Toronto-based Thriver, formerly known as Platterz, raises $33M Series B to expand beyond a B2B marketplace for corporate meal plans to virtual wellness programs — Thriver said it has raised $33 million in a second round of funding as it moves beyond corporate food to the business of virtual health and wellness.
TikTok, the video-sharing app that’s moved to the center of the economic conflict between the US and China, is planning to challenge the executive order issued by President Donald Trump that would force the sale or ban the service in the United States.
According to a report from National Public Radio yesterday, TikTok could file a federal lawsuit challenging the order as soon as Tuesday. The lawsuit is expected to be filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, where TikTok has its American headquarters.
TikTok will challenge the constitutionality of the ban and its underlying claims that the video sharing service represents a national security threat to the country, according to NPR’s report.
TikTok did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
On Thursday, the President signed executive orders that put a 45-day deadline on American companies to unwind their business relationships with TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, and with WeChat, the messaging service owned by Chinse tech giant, Tencent.
TikTok had already laid out its opposition to the executive order when news first broke that the President had signed it.
As TechCrunch reproted, the company said the order was “issued without any due process” and would risk “undermining global businesses’ trust in the United States’ commitment to the rule of law.” The mechanisms the White House wants to use to ban the app include the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act. But claiming that the operations of a subsidiary of a foreign business on US soil constitutes a national emergency is highly unprecedented.
Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which was passed during the Iran hostage crisis in 1976, the President has sweeping authority to issue tariffs and suspend economic relationships with other companies.
Any challenge to the executive order needs to come soon, because Bytedance, TikTok’s parent company is also looking at how to unwind its US operations through a sale.
After the President’s executive order was announced, Microsoft said in a statement that it was in talks with Bytedance about acquiring TikTok.
Micrsofot said:
“Following a conversation between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Donald J. Trump, Microsoft is prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States. Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President’s concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury.”
Analysts and bankers have said that TikTok’s US business could be worth anywhere from $20 billion to $50 billion, thanks to the company’s user base of over 100 million customers in the US, according to reports in Fortune.
And other bidders are emerging for TikTok’s US business as well. According to The Wall Street Journal, TikTok has also engaged in preliminary discussions with Twitter over a possible combination.
The first season of “The Umbrella Academy” had its flaws, but empathetic portrayals of its seven superhero siblings (all adults bearing the emotional scars of an upbringing under their strict adoptive father Reginald Hargreeves) more than made up for its meandering plot.
In season two, which recently launched on Netflix, the Umbrella Academy has been transported to Dallas in the early 1960s, where the Hargreeves must once again try to repair their familial bonds while also averting a nuclear apocalypse — an apocalypse that they themselves may be causing.
Once again, the show takes a while to get good, with early episodes that keep our heroes apart and take a few too many digressions into the world of the JFK assassination and Jack Ruby. But once the Umbrella Academy is reunited — and especially after they get a chance to confront a younger version their father — the story moves full speed ahead to a spectacular and moving finale.
We have plenty of praise for the show and its delightful musical numbers on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, and even get a little choked up when recapping the final episode. And before we get to our review, we discuss the news that Disney will be releasing “Mulan” on Disney+ next month, for an additional price of $29.99.
You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also follow us on Twitter or send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)
If you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:36 “Mulan” discussion
18:03 “Umbrella Academy” review
40:20 “Umbrella Academy” spoiler discussion
Enlarge / An average performance you can expect to see, and participate in, at Internet Temple. Co-creator Clayton Collins is in the center frame, performing as his alter-ego Long Distance Husband. (credit: Internet Temple)
In early May, I needed a change of pace from my usual YouTube rabbit holes, having gone down a few of those during months of quarantine. My discovery of Internet Temple almost felt like finding a good bar or music venue; instead of being served content by a video platform’s algorithm, I had to know someone, get a tip, and type an entire URL.
The Temple made a blunt entrance on my browsing tab with little more than a cropped YouTube embed and a chat box with no scrolling feature. And then it got weird.
I witnessed a startling musical performance drenched in autotune (the laughs between songs were also autotuned). The singer wore snowman print boxers, an oversized sweater featuring abstract humanoid images, and a hat reading "WWW DOT COM MY ASS." He danced with three stuffed sheep in his hands, while behind him, a green screen was flooded with imagery chosen by audience members. They had selected images of Shrek and Unicode shrimp emojis.
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As Zynga buys Istanbul-based Rollic Games for $168M, a look at the rapid growth of hyper-casual mobile games, where publishers may launch a new title every week — Games makers are scoring hundreds of millions of downloads by churning out cheaply made titles
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Taiwan has faced existential conflict with China for its entire existence and has been targeted by China's state-sponsored hackers for years. But an investigation by one Taiwanese security firm has revealed just how deeply a single group of Chinese hackers was able to penetrate an industry at the core of the Taiwanese economy, pillaging practically its entire semiconductor industry.
At the Black Hat security conference today, researchers from the Taiwanese cybersecurity firm CyCraft plan to present new details of a hacking campaign that compromised at least seven Taiwanese chip firms over the past two years. The series of deep intrusions—called Operation Skeleton Key due to the attackers' use of a "skeleton key injector" technique—appeared aimed at stealing as much intellectual property as possible, including source code, software development kits, and chip designs. And while CyCraft has previously given this group of hackers the name Chimera, the company's new findings include evidence that ties them to mainland China and loosely links them to the notorious Chinese state-sponsored hacker group Winnti, also sometimes known as Barium, or Axiom.
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iwoca, an online lending startup for SMBs, raises £100M to support SMBs looking for financing via the UK's Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme — U.K. FinTech iwoca has notched £100 million in funding to help coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS) clients.
