little further now — saying it wants to build on that prohibition on “political content in ads” by applying ad restrictions at an account level.

“This means accounts belonging to politicians and political parties will automatically have their access to advertising features turned off, which will help us more consistently enforce our existing policy,” it explained.

TikTok notes there may still be “limited” situations where it will allow political accounts to advertise — such as for raising awareness of public health reasons. But it said government organizations will be “required” to work with a company representative in order to run such campaigns, so it will be vetting all requests.

“We recognize that there will be occasions where governments may need access to our ads services, such as to support public health and safety and access to information, like advertising Covid-19 booster campaigns,” it noted, adding: “We will continue to allow government organizations to advertise in limited circumstances, and they will be required to be working with a TikTok representative.”

The changes regarding solicitation for campaign fundraising will see TikTok disallowing content that makes direct appeals for donations.

TikTok has given examples of “a video from a politician asking for donations”, or “a political party directing people to a donation page on their website” as types of fundraising content that it will not allow under the new policy. But it remains to be seen whether politicians will find creative/coded ways to encourage fundraising on TikTok that workaround these limits. As ever, a policy is only as strong as the enforcement it receives.

“TikTok is first and foremost an entertainment platform, and we’re proud to be a place that brings people together over creative and entertaining content,” the company added in the blog post. “By prohibiting campaign fundraising and limiting access to our monetization features, we’re aiming to strike a balance between enabling people to discuss the issues that are relevant to their lives while also protecting the creative, entertaining platform that our community wants.”

It’s not clear how much political grifting is going on on TikTok’s platform currently. Asked whether there are a substantial number of political accounts using monetization features like tipping etc, a spokeswoman for the company declined to specify, saying the company does not release information about specific user demographics.

While TikTok is clearly very keen for its platform to be seen as ‘just a bit of harmless fun’, it can’t avoid being a political ‘hot potato’ topic in and of itself.

Lawmakers and intelligence agencies in the West have — for years — raised a range of concerns linked to TikTok being owned by a Chinese company and thus subject to wide-ranging national security laws which give the Chinese state sweeping powers to access data held by tech firms. Hence it’s invested in opening so-called ‘transparency centers‘ and on moving US users’ data to Oracle servers (as well as announcing date localization plans in the EU, too). Though concerns persist about China-based employees’ ability to access data on Western users.

TikTok’s platform has also faced sporadic accusations that it censors views not aligned with the Chinese Communist Party — although it refutes the claim. Other political fears the platform raises in the West relate to its ability to track users, given how much user data it captures (including concerns about biometric data), as well as wider worries about its ability to influence public opinion via the application of its powerful content-sorting algorithms. The fear — or, well paranoia — here is that TikTok is a wildly successful foreign influence op brainwashing Western kids… 

Only last month, the British parliament closed an account on TikTok days after opening it after it faced criticism from senior MPs and peers who called the data security risks attached to using the app “considerable”. So it may take more than a few policy tweaks for TikTok to rise above the political fray.

This report was updated with responses from TikTok

TikTok takes aim at political grifting and fundraising in latest policy tweaks by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

Synthetic speech tech startup Murf gives a voice, literally, to content creators of all sizes. Murf, which now has a library of more than 120 human-parity AI voices across 20 languages, announced today it has raised $10 million Series A funding led by Matrix partners. Participation came from returning investors Elevation Capital and several prominent angel investors like Ola founder Ankit Bhai; Disney Streaming SVP of product; Ashwini Asokan, the founder of Mad Street Dap; and Pushkar Mukewar, founder Drip Capital

Founded in October 2020 by IIT-Kharagpur school friends Sneha Roy, Ankur Edkie and Divyanshu Pandey, Murf’s previous funding announcement was a $1.5 million seed led by Elevation Capital and angel investors who helped them recruit talent, invest in product innovation and user acquisition. Murf says that since its seed round, it has grown 26X in ARR and synthesized more than one million voice over projects, in wide variety of speaking styles and tones.

Some examples of how Murf’s technology has been used include a tech entrepreneur and artist creating an entire film using AI art models, deep fake programs and AI Voices from Murf studio; an entertainment animation agency that created a TV series using a collection of Murf’s voices; authors creating fantasy fiction audiobooks with Murf’s AI voices; and a YouTube influencer who used Murf’s AI voice to create a rap video.

