• Samsung is expected to announce its next Galaxy Note phone at an upcoming event on August 5.
• The phone is rumored to come in two variants and will likely come in a new bronze color.
• Other rumors suggest it could include a triple-lens camera, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865+ processor, and a new S Pen with a pointer feature.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Samsung is holding a virtual event on August 5, where it's expected to unveil its next major addition to its smartphone lineup: the Galaxy Note 20.

Samsung typically announces its new Galaxy Note devices in the August and September time frame, and recent rumors and reports are suggesting this year will be no different.

The main difference between the Galaxy Note and Galaxy S phones is the Note's included S Pen stylus, which has been a hallmark of the lineup since the first Note launched in 2011. In their earlier years, Samsung's Note phones also stood out for their larger screens and longer battery life — and a higher price tag to go along with those benefits — but the Note has grown increasingly similar to the Galaxy S line in recent years.

The next Galaxy Note phone, likely to be called the Galaxy Note 20, is expected to come in a new bronze color, may feature a larger design, and could come with a new S Pen feature, according to various leaks.

The launch of a new high-end phone like the Note would come as Samsung and other smartphone makers have been focusing on more affordable devices recently to combat slowing sales across the industry. The International Data Corporation reported in June that it expects the worldwide smartphone market to plummet 11.9% year-over-year in 2020 as the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic influence consumer spending.

Here's a closer look at everything we're expecting to see. 

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It may have a larger design that resembles the Galaxy S20.

The Galaxy Note has always been known for having a larger than usual screen, and it looks like Samsung is focusing on size again this year.

The Galaxy Note 20 is said to be noticeably larger than last year's Note 10, according to leaks from YouTuber Jimmy Is Promo and tech accessory maker Pigtou.

The design will also look familiar to anyone who's seen the Galaxy S20, according to the leaks, as the phone is expected to have a borderless screen with a hole punch cutout from the camera. 

The phone is expected to launch in two versions: the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra or Plus.

Samsung is reportedly planning to launch the Note 20 in two variants, marking a departure from last year when it debuted three versions of the Galaxy Note 10.

But reports vary on what the high-end version of the phone might be called. Frequent leaker Ice Universe has referred to the more premium model as the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, while other media reports such as the one translated story from Korea Joongang Daily have called it the Note 20 Plus. 

Pigtou reports that the standard Note 20 will have a 6.7-inch screen, while the larger Note 20 could have a 6.9-inch curved screen. 

Ice Universe also suggests the bigger variant could have a "more fine-tuned" version of the S20's 120GHz refresh rate technology for its screen. 

The Note 20 and Note 20 Plus will reportedly have triple-lens cameras, but won't have 100x zoom like the Galaxy S20 Ultra.

According to Ice Universe, which claims to have shared details about the Note 20 Plus' camera on the Chinese social network Weibo, the Galaxy Note 20 Plus will have a triple camera with a 108-megapixel main camera, a 13-megapixel periscope camera, and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera. It will also reportedly have improvements when it comes to focusing. 

The standard Galaxy Note 20, comparatively, could have a 12-megapixel main camera, a 64-megapixel telephoto camera, and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, reports CNET citing Korea Joongang Daily and Ice Universe.

The Note 20 Plus, however, is not expected to have the same 100x zoom feature as the Galaxy S20 Ultra, according to Ice Universe.

When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S20 Ultra in February, it touted the high-end model's ability to zoom in up to 100x as a standout feature. But in practice, many reviewers, including Insider's Antonio Villas-Boas, found that photos zoomed in to that degree were often too blurry to be useful. 

It may also come in a new bronze color.

Samsung may have accidentally posted a picture of the Galaxy Note 20 in a new bronze color, as multiple outlets, such as Android Authority, CNET, and others, reported.

XDA Developers writer and leaker Max Weinbach also posted the image on Twitter, which Samsung has since taken down. In one of the biggest clues of all, Samsung has featured this same bronze color in its event invite for August 5.

The color looks similar to the pinkish gold color available for some of Apple's products, such as the MacBook Air and iPhone 11 Pro.

The S Pen may get a new feature that lets it act as a pointer.

The Note 20's S Pen may be able to serve as a pointer for selecting content on screen, according to Jimmy Is Promo.

A leaked screenshot posted by Jimmy Is Promo shows how Galaxy Note 20 owners may be able to choose the size of the pointer as well as its color and speed. It looks like users will be able to activate the feature by pressing the S Pen's button and moving the stylus.

Samsung already offers a similar feature on the Note 10 called Air Actions, which makes it possible to control the phone's camera, volume, and certain apps. It looks like the Note 20 could include some type of expansion of this feature.

It'll likely be powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865+ processor.

The Galaxy Note 20 will reportedly run on Qualcomm's new processor: The Snapdragon 865+. That's again according to Ice Universe, which tweeted near the end of June that the Note 20 as well as other rumored Samsung products, like its next-generation versions of the Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Z Flip, will run on this processor.

Qualcomm just announced the Snapdragon 865+ in early July, and the company says the processor is designed with 5G, artificial intelligence, and gaming in mind.

We'll learn more on August 5, when Samsung is expected to debut the device.

• Mayfield managing director Navin Chaddha told Business Insider that the months of sheltering in place in California's Bay Area have been some of the most productive of his professional career.
• He credits the change to ditching his lengthy morning commute and time spent shuttling between Mayfield's office and various meetings in San Francisco.
• He said he has started taking socially distant hikes and walks with founders and firm partners in Silicon Valley's South Bay as a safe way to build and maintain relationships.
• The extra time has helped Chaddha focus on "out of the box" goals, and he said he has done more writing and webinar broadcasts in the last few months than any other time in his career.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

The commute in and around California's Bay Area is particularly nightmarish. The handful of highways are gridlocked with Teslas and corporate shuttles beginning around 6 a.m. and, with the exception of a short reprieve around noon, stay that way until long after the sun goes down. 

But when the counties that make up the Bay Area issued shelter-in-place orders in early March, the highways became eerily quiet. Commuters were staying home and clocking in from the home office, and the massive corporate campuses in Silicon Valley became ghost towns.

And the longer workplaces remain closed in favor of remote options, the harder it will be for the masses to resign themselves to hours-long daily commutes.

That's what Mayfield managing director Navin Chaddha thinks, at least. As a prominent venture capitalist living in Silicon Valley, Chaddha has the ability to manage his own schedule and access to reliable transportation even while working remotely. But after months of working from home, without a daily commute or time spent traveling between meetings, he realized that there were more productive ways to spend his time.

"I'm feeling more productive and I'm able to think more out of the box," Chaddha told Business Insider. "There's no more driving to the office or to board meetings, and suddenly you get back half your day that you can use to read and think."

Study after study has shown the negative effects of long commutes on workers' mental and physical health, but now many professionals with shorter drives are starting to see how much even a short commute could drain them. For Chaddha, that time is now spent with his family, with whom he is sheltering, and in front of the grill. It's the balance he needs to avoid Zoom fatigue, a relatively new phenomenon used to describe the mental effects of back-to-back video conference meetings.

"Business-building is a marathon, not a sprint," Chaddha said.

The marathon has continued, Chaddha explained, even as other firms scaled back funding activity in hopes they could wait out any underlying uncertainty. Since his firm's physical office closed on March 6, Mayfield raised its latest fund, saw multiple exits from portfolio companies, and continued to source new deals from a large network of investors and entrepreneurs. He has started writing more often, he said, and has been channeling some of his creative energy into webinar broadcasts for Silicon Valley insiders. He told Business Insider that he has likely done more writing and broadcasting than any other time in his career over the last several months.

"What I'm getting that I wasn't getting before was the time to think and read," Chaddha said. "The driving and interruptions in a physical setting that happen, you get back four or five hours a day, and the efficiency goes up."

Chaddha has had to get creative to keep the firm running smoothly, at times hosting socially distant executive meetings in large outdoor spaces with limited internet access or taking founders on hikes around the nearby parks in the South Bay Area, like the West Valley College campus or the Los Gatos Trail, when he feels the conversation topics are especially sensitive.

"You can do a lot of the stuff you would do, I would say it's almost better than face-to-face because everyone is relaxed," Chaddha said. "You can learn so much more about a person when you are walking or hiking in an hour than in three hours over dinner."

SEE ALSO: Startups need to beware of these 'toxic' deal terms when negotiating with VCs for fundraising

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• The US government is considering banning TikTok as nationalist "security" concerns about the Chinese app grow.
• That's great news for American tech companies like Facebook.
• In recent years, there has been increased political and regulatory scrutiny of the American tech giants.
• But the companies are able to leverage concerns about foreign tech's influence to ward off unwanted regulation.
• In 2019, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that "the future of the global internet" is at stake.

On Friday, Amazon informed employees that buzzy app TikTok is a security risk and they needed to delete it immediately, only to row back on that message hours later, saying it was "sent in error."

The full story behind Amazon's perplexing about-face isn't yet clear. But it's reflective of a growing distrust in American political circles of Chinese-owned technology firms — a distrust that America's homegrown tech giants are trying to harness to their own advantage to stave off the looming specter of regulation.

Over the past few years, public and political scrutiny of major US tech firms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon has steadily heightened, fed by a seemingly unending string of scandals and an increased recognition of the companies' extraordinary size and market power.

They now face varying calls for regulation from both the left and the right: from reform of Section 230, the law that underpins content moderation online, to calls for aggressive antitrust action that will tear the companies into their constituent parts.

This criticism has taken place against the backdrop of a nationalist Trump White House that is, rhetorically at least, aggressively challenging China. Big tech has been quick to leap on this in their defence. Take a speech from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about "free expression" in October 2019:

"This raises a larger question about the future of the global internet. China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values. There's no guarantee these values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese.

"We're beginning to see this in social media. While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the US.

"Is that the internet we want?"

Zuckerberg presents the contemporary internet as a modern-day clash of civilizations: A struggle between the enlightened, freedom-loving West and censorious China. And that's a warning to policy makers: Regulate us too much, and the Communists might win.

He's not wrong about China, of course: It's a totalitarian regime that stifles freedom of speech and locks people up in concentration camps by the hundreds of thousands.

Now, the targeting of TikTok indicates the argument is gaining ground, to the benefit of America's homegrown tech firms.

Trump, who has been railing against Chinese telecom giant Huawei for years, is now turning his ire on TikTok, with reports swirling that the White House plans to attempt to ban the app in the US over purported security concerns. After the Amazon news first broke (and before it recanted), Republican Senator Josh Hawley wrote that "now the whole federal government should follow suit" in banning it from their employees' phones.

And, although Amazon walked back its ban, at least one other big American company has banned TikTok for employees: Wells Fargo, as The Information reported on Friday afternoon.

Big tech companies benefit from this in an immediate way: If the US government bans foreign competitors, it means American tech companies, to state the obvious, have less competition.

But it also illustrates that arguments like Zuckerberg's are effective, and that even nominal critics of American tech firms like Hawley are still keen to see decisive action taken against outside companies that might encroach on their turf. That fear can be leveraged to try to ward off regulation that's overly onerous or damaging to the American technology companies' interests — lest the Communists win.

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (robaeprice@protonmail.com), standard email (rprice@businessinsider.com), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

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• A team at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials developed a robot to collect samples for COVID-19 testing.
• The robot is remotely controlled by a healthcare provider, reducing the risk of transmission between patient and provider.
• Robots have been used in fighting the coronavirus around the world.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A remote-controlled robot sticking a swab deep into the nose to collect a sample is one of the latest developments to fight COVID-19.

Doctors and researchers at The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) developed a robot that can be controlled by medical personnel from another room to take samples needed to test for the coronavirus. The team, led by Dr. Joonho Seo and Professor Nam-Hee Kim of Dongguk University College of Medicine, created the robot to swab the upper airways of people with COVID-19 symptoms. 

The system is based on parallel robots, where controls by a doctor in one room tell the swabbing robot in the other room what action to take. Doctor and patient are also connected by audio and video, so they can communicate. The researchers expect this robot will reduce the risk of transmission for medical providers, who have to get very close to people who potentially have infectious diseases. Professor Nam-Hee Kim also noted that the robot could reduce the need for personal protective equipment because providers don't need to interact as closely with patients.

Robots have increasingly been put to use since COVID-19 spread around the world. In Boston, Spot robots were used to screen patients remotely, using iPads so doctors could talk to and visually assess them. In India and other countries, robots have been tasked with screening patients using thermal temperature guns, picking out people with fevers as potential COVID-19 patients.

The KIMM robot could potentially be the most useful yet, because it doesn't rely on symptoms but actually gives doctors the ability to remotely test people. Here's how it works. 

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Patients in need of a COVID-19 test sit here, near the robot.

The process works by the medical professional controlling a remote device.

At the same time, a camera is focused on the patient so the provider can have an up-close look.

For the patient, the robot moves a disposable swab to take a sample through the nose.

First, the medical professional has to adjust the swab to just the right place on the patient, to align with their nose.

Meanwhile, the patient has their head in position.

Next, the swab is inserted as directed by the doctor.

Next, the force of the swab can be remotely monitored by the provider, which KIMM says improves test accuracy.

Finally, the provider directs the swab to take the sample.

The target, highlighted in blue, is where the swab has to reach to get a useful sample.

Dr. Joonho Seo sees this invention being useful even beyond COVID-19. "I expect it to be useful in the screening of high-risk diseases like COVID-19, and hope it will contribute to the safety and well-being of medical personnel during pandemics and epidemics."

• Civilized Worldwide, a cannabis media startup, raised $7 million to create the "premium lifestyle and media brand" for cannabis consumers around the globe.
• With investments from high-profile backers like the comedian and author Chelsea Handler and Canopy Rivers, the venture arm of Canopy Growth, Civilized and its husband-and-wife founders were soaring as cannabis legalization looked poised to sweep the US a few years ago.
• But after a series of layoffs and business pivots, as well as a failed takeover attempt, Civilized has let go of all of its staff and suspended operations.
• Civilized's management team told Business Insider they were in negotiations to restructure their debt and bring on new investors for a relaunch.
• For more stories like this, sign up for our Cultivated newsletter.

On September 20, 2018, Derek Riedle, then the CEO of Civilized Worldwide, a cannabis media startup, was set to embark on a tour.

He had just boarded a jet with the comedian Chelsea Handler at Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles, a popular spot for celebrities and wealthy executives.

The pair were heading to Calgary, Alberta, the first stop on a tour of seven Canadian cities where Riedle and Handler held town-hall-style events with thousands of people. Canada had just legalized cannabis, and the excitement was palpable.

