Author : zebethcontrol

Crowded’s app gives clubs, associations banking flexibility • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Apps, banking app, Crowded, Daniel Grunstein, Fintech, garageNo Comments

Crowded, a free banking app targeting member-based nonprofit organizations, like fraternities, sororities and booster clubs, closed on $6 million to continue developing its suite of banking and member management tools. Organizations often open banking accounts at nearby institutions, while some groups, like fraternities, sororities and on-campus clubs, are required to bank through their student activities, but without many of the features of modern banking. Crowded co-founder and CEO Daniel Grunstein told ZebethMedia that the company designed its mobile app for the specific needs of club treasurers so they can perform duties, for example, requesting and collecting member dues and tax reporting, digitally versus physically sending out notices to pay each month. The company is entering somewhat of a “crowded space” for organization management. For example, Heylo raised $1.5 million in seed funding this year for its member coordination app, while OurHouse and OmegaFi specifically target fraternities and sororities. Crowded offers both physical and virtual debit cards for its members, but organizations can also link their own existing bank accounts. One of the ways Grunstein says his company differs is that rather than charge subscription fees, Crowded collects interchange fees from merchants when those debit cards are used to make purchases. It also charges processing fees for member payments at around 3% or $5 per payment, which Grunstein said is lower than the industry average of 8%. Crowded co-founders, from left, Dvir Hanum, Daniel Grunstein and Darryl Gecelter. Image Credits: Crowded Grunstein started the company with Dvir Hanum, Darryl Gecelter and Dor Kleinmann in June 2021. The founders were previously in either financial technology or from alumni network tech. Grunstein himself has a background in fintech and enterprise software, previously working with JP Morgan Chase. “I was really focused on traction, as a service, and trying to advocate for that within a bank,” he said. “It made me put two-and-two together and realized that this is a way to solve some of the headaches I had and go top-down within a national organization.” Meanwhile, after launching a year ago with five customers, Crowded has grown into 300 chapter customers using the platform, with letters of intent signed with another 1,200 chapters. The company’s seed round was led by Garage and included Deel co-founder Philippe Bouaziz, Innoventure Partners’ Michael Marks and a group of former bank executives. The new funding will be deployed into building out the platform, marketing and compliance as it pertains to nonprofit finances. The platform was previously in closed beta, but Grunstein wants to open it up and continue building out features, including automation from the customer side. He also said the company was on its way to traction of $1 million annual recurring revenue. “We are working on completing the build of features so that what our customers do at a regular bank they can do with us,” he added. “We also want to add a self-service component, get into new markets, continue to grow in colleges and diversify our customer base. We will plan to do a Series A next year if we can meet those milestones.”

SwiftConnect, which lets employees use their phones to access the office, raises $17M • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Enterprise, Jamf, JLL Spark Global Ventures, navitas capital, startup, Startups, SwiftConnectNo Comments

