Tag: Asia

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Crypto mining giant Bitmain is reportedly getting a new CEO as its IPO plan stalls

Bitmain, the Chinese crypto miner maker, looks like it has reached an interesting point in its pathway to going public. There’s been little heard since the company filed to go public in Hong Kong in September, but now it appears that a new CEO has been hired and its two founders are leaving.

That’s according to a report from SCMP which — citing two sources — said Wang Haichao, Bitmain’s director of product engineering, has assumed CEO duties following a transition that began in December. Founders Wu Jihan (pictured above) and Zhan Ketuan will be co-chairs with Wang described as the “potential successor.”

The publication said that it isn’t clear when a new CEO will be named, or indeed whether an outside appointment will be made.

Bitmain declined to comment on the report when asked by TechCrunch.

The company, which is said to have been valued as high as $15 billion, certainly appears to have stalled with its IPO following the filing of an application on September 26. That document opened up a treasure trove of financial information regarding the company, which is estimated to supply around three-quarters of the world’s crypto mining machines.

Indeed, Bitmain’s IPO filing showed heady growth in revenue. The company grossed more than $2.5 billion in revenue in 2017, a near-10X leap on the $278 million it claimed for 2016, while sales in the first six months of last year surpassed $2.8 billion.

However, there were no figures for Q3 2018 and, since September, the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has plummeted further still, therein reducing the appeal of buying a mining machine and likely impacting Bitmain’s sales.

Bitmain saw impressive revenue growth as the crypto market grew, but it isn’t clear how the business weathered the price slump that affected the market in 2017

We reported that the company likely made a loss of around $400 million in that Q3 quarter. Things are likely to have been trickier still in Q4, as crypto prices dropped so low that mining companies in China were reported to be selling off machines because the cost of power to mine was lower than the reward for doing so.

Bitmain has diversified into non-mining services, to its credit, but its efforts to grow Bitcoin Cash — a controversial fork of Bitcoin — have been controversial and likely loss-making, to boot.

The price of Bitcoin Cash is currently $162 at the timing of writing, that’s down significantly from around $2,500 one year ago. That doesn’t bode well for Bitmain’s investment into the cryptocurrency, and it likely explains why the company has made layoffs, like others in the crypto space.

What a difference four months can make. The challenge for the company’s (apparent) new CEO is certainly a daunting one.

But Bitmain’s struggled isn’t unprecedented. Just this week, its closest rival — Canaan — was linked with a U.S. IPO. The company had planned to go public in Hong Kong last year but it allowed its application to expire as crypto market prices went south.

There’s plenty to watch out for in the mining space in 2019!

Editorial note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

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Thailand issues its first licenses to 4 crypto exchanges

Thailand has joined Japan in regulating crypto exchanges after it issued its first licenses to four applicants.

The four that were approved as licensed brokers and dealers of cryptocurrencies in the country are Bx, Bitkub, Coins and Satang Pro. One other exchange — Coin Asset — is under extended review after replacing its management team in a bid to win a license.

But two that failed to win a license — Cash2Coins and Southeast Asia Digital Exchange — will shut down this month. They have until January 14 to notify their customers and move any assets outside of their exchanges. The companies were rejected on account of insufficient know your customer (KYC) processes and inadequate IT infrastructure, according to a report from the Bangkok Post.

The deal has been hailed as a major step forward for the legitimacy of cryptocurrencies in Thailand.

“We can partner with traditional financial institutions, brokers, e-wallets etc to offer more financial products to customers,” Jirayut Srupsrisopa, the founder of Bitkub, told TechCrunch. “The bottleneck was the regulation.”

The move could help Thailand establish itself as a hub for the blockchain industry in Asia. The country announced regulation for ICOs — initial coin offerings — last year and it is said to considering moves to loosen those rules. That, combined with licensed exchanges, could appeal to those who seek ‘regulatory havens’ in light of China’s ban on crypto and increased activity from the SEC in the U.S.

