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Facebook confirms that it’s acquiring Bloomsbury AI
Facebook announced this morning that the London-based team at Bloomsbury AI will be joining the company.
My colleague Steve O’Hear broke the news about the acquisition, reporting that Facebook would deploy the team and technology to assist in its efforts to fight fake news and address other content issues.
In fact, Bloomsbury AI co-founder and Head of Research Sebastian Riedel also co-founded Factmata, a startup that purports to have developed tools to help brands combat fake news.
Facebook doesn’t quite put it that way in the announcement post. Instead, it says the team’s “expertise will strengthen Facebook’s efforts in natural language processing research, and help us further understand natural language and its applications” — but it certainly seems possible that those applications could include detecting misinformation and other problematic content.
While financial terms were not disclosed, we reported that Facebook is paying between $23 and $30 million. Bloomsbury AI is an alumnus of Entrepreneur First, and it was also backed by Fly.VC, Seedcamp, IQ Capital, UCL Technology Fund and the U.K. taxpayer-funded London Co-investment Fund.
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Alan launches Alan Map to find doctors around you
Health insurance startup Alan has launched a new product in France called Alan Map. It’s a dead simple way to find GPs, dentists, ophthalmologists and more around you.
You first type your address and the name of a doctor or the type of doctor you’re looking for. There’s a big map front and center with dots representing doctors around you.
If you click on a dot or a name in the right column, you can learn more about this doctor. Alan Map currently lists the name, address, phone number, opening hours and average price. You also can find out if you can see this doctor without booking an appointment, and if they accept national healthcare cards.
This is already so much better than searching through a directory. But Alan doesn’t plan to stop there. The company will soon launch an integration with MonDocteur so you can book an appointment from Alan Map directly. MonDocteur is one of the leading healthcare scheduling services in France along with Doctolib.
But compared to Doctolib and MonDocteur, Alan Map doesn’t stop at doctors that use their own scheduling systems. Alan has partnered with the official health directory from France’s national healthcare system. You’ll find more than 245,000 health professionals on Alan Map, with pricing information for nearly half of them.
The main advantage compared to Ameli.fr is that it looks much better and it’s much easier to find what you’re looking for. Design can be important, even for health products. It can be the main difference between an obscure directory on an official website and a useful map.
Eventually, Alan plans to add more data to its mapping product. For instance, as Alan is a health insurance startup, the company knows how much users are paying when they visit a specific doctor. You could anonymize and leverage this data to get exact pricing information.
Alan Map is a free product. It’s a good way to promote the company’s health insurance product and get inbound traffic. For instance, it should give an SEO boost and you might see Alan in your Google search results.
As for Alan users, they can find a doctor and know how much they’ll get back from the national healthcare system and from Alan. This way, there’s no surprise when you get reimbursed.
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Planck Re scores $12M Series A to simplify insurance underwriting with artificial intelligence
Planck Re, a startup that wants to simplify insurance underwriting with artificial intelligence, announced today that it has raised a $12 million Series A. The funding was led by Arbor Ventures, with participation from Viola FinTech and Eight Roads. Co-founder and CEO Elad Tsur tells TechCrunch that the capital will be used to expand Planck Re’s product line into more segments, including retail, contractors, IT and manufacturing, and grow its research and development team in Israel and North American sales team.
The Tel Aviv and New York-based startup plans to focus first on its business in the United States, where it has already launched pilot programs with several insurance carriers. Tsur says that Planck Re’s clients generally use it to help underwrite insurance for small to medium-sized businesses, including business owner policies, which cover property and liability risks, and workers’ compensation.
Founded in 2016 by Tsur, Amir Cohen and David Schapiro, Planck Re poses its technology as a more efficient and accurate alternative to the lengthy risk assessment questionnaire insurers ask clients to fill out. Its platform crawls the internet for publicly available data, including images, text, videos, social media profiles and public records, to build profiles of SMBs seeking insurance coverage. Then it analyzes that data to help carriers figure out their potential risk.