Riedle, along with his wife, Terri Riedle, had built Civilized into one of the more successful media-and-events brands in the burgeoning cannabis industry. The company attracted a slew of writers and videographers who wanted to document what many viewed as one of the greatest social and policy transformations of the 21st century.

The excitement helped the company pull in $7 million from prominent investors like Canopy Rivers, the venture arm of the biggest cannabis company, and celebrities like Handler. By spring 2018, former employees said the company had even taken steps to go public and touted its ability to reach over 2 million people per month. 

But a little more than a year after the Riedles toured Canada with Handler, they were closing up shop at Civilized.

By December 2, Civilized had laid off all of its employees and suspended operations after the startup ran out of runway. A deal to sell the company and resume publishing was beginning to unravel too.

While the layoffs have been made public, Business Insider is the first to report on the collapse of Civilized's deal with New Frontier Data, as well as its negotiations to restructure its debt. This story is based on conversations with five former employees and four freelancers, as well as email threads and internal memos obtained by Business Insider.

Civilized found itself at the intersection of two collapsing bubbles: cannabis and digital media. In both cases, early hype convinced investors to pour in cash, but growth didn't materialize as quickly as investors had hoped. 

"The last year or so in the world of digital media and cannabis has been unbelievably challenging, to say the least," Terri Riedle said in an email after Business Insider sent a detailed list of questions outlining the issues former employees and freelancers had with Civilized. Riedle said Civilized was still working to resume publishing.

In some ways, Civilized is emblematic of the cannabis industry's struggles — the coronavirus notwithstanding — over the past few months, where the outsize ambitions on the part of investors and management don't reflect what is feasible for a startup to do.

Former employees of Civilized told Business Insider that the tour with Handler symbolized the startup's troubles. The Riedles had big plans for Civilized but often lacked the resources, time, and skills to see them through.

The tour, for instance, was successful in terms of ticket sales but expensive to produce — especially with the fees that a high-profile celebrity like Handler commanded. And it didn't become the content opportunity Derek Riedle had hoped for, as the startup did not end up with much usable footage to turn into a documentary for a platform like Netflix or a video blog series for YouTube, former employees said.

"Derek was trying to build up his celebrity, which was sort of foolish," a former senior employee who worked at Civilized from 2016 to 2019 said. There was a constant "blurry line" between Derek Riedle wanting to be an influencer, palling around with celebrities, and doing the work he needed to do as CEO, the employee said.

The beginnings of Civilized

Derek and Terri Riedle started Civilized in 2015, shortly after Colorado became the first US state to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Investors and entrepreneurs hoped Colorado's move would catalyze a multibillion-dollar industry. 

The digital-media startup had ambitions to be the "premium lifestyle and media brand" for modern cannabis consumers. Think High Times for the upwardly mobile professional, those that enjoy a toke or two after long days of working at a tech startup or in a creative job.

The business model in the early days was simple: Civilized would post original and branded content and sell ads to cannabis companies.

The Riedles also ran Revolution Strategy, a marketing firm, and had enough business acumen to see early on that legal cannabis could be huge — and that as a media company, they could avoid some of the challenges facing companies that sell and cultivate marijuana. (The Riedles left Revolution Strategy in January after the company was taken over.)

On top of digital content, Civilized also has an events business, which includes the Civilized Games, an athletic competition where athletes compete while high, and the yearly World Cannabis Congress. It also bought the Moonlight Bazaar, an art and music festival in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Fresh investment and new hires

By the middle of 2018, the Riedles had become mainstays of the cannabis-conference circuit and courted favorable press. Derek Riedle had appeared on stage with celebrities like Handler and Martha Stewart, as well as cannabis execs like Bruce Linton, the founder of Canopy Growth, the largest cannabis company by market value.

The company received fresh investment from Canopy Rivers in April 2018. That year, Civilized hired a lot of people, creating excitement in its home city of Saint John, a Maritime town desperately in need of jobs and tax-revenue-generating companies, James McClure, a former Civilized employee who was laid off last July, told Business Insider.

Former employees estimated the company peaked in mid-2018 with more than 30 employees, though there was constant turnover, as is typical for growing startups.

Civilized also tried to make a string of acquisitions in 2018 and 2019, including the 420 Games, an athletic-events company that combines sports with marijuana, and Business of Cannabis, an online news, events, and analysis platform for the Canadian cannabis industry. The Business of Cannabis deal didn't end up closing.

McClure worked on the editorial side of Civilized from August 2015 to July 2019, first as an associate editor and then as head of the content team in Canada.

He said his tenure at Civilized started out well. McClure said he felt he and his team had the autonomy to work on important stories, and the Riedles showed they cared about him as a person, a sentiment that many former employees shared.

By mid-2018, McClure said Civilized had taken steps to go public — including talking to investment bankers and conducting internal audits — in an effort to join a wave of cannabis companies that rushed into the public markets in late 2018 and early 2019. Many employees hoped their stock options would pay off, he said.

The company never filed to go public, Terri Riedle said.

Handler invested in March 2019, a few months after she joined Derek Riedle on the Civilized tour. At the time, Handler said in a press release that Civilized was "more than just a media company, it's a movement. And one I'm proud to be a part of." 

She didn't respond to a request for comment.

Signs of trouble surface for Civilized

Shortly after Handler's investment, signs of trouble surfaced.

The company underwent two rounds of layoffs in April and July 2019. Some of its cannabis-company advertisers had been unable to deliver on payments and feared running afoul of Canada's strict regulations around advertising marijuana products, former employees said. CBC has also reported on Civilized's trouble with advertisers.

2019 was the year that outsize hopes for the cannabis industry came back down to earth, more broadly. By the end of that year, California and 11 other states had legalized cannabis for adult use, as had Canada.

But the rapid spread of cannabis legalization did not play out in the way many entrepreneurs and investors had planned for. Slow-moving legislation and a lack of growth capital from mainstream venture capitalists and other investors gummed up the progress. Cannabis stocks slumped as much as 90% last year.

Employees and freelancers say Civilized owes them money

By late 2019, Civilized was sometimes weeks late with payments to both workers and freelancers, the former employees said. One freelancer, Danielle Guercio, said she hadn't been paid more than 20 weeks after two stories she wrote were published. Aaron Genuth, a freelance writer, said he hasn't been paid for two articles he wrote last summer.

Terri Riedle said her goal was to settle "much of" Civilized's debts to creditors, including freelancers, in the coming weeks.  

It was hard-nosed capitalism one day and a family the next. It's a hard thing to describe.

McClure said he was paid on time until the last month of his employment. That month the payment arrived a few days late. 

He said he and his team — along with six freelance contributors — were laid off on July 29.

"Derek and Terri told me that they were under pressure to make some big cuts and they couldn't make money off of the site's editorial content, so they had to let us go," McClure said.

McClure said the timing of the July layoffs surprised him, since the company had successfully put on its World Cannabis Congress a month earlier.

"It was hard-nosed capitalism one day and a family the next," McClure said. "It's a hard thing to describe." 

'It's hard to take advertiser money from an industry you cover'

Over his four years at Civilized, McClure said priorities seemed to change quickly for both management and employees — typical of working in a growing startup.

In one example, he said Civilized encouraged its writers to "make everything into a listicle." Then when listicles started going out of fashion as social-media giants like Facebook tweaked their algorithms, the directive was to write anything but a listicle. Former employees said it felt like the Riedles were sometimes out of their depth in managing these shifts.

And in cannabis, there was a need for strong journalism as the industry struggled, with investors losing money and companies laying off employees. McClure said Civilized turned into more of a public-relations company for the industry than a media company covering it.

"The people who were paying us to write good news didn't want their content placed next to bad news," he said. "Things got really, really tense towards the end," he added.

He said this caused conflict between the editorial operation and teams working on advertising and sales who were trying to drum up new business. 

As money at the company got tight toward the end of his tenure, some of the decisions the Riedles made weren't "nearly as kind" as their personal conduct toward him, he said, with demands for sponsored content overwhelming employees.

As Civilized tried to pivot toward live events and video production for YouTube instead of written content, two former employees said they weren't given enough resources to produce high-quality videos and that there wasn't enough money to pay more staff and buy equipment.

After McClure left the company, three former employees said things got worse. Derek Riedle, who was the CEO at the time, would often come into the office for only a few hours at a time, leave at noon, and wouldn't be seen for the rest of the day.

A deal with New Frontier breaks down

On December 2, just after the Thanksgiving holiday, Derek Riedle told Civilized's remaining staff in the Los Angeles office — about seven people — that they would be laid off, three former employees who were in the office that day said. 

The former employees said the layoffs didn't come as a surprise, as Derek Riedle had been open about the financial trouble Civilized was in.

Four employees who were part of that round of layoffs said they were still owed money from Civilized and did not receive severance pay. Business Insider reviewed a section of a former employee's contract that shows employees who are fired are owed severance.

One former sales employee, who said she was still owed money, said she and three other former employees have spoken to a California labor attorney about filing a suit over the payments. That employee, who joined the company in May 2019 and was laid off in December, said she was paid weeks late on three separate occasions in 2019, with one paycheck coming in nearly a month late. 

At the time of the layoffs, Civilized was working on a deal to be acquired by New Frontier Data, a cannabis-analytics and business-intelligence startup. On December 3, a day after employees were laid off, New Frontier put out a press release saying that it would move forward with the acquisition. The statement didn't say how much money New Frontier would pay.

The press release characterized the December layoffs as "temporary" and said the company would resume operations in January. 

A few days later, a group of former employees got on the phone with Derek Riedle, who told them the deal hadn't gone through. When employees asked about severance pay and other issues, Riedle hung up, two people who were on the call said. 

'Stumbled right out of the gate'

By March 18, the deal with New Frontier was effectively dead, according to a letter sent to Civilized shareholders and employees obtained by Business Insider. In the letter, the Riedles said the term sheet with New Frontier had expired. 

"From the outset of the legal regime in Canada, the cannabis industry has been in continual turmoil which has made it incredibly difficult for teammates, partners, content-creators, suppliers, shareholders and fans of Civilized. We are built to serve an industry that not only has failed to soar, it has stumbled right out of the gate," the letter said.

"Both parties tried to get this done, but it has been difficult to fund the transaction in the current climate. Although they continue to fundraise to complete the merger, we are no longer in a period of exclusivity and have opened multiple new discussions," it added.

New Frontier CEO Giadha DeCarcer told Business Insider that after the company's diligence process with Civilized, "disagreements on value could not be overcome despite ongoing negotiations that continued into May."

The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic also poses a challenge to digital-media companies like Civilized. Companies have slashed marketing budgets, which has affected publisher revenue, Business Insider's Lucia Moses has reported. Many digital-media companies, including behemoths like BuzzFeed and Vice, have been forced to institute pay cuts, lay off employees, or fold entirely. 

Without the deal, the Riedles said they wouldn't be able to resume operations or hire any employees back. 

A new plan to restructure debt and bring in investors

They also said in the March 18 email that they had shown Canopy Rivers a plan to "return to skeletal operations" and refine a new business model. As part of that plan, Terri Riedle would assume the role of CEO, and Derek Riedle would step aside.

"The first plank in that plan is securing short term funding and beginning to settle the payables Civilized has been carrying," the Riedles said.

Terri Riedle told Business Insider that Civilized had set a plan with Canopy Rivers to restructure the company's debt to bring in new investors. She said the company would soon share its plans to restructure and relaunch. A Canopy Rivers spokesperson told Business Insider that "our conversations with Civilized remain focused on the existing debt instrument we have with them."

"The company has secured fresh capital, and we will be reaching out to all of Civilized's stakeholders, including investors and creditors to share the restructure/relaunch plans and deal with all other outstanding issues," including settling debts with former employees and freelancers, Terri Riedle told Business Insider earlier this month. 

She did not identify the sources of new capital or say how much money the startup would raise.

On June 19, Civilized posted its first official statement in months, which was focused on the Black Lives Matter movement. The statement added that Civilized was "almost ready" to relaunch. 

For their part, employees aren't crossing their fingers that they'll be going back to work at Civilized. McClure, the former Canadian head of content, said he was still in touch with some of his former colleagues.

"Everyone talks about Civilized in the past tense," McClure said. "Everyone has moved on to other things."

• Read more:
• Aurora Cannabis is laying off 30% of its workers and shutting 5 facilities as the cannabis industry reels from a capital crunch
• Cannabis startup Caliva laid off 20 employees, including a top retail exec, as headwinds from the coronavirus pandemic upend the industry
• An inside look at Eaze's latest pitch deck reveals vastly scaled back ambitions from the once-soaring cannabis startup
• Aurora Cannabis is laying off 30% of its workers and shutting 5 facilities as the cannabis industry reels from a capital crunch

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Welcome to Wall Street Insider, where we take you behind the scenes of the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives from the past week. 

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With a travel-industry slump looking like it could stretch on for months or even years, lenders are beginning to sell debt tied to distressed hotel properties. It's a big change in posture for these firms, which had been wary to sell loans at discounts earlier on in the pandemic.

Dan Geiger mapped out this new trickle of deals, and explained why we could see a surge to billions of dollars in sales in the coming months as more lenders seek to cut ties with bad loans within the lodging sector.

Read the full story here: 

A growing group of lenders are looking to unload hundreds of millions of dollars of souring hotel loans. Teams hired to sell the portfolios say it's just the beginning of a surge in activity.

We also had a pair of scoopy trader stories on Friday. Here's a roundup in case you missed it:

• Dakin Campbell learned that JPMorgan has placed its top US Treasuries trader on leave amid a compliance review of electronic messages. Earlier this year, the bank removed a handful of interest-rates traders— at least two in New York and one in London — from the floor and turned off their Bloomberg terminals while it investigated their behavior.
• Alex Morrell reported that Bank of America has poached a top junk-bond trader from Deutsche Bank, leveling up in one of 2020's red-hot trading markets.

Keep reading for a peek inside Goldman Sachs' first in-person board meeting since the pandemic began; a look at the executives who are driving Amex's digital strategy as e-commerce booms; and to learn why SoFi CEO Anthony Noto is so excited about the fintech applying for a national banking charter.

Have a great weekend, 

Meredith 

SoFi makes another go at starting its own bank

The personal-finance startup SoFi has filed an application for a national bank charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Dan DeFrancesco first reported. Approval would allow the fintech to lend money and accept deposits on its own. 

Anthony Noto, SoFi's CEO, highlighted three benefits of a national charter when announcing the application to employees in a company-wide email.

