The drone market is on a growth trajectory. In rural Africa, they are being increasingly used for transporting life-saving drugs and for collecting data for geographic information systems, agriculture and even film-making.



DUMISANI KALIATI’S UNIVERSITY was close to a hospital, and each time he would walk past it, he would meet women asking for money. He would later find out why – they were patients coming from far, from districts outside Blantyre, in Malawi, and needing transport to their homes in the rural parts.



He says deeper in the communities, there are no demarcated roads, in places, only foot paths exist through thick forests or up the mountains.



This led him to ask: how can he help people living in remote areas, remotely?



He first developed an SMS-based app to remind patients to take their medication.



“But that was not enough. I was still looking for ways to reach out to those in the rural areas with physical medication. And around 2016, I got news that Malawi was introducing a drone corridor in 2017, and I started to research how local startups or individuals like myself could benefit from the drone corridor,” says Kaliati, the founder of MicroMek, a Malawian hardware startup developing low- cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for remote medicine delivery.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GettyImages-1240045217.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-54868" width="527" height="351" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GettyImages-1240045217.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GettyImages-1240045217-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GettyImages-1240045217-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 527px) 100vw, 527px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Christoph Soeder/picture alliance via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



This year, MicroMek was contracted by UNICEF to survey the damage done by tropical storm Ana.



Kalaiti says having only one main road up the escarpment in Blantyre creates challenges when there are disruptions in weather, and the arterial M1 road was destroyed in three places by the flooding. His drone helped.



Kaliati founded MicroMek in his third year of university studying science and information technology. MicroMek builds drones from 3D-printed parts and recycled material in Malawi, working with the Virginia Tech University’s Unmanned Systems Lab. EcoSoar is a simple fabrication designed to deliver medicine, dried blood samples, vaccines and other critical medicines in the UNICEF Kasungu drone corridor in Malawi to the Kasungu district hospital. An important aspect is the time reduction in the delivery of diagnostics, vaccines and medicines.



His drones are also being used for environmental sensing. Since 2018, he has conducted over 1,000 test flights with medicinal supplies and for aerial data collection.



MicroMek is in its pilot phase, with 65 women participating, also doing community surveys about the challenges they face and the medication the people in far-flung areas need.



So far, they have tested with family planning medication, and pregnancy and HIV test kits. Kaliati says communities have widely welcomed the service.



“I think there is a big opportunity, mainly if we look at current economic trends, while at the same time at the Covid-19 pandemic, when we were in total lockdown; things like drones are autonomous and minimize human contact&#8230; all these are opportunities that are defining the new normal, the new way of doing things, and the next industry,” he says.



MicroMek also trains young local people as drone pilots, enabling cost-reductions in operations.



“At the same time, when you’re looking at costs on the medical side of things, it’s tricky to put a cost on saving lives. For example, if a person is in need of blood and you are able to carry 500ml of blood within an hour, and it’s the only package you’re carrying, it becomes hard to put a price on it. It’s life- saving,” Kaliati says.



The EcoSoar fixed-wing drones can go up to 30km for aerial mapping, while the tail seater vertical take-off and landing UAVs can carry up to 1kg for medical deliveries, he says. The first costs $350 while the second costs approximately $430 to manufacture. They finalized production on the tail seater in February. MicroMek is developing the drones to go further, to multiple facilities, carrying up to 6kg of weight.



The growth of the Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) industry in 2019 was predicted to be worth $43 billion by 2024, a compound growth rate of 20.5%. Currently, the drone market is worth $26.3 



billion. The Drone Market Report 2021-2026 from German analytics firm Drone Industry Insights (DII), reports reaching $41.3 billion by 2026, a 9.4% compound annual growth.



The slower growth outlook is being attributed to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. India is set to see a growth of 20.6%, outstripping other continents’ progress, while the South American market is set to see a promising compound growth rate of 11.3%. Despite the conservative global growth estimates, the report by DII says if UAV companies capitalize on the increased investments and positive attention to drone technology, then the industry could profit from a K-shaped recovery, growing faster than the data suggests. Uneven economic recovery is a possibility, especially in a post-pandemic world: different sectors demand needs be met, perhaps with alternatives.



South Africa’s drone market is also on a growth trajectory, estimated to reach $134.5 million by 2025, according to a report by IndustryARC. The research found the expansion is due to the growth in the mining industry, developments in more data- accurate drone technology and the presence of dominant players in hardware and niche applications.



“What we’re seeing is that the increase in global investment has resulted in an increased number of drone applications and density of drones within an airspace. For example, Australia has about a million drones in operation, with estimates that 8% of the population now own a drone,” says Greg Dillon, Lead of Sport, Events, Entertainment &amp; Drones at specialist insurer iTOO, in a press statement.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-diverse-uses-and-leapfrogging-opportunities">Diverse uses and leapfrogging opportunities</h2>



The current gaps in road transport infrastructure in East Africa and sub-Saharan Africa are vast, amounting to billions of dollars annually, according to a World Bank (WB) report, ‘Unlocking the Lower Skies’, in 2021. UAVs are being used in multiple industries; for collecting data for geographic information systems, agriculture, healthcare and film-making. Their applications include inspection, mapping, filming and drone delivery to spray and seed farmlands. RPAs are even being used to monitor wildfires.



Rwanda first used UAVs for medical services to deliver blood supplies in partnership with US startup Zipline. While drones were more expensive than the motorcycles and cars that distributed blood supplies to rural areas, money was saved due to speed – it takes 13 to 26 minutes to get blood to outlying areas compared to hours – and blood wastage has dropped from 38% to 3%. Moreover, there were fewer deaths as communities have faster access to blood. The country’s Minister of ICT and Innovation Paula Ingabire said the above at a World Economic Forum event in 2019 and that the investment had ripple effects; a burgeoning of startups with drones also being used to spray pesticides in Rwanda to combat Malaria.



In March this year, Zipline announced a deal with Ghana’s Ministry of Health to scale to four additional distribution centers covering 24 million people — bringing Zipline’s coverage to 90% of the country’s population. The company also aided in Ghana’s Covid-19 vaccine distribution efforts, delivering nearly one million Covid-19 vaccines, with plans to distribute more.



In Rwanda, Zipline has expanded into 24/7 operations and now delivers critical supplies around the clock. The company has now announced expansions into Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Kenya.



Overall, Zipline surpassed 275,000 commercial deliveries and currently makes a delivery every four minutes on average.



“New technologies are transforming transportation, and electric autonomous drones epitomize the immediate leapfrogging opportunity for emerging markets,” says Hafez M.H. Ghanem, Vice President, Eastern and Southern Africa Region of the World Bank, in a 2021 report.



Overall, the research by Stokenberga and Ochoa in the Ukerewe district in Tanzania revealed that high quantities of products result in relatively low costs per flight. Significantly more flights, and UAVs required to deliver the same quantities that ground transport carry out, mean the net result is higher costs. Small volumes (such as in the case of life-saving items) and infrequent demand mean few flights with high costs per flight, says the WB report in 2021.



Importantly, the WB report says layering use cases can be efficient and cost-saving, by allocating fixed costs across a greater number of flights and maximizing drone capacity as well as time use. The base case absorbs fixed costs and startup capital costs. Additional layered use cases incur incremental operations costs.



Ramping up the number of flights per UAV reduces overall per-flight costs, and combining products per flight maximizes capacity usage of the vehicle.



With routine deliveries, cost-effectiveness can be amplified by using ‘milk runs’ (going to multiple facilities in one flight) rather than hub-and-spoke routes. Excess capacity is used by including cargo for multiple facilities, therefore total mileage reduced.



Opportunities for UAV transport cost reduction lie in layering life- saving items; rabies vaccine deliveries, laboratory samples, and blood deliveries making up the base cases.



However, given the estimated time needed to complete one trip; preparation, packing, unpacking and flying, a single UAV can be expected to achieve 1,200-1,600 flights per year.



Much of the challenges surrounding the scaling of drones has been economically motivated, with a partiality towards ground transport. ‘The Lancet’ medical journal compared distribution programs using motorcycles and UAVs during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, finding that the longer the range (100km), the more cost-effective drones became.



South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana, and Tanzania have now also issued or updated comprehensive regulatory guidelines on the use of UAVs for sports, private undertakings and commercial applications within their airspace.



On the other hand, the governments of Morocco, Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Madagascar have decided to prohibit the use of UAVs by the general public and utilize them for their own security services.



Currently, regulation in South Africa has been overtaken by the technology of drones to an extent, with regulators reporting that stricter UAV laws to counter the likelihood of accidents and incidents are required.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Use of RPAs</h2>



RPAs can be a replacement for light planes, offering a cheaper monitoring system, potentially staying aloft longer. An area UAVs could be crucial is for countries facing challenges in acquiring and maintaining light aircraft, or where there is a dearth of runways in remote areas, says Matt Herbert, Research Manager at the North Africa and Sahel Observatory, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. Furthermore, helicopters and light aircraft have more fixed and continuous costs.



“I think there’s the potential to use it for search and rescue, because these are relatively cheaper to purchase and maintain than light aircraft and the pilots that go with them, I think there’s the potential to get more of them and employ them at more of an increased tempo,” says Herbert.



He adds that while speculative, the potential is certainly there. If drones could be used for helping victims of disasters, helping aid get to people quicker, that is where there could be a positive impact in how governments engage their citizenry, he explains.



“As you’ve seen with mobile finance coming out of Kenya, coming out of Nigeria – in many ways, the lack of development in some sectors enables a much more unconstrained thinking in innovation about the potential opportunities and trajectories of different technologies. So, texting cash would not have been something that would’ve been easily identified and scaled within for example, Europe, but M-Pesa, it took off,” says Herbert.



“Certainly the tech talent exists within Africa: the potential for thinking about how to create drones that are able to do different things under different environments. And there’s also the demand, there’s potentially the need. We’ve already started to see indications of some domestic current manufacture,” he says.



Drones offer a benefit in delivery, despite existing rapid transportation such as roads, and because the continent is so big, there’s opportunity for UAVs to be scaled in the coming years, concludes Herbert.

Screenshot 2022-04-18 at 11.44.09

BOOM or BUZZ: Drones on the Rise in Africa

Missing colleagues in a work-from- home setting? A collaborative robot or cobot could take that place in a smart home, and it wouldn’t mind repetitive tasks all day.



