Tag: ceo

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Tesla to reduce price of standard range Model 3 in China

Tesla said it will reduce the price of its standard range Model 3 vehicle in China to meet the government’s new eligibility requirements for subsidies.

This marks the second time this year that the automaker has reduced the price. Several months ago, the base version of China-made Model 3 was lowered by 9%.

Tesla has to cut the price of the vehicle to continue to qualify for government rebates on electric vehicles. The Chinese government instituted new regulations that require prices below 300,000 yuan for electric vehicles to qualify for subsidies.

The base price of standard range Model 3 made in China is 323,800 yuan, or $45,754 before subsidies.

The price reduction will go into effect tomorrow in China, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a earnings call Wednesday. Musk, who didn’t provide a specific figure, said he is confident that the vehicle will deliver a gross margin despite the reduction in price.

Tesla chief financial officer Zachary Kirkhorn added that the cost of vehicles produced at its Shanghai factory in the first quarter is already lower than the cost to produce the Model 3 in the United States. That margin should improve as the company improves its local supply chain in China. Tesla still ships some parts from the U.S. to build cars at its Shanghai factory.

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Tesla to reduce price of standard range Model 3 in China

Tesla said it will reduce the price of its standard range Model 3 vehicle in China to meet the government’s new eligibility requirements for subsidies.

This marks the second time this year that the automaker has reduced the price. Several months ago, the base version of China-made Model 3 was lowered by 9%.

Tesla has to cut the price of the vehicle to continue to qualify for government rebates on electric vehicles. The Chinese government instituted new regulations that require prices below 300,000 yuan for electric vehicles to qualify for subsidies.

The base price of standard range Model 3 made in China is 323,800 yuan, or $45,754 before subsidies.

The price reduction will go into effect tomorrow in China, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a earnings call Wednesday. Musk, who didn’t provide a specific figure, said he is confident that the vehicle will deliver a gross margin despite the reduction in price.

Tesla chief financial officer Zachary Kirkhorn added that the cost of vehicles produced at its Shanghai factory in the first quarter is already lower than the cost to produce the Model 3 in the United States. That margin should improve as the company improves its local supply chain in China. Tesla still ships some parts from the U.S. to build cars at its Shanghai factory.

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Apple and Google release first seed of COVID-19 exposure notification API for contact tracing app developers

Apple and Google have released the very first version of their exposure notification API, which they previously called the contact tracing API . This is a developer-focused release, and is a seed of the API in development with the primary intent of collecting feedback from developers who will be using the API to create new contract tracing and notification apps on behalf of public health agencies.

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook told EU Commissioner Thierry Breton that the API would be arriving shortly, and this version is indeed now available – albeit to a specific and limited group that includes select developers working on behalf of public health authorities globally, according to the companies. This is a test release that’s intended to provide the opportunity for development and feedback in advance of the API’s public release in mid-May, at which time developers will be able to use the software feature on devices with publicly available apps released through the iOS and Google software stores, respectively.

Apple and Google say they will be providing additional details this coming Friday about the API and its release, including sample code to show how it operates in practice. Both are intent on providing updates to the documentation as they become available, and in adding access to new developers throughout testing, though this will be gated because the companies are limiting access to this API to authorized public health authorities only.

Already, Apple and Google have made available documents that describe the specification in detail on its respective developer websites, and it provided an update with improvements to the tech’s functioning, including in terms of its protection of user privacy, and the ease with which developers can deploy it within their apps, as discussed during a press call last week.

This update includes an added ability for health authorities to define and calcite an exposure risk level for individuals based on their own criteria, since that varies organization to organization. This will be variable based on approximate distance of an individual to a confirmed exposed COVID-19 patient, as well as the duration of that exposure. Developers can customize notification messaging based on their defined exposure levels to ensure alerts correspond correctly to calculated risk.

Apple and Google first announced the combined API and eventual system-level contact tracing feature on April 10, and intend to release the first version of the API publicly in mid-May, with the system-level integration to follow in the coming months. The tech is designed to be privacy-preserving, ensuring that contact IDs are rotating and randomized, and never tied to an individual’s specific identifying information.