The widespread adoption of flexible work has increased the challenge of managing access to physical, commercial buildings, given the dynamic nature of hybrid workspaces. With today’s staffers coming and going to the office on unpredictable timetables, it can be tough to keep track of which have access to rooms and office resources. In a recent survey conducted by HID Global, an independent brand of access control conglomerate Assa Abloy, 41% of businesses said they believed that their current system met requirements — down from 51% in 2021. HID Global, being a vendor, isn’t necessarily impartial. But it’s not inconceivable that there’s truth to the assertion access control has become harder than it once was. Chip Kruger certainly believes so. Hurdles in the access control space spurred him to found SwiftConnect, a platform for handling space booking, visitors and meetings in physical offices. Kruger previously partnered with Matt Copel, SwiftConnect’s other co-founder, to start Waltz, an access control company launched in Copel’s dorm room that was acquired by WeWork in mid-2019. Both Copel and Kruger briefly worked at WeWork, but left to found SwiftConnect in 2020. “We had the idea that the flexibility and on-demand nature of access control that WeWork wanted was now going to be a requirement of every owner and occupier for their own buildings and offices going forward due to changing work patterns, including the increasing number of people working on-site and remotely,” Kruger told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “SwiftConnect also tapped into the fact that administrators were also seeking to use physical space and real estate more efficiently.” SwiftConnect — which today closed a $17 million Series A round co-led by JLL Spark Global Ventures and Navitas Capital — sells access to cloud services that tie together existing credential providers, reader terminals and other business systems. The company provides tools to automate identity, credentialing and permissioning steps for office spaces through mobile devices, for example a dashboard that allows admins to issue credentials to access certain buildings to iOS devices via Apple Wallet. Using SwiftConnect, employees and tenants can add their employee badge to Apple Wallet on the iPhone or Apple Watch after an initial set-up process. Once added, the badge gives them access to enter their office building, office space and shared fitness and amenity spaces secured by NFC-enabled locks. SwiftConnect’s platform allows companies to orchestrate physical access controls. Image Credits: SwiftConnect “As hybrid and flexible work have made the execution of seamless access control ever more challenging, commercial building owners and operators are increasingly seeing it as both an opportunity and a pain point they’re trying to solve,” Kruger said. “On-demand, connected, mobile-first access control is a requirement for most organizations who want their access control system to enable a more dynamic space where access permissions and credentials must change based on space booking or other context.” SwiftConnect isn’t the first to market with a mobile-centric access control management platform. Openpath, which has raised tens of millions of dollars in venture funding, offers a solution that allows workers to replace their physical access cards with the phones they already have. But Kruger emphasizes that — unlike Openpath — SwiftConnect’s system doesn’t require installing any new reader hardware. But what about when your iPhone dies? Well, Kruger doesn’t have the perfect solution to that problem. He notes, though, that Apple Wallet on the Apple Watch works even when the ultra-battery-saving Power Reserve mode is active. As for the all-too-common misplaced phone scenario, he suggests Apple’s Find My app. “For users of office spaces, SwiftConnect’s platform means they can enjoy coming back to the office with a ‘skip-the-wait’ experience that gets them from street-to-seat efficiently and without ever having to worry about a plastic badge again,” Kruger said. The plug-and-play nature of SwiftConnect’s approach seemingly appeals to large real estate clients like Silverstein Properties, which installed it in its 7 World Trade Center office building in February. SwiftConnect more recently announced a collaboration with Microsoft to develop “intuitive, employee-centric” experiences on top of Microsoft Places, Microsoft’s app for managing office workers across hybrid work campuses. That’s surely music to the ears of SwiftConnect’s investors. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global access control market was worth $10.31 billion in 2019 and could reach $20.02 billion by 2027. Kruger said that the Series A, which SwiftConnect plans to put toward growing its professional services and engineering teams as well as expanding its presence across the U.K., Europe and Australia, was raised to “weather any potential economic headwinds.” It brings the startup’s total cash in the bank to $27 million. “We have product-market fit given our traction, deployments, happy customers and growth,” Kruger said, while declining to answer questions about revenue or customer count. “We are receiving significant inbound interest from other verticals and geographies, including financial services and tech companies occupying spaces in premium locations in Europe and Australia.” A mix of real estate and institutional investors including Nuveen, Cushman & Wakefield, Bridge Investment Group, Crow Holdings, World Trade Ventures, 1414 Ventures and JAMF, the Apple device management vendor, also participated in SwiftConnect’s latest equity funding round. SwiftConnect currently has 70 employees, with an expectation to reach 80 by the end of 2022 — a hiring spree largely fueled by the proceeds.

