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Hi friends and new readers, welcome to The Station. A few items before we jump into the news.

Rebecca Bellan, who started writing for TechCrunch earlier this month, is going to be contributing to the micromobbin’ section as part of her focus on ebikes, scooters and other personal mobility vehicles. Reach out to her at rebecca.techcrunch@gmail.com if you want to share some micro news or offer up a tip.

Last week, I promised a new market maps article — those deep dives into slices of the transportation sector. The latest, written by Abigail Bassett, examines the business of augmented and virtual reality in vehicles. This is an Extra Crunch story, which requires a subscription.

As I’ve shared in here before, we’re bringing more transportation analysis to Extra Crunch. So far, we’ve had Mark Harris’ article on solid state batteries and Jason Plautz’s piece on the business of MaaS transit. This coming week we’ll have analysis on the market for second-life batteries.

Of course, my email inbox is always open. Email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also send a direct message to me at Twitter — @kirstenkorosec.

Micromobbin’

Lime rolled out several new app features designed to get more people riding their ever-growing fleet of e-scooters. The micromobility company will make e-scooter rides available to new users who don’t have the app and aren’t particularly fussed to download it — whether it’s for personal reasons, commitment issues or lack of phone space. Instead, customers can just scan the QR code on the scooter and let Apple’s App Clips or Android’s Instant App do the work of payment. Lime says they’re already seeing impressive conversion rates for new riders coming to the scooters slowly through this coy method.

Lime also decided to do away with the fee for reserving vehicles for up to 10 minutes, a cost that developers say was not only unnecessary, but also restrictive — apparently, during tests, the percentage of people who used the reservation feature increased once the price dropped. And to make it just that much more convenient to hop off the subway and step onto a scooter, the Lime app will also highlight a path to the rider’s nearest scooter. Finally, riders now you can go into dark mode on the app if they feel like it. Lime says this makes viewing the app at night easier on the eyes. And besides, all the other apps are doing it!

Some other micromobility tidbits …

British Columbia has approved e-scooter pilot projects in four cities within Metro Vancouver, as well as Kelowna and Vernon. Municipal governments put a call out for interested local jurisdictions last year, and these localities were among those who raised their hands. It’s still not clear which companies will be dropping their dockless e-scooters on the Canadian streets, but something tells me we’ll see many of the usual players.

In other policy-related news, Washington state is thinking about installing an e-bike tax break. A state Senate committee will be holding a hearing this week on a bill that would make e-bikes exempt from the state’s 6.5% sales tax.

— Rebecca Bellan

Deal of the week

TuSimple filed an IPO, putting to rest months of speculation that the autonomous vehicle startup was going to take the trendy route to the public exchanges and merge with a special purpose acquisition company. The company did not SPAC, but instead took the traditional IPO route.

TuSimple’s S-1 is a page turner. I’ll list a few of the items that popped out.

1. TuSimple’s shares are largely held by Chinese investors. The company’s principal stockholders of Class A shares are Sun Dream Inc with 20%, Composite Capital Master Fund with 7.28% and Navistar with 6%. Navistar is now owned by Volkswagen Group’s The Traton Group. TuSimple’s co-founders Mo Chen and Xiaodi Hou hold 9.1% and 8.5%, respectively in Class A shares. The two each hold 50% of the Class B shares.

The Sun Dream is ultimately controlled by Charles Chao, who is a board member, but perhaps best known as the chairman of Sina, which owns Weibo.

While TuSimple has a large U.S. presence and a number of partnerships with U.S. companies, there’s no denying its Chinese ties.

2. At least one of TuSimple’s investors has caught the attention of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. TuSimple reveals in its S-1 that CFIUS is reviewing shares held by Sun Dream, which as I mentioned above is an affiliate of Sina Corporation. CFIUS will have 45 days to conduct a review of the Investment.

3. The S-1 shows that TuSimple had a loss from operations of $177.9 million in 2020, more than double loss of $84.8 million incurred in the previous year. The company said it had net losses from operations of $45 million in 2018. Its accumulated deficit was $405.2 million as of December 31, 2020.

Net loss attributable to common stockholders sat at $198.8 million in 2020, up from a loss of $145 million a year earlier. The company’s revenue did rise to $1.8 million in 2020, up from $710,000 the previous year.

