Technology

Klevio, a smart home startup out of the U.K., is officially launching its first product: a smart intercom system that lets you control your front door lock remotely via an iOS and Android app on your phone.

Dubbed &Klevio One,& the device is designed to be retrofitted to existing electric strike-enabled locks, and also interfaces with intercom systems found on the communal doors of apartment blocks. This, say its makers, means that it is better suited to flats than smart locks already on the market.

In a call with Klevio co-founder and CEO Aleš Špetič, he explained that the approach the London-based company has taken is different to smart locks that typically use a motor to turn the lock and require tearing out and replacing your existing lock. In contrast, if you already have an electric strike as part of your lock — which a lot of apartments do — the Klevio One can simply be wired to interface with it. If you don&t, a Klevio installer can fit one to your existing lock for you.

This major upside of this approach is that Klevio isn&t re-inventing the whole wheel, but taking years old, tried and tested electric strike technology, and simply adding smart connectivity to it.

It means the Klevio One works with multiple doors and thereno need to modify the communal area of apartment buildings when installing it, since the device is located within an individual apartment. You can also still use your old physical keys as a backup, and the company says the use of Klevio won&t be obvious to anyone outside the building.

And as you&d expect, the Klevio system is cloud-connected so that you can control your lock remotely, and issue virtual and one-time use keys. It comes in a WiFi only version, and a subscription version with added 4G.

The startupback story is noteworthy, too. The Kleviooriginal concept and eureka moment came at Onefinestay, the ‘upscale Airbnb& acquired by Accor in 2016. After the exit, Onefinestay co-founder Demetrios Zoppos teamed up with CubeSensors& Aleš Špetič and Marko Mrdjenovič to start the new company, including purchasing the needed patents from Onefinestay.

In addition, Onefinestay co-founder Greg Marsh is an investor in Klevio, alongside LocalGlobepartner Robin Klein (who I&m told has invested in a personal capacity). To date Klevio has raised £1.2 million in funding.

Meanwhile, Špetič tells me that prior to todaywider launch — where it can be ordered via the Klevio website — the Klevio One has been piloted with 1,000 users across London.

Microsoft under CEO Satya Nadella has refocussed to double down on enterprise, artificial intelligence and cloud services, and today the company took the wraps a new project for advertising giant Publicis that shows how it is leveraging all three to expand its business. At an event in Paris, the CEOs of the two companies unveiled Marcel, a new platform comprised of multiple apps using AI, social networking mechanics, voice recognition, predictive analytics and more aimed at getting Publicis& 80,000 employees to be more productive and work together better.

The first three apps on Marcel — named afterMarcel Bleustein-Blanchet, the founder of Publicis who had an interesting second career as a fighter in the French Resistance — will be Daily Six, Expert Match and Open Brief, with plans to add more apps over time,CEO and chairmanArthur Sadoun said in an interview this week. They&ve been trialled so far with 100 employees and will be rolling out more widely from today, with an aim of having its whole staff connected in 18 months.

The move is an interesting turn for Publicis, currently the worldthird-largest advertising agency, to defragment and improve how its organization works.

In keeping with the norm in the ad world, Publicis has been built up by way of acquisitions, and operates essentially as a holding company for all of them to largely continue working in their silos. While that might have been a useful model when the organization was smaller, at 80,000 employees it runs the risk of being inefficient, and could easily lead to many missed business opportunities for Publicis.

Now the aim will be to try to disrupt that model with technology. &We are committing to learn more, to share more, and create more,& Sadoun said.

Or as MicrosoftNadella put it today at the Marcel event in more — err — flowery words, &Our job is to find rose petals in a field of shit,& he said, describing how he talks about motivating teams at Microsoft to think in a more forward way. &Our job is to find, in a constrained world, ways to make things happen. Thatwhat this is all about.&

For Microsoft, working on Marcel is something of a home run for the company, in that it hits all three key bases — AI, enterprise and cloud — that Microsoft has been hoping will help propel the company into the future and away from being relegated to a role as a has-been in the software world best known for Windows and Office.

Playing on the concept of ‘consumerization of IT,& where apps and mechanics that have proven popular are used in enterprise services to get employees more engaged in them, each app in Marcel has echoes of services that you might have seen and used in the consumer world.

Daily Six presents six pieces of content to the user that is tailored to him or her. They might include key updates from a current account, suggestions for creative activities, and reading recommendations — selections that are based on what a specific employee is already working on, and what he or she might want to do next.