US charges Ukrainian national over alleged role in Raccoon Infostealer malware operation • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in cybersecurity, malware, Security, ukraine, us governmentNo Comments

U.S. officials have charged a Ukrainian national over his alleged role in the Raccoon Infostealer malware-as-a-service operation that infected millions of computers worldwide. Mark Sokolovsky — also known online as “raccoonstealer,” according to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday — is currently being held in the Netherlands while waiting to be extradited to the United States. The U.S. Department of Justice accused Sokolovsky of being one of the “key administrators” of the Raccoon Infostealer, a form of Windows malware that steals passwords, credit card numbers, saved username and password combinations, and granular location data. Raccoon Infostealer was leased to individuals for approximately $200 per month, the DOJ said, which was paid to the malware’s operators in cryptocurrency, typically Bitcoin. These individuals employed various tactics, such as COVID-19-themed phishing emails and malicious web pages, to install the malware onto the computers of unsuspecting victims. The malware then stole personal data from their computers, including login credentials, bank account details, cryptocurrency addresses, and other personal information, which were used to commit financial crimes or sold to others on cybercrime forums. An example of one of the phishing emails sent by the crime group. Image Credits: U.S. Justice Department. According to U.S. officials, the malware stole more than 50 million unique credentials and forms of identification from victims around the world since February 2019. These victims include a financial technology company based in Texas and an individual who had access to U.S. Army information systems, according to the unsealed indictment. Cybersecurity firm Group-IB said the malware may have been used to steal employee credentials during the recent Uber breach. But the DOJ said it “does not believe it is in possession of all the data stolen by Raccoon Infostealer and continues to investigate.” The Justice Department said it worked with European law enforcement to dismantle the IT infrastructure powering Raccoon Infostealer in March 2022, when Dutch authorities arrested Sokolovsky. According to one report, the malware operation claimed it was suspending its operations after one of its lead developers was allegedly killed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A new version of Raccoon Infostealer was reportedly launched in June this year. The FBI also announced on Tuesday that it has created a website that allows anyone to check if their data is contained in the U.S. government’s archive of information stolen by Raccoon Infostealer. “This case highlights the importance of the international cooperation that the Department of Justice and our partners use to dismantle modern cyber threats,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. “As reflected in the number of potential victims and global breadth of this attack, cyber threats do not respect borders, which makes international cooperation all the more critical. I urge anyone who thinks they could be a victim to follow the FBI’s guidance on how to report your potential exposure.” Sokolovsky is charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and identity theft and faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty. The DOJ said Sokolovsky is appealing a September 2022 decision by the Amsterdam District Court granting his extradition to the United States.

Twitter’s Elon problem could soon become Apple’s Elon problem, too • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Apps, elon musk twitter, twitter elon muskNo Comments

Reports indicate Elon Musk is on track to close his purchase of mildly popular bird website Twitter dot com as of this Friday, which is when he’s been ordered by the judge in the ongoing legal fracas to do so anyway. The deal closing is bound to have huge impacts, for Twitter employees themselves; for global political leaders; for news media; and potentially, for Apple and its escalating in-app-purchase land grab. Apple updated its developer guidelines this week, mending the wall on its garden where there gaps existed previously around digital revenue opportunities for third-party developers. One of these focused on crypto and NFTs, but another seeks rent on revenue made by social networks around promoted posts, including paid promotional efforts in Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps, for example. Those rules also apply to Twitter, but that social network already makes use of Apple’s IAP program to enable them on iOS devices, meaning the iPhone-maker already gets its cut. If Twitter’s already cool with Apple’s skim, then everything should be fine… except that Musk has waded into the wider debate about what’s fair for Apple to charge its partners when it comes to digital transactions on its platform. Early on Wednesday, the billionaire serial founder tweeted a response to his longtime investor Bill Lee agreeing that “30% is a lot” for Apple to charge developers for IAP transactions. This isn’t the first time he’s expressed disapproval of the fee, either. Right now, Musk has little stake in this fight, but come Friday that could change significantly, especially as he looks for ways to boost Twitter’s revenue once he takes over control. Apple already has its fair share of influential vocal developer opposition, including Epic’s Tim Sweeney and Spotify’s Daniel Ek, but the influence Musk wields with his zealous troll army is on another level entirely. A Musk-owned Twitter is going to have ripple effects that extend far and wide, but this could be one that shakes up some of the foundations upon which the modern tech ecosystem is based.