By Tiana Cline



INSTEAD OF WALKING AROUND AND LOOKING FOR an information desk, a friendly robot who can communicate in multiple languages is making its way around an airport terminal, shopping center or hospital reception. And when arriving at a hotel, there’s now an AI-powered robo-concierge to assist you with everything from room service to check-in. It sounds far-fetched but cobots, or collaborative robots, are one of the fastest growing segments of industrial automation worldwide. According to Report Ocean insights, the global cobot market is expected to reach $4,925 million by 2030.



“Robotics and mechatronics are on the rise in Africa,” says Martine Solomon, a non-executive director at Forge Academy, a 4IR institution where cobot training programs are the norm.



“The inclusion of cobots into the modern workplace will do wonders for employees in the manufacturing industry wanting to increase their productivity, efficiencies and quality assurance. Cobots will not tire during physical activities and their concentration levels won’t drop. As a result, they make for an excellent partner on the job.”



Hotel Sky is the first African hotel chain to introduce robot staff. With locations both in Cape Town and Johannesburg, each property has a team of robots and Tony Maia, Bright Horse IT Automation’s founder, was tasked with sourcing Hotel Sky’s unique technology requirements.



“The robots work alongside their human colleagues but were never intended to replace them,” says Maia. “If people are inclined to stand in front of a robot and speak to a machine, they can play a very good concierge role&#8230; provided you have the patience as conversing with a robot is a little bit slower than a human.” Hotel Sky’s robots work in conjunction with a bespoke app that guests download upon arrival and use as a mobile keycard. While the robot staff do provide some entertainment value, they complement the workload of the staff by carrying bags, delivering room service and, for those who prefer to social distance, offer a safer alternative by limiting human-to- human communication. “There is a footprint of robotics in the logistics, education and healthcare sectors, especially when it comes to hygiene, but cobots definitely have a role to play in hospitality too,” he says.



One of the best use cases for cobots is their ability to pick up tasks that are either repetitive, become dull quickly, or too dangerous for human beings. Dwyka Mining Services, a pan-African mining technology company with offices in Tanzania, Ghana, Botswana and South Africa, recently introduced the enterprise version of Spot to the continent.



Spot Enterprise is an agile robot quadruped (similar to a dog, and yellow like a Labrador) made by Boston Dynamics which is used by the military, police and space organizations like NASA. Spot has become increasingly popular in the construction industry and is even used on oil rigs to sniff out dangerous gases. “To get people to do tasks repetitively, human beings by nature introduce error. These errors, ironically, make it more difficult for us. We get tired and our brains no longer want to do the work,” explains Jamie van Schoor, Dwyka Mining Services’ CEO. “Robots love to be able to repeat. It’s what they’re built for. To create the right data sets we need the right tools and Spot can get that data in the toughest of environments.” While Spot is perfect for Africa’s narrow-reef mining environment, the mechanical canine could easily be used as a search-and-rescue robot, carrying much-needed medical supplies. “One of the big things we’re going to be doing now with Spot is gas detection and LiDAR surveys, pre- and post- blast. We’re also going to do convergence monitoring of all the pressure on tunnels underground,” adds van Schoor. “Mining is so complex but Spot can do the repeatable, easier tasks more safely. That said, you do need people to turn Spot on and make sure he is doing what you need him to do when he gets underground.”



While Spot is relatively easy to control using Boston Dynamics’ web platform or with its video game-like tablet, a robot like Spot is heavy duty – and pricey – which means it works best in an industrial or commercial setting.



Stepping outside of mining and manufacturing, major robotics companies are also investing in home cobots and those which are available today, use similar sensor and AI technology to their big industry counterparts.



While there are high-tech industrial robotic arms performing surgeries, domestic-focused cobot manufacturers are looking into areas like nursing – creating digital robot companions to fill the global caregiver crisis.



Forge Academy, for example, has an internal startup focused on personal robots that could assist the elderly and people living with disabilities.



Thanks to better connectivity, household cobots which are smaller, cheaper and often more versatile are also becoming a part of our day-to-day reality with cleaning robots, like iRobot’s Roomba, cementing the idea that connected (and robotized) homes are the future.



“A smart appliance is often more of an established decision. It’s more than a fridge or dishwasher as it’s coming into your space and you have to work out how you’re going to live with this thing,” says Kalycia Urquhart, iRobot SA’s marketing lead. “Because a Roomba moves on its own accord, we give it a persona. It feels like a creature that you have to embrace.” 



In an era of automation where machines are becoming more intelligent, the space shared by humans and cobots – whether it’s an office, warehouse, or home – has to be one of safety, predictability and security. “This personalization with technology is interesting – you have to trust cobots in order to become comfortable with them.”

Hanover Fair 2017

The Rise Of The Cobots In Africa?

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Moon dust that astronaut Neil Armstrong collected during 1969’s Apollo 11 mission that was man’s first visit to the moon could sell for a seven-figure sum at auction in April – years after the space agency fought in court to keep the dust out of private hands.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Armstrong collected&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bonhams.com/auction/27937/lot/21/the-first-lunar-sample-collected-by-humanity-the-only-apollo-sample-that-can-be-legally-sold-5-scanning-electron-microscope-sem-aluminum-sample-stubs-each-topped-with-approximately-10-mm-diameter-carbon-tape-containing-apollo-moon-dust/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the dust</a>&nbsp;as a contingency sample shortly after he took his first steps on the lunar surface and uttered his now-famous line, “that&#8217;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9WDsgCIroE" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">one small step for man</a>, one giant leap for mankind,” auction house Bonhams said.



The dust is expected to sell for between $800,000 and $1.2 million, according to Bonhams.



The lunar bag that contained it – and included only particles of lunar material left in the bag – was auctioned off in 2017 for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/us/moon-bag-auction-sothebys.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$1.8 million</a>.



A portion of the proceeds will go toward scientific charities, Bonham’s said.



The lunar dust will be sold April 13 as part of a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bonhams.com/live_auctions/27937/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">space-themed auction</a>&nbsp;that also includes a fragment of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bonhams.com/live_auctions/27937/lot/2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sputnik 1</a>, the first space satellite ever launched.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



NASA has confirmed the authenticity of the lunar dust up for auction, but the space agency never meant for the sample to end up in private hands. The dust’s seller,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nancy-lee-carlson-bought-a-piece-of-the-moonnasa-really-wants-it-back-1495206493" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nancy Lee Carlson</a>, purchased what was labeled only as a “flown zippered lunar sample return bag with lunar dust” for $995 in 2015 at a U.S. Marshal&#8217;s auction. When Carlson sent the bag to NASA to learn more, the space agency realized it had Apollo 11 ties and refused to return it, saying the bag belonged to “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/us/moon-bag-auction-sothebys.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the American people</a>&#8221; and should be put on public display. It’s unclear when NASA lost track of the bag of dust but by 2002, it was in the possession of Max Ary, a space museum co-founder in Kansas who was convicted of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-110603a.html#110205" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">selling stolen artifacts</a>. The lunar bag was compounded in 2003 and later put up for sale for restitution at the auction where Carlson purchased it. Carlson sued NASA for wrongful seizure of property, and in 2016 Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled in her favor, writing that Carlson was a “<a href="http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-121516a-apollo11-moon-rock-bag-lawsuits.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a good faith purchaser</a>” in a legally conducted sale.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“The surface is fine and powdery, I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles,” Armstrong said in 1969, describing lunar dust as he walked on the moon.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



$2.9 million. That’s how much a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2019/07/13/apollo-11-auctions/?sh=3c25856074ea">Soviet-era space capsule</a>&nbsp;sold at auction for in 2011, a price that remains the record for space exploration memorabilia. The capsule was used in unmanned tests leading up to the launch of Vostok I, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2011/vostok-earth39s-first-spaceship-n08781.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">world’s first spaceship</a>, which took cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



The private space ventures of wealthy businessmen like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson – dubbed the “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/06/25/branson-vs-musk-vs-bezos-billionaire-space-race-heats-up-as-virgin-galactic-is-cleared-for-passengers/?sh=344e80f56908">Billionaire Space Race</a>” – has “stirred up the market” for space material, Bonham specialist Adam Stackhouse told&nbsp;Forbes.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2019/07/13/apollo-11-auctions/?sh=3c25856074ea">Space memorabilia</a>&nbsp;and extraterrestrial materials like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/valeriestimac/2022/02/09/the-new-space-race-christies-auctions-meteorites-from-moon-mars--beyond/?sh=73f5575b6051">meteorites</a>&nbsp;have picked up in popularity over the past few years. In 2017, NASA announced the launch of the Artemis program, which aims to send another crewed mission to the moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nancy-lee-carlson-bought-a-piece-of-the-moonnasa-really-wants-it-back-1495206493" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nancy Lee Carlson Bought a Piece of the Moon—NASA Really Wants It Back</a>&nbsp;(Wall Street Journal)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2019/07/13/apollo-11-auctions/?sh=3c25856074ea">The Moon Market: Inside The Multimillion-Dollar Craze For Space And Apollo 11 Collectibles</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/04/28/the-loneliest-man-in-history-dies-astronaut-michael-collins-was-the-sole-man-on-apollo-11-who-didnt-walk-on-the-moon/?sh=393f030d3efe">‘The Loneliest Man In History’ Dies: Astronaut Michael Collins Was The Sole Man On Apollo 11 Who Didn’t Walk On The Moon</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2019/07/20/apollo-11-facts-figures-business/?sh=98fd78833771">Apollo 11’s 50th Anniversary: The Facts And Figures Behind The $152 Billion Moon Landing</a> (Forbes)



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/"></a>Carlie Porterfield, Forbes Staff

960×0

Moon Dust Collected By Neil Armstrong On Apollo 11 Heads To Auction – After NASA Lost Legal Battle To Keep It

Alphabet subsidiary Google has announced it’s buying prominent cybersecurity firm Mandiant in an all-cash transaction that values the business at $5.4 billion. The deal, which is slated to close later this year, sees Google snap up a coveted prize at a time when Russia’s war in Ukraine is fueling widespread concern about rising cyberthreats.



Google’s bid for Mandiant comes a few weeks after rumors that Microsoft, a major rival in security and cloud computing, had been eyeing the business to further strengthen its own security offerings. At $23 a share, Google’s offer represents a 57% premium to Mandiant’s share price when news of Microsoft’s purported interest began spreading in February.



Mandiant will bolster Google Cloud’s security offerings as it seeks to compete more aggressively with Microsoft, AWS and other cloud giants. In a statement announcing the transaction, Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud, called the Mandiant brand “synonymous with unmatched insights for organizations seeking to keep themselves secure in a constantly changing environment.”