The upshot: TuSimple has lost more than $307 million in the past three years, a figure that illustrates the kind of capital that the larger, well funded autonomous vehicle companies are pouring through to try and commercialize the technology.

It makes me more confident than ever that other AV companies like Aurora will soon file to go public as well, either via the traditional path or through a SPAC merger.

Other deals that got my attention this week …

Automotus, a curb management startup that uses video analytics, raised $1.2 million in a seed round last month led by Quake Capital, Techstars Ventures, Kevin Uhlenhaker (the co-founder & CEO at NuPark, which was acquired by Passport) and Baron Davis. More investors, including Ben Bear, Derrick Ko, and Zaizhuang Cheng of micromobility company Spin, have piled on bringing its total raise to $2.3 million, CEO Jordan Justus told TechCrunch.

Baraja, Australian lidar maker, raised a $31 million in a Series B round led by Blackbird Ventures. Main Sequence Ventures, Hitachi Construction Machinery, Regal Funds Management, Perennial Value Management and InterValley Ventures also joined the round.

The company said the funds will be used to continue the deployment and development of its “unique and ingenious” imaging system. As Devin Coldewey explains in his article, Baraja’s lidar uses what the company calls Spectrum-Scan, letting physics do the hard work of directing the light. By passing its laser through a prism, different wavelengths of light go in different directions — and when it comes back, it takes the same path. Check his coverage of the company from CES last year, which lays it out in more detail.

Baton, a San Francisco-based startup that wants to set up drop zones for long-haul trucking companies, raised $10.5 million in the Series A in a Series A funding round, co-led by 8VC and Maersk Growth, the corporate venture arm of logistics giant AP Moller-Maersk. The now has a post-money valuation of $50 million, co-founders Nate Robert and Andrew Berberick told TechCrunch.

Prologis, Ryder, Lineage Logistics, Project44 CEO Jett McCandless, KeepTruckin’ CEO Shoaib Makani, Clarendon Capital operating partner John Larkin, I.S.G founder Trace Haggard and Cooley LLC all participated in the round.

Blacklane, the Berlin startup that provides on-demand black-car chauffeur service, closed a round of €22 million ($26 million at current rates). Blacklane, which took a majority stake in Havn in February, said that it will be using this latest round of funding to continue expanding sustainable travel initiatives, and to continue expanding its existing business with more flexible options for riding.

Flapper, an on-demand private aviation company based in Brazil, raised $2 million in a Series A round led by the aerospace-focused fund, Confrapar. Crowdfunding platform SMU and angel investor group Investidores.VC also participated along with a number of foreign and local investors, including three undisclosed air taxi companies. The company has previously raised $1 million Seed funding, led by Confrapar and ACE, Brazil’s largest accelerator.

Gorillas, the Berlin-based grocery delivery startup, raised $290 million in Series B funding, at a valuation that surpasses $1 billion. The round was led by Coatue Management, DST Global and Tencent, with participation from Green Oaks, Fifth Wall and Dragoneer. Previous backer Atlantic Food Labs also followed on.

Hoppin, the Canadian travel startup Hopper, raised a $170 million in a Series F round led by Capital One. The U.S. banks and credit card company is also coming on board as a strategic partner, to launch Capital One Travel, which is the first instantiation of Hopper’s new B2B platform, Hopper Cloud.

Woven Capital, the investment arm of Toyota’s innovation-focused subsidiary Woven Planet, kicked off its new $800 million strategic fund with an investment in autonomous delivery startup Nuro. Neither company shared the amount of the investment. We do know that Woven Capital’s contribution was part of Nuro’s $500 million Series C funding round, which was announced last November. Chipotle also invested in the round, which also included funds managed by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., with participation from new investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, LLC and Baillie Gifford.

Notable news and other tidbits

Whew, the newsletter is a bit long already, so I’ll just mention a few other items worth noting this week.

Autonomous vehicles

Cruise, autonomous vehicle subsidiary of GM, seems to be trying to appeal to the youths by creating an influencer-esque personality out of one of its vehicles. “Poppy,” who identifies with she/her pronouns according to her Twitter bio, debuted her first post Wednesday, sharing a TikTok video that shows her riding around the streets of San Francisco. Cruise began testing its self-driving car on the Bay Area streets in December.