Trigo raises $100M to expand its Amazon-style cashier-free store technology • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Amazon, autonomous, Commerce, just walk out, Robotics & AI, Startups, TrigoNo Comments

Amazon has become the pacemaker in commerce, and today a startup that’s been building technology to help retailers keep up with it in the world of physical stores is announcing some funding to expand its business. Trigo, an Israeli startup that builds technology for stores to operate cashier-free, “just walk out” experiences similar to those you might find in Amazon Go stores, has raised $100 million. Trigo focuses on grocery shopping, and it already has a high profile list of grocery retailers on its books, including Tesco, the UK-based supermarket giant; Germany’s REWE; ALDI Nord in The Netherlands; Netto in Munich; Shufersal in Israel; and the Wakefern cooperative in the U.S.. The plan will be to use the funding to expand its engagement with these, and to add more to the roster, amid a strong slate of competition in the market. Others in the same category include Standard Cognition (last year valued at over $1 billion), Shopic, Caper, Zippin, and Grabango, to name a few. It will also be doubling down on expanding its technology. Alongside its autonomous check-out system based on hardware and software, Trigo also provides inventory management and will soon be launching “StoreOS” to bring these together with other tools (analytics, marketing and more) to help physical retailers link up their brick-and-mortar stores better with their online operations, and — thanks to the popularity of e-commerce — what customers are generally expecting out of any shopping experience these days. Singapore’s Temasek and 83North are co-leading this round, with new backer SAP and previous backers Hetz Ventures, Red Dot Capital Partners, Vertex Ventures, Viola, and REWE also participating. The startup is not disclosing valuation, but according to PitchBook its last valuation, in 2020, was in the region of $208 million. This latest round brings the total raised to almost $300 million. Computer vision, machine learning and other innovations in artificial intelligence are being put to use in earnest in autonomous systems across a range of industries these days, and supermarkets have been one of the more interesting applications. Faced with an onslaught of offerings to buy groceries online and have them delivered to one’s home in ever-shorter turnaround times, retailers’ in-store experiences have largely remained in stasis. In-store, however, also represents a large amount of inefficient overhead due to real estate and building costs, the rotation of products, theft and the cost of maintaining a staff to serve customers. The argument for bringing autonomous systems into the grocery store is not one of the technology for technology’s sake, but that it will help reduce costs and losses in all of these areas, while speeding up the experience for customers usually in a hurry to do something else. Trigo’s self-check-out solution, called “EasyOut,” is based around a series of overhead cameras, shelf sensors and algorithms that work with “digital twins” of stores to operate cashier-free experiences. Some believe that this is a costly approach, both in terms of initial installation and maintenance, arguing that other approaches, such as systems based on sensors that sit on shopping carts themselves, is the better approach. “Smart counters and smart carts have their place, but full-store frictionless checkout based on AI-powered cameras and sensors — where the costs of the hardware are decreasing over time — is superior in both the experience it provides shoppers and for the efficiencies and tools it enables retailers,” CEO and co-founder Michael Gabay said in an email to ZebethMedia. One of the issues is that carts don’t account for shoppers who are only buying a couple of hand-held items, he said. “Frictionless checkout makes shopping seamless for everyone, regardless of the size of their basket or how they plan to shop. If you have a full shopping cart you don’t want to wait at the cashier or scan all of those items at self checkout, you just want to walk out regardless of the size of your shop.” He also believes that the “digital twin” approach that Trigo uses, which mirrors the store in real time, is more accurate and can be repurposed for more than just check-out, such as predictive inventory management. “Smart carts and similar technologies don’t allow for the full digitization of the store, so they are limited solutions when compared with the full system,” he said. Gabay claimed that even in the current market climate — the bigger issue with stores and its shoppers is inflation and people worried about prices of goods, not how long it takes to buy them — has not really dampened conversations with customers. “Especially in periods of high inflation, rising prices, and supply chain disruptions, the value of managing the inventory and procurement is huge,” he said. The company does not disclose how much it costs to, say, equip an average supermarket with its technology, but it says that typically they get return on the investment within 18 months. “Tech-enabled cost savings accumulate over time and boost grocery retailers’ margins,” he said. One argument for Trigo is that its tech can be used for all shopping, no matter the cart size, its focus right now, Gabay said, are large format supermarkets. To date, it has opened stores of between 3,000 square feet and 5,000 square feet — “on-the-go” type stores, Gabay said — but “we are now working on larger formats, including more than 10,000 square feet stores.” While the grocery sector will remain the company’s focus precisely because of its specific inefficiencies, the longer-term plan is to expand to other categories of retail such as pharmacies and quick-service restaurants. “But we see huge potential to retrofit thousands of existing grocery stores worldwide,” Gabay said. “This is accelerating also as grocers increasingly connect their e-commerce shops to their physical stores.” This is precisely where SAP is coming into the picture. It’s described as a strategic backer in this round: it works with its own long list of retailer customers, and the plan is to help integrate Trigo into those systems. “Trigo’s superior computer vision technology built