Before launching Planck Re, Tsur and Cohen founded Bluetail, a data mining startup that was acquired by Salesforce in 2012, where it served as the base technology for Salesforce Einstein. Schapiro was previously CEO of financial analytics company Earnix.
There are already a handful of startups, including SoftBank-backed Lemonade, Trōv, Cover, Hippo and Swyfft, that use algorithms to make picking and buying insurance policies easier for consumers, but AI-based underwriting is still a nascent category. One example is Flyreel, which focuses on underwriting property insurance and recently signed a deal with Microsoft to accelerate its go-to-market strategy.
Tsur says Planck Re is developing more dedicated algorithms to meet the evolving needs of insurance providers. For example, many underwriters now want to know if clients in photography use aerial imaging equipment, so Planck Re’s imaging process capabilities automatically check images for that information.
He adds that being able to automate underwriting enables carriers to find new distribution channels, including allowing customers to apply for insurance online without needing to fill out any forms. Planck Re also continues to monitor and underwrite policies, which means if a customer’s risk profile changes, insurers can react quickly.
In a statement, Arbor Ventures vice president and head of Israel Lior Simon said, “We are excited to partner with Planck Re and the driven, entrepreneurial team. Insurance companies are thirsty for actionable data, to assess risk, gain real time insights and enhance customer understanding. Planck Re aims to empower them through a streamlined digital approach, which we believe will truly alter the insurance industry.”
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Airbnb tests earlier payouts for hosts
Airbnb is testing a new payments feature for hosts, letting them get partially paid out at the time of booking.
This feature isn’t rolling out to everyone just yet, as Airbnb says that this is just a preliminary test to gauge interest. Invited hosts simply opt in to payout splitting to check out the feature.
Here’s how it works:
Normally, Airbnb hosts are paid 24 hours after their guest’s scheduled check-in time. With the new payouts test, hosts who have been invited and opt in will receive 50 percent of their cash three days after the guest has booked their stay, and the other half will be received 24 hours after check-in time.
For their trouble, Airbnb is taking a 1 percent fee of the booking subtotal for early payouts.
As per usual, hosts can opt out of early payouts at any time by making the change in their Payout Preferences.
If a booking is cancelled after an early payout has been received, the amount will be deducted from the host’s next booking.
This comes on the heels of Airbnb’s announcement in February to add new tiers and types of lodging to the platform, including boutique hotels and B&Bs. Airbnb classifies hosts with more than six listings on the platform as Professional Hosts, and early payouts are one way that Airbnb can help these hosts grow their business.
However, in certain housing-constrained markets like NYC, professional hosts aren’t necessarily welcome. In May, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer released a report saying that Airbnb’s presence in NYC is driving up the cost of rent for full-time residents. The company and the Comptroller’s office went back and forth over the veracity of the report, but NYC isn’t the only market worried about the folks who make Airbnb their full-time job.
In 2017, the WSJ reported on a study surveying 100 of the largest metro areas in the U.S. that found that a 10 percent increase in Airbnb listings leads to a 0.39 percent increase in rent and a 0.64 percent increase in housing prices. That may sound small, but rental prices typically climbed by 2.2 percent per year without Airbnb, according to one of the survey’s authors. So Airbnb is accelerating the rate at which rental prices rise.
This very argument and the ensuing spats have led Airbnb to cut SF listings (almost in half) following the city’s kick-off of new short-term rental laws. And new, stricter laws may be coming to NYC.
Airbnb says that it works with its communities to stay on the right side of the law, but that professionally managed properties are integral in markets where tourism is a huge part of the economy.
“For decades, vacation rentals and professionally managed properties have been the backbone of the economy in vacation destinations like beach and ski towns and we welcome these types of listings in these types of communities,” said an Airbnb spokesperson. “Trials like these are one way we work to support our community. In some places, usually urban destinations, there can be rules around hosting multiple listings. We always want Airbnb to be a positive force in local communities and we make it clear to hosts that they need to follow these rules.”