That environment could start changing faster than ever because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has triggered fears that cyberattacks within Ukraine could spillover into other countries. CIOs and chief information security officers (CISOs) at companies are looking to their ecosystem of security providers to alert them to—and help defend them against—escalating digital threats.



Mandiant, which was spun out of cybersecurity company FireEye in 2013 and sold to private-equity investors for $1.2 billion, has built up a reputation for smart analysis of hackers’ activities, including those of groups from Russia and China. It has also played a prominent role in unmasking several high-profile cyberattacks,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2020/12/17/solarwinds-hackers-five-cybersecurity-challenges-for-cios/?sh=478b6a6c21b6">including one on SolarWinds</a>&nbsp;in 2020.



The business, which is led by CEO Kevin Mandia, a highly respected security leader, has 600 consultants who help businesses deal with many thousands of crises a year. It also has more than 300 analysts who track hackers’ activities and flag emerging risks. Mandiant has developed a software-as-a-service platform that will integrate with Google Cloud’s online offerings and which helped the security company grow revenue last year by 21%, to $483 million.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-intelligence-sharing">Intelligence sharing</h3>



Technology leaders say intelligence from all kinds of third-party suppliers is more important than ever given the heightened uncertainty triggered by the conflict in Ukraine. “Step number one is to be really plugged into your information network, says Brad Arkin, the chief security and trust officer of tech giant Cisco, which boasts one of the largest cyber threat intelligence teams in the world in the form of its Cisco Talos Intelligence Group.



While hackers may have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-07/hackers-targeted-u-s-lng-producers-in-run-up-to-war-in-ukraine" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">targeted computer systems at liquid natural gas providers</a>&nbsp;just before the invasion of Ukraine began, tech leaders say they generally haven’t seen any increase in specific threats. Still, they’re on the lookout for things such as distributed denial-of-service attacks, which flood websites with traffic to knock them offline, and wiper malware, which erases the hard drives of computers it infects. Both these and other tactics&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/02/23/another-round-of-malware-attacks-hits-ukraine-as-russia-crisis-intensifies/?sh=2e3c2afc585b">have already been used against Ukranian targets</a>.



Lou Steinberg, a former CTO of TD Ameritrade who is the founder and managing partner of cybersecurity firm CTM Insights, thinks the risk of cyber activity spreading beyond Ukraine and Russia will partly depend on how far economic sanctions go in terms of damaging the Russian economy. The harder these measures bite, the more Russia could be tempted to loosen the restraints on cyber hacking groups in the country. Steinberg recommends CIOs and chief information security officers keep a close eye on the Baltic states, which are likely to be the first to experience any spillover cyber events.



Like other security professionals&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;spoke with, Dawn Cappelli, who recently retired as the chief information security officer of Rockwell Automation, stressed that getting security basics right, such as bolstering defenses against phishing attacks that try to trick employees into handing over login credentials, is now more important than ever. Hackers, she says, could try to exploit feelings running high over the invasion to fool employees into clicking on phishing links.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chain-reaction">Chain reaction</h3>



Cappelli also recommends that companies step up scrutiny of their software supply chains, including code that controls key machinery and safety systems in factories and other critical infrastructure, such as power grids. Mandiant’s CTO, Charles Carmakal, who&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;interviewed before news of Google’s bid emerged, says that where possible companies should try to separate the networks that run software controlling key industrial processes from those handling general IT needs in order to stop cyber attackers from using corporate networks to access more sensitive systems.



Cisco’s Arkin recommends businesses step up scrutiny of their network environments more generally in order to detect any intrusions. “Now is not the time to look past things that are a little bit off,” he says. The key is to be able to tackle any intrusions before they can cause chaos. “I’m really, really focused upstream. How do I prevent those early steps of the attack chain.”



Events in Ukraine mean that experts at businesses such as Mandiant and Cisco Talos are going to be especially busy this year. Chief executives and boards are also likely to be questioning CIOs and CISOs about the state of their preparations for scenarios in which cyberattacks spread. But one security expert cautions that placing too much pressure on tech and security teams now could ultimately backfire.



Johannes Ullrich of the SANS Institute, which specializes in cybersecurity training and research, says there’s a real risk of companies overloading cyber defenders with preparations for threats that may or may not become reality when they’re only just recovering from dealing with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/12/14/amazon-cisco-microsoft-just-3-of-many-vulnerable-to-log4j-hacks/?sh=21f7603b40eb">the Log4j security crisis</a>&nbsp;in open source software at the end of last year. Warns Ullrich: “Exhausting your people with busywork [now] will hurt you later more than it helps.”



By&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/"></a>Martin Giles, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration, a woman holds a smartphone with

Google’s $5.4 Billion Acquisition Of Cybersecurity Firm Mandiant Comes As Tech Leaders Brace For Escalating Digital Threats

With the start of Crypto Fashion Week, designer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rebeccaminkoff.com/pages/dunamis-nft-collection" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rebecca Minkoff</a>&nbsp;is debuting her brand’s second NFT collection. But this time, the looks are designed to exist strictly in the metaverse.



“No physical garments will coincide with this collection,” says Minkoff, who recently&nbsp;<a href="https://wwd.com/business-news/markets/rebecca-minkoff-sold-to-sunrise-brands-1235077732/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sold her fashion label to Sunrise Brands for $13 million to $19 million</a>, as reported by WWD.



“Instead, we’re focusing fully on digital, fantastical looks that still have the brand DNA.”



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" src="https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/623478c735e3c81ba4c02f75/Screen-Shot-2022-03-18-at-8-19-06-AM/1960x0.jpg?fit=bounds&amp;format=jpg&amp;width=960" alt="Screen Shot 2022-03-18 at 8.19.06 AM"/><figcaption>The designer will unveil one of four looks on the digital runway for Crypto Fashion Week.&nbsp;REBECCA MINKOFF</figcaption></figure></div>



Minkoff is unveiling one piece from the new collection on the digital runway during&nbsp;<a href="https://cryptofashionweek.xyz/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crypto Fashion Week</a>, which kicks off today. The full line will then be available via&nbsp;<a href="https://thedematerialised.com/shop?utm_source=RM%2520press%2520release%2520&amp;utm_medium=press&amp;utm_campaign=dunamis" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Dematerialised</a><a href="https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/rojfC5yAGNiYmO48Cz3u0f?domain=bit.ly" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;</a>(DMAT), a marketplace for fashion NFTs, where customers can view, purchase and style their avatars. “We’re excited to take these garments and ensure they have more utility than prior drops,” says Minkoff.



The 41-year-old designer launched the company in 2005 with her cofounder and brother, Uri, who was previously CEO. Upon the sale to Sunrise, Uri took on a senior advisor role focusing on innovation and tech. Minkoff maintains her title as chief creative officer.



“There is no physics. So the weight of a garment, like a jewel-encrusted gown that would weigh hundreds of pounds in the real world could work in the metaverse.”—Rebecca Minkoff



“Now we have the resources to invest in NFTs in a much larger way,” she says, of the Sunrise acquisition. “Eventually I see a world where there’s a division for this and something we can focus on, whether it’s separate or in-house drops”



Either way, Minkoff fully expects “NFTs will continue to be a part of our brand story. Akin to product development across bags and RTW, it will become an important part of the Rebecca Minkoff product umbrella.”



The new NFT line draws inspiration from the Greek philosophical concept of&nbsp;dunamis, which refers to power and potential. The Dunamis collection includes four digital looks: Athena, Venus, Aphrodite and Persephone.



In addition to its Greek goddess theme, the line pays homage to the company’s New York roots and signature CBGB-gone-chic aesthetic. Her Grecian-meets-Manhattanite looks—which include dresses, tops, bottoms and accessories—will be priced between $100 and $1400. Shoppers can buy the NFTs with Crypto and fiat, DMAT doesn’t require a purchaser to have a Crypto wallet so the NFTs are accessible to all



Designing digital fashion is particularly freeing, Minkoff says, “because there is no physics. So the weight of a garment, like a jewel-encrusted gown that would weigh hundreds of pounds in the real world could work in the metaverse. When we got the opportunity to imagine, we said ‘Why not be fun, it’s fantasy, there are no rules, let’s play and explore.’”



Last fall, before the sale to Sunrise, Minkoff became a pioneer in the world of fashion NFTs when she dropped her first collection of digital garments for New York Fashion Week.



The Fall/Winter collection debuted at Spring Studios, a central hub for NYFW shows, with a series of streaming images shot by photographer Cass Bird. Each photo featured a special QR code that led to an augmented reality experience for live bidding.



The first collection of digital NFTs—which cost between $60 and $600—sold out in nine minutes. Minkoff declined to comment on total revenue from sales. “We weren’t expecting it but it proved there’s a bigger appetite for accessible luxury in the metaverse and it’s all about understanding that fine line between scarcity and opportunity,” she says, “and giving collectors a way to gain value and resell.”



Minkoff also believes NFTs “will transform the entire fashion industry in ways we can’t imagine.”



“This will affect inventory and the cost of garments,” she says. “And what will this do for supply issues, and the physical values of things?” For the buyer side, she envisions a world where an NFT dress can be used not just for one’s avatar, but instant dress-up for Instagram photos as well.



Minkoff’s debut at CFW signifies the designer’s continued desire to engage with Gen Z consumers. To further these efforts, her second NFT drop will also launch on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/09/17/how-roblox-is-training-the-next-generation-of-gaming-entrepreneurs/?sh=bd3bc351a971">Roblox, a metaverse platform</a>, and host an eSports event within High Heel Obby, an obstacle course on Roblox that draws 10 million players each month.



By purchasing the NFTs via DMAT, each buyer will become members of the Rebecca Minkoff Metaverse world, with access to a Roblox-based eSports event on March 25. For the eSports event on High Heel Obby, both NFT holders and Roblox players can compete to style the Minkoff looks and win prizes from the brand.



While she’s pivoting for the next-gen via Web3, Minkoff will soon revisit her physical store strategy. “Brick-and-mortar is just not a goal for this year, it is more of a 2023 goal,” she says. “When we do re-enter brick-and-mortar, we are carefully thinking about what that will look like, but it will have an NFT loyalty component.” She also plans to return to New York Fashion Week this fall with a live show.