Flush with Series A funding, Daye unwraps the big gynae health mission • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, Daye, femtech, gynaecological health, Startups, Valentina Milanova, women's healthNo Comments

Talking to Valentina Milanova, the still just 28-year-old founder of U.K. femtech Daye, is best described as an exhilarating experience. During our interview, she talks in and around her topic — building a startup supporting women’s sexual and reproductive health — non-stop for the best part of an hour, barely pausing for breath and without needing to be prompted to unpack the detail (although an engaged listener will be forced to interject with exclamations and follow-on questions as she lays out her sharp takes) — dispensing, at times, part-fascinating, part-horrifying insights from the coal-face of a field that’s suffered from a chronic lack of research and innovation for far too long. The thrill comes in knowing she’s intent on being the change — and bringing positive change — to gynaecological health by working with clinicians to do the research and build out a platform that’s designed to open up an overlooked and neglected ‘Pandora’s Box’ of intimate female health issues and put women in the driving seat over choices affecting their bodies and lives. Daye’s first product — a CBD-infused cramp-fighting tampon, which launched back in 2019 — was just the start (although the startup has built up a user-base of some 60,000 subscribers thus far for that direct-to-consumer play, selling “fully sustainable” organic tampons which are also proudly touted as produced to “medical device standards” and feature eco innovations like a flushable, biodegradable wrapper and a non-plastic (sugarcane) applicator); Milanova has always had a wider “gynae” health mission in mind for Daye and is now rolling out the next pieces of the plan with the launch of a tampon-based at-home vaginal microbiome screening kit that it’s billing as a “world first”. The at-home testing experience is more convenient, private and less intrusive for women than the traditional option of going to see their doctor or attending a dedicated sexual health clinic where a health worker would need to take a swab. Instead, they just insert a tampon into their vagina and remove it. The test tampon then goes in the specimen bag provided — and they post it back to Daye’s lab for analysis, with their results delivered back digitally. And of course they don’t just get a bunch of raw medical data; the product mission is to offer an informative, accessible informational experience, with analysis of the screening data presented in language (and with graphics) that make it easy for anyone to understand. The analysis comprises a breakdown of certain good and bad bacteria that were detected (or not detected) in the user’s sample, along with explanations and recommendations for how they might want to act on the information — such as downloading a PDF to take with them to a doctor; or by the platform pointing them to where they can locate a local sexual health clinic if an analysis suggests the user should get checked for infections. Image credits: Daye “This was actually always part of the original vision for Daye. From the earliest pitch decks I had ever created. The intention for us was always to deliver on a number of different areas of gynaecological health — not just changing the tampon so it serves people better and so it delivers pain relief. We always saw tampons as a potential tool for bridging the many gaps that exist in gynaecological health today. So tampons can be used to deliver all sorts of medications to the vaginal canal and tampons can also be used to really effectively screen vaginal health for a number of different diseases and infections,” Milanova tells ZebethMedia. “This isn’t a novel scientific discovery — it’s existing scientific knowledge that we’re building upon. Since the 1990s, when researchers from Westminster University first pioneered the method of menstrual tampon screening, we’ve known that tampons have greater levels of sensitivity and specificity, or diagnostic capacity, compared to vaginal swabs and cervical swabs and urinary swabs for the detection of vaginal infections and STIs [sexual transmitted infections]. So what we’re doing now with the introduction of the gynaecological health screen is we’re hoping to democratize access to insightful gynaecological health information that is not typically available through other providers or through the NHS [the UK’s National Health Service].” Daye’s first vaginal microbiome screening tests are focused on identifying two pathogens: mycoplasma and ureaplasma — which Milanova says are typically asymptomatic but associated with a negative impact on the reproductive function — putting carriers at a higher risk of miscarriage, pre-term labor or ectopic pregnancy. The vaginal microbiome screening test could therefore be of particular interest (initially) to women who are looking for explanations for fertility issues, though she also points to wider utility, noting: “The health of the vaginal microbiome in general not only has repercussions for your fertility, it also has an implication on your risk of contracting an STI and your risk of contracting a vaginal infection. And again this isn’t novel scientific discovery that we have made — we’re largely building on top of existing scientific knowledge.” Daye is also planning to introduce more types of tests as it continues to develop the screening product — including screening for STIs. It’s also currently conducting research in conjunction with Liverpool Women’s Hospital into pathogens with suspected links to certain conditions that can affect women (or people assigned female at birth), like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis, with the aim of further expanding the utility of the screening test by (it hopes) helping to verify those links. In addition to launching the vaginal microbiome screening kit — which will be offered to users in the UK in the coming days — Daye is busy building out a gynaecological health platform that will do more than just distribute individual screening results. The idea is to offer a place where women can get validated, accessible information about the full spectrum of gynaecological health — along with expert support and guidance to help them access appropriate treatments (or make helpful lifestyle changes) for any specific issues identified.