The payouts test is geared toward professional hosts, but is being spread via an invite basis to both pro hosts and regular hosts.
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Airwallex raises $80M for its international payment service for businesses
Airwallex, a three-year-old fintech startup focused on international payments for SMEs and businesses, is putting itself on the map after it raised an $80 million Series B round.
Based out of Melbourne, but with six offices in Asia and other parts of the world, Airwallex’s new funding round is the second-largest financing deal for an Australian startup in history. The round was led by existing investors Tencent, the $500 billion Chinese internet giant, and Sequoia China. Other participants included China’s Hillhouse, Horizons Ventures — the fund from Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-Shing — Indonesia-based Central Capital Ventura (BCA) and Australia’s Square Peg, a firm from Paul Bassat, who took recruitment firm Seek to IPO and is one of Australia’s highest-profile founders.
The financing takes Airwallex to $102 million raised. Tencent led a $13 million Series A in May 2017, while Square Peg added $6 million more via a Series A+ in December. Mastercard is also a backer; the finance giant uses Airwallex to handle its “Send” product, while Tencent uses the service to power an overseas remittance service for its WeChat app.
Airwallex handles cross-border transactions for companies that do business in multiple countries using international currencies. So it’s not unlike a TransferWise-style service for SMEs that lack the capital to develop a sophisticated (and expensive) international banking system of their own.
The service uses wholesale FX rates to route overseas payments back to a client’s domestic bank and is capable of processing “thousands of transactions per second,” according to the company. A use case example might include helping a China-based seller return money earned in the U.S. or Europe via Amazon or other e-commerce services, or route sales revenue back directly from their own website.
Airwallex CEO Jack Zhang (far right) onstage at TechCrunch Shenzhen in 2017
China is a key market for Airwallex — which was started by four Australian-Chinese founders — as well as the wider Asian region, and in particular Australia, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. With this new capital, Airwallex co-founder and CEO Jack Zhang said the company will increase its focus on Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, whilst also extending its business in Europe (where it has a London-based office) and pushing into North America.
Product R&D is shared across Melbourne and Shanghai, while Hong Kong accounts for business development, compliance and more, Zhang explained. However, Airwallex’s locations in London and San Francisco are likely to account for most of the upcoming headcount growth planned following this funding. Right now, Airwallex has around 100 staff, according to Zhang.
The company is also aiming to expand its product range.
The firm is in the process of applying for a virtual banking license in Hong Kong, a third-party payment license in mainland China and a cross-border Chinese yuan license. One goal, Zhang revealed, is to offer working capital loans to SMEs to help them scale their businesses to the next level. Airwallex is working with an undisclosed partner to underwrite deals in the future. Zhang explained that the company sees a gap in the market since banks don’t have access to critical data on clients for loan assessments.
More generally, he’s bullish for the future, despite Brexit and the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.
“The trade war gives the Chinese yuan a lot of vitality, and we’ve seen more demand in the market. China’s belt road initiative has really taken off, too, and we’re seeing the impact in many, many of our payment corridors,” he explained. “Business has been booming, especially as traditional offline SMEs start to move online and go from domestic to global.”
“We want to be the backbone to support these new opportunities for businesses,” Zhang added.
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MeetFrank nets $1.1M for its passive job matching chatbot
MeetFrank, aka a ‘secret’ recruitment app that uses machine learning plus a chatbot wrapper to take the strain out of passive job hunting and talent-to-vacancy matching, has closed a €1 million (~$1.1M) seed funding round to fuel market expansion in Europe.
Hummingbird VC, Karma VC, and Change Ventures are the investors.
The Estonian startup was only founded last September but says it has ~125,000 active users in its first markets: Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, plus its most recent market addition, Germany, an expansion this seed has financed.
