Technology

U.K.-based lunar rover startup Spacebit, a company developing robotic exploration hardware for use on the Moon, announced two new partners that will help it develop and finalize its technology ahead of its target mission date of 2021. The Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency (EXA) and MexicoDereum will be providing the technology that Spacebit will employ on both its deployer and the robot rover itpreparing for use on the Moon.

This marks the first time that Latin American companies will participate in a mission to the lunar surface, and Spacebit CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk was joined by Dereum CEO Carlos Mariscal and EXA COO Ronnie Nader to talk about the news at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington, D.C.

&We have Ecuador and Mexico as our technical partners,& Tanasyuk said. &So in addition to this being the first lunar mission from the U.K., it also is the first Latin American mission with a consortium of Latin American countries participating along with the U.K.&

Both the EXA and Dereum have strong technical chops when it comes to spacecraft and space-based robotics, with the EXA focusing on developing technology that is &efficient, cheap and reliable,& according to Nader, while DereumMariscal said that his organization is well-known globally for its work on building robots for use in space, with an extensive track record. Their expertise should help a lot in Spacebitefforts to build, test and validate its robotic lunar rover, which employs a novel walking system for getting around, whereas all rovers to date have used wheels for transportation.

Spacebit CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk

&We are planning on doing a swarm technology exploration plan, where we have multiple small spider walking rovers deployed from a wheeled mothership, along with being able to have some redundancy and the ability to do 3D lidar scanning of the interior lunar caves and lava tubes,& Tanasyuk said.

&Itessentially a data as a service business model,& he added, explaining how they&ll seek to monetize the business. &Our primary focus for early missions are to do exploration and mapping of lunar lava tubes to be able to characterize the lunar subsurface environment for potential suitability for future human habitation.&

Spacebit, founded in 2014, is funded privately via Tanasyuk himself, along with a couple of other private investors. He said that his company is fully funded through its first mission, a berth aboard the Peregrine Moon lander being launched by Astrobotic in 2021 (which itself has a price tag of $1.7 million he said). The first mission won&t be an entire swarm, but a single rover sent up as a demonstration unit to prove out its technology.

Vendr has developed an enterprise SaaS solution for managing enterprise SaaS.

The new startup, founded by InVisionformer head of enterprise sales Ryan Neu, is another standout from Y Combinator latest batch. Contrary to the majority of those businesses, however, Vendr is already profitable.

In classic YC fashion, the company has created software to sell to other startups, and, as such, it was quick to gain the confidence of top venture capital investors. Headquartered in Boston, Vendr has raised a $2 million round led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from Ashton KutcherSound Ventures, Joe MontanaLiquid2 Ventures, Garage VC and angel investors including Canva co-founder and chief operating officer Cliff Obrecht and HubSpot COO JD Sherman.

The company offers subscription-based software, priced depending on company headcount, that helps fast-growing businesses buy and manage enterprise SaaS. In short, the product cuts the human out of the sales process, allowing companies to purchase or upgrade software using software. The goal isn&t to eliminate the sales profession, rather to put an end to &persuasion driven& sales, Neu explains, and to make enterprise software purchases as easy as consumer product purchases.

Boston-based Vendr graduated from the Y Combinator startup accelerator earlier this year

&We see software sales actually going away because most people are tired of being sold to, they are tired of being persuaded, they want to transact,& Neu, who previously led sales at HubSpot, tells TechCruch. &Vendr was created to allow people to transact software without actually having to talk to people.&

Founded 14 months ago, Vendr has reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue, which, for context, has historically been amongst the benchmarks necessary for a SaaS startup to raise its Series A. Neu says the company is growing 15% month-over-month with monthly recurring revenue currently sitting at $96,500. Already profitable, Neu says they want to put themselves in a position in which they don&t have to raise any additional outside capital.

&I can&t imagine looking at the bank account every month and watching it deplete,& Neu said. &We want to be in a position where we can control our own destiny.&

Vendr currently operates with a team of six employees and 19 customers, including Canva, Grammarly, GitLab, Brex, HubSpot and InVision. The company is also backed by Oktageneral counsel Jon Runyan, AppDynamics& COO Dan Wright and YC partner Aaron Epstein.

In a bid to shake up the local smartphone market, TV manufacturer TCL has officially launched its first phone in Australia today with the arrival of its budget-friendly handset, TCL Plex. 

As you've probably surmised from the device's official Plex branding and TCL's background in televisions, the new smartphone's capacity for displaying video is