But Thailand is up against stiff competition to attract blockchain projects and talent.

Singapore has established itself as a global hub for ICOs while it has a wider pool of developers than most of Southeast Asia. Japan was the first to regulate crypto exchanges — there are currently over a dozen licensed and the exchange industry has been granted self-regulatory status — while Vietnam had made its name as blockchain talent hub with China’s Huboi and Quoine, the parent company of the Liquid exchange, among the companies operating local offices.

Hong Kong has also said in the last year that it may license exchanges, now it has another model to look at for ideas.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

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Vietnam threatens to penalize Facebook for breaking its draconian cybersecurity law

Well, that didn’t take long. We’re less than ten days into 2019 and already Vietnam is aiming threats at Facebook after it violating its draconian cybersecurity law which came into force on January 1.

The U.S. social network stands accused of allowing users in Vietnam to post “slanderous content, anti-government sentiment and libel and defamation of individuals, organisations and state agencies,” according to a report from state-controlled media Vietnam News.

The content is said to have been flagged to Facebook which, reports say, has “delayed removing” it.

That violates the law which — passed last June — broadly forbids internet users from organizing with, or training, others for anti-state purposes, spreading false information, and undermining the nation state’s achievements or solidarity, according to reports at the time. It also requires foreign internet companies to operate a local office and store user information on Vietnamese soil. That’s something neither Google nor Facebook has complied with, despite the Vietnamese government’s recent claim that the former is investigating a local office launch.

In addition, the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information (ABEI) claimed Facebook had violated online advertising rules by allowing accounts to promote fraudulent products and scams, while it is considering penalties for failure to pay tax. The Vietnamese report claimed some $235 million was spent on Facebook ads in 2018, with $152.1 million going to Google.

Facebook responded by clarifying its existing channels for reporting illegal content.

“We have a clear process for governments to report illegal content to us, and we review all these requests against our terms of service and local law. We are transparent about the content restrictions we make in accordance with local law in our Transparency Report,” a Facebook representative told TechCrunch in a statement.

TechCrunch understands that the company is in contact with the Vietnamese government and it intends to review content flagged as illegal before making a decision.

Vietnamese media reports claim that Facebook has already told the government that the content in question doesn’t violate its community standards.

It looks likely that the new law will see contact from Vietnamese government censors spike, but Facebook has acted on content before. The company latest transparency report covers the first half of 2018 and it shows that received 12 requests for data in Vietnam, granting just two. Facebook confirmed it has previously taken action on content that has included the alleged illegal sale of regulated products, trade of wildlife, and efforts to impersonate an individual.

Facebook did not respond to the tax liability claim.

The company previously indicated its concern at the cybersecurity law via Asia Internet Coalition (AIC) — a group that represents the social media giant as well as Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Line and others — which cautioned that the regulations would negatively impact Vietnam.

“The provisions for data localization, controls on content that affect free speech, and local office requirements will undoubtedly hinder the nation’s fourth Industrial Revolution ambitions to achieve GDP and job growth,” AIC wrote in a statement in June.

“Unfortunately, these provisions will result in severe limitations on Vietnam’s digital economy, dampening the foreign investment climate and hurting opportunities for local businesses and SMEs to flourish inside and beyond Vietnam,” it added.

Vietnam is increasingly gaining a reputation as a growing market for startups, but the cybersecurity act threatens to impact that. One key issue is that the broad terms appear to give the government signficant scope to remove content that it deems offensive.

“This decision has potentially devastating consequences for freedom of expression in Vietnam. In the country’s deeply repressive climate, the online space was a relative refuge where people could go to share ideas and opinions with less fear of censure by the authorities,” said Amnesty International.

Vietnam News reports that the authorities are continuing to collect evidence against Facebook.

“If Facebook did not take positive steps, Vietnamese regulators would apply necessary economic and technical measures to ensure a clean and healthy network environment,” the ABEI is reported to have said.