Minkoff also has no plans of abandoning her original customer base of Millennial women, whom she won over more than 16 years ago with her Morning After Bag and I Love New York Tee. “It’s our job to educate the consumer who buys an NFT from us and might not know where to take it, while growing that already educated audience,” she says. “It’s getting exposure to them in the metaverse while bringing the rest of our consumers along, it’s definitely straddling two worlds at once and hoping to connect them.



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/"></a>Tanya Klich, Forbes Staff

Feminist Rising: Why Brands Must Take a Stand – 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals

Rebecca Minkoff Goes Back To The Metaverse With An NFT Collection For Crypto Fashion Week

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Starlink, the app that enables mobile users to access SpaceX’s satellite internet service of the same name, was the most-downloaded app in Ukraine Monday afternoon after reaching the top spot Sunday,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-ukraine-latest-news-2022-03-14/card/app-downloads-for-elon-musk-s-starlink-internet-service-soar-globally-and-in-ukraine-UyVoshzEIYRItnea6b76?mod=e2tw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to data seen by the&nbsp;Wall Street Journal, following SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s rapid delivery of the terminals that provide the service to the war-torn country last month.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Sensor Tower, a firm that provides App Store and Google Play data, told the&nbsp;Wall Street Journal&nbsp;the app was downloaded 21,000 times globally Sunday across the two stores—the most global installs in a single day, with most of the downloads coming from Ukraine.



The app has been downloaded nearly 100,000 times in Ukraine according to Sensor Tower, with global downloads more than tripling in the last two weeks.



Starlink became available in Ukraine days after Russia invaded, when the country’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/1497543633293266944?s=20&amp;t=IGxZpHWpanAPvu25Hmtczw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">implored</a>&nbsp;Musk via Twitter to provide Ukraine with the terminals that enable the service—a request Musk quickly&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/1498392515262746630?s=20&amp;t=IGxZpHWpanAPvu25Hmtczw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">obliged</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



A Tesla company&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/09/tesla-will-pay-ukrainian-employees-for-up-to-3-months-if-conscripted.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">email</a>&nbsp;seen by CNBC&nbsp;last week showed the automaker, of which Musk is also the CEO, assisted in the rapid, two-day delivery of the Starlink terminals to Ukraine, providing Tesla battery storage systems to power them. Internet outages have been a growing issue in Ukraine since Russia began its invasion three weeks ago. The British Ministry of Defense&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1500727508014088192" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">warned</a>&nbsp;last week Russia is “probably” targeting Ukraine’s communications infrastructure, but internet access could be also shutting off due to collateral infrastructure damage from Russian attacks. The Ministry reported outages in Mariupol, Sumy, Kharkiv and the capital city of Kyiv. The besieged city of Mariupol was effectively without internet for a week straight as of March 9, NBC News&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ukraine-facing-major-regional-internet-outages-russian-invasion-contin-rcna18973" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;based on data from a U.S.-based internet tracking firm.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/03/10/cyberattack-on-major-ukraine-internet-provider-causes-major-outages/?sh=77ae77b56573">reported</a>&nbsp;last week one of Ukraine’s major internet providers had been hacked multiple times, resetting service devices to factory settings, though it is unclear whether Russia is directly behind these attacks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1503327421839417344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1503327421839417344%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Fworld%2F2022%2F03%2F14%2Felon-musk-putin-fight-ukraine%2F7036541001%2F" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">challenged</a> Russian President Vladimir Putin to “single combat” via Twitter Monday—with the stakes being Ukraine. In a <a href="https://twitter.com/Rogozin/status/1503335137991438336?s=20&amp;t=f8U3BE3dwgHFmMxL_lvWbw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a> response, Dmitry Rogozin, director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, called Musk a “weakling” and a “little devil” in Russian.



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/masonbissada/"></a>Mason Bissada, Forbes Staff

Elon Musk Mobile World Congress 2021

Elon Musk’s Starlink Becomes Most-Downloaded App In Ukraine

Land is being bought in Ubuntuland, a metaverse by Africarare, Africa’s first 3-D immersive virtual reality. Opportunities for artists, architects and designers are many, and open to public land sales this year.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Topline</h2>



In October 2021, Facebook announced its corporate name change to Meta, showing an increased interest in the virtual reality sector.



On February 28 2022, African company MTN and South African M&amp;C Saatchi Abel bought plots of ‘land’ in the metaverse by Africarare, the online landscape known as Ubuntuland. MTN bought 144 plots of digital space for an undisclosed amount. M&amp;C Saatchi Abel, award-winning advertising agency has done work for the likes of Standard Bank, Nandos, SuperSport, Mweb, Continental and Mr Delivery.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Background</h2>



Ubuntuland sold-out the debut collection of South African artist Norman Catherine NFTs for $53,000 in the gallery Mila, meaning traditional in Swahili. Ubuntuland will showcase African art, fashion, entertainment, sport, tech and creativity and will provide a platform for artists from across the continent to display and sell their work. The upcoming Inuka gallery (Swahili for ‘rise’) will feature works by emerging African artists from later in 2022.



“We just did a very small campaign to look out for artists. And we had a couple of 100 applications. We found some amazing, very young and upcoming artists. And then we are curating a couple that we think should be in the mix,” says Mic Mann, co-founder and CEO of Africarare.



“The unique afro-themed metaverse establishes local representation in a growing global digital universe and will open our continent up to significant digital and economic growth opportunities for both talent, clients and industry colleagues to come together to solve business and even societal challenges with creativity,” says Mike Abel, M&amp;C Saatchi Group South Africa Founding Partner and CEO.



“This aligns with our own very clear commitment to pushing the bounds of South African capabilities and creativity in the work we produce across the continent. We love a good problem as a team, and we believe that creativity is the most significant key to solving these. Creating a virtual home for this is a very natural and fluid extension of our ability to do exactly this,” he says.



Ubuntuland is created by Mann Made and will be open to public land sales from 2nd or 3rd quarter of 2022 as the team continue to work on the build for their Afro-futuristic world. Together with Mann Made, M&amp;C Saatchi Abel and Africarare will create a cultural, social, and commercial destination for African creativity in the metaverse.



“We aim to give Africans the access and resources they need to unlock their creative fire power from the home base of Africa’s digital creative destination – M&amp;C Saatchi Abel Ubuntuland. Using our capabilities as industry leaders, we can enable and empower Africa to grow and flourish on a global playing field,” says Abel.



“For us it’s all about building a thriving engaged community and ecosystem in Ubuntuland as we develop this new metaverse. We are thrilled to be working with one of Africa and the worlds most talented creative agencies as we focus on unlocking Africa’s best talent and connect Africa to the global digital economy,” says Mann.



Landholders will be able to customize their 3-D land spaces, such as hosting shops, producing resources, renting virtual services and developing games or other applications. Certain spaces will serve the community for work, play and wellness purposes, including meeting rooms, online therapy rooms (with optional anonymity), concert stages, film festival spaces, meditation lounges and other interactive environments. And there’s more to come, such as staking, DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and blockchain play-to-earn gaming.



“Africarare will connect Africa to this booming arena of the global economy, stimulate growth and create multiple new jobs such as digital designers, creators and architects,” says Mann.



Speaking on the online wellness aspect, Mann had this to say: “I think it&#8217;s going to be a journey to get where it needs to be eventually. But I think it&#8217;s a shared experience, it&#8217;s a great thing to share a meditation with others, rather than being alone. A lot of people don&#8217;t like to meditate by themselves, they prefer doing it in some sort of group, it gives them energy, it gives them some sort of balance,” he explains.



Furthermore, a collaboration between Africarare and South African superstar Boitumelo Thulo has been announced. Popularly known as Boity, the television personality, rapper, actress, businesswoman and model, revealed her first virtual reality music video at the Africarare launch on February 28. Then she came out in real life, entering the event in the same Sun Goddess custom creation which her outfit the Queen Boity avatar form is based. The Boity tribe of 10 000 avatars will soon be available for fans, with a Boity village currently being developed and plans for virtual concerts under way.



The currency in Ubuntuland will be the $UBUNTU token, which is built on the Ethereum blockchain and available from later this year. Everything in Africarare can be bought, sold or traded using $UBUNTU tokens, including buying, developing, selling or renting plots or villages in Ubuntuland. The valuation of the token will be calculated according to what users invest, build, play or trade inside the metaverse.



“We are thrilled to be working with Africa’s greatest talent and showcase it to the world in our virtual reality metaverse allowing Africa to take part in this global phenomenon,” says Zhulik Co-founder Africarare.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



Mann is heading to VeeCon in Minnesota, Minneapolis USA, later this year. VeeCon is a multi-day conference with discussions and performances from iconic and emerging leaders in NFTs and popular culture. He says you have to own one of the Vee friends in order to go.



“And thankfully, I bought on when that came out a year ago. So I&#8217;m going, that&#8217;s amazing,” he says. The line-up includes names likes Snoop Dog, Deepak Chopra, Beeple, Mila Kunis and many more.



Stoner Cats, an animated series, where you have to buy an NFT to watch the series, is another project Mann bought an NFT in. The creatives behind Stoner Cats are Chris Cartagena, Sarah Cole, and Ash Brannon. Together they have amassed years of experience working on movies such as Toy Story 2, Happy Feet, Surf&#8217;s Up, The Grinch, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and Space Jam: A New Legacy. The show is being developed by Orchard Farm Productions, Mila Kunis’s production company with her partners Cami Curtis and Lisa Sterbakov.



“So I bought one of the cats, and I&#8217;ve watched the first two episodes, they&#8217;re really brilliant. You can only watch it if you own the one of the NFTs. But I think there&#8217;s a lot of opportunity for that. We could see a lot of African filmmakers making shows and then you know, charging for them in $UBUNTU tokens, or some sort of crypto subscription,” Mann says.



Opportunities for creators and designers are opening up in the digital world, with Africa on the way to capitalize on these developments.

Mic Mann & Boity at Africarare Launch in JHB 28 Feb 2022

Africa Launching Into The Metaverse

Waabi, a Toronto-based AI startup that came out of stealth last year, says it’s developed an advanced simulator that can train autonomous vehicles to handle nearly limitless types of driving conditions–in a virtual world–and do so faster and more thoroughly than self-driving rivals that prioritize road tests.



The Waabi World platform is more comprehensive than any used by competitors as it can more accurately mimic real-world scenarios and create the types of rare, challenging “edge cases” that occur on the road only rarely, company founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun tells&nbsp;Forbes. Learning in this elaborate virtual world is happening constantly, preparing the software to eventually drive a range of vehicles from robotaxis to semi-trucks.