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Twitter says Elon Musk’s tweets advocating against expert COVID-19 guidance don’t violate its rules

Twitter has said that tweets posted early Tuesday morning by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that irresponsibly call for restrictions put in place to defend against the spread of COVID-19 don’t violate its guidelines around inaccurate or disputed information about the coronavirus that could cause harm. Musk tweeted a series of things on Tuesday, including an endorsement of a controversial Wall Street Journal op-ed with the caption “Give people their freedom back!”

A Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch that these tweets, which also include an urging to “FREE AMERICA NOW,” are “not currently in violation of the Twitter rules. According to the company, it has said previously that it’s not enforcing punitive or corrective action on each instance of tweets about COVID-19 that don’t provide a full picture or that appear to contain info that’s disputed by other sources.

Twitter says that it has removed over 2,400 Tweets since March 18 when it implemented its new policy, and that it’s automated filtering systems have addressed in some way or another as many as 3.4 million accounts which seemed to be spamming or providing manipulative info regarding COVID-19 discussions. Thus far, however, some of the most influential sources of have not been subject to punitive or corrective action under the policy.

President Trump’s tweets calling to “liberate” states, for instance, which bear a content and formatting similarity to the new tweets by Musk, have not been removed or disputed by the social network, and Twitter provided a similar statement about those missives not currently violating its rules.

Trump and Musk represent some of the most influential Twitter users, with 78.9 million and 33.3 minion users respectively, so their voices have outweighed impact on the community and public discourse relative to spam or automated misinformation accounts. In both cases, these messages indirectly seek to encourage the curtailing or disruption of social distancing, isolation and quarantine measures, even as the U.S. surged past 1 million diagnosed cases this week, with many more likely undiagnosed and therefore unaccounted for in the total.

States are already beginning to ease restrictions, and seeing resurgences in case numbers. Some more rural states that previously seemed less impacted are seeing spikes, even as they began to partially reopen, including Iowa. Leading experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci of the U.S. federal coronavirus task force have warned against the consequences of relaxing rules too soon, and the WHO and CDC are still warning of the impact of opening up too soon as well.

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Twitter says Elon Musk’s tweets advocating against expert COVID-19 guidance don’t violate its rules

Twitter has said that tweets posted early Tuesday morning by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that irresponsibly call for restrictions put in place to defend against the spread of COVID-19 don’t violate its guidelines around inaccurate or disputed information about the coronavirus that could cause harm. Musk tweeted a series of things on Tuesday, including an endorsement of a controversial Wall Street Journal op-ed with the caption “Give people their freedom back!”

A Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch that these tweets, which also include an urging to “FREE AMERICA NOW,” are “not currently in violation of the Twitter rules. According to the company, it has said previously that it’s not enforcing punitive or corrective action on each instance of tweets about COVID-19 that don’t provide a full picture or that appear to contain info that’s disputed by other sources.

Twitter says that it has removed over 2,400 Tweets since March 18 when it implemented its new policy, and that it’s automated filtering systems have addressed in some way or another as many as 3.4 million accounts which seemed to be spamming or providing manipulative info regarding COVID-19 discussions. Thus far, however, some of the most influential sources of have not been subject to punitive or corrective action under the policy.

President Trump’s tweets calling to “liberate” states, for instance, which bear a content and formatting similarity to the new tweets by Musk, have not been removed or disputed by the social network, and Twitter provided a similar statement about those missives not currently violating its rules.

Trump and Musk represent some of the most influential Twitter users, with 78.9 million and 33.3 minion users respectively, so their voices have outweighed impact on the community and public discourse relative to spam or automated misinformation accounts. In both cases, these messages indirectly seek to encourage the curtailing or disruption of social distancing, isolation and quarantine measures, even as the U.S. surged past 1 million diagnosed cases this week, with many more likely undiagnosed and therefore unaccounted for in the total.

