Byju Raveendran, the founder of the embattled edtech group Byju’s, acknowledged on Thursday afternoon that he made mistakes, mistimed the market, overestimated growth potential and that his startup, once valued at $22 billion, is now effectively worth “zero.”
Speaking to a group of journalists, Raveendran said the company’s aggressive acquisition of more than two dozen startups to expand into new markets proved fatal when financing dried up in 2022. Byju’s was planning to go public in early 2022 with several investment bankers giving the firm valuation as high as $50 billion, TechCrunch reported earlier.
He alleged that many of his more than 100 investors had urged him to pursue aggressive expansion into as many as 40 markets. But, he added, those very investors got cold feet when global markets tumbled following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending the venture capital market into a downward spiral.
Raveendran said many of his investors “ran away,” and the departure of three key backers – Prosus Ventures, Peak XV, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – from the company’s board last year made it impossible for the startup to raise additional funds.
Representatives of the aforementioned three firms as well as auditor Deloitte left the startup’s board last year, citing governance issues.
Byju’s has since entered insolvency proceedings, and Raveendran, who no longer controls the company, said: “It’s worth zero. What valuation are you talking about? It’s worth zero.”
Byju’s, once India’s most valuable startup, counts BlackRock, UBS, Lightspeed, QIA, Bond, Silver Lake, Sofina, Verlinvest, Tencent, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Owl Ventures, and World Bank’s IFC among its backers. It has raised more than $5 billion to date.
Raveendran said he remains hopeful that his startup will make a comeback. “I have nothing to lose. I came from a small village. I invested everything I had into the startup.”
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The New York Times on Thursday published a look at the “fraying” relationship between OpenAI and its investor, partner, and, increasingly, rival, Microsoft, reporting their five-year romance has cooled owing to financial pressure on OpenAI, the limited computing power Microsoft is providing OpenAI, and disagreements between the two about ground rules.
Most fascinating perhaps is a reported clause in OpenAI’s contract with Microsoft that cuts off Microsoft’s access to OpenAI’s tech if the latter develops so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI), meaning an AI system capable of rivaling human thinking.
TC has asked OpenAI for comment, but the Times — which talked with 19 people familiar with the companies’ relationship — says the clause aims to ensure Microsoft can never misuse the technology. Thing is, OpenAI’s board can reportedly decide when AGI has arrived, and CEO Sam Altman has already said that moment will be somewhat subjective. As he told this editor early last year, “The closer we get, the harder time I have answering [how far away AGI is] because I think that it’s going to be much blurrier, and much more of a gradual transition than people think.”
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Phillip Man was burned out. He had founded a watch trading company with his flatmate, but the grind was wearing him down.
“We did that for ten years,” Man said. “It’s very difficult to keep yourself motivated when you know the whole reason for your operation is to sell expensive stuff to wealthy people.”
He had previously been a jet fuel trader at Glencore — “the evil side of energy,” he said — and felt himself drawn back to that world. “I wanted to go back to energy, do something that had real impact, for profit, but that helps the planet.”
Climate seemed an obvious starting point. Germany, where he’s from, was being flooded with wind and solar power, and as the country turned off its nuclear power plants, it needed a way to keep the grid humming on calm, cloudy days.
Grid-scale batteries help save renewably generated power for just such days, and they have boomed in recent years, with global capacity tripling in 2023, according to BloombergNEF. Analysts at the firm also expect capacity to nearly triple again before the end of the decade.
“The industry, while still very nascent, has been built the wrong way around,” Man said. “Today, people build a battery, and then somebody else trades it.”
Man’s alternative, which has taken shape as a startup called Terralayr, is a twist on the virtual power plant, what experts call it when energy traders aggregate batteries and manage their use. He said Terralayr is similar to AWS, Amazon’s cloud service that aggregates computing resources and sells fractions of them. “We aggregate grid-scale energy storage assets, we bundle them, we virtualize them, and then we sell off the capacity between 15 minutes and 15 years,” Man said.