Murf’s founders

Edkie, the CEO of Murf, told TechCrunch that even though Murf’s founding team worked in different domains in the past, they all ran into the pain points of creating high quality voice overs. This included creating and updating product demos and recording radio and video ads. He added that the pandemic “provided a boost to multimedia creation and the demand for scalable audio content was growing rapidly.”

Murf’s clients have used it in a variety of way, including advertising, audiobooks, explainer videos and e-learning. Murf.ai, its SaaS platform, was developed to make it easier for clients to create high-quality natural sounding voiceovers for any commercial purpose. The company’s clients range in size from individual content creators to SMBS and enterprises, and work in sectors like education, corporate, healthcare, media and entertainment, marketing, advertising, podcasting, customer support and more. 

Edkie, told TechCrunch that content creators and marketing teams often record voiceovers themselves, or outsource the entire process, both of which are “cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming.” Murf, on the other hand, lets users generate “human-like” voiceovers without needing to buy recording equipment or hire a voice artist. 

The company also wants to remove limitations on what text-to-speech can do. “While TTS has been around for quite some time now, limitations in voice quality have restricted its usage. By leveraging recent advances in AI and deep learning, we are making it possible to create high-fidelity synthetic voices that mimim the natural prosody and pronunciation of human speech.”

Murf’s platform includes an AI-enabled SaaS tool that helps users to generate “human-like” voices, typically for use in videos or presentations, without having procure complex and costly recoding equipment or hiring a voice artist. Content creators can use online voice recording booth, where they can sample a wide array of speaking styles. Murf wants to bridge diversity gap in traditional text to speech platforms by including voices across accents, like African American, British, Australian and others. 

According to market reports used by Murf’s founders, the global text-speech market is expected to reach $7.06 billion by 2028, growing at a 14.6% CAG. Meanwhile, the voiceover and dubbing markets is predicated to generate a total of $8 billion annually by 2027.

Text-to-speech has been around for years, but quality limitations meant they were used primarily by voice assistants and chat bots. But recent developments in AI and deep learning now means it is possible to create synthetic voices that have the prosody and pronunciation of human speech. Murf’s AI engine is trained on hours of actual human speech and Murf Studios offer more than 120 human-variety AI voices, which can speak in 20 languages. Murf is also working towards bringing more diverse accents by partnering with voice actors to bring abroad voices like African American, British and Australian English.

Murf’s AI-powered text-to-speech can also learn from contextual information to return the right responses. The founders describe Murf as an “all-in-one-voice solution” that enables users to add images, videos and background music. It also has features for pronunciation using the international phonetic alphabet (IPA), voice customizations that change users’ pitch, pause, emphasis and speed.

Murf makes money through a subscription plan for its services. It came out of beta testing in January 2021, and over the last 18 months, has grown 22x in ARR and synthesized over one million voiceover project to date.

Edkie said that Murf’s main competitors are the large tech and cloud companies, like Google, Amazon, Polly and Microsoft, who have the leading text to speech platforms in the market. Murf sets itself apart with natural sounding AI voices that also support multiple accents and styles. 

“Going beyond a simple text to speech tool, our platform offers the ability for users to add images, videos, presentations, and to the voiceover, include background music and sync them altogether to create compelling content,” said Edkie. Murf’s AI-powered TTS can also learn from large amounts of contextual information to create contextual speech. For example, it has an in-built context awareness that can recognize common used entity formats like numbers, currencies, percentages, addresses, dates and times, reducing their randomness and bringing them closer to a predefined standard, Edkie added. 

In a prepared statement, Elevation Capital co-managing partner Mukul Arora said, “AI-driven, life-like voiceovers are the next frontier in the text to speech market. Murf, with their stellar founding team and unique IP, is perfectly poised to gain a leadership position in this space. Their execution prowess and tech-first focus is evident in the solid traction and growth that they’ve demonstrated so far. We are really excited to double down on our  partnership with Murf.”