Plus will be part of a pilot project with SF Express that aims to demonstrate how trucks with an automated driving system can improve logistics operations. Plus is running its supervised autonomous trucks on two long-haul routes in China.

Yandex published a blog post with details on how its autonomous vehicles development in Russia. The company said it recently passed 6 million miles of testing, with one-third of that mileage driven in Russian winter conditions. The blog describes how it uses neural networks to filter snow out of the lidar point cloud and handle condensation clouds created by car exhausts and heating vents, among other challenges.

Electric

BMW Group and California utility Pacific Gas & Electric are rolling out the next phase of a pilot that aims to test — and learn — how electric vehicles could support the integration of renewable energy on the electric grid.

Electric vehicle manufacturers are pushing back against a decision by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to delay penalty increases for automakers who fail to meet fuel efficiency standards.  Tesla has taken the most active role and petitioned the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to review the ruling, saying that the delay “inflicts ongoing, irreparable injury” on the company and creates an “uneven playing field” by reducing the consequences of nonadherence.

Geely Automobile Holdings is launching a new brand of premium electric vehicles called Zeekr. The vehicles will be manufactured by parent company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. The first Zeekr vehicles are expected to be delivered in the third quarter of 2021.

Jeep has partnered with Electrify America to create the Jeep 4xe Charging Network. Jeep-branded EV charging stations will be installed at or near the trailheads of Jeep Badge of Honor off-road trails over the next year. Jeep 4xe charging stations are scheduled to open this spring at three of the most-popular off-road sites and icons for the Jeep brand: Moab, Utah as well as the Rubicon Trail and Big Bear, both of which are in California. (Sorta reminds me of the Rivian adventure network).

Rivian has been sued by Illinois car dealers over its direct-to-consumer sales model.

Tesla is now accepting bitcoin (at least for customers in the U.S.).

Ride-hailing and sharing

Uber is being challenged in the U.K for using facial recognition technology for a driver identity system. The App Drivers & Couriers Union and the Worker Info Exchange have called for Microsoft to suspend the ride-hailing giant’s use of B2B facial recognition after finding multiple cases where drivers were mis-identified and went on to have their license to operate revoked by Transport for London.

Via partnered with southeast Michigan’s public transit authority (known as SMART) to launch an on-demand public transit service in the Detroit Metro area. The on-demand public transit service, called SMART Flex, will act as a complement and extension to the existing transit system in the area.

Chinese ride-hailing company DiDi Chuxing has started operations in South Africa today, according to Reuters.

Founded in 2012, the Beijing based company operates in more than 400 cities in China. It claims to serve over 550 million users in 16 countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Australia.

This South African expansion (first launch in Cape Town) marks its first presence in Africa and 17th active country.

Here’s an excerpt from the company’s website announcing the launch.

DiDi South Africa understands the challenges communities and the transportation industry face with the evolution of urban mobility (rideshare) and as a result is committed to creating the freedom and convenience to go places, open up horizons and give access to new experiences through our platforms.

Our mission is driven by a dedicated team who understand the operational landscapes of the rideshare industry. DiDi exists to help South Africans move freely and to unlock their potential and that of the cities they live in.

Although the nine-year-old company claims to understand how the ride-sharing industry works, the South African market, despite being a relatively stable environment with high economic potential compared to the rest of Africa, is a different ball game entirely.

While Uber and Bolt dominate with a few million users, they regularly face regulatory challenges from the government who feel the need to protect traditional metered taxis in the country. DiDi wouldn’t be exempt from this but the timing to expand to South Africa suggests the company is looking to explore the present challenges facing Uber as its drivers push for worker rights.

After Uber announced that it would concede employment rights to its UK drivers, SA drivers are trying to get the same treatment by filing a class-action suit against the U.S. company in collaboration with British law firm Leigh Day and Johannesburg-based Mbuyisa Moleele Attorneys.

With South Africa, DiDi currently has interests either by expansion or investments all over the world.

In 2018, DiDi acquired Brazilian ride-hailing company 99 and now claims to have 50% of the ride-hailing market share in South America. In its most dominant market, China, DiDi has almost 80% market share after buying out Uber China in 2016.