States are already beginning to ease restrictions, and seeing resurgences in case numbers. Some more rural states that previously seemed less impacted are seeing spikes, even as they began to partially reopen, including Iowa. Leading experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci of the U.S. federal coronavirus task force have warned against the consequences of relaxing rules too soon, and the WHO and CDC are still warning of the impact of opening up too soon as well.

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Elon Musk provides more details about SpaceX’s plan to reduce Starlink satellite visibility

During a virtual conference briefing this week, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk provided more details about a new plan that his company has to mitigate the impact of their Starlink satellite constellation on night sky observation. Musk first revealed the intent to build a “sun visor” to lower their visibility on Twitter, but we didn’t know much about how it would work or how it compared to the test dark paint job that SpaceX tried previously.

As reported by Space News, SpaceX’s new “VisorSat” approach will essentially use sun visors to block inbound sunlight from hitting the reflective antennas on the spacecraft, stopping them from reflecting said light back to Earth, which is why they appear as bright lights in the night sky.

This new hardware addition to future Starlink satellites will supplement other measures, including making use of a new method for change the orientation of the satellites as they raise into their target orbits after launch, which is a period during which they’re especially visible. The overall goal, according to Musk, is to “make the satellites visible to the naked eye within a week, and to minimize the impact on astronomy,” with a specific focus on ensuring that whatever impact the constellation does have doesn’t impeded the ability of scientists and researchers to make new discoveries.

SpaceX’s first test for reducing the visiblity of its Starlink constellation focused on using a darkening treatment to cover reflective surfaces, and though that proved somewhat effective in early testing, Musk says that he believes the VisorSat alternative will be more effective, greatly reducing the satellites’ brightness instead of just making a smaller reduction.

For now, SpaceX intends to test out the VisorSat system on the next Starlink launch, which have been happening at about a pace of one per month so far in 2020. The system does involve some degree of mechanical difficult, however, since it’s a whole new part that has to extend during flight to block the inbound light. The company has also focused on using materials that are radio transparent for the shades, so they don’t impact the primary mission of Starlink, which is to provide low-latency, high-broadband bandwidth to customers on the ground.

Should this work, future Starlink spacecraft will be equipped with VisorSat, and Musk notes that the existing satellites on orbit will have a relatively short lifespan, meaning while they won’t have the treatment, they should only be in use for around three or four years before being deorbited, at which point they’ll be replaced by hopefully optically improved versions.

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Checkly raises $2.25M seed round for its monitoring and testing platform

Checkly, a Berlin-based startup that is developing a monitoring and testing platform for DevOps teams, today announced that it has raised a $2.25 million seed round led by Accel. A number of angel investors, including Instana CEO Mirko Novakovic, Zeit CEO Guillermo Rauch and former Twilio CTO Ott Kaukver, also participated in this round.

The company’s SaaS platform allows developers to monitor their API endpoints and web apps — and it obviously alerts you when something goes awry. The transaction monitoring tool makes it easy to regularly test interactions with front-end websites without having to actually write any code. The test software is based on Google’s open-source Puppeteer framework and to build its commercial platform, Checkly also developed Puppeteer Recorder for creating these end-to-end testing scripts in a low-code tool that developers access through a Chrome extension.

The team believes that it’s the combination of end-to-end testing and active monitoring, as well as its focus on modern DevOps teams, that makes Checkly stand out in what is already a pretty crowded market for monitoring tools.

“As a customer in the monitoring market, I thought it had long been stuck in the 90s and I needed a tool that could support teams in JavaScript and work for all the different roles within a DevOps team. I set out to build it, quickly realizing that testing was equally important to address,” said Tim Nolet, who founded the company in 2018. “At Checkly, we’ve created a market-defining tool that our customers have been demanding, and we’ve already seen strong traction through word of mouth. We’re delighted to partner with Accel on building out our vision to become the active reliability platform for DevOps teams.”

Nolet’s co-founders are Hannes Lenke, who founded TestObject (which was later acquired by Sauce Labs), and Timo Euteneuer, who was previously Director Sales EMEA at Sauce Labs.

