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Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki dies at 56

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Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has passed away at age 56

Tragedy has struck again for a famous Silicon Valley family. Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has just died, based on social media posts from her husband, Dennis Troper, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. She was 56.

Troper wrote on Facebook on Friday evening: “It is with deep sadness that I share the news Susan Wojcicki My beloved wife of 26 years and mother of our five children passed away today after 2 years of living with non-small cell lung cancer.”

“Susan was not only my best friend and partner in life, but also a brilliant mind, a loving mother and a dear friend to many. Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable. We are heartbroken but grateful for the time we had with her. Please keep our family in your thoughts as we navigate this difficult time.”

Pichai also sent a memo to Google employees on Friday evening.

“By now, you may have heard the news that Susan Wojcicki has died after two years of living with lung cancer. Even as I write this, it seems impossible that it is true. Susan was one of the most active and vibrant people I have ever met,” the note reads.

Non-small cell lung cancer is one among the 2 predominant kinds of lung cancer and probably the most common type, based on the Yale School of Medicine. Because its symptoms are sometimes confused with common diseases, 80 percent of individuals diagnosed with the disease have already progressed to advanced stages, based on a fact sheet affiliated with the university.

Wojcicki’s passing comes on the heels of one other devastating loss for Wojcicki and her husband in February of this yr. Their 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, died of an accidental overdose in his dorm room at UC Berkeley, where he was a freshman.

Wojcicki rose to fame as YouTube’s CEO, a task she held for nine years before stepping down in early 2023. At the time, she wrote in a blog post that she had “decided to start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects that I’m passionate about.”

Wojcicki was among the many first 20 employees at Google, which acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion—a staggering sum at the time. She famously got involved with the corporate after renting a garage within the Menlo Park, Calif., home of friends Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were then graduate students at Stanford University. (Google was restructured in 2015, at which point Alphabet became its parent company.)

According to reports in recent times, after witnessing YouTube’s early popularity, Wojcicki herself — then a marketing manager at Google — proposed to Page and Brin that Google buy the video-streaming platform.

Under her leadership, YouTube became a multibillion-dollar money generator for Google. In 2023, YouTube reported $8.1 billion in ad revenue—nearly 10% of Alphabet’s total revenue.

The Wojcicki family has deep ties to Silicon Valley and the broader Bay Area. One of her sisters is 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. Another sister, Janet, is a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. Their mother, Esther Wojcicki, is a renowned educator who has written extensively on the best way to raise successful children.

Here is the complete text of the memo Pichai sent to Google employees:

Googlers,

By now, you might have heard the news that Susan Wojcicki has died after two years with lung cancer. Even as I write this, it seems not possible that it’s true. Susan was one of the lively and vibrant people I even have ever met. Her loss is devastating for all of us who knew and loved her, for the 1000’s of Googlers she led through the years, and for the tens of millions of individuals around the globe who admired her, benefited from her advocacy and leadership, and were impacted by the incredible things she created at Google, on YouTube, and beyond.

Susan’s journey, from renting out her garage to Larry and Sergey… to leading teams in consumer products and constructing our promoting business… to becoming CEO of YouTube, one of the vital platforms on the earth, is inspiring in every way. But she didn’t stop there. As one among the primary employees at Google—and the primary to take maternity leave—Susan used her position to construct a greater workplace for everybody. And within the years since, her advocacy for parental leave has set a brand new standard for corporations around the globe. Susan also had a deep passion for education. She recognized early on that YouTube might be a platform for education for the world and championed “edutubers”—especially those that were expanding the reach of STEM education to underserved communities.

For the past two years, despite facing great personal hardships, Susan has dedicated herself to improving the world through her philanthropic work, including supporting research into the disease that ultimately took her life. I do know this was very meaningful to her, and I’m so glad she took the time to achieve this.

Susan at all times put others first, each in her values ​​and in her each day life. I’ll always remember her kindness to me as a possible “Noogler” 20 years ago. During my interview at Google, she took me out for ice cream and a walk around campus. I used to be sold – by Google and Susan.

I feel so fortunate to have spent so a few years working closely with Susan, as I’m sure lots of you do – she was absolutely loved by her teams here. Her time on earth was far too short, but she made every minute count.

We are in close contact with Susan’s family, including her husband and Google colleague Dennis. We will share more details soon about how we’ll honor her incredible life. In the meantime, let’s honor Susan’s memory by continuing to construct a Google she can be happy with.


This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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The company is currently developing washing machines for humans

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Forget about cold baths. Washing machines for people may soon be a brand new solution.