The company, whose backers include Alibaba, Apple, DST, Softbank and Tencent, also has its claws in different ride-hailing companies in markets where it doesn’t operate — Grab (Southeast Asia), Lyft (U.S.), and Ola (India). All these companies compete with Uber in their respective markets.

But having invested in Bolt as well, South Africa represents the second market after Russia, where DiDi will be going head to head with the Estonian-based company. The pair will also compete against one another when DiDi begins operations in the U.K., as reported by Bloomberg in February.

These expansion plans are geared towards increasing the Softbank-backed company’s value (currently at $62 billion) for a potential mega-IPO of $100 billion later this year.

Meet Singular, a new VC firm based in Paris that just finished raising its initial fund. The firm was founded by two former Alven partners — Raffi Kamber and Jérémy Uzan. They have some ambitious goals and an interesting investment model that could help them remain involved even during late-stage rounds. Overall, the firm raised €225 million, or $265 million at today’s exchange rate.

If you browse Singular’s website, you’re not going to find a lot of information. Here’s what it currently looks like:

Image Credits: Singular

The Singular team doesn’t want to be secretive. But they don’t like talking about themselves. That’s why you may have seen Singular’s name in a few articles I wrote over the past few months. But now it’s time to talk a bit about what the firm has in mind when it comes to startup investment.

Jérémy Uzan and Raffi Kamber spent 11 and 8 years at Alven. They’ve been behind some of the firm’s most successful investments, such as Dataiku and OpenClassrooms. “But every time you raise another fund, you sign up for a long time,” Uzan told me.

The duo left Alven quite naturally as they felt it was time in their careers to take their destiny in their own hands. There’s no hard feeling with their previous fund.

It was the right timing personally but also the right timing for the tech ecosystem. While Singular is based in Paris, the firm plans to build a true European VC firm with its headquarters in Paris. Singular wants to be Index Ventures, except that it doesn’t think London should be the center of gravity for European tech investment.

Singular started fundraising in late 2019 and early 2020. Kamber and Uzan didn’t know anything about raising a fund and didn’t work with an external financial firm to handle the fundraising effort.

When asked about the coronavirus pandemic and the impact on the process, they both said that the lockdown actually helped as everyone was stuck at home. Around two-thirds of the limited partners that invested in Singular are based outside of France.

“These are historic VC investors. They really believe in tech — and Europe too. They have seen that Europe has been taking off for the past two or three years,” Kamber told me.

Just like a startup, Singular wanted to be backed by some well-known investors. And some of those investors are injecting money in a French VC fund for the first time. Limited partners include a mix of pension funds, funds of funds, sovereign funds and family offices.

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Bpifrance, Vintage Investment Partners, Axa Venture Partners, Sofina, MACSF and Mubadala Capital are some of Singular’s backers. Unless you’ve raised a VC fund in the past, you may discover some of those names for the first time. And yet, these investors are significant. For instance, while you might not be familiar with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, they have over $200 billion in net assets.

Singular started closing investment deals around October 2020. So far, the company has invested in six different startups:

• A Series B round in Gtmhub, an OKR management service
• A Series B round in Indy, an accounting automation software suite
• A Series A round in Soda, an enterprise-grade data monitoring platform
• A seed round in Moka.care, a mental health solution for employees
• A seed round in Resilience, a full-stack software approach to improve cancer treatment
• Another undisclosed Series A round

It’s hard to find some common trends around this list of investments, but I’m going to help you. First, let’s start with the average check size.

“We are mostly focused on Series A/B because we think there’s a lot of room to grow at that stage,” Kamber said. And Singular can invest as much as €20 million in a single round ($23.6 million at today’s exchange rate).

When it comes to verticals, Singular openly says that it doesn’t want to focus on a specific area in particular. “We are a generalist fund and we are quite opportunistic,” Uzan said. Singular doesn’t want to choose between B2B and consumer, between AI and e-commerce, etc.

Where Singular stands out is that it has a unique approach to late-stage rounds. When a portfolio company reaches the Series C or Series D stage, Singular might not have enough money under management for infinite follow-on investments.