Read the full story here: 

SoFi just filed an application for a national banking charter, and CEO Anthony Noto told employees it's a critical strategic step for the $4.3 billion fintech

Wells Fargo shakes up marketing 

Wells Fargo is shaking up marketing operations and plans to eliminate its centralized CMO role, Rebecca Ungarino reported. The moves underline the personnel and organizational changes CEO Charlie Scharf has ushered in at Wells Fargo, which he joined last fall after leading Bank of New York Mellon. 

Since a sales-practices scandal erupted in late 2016, the bank has gone through two CEOs before Scharf took over last year. In 2017, Wells Fargo unveiled a marketing campaign with the tagline "Building a Better Bank," and a year later released the tagline "Established 1852. Re-established 2018." 

Read the full story here:

Wells Fargo's longtime CMO will leave her role as part of a bigger marketing shakeup across the bank

Goldman Sachs restarts in-person board meetings

As Dakin Campbell reports, Goldman Sachs has held its first in-person board meeting since the coronavirus pandemic began. About half of the company's board attended last week's meetings, including Chairman and CEO David Solomon. Other Goldman execs were also in attendance.

Several of the attendees chose not to wear masks inside the meeting room, Dakin learned. Others across Wall Street, including JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Citigroup, continue to hold meetings virtually.

Read the full story here: 

Inside Goldman Sachs' first in-person board meeting since the pandemic began

Power players leading Amex's digital strategy

The adoption of digital payments has taken off amid the coronavirus pandemic, as consumers look to avoid cash. American Express, both a card network and credit issuer, is riding the digital wave with products like contactless cards, partnerships with players like Venmo, and QR codes to pay.

From fraud monitoring to credit decisioning to exploring new ways to pay, Shannen Balogh took a look at the power players leading Amex's digital push.

Read the full story here: 

Meet the 11 American Express execs tasked with helping the card giant keep pace with the e-commerce boom

On the move

Bank of America continues to shake up its dealmaking team that focuses on M&A in the finance sector. After less than a year leading banking M&A at Credit Suisse, Jerry Wiant is packing up again to join the team at Bank of America, where he'll run coverage of banks and specialty finance in the Americas. 

One-click checkout startup Fast raised its $20 million Series A from investors including Index Ventures and fintech Stripe in May as it looks to take on Apple Pay to solve pain-points around password management and online checkout.

Join Business Insider reporter Shannen Balogh on Tuesday, July 14 at 1:30 p.m ET when she will speak with Domm Holland, Fast's co-founder and CEO, and Jan Hammer, general partner at Index Venture. They'll discuss how Holland came up with the idea for Fast, how to build a pitch deck, and what it takes to win over investors.

If you're a Business Insider subscriber, you can sign up here.

PPP loans, revealed 

• Multimillionaire and Highland Capital founder James Dondero's investment platform managing billions got approved for as much as $8 million in loans from the PPP
• Inside the legal industry's reaction as it deals with the messy optics of white-shoe law firms taking PPP money

Deals

• How Postmates went from multiple IPO setbacks to a $2.65 billion takeover by Uber

Private equity and investing

• The CEO of an Apollo-backed energy company may face charges for pulling a gun on a Mexican American couple that took a wrong turn near his Colorado home
• Private-equity firms' cybersecurity defense has lagged. Here's what makes them attractive targets — and what they can do to protect themselves, according to experts.
• Here's how Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge offloaded stakes in 2 funds after credit markets seized up

Real estate

• Commercial real-estate hiring is heating back up. 4 recruiters lay out the exec roles they're trying to fill.
• Lenders are balking at financing mega commercial real-estate deals 
• Women-focused coworking startup The Wing is almost $270,000 behind on rent and other charges at its Bryant Park location in New York, according to lawsuit
• Some short-term rental startups like Sonder and CorpHousing say they're bargain-hunting for new locations to bet on an eventual travel recovery
• WeWork faces 3 new discrimination and harassment lawsuits, including a complaint that says a manager brought knives and a crossbow to work
• A top Americas exec at commercial real-estate giant Cushman & Wakefield is out
• Knotel is facing claims of $230,000 in unpaid rent and construction bills at one Atlanta location, adding to a growing list of legal woes for the flex-space firm

Payments and fintech

• The head of Amex Digital Labs lays out the card giant's innovation strategy, and explains why the future is partnering with tech giants like Apple and Google
• Meet the fintech that nabbed $50 million in funding from Alphabet, where customers text it money questions and choose what they pay
• Fintech investors say the Wirecard scandal will put increased regulatory pressure on payments companies and stymie growth for startups
• Rivals Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Discover are partnering up for one-click checkouts to compete with the likes of Apple Pay and PayPal as e-commerce booms

Pitch decks

• Here's the pitch deck an app helping new families save used to raise a $9 million Series A from NBA all-star Baron Davis and Anthos Capital
• Here's the pitch deck used to raise a $4.4 million seed round for an AI chatbot looking to transform how people find apartments

Join the conversation about this story »

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• On May 20, Amazon launched "Crucible," a major new video game that was in development for over five years.
• One week later, the game completely dropped off the charts. One month later, and Amazon outright pulled the game from availability and put it back into "closed beta" — a term used in game development to signify a game isn't complete.
• "Crucible" is the latest attempt from Amazon to push into the lucrative video game industry, which it has repeatedly failed to achieve.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Did you know that Amazon, the biggest company in the world, launched a big-budget video game recently?

The game is called "Crucible," and you're forgiven if this is the first you're hearing about it. Despite being free-to-play and available on the world's largest gaming platform, Steam, "Crucible" has already come and gone from the top 100 charts. 

Crazier still: Amazon outright pulled the game from digital stores in late June. "Starting tomorrow, 'Crucible' is moving to closed beta," a note posted to the game's developer blog on June 30 said.

So, how did "Crucible," a free-to-play multiplayer game, go from a promising new game to being pulled from storefronts in just a few weeks? Here's what we know:

SEE ALSO: 4 times that major tech companies, from Apple to Google and Amazon, tried and failed to break into video games

When "Crucible" launched on May 20, it arrived with very little fanfare.

It's important to understand the type of game that "Crucible" is: a team-based online multiplayer shooter, more akin to "Overwatch" than to "Fortnite." But its gameplay takes more inspiration from the world of MOBAs – "League of Legends" and "DOTA 2," for instance – than competitive shooters. 

Also of note: It's a free-to-play game with a PC focus, which puts it in direct competition with games like "Valorant" from Riot Games. Amazon's goal for "Crucible" was to attract tens of millions of players and, with any luck, have it become a major esport game.

The contrast between how "Crucible" launched and how "Valorant" launched is illustrative of why the former failed while the latter is succeeding.

When "Valorant" launched this year, it was available in a closed beta that you could only get access to by watching Twitch streamers play the game live. Through a "drop" system tied to Twitch accounts, viewers would gain free access to the beta. This way, new "Valorant" players already had some idea of how to play the game because they'd watched someone play it live.

In the weeks leading up to and following the launch of "Crucible" in late May, Amazon didn't utilize its own streaming service – Amazon owns Twitch – to promote the game. There were no major streamers playing the game and hyping it up, no trailers for the game running as ads, and no "drop" system to gain early access. Similarly on YouTube, where gaming dominates attention, ads for "Crucible" were nowhere to be seen. 

With little advertising, and little to no buzz from press, very few people ever played "Crucible."

As of May 21, the day after it launched, "Crucible" had around 25,000 concurrent players at peak. By May 22, it had already disappeared from Steam's top 100 — a list of most-played games on Steam that bottoms out around 5,000 concurrent players.

Which is to say: Two days after launch, fewer than 5,000 people were playing "Crucible" at any given time.

By comparison, the most-played game on Steam averages around 1 million concurrent players — a spot usually occupied by "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" (a free-to-play shooter), "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" (a huge battle royale game), and "DOTA 2" (another free-to-play game).

These numbers would be bad for a premium game — a game that people had to pay for upfront — but they're especially bad for a free-to-play multiplayer game, where the business model is based on bringing in huge numbers of players.

The logic for free-to-play games is you bring in a ton of players and then either sell ads that appear in-game based on those huge user numbers or sell in-game cosmetic items that players can purchase.

"Fortnite" is a great example of this: The game costs nothing to play, and has tens of millions of players. If just 1% of players buy in-game items, "Fortnite" maker Epic Games profits handsomely. Analysts estimate "Fortnite" made $1.8 billion in 2019.

Simply put: If no one's playing your game, there's no one to buy those virtual items — a major issue when your business model is predicated on a huge user base.

In the weeks following launch, player numbers continued to drop. By mid-June, the game averaged in the low hundreds of players at any given time.

The poor launch of "Crucible" led to a gradual decline in players until, just a few weeks after launch, no more than a few hundred players were online at any given moment.

Beyond being a business problem, the low player numbers made it hard for the few people still playing to find other players. This issue was compounded by the game itself: "Crucible" initially launched with three separate game modes, which split up its player base from the jump.

Amazon cut two of those modes soon after launch in an attempt to corral existing players, but it was already too late.

On June 30, Amazon outright pulled the game out of open release and put it back in "closed beta" – a term used for games that are still in development.

On June 30, just over a month post-launch, Amazon pulled "Crucible" out of open release back into "closed beta" – a term used to describe games that are still in development.

"Starting tomorrow, 'Crucible' is moving to closed beta," a note posted to the game's developer blog said.

People who already own the game still have access to it in the closed beta, and Amazon said it will open up applications for entry in the coming weeks.

But if the game's free anyway, why pull it from stores?

Amazon said the move was intended to, "help us focus on providing the best possible experience for our players as we continue to make the game better."

The reality is no doubt more complicated, but it's clear that — even after five-plus years of development, and tens of millions of dollars — Amazon still has more work to do.

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email (bgilbert@businessinsider.com), or Twitter DM (@realbengilbert). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.

• President Trump's decision to suspend key immigrant work visas has been severely criticized by many in the US tech industry, which has long relied on foreign talent.
• Venture capitalists, founders, and CEOs who are immigrants themselves shared their frustrations with the Trump order with Business Insider.
• One of them, Togo-born F5 Networks CEO Francois Lo coh Donou, who grew up in France, told Business Insider that the executive order "sends the signal to highly-skilled immigrants around the world that the US is a dangerous and unstable place to bet on for their careers."
• Read the words and stories of 15 other tech leaders who denounce the visa freeze.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

President Trump's order suspending many types of immigrant work visas in late June prompted a strong response from the US tech industry which has long relied on talent from overseas.

Executives from major tech giants, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Box, and Twitter were quick to criticize the move, calling it "unbelievably bad policy" that "undermines America's greatest economic asset." More recently, the Trump administration also said international students at US institutions that have shifted to remote learning must leave the country. 

Business Insider reached out to leading figures in the tech industry who moved to the US as immigrants, on work or student visas or green cards, for their insights into the Trump administration's move to severely curtail the arrival of workers and students from other countries.

These 16 technology figures have played critical roles in the industry as venture capital investors, top engineers, CEOs, and trailblazing entrepreneurs and founders. Here's what they said:

SEE ALSO: The tech industry has a terrible track record on diversity. Here's how 17 companies that spoke out against racism this week say they plan to improve.

F5 Networks CEO Francois Locoh Donou: It sends the message to immigrants that the 'US is a dangerous and unstable place to bet on for their careers.'

Francois Locoh Donou, CEO of networking giant F5 Networks, is a native of Togo and grew up up in France. He came to the US on an H1-B visa when he joined Ciena, another networking company, in the early 2000s.

"Without that visa and the stability it provided, I doubt I would hold the position I do at F5 today," he told Business Insider. "Like a number of tech companies, I share the belief that our company's future, and the growth of the tech industry at large, rely upon recruiting and retaining talent from all backgrounds and countries."

The Trump order suspending the work visas sends a potentially harmful message, he said.

"This executive order – even if temporary– sends the signal to highly-skilled immigrants around the world that the US is a dangerous and unstable place to bet on for their careers," he said. "That is not what this country is about, and it is certainly no way to ensure the US economy's global competitiveness."

Landing AI founder and CEO Andrew Ng: 'There's an obligation for us to make smart decisions from a business and strategic perspective, but also to treat people with kindness.'

Throughout his career, computer scientist Andrew Ng has founded organizations like Google Brain, Coursera, and Landing AI. 

Many of their founding teams consisted of students on the F-1 visa or workers on the H-1B visa. Ng, who was born in the UK and raised in Hong Kong, was a recipient of these visas, too. He knew he wanted to study artificial intelligence and first came to the US to attend college at Carnegie Mellon University in 1993, staying for graduate school and becoming a professor at Stanford University and obtaining an H-1B visa.

Many of Silicon Valley's tech companies were founded by immigrants, yet the current lengthy American immigration process is riddled with uncertainty, Ng says.

"For a green card, the wait time is many, many decades long," Ng said. "Who knows if five years from now, maybe a change in policy will make all that waiting pointless? It's damaging the US to create uncertainty in the immigration process because it makes it difficult for an individual to want to make a long term investment."

Even for Ng, he says that while he had a visa that allowed him to work in the US, it was always something in the back of his mind to worry about for others, whether his interns at Google Brain or his international Coursera cofounders. 

"Immigration is an important business and strategic issue for the US, but it's also a very human issue for millions of families," Ng said. "There's an obligation for us to make smart decisions from a business and strategic perspective, but also to treat people with kindness."

Technovation founder and CEO Tara Chklovski: 'It's very, very important to keep the systems and channels open.'

Technovation founder and CEO Tara Chklovski grew up in India with the dream of becoming an aerospace engineer. She studied physics as an undergradute, but not many universities in India at the time offered aerospace engineering, so she decided to do her graduate studies in the US.

She came to the US on an F-1 student visa with a full scholarship for her masters at Boston University. 

"It was absolutely awesome," Chklovski said. "For me, it was freedom on so many different levels. India is a developing country. Women are very few in aerospace. Also there is lots of gender-based inequality and gender-based violence and different ways of oppression of girls."

While Chklovski studied aerospace engineering in the US, she realized that there were very few women in her industry, which inspired her to start an education nonprofit called Technovation to encourage more girls worldwide to enter STEM fields and connect them with mentorship, guidance, and internships.

"When I was in a PhD program, it was very very stark to see that there are not that many women," Chklovski said. "I did internships, and I felt like I was the only woman in the technical department. It was wrong and odd. We're not bringing in ideas from 50% of the population."

Chklovski says she was grateful she was able to get a student visa and believes innovation comes from a diversity of ideas.

"If you bring in people from different countries, it will help build society," Chklovski said. "I think it's very very important to keep the systems and channels open, not just into the US but for other countries as well."

Lightspeed Venture Partners' Arif Janmohamed: 'It's against the ethos of this country.'