Around 2,000 companies are using the app to try to attract talent. In Germany employers on board with MeetFrank include Daimler, Eon, Delivery Hero, SumUp, Blinkist, High Mobility and MyTaxi.
“The average company profile we have at the moment is a start-up/scale-up company that develops their product in-house,” says co-founder Kaarel Holm.
“At the moment we are mainly focused on technology-related companies — so positions you can find from average start-up or a scale-up,” he tells TechCrunch. “Around 50% of the position are engineering and other 50% is marketing, sales, customer support, legal, data science, product/project management etc.”
He names TransferWise, Taxify, Testlio, Smartly and High-Mobility as other early customers.
Here’s how MeetFrank works on the talent side: The person downloads the app and goes through a relatively quick onboarding chat with ‘Frank’ (the emoji-loving chatbot) where they are asked to specify their skills and experience — choosing from pre-set lists, rather than needing to type — plus to state their current job title and salary.
So while MeetFrank’s target is passive job seekers, these people do still need to actively download the app and input some data.
Hence the chatbot having a strong emoji + GIF game to convince talent that a little upfront effort will go a long way…
The bot also asks what would convince them to switch jobs — offering options to choose from such as a higher salary, more flexible or remote working, relocation, a startup culture and so on.
The anonymous aspect comes in because there’s no requirement for users to provide their real name or any other identifying personal information in order to get matches with potential positions.
Talent is therefore assessed on its merits, at least at this stage of the job hunt.
And while people are asked up front to specify their current salary, which you might think puts them at a potential disadvantage during any pay negotiations, Holm says the aim of MeetFrank’s platform is also to encourage greater openness from employers and steer away from traditional pay negotiation situations.
“We use salary as one datapoint for matching and we try to make sure that offers we make to the user are match their preferences. In lot of cases the salary is the main deal breaker and we would like to present the information as early as possible,” he explains. “Companies on the other side of the marketplace disclose their salary for the users as well — in that case we can avoid the negotiating disadvantage.”
“The policy of MeetFrank platform is that companies have to be extremely open about the position they are trying to fill — this also includes the salary information,” he adds.
Employers are not at all anonymous on the platform. On the contrary, they have to write detailed job advertisements — including levels of pay for advertised roles.
And a pay range will be disclosed to applicants that the app deems potentially suitable — i.e. after its matching process — by displaying a percentage of how much more they could earn above their current salary.
So employers need to be comfortable showing their hand to people who may just be curious what’s out there.
For employers, MeetFrank takes over the ad placement process — using its machine learning to algorithmically match potential candidates to positions. So its proposition is automatic pre-selection across “thousands” of potential job applicants.
And also the possibility of reaching talent which might otherwise not realize that company is hiring. Or think about working for a certain brand.
The app is mainly focused on a “passive talent pool” — aka “currently or recently employed talent that is open for offers”, as Holm puts it. So it’s certainly cherrypicking easier types of jobs to match and fill.
“Entry level jobs is bit out of reach for us at the moment but we will launch a beta project with couple of universities in the autumn this year,” he adds when we ask if the app is open to matching people who don’t currently have a job or are looking for a first job.
Holm says MeetFrank is currently showing 50% MRR growth. It’s already out of the pre-revenue phase — so is charging employers to advertise (the service remains free for the talent side).
The main monetization model is a daily subscription, with employers being charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. Holm says the price per day for employers is €9, and MeetFrank lets them cancel at any time — with no minimum time commitment required to sign up.
“We believe that the new-aged classifieds will only monetize on that kind of on-demand model and should only pay when they find us useful. This also lowers the barrier of entry to most of the start-ups and allows them to vet the market and get visibility with low budgets,” he adds.
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All charges against ex-Vungle CEO Zain Jaffer, including lewd act on a child, dismissed by judge
All charges against former Vungle CEO Zain Jaffer, including sexual abuse of a child, have been dropped. According to a statement from Jaffer’s representatives, San Mateo County Judge Stephanie Garratt dismissed the charges today. Jaffer was arrested last October and charged with several serious offenses, including a lewd act on one of his children, child abuse and battery on a police officer.
