18 October, 2024
Boeing's Wisk Aero buys Verocel to boost software safety for its self-flying eVTOL
Wisk Aero, a subsidiary of Boeing, has acquired Verocel, a software verification and validation company that’s been serving the aerospace industry for 25 years.
Wisk has an autonomous-first approach to electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The company’s Generation 6 aircraft, slated to begin airborne tests this year, is designed to be supervised by humans, but not physically flown by them.
That means, perhaps more than other companies building eVTOL vehicles, Wisk needs to ensure its software is up to snuff.
“We have a tremendous amount of high-integrity software all over the airplane and on the ground that needs to be verified,” Brian Yutko, CEO of Wisk Aero, told TechCrunch. It’s important to ensure high-integrity software runs as it’s supposed to, because any failure can cause serious damage, with possible life-threatening consequences. “It needs to be validated, and it’s just a big scope of work. So the Verocel team is going to contribute expertise to make sure that all of the software that we’re building for the airplane meets the standards that we expect them to meet.”
Wisk will absorb the Verocel team, numbering about 60 people, who bring deep expertise in DO-178C, a standard that provides guidelines for developing safety-critical software for airborne systems.
DO-178C certification is one element of the Federal Aviation Administration’s type certification process, which certifies that an aircraft has met all design and safety standards. Wisk said Verocel’s expertise can not only help the company certify its Gen 6 aircraft, it will also help with future software development at Boeing.
To make the certification process easier, Verocel offers a toolset called VeroTrace that helps track and manage the life cycle of software development and verification efforts all the way through to regulatory approval.
Neither Wisk nor Verocel shared the financial terms of the deal.
The deal is reminiscent of competitor Joby Aviation’s 2022 acquisition of Avionyx, an aerospace software engineering firm. In both their acquisitions, Wisk and Joby valued becoming more vertically integrated while also bringing on the necessary expertise to test and validate their software to accelerate the path toward federal certification.
Verifying and validating all of Wisk’s software is one piece of building and operating an autonomous airplane safety, Yutko said, noting that Wisk aims to commercialize its self-flying eVTOLs by 2030.
The company is already working to set up the infrastructure to operate air taxis. In February, Wisk partnered with Sugar Land, a city close to Houston, to identify and assess a location at the city’s regional airport for the development of vertiport infrastructure for future air taxi operations. Earlier this month, Wisk established a memorandum of understanding with Houston airports to consider locations for vertiport infrastructure that could help serve the greater Houston area.
India's VerSe buys Valueleaf to boost digital marketing
VerSe Innovation, India’s content tech unicorn that owns local language news aggregator Dailyhunt, digital newsstand platform Magzter and short-video app Josh, has acquired digital marketing firm Valueleaf Group in a cash and equity deal. Valueleaf will help VerSe to bolster its presence in the Indian digital ad space and build a significant retargeting platform, countering the likes of Google, which also backs the startup, and local contenders including InMobi.
Digital ad spending in India is growing as consumption across online platforms expands in the world’s most populous country. India is also the second-biggest smartphone market worldwide after China and has over 50% of its population actively using the internet. Digital advertising in the country will outpace traditional advertising by capturing a 60% share by the financial year 2028, according to market consultancy firm Redseer. The digital ad market globally is also moving toward programmatic performance marketing, as it allows better dollar value to advertisers.
However, India doesn’t have many digital ad platforms to serve the growing demand. Google has so far been the first choice for many businesses; the search giant offers its digital ad exchange alongside consumer destinations, including Google Search and YouTube. Similarly, the market has InMobi as a significant player offering both ad exchange and consumer destinations, alongside a list of smaller companies that don’t own consumer destinations but work as pipe players.
VerSe gets deeper into that market with Bengaluru-headquartered Valueleaf, which already serves customers in markets including India, the U.S. and UAE. The startup counts CPP Investments, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, Qatar Investment Authority and Goldman Sachs among its storied investors.
Financial terms of the buyout were not disclosed. However, VerSe co-founder Umang Bedi told TechCrunch that the deal was done based on Valueleaf’s forecast of hitting $100 million in revenue and 10% EBITDA this year.
“What we found with Valueleaf interestingly is that they were very strong in four core verticals: gaming, online commerce, banking and financial services and digital-native brands, which are largely the four verticals that spend 80% of all their ad dollar on performance marketing,” he said. “That was an added benefit that came to the table.”
