As interest in climate-tech grows, so are the mega war chests.
Growth equity and buyout investor TPG announced earlier this week that it had raised $5.4 billion to invest in climate solutions, while Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management followed up Tuesday by raising $7 billion upon the first close of its fund aimed at companies seeking to reach carbon neutrality.
Design and verification of automotive SoCs that utilize the emerging CAN XL and TSN Ethernet 1/10G networking and control protocols integrate CAST’s validated design IP for both standards with Avery’s verification IP (VIP) that streamlines the design and verification process to an ensure higher quality designs as well as compliance with the standards. The new solutions include the CAN XL and TSN Ethernet design IP from CAST and the corresponding VIP from Avery, which is one of the most comprehensive verification suites available.
CAN XL is the third generation of the CAN data link layer that enables net data rates of up to 10 Mbit/sec averyand supports an extra-large (XL) payload of up to 2048 bytes. High-speed Ethernet in automotive supports the need for multiple streams of data from cameras, sensors, and radars to be transferred and processed in real time. Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) addresses the scheduling, low-latency, and safety requirements of mission-critical control systems like braking, steering, ADAS and other functions.
The expanded partnership builds on the companies’ thirteen-year-long relationship and creates best-in-class, robust, pre-validated CAN FD/XL and TSN Ethernet MAC solutions, streamlining the design and verification process for mutual customers. Avery’s virtual prototype solution for CAN XL and TSN Ethernet enables running CAST’s CAN XL IP and TSN Ethernet MAC reference designs and software stack in a QEMU/SystemVerilog co-simulation solution running on RTOS and supports RISC-V, Arm, and Microblaze embedded processor solutions.
“As an increasing amount of data gets moved throughout and around the connected automobile chip developers need the latest high-bandwidth and high-speed connectivity solutions enabled by evolving networking standards. CAST has a long track record of providing reliable and accurate IP solutions to incorporate the latest automotive networking functionality in SoCs, and this expands our established partnership to deliver high quality VIP to further accelerate the verification of these designs. We look forward to continuing our collaboration to address the current and next-generation protocols being used in a rapidly evolving automotive electronics market,” said Chris Browy vice president of sales and marketing at Avery.
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world.
Despite the geopolitical headwinds for foreign tech firms to enter China, many companies, especially those that find a dependable partner, are still forging ahead. For this week’s roundup, I’m including a conversation I had with Prophesee, a French vision technology startup, which recently got funding from Kai-Fu Lee and Xiaomi, along with the usual news digest.
Spotting opportunities in China
Like many companies working on futuristic, cutting-edge tech in Europe, Prophesee was a spinout from university research labs. Previously, I covered two such companies from Sweden: Imint, which improves smartphone video production through deep learning, and Dirac, an expert in sound optimization.
The three companies have two things in common: They are all in niche fields, and they have all found eager customers in China.
For Prophesee, they are production lines, automakers and smartphone companies in China looking for breakthroughs in perception technology, which will in turn improve how their robots respond to the environment. So it’s unsurprising that Xiaomi and Chinese chip-focused investment firm Inno-Chip backed Prophesee in its latest funding round, which was led by Sinovation Venture.
If you read InsideHook’s posts on tech deals — as you should — you’ll sometimes find seemingly unbelievable discounts on speakers, smartphones, laptops and headphones.
We’re talking 30-50% off brands like Sonos, Apple, Bose and Samsung; these are deals that you wouldn’t find during big shopping events like Black Friday or Prime Day.
The big sales secret? These are “refurbished” products, a phrase that can mean different things on different sites. It’s not quite the same as “used” or “open box,” and depending on where you buy this refurbished gear, you’ll be subject to different warranties and the products may (or may not) have cosmetic blemishes.
Is a big discount worth buying a not-quite-new product? To get some background, we spoke with Lauren Benton, the U.S. Managing Director from Back Market, a refurbished marketplace that just launched a Certified Renewed collection from brands like Samsung, Microsoft, Sennheiser and more (we’ve previously recommended Back Market due to their excellent supply of not-quite-new Apple gear).
China’s economy is roaring back to pre-pandemic levels and has considerable growth potential. For any European company, entering the Chinese market and implementing its business strategy can be a long and perilous process, unless you are inducted by artificial intelligence (AI) guru Kai-Fu Lee.
“It is the recognition of the work that has been done and it is perhaps the beginning of a new phase with new objectives, with each time the challenge of having to progress both on product development and on commercial development,” said Luca Verre, co-founder and CEO of Prophesee, in an interview with EE Times Europe.
7 years, $100 million
The amount of the investissement was not disclosed, but a quick calculation provides the answer. In 2019, Prophesee indeed raised €25 million ($28 million) in funding, bringing the total to $68 million since its creation in 2014, and Verre said, “We’re getting very close to a total investment of $100 million.”