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LinkedIn now requires phone number verification for all users in China

LinkedIn’s China site looks and functions just like LinkedIn everywhere else, except now it asks users in the country to verify their identities through phone numbers.

The American company is requiring both new and existing users with a Chinese IP address to link mobile phone numbers to their accounts, TechCrunch noticed this week. LinkedIn had for months told its China-based users to provide mobile number details before sending them to the main page, but it had mercifully kept a little “Skip” button that let users avoid the fuss until at least last week.

“The real-name verification process for our LinkedIn China members is a legal requirement, which will also help improve the authenticity and credibility of online accounts,” a LinkedIn China spokesperson wrote back to TechCrunch in an email without addressing whether the process is new.

The spokesperson also links the policy to China’s burgeoning mobile industry: “Considering the growing popularity of mobile devices and mobile Internet, Chinese Internet users are adapted to registration with mobile phone numbers instead of email addresses. Almost all apps in the Chinese market are applying this trend to follow users’ habits.”

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LinkedIn users with a Chinese IP address are greeted with an identity check tied to phone numbers. Screenshot: TechCrunch

In a note visible to China-based users only, LinkedIn explains that its identity check is a response to local regulations:

In some countries, local laws require that we confirm your identity before letting you engage with our Services. You must provide a mobile number and confirm receipt of our text. This phone number will be associated with your account and is accessible from your settings. If you choose to change or delete your confirmed mobile number your ability to access our Services in certain countries (e.g. China) will be blocked until you once again confirm your identity.

The California-based social network for professionals is a rare existence in China, where most mainstream global tech services like Facebook and Google have long remained blocked. Exceptions happen when foreign players bend to local rules. Microsoft’s Bing is accessible in China by censoring search results. Google also reportedly mulled a censored search service to re-enter China, an attempt that outraged its staff, politicians and speech advocates.

LinkedIn, which launched in China back in 2014, also hires so-called “information auditors” to keep close tabs on what users say and share in its China realm, according to a job post the firm listed on a local recruiting site. Like Google, LinkedIn caught flack for censoring content.

Real identity

Digital anonymity came to an end in China — at least in theory — when the sweeping Cyberspace Law took effect in 2017. The rules, which are meant to police information on the web, ordered websites to verify users’ real identities before letting them comment or use other tools, though users can still post with their screen names.

Large platforms like messenger WeChat and Twitter -like Weibo reacted swiftly by running real-name checks on users. The staple practice is to collect mobile phone numbers, which became a form of ID after China introduced a policy in 2010 requiring all buyers, foreign or Chinese, to show a piece of identification when they obtain their 11-digit identifiers. Google’s rumored search engine for China also asked for users’ phone numbers, according to The Intercept, which would make it easier for the government to monitor people’s queries.

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LinkedIn’s China office in Beijing. Photo: LinkedIn China via Weibo

LinkedIn had been able to avoid the inevitable process for months. Perhaps the government had gone after the biggies first. After all, LinkedIn is only a fraction the size of its main rival in China. As of November, LinkedIn had 13 million monthly installs while its local peer Maimai had 95 monthly installs, data from iResearch shows. Both are dwarfed by WeChat’s more than 1 billion monthly active users.

As with other fledgling industries, laws often lag behind technological development, not to mention the enforcement thereof when the odds are against enterprises. Take ride-hailing for example. Unlicensed drivers and vehicles were still running on the roads two years after China legalized the sector. When the government steps up oversight recently, the market is hit by a shortage of drivers.

Clamping down

TechCrunch has come to understand that LinkedIn’s identity enforcement is linked to the latest wave of government crackdowns. “Slowly, the Chinese Communist Party has been pushing their collective thumbs down on, not only foreign internet companies but all internet companies. It just so happens that the recent political atmosphere is causing more scrutiny,” a source with insights into the matter told TechCrunch, asking not to be named.