It’s the “most scalable, high-fidelity, closed-loop simulator that ever existed and, we believe, the key to unlocking self-driving technology at scale,” says Urtasun, who is also professor of computer science at the University of Toronto and a past chief scientist for Uber’s autonomous vehicle team. “It&#8217;s an immersive and reactive environment that can automatically design tests for our self-driving brain, which we call the Waabi Driver, and also automatically assess the skills of the Waabi Driver. Ultimately, it can also teach the Waabi Driver to learn the skills of driving.”



The company isn’t planning to license the Waabi World platform to other AV developers. Urtasun said the focus is on intense training of its software for now, declining to say when Waabi’s first autonomous vehicles would be on the road. We’re advancing really well, really, really fast,” she said, without elaborating.&nbsp;



The pace of development for the leading autonomous vehicle companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, General Motors-backed Cruise, Argo Ai, which is funded by Ford and Volkswagen, Amazon’s Zoox and robotic truck developer TuSimple, has been somewhat slower than anticipated though all the companies are making progress toward broader commercialization. Those companies, which have raised billions of dollars, are doing rigorous on-road testing to verify software and sensors, as well as racking up countless miles in simulation, yet it’s unclear when robotaxis and autonomous trucks will be ubiquitous.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Waabi World" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M7xIn2iNytE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Waabi–a name inspired by an Ojibwe word meaning “she has vision”–emerged from stealth mode in June 2021, announcing an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2021/06/08/uber-veteran-launches-her-ai-mindset-self-driving-startup-with-835-million-round/?sh=7e4babe26edf">initial $83.5 million funding</a>&nbsp;round. Urtasun declined to say whether she’s raised additional funds in subsequent rounds. The initial focus will be applying the Waabi Driver software to self-driving trucks, but Urtasun envisions broad usage across all forms of vehicles.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We talk a lot about how you need a different brain for the self-driving vehicle for it to generalize to all the different things that might happen, but there is one more piece that you need which is a different way of testing, as well as training the system to really handle all situations,” she says. “The industry mainly does this by testing and driving millions of miles in the real world. This is very costly and it doesn&#8217;t scale. &#8230; We need a totally different approach and this is what Waabi World is.”



If Waabi does indeed have a more comprehensive, robust simulation system than any that currently exists, it could prove to be a critical asset for the young company. The current limitations of simulation-based training software is one reason that Zoox is increasing its real-world testing, CTO and cofounder Jesse Levinson told reporters this week.&nbsp;



“In many ways the simulator is actually more useful than real driving but of course you can’t just not drive in real life either because simulations are not perfect, yet, We have not built the matrix for self-driving cars such that there are absolutely no differences between the simulated world and the real world,” he said. “It&#8217;s getting better and better so there are fewer and fewer things that you learn in real life that you can&#8217;t learn in simulation. But I do think it&#8217;s going to be a long time before there&#8217;s nothing you can learn in real life that you can&#8217;t learn in simulation.”



By Alan Ohnsman, Forbes Staff

Key Speakers At The Economist Canada Summit

Can Next-Generation Simulation Build A Better Self-Driving Car? This AI Upstart Thinks So

<a href="https://ucollex.io/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ucollex</a>, a Hong Kong-based NFT platform, has pulled $10 million fresh capital from local blockchain game developer Animoca Brands. The startup’s latest funding round comes as sales of the digital collectibles are gaining ground in the city, which has seen an increasing number of projects launched over the past year.&nbsp;



Another investor who also participated in the fundraising is MCP IPX One Fund, an investment fund established by the Japanese branch of MCP Asset Management and Animoca, according to a statement issued on Thursday.&nbsp;



Ucollex said the financing round values the company at $110 million. The new capital will be used to strengthen its team and its platform with the aim of delivering an experience that combines digital collectibles and entertainment through features such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/ucollex/videos/867859440553046" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">virtual artwork battles</a>, cofounder and CEO Robert Tran said in a written response.



“We believe there is still a lot to do to turn collectors from being passive supporters to becoming an integral and active part of the development process,” Tran added. “As long as more creators are emerging and content is growing at the pace that we have experienced in the last few years, there will be tremendous growth for Ucollex.”



NFTs—short for non-fungible tokens—are crypto assets that record the ownership of a digital item such as a piece of artwork, a photo or a video. Anyone can create, or “mint,” NFTs, by uploading their digital files to a blockchain that acts as a public ledger. 



Established in 2020 by Robert Tran and Raymond Hung, Ucollex is a marketplace that sells NFTs featuring toys and pop culture collectibles. Prior to the crypto business, Tran cofounded local watch brand Undone and iClick Interactive Asia, a marketing technology company listed on the Nasdaq. While Hung’s career includes a stint serving as the CTO of Undone as well as working at Microsoft Hong Kong for more than a decade.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Last year, Ucollex teamed up with world’s largest crypto exchange Binance and British luxury fashion brand Jimmy Choo to launch a NFT collection. (Disclosure: Binance recently announced a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2022/02/10/forbes-announces-200-million-strategic-investment-from-binance/?sh=5729a63b57e2">strategic investment</a> in Forbes.)



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">LIVE: Discover Jimmy Choo’s first NFT, in collaboration with <a href="https://twitter.com/ucollex?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ucollex</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/NFKingsPro?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NFKingsPro</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/binance?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@binance</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/TheBinanceNFT?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TheBinanceNFT</a>, featuring exclusive mystery packs <a href="https://t.co/va1vEsHHSL">https://t.co/va1vEsHHSL</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NFT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NFT</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NFTCommunity?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NFTCommunity</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CryptoArt?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CryptoArt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/JIMMYCHOOXERICHAZE?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#JIMMYCHOOXERICHAZE</a> <a href="https://t.co/zKVf1yO1zr">pic.twitter.com/zKVf1yO1zr</a>&mdash; Jimmy Choo (@jimmychoo) <a href="https://twitter.com/jimmychoo/status/1450733530439319554?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 20, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Yat Siu, cofounder and chairman of Animoca, said he believes his company’s latest investment in Ucollex will make it easier for intellectual properties to participate in the metaverse, according to the statement.&nbsp;



Ucollex’s funding round underscores the increasing popularity of NFTs in Hong Kong, which has seen an increasing number of new projects emerged over the past year. Among the successful launches are Shrooms, an NFT collection featuring three-dimensional mushroom avatars with Asian elements such as mahjong and red banners. The project said on its Twitter that all of its 3,888 NFTs were sold out within two minutes after its public launch in January.&nbsp;



But as the emerging market for NFTs has grown, so too have reports of scams. Monkey Kingdom, a Hong Kong NFT project that has more than 23,000 followers on Twitter, said it became the unwitting victim of theft in December. Buyers of the NFTs lost 7,000 Solana tokens, which translates to about $1.3 million at the time, after a hacker infiltrated the project’s group chat and posted a phishing link, which was used to steal personal data and gain access to their accounts. Monkey Kingdom said it had launched a fund to compensate the victims for some of their losses.



By Zinnia Lee, Forbes Staff

World’s First NFT Vending Machine Operates In New York City

Animoca Leads $10 Million Funding Round In Hong Kong NFT Platform Amid Crypto Craze

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The Associated Press on Thursday cancelled a planned sale of a non-fungible token of a video of “migrants drifting in an overcrowded boat in the Mediterranean” after backlash on Twitter to a post advertising it, with many deeming it distasteful.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



The tweet garnered at least 227,000 views before the news outlet deleted it, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/CLElaytown/status/1496990837368098817?s=20&amp;t=8suVg0PlNA6gydaVXo296A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">screenshots</a>&nbsp;posted of the ad by Twitter users following its removal.&nbsp;



The AP intended to sell the video, along with other NFTs from AP photographer Felipe Dana, on its photojournalism NFT&nbsp;<a href="https://apmarket.xooa.com/p/drops" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">marketplace</a>&nbsp;the following day.&nbsp;



The image in the tweet&nbsp;<a href="https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2018/5/7/refugees-and-migrants-rescued-at-sea" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">matches</a>&nbsp;one of Dana’s on an AP image blog of refugees being rescued off the Libyan coast in 2018.&nbsp;



An AP representative confirmed to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that the post was deleted and the image would not be put up for auction,&nbsp;stating,“This was a poor choice of imagery for an NFT.”&nbsp;



Twitter users called the post “<a href="https://twitter.com/CivesVero/status/1496990657646411776?s=20&amp;t=8suVg0PlNA6gydaVXo296A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dystopian</a>,” “in extremely poor&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/BunnyNC/status/1496997875141816320?s=20&amp;t=8suVg0PlNA6gydaVXo296A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">taste</a>” and “<a href="https://twitter.com/megm4926/status/1496998071238262784?s=20&amp;t=8suVg0PlNA6gydaVXo296A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hyping</a>&nbsp;up the monetization of human suffering.”



Dana did not immediately respond to&nbsp;Forbes’ request for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT WE DON’T KNOW</h2>



&nbsp;It is unclear if the video will still be sold on the AP’s NFT marketplace, but the sale was scheduled for Friday at 12 p.m.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



The AP began turning its photos into NFTs last month, launching its marketplace via the blockchain technology provider Xooa. In its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2022/ap-to-launch-nft-marketplace-built-by-xooa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">release</a>&nbsp;announcing the marketplace, the non-profit news organization said proceeds from the sales would “go back into funding factual, unbiased AP journalism.” Images currently available on the marketplace are selling for as much as $1,799 worth of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. NFTs are images stored on the blockchain, an encrypted ledger, making them unique to the owner.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“AP’s NFT marketplace is a very early pilot program,” the outlet told Forbes. “We are immediately reviewing our efforts.”



By Mason Bissada, Forbes Staff

A microphone of Associated Press (AP), an American non-

AP Cancels Sale Of NFT Of Migrants Floating In Overcrowded Boat In Mediterranean￼

Yat Siu&nbsp;is exhausted. The 49-year-old Austrian-born, Hong Kong-based exec isn’t sleeping more than a few hours a night these days but can’t stop himself from jumping into high gear when asked about his blockchain gaming business, Animoca Brands. Sporting a hooded black jacket and half-rimmed glasses, he wildly gesticulates as he expounds on the glorious destiny he sees for gaming decentralization and digital property rights.



“Maybe we can even reshape how people think about classic forms of capitalism,” he says.