Arif Janmohamed, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, only became a US citizen in late June 2020, but his journey to citizenship began in the 1990s when he got his first taste of Silicon Valley.

Janmohamed was born in Canada and grew up in Montreal. After he graduated, he moved to the Bay Area and never looked back. He first came with a TN visa, which offers work authorization to people from Canada and Mexico. He eventually got an H-1B visa, then a green card, and most recently, US citizenship. 

The H-1B visa suspension is personal for Janmohamed, which he says contradicts the values of the American dream: "It's against the ethos of this country."

"Those people who would otherwise put down roots over here, buy houses here, work at great companies, and learn from peer mentors here, will go somewhere else around the world," Janmohamed told Business Insider. "Ultimately what we're doing is hurting US innovation."

Janmohamed's own family has immigrated multiple times over the generations. His ancestors come from India, but they immigrated to Kenya because they faced economic uncertainty and persecution. 

His parents grew up in Kenya, but in 1972, Idi Amin, the president of Uganda at the time, expelled Asians – many of whom were Indian – from the country. Although his family wasn't directly affected, they moved to Canada as uncertainty spread to nearby countries as well, including Tanzania and Kenya. 

Janmohamed's father was an entrepreneur, and eventually, Janmohamed would follow in his father's footsteps by working at various tech startups. In college, he decided that he wanted to experience Silicon Valley for himself. He sent 250 emails, and eventually, got an internship from a Bay Area startup called Nomadic Technology, which operated out of a garage. 

After graduation, Janmohamed worked at various startups before going to business school and deciding he wanted to help build up those companies in the second half of his career. He joined Lightspeed in 2008, where he has been for the last 12 years, working with companies like Netskope, Qubole, TripActions, and ThoughtSpot.

"Seeing these companies go from an idea to employing tens or hundreds of people of creating value, that was exciting to me," Janmohamed said. 

Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey: 'Immigration is at the heart of capitalism'

A native of India, Nutanix cofounder and CEO Dheeraj Pandey moved to the US as a student at the University of Texas-Austin in 1997. 

He cites "the openness of the US immigration program" as a key to his successful tech career.

"America hugged me hard," he said in a tweet the day after Trump signed the freeze order. "I became an Indian American."

Pandey, whose company is now a $4.6 billion infrastructure software powerhouse, added that he believes that immigration is "at the heart of capitalism." 

Race Capital cofounder Alfred Chuang: One visa made a big difference

Alfred Chuang, a native of Hong Kong, came to the US on an H-1B visa when he joined Sun Microsystems in the mid-1980s.

Getting that visa was "a life changing experience," he told Business Insider.  

"If I didn't get my H-1B then I would not have gone on to cofound BEA Systems, which subsequently employed over 30,000 US workers when it was an independent company," he said.

BEA Systems, which Oracle acquired for $8.5 billion in 2008, was also a major win for Warburg Pincus which had made a $50 million investment in the company, he said. This year, Chuang launched his own venture capital fund, Race Capital, which plans to support startups that are developing technologies for the post-COVID world.

"This little step of Alfred getting his H-1B has manifested a whole different outcome for the world of enterprise tech," Chuang said. "That's the potential each visa holds." 

Intel chief engineer Murthy Renduchintala: 'Foreign national graduates of US advanced degree programs are essential to closing this skills gap.'

Venkata Murthy Renduchintala, known in Silicon Valley as Murthy, came to the US from Great Britain on a temporary work visa when he joined Phillips in 1997.

He later joined Qualcomm where he served as a top executive for 11 years before being recruited by chip giant Intel where he is now chief engineer.

Work visas play a critical role in the American tech industry because "there is a shortage of highly trained and specialized engineers and scientists in the US," Murthy, now a US citizen, told Business Insider. 

"To maintain leadership in the global semiconductor industry, we believe it is critical to continue attracting the best and brightest STEM talent from all over the world, he said. "Foreign national graduates of US advanced degree programs are essential to closing this skills gap."

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan: Silicon Valley is the 'center of innovation' because it welcomes founders and employees from around the world

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan's visa application was rejected eight times over the course of 2 years before it was finally approved in 1997. He moved from China to Silicon Valley on a temporary, six-month B-1 visa and started working at WebEx and later got an H-1B visa. 

Silicon Valley "is the center of innovation because it welcomes founders and employees from countries worldwide," Yuan told Business Insider in an email. He was inspired to work for a tech company after watching a speech Bill Gates gave about the dot-com bubble, according to Bloomberg.

Yuan helped build WebEx as its VP of engineering, and stayed on when Cisco acquired it in 2007. That was also the year Yuan became a US citizen. After four years at Cisco, he left in June 2011 to start Zoom.

Zoom went public last year and is widely thought to have transformed the video conferencing market and the way people work. It's grown tremendously this year due to social distancing mandates during the pandemic, with a market cap of over $70 billion. 

"Zoom simply would not exist if it weren't for the tireless efforts of our employees including immigrants," Yuan said. "Immigrants make us stronger as a company and as a nation, and we should advocate for policies that welcome and empower them."

Array Ventures founder Shruti Gandhi: The US is "stagnating" itself by closing off immigration

Shruti Gandhi moved to the US from India in 1999 on a green card, after her aunt had applied for her and her parents about 14 years prior. It's the process that's often referred to as "chain migration," where US citizens can apply for a green card for their close family members, but the process often takes years.

Gandhi finished high school and college in upstate New York where she realized her interest in technology. She then started working at IBM and worked there for a decade before making a career shift into venture capital. She launched her own firm called Array Ventures in 2015.

In her experience, immigrants contribute significantly to both the tech industry and the overall economy, and if the US closes itself off to immigrant workers it will stagnate the economy, she said. Many of the companies Array invests in are created by immigrant founders, who in turn create jobs for others. 

"I think it wouldn't have been possible if someone like me wasn't given the chance and the opportunity to truly live the American dream," she said, adding that the exchange of ideas created by immigrants is invaluable.

She also said the US only hurting itself in the long run because as remote work becomes the norm, companies will opt to hire people where they're already at instead of asking them to immigrate if US immigration policies continue to be restrictive. 

"If we don't capture that dollar here for tuition and things like that then we're losing that income and we're not doing a better job of training our own workforce," Gandhi said. "We're basically stagnating ourselves here."

Outreach CEO Manny Medina: These policies are creating a 'climate of fear and uncertainty' for immigrants

Manny Medina came to the US from Ecuador on a student visa in 1994, and decided to study computer engineering. He stayed because he loved programming and engineering and felt like the US was the best place to pursue it. 

His first job after college was at Bell Atlantic, which is now part of Verizon, and he worked to build the company's billing systems. He was able to work on an OPT visa, which gives international students one to three years to work in the US before needing an H-1B or other work visa. The company applied for his H-1B visa but because a limited number of visas are awarded each year, he didn't get one.

Medina then attended grad school on a student visa and was able to keep working for the company because it funded a research project that he could work on at school. During that time, he got married and subsequently got a green card and later became a citizen. 

He's since worked as an engineer for various tech companies including Amazon and Microsoft, before founding his current company Outreach in 2014. 

As an immigrant who built a career and company in the US, he said these current policies are creating a "climate of fear and uncertainty for the immigrants who are here in the country" and that the "environment just creates animosity towards immigrants."

At Outreach, 10 to 15% of the workforce is immigrants, and these policies make it hard for the company to continue attracting talent. Medina said Outreach is starting to think about building new teams overseas in places like Prague where it has an office. Those are jobs that could be here if the climate was more favorable, he said.

Carbon Health CEO Eren Bali: Diverse perspectives create diverse companies.

Eren Bali moved to the US in 2007 on an H-1B visa after cofounding education-tech startup Udemy in Turkey earlier that year.

"My naive kind of goal was to come here for a couple of months, raise money from investors here," Bali told Business Insider. "And then obviously I just didn't go anywhere."

He worked at a handful of other Silicon Valley companies after leaving Udemy, before starting Carbon Health, a platform that fuses virtual and in-person health care, in 2015.

He said his experience as an immigrant in the US allowed him to look at healthcare providers and technology through a different lens. Other companies in Silicon Valley at the time were focused on products for consumers who already had high-quality health care, like premium wearables and body scanners. But Bali realized that the real issue was much more basic: "The primary problem in the US healthcare is access."

The new visa freezes would hamper that kind of diversity of thought and perspectives. 

"Silicon Valley is all about talent," Bali said. "You move the people here to another place, that place is the new Silicon Valley."

Since the coronavirus pandemic started, Carbon Health started offering free COVID-19 tests in the Bay Area and grew its 100-person workforce to 300 by May.

"Trump's administration failed to contain this problem," Bali said. "Companies like ours rise up to the challenge and will help solve the problem."

NetApp CEO George Kurian: 'Building barriers' just 'weakens American leadership'

"Immigrants have had an incredible impact on the tech industry," George Kurian, the CEO of NetApp, told Business Insider.

He and his brother, Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud, are prominent examples. The Kurian brothers, who are from India, are the most famous twin siblings in the tech industry. They moved to the US as students in the late 1980s, each earning a engineering degree from Princeton and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The NetApp CEO said that the move to limit work visas drastically could potentially weaken the US tech industry: "Building barriers between countries and labor markets impedes our ability to reach our greatest potential in a changing world, and over time weakens American leadership," he said. 

His company serves customers in about 140 countries worldwide, he added. "And we have benefited from having people from so many different parts of the world be part of our company."

In an interview with Business Insider last year, Kurian previously opened up about how moving to the US is a challenging experience for most immigrants: "They're giving up a lot to come here," he said. "They're giving up the comfort of the language and the culture they grew up in to come here. They're not making that decision lightly."

Pulse CEO Mayank Mehta: The 'immature' decision has led to immigrants feeling worried about their future in this country.

Mayank Mehta, cofounder and CEO of the social research platform Pulse, was a recipient of both a student visa — when he came to the US to finish up high school — and an H-1B — when he moved to California for his first startup, Cooliris. 

"Coming here was an absolute dream-come-true for me," Mehta told Business Insider. "I was a techie through and through."

Mehta acknowledges that his visa process was easier than most: He was backed by venture capitalist firms like Kleiner Perkins who hired lawyers to make the process as smooth as possible for him. By the time Mehta became a citizen five years ago, Cooliris was acquired by Yahoo, and Mehta had moved on to becoming an angel investor and working at the enterprise platform Capriza.  

"A large part of the team that we built up was from the immigrant community," he said. "Without all the diversity, we wouldn't have been able to get to where we were."

Mehta, now the CEO of Pulse, called the Trump administration's decision "immature" and said the move is affecting his colleagues' stability and stress levels in the company and in the country. 

"I have a number of people who are worried — both at Pulse as well as family and friends — that are concerned about what it means to have a future in this country," Mehta said. "Is this step one of many to come that is going to be more and more extreme in treating immigrants here?"

Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra: It's 'completely unfathomable' to turn away the next generation of founders

Rahul Vohra came to the US on an H-1B visa when he was building his first company, Rapportive, in 2010. He and his other two cofounders were from the UK and wanted to come to the US because it's "still the best place to start a technology company" and have access to venture capital, he said. 

After Rapportive was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012, Vohra stayed on for two years before leaving to found Superhuman, an email software startup that has a cult-like following in Silicon Valley. Vohra also applied for his green card and, after 6 years, he just became a citizen in February 2020.

The jobs created at Rapportive, LinkedIn, and Superhuman — and the value those products provide — would have never been possible if he hadn't been able to get an H-1B visa, Vohra said, and there are many more like him. That's why he thinks it's "completely unfathomable" that the US is "turning away the next generation of founders and entrepreneurs that could be building the next Teslas, the next Googles, the next Facebooks."

The work visa freeze is worrisome because no one knows what's coming next, he said, and many fear that the restrictions will continue even after the pandemic is over.

"If the ban persists or it doesn't get repealed properly, then it's only going to make America less competitive and less diverse at a time when it needs to be both of those things," Vohra said. 

Harness CEO and cofounder Jyoti Bansal: There's no 'rational argument' behind these bans because they're 'politically driven, xenophobia-driven.'

Two-time tech entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal came from India to the US on an H-1B visa right when the dot-com crash was happening in 2000.

Bansal worked at a startup called netLens and hoped to later start his own, but he had to wait until he got his green card to do so. Finally, in 2008, he made his dream come true when he founded AppDynamics, an application to help customers with monitoring and troubleshooting. In 2017, Cisco acquired AppDynamics for $3.7 billion.

After he sold AppDynamics, Bansal set off to start his next company, Harness, which helps developers with automatically releasing code faster and more often. He also cofounded a venture capital firm called Unusual Ventures. 

Bansal says many people were surprised he started another company after selling AppDynamics and asked him why he didn't just go retire on a beach somewhere. 

"I'm passionate about solving problems and building companies around it," Bansal said. "That's my motivation."

Bansal says that he had always believe that Silicon Valley was the place to go if he wanted to work at a startup, but that sheen could fade because of these bans. 

"Good engineers and scientists and talent are coming to the US to work on interesting things, especially since Silicon Valley has that perception," Bansal said. "There's a lot of this short-term political thinking and I don't think there's any rational argument behind these bans. Seems like it's politically driven, xenophobia-driven arguments mostly. In the long term, it's a loss."

EmpInfo CEO Jag Puttanna: Like the coronavirus crisis, Trump's order creates uncertainty

Jag Puttanna, the cofounder and CEO of the employment verification company EmpInfo, disagreed with the Trump administration's rationale that suspending work visas for H-1B recipients would make sure that Americans get those jobs.

"[Visa recipients] are not taking anyone's jobs away." he said, "It doesn't mean that those jobs will go to someone who's not talented here — that would go to an individual who was qualified to do it no matter where they are in this country and the world."

Puttanna came to the US from India on a student visa for his graduate program at the University of Nevada. He moved to the Bay Area after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, when structural engineers were in high demand. 

"The company desperately needed someone with my background," Puttanna told Business Insider. "It was good for an employer to hire someone who had the talent."

Now, as someone who employs guest workers with H-1B visas, he says the restriction put his colleagues in limbo. One planned on going to another country for a wedding, another wanted to visit family abroad, but because of new H-1B restrictions, Puttanna says, his employees are reluctant to travel.

All this, amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic.

"That's another COVID-19 kind of situation, that you can't travel," Puttanna said. "All these H-1B restrictions would curtail them in to live freely. They came here for the freedom, not to lose the freedom."