Other websites are also indeed tightening controls over users. Many apps that previously allowed third-party logins from platforms like WeChat and Weibo also recently started collecting users’ phone numbers, several people who experienced the changes told TechCrunch.

Users can still get around LinkedIn’s real-name verification by switching on their virtual private network, known as VPN, that lets people surf the net from an overseas IP address and circumvent the Great Firewall, China’s internet censoring machinery. But the practice is becoming more challenging and the stakes are growing. By law, only government-approved providers can set up VPNs. In response to regulatory oversight, Apple pulled hundreds of VPN apps from its China App Store in 2017.

More recently, China’s telecoms regulator slapped a 1,000 yuan (around $146) fine on a man for accessing the “international net” through “illegal channels.” The case is one of the few known instances where individuals are punished for using VPNs, sending worrying signs to those jumping the Wall to surf the unfiltered world wide web.

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BasisAI, a Singapore startup from Bay Area returnees, comes out of stealth with impressive creds

An intriguing new startup is out from under the radar in Southeast Asia after BasisAI, a Singapore-based company, revealed itself this week. The startup disclosed a seed investment from two prestigious investors in the region and some impressive credentials to back it up.

Started by twin brothers Linus and Silvanus Lee and Liu Feng-Yuan — all Singapore nationals — the startup is, as the name suggests, focused on AI… but the exact scope of its business is not yet clear. In a phone interview with TechCrunch, the founders explained their goal is to work with enterprises to help scale data project and give artificial intelligence and machine learning increased accountability.

“We see a problem within a lot of enterprises with data, they are keen to scale and take their innovation and lab experiments into production and reality,” Silvanus Lee explained. “What we’re trying to tackle is to make AI scalable and accountable.”

That, Lee continued, is important for reasons include refining results produced by AI systems, explaining how AI products work to stakeholders and users, as well as of course allowing companies to operate systems at large scale. The initial focus is Singapore, a prime location for enterprises and corporates in Southeast Asia, the founders added.

That’s about all we know about the business so far, despite coming out of stealth mode a lot of information is being kept private, including the exact size of the team under wraps — we are assured, though, that it’s “lean.” The startup did confirm, however, that it raised a $6 million seed round from marquee investors Temasek, the Singapore sovereign fund, and Sequoia India, the branch of the U.S. firm that handles deals in India and Southeast Asia.

Lee said they spoke to a range of investors and chose these two for the strategic value they bring to the table, particularly in Singapore.

Those are indeed impressive backers — Temasek, in particular, isn’t known for doing seed stage investments — and that is likely down to the caliber of the founding team as much as their (mysterious) vision.

The Lee brothers are both Singaporeans returning home from Silicon Valley, where they worked with major tech firms. Silvanus spent 15 years in the Bay Area with Dropbox and then Uber, where he was a director of data science, and Linus spent six years at Twitter in California before relocating to Singapore in 2016 to lead the social media firm’s data science team in Asia Pacific.

Matched with those tenures at top tech firms, meanwhile, is Liu, who has spent significant time working within the Singapore government. That has included stints with the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and on the Ministry of Trade’s Advisory team before nearly five years with GovTech Singapore, an agency under the Prime Minister’s office.

BasisAI founders [left to right] Silvanus Lee, Liu Feng-Yuan and Linus Lee

It’s the kind of ‘dream ticket’ that you’d imagine Singapore has dreamed of: two students which cut their teeth in Silicon Valley matched with another who has been part of the country’s digital push. (And, hey, twins, too!)

Still, it remains to be seen exactly what the company will bring to market.

Silvanus told TechCrunch that BasisAI is a product-driven company — as opposed to an agency-like outfit that advises enterprises — and he revealed that it has customers piloting deployments and software right now.

“Now it feels like the right time to come back and see if we can contribute to the tech ecosystem,” he said. “There’s a lot of world-class talent here, more so than ever before, and we feel like the time is right now to build a really high caliber tech and engineering company.”