Expert Match, meanwhile, is a very LinkedIn-style service that is actually built using some of the mechanics of LinkedIn (another plus for Microsoft and indication of how it will target enterprises and repurpose the assets it has for that end). It helps connect employees who are looking for answers or advice on specific questions, or mentorship, with those who are willing to help out.

Lastly, Open Brief will be a way for outside clients to put out requests for input or work to the wider group, and for a small selection of people who might have skills relevant to those requests to put in offers to work on them. Both this app and Expert Match use voice and video, and are powered by Cortana to pick up cues from the requests to power the recommendations that are made.

All three are opt-in — that is, employees, in keeping with GDPR data protection principles, will have to consent to using them and having their data be a part of the Marcel mix.

Sadoun would not go into too much detail about who else might have put in requests to build Marcel — which it first said it wanted to work on a year ago, and announced in January that Microsoft had clinched the deal to build it — and nor would he be drawn out about the business model behind it. (He did concede that Google, with its extensive ad business, remains a &frenemy&, so while Publicis and Google do work together, this that might have kept it out of the running, and Amazon also had talked to Publicis. &Microsoft represents zero competition for us,& he added.)

He also added that Nadella personally got involved with the pitch and lured Sadoun and his team over to Seattle to help seal the deal.

&One day I received a call from Satya saying Microsoft wanted to be a part of this,& Sadoun said. &We had a great time in Seattle. I understodod his vision of Microsoft, and saw that it was close to our vision of Marcel. Thathow we started this partnership.&

While there is not detail about the financial terms of Marcel, itlikely that there will be several elements at play: the building the apps; moving data in and out of Azure; licensing technology to run the apps; and so on.

And as Publicis and Microsoft bring more of MicrosoftAI smarts into the mix to help Publicis work better, itworth pointing out that — at least for now — the AI has a limit. I asked, and was told in no uncertain terms by Sadoun that there are no intentions of building AI products that might actually create the ads themselves.

&I think that AI will never replace emotional intelligence,& Sadoun said. &It will help us to leverage the talent in the room, tapping people who deserve to do and grow more.& He also said that this not a move to &optimize headcount& but about trying to surface more of its talent from across its global footprint, in a diversity play.

TechCrunch scoured all of Europe to find the most innovative and disruptive early-stage startups to launch at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Europe 2018 at VivaTech. And today starting at 9:05 am CET on the TechCrunch homepage you can watch the pitches from the latest 15 Startup Battlefield companies.

Each company will pitch for six minutes on the Pitch B stage at VivaTech, followed by a rigorous six-minute Q-A with esteemed judges from all over Europe. Five companies will be selected to pitch in the finals this evening at 6:15 pm on the VivaTech Main Stage in front of a fresh crop of judges.

Our teams come from a diverse set of industries and are using a range of technologies, from insurance tech to biotech, and from blockchain technology to the latest in bioluminescent capture. Some are first-time founders and others have already negotiated $60 million financing rounds and developed tokens with over a billion-dollar market cap. These founders are challenging industry norms, and replacing the status quo of todaybusinesses with technologies that support circular economy, optimized IoT design, GDPR-compliant data innovation and so much more.

Many of the problems these startups attempt to solve are rooted in personal experiences: One entrepreneur is building an insole to help Parkinsonpatients, like her father, regain their ability to sense the ground beneath them. Another entrepreneur grew up in a port city watching the dysfunction of shipments and became fixated on making them more seamless. And therean entrepreneur participating who built a flight marketplace, realizing first-hand that hobby pilots& empty seats were a market opportunity waiting to be unlocked.

Here are the 15 Startup Battlefield Europe companies and the order in which they will pitch:

Session 1 at 9:05 am CET: Statice, Anorak, Tapoly, Wakeo, BIMlosophy

Session 2 at 10:30 am CET: Glowee, Mapify, DROVA, Walk With Path, StatusToday

Session 3 at 12:00 pm CET: Wingly, Varanida, Solely Original Shoes, Wisebatt, IOV

Over the last two months, these 15 startups refined their business models, demos and messaging with TechCrunchStartup Battlefield team and editors. Today, it will culminate onstage as they share their business with the world and answer the judges& questions about the viability of their businesses.

Battlefield alumni have raised more than $8.2 million with over 105 successful exits, so investors, get your checkbooks ready. One of these 15 startups will receive the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Top European startup award along with €25,000 in equity-free money.

TechCrunch Editor-in-ChiefMatthew Panzarinoand I will kick off Startup Battlefield Europe at 9:05 am CET. You can find more information about Startup Battlefield Europe here.