The acquisition will help VerSe attract businesses looking to buy digital ads across different destinations. Valueleaf has targeted ads to more than 90% of Indian internet users: over 600 million people. It also has about 200 million to 300 million installers and downloaders and conversion data of about 60 million to 80 million online shoppers across categories, Bedi said.
The firm has also integrated with over 50,000 websites, 1,000-plus apps and all leading smartphone brands in the country. It offers vertical-specific solutions aimed at banking, financial services and insurance, as well as small and medium businesses.
Before Valueleaf, VerSe developed its in-house ad tech stack, which restricted serving ads specifically on its platforms, including Dailyhunt and Josh. It also introduced a brand-facing platform called NexVerse.ai in May to expand its ad tech platform to external brands. Valueleaf will help broaden that offering by adding thousands of supply-side integrations, Bedi said.
In 2013, Valueleaf was acquired by financial markets research company CapitalVia Global Research. Bedi did not share specific details on that deal but said the firm had never raised external capital.
In the financial year 2023, Valueleaf generated about $36 million (nearly 300 crores Indian rupees) in revenue at 5% EBITDA, Bedi told TechCrunch, adding that the firm is on its way to market a “very significant revenue growth” and EBITDA of about 6% this year. He also stated that Valueleaf exited its June month at an annual recurring revenue rate of $87 million (732 crores Indian rupees).
The latest acquisition comes just four months after VerSe acquired Apple News+ competitor Magzter.
VerSe’s revenue grew by 57% to $130 million in the financial year 2023, with its burn reduced by 34% to $172 million from $261 million in 2022. Without disclosing the latest numbers, Bedi said the startup saw a “massive double-digit growth on the top line, and burn has come down more than half to triple-digit crores” last year.
TechCrunch Minute: Yahoo buys Artifact news app from Instagram’s co-founders
News that Yahoo is buying Artifact stirred the technology watercooler yesterday. Artifact was an interesting app, employing AI to help its users find and consume more, and more targeted news. It had some devoted fans, but never reached the sort of scale that would have made it an attractive long-term project. So, the Instagram founders who built it decided to sunset the service.
Then TechCrunch’s parent company Yahoo decided to snap up its technology. The app itself isn’t long for the world, but all the same the deal is an echo of an older time when Yahoo was famous for buying smaller, mobile-focused companies.
Regardless of whether or not you were an Artifact user — I was for a time — that Yahoo is still feeling acquisitive under its current ownership structure matters. Artifact is hardly the only startup project in the market today that might be looking for a new home, after all.
Robot delivery firm Kiwibot buys Taipei chipmaker, citing US/China tensions
Bay Area/Colombia-based delivery robotics firm Kiwibot this week announced that it has acquired Auto Mobility Solutions. The Taipei firm produces chips specifically for the world of robotics and autonomous driving. Details of the transaction have not been disclosed. Kiwi founder and CEO Felipe Chávez Cortés does, however, tell TechCrunch that rising tensions between the U.S. and China are a key motivator for the purchase.
Kiwibot calls the deal a “significant milestone in both companies’ journeys toward innovation and safeguarding privacy in the robotics industry, particularly for intelligent robots sourced from China and deployed in the Western markets.
This is likely going to be an instructive model for many in the industry, in light of the Senate’s big push for ByteDance to sell its massively successful social media platform, TikTok. Prior to this, the U.S. government had set its sights on various Chinese tech giants, including Huawei and DJI.
Taiwan’s tenuous geopolitical situation, coupled with its vastly outsized share of the semiconductor market, has placed it at the center of the conflict. Some in the government have even gone so far as suggesting the United States bomb Taiwanese chip giant TSMC should the island nation be invaded by China. Control over the company’s facilities would give a country a near monopoly for certain chip verticals.
Smaller operations like Auto Mobility Solutions are less likely to be an immediate focus, though it’s worth pointing out that the company produces chips in both Taipei and Shenzhen, the latter of which is located in South China, now a 20-minute subway ride from Hong Kong.
In a statement tied to the news, Chávez Cortés cites cybersecurity concerns as a key motivator. “The acquisition of Auto is a game-changer for us, bringing a wealth of technological innovation and a strong patent portfolio that will significantly enhance our cybersecurity measures for AI-powered robotics,” he notes. “This move not only strengthens our position in the market but also connects the manufacturing expertise from Asia with the AI development in the West securely.”
Kiwibot says the deal will also help the UC Berkeley spinout establish a presence in Asia, owing to Auto’s footprint in Taiwan and China. Kiwi has thus far found its biggest successes on college campuses.