“We really want to help grow the ecosystem in Singapore,” Lee added.

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Go-Jek’s Southeast Asia expansion runs into a roadblock in the Philippines

Southeast Asian ride-hailing challenger Go-Jek has expanded into three new markets as it bids to expand beyond its native Indonesia, but it is having major issues getting into a fourth.

The company — which rivals Grab, is valued at over $6 billion and is backed by the likes of Google and Tencent — this week suffered a blow in the Philippines where the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) denied its application to operate in the country, as Rappler reports.

The issue is pretty simple: Go-Jek’s Philippines-based business — an entity called Velox Technology Philippines — is majority owned by an overseas business. (Go-Jek’s own Singapore-based Velox South-East Asia Holdings.) That violates local law which stipulates that at least 60 percent of a company should be owned by Philippines individuals or entities.

That’s a pretty major roadblock which, for now, Go-Jek doesn’t appear to have much chance adhering to without major structural change. It remains unclear how the company failed to foresee this issue, but that’s another matter altogether.

“We continue to engage positively with the LTFRB and other government agencies, as we seek to provide a much needed transport solution for the people of the Philippines,” was all Go-Jek would say when asked for comment from TechCrunch .

Meanwhile, Grab, which bought out Uber’s local business last year, claims it is compliant. A Grab spokesperson said the company’s business in the Philippines is “majority local owned.”

The company declined to provide more details, including the identity of Grab’s Philippines-based owner.

Previously, Philippines law allowed ride-hailing services to operate as ‘telecommunications services’ but that changed last year.

This week’s ruling is a blow for Go-Jek, which has moved into Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore over the last six months following a protracted $1.5 billion funding round secured last year. Go-Jek is edging close to finalizing a new investment of $2 billion which TechCrunch understands will be used to offer additional services and expand its presence in those three expansion markets.

Grab, meanwhile, has raised over $2 billion from its ongoing Series H round which the company intends to extend to $5 billion, as TechCrunch reported last month. That’s primarily motivated by an impending investment from SoftBank’s Vision Fund but TechCrunch understands that Grab is keen to raise a significant war chest as part of its battle with Go-Jek.

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Matrix India announces new $300M fund

Matrix India, one of India’s highest-profile tech VCs, is loading up for new deals after it announced a new $300 million fund for early stage investments.

This is the third fund for the Indian firm, which is associated with U.S-based Matrix Partners. Matrix India has backed over 60 startups to date, including Uber rival Ola, ambitious medical platform Practo, popular news aggregator DailyHunt and classifieds company Quikr. The plan is to continue on that road with the new fund, which was announced today but officially closed its commitments in December, according to an SEC filing in the U.S.

Matrix India has been fairly consistent with its capital. Its debut fund was an initial $150 million that was later increased $300 million, while the follow-up in 2011 came in at $300 million before being increased by $100 million following the departure of co-founding partner Rishi Navani.

No extensions are planned for round three, Avnish Bajaj — the firm’s founder and MD in India — told TechCrunch in an interview.

Bajaj said he doesn’t have concrete plans for how the capital will be spent, but he envisages 12-14 deals per year “with more bias given to seed” over Series A and B deals.

“We will continue to do early stage,” Tarun Davda, the second of Matrix India’s three MDs — explained. “We are traditional venture capital with more focus on consumer brands.”

But that’s a very founder-led approach for Matrix, which is entirely dependent on finding startups teams it can gel with and believe in.

“We get smart enough about a trend to found out whose smarter than us and pursuing it,” Bajaj explained. But “if we find a market we like but not excited by founding team, we’ll pass.”

If on board, however, Matrix helps out on a range of areas, including hiring — it has a four-person recruitment team in house — as well as in marketing and finance, if required. Bajaj said it tries to connect portfolio founders were it sees benefits, but he freely admits that many in India’s startup ecosystem are already connected and know each other so often don’t require assistance.

