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Thursday, October 20, 2022

Welcome to an extra-special TechCrunch Disrupt edition of the Daily Crunch. It’s been three long years but, the TechCrunch team finally descended on San Francisco along with the tech industry’s brightest minds to discuss all things, well, tech. Not only that, 20 startups pitched their companies as part of Startup Battlefield and the finalists were announced last night. Read on for some Disrupt highlights and stay glued to your inbox (or better yet, go watch on TechCrunch dot com) to find out who the Battlefield winner will be!

Disrupt roundup

Mary Ann covered Serena Ventures’ panel and wrote about how Serena Williams brings her killer instinct to the world of investing.
Kevin Hart and his HartBeat Ventures partner Robert Roman discussed taking the firm’s first outside investment from JPMorgan. Aisha has more.
Rivian’s RJ Scaringe says the future of his electric vehicle company involves humans rather than machines, Rebecca reports.
Activision Blizzard’s Johanna Faries was in the hot seat discussing the company’s emerging “anti-tox” strategy, as reported by Taylor. Kyle wrote about Reddit, whose chief product officer, Pali Bhat, told the crowd that over 3 million of its users have tapped into its Vault blockchain wallet to create over 3 million crypto wallets to date. Meanwhile, you don’t want to miss Ron’s article on Chief’s co-founders, who discussed the members-only club and why they hate the term “girl boss.”
Mary Ann spoke with Rippling founder Parker Conrad, and here is a look at how the company, which just got into the spend management space, is taking over global payroll.
Catch up with Ingrid’s report on the panel featuring OnlyFans CEO Ami Gan, who said that even though the company is working toward an all-creator platform, adult content will continue to be a part of the site.
Solana’s co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko was onstage yesterday, and Jacquelyn wrote about how he sees the company’s web3 phone as a “developer play” to target crypto audience.
Rebecca has two takes on Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe’s interview from yesterday. One is on how the company is managing recalled vehicles and one covers its hire of a former Waymo executive for a new autonomy and artificial intelligence role.
Check out some bot madness in Brian’s Actuator newsletter. He goes on the hunt for hardware and robotics goodness at Disrupt, and here is the result.
And here are some video links if you want to catch up on our fabulous interviews with Serena Williams and Kevin Hart.

Image Credits: Haje Kamps / TechCrunch

Framing Innovation: Explore how AT&T’s network powers innovation

The Battlefield 20

In case you need a refresher, here are the 20 companies that pitched onstage this week.

NXgenPort: A Saint Paul, Minnesota-based startup that’s looking to remotely monitor cancer patients in between doctor visits using a port catheter.

Omneky: Leverages OpenAI’s DALLE-2 and GPT-3 models to generate visuals and text that can be used in ads for social platforms.

Circular Genomics: Claims its new form of genetic testing can identify which medications will work for a patient in a fraction of that time.

Anthill: Connects frontline workers to company resources through text messaging.

AppMap: Was built on the simple idea that developers should be able to see the behavior of software as they write it so they can prevent problems when the software runs.

Mother Honestly: New commerce offering aims to give employees more freedom when it comes to caregiving spending.

Digest.ai: Beyond flashcards to create an AI dialogue assistant that we can all carry around on our phones.

Swap Robotics: Paving the way for electric solar vegetation cuts and sidewalk snow plowing.

Hormona: Hopes to encourage people with periods to do just that — add hormone-monitoring to their quantified health mix.

Staax: Thinks peer-to-peer payments can onboard a new generation of stock investors.

Ally Robotics: The company has developed a combination hardware and software solution designed to make it easier to deploy these automated solutions for those without coding/robotics experience.

Nat4bio: Makes food-grade coating to protect fruit from microscopic threat.

Minerva Lithium: Uses absorbent material to change the way we extract lithium.

Reverion: Has developed a way to get more electricity out of biogas and existing fuel-cell technology.

Incooling: Is building servers that use liquid to cool down.

Intropic Materials: Helps single-use plastics decompose from the inside out.

BetterData: BetterData taps the blockchain to help create better synthetic data.

Labby: Wants to make milk healthier and cows happier with better sensors.

Advanced Ionics: Is striving to drive down the price of green hydrogen by slashing how much electricity is needed for electrolysis by as much as 50%.

Kayhan Space: Kayhan Space is making orbit safer with timely, automatic collision warnings for satellites.

And the finalists are ….

After the pitching, TechCrunch editors and judges winnowed the list down to five companies (Advanced Ionics, AppMap, Intropic Materials, Minerva Lithium and Swap Robotics). Later today, one of them will be crowned the Battlefield winner and take home the Battlefield Cup and $100,000. Hey now.