The dismissal is confirmed by San Mateo County Superior Court’s online records. The case (number 17NF012415A) had been scheduled to go to jury trial in late August.
Jaffer, whose full name is Zainali Jaffer, said in a statement that:
Being wrongfully accused of these crimes has been a terrible experience, which has had a deep and lasting impact on my family and the employees of my business. Those closest to me knew I was innocent and were confident that all of the charges against me would eventually be dismissed. I want to thank the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office for carefully reviewing and considering all of the information and evidence in this case and dropping all the charges. I am also incredibly grateful for the continued and unwavering support of my wife and family, and look forward to spending some quality time with them.
Vungle, the fast-rising mobile ad startup Jaffer co-founded in 2011, removed him from the company immediately after they learned about the charges in October. TechCrunch has contacted Vungle and the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office for comment.
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Anthony Levandowski is back with a new self-driving startup, called Kache.ai
This is a comeback story. Or at least the first chapter to one.
Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, is back. And he is connected to an autonomous trucking company that is still in stealth mode, TechCrunch has learned.
The company, called Kache.ai (pronounced like cache), has kept a low profile since paperwork registering it as a corporation was first filed with the California Secretary of State nearly seven months ago. And at first glance, there’s no indication that Levandowski is even tied to the company.
Corporation documents, filed with the state, list a “Thomas S. Lee Jr.” as its president. A search on LinkedIn showed Lee, a software developer whose previous experience includes co-founding two San Diego-based companies, as president of Kache.ai. Since reaching out to Kache.ai, all references of the company have been removed from LinkedIn.
However, the address listed on the corporation’s state filing tells a different story. Kache.ai’s documents filed with the state lists an address in St. Helena, Calif. The property is owned by Levandowski’s father and stepmother, according to property tax and title records reviewed by TechCrunch. Levandowski’s stepmother Suzanna Musick was CEO of another one of Levandowski’s startups, called 510 Systems.
The company didn’t return calls for comment. However, other unnamed sources within the global autonomous vehicle ecosystem confirmed to TechCrunch that Levandowski is connected to the company.
Little is known about Kache.ai. The word “Kǎchē” in Chinese means truck, which could signal a connection to China. Although TechCrunch was not able to independently verify if Kache.ai has any outside partners or backers yet.
The company’s website, which at one point listed an email contact for Lee and described its mission, is now blank except for a single image of a jagged mountain ridge. TechCrunch was able to review and capture screenshots of the website prior to the changes, one of which is shown above. At that time, the Kache.ai website said the company was working on “the next generation of autonomous vehicle technology for the commercial trucking industry.” The employment opportunities section of the now erased website once said:
We’re developing the solution for the next level of on-the-road self-driving trucks. Our development philosophy is based on a fast moving, very aggressive agile team approach and we’re seeking both software and hardware engineers that thrive in such an environment.
It appears the company is hiring at every level, from mapping and database experts to people with robotics and simulation skills. The website also noted that the company is looking for software engineers with experience in convolutional neural networks as well as computer vision and machine learning algorithms.
The website said Kache.ai is located in the San Francisco area.
A not so unlikely return
To outsiders, Levandowski’s return to the autonomous vehicle stage might have seemed improbable just a year ago. To former colleagues and others who know him, it was inevitable. However, outside a few vague remarks that Levandowski was “working on something,” his return (until now) was mostly based on rumor and speculation.
Levandowski is part of the brain trust of autonomous vehicle technology that for years was largely confined to academic research.
