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Every once in a meme-ified blue moon, the wildly irrational cryptocurrency ecosystem gives birth to something that might outlive the hype.

The crypto art hype may be silly and expensive, but it might also empower artists from emerging economies and under-represented groups to access the global art market in ways that they couldn’t before.

On March 5, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey auctioned off a blockchain receipt, called a non-fungible token (NFT), for a screenshot of his first tweet in 2006, and bids for it promptly exceeded $2.5 million. Since 2018, people have spent roughly $237 million on NFTs, with the vast majority of those funds spent since the trend exploded in January 2021.

Bryana Kortendick, VP of operations and communications at the NFT startup Enjin, said the platform and corresponding NFT wallet’s growth is up 100 percent since December 2020, now tallying more than 47,426 registered users. Her company was funded by a token sale in 2017 that amassed 75,041 ether (ETH), worth more than $130 million today. Kortendick declined to comment on how the cryptocurrency treasury is managed, other than to say they have enough runway for the startup’s continued growth because “Enjin has retained a portion of the funds raised through our ICO in ETH.”

As of 2021, Kortendick said the wallet app’s fastest-growing markets include the United States, Korea, the United Kingdom, Iran, Germany, Canada, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Australia. In sanctioned countries like Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, NFTs provide one of the only ways for up-and-coming artists to transact with global art collectors. It can also be a way for dancers to make money by selling NFTs with GIFs showcasing specific moves or NFTs that allow video game characters to dance a specific move.

“There has been an influx of new [app] users in countries like Iran, and we are working to localize the app accordingly to make it more accessible for these growing markets,” Kortendick said. “We recently saw a surge of [web] users in Cuba too, which prompted us to translate our entire website into Spanish.”

A new world coming under compliance

It remains to be seen if that type of market activity is sustainable, with regards to compliance across jurisdictions.

The U.S. Treasury penalized the crypto company BitGo in 2020 for allowing users to transact with people in sanctioned countries. Maintaining financial sanctions appears to be one of the regulator’s priorities in 2021. In any case, companies can delist artists and pieces, which means anyone who isn’t fluent in command-line Ethereum tricks can lose access to their NFTs. It will still exist “on the blockchain,” yet it would be quite a stretch to call NFTs “permissionless” art, as many blockchain advocates do.

Kelauni Jasmyn, general partner at the new Black Tech Nation Ventures, can explain her aims for the new firm quite succinctly: “The goal is to get more Black people funded.”

That’s something Jasmyn has been working on already with Black Tech Nation, a Pittsburgh-based organization that supports Black entrepreneurs with education, content, community and more. Now she’s tackling the funding size of the equation more directly by raising a $50 million first fund with her fellow GPs Sean Sebastian and David Motley.

“We’re really at the beginning of something brand new, that I think will be historic and offer a literal economic shift for the Black community in building generational wealth,” Jasmyn said. “We get to be the ones who mold the foundation of that.”

Sebastian is a partner at Birchmere Ventures, a seed fund also based in Pittsburgh, while Motley is co-founder of BlueTree Venture Fund and African American Directors Forum. Sebastian also suggested that he and Motley are involved partly to enable a “transfer of knowledge” that will empower a new generation of Black investors, starting with Jasmyn.

Motley, meanwhile, suggested that this is an effort to take “take the Black Tech Nation platform and combine it with the Birchmere platform.” He recalled speaking to Jasmyn for the first time at Sebastian’s urging and immediately responding, “Sean, this is the real deal.”

All three of BTNV’s partners emphasized that while the fund has a social mission, they’re also focused on financial returns. 

“We are no different than any other fund just because you put a specific community around it,” Jasmyn said. “You shouldn’t expect any less valuable returns. We just happen to have the advantage of untapped potential.”

The fund will make seed and Series A investments, and Motley said they’re focused on software startups — which could be software as a service, B2B or B2B2C. These ideas can be pre-revenue and even pre-product, but they need to be “scalable and lend themselves to significant value creation.”

Sebastian added that although BTVN is based in Pittsburgh, they’ll look at investments across the country, particularly entrepreneurs that come from outside Silicon Valley.

I wondered whether the fund’s financial goals could, at times, conflict with the more inclusive approach of Black Tech Nation, but the partners countered that the for-profit fund and nonprofit organization can actually complement each other. Motley said that Black Tech Nation “gives us more opportunities to say yes,” while Jasmyn suggested that if the venture fund has to turn someone down, she can still tell them, “Scoot over across the street [to Black Tech Nation] and maybe we can revisit this another time.”

From distributed homes in Cambridge, Mass. and Cambridge, England, inBalance Research is joining Y Combinator as it looks to accelerate its business as the oracle for independent energy providers, utilities, and market makers.