Tthe company says that it currently has about 125 paying customers who run about 1 million checks per day on its platform. Pricing for its services starts at $7 per month for individual developers, with plans for small teams starting at $29 per month.

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Goldman backed ventures Jumia and Twiga partner on produce in Kenya

Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia and B2B agtech startup Twiga Foods are partnering to deliver produce in Kenya using adaptive measures during COVID-19.

In 2019, Jumia became the first VC funded tech company in Africa to list on a major exchange, the NYSE. Based in Nairobi, Twiga raised a $30 million Series B round in October and announced plans to expand its food supply-chain business to West Africa.

Both companies are backed by venture capital from U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs .

Per the partnership, Jumia will sell bundles of Twiga’s fresh produce on its e-commerce website. Jumia’s delivery fleet will pick up orders from Twiga’s sorting and distribution centers and then complete last mile, contact free delivery. The transactions will be cash only using Jumia’s JumiaPay app, according to Jumia Kenya CEO Sam Chappatte.

Image Credits: Jumia Kenya’s website

The arrangement is meant to leverage the strengths of both companies, while providing a safer and more affordable way for households to obtain foodstuffs through the coronavirus crisis, which started to hit East Africa last month.

Co-founded in Nairobi in 2014 by Peter Njonjo and Grant Brooke, Twiga Foods is focused primarily on connecting the produce of Kenya’s farmers more efficiently to pricing and marketplaces. The company serves around 3,000 outlets a day with produce through a network of 17,000 farmers and 8,000 vendors.

Twiga will benefit from Jumia’s B2C e-commerce platform and Twiga from Jumia’s B2B produce network, according to Jumia’s Kenya CEO.

On the product offerings, “We pulled together the core basics that a family would need for a week or two weeks,” Chappatte told TechCrunch on a call from Nairobi.

“It’s 28 kilograms of fruit and vegetables. It’s delivered in an hour and a half and they save 50% versus supermarkets.”

Image Credits: Jumia

The partnership comes as the coronavirus has hit Africa and actors across the continent’s tech ecosystem have begun to develop practices to maintain operations and stem the spread.

By WHO stats Tuesday there were 21,388 COVID-19 cases in Africa and 877 confirmed virus related deaths, up from 345 cases and 7 deaths on March 18. Kenya ranks 13th in coronavirus cases on the continent.

Africa Roundup: Africa’s tech ecosystem responds to COVID-19

Countries such as South Africa, Kenya  and Nigeria — which happen to be Africa’s top tech hubs — have imposed social distancing and lockdown practices.

Chappatte believes the virus in Kenya is likely under-counted. Jumia is approaching what could become a worsening COVID-19 scenario in Kenya from two angles.

“One of the ways in which we’re facing up to the crisis and trying be as useful as possible to our communities is to remain an everyday service,” he said.

“The second piece is around the right to operate…engaging the government on how home delivery can be cashless, contactless and safe and therefore a useful service over this period.”

Like many tech ventures in Africa, Jumia needs to adapt to the health and economic realities of the coronavirus to continue to generate revenues. Since going public in April 2019 —  and being required to report quarterly financial performance — the company has faced increased pressure to demonstrate profitability.

Continued losses, a short-sell assault and an employee fraud scandal in 2019 led Jumia’s share price to plummet more than 50% since its April IPO, from  $14.50 on listing to $4.43, as of Monday.

The company weathered these events and CEO Sacha Poignonnec highlighted a bright spot in the 2019 results. Jumia finally got into the black on one key indicator, reaching a gross profit of €1.0 million after deducting fulfillment expenses in Q4 of last year.

The online retailer’s next earnings call is scheduled for May 13. It could provide a unique window into the extent COVID-19 in Africa has impacted the performance of one of the continent’s most visible tech companies.