That began to change on March 13, 2004 when 15 teams brought their autonomous vehicles to the desert outside of Barstow, Calif. They were there to compete in the Grand Challenge, a 142-mile race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to encourage development of autonomous vehicle technology. Levandowski’s “blue team” had the distinction of being the only one to bring a two-wheeled vehicle, an autonomous motorcycle they called Ghostrider. The vehicle is now at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
And while not a single team completed the course, it prompted DARPA to hold two more autonomous vehicle challenges. The endeavor fueled the interest and passion of a few dozen people who would later go on to lead Google’s self-driving project, head AV R&D efforts at large companies or look for ways to move the autonomous vehicle needle forward. Levandowski was one of them.
In 2007, Levandowski joined Google, where he was one of the principal architects of Google Street View. The engineer had other projects too, notably a startup called 510 Systems that made and sold sensor systems to his employer, Google. 510 Systems was a pioneer of using light ranging and detection systems known as LiDAR to make maps. Google quietly bought 510 Systems and another one of his startups, Anthony’s Robots, in 2011.
(Photo: ANGELO MERENDINO/AFP/Getty Images)
A meteoric rise and fall
After nearly nine years at Google, Levandowski left the company with fellow Google employee Lior Ron. The pair founded Ottomotto, which later became Otto, along with Don Burnette and Claire Delaunay.
The timing couldn’t have been better. The race to deploy autonomous vehicles had heated up, creating a frenzied winner-takes-all environment. Competition between companies to attract talent pushed up salaries and incentives. For those who had been on the ground floor at Google’s self-driving project and other high-profile startups and academic positions, the world was theirs for the taking. The venture capital community didn’t just take note; they poured money into the effort. Large automakers and Tier 1 suppliers looking for an edge started snapping up startups brimming with self-driving technology talent.
Uber’s purchase of Otto for an eye-popping $680 million in August 2016 — just months after its founding — was just one example of the feeding frenzy. As part of the acquisition, Levandowski became head of Uber’s self-driving car research. (Documents filed as part of the lawsuit between Waymo and Uber suggest the pay out might have been as low as $220 million.)
But the buzz around the size of the Otto deal would soon be replaced with a different, more unwelcoming kind of attention.
Nine months after the acquisition, Uber was embroiled in a trade secrets lawsuit with Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet. And Levandowski was out of a job.
The lawsuit, filed against self-driving truck startup Otto and its parent company Uber in February 2017, alleged patent infringement and stealing trade secrets. The lawsuit made a number of allegations specifically against Levandowski, including that he downloaded more than 14,000 confidential and proprietary files shortly before his resignation. Waymo contended that Otto and Uber were using key parts of its self-driving technology, specifically related to its light detection and ranging radar. This technology, known in the industry as LiDAR, measures distance using laser light to generate highly accurate 3D maps of the world around the car.
The case went to trial in February 2018. After days of titillating testimony, including from former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, the two parties reached a settlement agreement. Uber agreed to not incorporate Waymo’s confidential information into their hardware and software. Uber also agreed to pay a financial settlement that includes 0.34 percent of Uber equity, per its Series G-1 round $72 billion valuation. In other words, Waymo got about $244.8 million in Uber equity.
Six weeks later, Uber would be grappling with the tragic fatal accident involving one of its self-driving test vehicles in Tempe, Ariz.
The other three Otto founders have all left Uber, as well. Burnette, the last one to depart, founded an autonomous vehicle company in April called Kodiak Robotics with Paz Eshel, who formerly worked at Battery Ventures.
Kache.ai next chapter
Levandowski’s return will likely raise questions, and possibly even anger, among people within Uber and Waymo. However, it’s unclear if Kache.ai will even use LiDAR, the sensing technology at the heart of the trade secrets lawsuit and one of Levandowski’s talents.
Some autonomous trucking startups have avoided LiDAR except for use in mapping because they argue that the sensors aren’t practical on a heavy-duty autonomous truck traveling on highways at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour. Instead, autonomous trucking companies like TuSimple use multiple cameras, which have better resolution. If Kache.ai bypasses LiDAR — which at this point is unclear — it could help alleviate IP concerns and attract investors.