Selling a service it calls Delphi, the very early stage startup is hoping to provide analysis for power producers and utilities on the demand forecasts of energy markets.

The orchestration of energy load across the grid has become a more pressing issue for utilities around the country after witnessing the disastrous collapse of Texas’ power grid in response to its second “once-in-a-century” storm in the last decade.

“If we want to address the solution longterm, it’s a two part solution,” said inBalance co-founder and chief executive, Thomas Marge. “It’s a combination of hardware and software. You need the right assets online and you need the right software that can ensure that markets operate when there are extreme market shocks.”

Prices for electricity change every 15 minutes, and sometimes those pries can fluctuate wildly. In some places, even without the weather conditions that demolished the Texas grid and drove some companies out of business, prices can double in a matter of hours, according to inBalance.

That’s what makes forecasting tools important, the company said. As prices spike, asset managers of finite responsive resources such as hydro and storage need to decide if they will offer more value to the market now or later. Coming online too early or too late will decrease the revenue for their clean generation and increase peak prices for consumers.

The situation is even worse, according to the company, if storage and intermittent renewables come online at the same time. That can create downward price pressure for both the storage and renewable assets, which, in turn, can lead to increased fossil fuel generation later the same day, once cleaner sources are depleted.

The software to predict those pressures is what inBalance claims to provide. Marge and his fellow co-founders, Rajan Troll and Edwin Fennell have always been interested in the problems associated with big data and energy.

For Marge, that began when he worked on a project to optimize operations for wind farms during a stint in Lexington, Mass.

“Fundamentally we’re a data science solution,” said Marge. “It’s a combination of knowing what factors influence every single asset on every single market in North America. We have a glimpse into how those assets are going to be working one day before to one hour before in order to do price forecasting.” 

So far, one utility using the company’s software in the Northeast has managed to curb its emissions by 0.2%. With a focus on renewables, inBalance is hoping to roll out larger reductions to the 3,000 market participants that are also using its forecasting tools for other services. Another application is in the work inBalance is conducting with a gas peaker plant to help offset the intermittency of renewable generation sources.

The reduction in emissions in New England is particularly impressive given that the company only began working with the utility there in December. Given its forecasting tools, the company is able to provide a window into which assets might be most valuable at what time — including, potentially, natural gas peaking plants, hydropower, pumped hydropower (basically an energy storage technology), battery or flywheel energy storage projects and demand response technologies that encourage businesses and consumers to reduce consumption in response to price signals, Marge said.

Already, six companies have taken a trip to see the Delphi software and come away as early users. They include a global renewable asset manager and one of the top ten largest utilities in the U.S., according to Marge.

“We use machine learning to accurately forecast electricity prices from terabytes of public and proprietary data. The solution required for daily power system stability is both hardware—like storage and electric vehicle charging—and the software required to optimally use it. inBalance exists to be that software solution,” the company said in a statement. 

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. 

Hi friends and new readers, welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B.

I changed things up this week to make room for an interview we had with Mike Lelli, senior manager of advanced battery cell technology over at GM. That means I don’t have the typical roundup at the bottom of EVERYTHING, or most things, that happened this week. But don’t worry, I’ll bring that back next issue.

You might recall, or maybe not, that GM president Mark Reuss announced last week a partnership with SolidEnergy Systems, an MIT spinoff. GM and SES plan to work together to improve the energy density of lithium-ion batteries. The companies are going to build a prototyping facility in Woburn, Massachusetts and aim to have a high-capacity, pre-production battery by 2023.

As one reader pointed out to me, the partnership is an interesting next step in GM’s interest in SES. Five years ago, GM Ventures, the VC arm of the automaker, invested in SES. Rohit Makharia, a longtime engineer turned investment manager at GM Ventures, is now the COO at SES. In other words, this isn’t some casual relationship.

Scroll below for a Q&A with Lelli.

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.

Q&A: GM’s battery plans

After the partnership between GM and SolidEnergy Systems was announced, we (meaning me and TC reporter Rebecca Bellan) jumped on the phone with Mike Lelli, senior manager of advanced battery cell technology at GM, to try and learn about about the automaker’s battery plans.

Specifically, we wanted to find out if SES was going to be providing the tech for the next generation of Ultium batteries. I’m not talking about the first generation of Ultium batteries that are going in the upcoming GMC Hummer. We’re talking next generation. We also wanted to learn more about GM’s approach to battery development.

The interview with Lelli was edited for clarity and brevity.

TECHCRUNCH: You’ve said that GM is trying to increase energy twofold and reduce the cost of batteries by 60%. So are you aiming to work directly with SolidEnergy Systems on building the next generation of Ultium batteries?

