This feature from Verge covers the highlight of this year’s edition of CES held in Las Vegas last week. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links. Tech Posts Cloud Stocks: Dropbox...

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Sramana Mitra: One question that arises from this discussion that I would like to explore is, how do you view long sales cycle enterprise deals? It sounds like the kind of technology that you like...

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A cannabis company won a CES award for 2020. Called Keep, the desktop storage device features biometric security to secure cannabis products, and looks good while doing it. The CTA gave them an Innovations Award Nominee in October and then weeks later told the company they were unable to use the word “cannabis” when exhibiting.

Keep Labs decided to stay home and not exhibit at the massive Consumer Electronics Show, potentially missing out on distribution deals, funding and increased brand awareness.

Vaporizers, cannabis and tobacco alike have long been found on the CES show floor. They’re often hidden under different names, like aromatherapy devices. This year is different. They’re gone from the show floor. I spent hours in the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo center. The vapes are missing from the 2020 show.

That could change, according to a spokesperson for CES. The trade group behind the show is evaluating if cannabis has a place at CES.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) runs CES. It’s the largest such trade event in the world and attended by some 200,000 people. After speaking with a CTA spokesperson, it’s clear the trade organization knows its under close scrutiny and yet it’s still willing to blur lines to allow some companies ancillarily to cannabis to exhibit. That is, if they don’t talk about the device’s true intention.

In the past, sex tech was explicitly banned, so companies like OhMiBod exhibited under Health and Wellness. Vaporizers could be categorized as aromatherapy devices. Emails obtained by TechCrunch show the CTA has told cannabis-adjacent companies it can exhibit if cannabis is not mentioned on the show floor.

Keep Labs submitted its cannabis storage device exhibit under the “Home Storage” category. Upon its acceptance, the CTA nominated the device to the coveted Innovation Award and told the company it could present, as long as it doesn’t mention cannabis. You see, to the CTA, Keep Labs’ product is acceptable as it could have another purpose other than storing cannabis gummies; it could, in theory, be used to store candy gummies. Keep Labs told TechCrunch that avoiding saying “cannabis” goes against the company’s best interest, so it decided to skip the show.

Canopy Growth operates several prominent brands in the cannabis space. Like Keep Labs, it feels CES is not the right place to exhibit its wares if true intentions need to be hidden.

The Canadian company announced a new line of vape pens and cartridges in late 2019. With smart features and an app component, it would be perfect fodder among CES’ high-tech exhibits. The company also owns Storz-Bickel, a vaporizer company with historic roots that could exhibit in this CES gray area.

Canopy Growth acknowledges it’s banned from the show while some smaller competitors are able to exhibit by skirting the rules.

Canopy Growth CTO Peter Popplewell tells TechCrunch he still attends CES. It’s essential for him and Canopy Growth’s brands, even if the company isn’t exhibiting. For him, as the CTO, he’s meeting with component makers and suppliers.

“As the largest producer of legally produced medical and recreational cannabis and hemp products, and now a hardware manufacturer, Canopy Growth is constantly looking for ways to provide next-generation innovation to our customers and enhance their cannabis experience,” Popplewell told TechCrunch. “Within its portfolio of brands, Canopy has brought to market five different vaporizer products this fiscal year and our R&D pipeline is full of exciting developments.

“CES is the tradeshow where I am able to meet with a host of component manufacturers that help us develop safety features on our devices — such as accurate temperature control and locking the devices to address the unique needs and concerns of cannabis users,” Popplewell said.

Pax is one of the largest cannabis hardware companies and does not exhibit at CES. To be clear, Pax still has a presence in Las Vegas during CES, even though it’s not at the show itself. Like many companies at CES, Pax holds meetings and attends third-party events during CES. This lets the company bypass the CTA’s rules and still access CES attendees.

Earlier this week Pax released its Era Pro vaporizer that features PodID, a clever feature that brings a lot of information to the user.

Pax VP of Policy Jeff Brown, tells TechCrunch he’s puzzled by the CTA’s stance.

“CTA’s stubborn refusal to allow cannabis companies on the show floor is both comic and puzzling,” Brown said. “Cannabis is fully legal in Las Vegas, and there are multiple dispensaries within a mile of the convention center. Inside, companies offer an open bar in their booth, and hundreds walk the floor with a drink in hand.

