Technology

Dressed in a Naruto t-shirt and a hat emblazoned with the phrase &lone wolf,& Ne-Yo slouches over in a chair inside a Holberton Schoolclassroom. The Grammy-winningrecording artist is struggling to remember the name of &that actor,& the one whohad a successful career in both the entertainment industry and tech investing.

&I learned about all the things he was doing and I thought it was great for him,& Ne-Yo told TechCrunch. &But I didn&t really know what my place in tech would be.&

It turns out &that actor& is Ashton Kutcher, widely known in Hollywood and beyond for his role in several blockbusters and the TV sitcom That &70s Show,and respected in Silicon Valley for his investments via Sound Ventures and A-Grade in Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Bird and several others.

Ne-Yo, for his part, is known for a string of R-B hits includingSo Sick, One in a Millionand Because of You.His latest album,Good Man,came out in June.

Ne-Yo, like Kutcher, is interested in pursuing a side gig in investing but he doesn&t want to waste time chasing down the next big thing. His goal, he explained, is to use his wealth to encourage peoplelike him to view software engineering and other technical careers as viable options.

&Little black kids growing up don&t say things like ‘I want to be a coder when I grow up,& because itnot real to them, they don&t see people that look like me doing it,& Ne-Yo said. &But tech is changing the world, like literally by the day, by the second, so I feel like it just makes the most sense to have it accessible to everyone.&

Last year, Ne-Yo finally made the leap into venture capital investing: his first deal, an investment in Holberton School, a two-year coding academy founded by Julien Barbier and Sylvain Kalache that trains full-stack engineers.The singer returned to San Francisco earlier this month for the grand opening of Holbertonremodeled headquarters on Mission Streetin the citySoMa neighborhood.

[gallery ids="1722954,1722952,1722953,1722955"]

Holberton, a proposed alternative to a computer science degree, is free to students until they graduate and land a job, at which point they are asked to pay 17 percent of their salaries during their first three years in the workforce.

It has a different teaching philosophy than your average coding academy or four-year university. It relies onproject-based and peer learning, i.e. students helping and teaching each other; there are no formal teachers or lecturers. The concept appears to be working. Holberton says their former students are now employed at Apple, NASA, LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox and Tesla.

Ne-Yo participated in Holberton$2.3 million round in February 2017 alongside Reach Capital and Insight Venture Partners, as well as Trinity Ventures, the VC firm that introduced Ne-Yo to the edtech startup. Holberton has since raised an additional $8 million from existing and new investors likedaphni,Omidyar Network,Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang and Slideshare co-founder Jonathan Boutelle.

Holberton has used that capital toexpand beyond the Bay Area.A school in New Haven, Conn., where the company hopes to reach students who can&t afford to live in techhubs, is in development.

The startupemphasis on diversity is what attracted Ne-Yo to the project and why he signed on as a member of the board of trustees. More than half of Holbertonstudents are people of color and 35 percent are women. Since Ne-Yo got involved, the number of African American applicants has doubled from roughly 5 percent to 11.5 percent.

&I didn&t really know what my place in tech would be.&

Before Ne-Yopreliminary meetings with Holbertonfounders, he says he wasn&t aware of the racial and gender diversity problemin tech.

&When it was brought to my attention, I was like ‘ok, this is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed,'& he said. &It makes no sense that this thing that affects us all isn&t available to us all. If you don&t have the money or you don&t have the schooling, itnot available to you, however, itaffecting their lives the same way itaffecting the rich guys& lives.&

Holbertonfounders joked with TechCrunch that Ne-Yo has actually been more supportive and helpful in the last year than many of the venture capitalists who back Holberton. Hevery &hands-on,& they said. Despite the fact that hebalancing a successful music career and doesn&t exactly have a lot of free time, hemade sure to attend events at Holberton, like the recent grand opening, and will Skype with students occasionally.

&I wanted it to be grassroots and authentic.&

Ne-Yo was very careful to explain that he didn&t put money in Holberton for the good optics.

&This isn&t something I just wanted to put my name on,& he said. &I wanted to make sure [the founders] knew this was something I was going to be serious about and not just do the celebrity thing. I wanted it to be grassroots and authentic so we dropped whatever we were doing and came down, met these guys, hung out with the students and hung out at the school to see what itreally about.&

Whatnext for Ne-Yo A career in venture capital, perhaps Hedefinitely interested and will be making more investments soon, but a full pivot into VC is unlikely.