AWS transformed enterprise computing, allowing companies to run servers without owning hardware and quickly scale them as needed. In some ways, virtual power plants do the same. Owners of grid-scale batteries can sell their capacity to traders, who then aggregate that capacity to the point where it makes sense to play in large electricity markets.
Terralayr also manages batteries, both its own and those of others, but Man said the difference is that it doesn’t function as a trader, but something more like an exchange. “Our pitch is like, we’re not traders. We don’t trade at all. In fact, we will just find the best buyer for your capacity.”
The startup charges battery owners a “small percentage” fee based on revenues. If Terralayr can operate the battery more profitably than a competitor, it will also take a portion of the upside. (How is that determined? Man said the company uses a model, built in part using previous bids from its own customers, that predicts what a typical trader would do.)
For buyers, power trading allows them to fill gaps in their output. For somewhere like Germany, where Terralayr is starting out, power providers need to predict how much electricity they’ll generate in the next 24 hours. If they fail to match their forecast — like if a freak thunderstorm clouds their solar farm — they can be penalized. By tapping into a battery array that’s selling power at the same time, they can bridge the gap and avoid costly penalties.
Terralayr currently has seven megawatt-hours of capacity on the grid with another 40 megawatt-hours that should be turned on soon, Man said. The startup has signed development agreements for over 200 sites in Germany totaling over seven gigawatts, or about 3% of Germany’s total generating capacity. “That’s a five- to ten-year horizon,” he added. “Of those seven gigawatts, not everything will come through.”
To fund the expansion, Terralayr has raised €62 million in equity and €15 million in debt from investors including Creandum, Earlybird, Norrsken VC, Picus Capital, and Rive Private Investment. “I wouldn’t call it seed round, but that’s technically what it is,” Man said, adding that “seed would wrongly suggest the earliness of the business.”
While Terralayr is focused on Germany for now, Man said the company is eyeing U.S. markets, particularly California and Texas. “We believe this is a generational opportunity,” he said.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Phillip Man was burned out. He had founded a watch trading company with his flatmate, but the grind was wearing him down.
“We did that for ten years,” Man said. “It’s very difficult to keep yourself motivated when you know the whole reason for your operation is to sell expensive stuff to wealthy people.”
He had previously been a jet fuel trader at Glencore — “the evil side of energy,” he said — and felt himself drawn back to that world. “I wanted to go back to energy, do something that had real impact, for profit, but that helps the planet.”
Climate seemed an obvious starting point. Germany, where he’s from, was being flooded with wind and solar power, and as the country turned off its nuclear power plants, it needed a way to keep the grid humming on calm, cloudy days.
Grid-scale batteries help save renewably generated power for just such days, and they have boomed in recent years, with global capacity tripling in 2023, according to BloombergNEF. Analysts at the firm also expect capacity to nearly triple again before the end of the decade.
“The industry, while still very nascent, has been built the wrong way around,” Man said. “Today, people build a battery, and then somebody else trades it.”
Man’s alternative, which has taken shape as a startup called Terralayr, is a twist on the virtual power plant, what experts call it when energy traders aggregate batteries and manage their use. He said Terralayr is similar to AWS, Amazon’s cloud service that aggregates computing resources and sells fractions of them. “We aggregate grid-scale energy storage assets, we bundle them, we virtualize them, and then we sell off the capacity between 15 minutes and 15 years,” Man said.
AWS transformed enterprise computing, allowing companies to run servers without owning hardware and quickly scale them as needed. In some ways, virtual power plants do the same. Owners of grid-scale batteries can sell their capacity to traders, who then aggregate that capacity to the point where it makes sense to play in large electricity markets.
Terralayr also manages batteries, both its own and those of others, but Man said the difference is that it doesn’t function as a trader, but something more like an exchange. “Our pitch is like, we’re not traders. We don’t trade at all. In fact, we will just find the best buyer for your capacity.”
The startup charges battery owners a “small percentage” fee based on revenues. If Terralayr can operate the battery more profitably than a competitor, it will also take a portion of the upside. (How is that determined? Man said the company uses a model, built in part using previous bids from its own customers, that predicts what a typical trader would do.)