LELLI: The SolidEnergy Systems arrangement includes building a prototype line in Massachusetts. So, this new technology will be built on that line.

TECHCRUNCH: Are you looking at any other battery tech startups to help speed R&D along?

LELLI: I would just say, stay tuned on that; we have a lot more to announce in the future. In the meantime, work is continuing on lithium-metal batteries and other related technologies at our R&D lab. We’re working on many different technologies at this point, including high voltage cathode, electrolytes, dry processing, battery raw materials etc.

TECHCRUNCH: GM already has a lot of critical IP in the space of lithium metal batteries. How is SES filling in the gaps?

LELLI: Well they have strengths and we have strengths and that’s the beauty of this arrangement. SolidEnergy Systems is a very innovative technology company and they offer many novel ideas around lithium metal anode technology, and manufacturing and, of course, we do as well. That’s where their strength is.

They also have a strength in electrolytes, but we have a strength in electrolytes as well and we have IP around electrolytes that we think could be an enabler to this technology. We have 49 patents and over 45 pending in this lithium metal space, so we’ve been working on it for a while. This isn’t something that we’ve thought about, you know, a year ago and saying, ‘hey what are we going to do next?’ This is stuff we’ve been working on for quite some time.

TECHCRUNCH: How is GM thinking about pushing for reductions in nickel and cobalt? Is that a priority?

LELLI: When we came out with the event last year on the Ultium battery, we were very focused on the precious metals. And you may remember that we commented that our cathode would be NCMA — nickel, cobalt, manganese, aluminum. We said that technology we were taking on because it was able to reduce cobalt by over 70%, and we’re able to do that by building a cathode with aluminum. 

We’re always focused on these raw materials and reducing high-cost materials and materials that are hard to get. That’s part of my group’s job; my group is responsible for the technology roadmap relative to all these different spaces within the cell: the cathode active material, separator, electrolyte, anode material, the different ways to process the cathode in manufacturing —  right now we have a wet process and if we can get dry to work, it’ll be less expensive. We work in all of these spaces simultaneously to reduce costs.

The beauty with the SolidEnergy arrangement is that we can put any of those cathodes that we develop and we can tie that to the lithium metal anode. The key work we’re doing with SolidEnergy is getting the lithium anode technology to work, and then we can, at some point in time, continue to change the cathode part of that cell for further cost reduction and less reliance on some of these critical battery materials out there.

TECHCRUNCH: The work around the anode is really the key to unlocking that energy density, is my understanding. Are there any other benefits?

LELLI: Equally important is the electrolyte. Because the electrolyte is not just a commodity where you can buy it and put it in. It has the electrochemistry and the kinetic of electrochemistry in the cell are very dependent on the electrolyte.

And so the life of a cell will be very dependent on what electrolyte — and the electrochemistry behind that electrolyte — and how it reacts with the materials you’re using, like lithium.

Lithium gives us energy density, but then you also have to design a cell that lasts many cycles, and so to do that you have to understand all the other parts and pieces of the cell that enable that. An electrolyte is an extremely critical part of that. 

TECHCRUNCH: Is SES only working with GM or is it working with other automakers or clients?

LELLI: SolidEnergy Systems can work with other OEMs and, of course, we can work with other technologies. We’re not restricting SolidEnergy Systems in any way.

TECHCRUNCH: What are you expecting the range to be for the next generation of Ultium batteries?

LELLI: It’s conceivable that the range of our production in lithium metal batteries could be as high as 500 to 600 miles, but that really depends on the car you’re putting it into. If you put the same battery in a truck, it’s not going to have the range that if we took that same battery and put it in a small car. It really depends on the product you’re putting the battery in to answer that question, but to give you a frame of reference, 500 to 600 miles is conceivable.

TECHCRUNCH: Has GM identified which vehicles will receive the first generation Ultium battery, besides the GMC Hummer?

The Cadillac Lyriq and the Cruise Origin will be among the first. 

Deal of the week

Earlier this year, I predicted that Via was going to have a big year; I was right. The on-demand shuttle startup turned mobility-as-a-service provider has been expanding, snapping up contracts with cities globally. And now it’s expanding through acquisitions.

Via bought Remix, the startup that developed mapping software used by cities for transportation planning and street design, for $100 million in cash and equity. Remix will become a subsidiary of Via, an arrangement that will let the startup maintain its independent brand. Remix’s 65 employees and two of its co-founders — CEO Tiffany Chu and CTO Dan Getelman — will stay on.

Remix’s strength is in planning, while Via brings expertise in software and operations. The acquisition should nicely rounded out Via’s current business and help it capture more customers, which currently number more than 350 local governments in 22 countries.