Synthetic speech startup Murf lends a voice to content creators of all sizes  by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

There are about three million solar installations in the United States per year, but that process is costly and often lacks transparency. Pleasanton, Ca.-based Enact Systems wants to increase collaboration between installers and end-users with two-sided software. One side lets salespeople remotely design, price and sell solar systems, and the other enables their customers to manage their new systems, track energy and financial outcomes.

Enact currently claims thousands of users in more than 20 countries, and says it processes $1.5 billion in projects annually. Today, the startup announced it has raised a $11.5 million Series A from Energy Growth Momentum, NB Ventures, ARKA Venture Labs, Olympus Capital and Alumni Venture Funds, along with angel investors.

Before starting Enact, co-founders Deep Chakraborty and Manasij Kar spent years leading solar businesses for top global solar companies, including Centrosolar and QCells India, in the United States and Asia. In 2014, they quit their jobs to start Enact.

Chakraborty told TechCrunch that Enact was launched to help end-customers have a better experience for solar and energy storage, purchase and ownership. In turn, solar businesses get productivity tools and data analytics that Enact’s founders say can reduce soft costs and help them scale their sales and operations quickly.

Enact’s platform is open to all solar installers in the United States, plus 20 other countries. They range in size from SMBs that have about five to 10 people focused on residential projects, to large global corporations in multiple countries that use Enact for commercial and industrial projects.

Most of Enact’s U.S. installers are focused on residential end-customers. In international markets, however, it’s a mix, Chakraborty told TechCrunch. Several of Enact’s Asia installers are large, listed companies that focus entirely on commercial/industrial clients, while in markets like the United Arab Emirates or South Africa, installers use Enact for both residential and commerce end-clients.

Enact can help installers close deals more quickly with a couple of features. The Enact Installer app uses energy modeling techniques to analyze the feasibility of possible solar and storage project feasibility. It also integrates with satellite imaging to help build visual models of rooftops and ground solars in 3D mode. Installers are able to take this information and produce proposals with detailed pricing. Chakraborty said the process can take as little as 5 minutes.

Another feature, called the Enact Platform, enables Digital Proposals that track end-consumer interactions in real-time. For example, it prompts prospective customers to upload their energy bills or share usage data which helps their installer come back with better savings projections.

Once a solar system is installed, Enact continues to help with features like its consumer app, which monitors for changes in generation and connectivity and helps customers save money by translating electricity generation in dollars saved, and potential savings by month, year or lifetime. As they continue using their solar systems, customers can compare actual savings to the estimates, giving the process more transparency.

Chakraborty says that the solar and storage software platform space is still relatively new, with less than 10 U.S. software companies that have raised capital and scaled up. Enact’s Installer app competes with Aurora Solar, which focuses on solar only. It also had an early competitor called Geli that also focused on energy storage, but was acquired in August 2020 by Hanhwa QCells, a large OEM.

Other former competitors that have also been acquired include Solargraf, by Enphase, and Sighten, by NextEra.

Enact differentiates by offering a two-sided platform that enables by B2B and B2B2C revenue, scalable architecture with strong data-layer for predictive analytics, and the most complete end-to-end workflow far the entire project lifecycle, which helps it appeal to enterprise grade users, Chakraborty said.

Enact Systems connects solar installers and customers for more efficient energy use by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Electrical engineers have been designing custom circuit boards on computers for years, but this approach simply moved the paper and pencil method to digital. It didn’t advance the craft or make it easier for engineers to reuse design elements across designs. They always have had to start from scratch, even if they can apply learnings they gathered along the way.

Jitx, a startup from three Berkeley alumni, recognized that the digital approach to board design hadn’t changed much and they saw an opening. They have created a new way of designing boards using code to describe what the board looks like. Today the company announced the general availability of that product and a previously unannounced $12 million Series A.

“Today engineers use very graphical tools to manually design schematics and circuit boards, and that’s just not productive enough anymore. There’s too much design work. The systems are too complex to design them without errors. So Jitx is changing that by letting engineers write code to create their designs, and that brings the benefits of software to hardware design,” co-founder and CEO Duncan Haldane told TechCrunch.

He says that this has several advantages including reusability, increased productivity, a simpler and automated review process, and the ability to share and collaborate on designs in meaningful ways.

The company has come up with a coding language that Haldane says is aimed squarely at electrical engineers and how they work.