Matrix India managing directors [left to right] Vikram Vaidyanathan, Avnish Bajaj (also founder) and Tarun Davda

Opportunity in India

Looking at the market now, the firm’s three managing partners see cause for optimism following 2018, a year in which Indian startup founding rebounded and the country saw a range of exits, chiefly Walmart’s massive takeover of Flipkart.

Davda said that, in particular, the growth of 4G in India — which has been driven by the developer of ‘challenger telco’ Reliance Jio — has been a “game changer” for a number of the firm’s portfolio who have seen the total addressable market for their services widen massively, while average user engagements have increased, too.

Matrix India sees the growth in internet access (and quality of access) coupled with India’s growing middle class as key development drivers for internet companies and startups in the country generally.

“The scale of companies likely to be significantly larger,” Davda said, adding that the pace of growth is increasing, too.

All of these could mean that IPO exits may be on the horizon for India startups, potentially within the next 2-3 years, Bajaj said, but already exit opportunities are appearing and they don’t all need to involve a Walmart buying a Flipkart — the $16 billion, while generating huge returns, isn’t particularly repeatable for a market.

Bajaj points to acquisitive Indian category leaders — including the likes of Ola, Paytm and others — who have reached sufficient size and have looked to other India startups to build up their businesses or expand into verticals via deals.

“That’s the real story, you are starting to see liquidity into the exits markets [as domestic] companies are reaching a certain scale,” he said. “Three years from now, we’ll see 2018 as a point of time when things changed.”

A large part of that may also be the type of founders and the nature of startups in Indian in 2019.

“Today, we are seeing guys who have been part of startup ecosystem for a while, who worked at big unicorns and got excited about problems they are seeing there, start new companies,” said Mumbai-based Vikram Vaidyanathan, the firm’s third MD. “They can hit the ground running at a much faster pace.”

Startups Weekly: VCs celebrate the new year the only way they know how

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China’s Nreal raises $15M to shrink augmented headsets to size of sunglasses

A former Magic Leap engineer believes the problem with most consumer-facing augmented headsets on the market is their bulky size.

“You wouldn’t want to wear them for more than one hour,” Xu Chi, founder and chief executive officer of Nreal told me as he put on a bright orange headgear that looked just like plastic Ray-Ban shades. Called Light and powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor, Nreal’s first-generation mixed reality glasses officially launched at Las Vegas’ tech trade show CES this week.

With a lightweight play, the two-year-old Chinese startup managed to bring in some big-name investors. Aside from debuting Light, Nreal also announced this week that it has raised $15 million in total funding to date. The proceeds include a Series A from Shunwei, the venture fund that Xiaomi’s founder set up, Baidu’s video streaming unit iQiyi, investment firm China Growth Capital and others. According to Xu, R&D is his company’s biggest expense at this stage.

Magic Leap and other AR startups have a rough 2019 ahead of them

The financial injection bears strategic significance to Xiaomi and iQIYI. The former is best known for its budget smartphones, but its bigger ambition lies in an Apple Home-like ecosystem that surely welcomes portable MR headsets. IQiyi, on the other hand, already has a channel dedicated to virtual reality, which is meant to immerse the end user in a completely digital environment. MR content may just be around the corner to provide an interactive experience of the real world.

Taking money from Shunwei rather than straight from Xiaomi is a thought-through choice. Xiaomi has backed hundreds of manufacturers to gain control over supply chains. Its portfolio companies, in turn, get access to Xiaomi’s retail channels, but they make comprises on various fronts, such as product design and pricing.

Xu doesn’t want his freshly minted business to lose independence. “We don’t want to pick sides. We want to be able to work with Oppo and a whole lot of other brands. We want to be compatible with a wide range of devices — smartphones, laptops, PCs, and so on,” said the founder.