I’m not so sure that Via is done. I expect more deal making — maybe even a bid to go public — by this company that last year hit a $2.25 billion valuation after raising $400 million in a Series E round.

Other deals that got my attention … 

Damon Motors, the electric motorcycle company, raised more than $30M in funding, completing a bridge round led by Benevolent Capital, SOL Global Investments, Zirmania, and others.

FlexClub, the South African-based car subscription startup founded in 2019, raised $5 million in equity and debt. This is a seed extension round, bringing the total investment raised by FlexClub to over $6 million. The company recently expanded to Mexico.

Optibus, the transit-focused software-as-service company based in Israel, raised a $107 million in a Series C round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Insight Partners.

Populus AI, a San Francisco-based startup founded in 2017, has raised $5 million from new investors Storm Ventures and contract manufacturing and supplier company Magna along with existing backers Precursor, Relay Ventures and Ulu Ventures. The company has raised nearly $9 million to date.

Zego, the insurtech that got its start by offering flexible motorbike insurance for gig economy workers, has raised $150 million. DST Global led the London-based company’s C round, which gave it a $1.1 billion valuation and a unicorn status.  Other new backers include General Catalyst, whose founder and MD, Joel Cutler, joins Zego’s board. Zego has since expanded its business to offer a range of tech-enabled commercial motor insurance products.

A deep dive: the Volkswagen ID. 4

Image Credits: Volkswagen

I recently brought on Abigail Bassett, a World Car Juror and longtime journalist who writes about cars and tech (among other topics) to review some of the most important vehicles of 2021. Last month, Tamara Warren (another longtime reporter in autos and tech) reviewed the Aston Martin DBX, a vehicle that is critical to the automaker’s survival.

This month, Bassett takes a deep dive into the Volkswagen ID. 4, a five-passenger, fully electric crossover with a starting price of $33,995 (before federal or state incentives).

The ID. 4 matters. A lot. Volkswagen, once a dabbler in electric vehicles, is now betting its future on the technology.

Did the ID.4 make the grade? Bassett tested it on three different occasions. I suggest you read the whole article, but for those busy folks here is the tl;dr: The VW ID.4 offers a balanced blend of technology, comfort and design for a more affordable price. It offers solid technology without being so out of this world that your average crossover buyer will balk … with one exception. The lack of seamless charging makes finding and then connecting to a third-party charging station a clunky, even complex experience.

Read more by clicking below.

Voyage, the autonomous vehicle startup that spun out of Udacity, has been acquired by Cruise, a deal that points to the continued consolidation within the nascent industry.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; the majority of Voyage’s 60-person team will move over to Cruise and the company’s co-founder and CEO Oliver Cameron will take on a new role as vice president of product.

Voyage, which was founded in 2017, was a tiny startup compared to well-funded operations like Cruise, Argo AI, Waymo and Aurora. But despite its size and only raising $52 million, Cameron helped Voyage stand out. The company is best known for its operations in two senior living communities. Voyage tested and gave rides to people within a 4,000-resident retirement community in San Jose, Calif., as well as The Villages, a 40-square-mile, 125,000-resident retirement city in Florida.

“Voyage’s approach has always been to leverage our limited resources to deliver a product that restores mobility to those who need it most: senior citizens. We’ve made tremendous progress towards this goal, moving countless senior citizens (some as old as 92!) around their communities,” Cameron wrote in a blog post announcing the deal. “Now at Cruise, we are thrilled to have the substantial resources to eventually serve not just senior citizens, but every possible demographic who stands to benefit from self-driving services.”

Voyage won’t be shutting down operations at the two senior communities immediately. However, Cruise reiterated to TechCrunch that its focus is commercial operations in San Francisco. Inevitably, any testing or operations at the senior communities will come to end, although Cruise did not provide a timeline.

Cameron’s role as VP of product is another signal that Cruise is inching forward with plans to launch a commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco. Cruise has hired hundreds of engineers, both hardware and software, but it will need to win over customers if it hopes to build a loyal base of robotaxi users. In his new role, Cameron will be the one who will be thinking through every customer touchpoint for Cruise’s self-driving service.

Cameron described the union of Cruise and Voyage as a “wonderful marriage,” in a tweet Monday morning. He noted that Cruise has the “most advanced self-driving technology, unique auto partners and the first purpose-built self-driving vehicle.” “With Voyage and our customer-service obsessed team, we’ll together deliver a game-changing self-driving product.”

Cruise has the funds to put towards this component of the business. Earlier this year, Cruise said it raised $2 billion in a new equity round that has pushed its valuation up to $30 billion and delivered Microsoft as an investor and partner. GM, Honda and other institutional investors also put more capital into Cruise as the autonomous vehicle company inches closer to commercializing its technology.