The VC firm didn’t want to raise its own late-stage fund. So Singular will be able to structure special-purpose investment vehicles with its limited partners. A few limited partners could put some money in this investment vehicle directly and the startup could accept to raise a new round with this new investment vehicle instead of a late-stage fund.

This way, Singular remains very much involved with the portfolio company in question. It could keep a board seat and have a say when it comes to the startup’s next phases.

It’s still too early to see how it would work in real life and it’s going to happen on a case-by-case basis. But the fact that Singular can offer that kind of investments is significant — it could be appealing for some entrepreneurs. You don’t have to accept it and you’re not tied with Singular forever, but the offer is on the table.

So that’s Singular — Eva Mayoud, Alexandre Flamant and Sonia Pélisson also joined the team. It’s not that often that a French VC firm starts from zero and raises a €225 million fund in a year. It’s going to be interesting to track the firm’s upcoming investments. In the meantime, here’s some TechCrunch coverage of Singular’s past deals:

Last week the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the national government’s plan to tax carbon emissions was legal in a decision that could have significant implications for the nation’s climate-focused startup companies.

The ruling put an end to roughly two years of legal challenges and could set the stage for a boom in funding and commercial support for Canadian startup companies developing technologies to curb greenhouse gas emissions, according to investors and entrepreneurs representing some of the world’s largest utilities and petrochemical companies.

“The high price on carbon has the potential to make Canada a powerhouse for scaling up breakthrough decarbonization technologies and for deploying solutions like carbon capture, industrial electrification, and hydrogen electrolysis,” said one investor who works with a fund that backs startups on behalf of large energy businesses.

This 2018 Greenhouse Gas Pricing Act is the cornerstone of the Canadian climate policy pushed through by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It establishes minimum pricing standards that all provinces have to meet but gives the provinces the ability to set higher prices. So far, seven of the nation’s 13 provinces are currently paying the “backstop” rate set by the national government.

That price is C$30 per tonne of carbon dioxide released, but is set to rise to C$170 per tonne by 2030. That figure is just a bit higher than the current prices that Californians are charged under the state’s carbon pricing plan and roughly four times the price on carbon set by the Northeastern Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Image Credits: Gencho Petkov (opens in a new window) / Shutterstock (opens in a new window)

Under the plan, much of the money raised through the tax levied by the Canadian government would be used to support projects and technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or create more sustainable approaches to industry.

“Think about the gas at the pump. That is going to get charged extra,” said one investor who works for the venture arm of one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, who was not authorized to speak to the press.  “For cleaner energy the price will definitely be reduced. And think about where this tax is going. Most of the tax is going to go to government funding into cleantech or climate-tech companies. So you have a double boost for startups in the carbon footprint reduction area.”

Ajaib, the Indonesian investment app, has added $65 million to its Series A, bringing the round’s new total to $90 million. The extension was led by Ribbit Capital, the fintech investor that also led Robinhood’s $3.4 billion funding last month. Ajaib is Ribbit Capital’s first investment in Southeast Asia.

The extension will be used to expand Ajaib’s product development and engineering capabilities. The startup, which claims to run the fourth largest stock brokerage in Indonesia based on number of trades, announced the $25 million first closing of its Series A in January. Other participants included Y Combinator Continuity, ICONIQ Capital, Bangkok Bank PLC, and returning investors Horizons Ventures, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Alpha JWC and Insignia Ventures. David Velez and SG Lee, the founders of fintech startups Nubank and Toss respectively, also invested.

Ajaib was founded in 2019 by chief executive officer Anderson Sumarli and chief operating officer Yada Piyajomkwan. It is among a new crop of fintech startups that are focused on making stock investing more accessible to first-time investors. In Indonesia, less than 1% of the population own stocks, but that number is increasing, especially among millennials.

Other investment apps in Indonesia that have also raised funding recently include Pluang, Bibit and Bareksa. Ajaib’s founders told TechCrunch in January that it differentiates as a low-fee stock trading platform that also offers mutual funds for diversification.

In a press statement, Ribbit Capital managing partner Micky Malka said, “We are witnessing an unprecedented revolution in retail investing around the world. Ajaib is at the forefront of this revolution and is on their way to building the most trusted brand in the market. Their commitment to bring transparency and serve Indonesia’s millennial investors with the best products is at par with the best companies worldwide.”