According to at least one Japanese the oldest newspapersOsaka-based shower head maker Science has developed a cockpit-shaped device that fills with water when a bather sits on a seat in the center and measures an individual’s heart rate and other biological data using sensors to make sure the temperature is good. “It also projects images onto the inside of the transparent cover to make the person feel refreshed,” the power says.

The device, dubbed “Mirai Ningen Sentakuki” (the human washing machine of the longer term), may never go on sale. Indeed, for now the company’s plans are limited to the Osaka trade fair in April, where as much as eight people will have the option to experience a 15-minute “wash and dry” every day after first booking.

Apparently a version for home use is within the works.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Zepto raises another $350 million amid retail upheaval in India

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Zepto, snagging $1 billion in 90 days, projects 150% annual growth

Zepto has secured $350 million in latest financing, its third round of financing in six months, because the Indian high-speed trading startup strengthens its position against competitors ahead of a planned public offering next yr.

Indian family offices, high-net-worth individuals and asset manager Motilal Oswal invested in the round, maintaining Zepto’s $5 billion valuation. Motilal co-founder Raamdeo Agrawal, family offices Mankind Pharma, RP-Sanjiv Goenka, Cello, Haldiram’s, Sekhsaria and Kalyan, in addition to stars Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar are amongst those backing the brand new enterprise, which is India’s largest fully national primary round.

The funding push comes as Zepto rushes so as to add Indian investors to its capitalization table, with foreign ownership now exceeding two-thirds. TechCrunch first reported on the brand new round’s deliberations last month. The Mumbai-based startup has raised over $1.35 billion since June.

Fast commerce sales – delivering groceries and other items to customers’ doors in 10 minutes – will exceed $6 billion this yr in India. Morgan Stanley predicts that this market shall be value $42 billion by 2030, accounting for 18.4% of total e-commerce and a pair of.5% of retail sales. These strong growth prospects have forced established players including Flipkart, Myntra and Nykaa to cut back delivery times as they lose touch with specialized delivery apps.

While high-speed commerce has not taken off in many of the world, the model seems to work particularly well in India, where unorganized retail stores are ever-present.

High-speed trading platforms are creating “parallel trading for consumers seeking convenience” in India, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note this month.

Zepto and its rivals – Zomato-owned Blinkit, Swiggy-owned Instamart and Tata-owned BigBasket – currently operate on lower margins than traditional retail, and Morgan Stanley expects market leaders to realize contribution margins of 7-8% and adjusted EBITDA margins to greater than 5% by 2030. (Zepto currently spends about 35 million dollars monthly).

An investor presentation reviewed by TechCrunch shows that Zepto, which handles greater than 7 million total orders every day in greater than 17 cities, is heading in the right direction to realize annual sales of $2 billion. It anticipates 150% growth over the following 12 months, CEO Aadit Palicha told investors in August. The startup plans to go public in India next yr.

However, the rapid growth of high-speed trading has had a devastating impact on the mom-and-pop stores that dot hundreds of Indian cities, towns and villages.

According to the All India Federation of Consumer Products Distributors, about 200,000 local stores closed last yr, with 90,000 in major cities where high-speed trading is more prevalent.

The federation has warned that without regulatory intervention, more local shops shall be vulnerable to closure as fast trading platforms prioritize growth over sustainable practices.

Zepto said it has created job opportunities for tons of of hundreds of gig employees. “From day one, our vision has been to play a small role in nation building, create millions of jobs and offer better services to Indian consumers,” Palicha said in an announcement.

Regulatory challenges arise. Unless an e-commerce company is a majority shareholder of an Indian company or person, current regulations prevent it from operating on a listing model. Fast trading corporations don’t currently follow these rules.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Wiz acquires Dazz for $450 million to expand cybersecurity platform

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Wizardone of the talked about names within the cybersecurity world, is making a major acquisition to expand its reach of cloud security products, especially amongst developers. This is buying Dazzlespecialist in solving security problems and risk management. Sources say the deal is valued at $450 million, which incorporates money and stock.

This is a leap within the startup’s latest round of funding. In July, we reported that Dazz had raised $50 million at a post-money valuation of just below $400 million.

Remediation and posture management – two areas of focus for Dazz – are key services within the cybersecurity market that Wiz hasn’t sorted in addition to it wanted.

“Dazz is a leader in this market, with the best talent and the best customers, which fits perfectly into the company culture,” Assaf Rappaport, CEO of Wiz, said in an interview.

Remediation, which refers to helping you understand and resolve vulnerabilities, shapes how an enterprise actually handles the various vulnerability alerts it could receive from the network. Posture management is a more preventive product: it allows a company to higher understand the scale, shape and performance of its network from a perspective, allowing it to construct higher security services around it.

