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TC Sessions: Space 2020
Here’s what’s happening on day 1 of TC Sessions: Space
2020
Alexandra Ames
Extra Crunch
Upstart and Wish price their debuts as the 2020 IPO cycle slows
Alex Wilhelm
StockX raises $275M Series E, valuing the retailer at $2.8B
Matt Burns
OpenSensors secures $4M for air-monitoring platform which allows offices
to be more COVID-safe
Mike Butcher
New Wave is a new European seed fund headed up by ex-Accel VC Pia
d’Iribarne
Steve O'Hear

The Latest
Pinterest says it will adopt workplace culture
recommendations
Megan Rose Dickey
12:58 PM EST•December 16, 2020
Pinterest has committed to adopting the recommendations from its
special committee of the Board of Directors, the company wrote in a
blog post today. The committee formed earlier this year in June,...

Google Stadia is now available on iOS

Romain Dillet
12:32 PM EST•December 16, 2020
A few weeks after announcing that iOS support was on the way,
Google’s cloud gaming service now supports the iPhone and iPad. As
expected, the company is using a web app to access the service.
Goog...

The team behind Jumpcut and SnappyTV is building a

new collaborative video tool
Anthony Ha
12:24 PM EST•December 16, 2020
Mike Folgner has had his share of success building video editing
tools, having sold Jumpcut.com to Yahoo and SnappyTV to Twitter.
But as he explained in a new Medium post, he still sees “unfi...

Sponsored Content
Cloud-based 3D-modeling can consolidate your entire
product production pipelines
Sponsored by SOLIDWORKS

Products of all sorts are being developed via cloud-based 3D-

modeling. Looking to consolidate production pipelines? Cloud-based
applications are a nimble and collaborative solution.

Bitcoin passes $20k and reaches all-time high

Romain Dillet
12:12 PM EST•December 16, 2020
After reaching a previous all-time high on November 30th, 2020 and
December 1st, 2020, bitcoin is now trading well above $20,000 and
has surpassed its previous peak price. Bitcoin’s value has rapid...
Amazon asks judge to set aside Microsoft’s $10B DoD
JEDI cloud contract win
Ron Miller
12:06 PM EST•December 16, 2020
It’s been more than two years since the Pentagon announced its $10
billion, decade long JEDI cloud contract, which was supposed to
provide a pathway to technological modernization for U.S. ar...

PepsiCo signs on to sponsor new founder-in-residence

program from M13
Jonathan Shieber
12:00 PM EST•December 16, 2020
The budding venture studio being built inside M13 has signed
PepsiCo as its first new corporate partner. Through the deal, PepsiCo
has agreed to bankroll the first founder-in-residence program from...
Sponsored Content
Streamline your product design process with
SOLIDWORKS
Sponsored by SOLIDWORKS

SOLIDWORKS allows companies to streamline their product design

process with collaborative tools that allow designers to create new
worlds from anywhere on any device.

PrivacyGrader is a free tool to help companies get

smarter about data and disclosures
Anthony Ha
12:00 PM EST•December 16, 2020
As businesses face a complex and evolving privacy landscape, a new
tool called PrivacyGrader can help them make sure they’re doing the
right things. The tool was created by Tom Chavez and Viv...
Discord will be able to screen share from iOS and Android
devices starting today
Greg Kumparak
12:00 PM EST•December 16, 2020
The super popular chat app Discord is getting a much-requested
feature starting today: mobile screen sharing. As the name suggests,
mobile screen sharing lets users capture and broadcast everything...

TC Sessions: Space 2020

Dec 16 - 17
Meet the most important people in the space industry, across
public, private and defense.
Register for direct access now

Hightouch raises $2.1M to help businesses get more

value from their data warehouses
Frederic Lardinois
12:00 PM EST•December 16, 2020
Hightouch, a SaaS service that helps businesses sync their customer
data across sales and marketing tools, is coming out of stealth and
announcing a $2.1 million seed round. The round was led by Af...

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AWS launches Amazon Location, a new mapping service
for developers
Frederic Lardinois
11:56 AM EST•December 16, 2020
AWS today announced the preview of Amazon Location, a new
service for developers who want to add location-based features to
their web-based and mobile applications. Based on mapping data
from Esri ...

Dash Systems raises $8M for precision-airdrops-as-a-

service at distant or disaster-stricken destinations
Devin Coldewey
11:30 AM EST•December 16, 2020
Now more than ever both the importance and limitations of the global
delivery infrastructure are on full display. But while Amazon and others
try to speed up last mile delivery using drones, Dash S...

Where we’ll be next

TC Sessions: Space 2020

Dec 16 - 17
Buy Tickets Be a Sponsor

TC Sessions: Justice 2021

Mar 3

Buy Tickets Be a Sponsor

Early Stage 2021 Part 1

Apr 1 - 2

Learn More Be a Sponsor

TC Sessions: Mobility 2021

Jun 9

Learn More Be a Sponsor

Early Stage 2021 Part 2

Jul 8 - 9

Learn More Be a Sponsor

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021

Sep 21 - 23

Learn More Be a Sponsor

TC Sessions: SaaS 2021

Nov 3

Learn More Be a Sponsor

TC Sessions: Space 2020

Here’s what’s happening on day 1 of TC Sessions: Space
2020
Alexandra Ames
11:23 AM EST•December 16, 2020
T-minus 3…2…1…liftoff! Day one of TC Sessions: Space 2020, our
first conference dedicated to space technology, early-stage startups
and the brilliant minds forging a new era of space exploration, i...