“Nobody is asking to consume at CES,” Brown added. “There’s a lot of interesting technology being developed to take the guesswork out of weed. There are vaporizers with apps that tell consumers what they’re smoking, they detail the chemical attributes, and provide controls to measure each dose. There’s even a numeric lock to make the vaporizer unusable by children.”

As he told TechCrunch, this technology is legal, and cannabis itself is legal in 33 states and Canada.

“Unfortunately, you’re not going to learn about it at CES,” Brown said.

Right now, even in 2020, there are ways around the CTA’s ban. In the case of Keep Labs, the CTA granted the company permission to exhibit — as long as cannabis wasn’t mentioned. The company decided that to exhibit without saying “cannabis” wouldn’t do the brand justice. They don’t want to shy away from cannabis.

This is the puzzling part. The CTA will let companies exhibit, as long as their true intentions are hidden. The CTA used to do the same with sex toys, too.

In the run-up to the 2019 show, the CTA awarded sextech maker Lori DiCarlo with an Innovations Award. It later rescinded the award after the trade organization decided it was too sexy for CES. Fallout followed and expanded as the show opened, and sextech was found throughout the show floor, despite the ban affecting Lori DiCarlo. As with cannabis, the CTA allowed sextech under the guise of as “personal massagers” alongside therapy and sports massagers in the Health and Wellness category.

The CTA introduced the Sex Tech category for the 2020 show on a trial basis. I’m told the category will likely live on to future shows, too. This is how the CTA operates, the CTA told TechCrunch. It trials a category, and then if it works out, the category is rolled into the show.

“For us, cannabis is a tough decision,” a CTA spokesperson told TechCrunch. “It’s complicated, and the laws are changing quickly. We are watching closely, and I would not be surprised if, at some point in the future, it was part of the show.”

The CTA tells TechCrunch it continually looks at the regulatory environment, pointing out that cannabis is still an illicit substance at the federal level in the United States. The CTA however acknowledges cannabis is legal in the state of Nevada.

Nevada is one of the 33 states in the United States where cannabis is legal in some form. In Nevada, it’s legal to consume for recreational uses. The state law allows for cannabis consumption in a private residence, making it illegal to consume in a hotel, public space or convention center. There are dozens of cannabis dispensaries within miles of CES.

Cortney Smith’s vaporizer company DaVinci is based in Las Vegas and has exhibited at CES a handful of times. As he tells TechCrunch, the company didn’t have a problem presenting on the show floor, but “didn’t paste pot leaves all over.”

Smith explained that he feels the CTA’s radar has grown more sensitive in part by the vaporizer scare in 2019.

“In the past, [cannabis products weren’t] challenged,” Smith said. “So when we were there, as a cannabis vaporizer, we did not get scrutinized because [the CTA] was not on alert.”

DaVinci isn’t exhibiting this year despite recently launching a new product. The dry herb DaVinci IQ2 just hit the market and is among a new crop of vaporizers designed to bring more transparency to cannabis use. It uses on-device processing to track and record active compounds produced per draw. The sleek device and smartphone app would look at home among the latest gadgets found at CES.

As he puts it, if CES doesn’t want the business, there’s an opportunity for other trade shows to pick up cannabis products and run with it.

“CES has competition,” Smith said. “There are other consumer electronics shows around the world that would love to steal their thunder and star power. And the chance [the CTA] takes when they limit their innovation — like no sex toys or no cannabis — it gives the opportunity to some other electronics show to welcome adult toys or adult devices. So I guess they’re willing to make this compromise to play it safe.”

This week we’ve covered layoffs at unicorns both inside the Vision Fund and out. This afternoon we add two more to our list: Oyo and Rappi.

The staff reductions are surprising — and not. They are surprising, as Oyo (India-based, low-cost hotels) and Rappi (Latin America-focused e-commerce) were bright lights in the Vision Fund’s crown. And the layoffs are not surprising as other famous unicorns have recently cut staff in a bid to reduce costs, diminish losses and aim closer to profitability.

Our net lack of shock is underscored by the Vision Fund itself, which signaled late last year that it wants portfolio companies to get profitable and get public. The cuts are therefore a little more than unsurprising; we should have anticipated them.

E-commerce phenom and D2C bright light Casper has filed to go public.