The prices of flagship smartphones keep climbing higher and higher. At this point, if you want to buy the latest and greatest, you need to shell out more than a thousand dollars. But before you do that, it’s a good idea to take a look at refurbished smartphones. Refurbished smartphones—especially those sold straight from the manufacturer—offer you the same flagship device (that is not even a year old) at a discounted rate.
Read on to learn what refurbished smartphones are, what you need to know before buying a refurbished iPhone or Android smartphone, and the trusted sources to purchase from.
What is a “refurbished” smartphone?
Although there’s no official definition for “refurbished” products, it generally refers to a smartphone that has been used (even if just to take it out of the box), and then returned to a company (manufacturer, carrier, or retailer), that then performed some checks and fixed things that needed to be fixed (if any).
That’s why it’s important to note the words “refurbished,” “certified refurbished,” and “renewed,” are used interchangeably. “Manufacturer refurbished” means that repairs or upgrades were done by the manufacturer themselves (which is better than it being done by third-party companies).
Other than that, there is no fundamental difference between a new or refurbished smartphone.
....
Back Market
Back Market shines with it comes to transparency. It has a transparent grading system for each device, for both appearance and technical condition. Every device goes through rigorous testing, and if there are any issues, they are fixed.
Back Market offers a 1-year warranty and a 30-day return policy.
The plastic waste problem gets plenty of attention, and for good reason: If we continue mismanaging this material as usual, there could be 7.7 gigatons of the stuff cluttering landfills, waterways and oceans, or being incinerated by 2040.
Just as stunning: Plastic isn't the fastest growing waste stream the world needs to deal with.
According to research released over the past 18 months by the International Telecommunications Union, that honor actually goes to various forms of electronics — ranging from mobile phones to appliances such as vacuum cleaners (the biggest part of the e-waste stream today) to refrigerators, air conditioners and other heat-exchange systems (the fastest growing part of the e-waste universe). That trend is the motivation for a "significant strategic investment" this week — the amount isn’t being disclosed — by investment firm Closed Loop Partners in ERI, the largest IT recycling and refurbishment company in the United States.
More details in a moment. First, consider the problem. "Each year, approximately 50 million tonnes of electronic and electrical waste (e-waste) are produced, equivalent in weight to all commercial aircraft ever built; only 20 percent is formally recycled," write the authors of a report published by the World Economic Forum in 2019. "If nothing is done, the amount of waste will more than double by 2050, to 120 million tonnes annually."
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Some key moments. In March, a group of organizations — including representatives of manufacturers and technology service providers such as Accenture, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Google and Microsoft — came together to create the Circular Electronics Partnership, focused on co-defining solutions for applying circular business practices to electronic devices, including the terminology used to describe them and trace them. The alliance has six founding members: GeSi; Global Electronics Council; Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy; Responsible Business Alliance; World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD); and World Economic Forum (WEF). Several months later, France’s Back Market, the world’s largest recommerce marketplace for refurbished electronics with more than 5 million customers, raised $335 million to expand its services. The new funding makes Back Market a triple unicorn, valued at $3.2 billion.
Macnica ATD Europe and Prophesee SA have announced an agreement that will see Macnica serve as an authorized distribution partner for Prophesee’s Metavision® event-based sensor platform throughout Europe.
Prophesee’s patented Event-Based Vision sensor technology and intelligence software enables machine system developers to reduce energy consumption and computational power requirements whilst using AI-based processing based on the human retina.
“We are thrilled to start a partnership with this highly innovative company that has many synergies with our business ecosystem and customer base, including collaboration with our long-term partner Sony. Prophesee’s ground-breaking event-based technology offers valuable benefits to machine vision system developers with the capability to reduce power consumption and processing requirements while improving overall performance.
“The solution has been production-proven and the Prophesee Metavision platform is now conquering significant industry applications. Macnica ATD Europe is happy to pave that way for event-based vision in the industry”, said Antoine Hide, General Director of Macnica ATD Europe.
The Metavision platform is built on Prophesee’s Event-Based Vision, which uses neuromorphic sensing and computing techniques to mimic the human eye and brain. With each pixel activating itself if it senses a change in the scene, Prophesee’s proprietary Event-Based approach allows for reductions of power, latency and data processing requirements imposed by traditional vision systems.
Between April and June, 136 startups crossed the billion-dollar valuation mark for the first time, according to CB Insights, which released its quarterly report on venture capital trends this week.
Synaptics CEO Michael Hurlston discussed his multi-year effort to reignite the semiconductor business, whose shares have climbed steadily under his tenure.
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