Already this future—ruled by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain technology—has been Siu’s salvation. Just over four years ago, Animoca Brands was struggling. Revenues at the tiny mobile game business—which he had cofounded with David Kim, a former Softbank partner and ex-CEO of early internet success Mail.com, in January 2014—had fallen 25% to $5.2 million, and its market capitalization (improbably Animoca Brands was public, trading on the Australian Stock Exchange) was less than $6 million.



Then, in 2017, Siu stumbled across CryptoKitties, an early blockchain-based marketplace where users bought, sold and collected virtual pets. He caught the bug and invested in its Vancouver-based parent, Dapper Labs (then called Axiom Zen), a company now worth $7.6 billion. It was the first of what would grow into more than 150 NFT-related investments. Animoca Brands now has stakes in most of the world’s largest and most successful NFT businesses, including OpenSea (the largest NFT marketplace with estimated 2021 revenues of $375 million); Dapper Labs, which created the NBA’s Top Shot platform (nearly $1 billion worth of basketball “moments” sold since November 2020); and Sky Mavis, maker of&nbsp;Axie Infinity, last year’s blockbuster NFT game (valued at an estimated $3 billion).



“The only place we’re not in is probably Antarctica,” Siu says with a laugh.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">Blockchain gaming is either the future—or another bubble waiting to burst.</blockquote>



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In mid-January, Animoca Brands raised nearly $360 million at a valuation of $5.4 billion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2022/01/17/blockchain-gaming-company-animoca-brands-raises-360-million-in-quest-to-build-the-open-metaverse/">more than doubling</a>&nbsp;its previous mark of $2.2 billion from October.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates that Siu has a 10% stake worth nearly $500 million. Investors included Liberty City Ventures, Soros Fund Management and Winklevoss Capital. (Animoca Brands is reportedly in talks with global investment firm KKR to add around $140 million to the January round.) Since its dark days in 2017, the company has grown from 57 employees to more than 600. In the first nine months of 2021, Animoca Brands generated $670 million in revenues, with about $530 million coming from gains on digital assets and investments. Its coin reserves were valued at nearly $16 billion at the end of November.



Overall, the global market for NFTs swelled to $25 billion last year, from $100 million in 2020. A fifth of that comes from video games, according to NFT tracker DappRadar. Much of the action has occurred in places like the Philippines, where low-income players have embraced a “play-to-earn” model that can net them a steady income of a few dollars a day. Western gamers have been less eager to embrace the trend. Blockchain gaming is either the future of the $200 billion video game industry—or another bubble waiting to burst. Given the range of Animoca’s holdings, lots of smart money is looking to the success—or failure—of Siu’s outfit as a litmus test for the viability of blockchain gaming.



“There’s very few times that you can feel like you can help shape an industry,” Siu says. “That’s very different from seeing a rising tide and an opportunity to participate. But here, you could help shape it in the manner that, at least we think, could be a net positive for everyone.”



The concepts behind blockchain gaming have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2022/01/06/why-video-game-makers-see-huge-potential-in-blockchain-and-why-problems-loom-for-their-new-nfts/">around for some time now</a>, dating back to the thriving economies of online multiplayer games of the early 2000s, especially&nbsp;World of Warcraft, and later the proto-metaverse project&nbsp;Second Life, which had its own digital currency (the Linden Dollar) and was home to the&nbsp;<a href="https://fortune.com/2006/11/27/anshe-chung-first-virtual-millionaire/#:~:text=Anshe%20Chung%2C%20a%20real%2Destate,worth%20more%20than%20%241%20million." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first virtual real estate boom</a>&nbsp;(and later bust) in 2006. Blockchain gaming is a massive bet on the idea of “true digital ownership” where players can buy and sell items (think unique clothing or superpowered swords) within a game and also where those assets have an existence (on the blockchain) independent of that game. How that plays out practically in an industry where competing game developers can’t even agree on the most basic standards (there is disagreement on which direction should be considered “up”) is anyone’s guess, but one NFT-gaming application has already caught on: play-to-earn.



Consider&nbsp;The Sandbox, a mobile game that Animoca Brands acquired in 2018 and transformed into a blockchain product. A player can purchase a virtual piece of land for about $4,000; fill it with custom buildings, objects or characters; and flip it for a higher price, just by putting the time in. Animoca Brands pockets a fee every time they’re traded.&nbsp;The Sandbox&nbsp;also has its own in game-currency, called SAND, that corresponds to real-world value—its market cap is currently $4.5 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Animoca Brands doesn’t collect royalties on the token but has accumulated a reserve that shows up on its balance sheet.



“Nobody’s thinking about, in a game design, how much can we give back to the players?” Siu says. “It’s really been always about the business.”



Siu’s passion for technology burned from an early age. Growing up in Vienna in the 1980s, he felt like an outsider because of his Chinese heritage. He found refuge in computers, and the burgeoning internet, to escape his loneliness.



He taught himself to code on an early Texas Instruments computer—a “glorified calculator,” as he says—and later progressed to an Atari ST. Using its MIDI port to connect to a keyboard, the teenaged Siu started publishing music composition software online. Unaware of his age, Atari reached out to him to discuss a job, only to be dumbfounded when he arrived at the company’s Austrian outpost. Still, they liked his online postings enough to hire him as a consultant.



After dropping out of college, and bouncing around through a handful of entrepreneurial ventures, Siu founded Hong Kong-based email company Outblaze in 1998. It was his first big score. In 2009, he sold the company’s cloud division to IBM for a sum in the hundreds of millions. Siu used most of his multimillion-dollar payday to help recapitalize the company during the ensuing economic downturn.



Inspiration for what to do next came in the unlikeliest of places. Sick of carrying around a stack of Baby Einstein flash cards to quiz his first child, Siu asked his team at Outblaze to develop a mobile app version. It was downloaded around 20 million times, leading him to create Animoca, an Outblaze subsidiary, to develop games in 2011. Renamed Animoca Brands, it was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2015.



It was hardly smooth sailing. In 2012, Apple, one of Animoca’s biggest distribution platforms, abruptly removed all of Animoca’s games from the App Store. No explanation was given. Siu suspects his strategy of launching a new game every week was deemed “spamming” by Apple. He shifted the company to producing kids’ games that licensed popular brands like&nbsp;Thomas and Friends, landing back on the App Store in 2013 until Apple de-emphasized the category, dealing a crushing blow. (Apple did not reply to a request for comment.) By 2017, Animoca Brands was a failing business.



Then a cofounder of a gaming startup Siu had funded told him about their new NFT project: CryptoKitties. The virtual felines were an instant success, becoming so popular that a month after their launch, in December 2017, they nearly crashed the Ethereum blockchain. Months later, the crypto market itself tanked, leading to 2018’s “Crypto Winter,” which left Bitcoin and Ether trading at momentary lows of $3,200 and $87, respectively.



Siu held strong. That year he congregated with what he called “250 die-hard believers, all just really willing to drink our own Kool-Aid” at a NFT conference in Hong Kong. He used the forum to forge relationships with companies that would turn to be some of his biggest wins: OpenSea,&nbsp;The Sandbox&nbsp;and Decentraland, a virtual-real-estate play with districts modeled after places like Las Vegas.



Embracing crypto put Siu in the crosshairs of the ASX, which was taking a cautious approach to digital assets. The exchange gave him a stark choice: Give up crypto, or get out. “It was scary,” Siu says. “If you’re delisted, no stock exchange was willing to look at you.” Animoca Brands was delisted in March 2020. (Technically, the company remains “public, but unlisted,” which means it operates like a private company with around 2,500 shareholders.)



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Nobody’s thinking about, in a game design, how much can we give back to the players?”</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Promising as the technology may be, the world still hasn’t figured out how to regulate cryptocurrency and NFTs. The controversial “play-to-earn” model and use of in-game currencies stoke fears of gambling, market manipulation and exploitation of workers in the less-developed world, who often rent NFTs from players in more developed countries in return for a share of their earnings. Some Axie Infinity players, mostly based in the Philippines, play the digital monster game as their&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/14/people-in-philippines-earn-cryptocurrency-playing-nft-video-game-axie-infinity.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">primary source of income</a>.



Last year, the U.S. Congress&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2021/12/27/in-2021-congress-has-introduced-35-bills-focused-on-us-crypto-policy/">introduced 35 bills</a>&nbsp;on crypto and blockchain policy. Only one passed, although in Australia the ASX announced plans to allow cryptocurrency exchanges and ETFs to trade on the exchange. Jack Dorsey’s Block (formerly Square) listed there in January. “It’s too big to ignore,” says former ASX regulator Greg Medcraft.



Not everyone shares Siu’s enthusiasm. Samson Mow, the chief technologist at Blockstream, which builds products to store and transfer Bitcoin, says the economics of an “Open Metaverse,” or an interchangeable collection of virtual worlds, works against game companies. “If&nbsp;Call of Duty&nbsp;sold you some weapons, Ubisoft doesn’t want you bringing them into&nbsp;Rainbow Six&nbsp;because that eats away at their item sales,” Mow says. “I just can’t see it happening to the way people are prophesying it will, like [the novel]&nbsp;Ready Player One, where you just move seamlessly.” Mow adds that blockchain technology is far from being truly decentralized; for instance, Ethereum, the network powering nearly all NFT games, relies heavily on Amazon Web Services.



And much of it can seem faddish.&nbsp;Axie Infinity’s primary token, AXS, has lost nearly 60% of its value in the last three months, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Electronic Art’s CEO Andrew Wilson, who previously expressed interest in entering the NFT space, walked back his comments on a recent earnings call. Valve, the company that owns popular game platform Steam, banned blockchain games and NFTs in October. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has said&nbsp;NFT gaming&nbsp;“feels more exploitive than about entertainment.”



If the world’s major gaming companies are hesitant, Siu is not. He’s quick to brag about&nbsp;Phantom Galaxies, an upcoming PC and Mac game from Animoca Brands that he says will rival the quality of Triple-A games on consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Except for a small misfire from Ubisoft, no major publisher has ventured in blockchain gaming yet. But the audacity of the gamble speaks volumes.



“I think Triple-A has arrived and it’s just going get better from here,” Siu says. “It’s going to happen in a big way.”



By Justin Birnbaum, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration, a NFT (Non-fungible token) sign

How An NFT Pivot Turned A Tiny Mobile Game Company Into Multibillion-Dollar Powerhouse

Starting a business has long been a way for Americans to rise up while serving others. Before the pandemic, the number of new enterprises launched by members of the Black and Latinx communities was growing impressively, a phenomenon that didn’t attract much media attention. As the pandemic recedes, such entrepreneurial activity will revive.