LatticeFlow raises $12M to eliminate computer vision blind spots • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Atlantic Bridge, Enterprise, funding, LatticeFlow, machine learning, openocean, StartupsNo Comments

LatticeFlow, a startup that was spun out of Zurich’s ETH in 2020, helps machine learning teams improve their AI vision models by automatically diagnosing issues and improving both the data and the models themselves. The company today announced that it has raised a $12 million Series A funding round led by Atlantic Bridge and OpenOcean, with participation from FPV Ventures. Existing investors btov Partners and Global Founders Capital, which led the company’s $2.8 million seed round last year, also participated in this round. As LatticeFlow co-founder and CEO Petar Tsankov told me, the company currently has more than 10 customers in both Europe and the U.S., including a number of large enterprises like Siemens and organizations like the Swiss Federal Railways, and is currently running pilots with quite a few more. It’s this customer demand that led LatticeFlow to raise at this point. “I was in the States and I met with some investors in Palo Alto, Tsankov explained. “They saw the bottleneck that we have with onboarding customers. We literally had machine learning engineers supporting customers and that’s not how you should run the company. And they said: ‘OK, take $12 million, bring these people in and expand.’ That was great timing for sure because when we talked to other investors, we did see that the market has changed.” As Tsankov and his co-founder CTO Pavol Bielik noted, most enterprises today have a hard time bringing their models into production and then, when they do, they often realize that they don’t perform as well as they expected. The promise of LatticeFlow is that it can auto-diagnose the data and models to find potential blind spots. In its work with a major medical company, its tools to analyze their datasets and models quickly found more than half a dozen critical blind spots in their state-of-the-art production models, for example. The team noted that it’s not enough to only look at the training data and ensure that there is a diverse set of images — in the case of the vision models that LatticeFlow specializes in — but also examine the models. LatticeFlow founding team (from left to right): Prof. Andreas Krause (scientific advisor), Dr. Petar Tsankov (CEO), Dr. Pavol Bielik (CTO) and Prof. Martin Vechev (scientific advisor). Image Credits: LatticeFlow “If you only look at the data — and this is a fundamental differentiator for LatticeFlow because we not only find the standard data issues like labeling issues or poor-quality samples, but also model blind spots, which are the scenarios where the models are failing,” Tsankov explained. “Once the model is ready, we can take it, find various data model issues and help companies fix it.” He noted, for example, that models will often find hidden correlations that may confuse the model and skew the results. In working with an insurance customer, for example, who used an ML model to automatically detect dents, scratches and other damage in images of cars, the model would often label an image with a finger in it as a scratch. Why? Because in the training set, customers would often take a close-up picture with a scratch and point at it with their finger. Unsurprisingly, the model would then correlate “finger” with “scratch,” even when there was no scratch on the car. Those are issues, the LatticeFlow teams argues, that go beyond creating better labels and need a service that can look at both the model and the training data. LatticeFlow uncovers a bias in data for training car damage inspection AI models. Because people often point at scratches, this causes models