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Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is the latest to be added to the Trump Administration’s military blacklist. On Thursday, the Department of Defense added nine more companies to its list of alleged Chinese military companies, including Xiaomi.

Xiaomi was the world’s third-largest smartphone maker as of Q3 last year, coming ahead of Apple and trailing behind Samsung and Huawei, according to market researcher IDC.

In November, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, which was set to take effect in January, to bar investment in companies designated as supporting efforts of China’s military, intelligence and security apparatuses. Huawei, China’s major chipmaker SMIC, and the country’s three largest telecoms operators are among the targets of the list.

The military blacklist is different from the Commerce Department’s entity list, which famously cuts Huawei, DJI, SenseTime and other Chinese tech firms off their U.S. suppliers over national security concerns.

Xiaomi “confirms that it is not owned, controlled or affiliated with the Chinese military, and is not a ‘Communist Chinese Military Company’ defined under the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act]. The company will take appropriate course of actions to protect the interests of the company and its shareholders,” a Xiaomi spokesperson said in a statement.

Like the entity list, the U.S. government’s military blacklist has caused confusion around compliance. In response to the sanctions on China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, the New York Stock Exchange made three moves. It first announced to delist the three Chinese telcos, then decided not to after consultation with regulators, but eventually reversed its reversal and said it would delist them, after all, upon further evaluation.

Xiaomi is listed in Hong Kong, and the executive order could force American investors to divest their holdings in the phone maker, whose shares tumbled more than 11% to $29 apiece on the blacklist announcement.

“The company is reviewing the potential consequences of this to develop a fuller understanding of its impact on the group. The company will make further announcements as and when appropriate,” the Xiaomi representative said.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/14/xiaomi-us-blacklist/

Samsung lowers prices with its latest Galaxy S phones, Google completes its Fitbit acquisition and Beyond Meat is coming to Taco Bell. This is your Daily Crunch for January 14, 2021.

The big story: Samsung unveils Galaxy S21 line

Samsung’s new line of phones includes the S21, S21+ and S21 Ultra, priced at $799, $999 and $1,119 respectively, an across-the-board price cut of $200. Brian Heater writes that the Ultra, in particular, “has one very important trick up its sleeve” — namely compatibility with the S Pen.

All three phones are available for pre-order now and start shipping on January 29.

In addition, Samsung announced the Galaxy Buds Pro, which cost $199 and come with a stated five hours of battery life. And it’s launching a Bluetooth locator, dubbed the Galaxy SmartTag.

The tech giants

Google’s Fitbit acquisition is official — This follows regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the pond.

Amazon’s Ring Neighbors app exposed users’ precise locations and home addresses — The bug made it possible to retrieve the location data on users who posted to the app.

Beyond Meat shares soar after inking deal with Taco Bell on new menu items — Taco Bell announced that it would work with Beyond Meat to come up with new menu items due to be tested in the next year.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Medium acquires social book reading app Glose — Glose has been building iOS, Android and web apps that let you buy, download and read books on your devices.

Tiger Global is raising a new $3.75B venture fund, one year after closing its last — Despite being named Tiger Private Investment Partners XIV, this is actually the firm’s thirteenth fund.

Carbyne raises $25M for a next-generation platform to improve emergency 911 responses — The Israeli startup aims to help emergency services get more complete information about callers, and to provide additional telemedicine services.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Five consumer hardware VCs share their 2021 investment strategies — Investors are generally bullish on at-home fitness startups.

Poshmark prices IPO above range as public markets continue to YOLO startups — This is the late-2020, early-2021 IPO market in action.

Twelve ‘flexible VCs’ who operate where equity meets revenue share — Founders seeking non-dilutive funding: start here.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Tech and health companies including Microsoft and Salesforce team up on digital COVID-19 vaccination records — The so-called “Vaccination Credential Initiative” includes a range of big-name companies from both the healthcare and tech industries.

2020 was one of the warmest years in history and indicates mounting risks of climate change — 2020 either edged out or came in just behind 2016 as the warmest year in recorded history, according to data from U.S. government agencies.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/14/daily-crunch-samsung-unveils-galaxy-s21-line/

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week we — Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace — had a lot to get through, as the news volume in early 2021 has been rapid and serious. Sadly this means that some early-stage rounds missed the cut, though we did make sure to have some Series A material in the show.

So, what did the assembled crew get to? Here’s your cheat sheet:

• • The demise of the Plaid-Visa deal, our chat with the CEO of the fintech unicorn and what the failed transaction could mean for startup valuations more broadly.
  • Why the $1.4 billion Nuvia exit to Qualcomm is impressive in scale and puzzling. This topic also gave Danny a chance to talk about chips, his favorite thing.
  • Auto-insurance rates can often depend on highly variable demographic data like marital status, income and education. Loop is a new seed-stage startup that wants to make the process more equitable. It landed millions this week, underscoring a broader insurtech wave.
  • SuperCharger Ventures pivoted its fintech accelerator into an edtech accelerator! We discuss why the shift and its surprising focus on B2B makes a ton of sense.
  • Crypto’s going up and down, ahead of the anticipated Coinbase IPO and the known Bakkt SPAC. More on that here.
  • Sticking to the SPAC front, SoFi joined the list of companies using blank-check companies to approach the public markets.

• As is Talkspace, the tele-therapy startup that you’ve heard of.
• Then there was SoftBank, of course, which has its own SPAC in the market now, confirming earlier reports. Which makes perfect sense.

There are so many SPACs and bits of IPO news and funding rounds to pick through and cover that we’re already straining the time limits of the show to even cover half of the material. This week that meant that we excised a chunk of the show to a forthcoming Saturday episode that is focused on e-commerce.

So, we will talk to you again soon!

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/14/the-end-of-plaid-visa-and-palantirs-growing-startup-mafia/

As expected, shares of Poshmark exploded this morning, blasting over 130% higher in afternoon trading from the company’s above-range IPO price of $42. The enormous and noisy debut of Poshmark comes a day after Affirm, another IPO, was treated similarly by the public markets.

Both explosive debuts were preceded by huge December debuts from C3.ai, Doordash and Airbnb. It seems today that any venture-backed company that can claim some sort of tech mantle is being treated to a strong IPO pricing run and a huge first-day result.

This is, of course, annoying to some people. Namely, certain elements of the venture capital community who would prefer to keep all outsized gains in their own pockets. But, no matter. You might be wondering what is going on. Let’s talk about it.

Here’s how you get a big first-day IPO pop

TechCrunch has covered the IPO window as closely as we can over the last few years. And the late-stage venture capital markets, along with the changing value of tech stocks and the huge boom in consumer (retail) investing.

Based on my participation in as much of that reporting as I could take part in here’s how you get a 130% first-day IPO pop in a company that has actually been around long enough for investors to math-out reasonable growth and profit expectations for the future:

1. Exist in a climate of near-zero interest rates. This leads to super-cheap money, bonds being shit and no one wanting to hold cash. Lots of dollars go into more speculative assets, like stocks. And lots of money goes into exotic investments, like venture capital funds.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/14/a-theory-about-the-current-ipo-market/

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