• Quin Garcia's venture firm, Autotech Ventures, is on the lookout for new deals.
• Autotech focuses on startups that are involved in ground transportation in some way, but instead of looking for the next Tesla, it invests in those making software or services or that are developing marketplaces.
• It's already had some notable successes — it made money off its investment in Lyft and three other startups it backed with its first fund have been acquired.
• Autotech recently raised a second fund of $150 million, which it plans to use solely to invest in earlier-stage startups. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The "ground transportation" industry is centuries old — millennia, really — but Quin Garcia still thinks there's plenty of investment-worthy innovation to be found there.

Garcia is a cofounder and managing director of Autotech Ventures, which focuses on startups involved in some way in ground transportation. The firm has invested in everything from Saf eAI, which is working on autonomous driving technology for construction and mining vehicles to Outdoorsy, vying to be the Airbnb for recreational vehicles.

This spring, Autotech closed a second fund with $150 million in assets. The company has already made nine investments with the second fund, but is on the lookout for more, Garcia told Business Insider in a recent interview.

"We're hunting for more deals right now," he said. "We're deal-hungry."

Autotech loves software, services, and marketplaces

Autotech's focus on ground transportation might seem to imply that it's looking for the next Tesla or Zoox, the self-driving car startup that Amazon just agreed to buy. But that's not where Garcia and his partners see the best opportunity, in part because of the time and money such companies will likely need before they'll be able to deliver a return.

Instead, they're much more interested in companies that are developing technology that such cars and other vehicles might use — or services that might allow people or companies to buy, sell or rent vehicles. Outdoorsy, for example, offers a marketplace where consumers can rent RVs owned by other people. Digital Motors, a recent investment, offers a service that helps automobile dealers sell cars online. It also recently backed Latent AI, which is working on software that can make it easier for artificial intelligence algorithms to run on less powerful computers, such as those that might be found in an autonomous vehicle.

Autotech's strategy tries to take advantage of a collection of industry trends it calls CASED, which stands for connectivity, autonomy, shared use, electrification, and digital enterprise, Garcia said.

"We tend to gravitate toward software, services, and capital-light hardware startups," he said.

Some of its startups benefitted from the pandemic

Garcia's particularly excited about Outdoorsy, in part because it's one of the few companies that has benefitted from the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks to COVID-19, few Americans are vacationing overseas and many don't want to set foot on a plane. But many still want to take a break and get out of town, and that's created a burgeoning market for Outdoorsy. Relatively cheap gas has also helped.

Autotech first invested in the company in 2016, according to Pitchbook, but it just decided to put some more money into it, Garcia said.

"That company is just exploding, so we just made a follow-up investment," he said.

Digital Motors is another company that got a boost from the pandemic, Garcia said. When the shutdown orders took effect around the country, it closed the physical locations of car dealerships around the country. Digital Motors software helped its customers stay in business, he said.

"The dealers are very quickly embracing digital auto-retailing solutions," he said. "So, Digital Motors has really taken off since COVID."

Successful exits, including Lyft

Autotech has made only a few tweaks to its strategy with its second fund. With its first fund, a $120 million vehicle that closed in 2017, the firm dabbled in some late-stage investments, including in Lyft. With the new fund, it's only going to be investing in less mature startups, those that are raising seed to Series C rounds, Garcia said. 

Thanks to that, and the fact that it has a bigger fund this time around, it's also planning on boosting its investments from a maximum of $5 million to a high of $8 million, he said. That will allow it to lead deals more frequently, he said.

Autotech has already seen some notable successes with its strategy. Its bet on Lyft paid off; it sold off its stake in the app-based taxi company at a profit, even though Lyft now trades at less than half of its initial public offering price.

Garcia's firm has had other exits. Apple acquired Xnor.ai, which developed technology similar to Latent AI's, for $200 million earlier this year. Tesla bought computer vision startup DeepScale last year. And online classified site OLX purchased Frontier Car Group, which operates an online used car marketplace, for $400 million.

He's looking forward to the future and finding more companies that are bringing innovation to ground transportation.

Raising the second fund "was kind of a big milestone for us," Garcia said.

Got a tip about a startup or the venture industry? Contact Troy Wolverton via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

• Read more about startups and the venture industry:
• This VC backed self-driving car startup Zoox into a big buyout by Amazon. Here's why he says that deal signals a new wave of automation.
• Amazon's $1.2 billion deal to buy Zoox shows just how hard building a self-driving car still is —and why even more startups could become buyout targets
• Palmer Luckey's military contracting startup Anduril is now worth $1.9 billion
• This fund manager thinks $35 trillion worth of global assets are underperforming thanks to the investment industry's lack of diversity. He's got a plan to turn that around.

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• In June, the former CIO of $1.3 billion customer messaging startup Intercom — Karen Peacock — took the role of CEO, replacing cofounder Eoghan McCabe. 
• She joined at a tough time: Months into the coronavirus pandemic and shortly after Intercom laid off 39 employees to cut costs. 
• As CEO, Peacock plans to lead the company to profitability and an IPO in a few years.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When long-time Intuit executive Karen Peacock first started speaking with Intercom cofounder Eoghan McCabe in late 2016 about potentially joining the customer messaging startup as COO, the plan was that if she took the job, she'd eventually become CEO when the time was right. 

McCabe made it clear from the beginning that he wanted to transition from CEO to chairman eventually, though "none of us had a specific timeline," Peacock told Business Insider. 

She took the job in 2017 and after three years — as Intercom's annual recurring revenue swelled to $150 million from its over 30,000 customers —Peacock officially became CEO of the $1.3 billion startup in June. 

It wasn't exactly an easy time to make the switch: The coronavirus pandemic had already been raging for several months. Although Intercom has raised a total of $240.5 million from the likes of Index Ventures and angel investors like Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, it hasn't had fresh funding since 2018 and, to cut costs, it laid off dozens of employees in May.

"We thought 'Now is the right time,'" Peacock said. "I don't think that things are going to change from the pandemic's perspective in a month's time, in two month's time. We didn't want to put anything about our business on hold so we moved forward."

McCabe has become company chairman.

Beyond navigating the company through the pandemic, Peacock's main goal as CEO is to guide the company to profitability "in the next couple years" and an IPO in a "few years out." 

Winning larger customers and the path to an IPO

Before joining Intercom, Peacock spent about 8 years at Intuit, most recently as the senior vice president of small business, a unit which includes accounting platform QuickBooks and that she grew from a $500 million business to $2.5 billion.  

She was intrigued by Intercom in part because she wanted to move away from building up businesses within massive corporations. 

"I was looking to move to something smaller and more nimble," Peacock said, "Where I can get the experience and have the impact I wanted to have — to be able to learn and grow and become a CEO."

She's currently focused on strengthening Intercom's relationships with customers, as well as reinventing some of Intercom's products so they're more useful for larger companies. One area in particular where she's investing is conversational support, so that customers can immediately have any questions answered. 

"We're very much focused on driving revenue growth that is sustained and predictable," Peacock said, "And long-term relationships with customers who are staying with Intercom and recommending it to others." 

Over the past year and a half, Intercom has focused on winning over larger companies. Today, it counts Facebook, Amazon, and Lyft as its customers.

"For every company, just continuing to grow and scale is something that we're always focused on," Peacock said. "Making sure to invest in our products and keep reinventing ourselves is important to do. We also hired a lot of people over the last few years. Continuing to build a culture as we build a company is very much on our mind as well."

Intercom recently brought on its first CFO — Sitecore veteran Dan Griggs — in April, and he will help the company build its roadmap for going public, including its plans for reporting and compliance. 

Layoffs and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic

During the coronavirus pandemic, Intercom quickly announced in March that it would offer its services for free for any nonprofit or institution fighting COVID-19 and leading projects related to the outbreak.

But Intercom itself wasn't immune to the effects of the pandemic: It laid off 39 employees in May and also shifted 47 current roles from San Francisco to Dublin, where the majority of R&D and product development take place. It also cut back on certain spending, including putting real estate renovation projects on hold and cutting its travel budget.  

Overall, Intercom's smaller company customers got hit harder by the pandemic and, as a result, tried to reduce their usage and spending, the company said. Still, Peacock says the company has seen "record amounts" of new user growth, both from large and small companies. People had increasingly expected to communicate with businesses through real-time messaging tools even before the pandemic, Peacock says, but the decrease in in-person interactions during the crisis has accelerated the shift. 

Read more: Intercom, a $1.3 billion messaging startup backed by Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, laid off 39 employees and is relocating 47 roles to Dublin

Peacock says Intercom's product "has never been more needed" than today. In a few months, the company will be launching a new product to improve on getting customers instantaneous support. "One of the things we've realized and seen is that traditional support tools don't work anymore," Peacock said. "If I have a problem with something, I don't expect to write a support ticket. I don't expect to write an email and hear back in a few hours or days." Users want real-time, contextual support, which is what Peacock says Intercom will start to offer. 

Taking care of employees

Finally, another key priority for Peacock is investing in diversity and inclusion for Intercom's workforce. The company made public statements condemning systemic racism both inside and outside the company during the civil rights protests in June, and Peacock says that she also spent time reading, listening, and educating herself before becoming CEO.

Throughout the last two months, Intercom has hosted internal panel discussions and published podcast episodes to amplify Black voices, and it's thinking about how to eliminate bias in recruiting and build a more diverse candidate pool, Peacock says.

"One of my reflections is there is more work that we can do and should do at Intercom," Peacock said. 

As she steps into her new role as CEO, she's been spending a lot of time on Google Meet and Zoom for meetings. As she transitions to her job virtually, she says it helps that she already knows the team and that it would've been harder if she had never worked at Intercom before.

"The fact that I've known the team for three years, worked closely with them for three years, made that easier and more smooth transition," Peacock said. "It would be a lot harder to come into a company as a brand new CEO during the pandemic."

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@businessinsider.com, Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request. 

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NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

• I test and review dozens of cars, trucks, and SUVs every year.
• Most are wonderful. But there are some things that annoy me.
• At the halfway point of 2020, I decided to round up all the features that disappointed me so far.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

At the halfway point of every year, I like to pause for a moment and reflect on all the vehicles I've driven, savor the great experiences and roadway thrills and ... amass a list of complaints!

Actually, I usually do this at the end of the year, but in 2020 I've decided to up my timetable. Part of this is because I've gotten behind the wheel of A LOT of cars at this point. 

A caveat: These days, most cars are wonderful, at least compared to the dreadful sets of wheels that we routinely had to deal with in past eras. The auto industry has done a very good job of giving customers what they want and improving reliability and performance.

But there are still some fails. 

Here's a rundown of everything that's annoyed me so far:

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The dashboard cupholder ...

... in the Porsche 911 Turbo S. What a staggeringly great machine! But that retractable cupholder is useless.

The flimsy plastic hood latch ...

... on the Maserati Levante GT. Admittedly, other Fiat Chrysler vehicles have suffered from this component, which I expect will fail well before the warranty runs out.

Fake plastic vents ...

... on the Toyota GR Supra 2.0 and 3.0. The updated Supras are pretty nifty cars, but the extraneous plastic adornment isn't.

The carbon fiber wing ...

... On the Mercedes-AMG GT R Roadster. The car is magnificent, and the wing would be helpful to keep the back tires glued to the tarmac on a track. But it spoils the design of the rear.

The infotainment system ...

... And infotainment interface ...

... In the Aston Martin DB11 ...

... And V8 Vantage. The system is borrowed from Mercedes, but it's an older generation and quite difficult to use.

BY THE WAY, the passenger-side hood release ...

... in the Aston Vantage was so well-hidden that many owners might never find it.

The rear end of ...

... The Porsche Cayenne Coupé. The Cayenne is already a marginally attractive vehicle, and while the Coupé's fastback styling is an improvement, the back quarters remain a problem.

The infotainment system ...

... In the Nissan Titan full-size pickup truck. I quite like the old Titan, and the infotainment setup gets the job done. But it needs to be updated.

It could be worse, of course. It could be the infotainment system ...

... In the Nissan Frontier, a midsize pickup. It's an aging design that has been gently upgraded ahead of a new truck, but the infotainment has DNA that seems borrowed from the early 2000s.

The mock grille ...

,,, on the Chevy Bolt EV. Electric cars don't need to suck in air to mix with gas to power their engines, so why do they need pretend grilles?

The lack of a running board step ...

... On the Jeep Gladiator Rubicon. The missing feature made climbing in and out a challenge.

While we're at it, although the Gladiator's 3.6-liter V6 is a stalwart ...

... The pop rod for the hood is quite difficult to deploy.

The shifter in ...

... The Lamborghini Huracán EVO Spyder. Awesome car, and many folks like the jet-fighter-inspired shifter. I feel like it was stolen from a Cylon raider.

The square infotainment screen in the round central dash ...

... Of the MINI Cooper SE electric. The car is fun to drive, but the ill-fitting screen reminds one that MINIs once had a far more interesting dashboard design, pre-infotainment era.

The design of ...

... The Mercedes-Benz GLB 250. It could have been because I don't like white SUVs, but the GLC was blandly forgettable.

The 1.6-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder engine ...

... in the Kia Soul GT-Line. The cute ute sends 201 horsepower though a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, which is terrible. Worse, the motor has rough turbo lag.

The dated interior ...

... Of the Infiniti Q50 Red Sport 400. Infiniti is losing ground to other luxury sedans due to its reluctance to bring interiors up to speed.

The performance of ...

... The Cadillac CT4-V. As a V-car, this Caddy should be something special. But the 2.7-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder doesn't exactly roar to life, and the car doesn't liven up until it hits decent highway speeds.

• New Zealand startup Eight360 created, a virtual reality motion simulator.
• Nova is a motion simulator that can make VR feel more real by turning in any direction. 
• Creators see the device being used for military training and e-racing in the future. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Eight360, a startup in Wellington, New Zealand has a way of tricking your brain into thinking you're driving a racecar, riding a rollercoaster, or even flying a jet.

The company's VR motion simulator, NOVA, can turn 180 degrees in any direction in only one second, combining visual, audio, and physical elements to make the experience as realistic as possible. Eight360 even says that this scary-looking contraption makes motion sickness less of a problem, because it matches up what the user is seeing to what they're feeling.

At $150,000 per year for a lease, the Nova probably isn't going to show up in many homes, though it could become standard in esports lounges. Instead, Eight360 is promoting the device as a way for racecar drivers to put in extra practice time off the track, or to practice esports, and for military training for pilots.

Here's how it works. 

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Nova is an "untethered VR motion simulator," making virtual reality games and training programs feel more real by rotating in any direction.

Eight360 says that Nova could be used for training, education, and fun.

Inside and wearing a VR headset, the user has full audio, visual, and physical immersion.