For now, the beginning of Kache.ai’s story is tied to Levandowski’s past, which is marked by engineering prowess and ingenuity as well as legal and ethical missteps. The remaining chapters will reveal whether the unique value prop of what Kache.ai is developing is strong enough to render all of that moot.
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Original Stitch’s new Bodygram will measure your body
After years of teasing, Original Stitch has officially launched their Bodygram service and will be rolling it out this summer. The system can scan your body based on front and side photos and will create custom shirts with your precise measurements.
“Bodygram gives you full body measurements as accurate as taken by professional tailors from just two photos on your phone. Simply take a front photo and a side photo and upload to our cloud and you will receive a push notification within minutes when your Bodygram sizing report is ready,” said CEO Jin Koh. “In the sizing report you will find your full body measurements including neck, sleeve, shoulder, chest, waist, hip, etc. Bodygram is capable of producing sizing result within 99 percent accuracy compared to professional human tailors.”
The technology is a clever solution to the biggest problem in custom clothing: fit. While it’s great to find a service that will tailor your clothing based on your measurements, often these measurements are slightly off and can affect the cut of the shirt or pants. Right now, Koh said, his team offers free returns if the custom shirts don’t fit.
Further, the technology is brand new and avoids many of the pitfalls of the original body-scanning tech. For example, Bodygram doesn’t require you to get into a Spandex onesie like most systems do and it can capture 40 measurements with only two full-body photos.
“Bodygram is the first sizing technology that works on your phone capable of giving you highly accurate sizing result from just two photos with you wearing normal clothing on any background,” said Koh. “Legacy technologies on the market today require you to wear a very tight-fitting spandex suit, take 360 photos of you and require a plain background to work. Other technologies give you accuracy with five inches deviation in accuracy while Bodygram is the first technology to give you sub-one-inch accuracy. We are the first to use both computer vision and machine learning techniques to solve the problem of predicting your body shape underneath the clothes. Once we predicted your body shape we wrote our proprietary algorithm to calculate the circumferences and the length for each part of the body.”
Koh hopes the technology will reduce returns.
“It’s not uncommon to see clothing return rates reaching in the 40-50 percent range,” he said. “Apparel clothing sales is among the lowest penetration in online shopping.”
The system also can be used to measure your body over time in order to collect health and weight data as well as help other manufacturers produce products that fit you perfectly. The app will launch this summer on Android and iOS. The company will be licensing the technology to other providers that will be able to create custom fits based on just a few side and front photos. Sales at the company grew 175 percent this year and they now have 350,000 buyers that are already creating custom shirts.
A number of competitors are in this interesting space, most notably ShapeScale, a company that appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt and promised a full body scan using a robotic scale. This, however, is the first commercial use of standard photos to measure your appendages and thorax and it’s an impressive step forward in the world of custom clothing.
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OnePlus 6 Red goes on sale July 10
Folks riding the OnePlus bandwagon will be pleased to learn that the phone maker today introduced a red version of the OnePlus 6.
The company is calling the phone the OnePlus 6 Red, and the new model follows on the success of the OnePlus 5T Lava Red.
Here’s what OnePlus CEO Pete Lau had to say in a statement:
Deciding on this color was not without its challenges. We see individual colors as a way to express certain feelings or ideas. To us, red exudes enthusiasm and personality. It also represents an inner confidence and courage. There is a kind of power in red, which the OnePlus logo has always tried to articulate. We hope you feel similarly empowered when you hold the OnePlus 6 Red this summer.
The OnePlus 6 debuted in May with a starting price of $529. Specs include a 6.28-inch display at a 19:9 aspect ratio, a Snapdragon 845 chip, 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage and Oxygen OS on the front end.
OnePlus has impressed with its ability to remain competitive in a landscape where Apple and Samsung reign supreme. Even HTC, the old king of the smartphone castle, has today announced that it’s cutting 1,500 jobs.
The OnePlus 6 Red will be available starting July 10, with sales in India beginning on July 16. The price will be the same as other OnePlus 6 variants.
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