“We made a programming language and a compiler for electrical engineers. So basically an electrical engineer thinks about problems a certain way – I need to design this IoT device. I need to have this radio. I want it to last five years with this type of battery. And I need this microcontroller – and we just gave them a language to express that so you can start at a really high level, and then the compiler starts filling in details for you,” he said.

He says the language is something engineers should understand, given they already write Python scripts to test board designs now.

Jitx coding screen where engineers describe what a circuit board will look like with code. Image Credits: Jitx

The other important thing that Jitx does is make it simpler to test the design to make sure it’s correct. Today that involves eye balling and getting a bunch of people together to  critique it to make sure it’s going to work. Jitx wants to bring automation to the design review process to test the design automatically, and move it into production more quickly.

The roots of the idea go back to work that Haldane was doing as a grad student in 2013. As the idea of code-based circuit design grew, he connected with his co-founders and started the company in 2017.

Jitx built this silicon validation board that included 2500 pins in a complex 300um grid. Image Credits: Jitx

Early on the startup began as a design consultancy helping companies design circuit boards, but they discovered this way of bringing more automation to the design process and began building the solution they have today, originally for themselves, before making it into a product.

The company currently has 18 employees. He says growing a diverse workforce is challenging, especially in a field that requires highly specialized skills, but the company is working at it and looking at ways to find candidates from historically underrepresented groups. “The way we address inclusion is just you have to work really hard on sourcing people. You’re not going to hire someone because they’re diverse, but rather because they’re less represented, so you have to work harder to find them,” he said.

The $12 million investment closed last year. It was led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Y Combinator, Funders Club and Liquid 2. The company was a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2018 cohort and was one of the 10 startups that caught the eye of the TechCrunch reporters covering their Demo Day.

Jitx wants to change the way engineers design circuit boards using code by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

Apple’s new iOS 16 operating system is about to get its first significant set of bug fixes, including those that will address users’ complaints over shaky cameras when using some apps, and a frustrating copy and paste bug that asks users far too often if an app has permission to access their clipboard, among other things.

Apple’s aim with the paste permissions feature was to protect users’ privacy, as the prompt highlights when apps are reading the clipboard where sensitive data could be stored — even when users may not be aware that’s happening. TikTok, for instance, was found guilty of snooping on clipboard data as were dozens of other iOS apps. But the prompt is not supposed to appear repeatedly as it’s doing in iOS 16, which is distracting and annoying.

The news of the iOS 16 update to address this issue and others was first reported by The Wall St. Journal. MacRumors additionally confirmed, via a reader email exchange with an Apple exec, that the annoying paste pop-ups was not intended behavior and would soon be fixed. The exec suggested the issue was not one that was caught internally, but admitted other users had experienced the same problem.

Apple also confirmed to TechCrunch it was aware of the issues and noted a fix would be out next week.

While the developer and public beta builds for iOS 16 had been relatively stable this time around, a full public release of a new operating system often uncovers new issues that weren’t discovered during testing phases — in some cases because those issues don’t impact all users.

That seems to be the case with the camera shaking issue, for example, which had been reported by some early adopters on social media. They found select photo-sharing apps like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram would record shaky videos when the rear-facing camera was used from inside the social media app, and their new iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max would make loud noises. This problem didn’t occur when using Apple’s first-party camera app, however, indicating the issue is rooted in software.

This is not a universal bug, as it turns out, but Apple hasn’t explained why some users encountered this problem and others did not. Here at TechCrunch, for instance, no one could replicate the issue when testing Apple’s new devices, including the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, running iOS 16.

Some other iPhone 14 Pro users also said their phones because unresponsive when restoring from iCloud and transferring data from older iPhones, the Journal reported. This will be addressed in the upcoming update, as well, it noted.

Apple has not indicated which day next week users can expect the update, but if you’re impacted by any of these issues, you may want to visit the iPhone Settings to check for the update directly.

Apple to fix annoying copy and paste bug, camera shaking and more in next week’s iOS 16 update by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Selling weed is easy. Selling legal weed is not easy. Dispensaries have to comply with an ever-changing list of regulations and consumer expectations. For example, online menus must match local inventory, and dispensaries must find a system that allows cashless transactions for those customers with credit cards. And then there’s marketing concerns, loyalty programs, and the need to provide budtenders with up-to-date information.