CEO Terry Miller has called it "the crazy spinning ball of death."

Source: VR Scout

Nova is a combination of standard parts, like gears and a motor, supplemented with modular parts for the best VR experience.

The whole thing weighs about 1,100 lbs, and can be transported on a pallet or forklift.

The sphere, which has been compared to a "human-sized hamster ball," is 5.9 feet in diameter, needing just a 6.5 square foot area.

Source: VR Scout

It works with some Windows games right off the shelf, making roller coaster simulators and racing games feel more realistic.

While Nova could definitely improve the gaming experience, it's too expensive to be practical for widespread use. Eight360 is looking to lease out the Nova for $150,000 per year.

Instead, the company is looking at other industries, like e-racing and defense training.

The seat and controls can be swapped out to better fit a particular need, like training pilots to fly a certain aircraft.

• Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson worked for Tesla CEO Elon Musk from 2009 to 2012.
• Rawlinson said the biggest lesson he learned from Musk is the importance of relentless optimism.
• "Sometimes you have to put all your chips in," Rawlinson said.
• Are you a current or former Lucid employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at mmatousek@businessinsider.com, on Signal at 646-768-4712, or via his encrypted email address mmatousek@protonmail.com.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Peter Rawlinson worked for Tesla CEO Elon Musk from 2009-2012 as he led the development of the electric-car maker's groundbreaking Model S sedan. Now the chief executive of the electric-vehicle startup Lucid Motors, Rawlinson learned from Musk the importance of relentless optimism.

"I really believe that success can beget success," Rawlinson said in an interview with Business Insider. "It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if you're really committed and you're all in, and everyone at Lucid knows I am. And that's the leadership I hope I provide."

If you focus too much on what might go wrong, it can decrease your odds of achieving your goals, he added.

"Sometimes you have to put all your chips in," he said.

Musk, Rawlinson said, demonstrated his commitment to success "on an hour-by-hour basis." Rawlinson has taken that attitude to Lucid, which he joined in 2013 (he became the company's CEO in 2019). His confidence in the company and its debut vehicle, the Air luxury sedan, is driven by Lucid's in-house engineering and design efforts. According to the company, the Air will be able to drive over 400 miles between charges and accelerate from 0-60 mph in under 2.5 seconds. Those specs would make the Air competitive with the Model S, which, depending on the trim, has a maximum range of 402 miles and a 2.3-second 0-60 mph time.

"We're creating a car which is going to be the best car in the world," Rawlinson said. "People are going to want it."

Lucid will unveil the production version of the Air in September before beginning production next year. The vehicle's price will start "well north" of $100,000, Rawlinson said.

Are you a current or former Lucid employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at mmatousek@businessinsider.com, on Signal at 646-768-4712, or via his encrypted email address mmatousek@protonmail.com.

• Read more:
• Electric pickups are on the way, promising everything from bulletproofing to drinking fountains. Here are some of the wildest features to expect from Tesla, Rivian, and others.
• Tesla is transforming how cars are sold. But 27 insiders say the company's methods mean slashed pay and living in constant fear of getting laid off.
• Elon Musk predicts Tesla will complete the 'basic functionality' needed for fully autonomous driving this year — 4 years after the company started selling 'full self driving' software
• Hydrogen vs. electric: Nikola's CEO reveals why businesses should buy the Nikola Two hydrogen-fueled truck instead of the battery-powered Tesla Semi

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NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

Digital transformation has just begun.

Not a single industry is safe from the unstoppable wave of digitization that is sweeping through finance, retail, healthcare, and more.

In 2020, we expect to see even more transformative developments that will change our businesses, careers, and lives.

To help you stay ahead of the curve, Business Insider Intelligence has put together a list of 30 Big Tech Predictions for 2020 across Banking, Connectivity & Tech, Digital Media, Payments & Commerce, Fintech, and Digital Health.

This exclusive report can be yours for FREE today.

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• A list of the 20 most valuable venture-backed companies in artificial intelligence boasts a combined valuation of some $120 billion.
• Most of the list are privately-held startups; some of them — namely Waymo and Uber Advanced Technology Group — are subsidiaries of much larger companies, but that are said to be eyeing IPOs of their own.
• Investment remains robust despite an uncertain economy, a reflection of the great potential of AI innovation, analysts say. 
• Seven of the 20 make autonomous car technology, a challenging field that will require time to mature. 
• Other technologies on the list include AI applications to farming, data management, hiring, and writing. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In an uncertain economy where valuations are slipping, the 20 highest-valued venture-backed companies in artificial intelligence combined are worth about a staggering $120 billion, according to PitchBook, in a reflection of the promising innovation of the sector.

To put it in perspective, these 20 young companies — many that have yet to produce actual products — are worth more than Ford, American Express, and US Steel combined. 

Top startups also continue to close major fundraising rounds and command multi-billion valuations for technology ranging from automation tools to self-driving cars. And despite the economic headwinds caused by the coronavirus pandemic, expert studies and venture capitalists say the market remains steady. 

"All the fundamental parts of the innovation cycle that have AI broadly employed in it are somewhat untouched by a COVID-like pandemic scenario," said Rohit Sharma, a partner at early stage VC firm True Ventures. "We don't really see a slowdown or any kind of impact." 

But there are obstacles ahead for even the most valuable startups. Seven of the 20 top, according to data provided by PitchBook, are builders of self-driving car technology, which experts say is a sector that demands capital and patience — two things that could be in shorter supply in a jittery recession. 

"A lot of the business case assumptions and model assumptions, historically, have started to fall apart as people really started to realize just how challenging this robo-taxi problem really is," Austin Russell, CEO of Luminar, told Business Insider's Troy Wolverton recently. 

Most of the companies on this list are relatively small, independently-held startups.

Notably, however, a few of the companies on PitchBook's list are independent subsidiaries of larger organizations — at the top of the list is Waymo, which began as Google's self-driving car unit, and is now reportedly mulling a public offering at some point in the future after raising venture cash all its own.

Joining Waymo is Uber's own autonomous vehicle division – a separate entity from the ride-sharing firm with its own CEO and IPO possibilities. And Zoox may be the poster child for how challenging the market can be. Amazon reportedly bought the firm for far less than its previous valuation. 

Beyond the parking lot of autonomous cars are a variety of interesting companies, all using the tech in different ways. The one thing they have in common, however, is they are backed by wealth many other of tech would  envy.

Big-data company Palantir is beginning the process to go public. Other standouts on the list include AI farming startup Indigo Ag, hiring firm Checkr, and AI writing company Grammarly. 

All valuation data is from PitchBook. All companies asked to verify valuation, and where they did it is noted. 

Business Insider unpacked the top 20 most valuable, VC-backed AI companies below:

Waymo: $30.75 billion

CEO: John Krafcik

Headquarters: Mountain View, California

Total funding raised: $3 billion 

Last funding round: The company raised $3 billion of venture funding in a deal led by Silver Lake Management, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Mubadala Investment Company in May.

Valuation: $30.75 billion 

Waymo is a self-driving car company that uses integrated sensors and artificial intelligence to detect pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles and road workers, enabling users to travel on-demand in autonomous vehicles. In May, Waymo raised roughly $750 million, expanding the size of its first external investment round to $3 billion. Until last spring, Waymo had been funded entirely by Google and its corporate parent, Alphabet.

Palantir Technologies: $20.33 billion

CEO: Alex Karp

Headquarters: Palo Alto, California

Total funding raised: $3.35 billion

Last funding round: The company received $549.73 million of financing from Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Holdings on July 1.

Valuation: $20.33 billion

Palantir makes a data analysis platform that integrates, visualizes, secures and sifts through information. The company helps human experts evaluate data at scale through machine-assisted analysis. Some of that data sifting has led to controversy. Activists have protested Palantir for taking big government contracts to work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to fight undocumented immigration. Palantir's creators have in turn criticized tech companies that don't work with the US government.

The company has confidentially filed a draft version of the paperwork for a public listing of its stock. The move sets Palantir up for what could be the highest-profile market debut of the year, after the coronavirus pandemic effectively froze the market for some of the most anticipated IPOs.

Uber Advanced Technologies Group: $7.25 billion

CEO: Eric Meyhofer

Headquarters: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Total funding raised: $1 billion

Valuation: $7.25 billion (Verified by company.)

Last funding round: The company raised $1 billion of venture funding from Toyota Motor, Denso and SoftBank Investment Advisers in April of 2019. 

Uber Advanced Technologies Group – a separate entity from its parent company Uber – develops car technology for self-driving cars. The company's system uses various sensors and cameras to detect and analyze driving scenarios, enabling clients to create self-driving cars that reduce human error. Self-driving is notoriously expense to develop, but autonomy is also key to Uber's pitch to investors. The company has revealed that paying drivers is among its top expenses — removing them from the equation could help Uber reach profitability.

UiPath: $7.1 billion

CEO: Daniel Dines

Headquarters: New York

Total funding: $977.23 million

Valuation: $7.1 billion

Last funding round: The company raised $568 million through the combination of Series D-1 and Series D-2 venture funding in a deal led by Coatue Management in April of 2019.

UiPath makes robotic automation software that performs tedious and redundant tasks. The company says it can help companies adapt to new needs with a configurable software platform that controls robotic machinery. The coronavirus pandemic could accelerate UiPath's plans to go public, CEO Danile Dines has said, predicting his firm "will have one of the biggest IPOs of 2021."

Automation Anywhere: $6.8 billion

CEO: Mihir Shukla

Headquarters: San Jose, California

Total funding: $840 million

Valuation: $6.8 billion 

Last funding round: The company raised $290 million of Series B venture funding in a deal led by Salesforce Ventures in November of 2019.

Automation Anywhere makes robotic process automation (RPA) software to augment the human workforce by automating repetitive business processes. The company's solution provides a platform for building and executing software bots powered by artificial intelligence, which the company says reduces costs and programming errors. The firm says stiff competition from Microsoft has forced it to invest more in research and development, and last spring it announced 100 new R&D open positions. 

Databricks: $6.2 billion

CEO: Ali Ghodsi

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $897.36 million

Valuation: $6.2 billion (Verified by company.) 

Last funding round: The company raised $400 million of Series F venture funding in a deal led by Andreessen Horowitz in October.

Databricks makes an analytics platform that simplifies evaluation of big data. The company's cloud and machine learning platform unifies data science, engineering and business, enabling data science teams to work faster and more securely. Databricks, which rolled out a new strategy last month, has a stockpile of more than $500 million to ride through the recession to an IPO thanks to disaster preparedness by its cautious CEO.

Samsara: $5.4 billion

CEO: Sanjit Biswas

Headquarters: San Francisco 

Total funding: $930 million 

Valuation: $5.4 billion 

Last funding round: The company raised $700 million of Series F venture funding from Dragoneer Investment Group, Warburg Pincus and General Atlantic in May.

Samsara makes Internet of Things sensors and cameras designed to increase efficiency, safety and sustainability. The company's suite of technology works in an integrated, real-time platform, enabling businesses to improve the safety and quality of business operations. Last year Samsara said it more than doubled its customer base to 10,000, and expanded into 10 new countries, while growing revenue at over 200% annually.

Tempus Labs: $5 billion

CEO: Eric Lefkofsky

Headquarters: Chicago

Total funding: $620 million 

Valuation: $5 billion 

Last funding round: The company closed on $100 million of Series G venture funding from Novo Holdings, New Enterprise Associates and Baillie Gifford in March.

Tempus Labs makes a healthcare data-analytics platform that helps physicians to deliver personalized care for patients through an interactive analytical and machine learning platform. Since launching in 2015, the oncology-focused startup has stocked up a bank of clinical data and architected a system that uses machine learning, genomic sequencing, and other AI tech to enhance clinician understanding of patients' cancer and tailor effective treatments. 

Indigo Ag: $3.45 billion

CEO: David Perry

Headquarters: Boston

Total funding: $1.12 billion 

Valuation: $3.45 billion 

Last funding round: The company raised $500 million of Series F venture funding through a combination of debt and equity in June.  

Indigo Ag provides agricultural services to predict which microbes are most beneficial to the health of crops and supply seed coatings that enable farmers to reduce risk and increase profitability. The fast-growing firm has picked up speed during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing some analysts to predict acquisition or an initial public offering in the near future. 

C3.ai: $3.3 billion

CEO: Tom Siebel

Headquarters: Redwood City, California

Total funding: $355.74 million

Valuation: $3.3 billion 

Last funding round: The company raised an estimated $50 million of Series H venture funding from BlackRock in September.

C3.ai's cloud software uses machine learning to expedite the integration and analysis of enterprise data to provide companies with predictive maintenance, fraud detection, and energy management to improve operations. CEO Tom Siebel recently said his hot AI startup did $160 million in revenue last year, but that it won't go public until the economy is fully recovered.

Aurora: $3.07 billion

CEO: Chris Urmson

Headquarters: Palo Alto, California

Total funding: $765.6 million 

Valuation: $3.07 billion

Last funding round: The company raised $69.51 million of Series B1 venture funding from Hyundai, Kia Motors and Millennium Technology Value Partners in September of 2019.

Aurora makes an autonomous car technology that uses advanced machine learning software and hardware to power self-driving cars. Founded in 2017 by veterans of Google, Tesla, and Uber's self-driving car projects, the startup plans to act as a supplier to automotive, tech, or logistics companies.

Pony.ai: $3 billion

CEO: James Peng

Headquarters: Fremont, California

Total funding: $726 million 

Valuation: $3 billion

Last funding round: The company raised $462 million of Series B venture funding in a deal led by Toyota Motor in February.

Pony makes an autonomous driving technology intended for the manufacturing of automated vehicles. The company's platform takes advantage of artificial intelligence and algorithms to accurately perceive the vehicle's surroundings in order to predict the surrounding drivers' actions and maneuver accordingly.

Convoy: $2.75 billion

CEO: Dan Lewis

Headquarters: Seattle 

Total funding: $668 million 

Valuation: $2.75 billion 

Last funding round: The company raised $400 million of Series D venture funding in a deal led by Generation Investment Management and T. Rowe Price in November.

Convoy makes an efficient digital freight network that connects shippers and carriers. The company's technology and data help solve the problem of waste and inefficiency in the trucking industry by matching trucking companies with shippers that need to move freight. The Jeff Bezos-backed trucking startup also raised money from Al Gore's fund in an effort to dominate the digital-freight market.

Nuro: $2.7 billion

CEO: Jiajun Zhu

Headquarters: Mountain View, California 

Total funding: $1.03 billion 

Valuation: $2.7 billion  

Last funding round: The company raised $940 million of Series B venture funding from SoftBank Investment Advisers in February of 2019.

