Technology

The Federal Communications Commission said it will move ahead with proposals to ban telecommunications giants from using Huawei and ZTE networking equipment, which the agency says poses a &national security threat.&

The two-part proposal revealed Monday would first bar telecoms giants from using funds it receives from the FCCUniversal Service Fund, used by the agency to subsidize service to low-income households, from buying equipment from the Chinese telecom equipment makers.

The second proposal would mandate certain telecom giants remove any banned equipment they may have already installed.

In a statement, the FCC said it would offer a reimbursement program to help carriers transition to &more trusted& suppliers.

&We need to make sure our networks won&t harm our national security, threaten our economic security or undermine our values,& said Republican-appointed FCC chairman Ajit Pai in remarks. &The Chinese government has shown repeatedly that it is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to do just that.&

On a background call with reporters, the FCC did not say how much of the Universal Service Fund has been used to purchase equipment from could-be banned companies, but noted that &a number& of smaller rural wireless carriers have used the fund to buy Huawei equipment.

The FCC said Huawei and ZTE were already on the list of companies that pose a threat, but that the draft order would &establish a process for designating other suppliers that pose a national security threat,& potentially opening the door for new additions.

Itthe latest move by the government to crack down on technology providers seen as a potential homeland security threat. Chief among the fears are that Huawei and ZTE are subject to Chinese laws, and could be told to secretly comply with demands from Chinese intelligence services, which could put Americans& data at risk of surveillance or espionage.

The claims first arose in 2012 following a House inquiry, which labeled the company a national security threat.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration banned federal agencies from buying equipment from Huawei and ZTE, as well as Hytera and Hikvision.

Both Huawei and ZTE have long denied the allegations.

Chairman Pai said in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal: &When it comes to 5G and Americasecurity, we can&t afford to take a risk and hope for the best. We need to make sure our networks won&t harm our national security, threaten our economic security or undermine our values.&

Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement: &The FCC is moving forward after more than a year and a half with its proposal to ensure that our universal service fund, which supports deployment in rural areas, will not be used to purchase insecure network equipment. But we need cybersecurity policies that target all our network providers—not just our universal service recipients.&

&In addition, we need to be mindful that in a global economy, our networks will still connect to insecure equipment abroad. So we should start researching how we can build networks that can withstand connection to equipment vulnerabilities around the world, including virtualizing the radio access part of our networks,& said Rosenworcel.

The FCCproposals are expected to be voted on during a meeting on November 19.

Revolution, the investment firm co-founded 14 years ago by entrepreneur-investor Steve Case, has closed its second Rise of the Rest seed fund with $150 million in capital commitments, just like the debut fund it announced two years ago.

Rise of the Rest — which funds startups outside of the biggest U.S. tech hubs in an effort to foster innovation and momentum elsewhere — has rounded up some of the funding from institutional investors, presumably, but also numerous very wealthy individuals.

According to Forbes, which is currently hosting a summit where Case announced the new fund, some of the new fundbackers include Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sara Blakely of Spanx, hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, Under Armour co-founder Kevin Plank, former Tennessee governor Bill Haslam, VCs Jim Breyer and John Doerr, and Apollo Global Management co-founder Joshua Harris. Some of these investors backed the first fund, too, including Bezos, Dalio, Breyer and Doerr.

Very notably, &Hillbilly Elegy& author J.D. Vance, who ran the first fund with Case, has stepped back, and longtime Revolution investor David Hall will manage the second fund instead, reports Forbes.

Certainly, that first fund kept its investors busy, with stakes in 125 companies. Barely a week passes without a startup announcing some funding from the Rise of the Rest team.

Just last week, for example, the outfit participated in the $18 million Series A round of Aurora Insight, a three-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based startup that provides a &dynamic& global map of wireless connectivity that it monitors in real time using AI and data from sensors on satellites, vehicles, buildings and aircraft, among others, and other objects.

Other recent checks — all in September — have gone to Zylo, a three-year-old, Indianapolis-based enterprise SaaS management platform that just raised $22.5 million in Series B funding with participation from Rise of the Rest; ZenBusiness, a four-year-old, Austin, Texas-based software platform that recommends services like banking, lending and tax preparation to those starting small businesses and which raised $10 million in Series A funding; and Replica, a Kansas City, Kan.-based data-gathering tool created within Sidewalk Labs that maps the movement of people in cities.

Sourcing ingredients in the restaurant industry is a dirty process that still relies heavily on voicemails and fax orders. More tech-forward solutions have been pushed, but getting restaurants and suppliers to uniformly sign on to a platform has been a relatively daunting challenge.

Choco is a young startup with plenty of momentum thataiming to attract restaurants and suppliers to their mobile ordering platform, which gives restaurants their very own food delivery app for getting ingredients from suppliers, moving them away from daily voicemail orders.

&[Leaving voicemails] a very tedious process and one thatvery prone to error but [restaurants] are going to repeat it every day,& Choco CEO Daniel Khachab tells TechCrunch. &This ‘system& is highly inefficient and wasteful, but itour main competitor.&

Chocomobile app has an interface reminiscent of popular consumer apps, with a Messenger-like chat interface for communication between suppliers and restaurants and a Postmates-like ordering list that makes ordering as easy as tapping away on onecommonly purchased ingredients.

Therea big opportunity here, and Khachab has been growing the Choco team at breakneck speeds to ensure that it is the solution to beat. The 18-month-old team has 100 employees already and is announcing that they&ve closed a $33.5 million Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners . By the end of next year the company hopes to grow its business by 15x.

Choco is in 15 cities across Europe and the U.S. and says their early customers include everyone from Michelin-starred restaurants to burger chains. The company has now raised $41 million to date. Other investors include Atlantic Labs, Target Global, Visionaries Club and Greyhound.

As the company seeks to build up a user base among suppliers and restaurants keen to build out their networks, Choco currently isn&t monetizing its users. Khachab tells me the team is developing premium subscription features that will likely focus on monetizing suppliers& abilities to reach restaurants and communicate with them about new offerings.

Khachab sees Chocosolutions as one that makes restaurant/suppliers relationships better but also takes a step toward solving the broader problem of food waste in the restaurant industry. Better communication and analytics that aren&t on the back of a napkin mean more precise ordering that can prevent both sides from overstocking, increasing efficiency but also preserving resources. Khachab notes that estimates say that 30-40% of food produced each year is wasted and that nearly three-quarters of that waste happens in the supply chain before consumers are involved.