Founder and CEO Xu Chi holding Nreal Light’s glasses and chipset. Photo: NrealIn early 2017, the Chinese entrepreneur started Nreal with his co-founder Xiao Bing, an optical engineer. The brand “Nreal” conveys the partners’ vision to bring users to spaces that fall between the real and unreal. Xu, who spent years working and studying in the U.S., decided to pursue his ideas back in his homeland for easier access to supply chains.

“We are combining our technological know-how from overseas with great resources in China’s manufacturing industry,” the founder said of his firm’s edge.

The 85-gram (about 3-ounce) Nreal Light isn’t as featherweight as regular glasses, but it’s a significant improvement from the biggies it’s going after — Magic Leap One and Microsoft’s HoloLens. Nreal was able to shrink its gadget size because it uses a display solution that requires fewer cameras and sensors than its peers, Xu explained.

Furthermore, Nreal is fixated on the consumer market from the outset, unlike its bigger rivals which, in Xu’s words, are “building gadgets for the next five or even 10 years.”

“They want to disrupt everything from cell phones, computers to televisions. They are not necessarily oriented towards consumers,” Xu added.

Nreal Lights

The smart glasses come in a variety of colors. Photo: Nreal

When it comes to performance, Light claims its display has a 52-degree field of view and a 1080p resolution, which my human eyes weren’t able to verify when I wore it to play an interactive shooting game. That said, I did experience minimum dizziness and latency on Light, as the company promised.

The only irritating part was I started to feel the weight of the specs on my nose bridge a few minutes into my session. Xu assured me that what I tried on was a prototype and that an assortment of nose pads and lenses for different facial features will be available. The glasses also come in a variety of flashy coral colors.

Nreal Light won’t be shipping until Q2 this year and mass production won’t arrive until Q3. Xu hasn’t priced his brainchild, but said it will probably hover around $1,000. By comparison, HoloLens charges $3,000 and Magic Leap One costs $2,300.

Where does that price tag leave Nreal in terms of profitability? It’s a matter of what kind of consumer hardware Nreal wants to become. “Do we want to be Apple or Xiaomi?” The founder asked himself rhetorically. He’s sure of one thing: As the MR industry matures in China, production costs will also come down. The company is already mulling its own factory so as to beef up supply chains and reduce costs, according to Xu.

CES 2019 coverage - TechCrunch

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Alibaba acquires German big data startup Data Artisans for $103M

Alibaba has paid €90 million ($103 million) to acquire Data Artisans, a Berlin-based startup that provides distributed systems and large-scale data streaming services for enterprises.

The deal was first announced by European media, including EU-Startups, before being confirmed by both Alibaba and Data Artisans through blog posts.

Data Artisans was founded in 2014 by the team leading the development of Apache Flink, an open source large-scale data processing technology. The startup offers its own dA Platform, with open source Apache Flink and Application Manager, to enterprise customers that include Netflix, ING, Uber and Alibaba itself.

The Chinese e-commerce giant has been working with Data Artisans since 2016, through support and open source work to help the architecture and performance of the software, both companies said in statements. Data Artisans is on record as raising $6.5 million over two rounds, most recently a Series A in 2016 led by Intel Capital, but there was a seemingly unannounced Series B which closed last year and it looks like Alibaba was involved, according to a blog post from Data Artisans co-founders Kostas Tzoumas and Stephan Ewen.

Now Alibaba’s ownership — and you’d also presume, resources — can help the business reach “new horizons” with its open source technology, including moves to “expand to new areas that we have not explored in the past and make sure that Flink becomes a more valuable data processing framework for the modern data-driven, real-time enterprise,” the duo wrote.

“Moving forward together, data Artisans and Alibaba will not only continue, but accelerate contributions to Apache Flink and open source Big Data,” Tzoumas and Ewen added, explaining that Alibaba is one of Flink’s biggest users and contributors to the community.

To mark the new era, Alibaba has committed to providing its own in-house developments to Flink — which it calls Blink — to the community.