However, well before Covid-19, the drive to launch or expand a new business had been seriously hampered by the lack of capital. Decades ago, banks were a major source of such funding, but that hasn’t been the case for quite a while. Thus, growth was stunted or, all too often, promising startups never saw the light of day.



That’s why the unique collaboration described below is of such crucial importance. It provides a creative model for capital access for Black and Latinx entrepreneurs that can be replicated across the nation.&nbsp;



Guest post by Nia C. Mathis, Verizon Vice President of State and Local Government Affairs—Central/New England Region.



In spite of the racial reexamining America has been going through for more than a year now, Black and Latinx tech entrepreneurs still don’t have equitable access to the startup capital that could make their dreams a reality. TechRise, a Chicago collaboration of Verizon, nonprofit P33 and business incubator 1871, aims to change that.



Chicago is rapidly becoming a hub for tech entrepreneurism, on track to achieve a startup valuation of at least&nbsp;<a href="https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/68c8CJ6Ew3fL3nGJtVDZhW?domain=forbes.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$1 billion</a>&nbsp;this year. It is also one of the most racially distributed cities in America, with Black and Latinx communities each making up roughly 30% of the population. Yet only 1.9% of venture capital goes to founders of color, less than the national average and far below the more than 5% they receive in Atlanta and New York City. Talent and good ideas that could transform communities and move the world forward are being left on the table.



The challenges to greater inclusion are real. Banks and Wall Street have long overlooked the potential of founders of color, who need outside access to capital.&nbsp;And many of these diverse would-be entrepreneurs also often lack a network of wealthy friends and family that many businesspeople look to for the initial funding that’s needed to move past the idea stage to develop a workable pitch and formal proposal.



TechRise takes steps to fill that gap by providing access not only to capital but also to community and connections. It will support Black and Latinx founders through the lifecycles of the businesses, from the initial concept to success and exit.



The goal is to deploy $5 million in nondilutive grant funding, meaning that diverse founders won’t have to give up equity in their startups in exchange for the seed money. Profits generated by their ideas and hard work will stay in the community. The grants will be given out in amounts of $10,000 to $50,000 to Black and Latinx entrepreneurs across the Chicago metro area.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/62044c507de68d368b4354fc/TRFinale-SESandwinners/960x0.jpg?fit=bounds&amp;format=jpg&amp;width=96" alt="TRFinale_SESandwinners"/><figcaption>TechRise 2021 Season Finale (left to right): Christine Izuakor, PhD, CISSP, founder of Cyber Pop-Up, the $100K Grand Prize-winner; Steven Shaw, Verizon team member; and Eric Alvarez, founder of Grapefruit Health, the $25K People&#8217;s Choice Award-winner.&nbsp;TECHRISE 2021</figcaption></figure>



This program is working and producing tangible results. After 31 pitch competitions, TechRise awarded more than $920K in nondilutive grants to 42 startups in 2021. They include Season One winners&nbsp;<a href="https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/e7onCKrAx3Cxz1gosv-vn1?domain=urldefense.proofpoint.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Christine Izuakor, PhD, CISSP</a>, founder of&nbsp;<a href="https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/dOSgCL9Ay3uMy3xWsP9s8c?domain=urldefense.proofpoint.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cyber Pop-up</a>, who won the $100K grand prize, and&nbsp;<a href="https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/06KBCM87z3fVMJKrCWSJH-?domain=urldefense.proofpoint.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Eric Alvarez</a>, founder of&nbsp;<a href="https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/6nXsCNk7A3s5D6KWFrP3zO?domain=urldefense.proofpoint.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Grapefruit Health</a>, who won the $25K People&#8217;s Choice Award at the live finale. The initial round of 10 competitions awarded more than $200K to winning founders who were 60% women, 60% Black and 40% Latino. Their innovative ideas have already created 29 new jobs.



Cyber Pop-up is a real success story. It secures companies through an on-demand cybersecurity platform powered by vetted and highly skilled freelancers. Christine, a PhD in Security Engineering, developed the Cyber Pop-up platform but was having issues expanding her business until she won a TechRise pitch competition prize of $25,000. Christine used that money to increase advertising, which led to her victory over a field of 20 other semifinalists and the $100,000 grand prize at the recent Atlanta Startup Battle. Add to this Christine’s TechRise finale grand prize and you begin to see how programs like TechRise can really propel early-stage entrepreneurs forward.



And this is only the beginning. TechRise will return in spring 2022, so stay tuned for Season Two.



With help from TechRise, companies like Cyber Pop-up have the potential to make a profound impact on the city of Chicago. It’s estimated that $5 million in grant funding (like that of TechRise) can have a significant multiplier effect, enabling additional funding for Black and Latinx founders that will create thousands of jobs across the Chicago tech ecosystem.



Research from the Kauffman Foundation predicts that early investments in Black and Latinx founders can increase the annual growth of diverse startups by 20%, creating 170,000 tech job openings. Further, these entrepreneurs will look to employ people of color and women, which will help shrink the unacceptably high wealth gap in Chicago and the nation.



TechRise is a project that is long overdue, and Verizon—bringing its unique ability to connect tech entrepreneurs with the 5G network—is excited and honored to be a part of it. We look forward to the success of TechRise in Chicago and to seeing it replicated in cities all across the nation. Together we rise!&nbsp;



—Nia C. Mathis, Verizon Vice President of State and Local Government Affairs— Central/New England Region



By Steve Forbes, Forbes Staff

People having planning meeting in hybrid office

TechRise Will Help Give Black And Latinx Tech Entrepreneurs The Chance They Deserve

Video game and electronics retailer GameStop has announced a partnership with blockchain developer Immutable to develop an NFT marketplace, as well as setting aside funding to attract developers. 



GameStop, the&nbsp;gaming retailer&nbsp;at the&nbsp;center&nbsp;of a battle between Wall Street hedge funds and retail traders last year, has announced it is planning to launch its own NFT marketplace.&nbsp;The&nbsp;company&nbsp;made the announcement on&nbsp;Thursday in a press release, confirming retail&nbsp;traders&nbsp;suspicions&nbsp;and heralding a partnership with Immutable, using their platform built on the Ethereum blockchain.&nbsp; &nbsp; “An NFT marketplace which can&nbsp;capitalize… on probably the most rabid fanbase in the world right now for any company is an exceptional move by them,” said Robbie Ferguson,&nbsp;Immutable’s&nbsp;co-founder and President&nbsp;on February 4 during&nbsp;Bankless&nbsp;livestream, a channel dedicated to crypto related news.&nbsp; &nbsp; Indeed, it was the company’s fanbase that predicted that GameStop would be moving into the NFT and Web 3.0 space, after several job postings seeking experts in these fields were posted on the company’s hiring pages.&nbsp;



The marketplace announcement highlights GameStop’s transition from&nbsp;brick-and-mortar&nbsp;retailer to a modern consumer electronics&nbsp;organization&nbsp;that is beginning to dabble in cryptocurrency and technology, a pivot driven by the April 2021 appointment of Ryan Cohen as Chairman of the board. Cohen, a noted entrepreneur and investor of PetSmart fame, has driven a&nbsp;turnaround of the&nbsp;company, hiring top executives from Amazon and clearing GameStop’s debt.&nbsp;



&nbsp; The use of the Immutable X platform is aimed at reducing some of the drawbacks of Ethereum, such as high transaction fees or “gas fees” and environmental costs, with Immutable promising to pay carbon offsets for any environmental costs they do incur.&nbsp;



“The partnership establishes an up to $100 million fund in Immutable X’s IMX tokens, which the parties intend to use for grants to creators of non-fungible token (“NFT”) content and technology,” continued the press statement. The fund&nbsp;aims to provide game developers and studios grants to build products on the Immutable X platform and NFTs, using&nbsp;Immutable’s&nbsp;proprietary IMX tokens.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The marketplace announcement is the biggest news since the company became a highly-publicized&nbsp;“meme stock” battle between hedge fund short sellers and retail traders in early 2021, which saw the company’s share price skyrocket amidst increased volatility, and a generation of young traders on public forums such as Reddit following the company’s every move.&nbsp;



It remains to be seen&nbsp;GameStop’s&nbsp;transition to NFTs and Web 3.0 will ultimately be received, as many other gaming related NFT offerings from major game developers being met with intense backlash.&nbsp;The retailer’s primary business is largely still driven by consumer electronics and videogame sales, and it is as yet unknown what NFT’s the marketplace will feature – but, given the publicity of the company of the last year and the cult-like following it has engendered, any further developments are likely to&nbsp;be received with bated breath.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Ends&nbsp;

GERMANY-SHARES-GAMES-LEISURE

GameStop’s NFT Marketplace And $100 Million Development Fund

Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and a dozen other large retailers are quietly using controversial facial-recognition technology to fight a rise in smash-and-grab robberies and other coordinated attacks.



It’s part of a larger push to turn retailers’ existing security cameras — those ubiquitous black gadgets that produce thousands of hours of mostly useless footage — into a more sophisticated artificial-intelligence surveillance system, capable of automatically identifying people, license plates and other information that can be used to alert store employees of unfolding threats and ultimately prosecute offenders.



“There’s a big play to use AI right now,” said Read Hayes, director of the Loss Prevention Research Council. “Retailers have got cameras all over the place anyways.”



The technology has new appeal at a time when theft and violence is on the rise, particularly from organized crime groups that steal millions of dollars in merchandise and then sell the products online. Organized retail crime has risen by 60% since 2015, according to the National Retail Federation, with nearly 70% of retailers&nbsp;<a href="https://cdn.nrf.com/sites/default/files/2021-08/2021%20National%20Retail%20Security%20Survey%20updated.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reporting an increase</a>&nbsp;in 2021. As much as $69 billion worth of products are stolen from the nation’s retailers each year, or 1.5% of sales, according to estimates from the Retail Industry Leaders Association and the Buy Safe America Coalition. A record&nbsp;<a href="https://www.retaildive.com/press-release/20210118-retail-fatalities-violent-incidents-up-40-in-the-us-in-2020-according/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">523 people were killed</a>&nbsp;during robberies and other violent retail incidents in the U.S. in 2020, including 256 customers and 139 employees.



This month, the federal government&nbsp;<a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndok/pr/members-retail-theft-organization-face-federal-and-state-charges" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">charged</a>&nbsp;29 people with stealing $10 million in over-the-counter medicine and other items from Walmart, Costco, CVS, GNC&nbsp;and others, then reselling the products on sites like Amazon and eBay.