Nuro makes a suite of robotics that include autonomous vehicle programs that help to transport goods quickly, safely and affordably. The delivery startup was the first self-driving vehicle company to get permission from the US government to ditch side mirrors and windshields on its delivery vehicles – which experts say could be a precedent for streamlining designs due to greater trust in vehicle safety. 

SambaNova Systems: $2.5 billion

CEO: Rodrigo Liang

Headquarters: Palo Alto, California 

Total funding: $460.6 million 

Valuation: $2.5 billion 

Last funding round: The company raised $250 million in a Series C round of venture funding in a deal led by BlackRock in February.

SambaNova Systems makes an advanced systems platform and hardware designed to power machine learning and data analytics, enabling manufacturers with AI-powered hardware to create faster and more efficient algorithms. The tech is based on the research of its two former Stanford professor cofounders. The third cofounder, Christopher Ré, was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant for his work in data analysis. 

Grammarly: $2.3 billion

CEO: Brad Hoover

Headquarters: San Francisco 

Total funding: $200 million 

Valuation: $2.3 billion 

Last funding round: The company raised $92 million of Series 2 venture funding in a deal led by General Catalyst in October.

Grammarly goes beyond just an automated grammar-checker, dictionary, and thesaurus. It uses the linguistic branch of AI called natural language processing to help people write more clearly and effectively by aiding with word choice and tone. In 2018, Grammarly expanded its use to Google Docs, and can be downloaded in beta form. 

Uptake: $2.3 billion

CEO: Bradley Keywell 

Headquarters: Chicago

Total funding: $293 million 

Valuation: $2.2 billion (Verified by company.) 

Last funding round: The company raised $117 million of Series D venture funding in a deal led by Baillie Gifford in November 2017. 

Uptake makes a predictive analytics platform that collects and interprets sensor data, enabling businesses to improve uptime, streamline operations and spot growth opportunities. The company says it boasts 1.3 million industrial machines monitored, 2.4 billion hours of machine learning, and failure data from more than 800 different systems.

Quanergy: $2.27 billion

CEO: Kevin J. Kennedy

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California 

Total funding: $325 million 

Valuation: $2.27 billion 

Last funding round: The company raised an undisclosed amount of venture funding in a deal led by Rising Tide Fund on April 1, 2020. Reshape Holdings and other undisclosed investors also participated in the round.

Quanergy makes sensors for self-driving cars. The company's sensors help high-definition mapping data and object detection, tracking and classification. The firm's light detection and ranging technology senses and sizes the location of objects to monitor and detect real-time movement within an indoor space. 

Checkr: $2.2 billion

CEO: Daniel Yanisse

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California 

Total funding: $309.74M

Valuation: $2.2 billion (Verified by company.)  

Last funding round: The company raised $160.63 million of Series D venture funding in a deal led by T. Rowe Price in September.

Checkr makes an enterprise platform enabling businesses to hire at scale, improve compliance and streamline operations. The background check software startup has a program that helps delivery services and other essential companies hire new employees on the same day they apply.

Zoox: $1.2 billion

CEO: Aicha Evans

Headquarters: Alpharetta, Georgia

Total funding: Not disclosed

Valuation: Amazon will pay a reported $1.2 billion to acquire Zoox; PitchBook reports its last private valuation in 2018 at $3.2 billion after a Series C round.

Last funding round: The company raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding in June of  2018.

Zoox makes an autonomous mobility ecosystem that includes self-driving vehicles, control systems, AI and a ride-sharing service to improve urban mobility. This summer Amazon announced that it plans to buy Zoox for $1.2 billion — a fraction of its previous private valuation — in a move which industry experts told Business Insider is a sign of how competitive this sector is becoming, and how there could be more consolidation to come.

• As grocery stores worldwide experienced stockpiling, long lines, and health worries amid the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people turned to shopping online.
• It has been a goldrush for the British company Ocado, an online-only grocery marketplace that also operates technology for supermarket giants worldwide.
• Ocado was the best performing stock on the FTSE 100 in the second quarter of 2020, and, in May, Ocado raised over $1 billion to grow its services.
• It is now betting big on its US expansion, hoping to convert Americans to grocery shopping online.
• Huge challenges remain, though. Many Americans are still reluctant to buy food they can't see in person, and some fear the current online pandemic-driven boom could prove a one-off.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced even those most resistant to digital change to give ground, and e-commerce is burgeoning like never before.

Trapped at home, or faced with hours waiting only to find empty shelves, more people than ever are turning to online grocery shopping.

"There is pretty strong evidence that that is here to stay," Luke Jensen, executive director of the Ocado Group and CEO of Ocado Solutions, told Business Insider.

Ocado is a household name in British cities, but its business is largely unknown elsewhere.

A British success story

The company's work is twofold. There is Ocado Retail, which sells groceries and other supermarket products to consumers online. The second aspect is Ocado Solutions, which provides technology to the online operations of major global supermarkets like Kroger in the US, Sobeys in Canada, and Waitrose in the UK.

The company, which was founded in 2002, does not expect to turn a profit until 2024. It has high running costs, a sky-high share price, and a price-to-earnings ratio to match. 

In short, it's now acting like less an online retailer and more like a tech giant.

Its share price hit a record £22.36 ($28) on June 1, and the company has turned out to be the best performing stock on the FTSE 100 in the second quarter of 2020, boasting a 66% rise.

Ocado first set out as an online grocer, boxing and delivering orders for Waitrose, the UK's deluxe supermarket. But it has now established itself as the guardian of online grocery delivery in its own right.

It now has operations in the US, Canada, Britain, Sweden, France, and Japan.

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on many industries, and businesses around the world are struggling to stay afloat. National economies are sliding into recession, as global unemployment rates are inching upward.

But Ocado, and the grocery sector at large, have found themselves booming in light of astronomical demand. 

The future of food is online

The pandemic has left companies around the world reassessing how the habits of their customers will change. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in grocery shopping.

"When you see people try grocery online for the first time, there's a high proportion of people who stick with it and make it part of their repertoire," Jensen said.

There are many signs that online grocery shopping is growing.

Online grocery sales in the US boomed to $7 billion in May 2020, up from $5.3 billion in April, according to a Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping survey. For reference, this number was $1.2 billion in August 2019.

A 2018 Nielsen study also predicted that 70% of US consumers would be grocery shopping online by 2024.

Before the pandemic, online grocery shopping made up only 4% of the US market, but that is set to change.

"The US has seen an enormous boom," Jensen told Business Insider. "We expect a lot of that to stick."

Back in the UK — where, pre-pandemic, 7% of grocery shopping was online — Ocado said in May that "a simply staggering amount of traffic" meant they had to turn away new customers. 

"They could be doing even better than they are because they deliberately limited their growth," Matt Botham, a strategic insight director at the Kantar data consultancy, told Business Insider.

The elevated demand for online grocery shopping won't last forever. Shops will reopen, and constraints on freedom of movement will end.

But what is expected to remain — and what Ocado is betting its bottom dollar on — is the knowledge that online grocery shopping is possible, and may even be preferable.

'The share price is what it is, but we're not going to ... go all Elon Musk'

"Ocado has been absolutely smashing it during lockdown," Fawad Razaqzada, a financial market analyst, told Business Insider. 

Daniel Coatsworth, the editor of the Shares financial-news magazine, also told Business Insider: "Any grocery company with either an inferior service, or without one at all, will be seriously looking at how they can up their game. And that's where Ocado's strengths lie."

"It's easy to see why Ocado has done so well on the stock market this year."

But as a result of Ocado's extraordinary rise, some wonder whether the company is overvalued.

Ocado's price-to-earnings ratio — how many years of annual earnings it would take to make up its valuation — is way higher than its competitors, a common trait of tech stocks. 

"The share price is what it is, but we're not going to worry about it and go all Elon Musk," Jensen said, referring to the view taken by the Tesla CEO that investors are overvaluing his company. 

"We're delighted the world is seeing that opportunity, and we're embracing it vigorously and going after it.

On June 11, Ocado announced it was raising £1 billion ($1.24 billion) from investors to expand its services.

"The opportunity for Ocado is massive in what we do," Jensen said. "There will then will be opportunities beyond what we do."

Grocer or tech firm?

Ocado's cash cow is not its grocery business, but in its technology.

The company owns hundreds of patents for the machinery and software that power its warehouses, from product-picking robots to item scanners that members of staff can wear on their heads.

This software, and future products, can be leased to supermarkets across the world. That's where Ocado's value lies.

"Investors bidding up Ocado's shares are effectively saying that its services as a provider of solutions to automate online grocery orders will be in greater demand," Coatsworth said.

"There is merit in the market valuing it as a technology stock rather than as simply a grocer or delivery business."

The future of online grocery shopping

"At the heart of it all," Ocado says on its website, "lies our technological know-how and unparalleled IP."

This stands for intellectual property — one of the most lucrative assets a tech company can own.

Ocado has registered at least 350 patent applications in Europe alone, according to IP law firm Reddie and Grosse.

Half concern "storing articles, individually or in orderly arrangement, in warehouses," the firm said. Dozens entail "systems and methods ... relating to logistics."

Coming to America

Nowhere has online grocery shopping boom been more apparent than in the US.

Americans weren't big on online grocery shopping before the pandemic, with it making up just 4% of the total market.

Kroger, the largest US grocer, appears keen to get a head start.

It struck an exclusive partnership with Ocado 2018, and the companies already have plans to develop 20 distribution centers across the country.

They have broken ground on three so far, with the locations of six more confirmed. 

Smart warehouses are underway in Monroe, Ohio, where Kroger is a mainstay, and Groveland, Florida, where rivals — Publix and Target — rule the roost.

"We see plenty of evidence that what we will be able to develop with Kroger will be able to push on quite an open door in terms of consumer demand," Jensen told Business Insider.

No mean feat

But getting Americans to shop for groceries online isn't as simple as it sounds. There has been a traditional reluctance to purchase fresh food online because people want to see what they are going to put in their mouths before they buy it.

At an Amazon Fresh distribution warehouse in Washington state, a third of bananas were thrown out because each banana had to be perfect to the naked eye, an MIT study found in 2015.

A 2014 Instacart training video seen by Quartz told its fruit pickers to "make sure there are no bruises, no cuts, no mold, it's not too soft, not too hard, just perfectly ripe."

And as consulting firm Oliver Wyman wrote in 2019: "Customers resist the idea of having someone else pick fresh food for their family."

The boom in online shopping during the pandemic could be a flash in the pan, rather than an inflection point for the industry. 

Another orthodoxy about online grocery shopping is that the US is just too big to cover with online delivery.

Ocado is less concerned about the challenge, however. Jensen concedes that the US is huge, but said "if you look at the distribution of the population in the US, you have about 75% of the population who live in urban or related-to-urban markets."

"In that respect the US is not terribly dissimilar from any other geography around the world."

Worldwide, Ocado has partnered with Kroger in the US, Sobeys in Canada, Aeon in Japan, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer in the UK, Groupe Casino in France, and ICA in Sweden.

In Japan, online grocery sales doubled during its coronavirus lockdown, which is remarkable for a country that obsesses over fresh produce and food presentation.

As Ocado proclaimed in its 2019 report: "We can change the way the world shops."

Leading the field at the right time

Coatsworth, the editor of Shares magazine, said: "What the market hasn't priced in is the likelihood of increased competition. If the opportunity is so clear for everyone to see, there will inevitably be other players entering the scene."

Several competitors already exist, especially in the US.

The main ones are Amazon Fresh and Instacart. Fresh Direct and Shipt, which is owned by Target, are also in the game.

Amazon has tried to get online vegetable and fruit delivery to stick for some years, but with little to no success.

When asked about the company, Jensen said it has been fascinating to watch.

"What's interesting with Amazon is they've been in grocery for over 10 years now and they've made multiple attempts at particularly getting into the fresh grocery market, and today their market share remains very, very small," he said.

"I think what that indicates is not that Amazon is not good at doing stuff, it indicates just how difficult and different grocery is."

'We don't do vanity tech projects'

The Ocado vans that ferry food from warehouses to homes still bear the slogan "the online supermarket," but the company is essentially a tech company. (It successfully applied to be un-designated as a grocer by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority in 2019.)

Nowhere has Ocado's performance as been more apparent than at its warehouses.

Inside these warehouses, known as Customer Fulfilment Centres, cuboid "Bots" whizz back, forth, and side to side on grids known as "The Hive," depositing supermarket produce from orders.

A 50-item order can be sorted by a bot, which travels through The Hive at a speed of eight meters per second, and is complete in a matter of minutes.

Ocado is also transitioning from a reliance on human produce-pickers to robots. 

"As we continue, we will see a greater proportion of the range picked robotically," said Jensen. He envisions "a tipping point where you get a payback with the cost of a robotic picking station versus the cost of a year of labor."

"We don't do vanity tech projects," Jensen said. "We do projects because they work and they pay back."

Here's what an Ocado warehouse in Andover, England, looked like in 2018:

Ocado has also invested in vertical farming, billed as a more sustainable and profitable way of growing vegetables indoors. 

He sees Ocado's warehouses ultimately being built alongside vertical farm facilities, which would dramatically lower costs and speed up deliveries of fruit and vegetables.

Botham, of Kantar, told Business Insider that the days of Ocado being a retailer are long gone.

"They see themselves as a solutions business," he said. "That's where they think their money is." 

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NOW WATCH: Inside London during COVID-19 lockdown

• Italian designers created a prefab cabin called Mountain Refuge.
• The modular cabin is about 260 square feet, with the potential to combine several units together.
• The designers are looking for prefab construction companies to work with to sell the cabin. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Architects Massimo Gnocchi and Paolo Danesi started The Mountain Refuge to deliver their concept for a tiny, modular cabin at affordable prices around the world. 

The startup is working towards finding a balance between sustainability and design. The architects told Business Insider that they are actively looking for partnerships with prefab construction companies in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to manufacture the cabin on a large scale. They say that they already consider the project a success based on requests and inquiries coming in, and they plan to design more tiny homes in the future.

The tiny cabin with wood finishes and a front deck looks rustic at first, but the slanted roof and minimalist interior give it a modern look, too. It can be hooked up to utilities, or used for an off-grid lifestyle, with some minor adjustments.

See inside. 

SEE ALSO: The 68-square-foot Zen Work Pod is a tiny office for the backyard designed to minimize distractions working from home — see inside

Designers describe the cabin as "inspired by traditional archetypes, evoked through contemporary principles."

The cabin is composed of two modules, each with a slanted roof that creates a symmetric look.