“By leveraging the technology expertise of both teams and shared passion to develop the open-source community, we are confident that this strategic tie-in will further strengthen the growth of the Flink community, accelerate the data-processing technologies and help bolster an open, collaborative and constructive environment for global developers who are passionate about stream processing and enabling real-time applications for modern enterprises,” said Jingren Zhou, vice president of Alibaba Group, in a statement.

This deal is reminiscent of Alibaba’s 2017 investment in MariaDB, an open source startup known for offering the most popular alternative to MySQL, a database management system. While not a full acquisition, the partnership has seen the two companies work together on new products for the community, and that’s also the goal here.

“Especially at times when many open source technologies and companies decide on a less collaborative and more “closed” approach, it is with great pleasure to see Alibaba committed to open source and our mission, eager to take Flink’s technological advancement to the next level,” Tzoumas and Ewen wrote in the announcement blog post.

We’ve contacted Alibaba and Data Artisans with follow-up questions, and we hope to have more information on the deal soon. Please refresh for updates.

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China’s Baidu says its answer to Alexa is now on 200M devices

A Chinese voice assistant has been rapidly gaining ground in recent months. DuerOS, Baidu’s answer to Amazon’s Alexa, reached over 200 million devices, China’s top search engine announced on its Weibo official account last Friday.

To put that number into context, more than 100 million devices pre-installed with Alexa have been sold, Amazon recently said. Google just announced it expected Assitant to be on 1 billion devices by the end of this month.

Voice interaction technology is part of Baidu’s strategy to reposition itself from a heavy reliance on search businesses towards artificial intelligence. The grand plan took a hit when the world-renown scientist Lu Qi stepped down as Baidu’s chief operating officer, though the segment appears to have scored healthy growth lately, with DuerOS more than doubling from a base of 90 million installs since last June.

When it comes to how many devices actually use DuerOS regularly, the number is much less significant: 35 million machines a month at the time Baidu’s general manager for smart home devices announced the figure last November.

Like Alexa, which has made its way into both Amazon-built Echo speakers and OEMs, DuerOS also takes a platform play to power both Baidu-built and third-party devices.

Interestingly, DuerOS has achieved all that with fewer capabilities and a narrower partnership network than its American counterpart. By the end of 2018, Alexa could perform more than 56,000 skills. Devices from over 4,500 brands can now be controlled with Alexa, says Amazon. By comparison, Baidu’s voice assistant had 800 different skills, its chief architect Zhong Lei revealed at the company’s November event. It was compatible with 85 brands at the time.

The number of Alexa skills in the U.S. more than doubled in 2018

This may well imply that DuerOS’s allies include heavy-hitters with outsize user bases. Baidu itself could be one as it owns one of China’s biggest navigation app, which is second to Alibaba’s AutoNavi in terms of number of installs, according to data from iResearch. Baidu said in October that at least 140 million people had activated the voice assistant of its Maps service.

Furthermore, Baidu speakers have managed to crack a previously duopolistic market. A report from Canalys shows that Baidu clocked in a skyrocketing 711 percent quarter-to-quarter growth to become China’s third-biggest vendor of smart speakers during Q3 last year. Top players Alibaba and Xiaomi, on the other hand, both had a sluggish season.

While Baidu deploys DuerOS to get home appliances talking, it has doubled down on smart vehicles with Apollo . The system, which the company calls the Android for autonomous driving, counted 130 OEMs, parts suppliers and other forms of partners as of last October. It’s attracted global automakers Volvo and Ford who want a foothold in China’s self-driving movement. Outside China, Apollo has looked to Microsoft Azure Cloud as it hunts for international partnerships.

Baidu has yet to prove commercial success for its young AI segment, but its conversational data trove holds potential for a lucrative future. Baidu became China’s top advertising business in part by harnessing what people search on its engine. Down the road, its AI-focused incarnation could apply the same data-crunching process to what people say to their machines.