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SpaceX’s latest Starship prototype passes a key test that puts it on track for a first flight

SpaceX has been developing its next-generation Starship rocket for some time now, but the large-scale prototypes it’s building in Boca Chica, Texas, have thus far always encountered a fatal error during an important part of testing called “cryo” – or filling the fuel tank to full pressure in conditions that simulate the vacuum of space. The latest prototype, called ‘SN4’ for ‘serial number 4,’ has finally passed this test however, and that clears the way for an engine fire test followed by a short flight.

SpaceX’s SN4 prototype resembles what its final rocket will look like, unlike the Starhopper sub-scale demonstrator that the company originally flew just to show off what its new Raptor engine could accomplish. The SN4, like the Starhopper, is equipped with a single Raptor engine, which will make it possible for the vehicle to make short flights for testing purposes. The next version, SN5, will have three raptor engines according to SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk, which is still less than the six that the full, functional version of Starship is intended to have, but that will allow it to perform longer test flights in preparation for an orbital launch demonstration.

Testing and developing a new rocket and launch system is always going to have hiccups, since all the simulation in the world can’t replicate real-world use conditions and physics. But Starship’s prior failures at the cry testing phase were beginning to look like they could be a more fundamental problem – it’s what laid low SN1 through SN3, after all.

SpaceX will now perform a static test fire of the Raptor engine installed on the prototype, which could happen as soon as sometime later this week, and then the development craft will look to do a flight of around 150 meters (around 500 feet), which is the same height as the Starhopper performed. That’s nowhere near as high as it’ll need to go to fly orbital missions, of course, but it’s a test that will show how a full-scale vehicle performs at low-altitude, which is key info that SpaceX needs before developing its high-altitude and orbital prototypes.

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Templafy raises $25M Series C led by Insight partners to deal with enterprise documents

Back in 2018 Templafy — which had come up with a way for enterprises to more easily make templates out of standard documents (yes, it’s a thing) — raised an additional $15 million from existing investors as an extension of its earlier Series B round taking it to $40.2 million raised. The company integrates with enterprise infrastructure to provide corporate content assets, document templates, and automatic validation of created documents for all kinds of clients. On this journey it has used its cash to acquire SlideProof in Berlin, then Veodin and iWRITER in 2019, and opened an office in NYC. 

It’s been quite a journey since they started in 2014, and today the journey continues with the news that it’s closed a $25 million Series C funding round led by Insight partners. With additional funding from Dawn Capital, Seed Capital and Damgaard Company, bringing the total external capital raised to almost $70 million.

Templafy plans to use this latest round to boost its M&A activity; advance its product roadmap; and double staff from 200 to 400 full-time employees.

Jesper Theill Eriksen, CEO of Templafy said in a statement: “We set out to establish a new market category and create a high return on investment for companies streamlining their document creation workflow through our platform.”

He says the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on remote working means “now more than ever, we see the need of global enterprises to support their distributed workforce with solutions that ensure productivity and compliance when documents are created.”

Jonathan Rosenbaum, vice president at Insight Partners said: “Templafy’s software represents a unique nexus of both end-user productivity and document compliance. This is what allows its customers to see real efficiency gains across an entire employee base.”

Templafy says it has more than doubled its revenue in the past year and has now sold over 2 million Templafy licenses worldwide

The total addressable market for Templafy’s document assembly software, in theory, extends to anyone that has to use traditional desktop software. The company’s Microsoft integration, means there are north of 1 billion Microsoft Office users for which Templafy could be used.

Christian Lund, co-founder and CPO at Templafy explained over email to TechCrunch that: “Being a horizontal document production infrastructure, Templafy is agnostic to the type of business document created (presentations, reports, contracts, proposals, pitches, emails, internal / external etc.) This is a key reason why many of the world’s largest enterprises use the platform company-wide.”

Templafy has plenty of competition across all the vertical categories it covers – for example in Template Management (Litera); Creative Content (Frontify, Bynder), Sales Enablement (Showpad, Seismic),  Proposal management (Conga, PandaDoc), Email Signature Management (Exclaimer, Xink).

But Templify takes a horizontal approach rather than vertical approach.