AVS

Signed, Sealed, Robo-Delivered

Cruise and Walmart have become self-driving pals. On Monday, the pals said they’ll launch a robo-delivery service early next year in Scottsdale, AZ. The streets of Arizona sure are getting crowded  with self-driving cars. 

How it works: A customer can place an online order for groceries or products from their nearest store. Electric, autonomous Cruise vehicles will take goods from store to doorstep, supervised by safety drivers. 

Fortune 500 fun 

You typically see startups or Big Tech talking up driverless vehicle deployments. This time around, it’s the buttoned-up household names of corporate America: Walmart, best known for its big-box superstores, and General Motors, a legacy automaker with majority ownership in Cruise. 

• While we’re here: Cruise recently received a license to test fully driverless cars on public roads in California. It plans to use it for its five vehicles in San Francisco. 

Walmart hasn’t put all its eggs in one tech provider basket. When it comes to futuristic transportation modalities….

• The retail giant has struck self-driving partnerships with Cruise, Nuro, Udelv, Ford, and Waymo. 
• On the aerial delivery front, it’s also running drone delivery pilots with multiple companies. In September, Walmart announced it was partnering with drone unicorn Zipline, and it’s also involved with Flytrex and DroneUp. 

Not all of Walmart’s emerging tech ventures pan out. The company recently nixed a partnership with a startup that provides shelf-scanning robots. 

*Obligatory Amazon comparison* 

Amazon is, obviously, skilled at rolling out robots and software that power its e-commerce business. Walmart is working on it. Both are also incubating new brick-and-mortar technologies, like autonomous checkout. 

Advantage Walmart: The retailer has thousands of stores and fulfilment centers across the U.S. They’d sure be fantastic hubs for last-mile delivery drone and self-driving networks. 

+ Stay tuned for more on e-commerce dropping soon from us. Hint: It’s an Emerging Tech Brew-Retail Brew collab.

TECH POLICY

TikTok on the Clock

Although it’s uncommon for Friday the 13th, TikTok cheated death last night. 

Yesterday was the deadline, issued by President Trump in August, for TikTok parent ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations...or be rendered inoperable nationwide. 

• The move—which prompted countless goodbye videos from the app’s top creators—would’ve banned app stores from offering TikTok, as well as cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud from web-hosting it. 

The latest: a dramatic turn in a months-long saga. The Commerce Department backed down yesterday, saying it would not enforce the order. For the moment, the world’s hottest algorithm is in the clear. 

TikTok may have been waiting with bated breath to learn its fate, but the team stayed busy working on new features in the meantime, including a global partnership with e-commerce platform Shopify, announced Oct. 27. 

• It started with ad tools that allow Shopify merchants to turn their products into in-feed video ads and will eventually lead to other in-app shopping features. 

Bottom line: Staving off the inevitable splinternet, one day at a time. 

SPONSORED BY REV

So You Think You Can Read Lips

Rev—the plucky startup that created the world’s most accurate speech-to-text tech and integrated it with Zoom—is holding a contest we can get behind.

Rev knows that not everyone can hear everything people say on Zoom calls—and because people are bad at lip reading, that results in a lot of poor communication. To prove their point, Rev created this goofy new take on a caption contest. 

You have to guess what their ridiculous character, Dr. Rev, is saying. And if you get close, you could win a $500 Amazon gift card or other prizes.

We simply can’t resist. Without further ado, here is Morning Brew’s official entry into the contest:

“I have some funky dance shoes, a scrumptious muffin, and a one way ticket on the Trans-Siberian railway for YOU.”

Think you can do better than us? Guess what Dr. Rev is saying here.

VC

Fundraising During Covid-19: new Unicorns Edition

Nowhere to be found in Silicon Valley: mermaids, dragons, centaurs. Everywhere you look: unicorns. 

In fact, 14 new ones joined the club in October—the second-highest monthly total so far in 2020, according to Crunchbase. 

• The amount of global VC funding in October—$23 billion—was up 3% from 2019. 

Inside the unicorn factory

No-code software: Unqork, an enterprise no-code platform based in New York, raised a $207 million Series C. 

ML-assisted auto sales: Tekion, a cloud-based automotive retail platform founded by Tesla’s former CIO, uses machine learning to connect vehicle manufacturers, dealers, and customers. It raised a $150 million Series C. 

AV simulation: Applied Intuition, which creates simulation software for developing and testing autonomous vehicles, raised a $125 million Series C. 

Wearables: Whoop, the startup behind a fitness wearable that monitors movement, sleep, and workouts, raised a $100 million Series E. 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: About 64% of leading consumer brands are beginning to invest in immersive tech for the retail experience, according to Accenture research. Think: AR, VR, and 360-degree product videos. 

Quote: “Commercialization for any AI-based company is very difficult, unless you get absorbed by a big corporate….DeepMind would have probably failed as a company because you wouldn’t be able to commercialize anything.” —Humayun Sheikh, a founding investor in DeepMind, in an interview with CNBC. 

Read: The Verge did a post-mortem on Quibi. 

SPONSORED BY MASTERWORKS

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Ring recalled 350,000 smart doorbells after some caught fire. 
• Facebook introduced “vanish mode”—i.e., disappearing chats—for Messenger 
• SMIC, the Chinese chipmaker, reported record-high revenue—plus supply delays due to U.S. sanctions. 
• Guido van Rossum, creator of Python, “unretired” to join Microsoft’s Developer Division. 
• Honda says it’s on track to mass-produce level 3 autonomous vehicles by the end of March 2021.
• China unveiled new anti-monopoly regulations for Big Tech. 

GOING PHISHING

Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt applied for citizenship in Cyprus. 
• Japanese researchers are experimenting with creating cyborg cockroaches. 
• Scientists tested whether delivery drones can more easily carry NY-style or deep dish pizza.
• Airplane pilots report a GPS “dark hole” over the Mediterranean. 

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For a reality check: Penn State scientists used data from vegetation, climate change, and ecological models to build a VR forest—with both present-day and 2050 versions. Here’s a video walkthrough. 

For your holiday wishlist: Mozilla released its annual buyer’s guide, rating the privacy and security of wireless headphones, smart speakers, and other popular connected products. 

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• Inside Apple’s first-ever chip for Mac 
• Healthcare AI’s data problem
• Bitcoin passes $15,000 

GOING PHISHING ANSWER

Though it’s an extremely important question, no such test has been done.