At the end of the day, Silicon Valley doesn&t need more people with fat wallets and a hankering for the billionaire lifestyle. What it needs are people who have the money and resources necessary to bolster the right businesses and who care enough to prioritize diversity and inclusivity over yet another payday.

&Not to toot the horn or brag, but I&m not missing any meals,& Ne-Yo said. &So, if I&m going to do it, let it mean something.&

Tesla CEO Elon Musk will step down as chairman of the electric automaker and pay a $20 million fine under a settlement reached with the U.SSecurities and Exchange commission. Musk will remain CEO and he will still keep a seat on the board, just not as chairman.

The agreement settles what could have turned into a bitter and potentially damaging fight for Musk, the company, and Tesla shareholders.

Musk will resign from his role as chairman of the Tesla board within 45 days of the agreement, which was filed Saturday. He has agreed to not seek reelection or accept an appointment as chairman for three years. An independent chairman will be appointed, under the settlement agreement.

Tesla will pay a separate $20 million penalty, according to the SEC. The SEC said the charge and fine against Tesla is forfailing to require disclosure controls and procedures relating to Musktweets.

Musk doesn&t have to admit or deny the SECallegations as part of the agreement.

Tesla has also agreed toappoint two new independent directors to its board andestablish a new committee of independent directors and put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Muskcommunications, according to the SEC. This likely means that Musk, who frequently turns to Twitter to unveils new products, features and updates on his multiple companies, will be more restricted moving forward. At least when it comes to his tweets about Tesla.

&The resolution is intended to prevent further market disruption and harm to Teslashareholders,&Steven Peikin, co-director of the SECEnforcement Division said in a statement.

The agreement marks the beginning of a new era of corporate governance for Tesla, which some shareholders have argued is too tightly controlled by Musk and others closely aligned to him such as his brother Kimbal Musk. Investor and founding board member Steve Jurvetson is still on leave.

In 2017, Tesla diversified its board and addedJames Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., and Linda Johnson Rice,Chairman and CEO of Johnson Publishing Company.

Other board members include: Robyn Denholm, whojoined the board in 2014,Brad W. Buss, who has been on since 2009, Antonio Gracias, andIra Ehrenpreis, one of longest-serving board members who joined in 2007.

TheSEC filed a complaintThursday in federal district court alleged that Musklied when he tweeted on August 7 that he had &funding secured& for a private takeover of the company at $420 per share. Federal securities regulators reportedlyserved Tesla with a subpoena just a week after the tweet. Investigations can take years before any action is taken, if at all. In this case, charges were filed just six weeks later.

The SEC said in the complaint that Musk violated anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws. The commission has asked the court to fine Musk and bar the billionaire entrepreneur from serving as an officer or director of a public company.

Muskdescribedfraud charges an &unjustified action&that has left him &deeply saddened and disappointed.&

Tesla and the board later issued a joint statement supporting Musk.

The complaint contains a number of eye-browing raising details, including that he had talked to the board about an offer to take Tesla private as early as August 2 when he sent to Teslaboard of directors, chief financial officer and general counsel an email with the subject, &Offer to Take Tesla Private at $420.&

Google big hardware event, scheduled for October 9, is expected to feature the newPixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL phones. But now we know that Google will probably reveal a third-generation model of Chromecast, thanks to one recent Best Buy customer who discovered the device on store shelves.

Whoops.

&GroveStreetHomie& detailed his experience on a Reddit post entitled &I think I bought the 3rd gen Chromecast too early.&

According to the Reddit post, the customer went toBest Buy earlier to pick up a Chromecast for a new TV. Thatwhen &GroveStreetHomie& noticed thepackaging and design was different from an earlier version.

The cashier wasn&t able to scan the item because it wasn&t in the system yet. The release date was labeled October 9 — the same day as the 2018 Google hardware event.

&But since I already had it in my hand and was the same price as the 2nd generation Chromecast, they let me have it under the old SKU,& the post read.

This new unannounced Chromecast is apparently thicker than the second-generation model. The Chrome logo has been replaced with Google one. The new device still has a micro-USB. The HDMI connector on the tip and base has been removed, according to the user.