“What retailers are really trying to do is give police more evidence of who is doing this,” said Adrian Beck, a professor at the University of Leicester whose research focuses on ways to combat retail loss.



Facial-recognition technology is controversial because research has shown it’s often inaccurate when identifying people of color and women. The worst technology has an error rate of up to 35% when scanning darker-skinned women, but less than 1% with lighter-skinned men, according to one&nbsp;<a href="http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">research report</a>. The reason? Early versions of the algorithms were trained using images of celebrities that skewed white and male.



Companies have been working to address the racial bias, and between 2014 and 2018, facial-recognition software got 20 times better&nbsp;at searching a database to find a matching photograph, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. However, as of 2019, the government found that some&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/19/federal-study-confirms-racial-bias-many-facial-recognition-systems-casts-doubt-their-expanding-use/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">software still misidentified</a>&nbsp;African-American and Asian people 10 to 100 times more often than white men.



“People have been wrongly arrested because of this technology,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst for the speech, privacy and technology project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s really not ready for prime time.”



There’s been a push to curb the use of facial recognition by law enforcement, with cities like San Francisco, Minneapolis and Boston barring police officers from using it. Companies like Amazon and Microsoft have stopped selling the tech to police.



However, facial-recognition companies actively market their technology to retailers, who use it to help gather evidence on repeat offenders before ultimately sharing it with local law enforcement.



“There’s been a shift to where the retailer is doing some of this work themselves,” said Tony Sheppard, director of loss prevention solutions at ThinkLP. Law enforcement resources are sometimes thin, he added.



FaceFirst, which said it works with one-quarter of the largest retailers in North America, compiles time-stamped incidents and a calculation of past losses packaged for law enforcement. “When you send this to police, it’s a really strong storyboard,” FaceFirst president Dara Riordan said at a recent industry conference.



Retailers must create their own watchlists, a manual process that involves an employee identifying a person on video footage after an incident and asking the software to alert them the next time the same person walks into one of their locations. It won’t help the first time someone steals, but it can catch repeat offenders.



“Demand for our product is exploding,” said Dan Merkle, CEO of FaceFirst, which now runs more than 12 trillion face comparisons a day for its customers, up from 100 million in 2017. It claims its technology has a 99.7% accuracy rate, with no difference by gender or race, and can reduce theft from non-employees by 34% and in-store violence by 91%.



It’s helped one retailer catch “The Philly Fanatic,” a thief with a reputation for donning Philadelphia Phillies gear, not to be confused with the baseball team’s mascot of the same name. He’d been hitting the same retailer every one to two days with different accomplices, surreptitiously filling a cabinet with $2,000 or so in goods, closing it with double-sided tape and purchasing the cabinet like normal. The goods were then turned over to a “fence,” in charge of reselling the goods. The software helped identify the suspect and send a real-time alert to the retailer, who then apprehended him and turned him over to police, says FaceFirst.



U.K.-based Facewatch said business has doubled during the pandemic, with particularly strong demand from convenience stores. Its biggest deployment is at a retailer with over 100 locations.



Retail is also a growing customer segment for New York-based Oosto, according to chief marketing officer Dean Nicholls. Both regional and national retail chains use its technology, and some of them have deployed it at hundreds of stores. The 150-person company has raised $350 million in funding.



The technology suffered a setback at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone suddenly began wearing masks. Accuracy rates have been improving as companies train their algorithms on masked faces, but their success rates still vary widely, ranging from 60% to 99%, according to a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology published this month. Facewatch says it’s now operating at about a 90% accuracy rate and has a human employee check each image before sending an alert to a retailer.



“In 2020, it was debilitating to everybody,” said Merkle. “Now we can function at very high accuracies even with a mask on.”



Retailers are also trying to figure out when to communicate to employees that an offender has walked in the store and how to instruct them to act without putting them in danger. “What do you say to the poor checkout employee on minimum wage?” said Beck.



Few stores want to admit they’re involved with facial recognition, fearful of backlash from shoppers. Rite Aid used the technology for nearly a decade at hundreds of stores, but stopped after an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-riteaid-software/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">investigation from&nbsp;Reuters</a>&nbsp;pointed out that it used the software in largely low-income, non-white neighborhoods. Others, like Target and Home Depot, have tested facial recognition in the past, but now say they don’t use it.



Retailers are also using other types of video technology. For instance, virtual security guards have become increasingly popular during the pandemic. Guards are stationed remotely and can respond to various alerts — like motion detected by a security camera in the parking lot at 1 a.m. — by speaking directly to the suspected intruder and alerting law enforcement. It’s easier than hiring in-person guards during the current labor shortage and certainly cheaper, running 8% to 12% of the cost, said Sean Foley, an executive at Interface, which provides virtual guards to Zale’s, Dollar General, Big Lots and Gamestop.



Body cameras, like the ones worn by police offers, are also being adopted by retailers. Typically outfitted on security guards, two-thirds of the retailers surveyed by the ECR Retail Loss Group were using the cameras in some capacity and reported a 45% decrease in the number of violent and verbal abuse incidents. They can help cover blind spots left by security cameras, said Scott Thomas, national director of sales for signature brands at Genetec, which sells security system software.



Security cameras are also increasingly capable of identifying objects, like license plates, as well as behavior. Oosto is developing technology that could someday identify weapons, like a gun, or pick up on unusual motion, like multiple people running towards a store, and quickly send an alert to the store to put employees on notice.



“It’s like a radiologist who tells you that a tumor could be cancerous,” said Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council. “AI doesn’t do anything but give you a heads up.”



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/"></a>By Lauren Debter, Forbes Staff

Hacker with computers in dark room. Cyber crime

Retailers Quietly Deploying Controversial Technology To Combat Crime Spree

The NFT craze has minted its first billionaires.&nbsp;



The founders of buzzy blockchain startup OpenSea have joined the three-comma club following a fresh funding round announced Tuesday that values the company at $13.3 billion—up from $1.5 billion just six months ago. With estimated 18.5% stakes in OpenSea, cofounders Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah are each worth about $2.2 billion, Forbes estimates. (Forbes applies a discount to the value of privately-held companies due to limited liquidity. An OpenSea representative declined to comment.)



Founded four years ago, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/11/23/what-every-crypto-buyer-should-know-about-opensea-the-king-of-the-nft-market/?sh=10edd5c62f89">New York City-based startup was an early player in the NFT market that took off in early 2021</a>. Shorthand for “nonfungible tokens,” NFTs are computer files used to track ownership of unique digital assets like art, music and even virtual sports cards on a ledger known as a blockchain. OpenSea bills itself as a peer-to-peer platform on which users can create, buy and sell all sorts of NFTs—in exchange for a 2.5% cut of each sale.&nbsp;



OpenSea has grown rapidly over the past year. In March 2020, the five-person outfit counted roughly 4,000 active users doing $1.1 million in monthly transactions,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/11/23/what-every-crypto-buyer-should-know-about-opensea-the-king-of-the-nft-market/?sh=10edd5c62f89">for about $28,000 in monthly revenue</a>. Its luck changed in February 2021, when platforms like the Winklevoss twins’ Nifty Gateway&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2021/04/05/revenge-of-the-winklevii-facebook-winklevoss-bitcoin-nft-billionaire-revenge/?sh=b87bb51572af">generated buzz</a>&nbsp;by auctioning off high-end digital art. By July, OpenSea had closed a $100 million funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and recorded about $350 million worth of transactions that month. The next month, transactions hit $3.4 billion—a staggering ten-fold increase that earned the company $85 million in revenue from commissions.&nbsp;



The NFT market cooled off slightly in the months that followed, before heating up again in December. OpenSea&nbsp;<a href="https://dune.xyz/rchen8/opensea" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">processed more than $3.3 billion worth of sales last month</a>, generating&nbsp;about $82.5 million in revenue for itself. Today, the company employs more than 70 people.&nbsp;



Finzer and Atallah, each around 30 years old,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/11/23/what-every-crypto-buyer-should-know-about-opensea-the-king-of-the-nft-market/?sh=10edd5c62f89">have familiar resumes for young tech billionaires</a>. CEO Finzer grew up in the Bay Area, studied at Brown University and took a job as a software engineer at Pinterest. In 2015, he cofounded his first startup, a search engine called Claimdog, before selling it to Credit Karma a year later for an undisclosed sum. Colorado-born Chief Technology Officer Atallah proved to be a spreadsheet whiz from a young age. While he was a student at Stanford, he worked at Palantir, according to his LinkedIn profile, and after graduating worked at Silicon Valley startups Zugata and Whatsgoodly.



In January 2018, the duo teamed up for the Y Combinator startup accelerator with an idea for paying users crypto to share their Wi-Fi hotspots. But CryptoKitties—the cartoonish virtual cats that were among the earliest examples of NFTs—captured their imagination.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2021/11/23/what-every-crypto-buyer-should-know-about-opensea-the-king-of-the-nft-market/?sh=10edd5c62f89">Finzer and Atallah quickly pivoted to launch OpenSea and relocated to New York.</a>



Since its start, OpenSea has raised more than $420 million from investors, according to data from PitchBook. The $300 million series C haul announced Tuesday was led by venture capital firms Paradigm and Coatue. OpenSea says it plans to increase its headcount, with a focus on its “trust and safety” teams, and invest in making its products more accessible to a wider audience.&nbsp;



OpenSea faces heightened competition, including from crypto giant Coinbase, which in October announced plans to launch its own NFT exchange. Critics have also called out the potential for fraud and scams in the NFT world. In September,&nbsp;<a href="https://opensea.io/blog/announcements/employee-information-use-at-opensea/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Finzer requested the resignation of OpenSea’s head of product</a>&nbsp;after he was discovered to be buying NFTs shortly before they went live on the marketplace. And, just last week, a New York art gallery&nbsp;<a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/opensea-freezes-2-2m-of-stolen-bored-apes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly claimed that $2.2 million worth of NFTs had been stolen from him</a>&nbsp;and listed on OpenSea.&nbsp;



If the company can navigate the choppy waters, even greater riches could be on its horizon. Some $23 billion worth of NFTs exchanged (virtual) hands in 2021, according to data tracked by&nbsp;<a href="https://dappradar.com/blog/2021-dapp-industry-report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DappRadar</a>–and the market is just getting started.



“Our vision is to be the destination for these new open digital economies to thrive,” Finzer said in an emailed statement.



By Eliza Haverstock, Forbes Staff

Category: Technology

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