to learn that fingers indicate damage (a spurious feature). This issue is fixed with a custom augmentation that removes fingers from all images. Image Credits: LatticeFlow LatticeFlow itself, it is worth noting, isn’t in the training business. The service works with pre-trained models. For now, it also focuses on offering its service as an on-prem tool, though it may offer a fully managed service in the future, too, as it uses the new funding to hire aggressively, both to better service its existing customers and to build out its product portfolio. “The painful truth is that today, most large-scale AI model deployments simply are not functioning reliably in the real world,” said Sunir Kapoor, operating partner at Atlantic Bridge. “This is largely due to the absence of tools that help engineers efficiently resolve critical AI data and model errors. But, this is also why the Atlantic Bridge team so unambiguously reached the decision to invest in LatticeFlow. We believe that the company is poised for tremendous growth, since it is currently the only company that auto-diagnoses and fixes AI data and model defects at scale.”

Singapore may soon require retail investors to take test before trading crypto, prohibit credit cards • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Asia, Crypto, cryptocurrency, SingaporeNo Comments

Singapore may soon require retail investors to take a test and not use credit card payments and other forms of borrowing for trading cryptocurrencies, the central bank proposed on Wednesday in a series of measures as the island nation looks to make citizens aware of the risks surrounding volatile assets. The Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a set of consultation papers that it’s worried that many retail customers may “not have sufficient knowledge of the risks of trading” digital payment tokens, which may lead them “to take on higher risks than they would otherwise have been willing, or are able, to bear.” Several popular crypto exchanges already require their customers to periodically sift through questionnaires before they are allowed to trade crypto and participate in derivatives trading. The central bank acknowledged [PDF] that a number of industry players are supportive of some form of assessment on the retail customer’s knowledge of risks. The central bank has also proposed that stablecoin issuers make adequate disclosures about their tokens and hold reserve assets in cash, cash equivalent or debt securities that are “at least equivalent to 100% of the par value of the outstanding” tokens in circulation “at all times.” The debt securities, the proposal says, should be issued by the central bank of the pegged currency or organizations that are both a governmental and international character with a credit rating of at least AA—. “SCS [single-currency pegged stablecoins] issuers must obtain independent attestation, such as by external audit firms, that the reserve assets meet the above requirements on a monthly basis. This attestation, including the percentage value of the reserve assets in excess of the par value of outstanding SCS in circulation, must be published on the issuer’s website and submitted to MAS by the end of the following month (for the month being attested),” the proposal says [PDF], adding that issuers also must appoint an external auditor to conduct an annual audit of its reserve assets and submit the report to MAS. The proposal marks a major shift in Singapore’s stance on crypto. Once a preferred global crypto hub for its policies, Singapore authorities have toughen their views of digital assets following the collapse of a series of firms including Terraform Labs’ stablecoin UST and native token LUNA, and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. (More to follow)

