Daily Crunch - Anthony Levandowski sentenced in trade secrets case

Wednesday, August 05, 2020 • By Anthony Ha

The man at the center of the Uber-Waymo trade secrets case was sentenced to 18 months in prison, Samsung announces new Note devices and Instagram rolls out its TikTok competitor globally. Here’s your Daily Crunch for August 5, 2020.

The big story: Anthony Levandowski sentenced to 18 months

The former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo (a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet), has been sentenced to 18 months in prison on one count of stealing trade secrets.

“The last three and a half years have forced me to come to terms with what I did,” Levandowski said yesterday. “I want to take this time to apologize to my colleagues at Google for betraying their trust, and to my entire family for the price they have paid and will continue to pay for my actions.”

However, it sounds like Levandowski’s legal battle isn’t over. As part of his bankruptcy proceedings, he’s also filed a lawsuit that focuses on Uber’s agreement to indemnify him against legal action when it bought his self-driving truck company, Otto Trucking.

Category leading companies use unitQ to deliver better quality products and beat the competition

Here are all the things Samsung announced at today’s Unpacked event — As expected, the big news is the latest version of Samsung’s phablet line, with both models of the Note 20 getting 5G.

Instagram Reels launches globally in over 50 countries, including US — With Reels, Instagram’s goal is to capture the now potentially up-for-grabs TikTok audience in the U.S. — and to steal that audience away, even if TikTok remains.

Match confirms plans for Tinder Platinum, a new top-level subscription for power users, arriving Q4 — Match described the subscription as providing additional value beyond Tinder’s current paid plan, Tinder Gold, but noted the feature was still in the very early stages of testing.

Image Credits: Samsung

Startups, funding and venture capital

DoorDash launches a convenience store — Called DashMart, the virtual convenience store is available in eight cities throughout the United States.

ChargePoint raises $127M as electric vehicle adoption grows among fleet operators — The company might be best known for its public and semi-public charging spots that consumers use to charge their personal electric cars and SUVs.

Black Founders Matter, a fund focused on Black entrepreneurs, makes first investment — The fund made its first investment in a company called A Kids Book About.

Startups, funding and venture capital image

Image Credits: Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

The story behind Rent the Runway’s first check — When Rent the Runway co-founders Jennifer Fleiss and Jennifer Hyman got their first term sheet, it had an exploding clause in it: If they didn’t sign the offer in 24 hours, they would lose the deal.

Go public now while software valuations make no sense — Alex Wilhelm makes the case that software valuations are currently bonkers.

Funding in an uncertain market: using venture debt to bridge the gap — A lot of tech companies are struggling to raise capital just when they need it most.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch image

Image Credits: Rent The Runway

Everything else

Watch SpaceX’s stunning Starship prototype ‘hop’ test flight and landing — SpaceX achieved a big win in its Starship spacecraft development program on Tuesday evening.

A new technique can detect newer 4G ‘stingray’ cell phone snooping — Cell site simulators, known as “stingrays,” impersonate cell towers and can capture information about any phone in their range.