The exterior is made of plywood covered in black tar, and the designers are experimenting with other possible finishes.

One side of the cabin is made up of a single large glass window pane for "reconnecting with nature."

The interior is a large open studio because of it's small size, and Gnocchi told Business Insider that these images propose several different layout options.

There's room for a bed, lounge area, and kitchen.

Hanging pots and pans, plus under the sink storage make smart use of space.

A small sink and burner, plus a table that also functions as a countertop, are other space-saving ideas.

Interior details and finishes can vary. Gnocchi told Business Insider that as a startup, they are looking for prefab construction companies to manufacture the cabin, but they will also work with any construction company hired by buyers.

The cabin has a surprisingly spacious bathroom with a rainfall shower-head.

Adding on a third, smaller module for a separate bedroom or living space is another modification suggested by the architects. It would make the entire cabin about 400 square feet.

Like other tiny home designs, making the cabin out of several prefab pieces makes the final construction, or adding on another module, cheaper and faster.

The designers told Business Insider that the cabin can be adapted for off-grid use. Photovoltaic panels can be added to the roof for power, and batteries can be placed under the floor.

Rainwater could be collected and filtered in a tank under the deck.

They estimate a cost of $40,000-$50,000 for the basic two module unit, which does not include furniture or utility hookups.

• Tesla has taken a radically different path to developing fully autonomous vehicles, when compared with competitors, such as Waymo and Cruise.
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk is confident; last week, he said Tesla could achieve "level five" autonomy this year — meaning no human intervention required.
• Waymo and Cruise have concentrated in relatively narrow use-cases, while Tesla's technology could be be broadly applied. 
• But Waymo and Cruise are also dedicated self-driving companies, while Tesla is also producing and supporting electric vehicles.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Last week in China, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revisited his enthusiasm for the carmaker's prospects of delivering fully-autonomous vehicles, and soon.

"I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year," he said, as reported by Bloomberg.

"I think there are no fundamental challenges remaining for level five autonomy. There are many small problems, and then there's the challenge of solving all those small problems and then putting the whole system together, and just keep addressing the long tail of problems."

"Level five" is industry terminology for vehicles that can drive themselves with no human interaction. The conventional wisdom is that there are no true level five vehicles yet. Even Tesla's main competitors in this space, Waymo and Cruise (the former is part of Alphabet, and the latter is affiliated with General Motors), admit that they have a long, long way to go before they can completely take the driver out of the picture.

Is Musk justified in being so confident? Skeptics say no way. While Waymo has been working on autonomy for over a decade, going back to the original "Google Car" project, and Cruise started out as a dedicated self-driving company before GM acquired it in 2016, Tesla has been adding its own autonomous tech while thus far delivering mainly advanced cruise control to customers.

On top of all that, Tesla's approach to self-driving is radically different from Waymo's, Cruise's, and others in the burgeoning area. 

Here's what it's all about, plus a rundown of its advantages and drawbacks:

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Tesla Autopilot has been around for about five years. It was initially billed as a handsfree technology, but both the company and I agree that drivers should keep their hands on the wheel as much as possible.

Tesla Autopilot is currently a combination of advanced cruise control with automated steering, plus a few maneuvering functions.

What the company calls "full self-driving" technology is available as hardware on all new Teslas, from the Model S ...

... To the Model X ...

... To the Model 3 ...

... To the Model Y ...

... As well as the forthcoming Tesla Semi ...

... And Cybertruck.

Musk is Autopilot's biggest champion. But he has to be. Tesla has always lagged the competition where autonomy is concerned.

Meanwhile, Waymo's "Waymo One" ride-hailing service has been active in Arizona since late 2018.

Waymo is also developing cargo/freight services and hopes to integrate with public transit systems.

CEO John Krafcik frequently refers to Waymo's tech as a "driver" — a sort of disembodied robot, made of hardware and software, that can pilot any type of vehicle.

Waymo has been at this for longer than anybody else. The company, spun off from Alphabet in 2016, got its start as the Google Car project over a decade ago.

Cruise has decided to focus on rolling out an autonomous ride-hailing service in San Francisco. The company has collaborated with GM and Honda to develop the Cruise Origin, an all-electric shuttle.

GM bought Cruise in 2016. Dan Ammann (right), former GM president, is now CEO, and cofounder Kyle Vogt (center) is CTO. Also pictured is cofounder Dan Kan, who is now chief product officer.

GM and Cruise have been steadily developing an integrated-manufacturing approach to autonomy. Cruise's tech and software are built into vehicles as part of the assembly process.

Cruise's tech is optimized for urban environments, but GM also has a fully handsfree highway system in SuperCruise, which thus far has been deployed only on Cadillacs.

Both Cruise and Waymo are heavy users of laser-radar, or Lidar, technology.

Both companies have focused on making Lidar units smaller and less obtrusive. Most experts think that Lidar is the best way to equip autonomous vehicles to drive themselves, but Cruise and Waymo also use a variety of other systems.

Tesla, by contrast, doesn't use Lidar. Autopilot relies on cameras, sensors, and — most importantly — a vast amount of real-world driver information that's generated by its fleet of cars.

All that data has to be crunched by powerful computers in the vehicles.

I like to think of it as a vast, real-time, multiplayer video game. The potential advantage it offers over Lidar is that it could enable Teslas to achieve network effects, leveraged by artificial intelligence, and allow an Autopiloting vehicle to drive itself just about anywhere.

Musk's advocacy for this approach has been unrelenting. He's a believer. But Tesla is also somewhat behind the curve; the company was so busy creating all-electric cars that it missed some development years.

There's good reason for each of the companies to be pushing the envelope. According to Cruise's Ammann, the entire global market for self-driving ride-hailing services could be $8 trillion.

If Tesla has a critical advantage here, it's that the company intends to make Autopilot as vertically integrated as possible, owning everything. So if the company's bet pays off, Tesla gets to control everything and keep all the money. But for now, Tesla is playing catch-up, despite what Musk says.

• Every week, Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with a list of the nine most in-demand original TV shows on streaming services in the US.
• Netflix's "Dark" surged up this week's list. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Audiences are catching on to how good Netflix's sci-fi series "Dark" is in its final season, as the series surged up the demand carts this week. 

Every week, Parrot Analytics provides Business Insider with a list of the nine most in-demand TV shows on streaming services in the US.

The data is based on "demand expressions," Parrot Analytics' globally standardized TV-demand measurement unit. Audience demand reflects the desire, engagement, and viewership weighted by importance. The list is ranked by how much more in demand the top series are than the average TV show in the US.

More than a year after season three debuted last July, Netflix's "Stranger Things" is the top series in the US and has rarely given up that title in that time period.

Below are this week's nine most popular original shows on Netflix and other streaming services:

9. "Narcos: Mexico" (Netflix)

Times more in demand than average show: 30.6

Description: "Witness the birth of the Mexican drug war in the 1980s as a gritty new ‚Narcos' saga chronicles the true story of the Guadalajara cartel's ascent."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 2): 87%

What critics said: "As ever, it's exquisitely written, cast and shot, making great use of Mexico's stunning landscapes, opulent haciendas and colourful '80s fashions. The series does a fine job too of keeping the viewer straight about a big cast of characters." — Sydney Morning Herald (Season 2)

Season 2 premiered February 13 on Netflix. See more insights for "Narcos Mexico".

8. "The Witcher" (Netflix)

Times more in demand than average show: 33.6

Description: "Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster-hunter for hire, journeys toward his destiny in a turbulent world where people often prove more wicked than beasts."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 1): 67%

What critics said: "For all its massive scale, The Witcher is a surprisingly small story centered around three appealing main characters." — Collider (Season 1)

Season 1 premiered on Netflix on December 20. See more insights for "The Witcher."

7. "Harley Quinn" (DC Universe)

Times more in demand than average show: 35.0

Description: "Harley Quinn has taken down the Joker and Gotham City is finally hers for the taking…whatever's left of it that is. Gotham has become a desolate wasteland, left in ruins, following the huge earthquake caused by the collapse of Joker's tower. Harley's celebration in this newly created chaos is cut short when Penguin, Bane, Mr. Freeze, The Riddler, and Two-Face join forces to restore order in the criminal underworld. Calling themselves the Injustice League, this group now stands in the way of Harley and her crew from taking sole control of Gotham as the top villains of the city."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 2): 100%

What critics said: "One of the best TV takes on comic books you can catch right now." — The Verge (season 2)

Season 2 premiered April 3 on DC Universe. See more insights for "Harley Quinn."

6. "Titans" (DC Universe)

Times more in demand than average show: 39.9

Description: "'Titans' follows young heroes from across the DC Universe as they come of age and find belonging in a gritty take on the classic Teen Titans franchise. Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, a special young girl possessed by a strange darkness, get embroiled in a conspiracy that could bring Hell on Earth. Joining them along the way are the hot-headed Starfire and lovable Beast Boy. Together they become a surrogate family and team of heroes."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 2): 81%

What critics said: "Titans is not going to blow anyone away but it will still appeal to established fans and has some nice moments for fans of DC Comics history." — JoBlo (Season 2)

Season 2 premiered on DC Universe on September 6. See more insights for "Titans."

5. "Doom Patrol" (DC Universe/HBO Max)

Times more in demand than the average show: 40.2

Description: "Doom Patrol is a team of traumatized and downtrodden superheroes, each of whom has suffered a horrible accident that gave them superhuman abilities but also left them scarred and disfigured. The members of the team have found their purpose through The Chief and have come together to investigate some of the world's weirdest phenomena. After The Chief mysteriously disappears, though, the reluctant heroes find themselves called to action by Cyborg, who comes to them with a mission that they cannot refuse. Doom Patrol, part support group, part superhero team, is a band of super-powered freaks fighting for a world that wants nothing to do with them."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (season 2): 96%

What critics said: "The cast inhabits their roles with a kind of familiarity that comes with having spent so much time realizing them, and the end result is more than a handful of scenes that make you genuinely feel for the team members and all they've gone through." — io9 (season 2)

Season 2 premiered on DC Universe and HBO Max on June 25. See more insights for "Doom Patrol."

4. "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" (Disney Plus)

Times more in demand than average show: 41.8

Description: "From Dave Filoni, director and executive producer of 'The Mandalorian,' the new 'Clone Wars' episodes will continue the storylines introduced in the original series, exploring the events leading up to 'Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.'"

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 7): 100%

What critics said: "While I'm not particularly sold on the Bad Batch being 'truly' bad, or even all that complicated, they do provide an off-kilter dynamic that may lead to some interesting developments down the line." — AV Club (season 7)

Season 7 premiered on February 21 on Disney Plus. See more insights for "Star Wars: The Clone Wars."

3. "The Mandalorian" (Disney Plus)

Times more in demand than average show: 46.6

Description: "After the fall of the Empire, a lone gunfighter makes his way through the lawless galaxy."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 1): 93%

What critics said: "The Mandalorian is a classic Western series with modern production values, set in the galaxy far, far away. Every episode is a Star Wars movie in half an hour, and a delight. And Baby Yoda is really, really cute." — Starburst (Season 1)

Season 1 premiered on Disney Plus on November 12. See more insights for "The Mandalorian."

2. "Dark" (Netflix)

Times more in demand than average show: 50.5

Description: "A missing child sets four families on a frantic hunt for answers as they unearth a mind-bending mystery that spans three generations."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 3): 94%

What critics said: "One of the most mind-melting shows on television, and possibly the most unique Netflix original, Dark finishes its run with peak writing, shocking conclusions, and a bittersweet sense of finality." — RogerEbert.com  (Season 3)

Season 3 premiered on Netflix on June 27. See more insights for "Dark."

1. "Stranger Things" (Netflix)

Times more in demand than average show: 69.7

Description: "When a young boy vanishes, a small town uncovers a mystery involving secret experiments."

Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 3): 89%

What critics said: "The third season is sweet and sad, it's funny and thrilling, and the last 14 minutes of Episode 5 is 'Halloween'-esque straight-up horror." — News and Observer (Season 3)

• RBC Capital Markets uses a metric called "Crucial Combo" to measure the stock value of the companies it follows.
• Crucial Combo simply combines the company's revenue growth and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margin each quarter.
• Based on the number, the following 9 companies have positive Crucial Combo scores: Alibaba, eBay, Akamai, Shopify, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Google, and Spotify.
• Those with high Crucial Combo scores are proving to be resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

"Crucial Combo" sounds like a special lunch offer at a fast-food joint, but according to financial analysts at RBC Capital Markets it's the recipe for a special class of tech stock. 

RBC Capital Markets likes to use a metric called Crucial Combo when evaluating company stocks — and it says those with high scores are proving to be some of the most resilient stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Crucial Combo scores are calculated by simply combining the company's revenue growth and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margin each quarter.

In a note published on Thursday, RBC shared the Crucial Combo scores for the 17 largest tech company stocks it follows. Based on this metric, 9 of the following companies are expected to have a positive score from their upcoming second quarter earnings results: Alibaba, eBay, Akamai, Shopify, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Google, and Spotify.

All 9 companies have previously been picked by RBC to be either resilient to or suffer relatively little from the COVID-driven economic downturn. Companies like Amazon, Netflix, Shopify, and Spotify have been put under a bucket called "Rocket Ships" for the demand surge they've experienced during the pandemic. Meanwhile, Facebook, Google, Akamai, Alibaba, and eBay are under a group RBC calls the "J-Curves," or companies expected to suffer revenue slowdowns this year before bouncing back to robust growth next year, the report said. Other companies expected to benefit from the COVID-related changes include Chewy, Etsy, and Roku, it said.

"We continue to believe that the COVID Crisis has created at least semi-permanent changes in consumer behavior, creating first-wave Structural Winners (AMZN, CHWY, ETSY, NFLX, SHOP, SPOT, WIX) & potentially second-wave Structural Winners (FB, GOOGL, PINS, ROKU, SNAP, TTD)," the note said.

Perhaps, the bigger question is whether the coronavirus outbreak has also created "structural losers" among the online travel and ridesharing companies. Bookings.com and Expedia in the online travel sector and Lyft and Uber in the ridesharing space have all experienced significant demand drops during the pandemic, as their negative Crucial Combo scores show. RBC said those companies will likely recover but it won't come soon.

"We expect demand trends for these companies to recover in 2021 and 2022, but we expect demand recoveries to be slow & jagged and would acknowledge that the recoveries – esp. with Ridesharing – have been slower than we anticipated," RBC said in the note.

SEE ALSO: Leaked emails show Amazon is delaying Prime Day again to October as concerns grow that a new COVID-19 demand spike may hit supply chains

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