Qualcomm’s new chipset for wireless earbuds promises

improved noise cancellation, all-day battery life
Frederic Lardinois
11:00 AM EST•December 16, 2020
There are now so many wireless earbuds, it’s hard to keep track, but
one of the reasons why we’ve seen this explosion in new and existing
manufacturers entering this business is the ava...

Extra Crunch
Upstart and Wish price their debuts as the 2020 IPO cycle
slows
Alex Wilhelm
10:47 AM EST•December 16, 2020
If the pattern of more relaxed debuts continues, this could be its start.

BigID keeps rolling with $70M Series D on $1B valuation

Ron Miller
10:02 AM EST•December 16, 2020
BigID has been on the investment fast track, raising $94 million over
three rounds that started in January 2018. Today, that investment train
kept rolling as the company announced a $70 million Ser...

Major U.S. news publishers join the Coalition for App

Fairness advocacy group to fight the ‘Apple tax’
Sarah Perez
10:00 AM EST•December 16, 2020
A group of major U.S. news publishers have joined the Coalition for
App Fairness (CAF), the advocacy group pushing for increased
regulation over app stores and fair treatment for all developers. Th...
Bicycle Health, the virtual opioid use disorder therapy
service, will soon be available in 25 states
Jonathan Shieber
9:30 AM EST•December 16, 2020
The startup opioid use disorder therapy service Bicycle Health will
soon be available to patients in half the country, just three years after
its launch in 2017, according to founder Ankit Gupta. A...

ZeroAvia’s hydrogen-powered vision for aviation nets

$21.4 million from Amazon, Shell, and Bill Gates-backed
fund
Jonathan Shieber
9:24 AM EST•December 16, 2020
ZeroAvia, the company that’s on a mission to move the world to zero-
emission, hydrogen-fueled flight, has just received some corporate jet
fuel in the form of a new $21.4 million cash infusio...
Motional and Lyft target 2023 to deploy
driverless robotaxi services in major U.S.
cities
Kirsten Korosec@kirstenkorosec / 9:23 AM EST•December 16, 2020
 Comment

Image Credits: Motional

Motional, the Aptiv-Hyundai $4 billion joint venture aimed at

commercializing autonomous vehicles, plans to launch in 2023 fully
driverless robotaxi services in major U.S. cities using the Lyft  ride-
hailing network.
This is the first time Motional has specified a target date for its robotaxi
service. And while Lyft has been a partner with Motional in Las Vegas,
this is the first indication that the ride-hailing company will be
autonomous vehicle company’s primary partner in its commercialization
plans.
The announcement follows Nevada’s approval last month to allow
Motional to test fully driverless vehicles — without a human safety
driver behind the wheel — on public roads in the state.
Motional and Lyft have been partners for three years, a relationship
that kicked off with what was supposed to be a weeklong pilot program
to offer rides in autonomous vehicles on the Lyft network in Las Vegas
during the 2018 CES tech trade show.
This partnership predates the joint venture with Hyundai. At the time,
Motional was known as Aptiv Autonomous Mobility Group. That
temporary experiment, which has always included a human safety
driver, was extended and still exists today. As of February 2020, the
program had given more than 100,000 paid self-driving rides in Aptiv’s
— now Motional’s — self-driving vehicles per the Lyft app.
Aptiv’s investment in Las Vegas expanded as those ridership numbers
grew. The company opened in December 2018 a 130,000-square-foot
technical center in the city to house its fleet of autonomous vehicles, as
well as an engineering team dedicated to research and development of
software and hardware systems, validation and mapping.
Motional describes today’s announcement as a “quantum leap” for the
partnership. The robotaxi services will use next-generation vehicles
based on a Hyundai vehicle platform. The vehicles will be integrated
with sensors, computers and software to enable fully-driverless
operation and remote vehicle assistance. Motional, which today uses
BMW 5 Series and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans, said the fleet will
also grow “significantly.”
The companies didn’t provide details on which cities it will offer service
in or just how big these fleets will be. Motional has testing operations in
Boston, Las Vegas and Pittsburgh. Motional did indicate that this
robotaxi service partnership with Lyft will extend beyond the initial
launch cities. That doesn’t mean Lyft will be it’s only partner. Earlier this
year, Motional struck a deal with on-demand shuttle company Via to
launch a shared robotaxi service for the public in a U.S. city in the first
half of 2021. The companies said the aim is to develop a “blueprint” for
on-demand shared robotaxis and learn how these driverless vehicles
can be integrated into mass transit.
“This agreement is a testament to our global leadership in driverless
technology. We’re at the frontier of transportation innovation, moving
robotaxis from research to road,” Motional President and CEO Karl
Iagnemma, said in a statement. “Our aim is to not only build safe,
reliable, and accessible driverless vehicles, but to deliver them at
significant scale. We’re partnering with Lyft to do exactly that.”
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Motional and Lyft target 2023 to deploy driverless
robotaxi services in major U.S. cities
Kirsten Korosec
9:23 AM EST•December 16, 2020
Motional, the Aptiv-Hyundai $4 billion joint venture aimed at
commercializing autonomous vehicles, plans to launch in 2023 fully
driverless robotaxi services in major U.S. cities using the Lyft rid...

Zoomin raises $21M for a platform to make fragmented

product content troves easier to use
Ingrid Lunden
9:06 AM EST•December 16, 2020
Technical manuals and other product content may not be the first
things that come to mind when you are thinking of software. But if
you’ve ever found yourself in a pickle or just need some he...
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