Dazz will proceed to operate as a separate entity while it’s integrated into the larger Wiz stack. Wiz has made a reputation for itself as a “one-stop shop,” and Rappaport said the integrated offering will proceed to be a core a part of it.

He believes this contrasts with what number of other SaaS corporations are built. In the safety industry, there are, Rappaport said, “a lot of Frankenstein mashups where companies prioritize revenue over building a single technology stack that actually works as a platform.” It could be assumed that integration is much more necessary in cybersecurity than in other areas of enterprise IT.

Wiz and Dazz already had an in depth relationship before this deal. Merat Bahat — the CEO who co-founded Dazz with Tomer Schwartz and Yuval Ofir (CTO and VP of R&D, respectively) — worked closely with Assaf Rappaport at Microsoft, which acquired his previous startup Adallom.

After Rappaport left to found Wiz together with his former Adallom co-founders, CTO Ami Luttwak, VP of Product Yinon Costica and VP of R&D Roy Reznik, Bahat was one in all the primary investors. Similarly, when Bahat founded Dazz, Assaf was a small investor in it.

The connection goes deeper than work colleagues. Bahat and Rappaport are also close friends, and she or he was the second family of Mickey, Rappaport’s beloved dog, referred to as Chief Dog Officer Wiz (together with LinkedIn profile). Once the deal was done, the 2 faced two very sad events: each Bahat and Mika’s mother died.

“We hope for a new chapter of positivity,” Bahat said. The cycle of life does indeed proceed.

Rumors of this takeover began to appear earlier this month; Rappaport confirmed that they then began talking seriously.

But that is not the one M&A conversation Wiz has gotten involved in. Earlier this 12 months, Google tried to buy Wiz itself for $23 billion to construct a major cybersecurity business. Wiz walked away from the deal, which might have been the biggest in Google’s history, partly because Rappaport believed Wiz could turn into a fair larger company by itself terms. And that is what this agreement goals to do.

This acquisition is a test for Wiz, which earlier this 12 months filled its coffers with $1 billion solely for M&A purposes (it has raised almost $2 billion in total, and we hear the subsequent round will close in just a few weeks). . Other offers included purchasing Gem security for $350 million, but Dazz is its largest acquisition ever.

More mergers and acquisitions could also be coming. “We believe next year will be an acquisition year for us,” Rappaport said.

In an interview with TC, Luttwak said that one in all Wiz’s priorities now’s to create more tools for developers that have in mind what they need to do their jobs.

Enterprises have made significant investments in cloud services to speed up operations and make their IT more agile, but this shift has include a significantly modified security profile for these organizations: network and data architectures are more complex and attack surfaces are larger, creating opportunities for malicious hackers to find ways to to hack into these systems. Artificial intelligence makes all of this far more difficult when it comes to malicious attackers. (It’s also a chance: the brand new generation of tools for our defense relies on artificial intelligence.)

Wiz’s unique selling point is its all-in-one approach. Drawing data from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and other cloud environments, Wiz scans applications, data and network processes for security risk aspects and provides its users with a series of detailed views to understand where these threats occur, offering over a dozen products covering the areas, corresponding to code security, container environment security, and provide chain security, in addition to quite a few partner integrations for those working with other vendors (or to enable features that Wiz doesn’t offer directly).

Indeed, Wiz offered some extent of repair to help prioritize and fix problems, but as Luttwak said, the Dazz product is solely higher.

“We now have a platform that actually provides a 360-degree view of risk across infrastructure and applications,” he said. “Dazz is a leader in attack surface management, the ability to collect vulnerability signals from the application layer across the entire stack and build the most incredible context that allows you to trace the situation back to engineers to help with remediation.”

For Dazz’s part, once I interviewed Bahat in July 2024, when Dazz raised $50 million at a $350 million valuation, she extolled the virtues of constructing strong solutions and this week said the third quarter was “amazing.”

“But market dynamics are what trigger these types of transactions,” she said. She confirmed that Dazz had also received takeover offers from other corporations. “If you think about the customers and joint customers that we have with Wiz, it makes sense for them to have it on one platform.”

And a few of Dazz’s competitors are still going it alone: ​​Cyera, like Dazz, an authority in attack surface management, just yesterday announced a rise of $300 million at a valuation of $5 billion (which confirms our information). But what’s going to he do with this money? Make acquisitions, after all.

Wiz says it currently has annual recurring revenue of $500 million (it has a goal of $1 billion ARR next 12 months) and has greater than 45% of its Fortune 100 customers. Dazz said ARR is within the tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars and currently growing 500% on a customer base of roughly 100 organizations.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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