For buyers, power trading allows them to fill gaps in their output. For somewhere like Germany, where Terralayr is starting out, power providers need to predict how much electricity they’ll generate in the next 24 hours. If they fail to match their forecast — like if a freak thunderstorm clouds their solar farm — they can be penalized. By tapping into a battery array that’s selling power at the same time, they can bridge the gap and avoid costly penalties.
Terralayr currently has seven megawatt-hours of capacity on the grid with another 40 megawatt-hours that should be turned on soon, Man said. The startup has signed development agreements for over 200 sites in Germany totaling over seven gigawatts, or about 3% of Germany’s total generating capacity. “That’s a five- to ten-year horizon,” he added. “Of those seven gigawatts, not everything will come through.”
To fund the expansion, Terralayr has raised €62 million in equity and €15 million in debt from investors including Creandum, Earlybird, Norrsken VC, Picus Capital, and Rive Private Investment. “I wouldn’t call it seed round, but that’s technically what it is,” Man said, adding that “seed would wrongly suggest the earliness of the business.”
While Terralayr is focused on Germany for now, Man said the company is eyeing U.S. markets, particularly California and Texas. “We believe this is a generational opportunity,” he said.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
AWS CEO Matt Garman has harsh words for remote workers: return to the office or quit. The Amazon executive recently told employees who don’t like the new five-day in-person work policy that, “there are other companies around,” presumably companies they can work for remotely, Reuters reported on Thursday.
Amazon’s top boss, Andy Jassy, told employees last month that there will be a full return-to-office starting in 2025, an increase from three days for roughly the last year.
Garman is the latest tech CEO to put his foot down on remote work, but he’s not the first. Earlier this year, Dell reportedly told employees they won’t be considered for promotions if they don’t come into the office. That said, remote work likely isn’t going anywhere for most people. Studies suggest most remote workers would quit if they had to return to the office.
Amazon did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
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Days after 159 people accepted Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg’s offer of a six-month severance package to employees who wanted to leave, the company floated a new offer late on October 16 of a nine-month severance package to anybody who quit immediately. Employees had four hours to decide whether they wanted to take the deal.
In Slack message seen by TechCrunch, Mullenweg posted that people who accepted the offer would lose access not only to Automattic but also to WordPress.org. This effectively means that people leaving wouldn’t be able to contribute to the open source project — at least under their existing ID. This would also mean they would be efficiently banned from the WordPress community. News of the deal was earlier reported by 404 Media.
Apart from being Automattic CEO, Mullenweg also owns and controls WordPress.org open source site.
Mullenweg gave just four hours’ notice (Until October 17, UTC 00:00) and said people who want to accept the offer should DM him, “I resign and would like to take the 9-month buy-out offer.”
“You don’t have to say any reason or anything else. I will reply ‘Thank you.’ Automattic will accept your resignation, you can keep your office stuff and work laptop. You will lose access to Automattic and Worg,” Mullenweg said.
He said, “I guess some people were sad they missed the last window,” and so presented this new short window.
Automattic didn’t comment on the story by the time of publication. It is not clear if any employees took the new offer.
The WordPress co-founder’s first offer was aimed at people who didn’t align with his views on Automattic’s fight with hosting provider WP Engine. The first batch of people who left Automattic included some top people at the company, including the head of WordPress.com (Automattic’s commercial WordPress hosting arm), Daniel Bachhuber, head of programs and contributor experience Naoko Takano, the Principal architect for AI, Daniel Walmsley, and WordPress.org’s executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy.
The battle started nearly a month ago after Mullenweg called WP Engine “Cancer to WordPress” and accused the independent firm of not contributing enough to the WordPress open-source project. Over the last few weeks, the fight has involved cease-and-desist letters, Automattic accusing WP engine of violating trademarks, a lawsuit by WP Engine, and WordPress.org blocking WP Engine’s access and taking over a plug-in it had been maintaining.
Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Automattic has been preparing to defend its trademarks by involving “nice and not nice” lawyers, according to an internal post published earlier this year by the company’s then-chief legal officer.
You can contact this reporter at [email protected] or on Signal: @ivan.42
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