Founded in 2015, Flowhub was one of the first of a growing cohort of companies building POS systems for dispensaries. The company today unveiled the latest iteration of its platform. Called Maui, the company claims the software can “cannabis retailers increase profits, operate more efficiently, and create superior customer experiences.” What’s more, this platform, unlike most competing products, is open and configurable, give dispensaries the ability to more easily integrate it into their tech stacks and doesn’t require the operation to buy proprietary hardware.

The company touts the new feature in a press release, saying the new platform offers several industry firsts. This includes a universal login for multi-state operators, allowing these large orgs to manage locations in other states. In addition, it provides a two-way Metrc integration, which the company claims internal data shows test dispensaries saw a 40% gain in efficiency. It can run on a PC, Mac, or iPad, and features an integrated payment processing feature. It also works with all of Flowhub’s fantastic mobile apps.

“Many assume the plant sells itself, but it’s not so simple for legal cannabis retailers. The industry remains a highly regulated environment with an influx of challenges and increasing competition. So far technology providers have struggled to keep up with today’s dispensary needs and consumer expectations,” said Kyle Sherman, founder and CEO of Flowhub, in a released statement. “With Maui, Flowhub gives full control back to dispensaries. We’ve taken diligent customer feedback to deliver a cutting-edge, mobile-first operating system primed for this multi-billion-dollar industry. We’re here to power the upcoming explosion of innovative retail experiences that sustain healthy cannabis businesses and keep customers returning for more.”

The Maui platform will be available in all of Flowhub’s markets.

Flowhub raised $49.35m to date, with its latest fundraising coming from a $19m later stage VC round in October 2021 with participation from e.ventures, Headline, Massive VC, Poseidon Asset Management, and Shawn Carter (Jay-Z). The company previously raised a $23m round in June 2019 and a $3.25 million round in 2017. According to PitchBook and a statement from the company, Flowhub has a valuation of over $200 million.

Flowhub launches Maui, the next generation of its cannabis POS platform by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch

Slack has succeeded in large part in the enterprise by allowing people to communicate in a number of ways while integrating with many common enterprise applications. This lets you stay in Slack to get your work done without dreaded task switching. But what Slack has lacked until now was a way to share information about a project in a persistent way.

If you wanted to find the content related to a project, you might start a channel to narrow it down, and share some documents, links and other information, but to find them again requires searching or a lot of scrolling. Slack recognized this limitation and decided to combine Quip’s collaborative tooling with Slack’s communication capabilities in a new tool Slack is calling Canvas.

Quip is the company that Salesforce bought in 2016 for $750 million (and which brought co-CEO Bret Taylor to the company). Salesforce has always seemed to struggle with how to make good use of Quip across the platform. With Slack, the company it bought in 2020 for almost $28 billion, it’s found a way to solve the persistent content problem .

Slack CPO Tamar Yehoshua describes it this way: “Canvas is taking the collaborative components of Quip and integrating them natively into Slack. It’s a persistent layer of information that is a complement to the real time nature of channels,” Yehoshua told TechCrunch.

For companies, who do the majority of their work in Slack, and rely on it to share information, Canvas can be a kind of missing link to help people find the information they need much faster. It sits alongside a channel’s conversation stream and gives people access to information such as data and charts, text, tasks, internal and external links, training videos and so forth.

“So you have a channel with the real time nature of the information that’s flowing and then you can have a persistent layer where you can find things very easily,” she said.

Image Credits: Slack

You can also include workflows you create in Slack, and add those in the form of buttons into the canvas, and you can add comment threads just as you can with Quip. “So all of the functionality that you have in threads in Slack you have for comments in your canvas,” she explained.

Early customers have used it for new employee onboarding and marketing campaigns, as a couple of examples.

In addition to Canvas, Slack announced it enhanced Huddles, the tool for quick audio-based meetings with video capabilities for those users who want it. Slack is also opening up the Slack platform, a way for developers to build modular and reusable building blocks in Slack to create more customized workflows. That is going from private to public beta this week.

Slack Canvas is being announced today at Dreamforce in San Francisco, and is expected to be generally available some time next year.

Slack adds persistent information layer to channels called Canvas by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch