“Credit score, but for startup teams.”

That’s how CB Insights markets Management Mosaic, its new prediction algorithm for scoring early-stage founders and management teams, to help the company’s roster of 1,000+ clients, including Cisco, Salesforce, and Sequoia, expedite investment, purchasing, and M&A decisions.

How it works: The algorithm’s basic premise is simple: Input a startup team’s background (résumé milestones and other criteria), and out comes a prediction of their “success” likelihood—implying how good an investment the individuals themselves might make.

Management Mosaic’s other stated goal is to help corporate decision-makers—think: VCs, executives, and company boards—avoid “subjective vetting,” or applying human biases to investment decisions.

“Our aim is to make the assessment of teams infinitely more efficient and objective,” Anand Sanwal, CB Insights’ cofounder and CEO, told us.

But, but, but…When Emerging Tech Brew spoke with AI activists, public-interest technologists, and some in the venture capital world, many shared a similar concern about the algorithm: Much like the credit scores referenced in the product’s pitch, which have been shown to perpetuate economic inequality and limit opportunities for communities of color, experts worry the CB Insights tool could do the same in exacerbating existing biases and widening the wealth gap for marginalized groups.

• The algorithm is trained on so-called signals of success, according to the company—from a founder’s educational institution to their “network quality.” But because much of the data is historical, it could be prone to bias.
• For example, just 1% of venture-backed startup founders are Black—and for Black women specifically, it’s less than 1%.

“By relying on past historical datasets that we know are deeply discriminatory to inform people about where they should invest, they risk automating already discriminatory investment patterns,” said Sasha Costanza-Chock, director of research and design for the Algorithmic Justice League, an advocacy organization founded in 2016.

Zoom out: For Gabe Kleinman, who leads portfolio services and marketing at Obvious Ventures, a San Francisco–based VC firm, transparency is important for any sort of algorithmic decision-making, including training data and the attributes it weights most heavily.

“There are a number of examples of well-intended products that have been built with the intention of removing human bias from a number of processes...and we have often seen how even the best-intended products can sometimes have the opposite effect,” Kleinman said. “Everyone should ask: ‘What could possibly go wrong?’”

Click here to read the whole story.—HF

The first uptick in online searches for “the metaverse” happened last spring. Then, in October, when Facebook announced its rebrand, the term spiked 25x in popularity.

Since then, the metaverse has remained on people’s lips—and in venture capitalists’ portfolios. In recent years, especially in the pandemic era, companies will try nearly anything to mimic in-person interaction, and connecting with others in a virtual world promises to recoup more losses than a video chat or phone call could. One key problem: Today’s technology hasn’t quite caught up yet.

• “For what we imagined in Snow Crash, what we imagined in Ready Player One, for those experiences to be delivered, the computational infrastructure that is needed is 1,000 times more than what we currently have,” Raja Koduri, head of Intel’s Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group, told Quartz this week.

One example...

A working metaverse’s first priority is transmitting information quickly and reliably, which means that 5G’s promise of low latency is the metaverse’s best friend. Since human communication is about so much more than words alone—like micro-expressions, tone, etc.—that speed of transmission is just as important in the metaverse as it is in consumer gaming.

• One startup working on this from a gaming perspective is Subspace, which claims it can reduce latency by 80%. VentureBeat describes its product as a “ghost internet,” or a private server network that allows users around the world to bypass the current internet’s blockages and access “battle royale”-style games with 100+ players connected in real time.

Looking ahead: The value of the metaverse market may top $783 billion in 2024, compared to ~$478 billion in 2020, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Click here to learn more about metaverse infrastructure.—HF

Stat: Rivian had 71,000 preorders for its electric trucks and SUVs, as of Dec. 15. The company, which went public in November, reported its earnings for the first time yesterday, revealing $1.2 billion in losses and plans to build a $5 billion EV and battery plant in Georgia.

Quote: “Our overall goal is to turn the world into a game board—to turn the world itself into a more magical, fun place.”—John Hanke, CEO of Pokémon Go maker Niantic, on the AR (not VR) metaverse

Read: VR doesn’t provide an escape from sexual harassment.

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

• Boston Dynamics released a new robot dance video, in which its robots do the Jerk.
• Facebook’s parent company will pay $60 million to buy “Meta” naming rights from a bank.
• Former-First Lady Melania Trump is releasing an NFT.
• Harley-Davidson’s electric motorcycle division will go public via a SPAC deal valued at $1.7 billion.

Today marks the 118th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first powered flights in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Orville and Wilbur took to the air four times that day, hovering about 20 feet above the beach. The longest flight lasted just 59 seconds.

• Earlier this year, a piece of the Wright Brothers’ first airplane landed on Mars aboard NASA’s Perseverance Rover.

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

• Thousands of diesel school buses could get a second life as electric ones
• A lithium shortage is coming, and automakers might be unprepared
• Roblox’s metaverse is already here, and it’s wildly popular