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter for your weekend enjoyment. It’s broadly based on the weekday column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free. And it’s made just for you. You can sign up for the newsletter here.
With that out of the way, let’s talk money, upstart companies and the latest spicy IPO rumors.
(In time the top bit of the newsletter won’t get posted to the website, so do make sure to sign up if you want the whole thing!)
One of the most interesting disconnects in the market today is how VC Twitter discusses successful IPOs and how the CEOs of those companies view their own public market debuts.
If you read Twitter on an IPO day, you’ll often see VCs stomping around, shouting that IPOs are a racket and that they must be taken down now. But if you dial up the CEO or CFO of the company that actually went public to strong market reception, they’ll spend five minutes telling you why all that chatter is flat wrong.
Case in point from this week: BigCommerce. Well-known VC Bill Gurley was incensed that shares of BigCommerce opened sharply higher after they started trading, compared to their IPO price. He has a point, with the Texas-based e-commerce company pricing at $24 per share (above a raised range, it should be said), but opened at $68 and is worth around $88 on Friday as I write to you.
So, when I got BigCommerce CEO Brent Bellm on Zoom after its debut, I had some questions.
First, some background. BigCommerce filed confidentially back in 2019, planned on going public in April, and wound up delaying its offering due to the pandemic, according to Bellm. Then in the wake of COVID-19, sales from existing customers went up, and new customers arrived. So, the IPO was back on.
BigCommerce, as a reminder, is seeing growth acceleration in recent quarters, making its somewhat modest growth rate more enticing than you’d otherwise imagine.
Anyhoo, the company was worth more than 10x its annual run-rate at its IPO price if I recall the math, so it wasn’t cheap even at $24 per share. And in response to my question about pricing Bellm said that he was content with his company’s final IPO price.
He had a few reasons, including that the IPO price sets the base point for future return calculations, that he measures success based on how well investors do in his stock over a ten-year horizon, and that the more long-term investors you successfully lock in during your roadshow, the smaller your first-day float becomes; the more investors that hold their shares after the debut, the more the supply/demand curve can skew, meaning that your stock opens higher than it otherwise might due to only scarce equity being up for purchase.
All that seems incredibly reasonable. Still, VCs are livid.
The Exchange spent a lot of time on the phone this week, leading to a host of notes for your consumption. And there was a deluge of interesting data. So, here’s a digest of what we heard and saw that you should know:
Whatever the case, during our chat Fastly CEO Joshua Bixby taught me something new: Usage-based software companies are like SaaS firms, but more so.
In the old days, you’d buy a piece of software, and then own it forever. Now, it’s common to buy one-year SaaS licenses. With usage-based pricing, you make the buying choice day-to-day, which is the next step in the evolution of buying, it feels. I asked if the model isn’t, you know, harder than SaaS? He said maybe, but that you wind up super aligned with your customers.
To wrap up, as always, here’s a final whack of data, news and other miscellania that are worth your time from the week:
We’ve blown past our 1,000 word target, so, briefly: Stay tuned to TechCrunch for a super-cool funding round on Monday (it has the fastest growth I can recall hearing about), make sure to listen to the latest Equity ep, and parse through the latest TechCrunch List updates.
Hugs, fistbumps, and good vibes,
Moft is a clever company that makes clever products. For a while there, I was sporting their laptop stand. It was a head-turner when I used to unfold it during meetings — back when we used to do those in-person. The truth is, I ended up having to tear it off the bottom. It lasted fine for a while, but the heat from the bottom of my MacBook ultimately melted it into a gooey mess. It was fun while it lasted.
Ultimately, I do think that was a design flaw. But even so, Moft its one of those companies you want to see succeed and continue making interesting products that buck the traditional models of most accessory makers. I’m not sure I would purchase the convertible standing desk, for instance, but I’m glad it exists.
The Moft Carry Sleeve, on the other hand, is a bit more my speed. It’s yet another convertible stand from the company, but for starters, it’s one that doesn’t require any adhesive, so that’s a big point in its favor right there. Instead of relying on the sticky stuff, the convertible sleeve functions similarly to a number of origami tablet cases currently on the market. Basically it uses a combination of foldable corners and magnets to snap into different shapes.
Honestly, I think I dig it. As a laptop sleeve, it’s a little too bulky for my tastes. It’s a bit big for my backpack. But the build quality is surprisingly nice. It’s built of a realistic vegan faux leather that is more sustainable, scratch resistant and water resistant than the real thing. All good news. There’s a card slot and a little stretch neoprene rubber slot for expandable storage.
The case converts into a stand with a couple of folds, propping the laptop up at either a 15 or 25-degree angle, with a little “flap limiter” up front that keeps it from sliding too far forward. The company claims it can support weight up to 22 pounds. I’ve not tried, but my 15-inch MacBook seems all right so far. I guess we’ll see for sure when I start traveling again.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
After all, the company’s name is an acronym for Mobile Office for Travelers. Clearly not a ton of business for that at the moment, but it’s already scored $300,000 on the Carry Sleeve Indiegogo, so there’s still interest, none the less.
The language in Trump's EOs on WeChat and TikTok may be vague deliberately, as some argue the uncertainty may dissuade more US companies from operating in China — The restrictions on the two Chinese-owned apps followed a familiar model for other policy announcements on China from the Trump administration.
Huawei says that production of its high-end Kirin smartphone chips will stop Sept. 15 and, more broadly, its smartphone production has “no chips and no supply” — BEIJING (AP) — Chinese tech giant Huawei is running out of processor chips to make smartphones due to U.S. sanctions …
Greg Bensinger / Reuters : The US NLRB rules that Amazon must negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union, which represents ~5K workers at its ...