Apple exec says future iPhones will comply with EU’s USB-C mandate • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Apple, Apps, Hardware, iPhone, USB-CNo Comments

There has been a lot of consumer demand and regulatory push on Apple to change the iPhone’s charging port from the lightning connector to USB-C. Earlier this month, the European Parliament voted in favor of the legislation that mandated phonemakers to adopt USB-C connectors from 2024 — increasing pressure on the tech giant to make the switch. Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior Vice President of marketing, confirmed on Tuesday that the company will comply with EU’s ruling, but stopped short of sharing any other detail. Speaking at Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Tech Live event, Joswiak didn’t seem pleased with how governments across the world are approaching this issue. A decade ago when the EU was pushing for micro USB connectors the firm had a disagreement with them, he said. While the regulatory body’s aim was to reduce the type of power adaptors consumers were using to make it easier on them, Apple approached the problem differently, he mentioned. Apple debuted the lightning connector almost 10 years ago and it has been the primary connector for many devices including the iPhone, the iPad, and Airpods. Over the last couple of years, Apple has launched iPads using USB-C as the primary connector — including the latest baseline iPad. “…we got to a better place which is power adapters with detachable cables. All of them being USB-A or USB-C and you choose the cable which is appropriate for your device. That allowed over a billion people to have that (lightning) connector and to be able to use what they have already and not be disrupted and cause a bunch of e-waste,” Joswiak said. The EU is not the only region pushing for a common charger for mobile phones. In June, Democratic senators including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ed Markey sent an open letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo pushing the US to follow the EU’s steps. Other countries like Brazil and India are considering a common connector rule.

Hyundai and WeRide plan to fuel self-driving with hydrogen in China • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in autonomous driving, China, Climate, Hydrogen, hyundai, Transportation, werideNo Comments

While hydrogen is still relatively niched as a fuel for electric vehicles, a startup in China is jumping ahead to embrace it for autonomous driving scenarios. WeRide, one of the most funded robotaxi operators in China with investors including Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, said Tuesday it is joining hands with Hyundai to launch a “self-driving hydrogen-powered vehicle pilot zone” in Guangzhou, the southern metropolis where it’s headquartered. The collaboration comes at a time when the research and production of clean hydrogen increasingly becomes a focal point for China, which has been striving to decarbonize its economy. Details are scant from the announcement. It’s unclear when the pilot will kick off, what the scale of the trial is, or what exactly is being powered by hydrogen, which is considered one of the cleanest fuels as it is combined with oxygen to produce just water vapor and energy. But it won’t be surprising to see unmanned hydrogen vehicles roaming about the pilot zone since Hyundai has been betting big on the fuel. Indeed, the announcement says that WeRide, Hyundai, and Hengyun, a Chinese power generation and supply company, will work together to “create demand for the use of hydrogen fuel cell battery in unmanned street cleaning and ride-hailing.” In September last year, Hyundai said it planned to offer hydrogen cell fuel versions for all of its commercial vehicles by 2028. The tie-up with WeRide could expand the use case of its hydrogen products to robotaxis. Hydrogen-fuelled vehicles can recharge within minutes, making them an ideal medium for taxi operations if there’s enough refueling infrastructure. Guangzhou is a natural choice for the experiment given Hyundai has been producing hydrogen fuel cell systems in the city since March 2021. When the facility opened last year, the South Korean auto giant set an annual target to produce “6,500 units, with a goal to gradually expand production capacity in line with Chinese market conditions and central government policies.” China has made a big push to electrify its public transportation. In Shenzhen, the hardware capital of the world, nearly all buses and cabs run on lithium-ion battery packs. While the city has grown quieter with fresher air thanks to the initiative, battery safety and recycling remain big sticking points for the local authorities. Long lines often form at charging stations as it can take hours to fully refuel lithium-ion batteries.