Technology

In niche markets like aerospace, where the traditional VC model might not yield an abundance of available funding, corporate venture funds can offer entrepreneurs an interesting alternative.

Unlike traditional VCs, firms like Lockheed Martin Ventures are in constant contact with internal business units about challenges they need solved, or improvements they&re seeking that cannot be sourced internally or through existing vendors.

Lockheed Martin Ventures Executive Director and General Manager J. Christopher Moran explains that while in the past that has traditionally meant the companyin-house VC sought out later-stage investments in companies with more &mature& technology, the fund recently shifted its focus to early-stage companies.

&[Lockheedventure arm] was actually established in 2007, as a fund called the ‘Emerging Technologies Funds,& Moran said in an interview. &And it was a vehicle for the business areas to look for and find small startups […] They were using it to look for sort of leading edge, but more mature technology. We started realizing that what we wanted to do was focus more on commercial tech, with a dual-use capability for aerospace, then that made us think that we should probably be looking at much earlier stage companies.&

Aerospace has always spun out dual-use technologies like GPS and satellite imaging, but todaystartups are solving larger problems; autonomous technologies like machine learning, computer vision, neural networks and artificial intelligence have tremendous potential for application in Lockheedaerospace and defense businesses — but most of the startups working on these challenges are geared towards automakers and mobility, since they offer a clearer and more immediate path to revenue.

Moran accordingly shifted the focus of the fund, aiming its investments at much earlier stage companies, and looking instead for leading edge or &visionary& startups. Once identified, they look to establish partnerships with areas of Lockheedbusiness to help inform the startups& work at an earlier stage in the process.

Lockheed Martin Ventures now has $200 million committed, and Moran says it has returned around $80 million on its first $100 million invested already in its first decade of operation. Itan ‘evergreen& fund by design, meaning that returns generated by the fund go back into funding more startups through the venture wing exclusively.

French company Kabuto is launching a Kickstarter campaign today for the second generation of its smart carry-on suitcase. The company was previously known as Xtend.

If you think about smart suitcases, chances are you picture a suitcase with a battery pack in it and thatit. In other words, they are not that smart. Kabuto is packing a bunch of electronics to add some more features.

At the top of the suitcase, you&ll find a fingerprint reader. You can unlock the suitcase with your fingerprint or use a key in case your suitcase battery is dead — yes, a smart suitcase means you have one more thing to charge in your life.

The suitcase comes with a 10,000 mAh battery that you plug to various USB-A and USB-C cables. This way, you can charge a device using a USB-A or USB-C cable from the top of the suitcase.

The pocket at the back of the suitcase is removable. For instance, you can store a laptop and a book in it in order to take it with you on a flight. The company uses a magnetic connection between the pocket and the suitcase, which means that you can plug the included USB-C cable to your laptop and then attach the pocket to the suitcase to charge your laptop when you&re not using it.

The suitcase features an expandable structure, four wheels with metallic bearings and tires, a strap to attach another bag to the large handle on top of your suitcase. It costs $435 on Kickstarter and it will cost $595 after the Kickstarter campaign.

People who like to pack things exactly the right way will think the Kabuto suitcase offers a lot of options. Itnot a suitcase for everyone, but itan interesting take. The company promises to ship all suitcases by the end of the year. The startup has previously raised $1 million (€900,000) from Frédéric Mazzella, Michel - Augustin, Bpifrance, Fabien Pierlot and others.

As TikTok continues its rapid U.S. growth, the company is being challenged to better explain its content moderation choices. Why, for example, is the short-form video app censoring the Hong Kong protests but not U.S. political content? Why is it banning political ads, but supports hashtags like #trump2020 and #maga, each with millions, or even hundreds of millions, of views? TikTok so far has struggled to answer these questions. Now, ithoping to change that with the formation of a new committee of experts who will help TikTok craft its content moderation policies and increase transparency around these topics and others that afflict popular social media platforms.

That is to say, the committeefocus won&t only be on political censorship — thatjust the most important, hot-button issue facing TikTok in the U.S. today.

However, TikTok says the new committee will advise across a wider range of issues beyond censorship, including also child safety, hate speech, misinformation, bullying and other potential issues, both existing and those yet to come.

To aid in this, the company is working with a group from corporate law firm K-L Gates, including former Congressmen Bart Gordon and former U.S. House Rep., now government affairs counselor, Jeff Denham, who bring to the initiative their expertise in the technology sector.

K-L Gates was chosen for this initiative after TikTok talked to several firms for some time. It says that K-L Gates made the cut because it was considered to be a top-five public affairs firm with an outstanding reputation, and because Bart Gordonprevious role as chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, in particular, offered TikTok strong expertise in the space.

TikTok says its committee, which has not yet been formed, will look to include outside and independent voices to help it better craft its policies. It couldn&t identify who else would be on the committee as those people haven&t been selected.

The committee will focus on helping TikTok strengthen its own internal moderation teams, moderation and content policies, and overall transparency, the company says.

&TikTok is beloved because it provides an outlet for creative expression and a uniquely genuine and inspiring app experience. Itamazingly rewarding to know that we&re bringing joy to so many — but it also brings great responsibility on our part,& said TikTok U.S. General Manager Vanessa Pappas, in a statement. &We are committed to meeting this responsibility fully,& she added.

Initially, TikTok will create the committee of outside experts with the help of its new advisors at K-L Gates. It will then work to increase its transparency around content moderation and continue to build out a deeper bench of internal leaders in order to tackle the challenges caused by its rapid expansion.

Asked if an entirely new set of policies would be the result of this activity, a spokesperson couldn&t say, noting that a decision on that front will be the role of the committee.

This effort has been in the works for some time, and is not a result of the increasing amount of bad press about the censorship on TikTokplatform.

But the decision to announce the news of a committee formation is an attempt by TikTok to help manipulate the narrative here. The reality, however, is that TikTok isn&t censoring all political content or just the &non-fun& stuff, as it would have you believe.

If that were true, then there would be no TikTok hashtags focused on U.S. politics — like #dumptrump or #trumptrain, for example. Nor would the app offer hashtags for causes like #blacklivesmatter or its controversial counterslogan with racist undertones, #alllivesmatter. All these and more are in the app today, with hundreds of millions of combined views.

TikTokannouncement comes at a time when the company is again coming under the eye of the U.S. government and regulators. The app was already fined $5.7 million for childrenprivacy law (COPPA) violations. And now, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Wednesday requesting that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States look into ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, for its 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly. The letter claims that there is &growing evidence& that TikTokU.S. platform is engaging in censorship.

TikTok, before today, had admitted its content guidelines were outdated and no longer used, and said it took a localized approach to its moderation choices. But a hashtag like #hongkong in TikTok shows &barely a hint of unrest,& The Washington Post recently reported.

With legal — and soon, independent — advice and strategic consulting in the works, TikTok hopes to figure out how a Chinese-owned app can participate in the democratic U.S. social media market, without becoming another mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party.

None of the controversies around TikTok seem to be impacting its growth in the U.S., however. TikTok in September was the No. 3 most-downloaded (non-game) app in the U.S., ahead of Facebook and Messenger, according to Sensor Tower. It was also the No. 1 social media app worldwide at that time.