The New York-based company that raised nearly $340 million while private, according to Crunchbase data, expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CSPR.” Its S-1 filing includes a $100 million placeholder figure for its possible capital raise.

The company will need the money, as it loses money and burns cash. Let’s explore just how a mattress company does that.

Growth, loss

In the full years of 2017 and 2018, Casper recorded revenue of $250.9 million (net of $45.7 million in “refunds, returns, and discounts”) and $357.9 million (net of $80.7 million in “refunds, returns, and discounts”). That worked out to growth of 42.6% in the year.

Over the same two periods, Casper lost $73.4 million and $92.1 million on a net basis, respectively.

In the first three quarters of 2019 versus 2018, Casper put up $312.3 million in top line (net of $80.1 million in “refunds, returns, and discounts”), up just over 20% from its year-ago three-quarter tally of $259.7 million in revenue (net of $57.7 million in “refunds, returns, and discounts”).

The company’s net loss during the three-quarter period rose from $64.2 million in 2018 to $67.4 million in 2019. The company’s net losses are generally rising (though slowly so far in 2019), while its growth decelerates.

In contrast, and to the company’s favor, its operating cash burn is slowing. From $84.0 million in 2017 to $72.3 million in calendar 2018, Casper slowed its operating cash consumption further in 2019, to just $29.7 million in the first three quarters of the year, compared to $44.9 million over the same period of the preceding year.

But the company’s slowing growth and stiff losses using regular accounting methods (GAAP) could strain its valuation. Casper was valued at $1.1 billion in its most recent funding round.

While the company’s gross margins aren’t bad for a non-software company (49.6% in the first nine months of 2019), the firm spent over 73% of its gross profit last year on sales and marketing costs. That figure indicates that Casper spent heavily to generate growth, growth that came in at about 20% so far in 2019, as reported.

That fact implies that growth will remain constrained, as the firm can’t afford to spend too much more on the line item. Which begs the question: What’s the value of a firm that is showing slowing growth, non-recurring revenue and sticky GAAP losses?

The company’s adjusted losses aren’t much better. Looking at its adjusted EBITDA, a profit metric so distorted to flatter that it’s nigh a funhouse mirror, Casper only marginally improved on its 2018 tally looking at the first three quarters of that year (-$57.5 million) in 2019 (-$53.8 million).

Investors

Casper has raised from IVP, Lerer Hippeau, Target and New Enterprise Associates. The firm raised seed capital back in 2014 along with a Series A. Lerer and NEA were most active back then, looking at its funding history.

The company raised $55 million more in 2015, and a far-larger $170 million in mid-2017. A $100 million round came in 2019 that set it up for its 2020 IPO.

This company’s IPO is a pricing question. And one that will impact a host of startups that both compete directly with Casper or operate in a different vertical with a similar business. Get hype.

Blackbaud + global virtual accelerator One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), are pleased to announce the winners of the “Social Good Startup Challenge”. As part of our commitment to expanding the...

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Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Positive adjusted EBITDA, or something close to it.

That’s the message from scooter unicorn Lime, which announced this week that it was cutting about 14% of its staff and closing a dozen markets. The staff reductions, numbering about 100, come as the company has touted efforts to improve its profitability — going as far as setting targets for when it might reach capital freedom, as well as highlighting the matter in a recent corporate blog post.

(Bird, a Lime competitor, also underwent layoffs this year.)

What’s going on? Unicorns, once hungry for growth, are now hell-bent to show current (and future) investors that their businesses aren’t unprofitable quagmires. Profitability, or movement towards it, is hot, and Lime is a good example of the trend — as is Getaround, which also wrote about its own layoffs this week. Let’s dig in.

Greg Smith: Another trend is the mass adoption of online learning. People across all socio-economic demographics are going to online learning as the first place to look for things. It’s becoming more...

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According to an Allied Market Research report, the global self-driving truck market is expected to grow 10% annually to $1.7 billion by 2025. TuSimple is an AI unicorn in the autonomous truck...

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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week we had TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm and Danny Crichton on hand to dig into the news, with Chris Gates on the dials and more news than we could possibly cram into 30 minutes. So we went a bit over; sorry about that.

We kicked off by running through a few short-forms to get things going, including:

Turning to longer cuts, the team dug into the latest from SoftBank, its Vision Fund and the successes and struggles of its enormous startup bets. Leading the news cycle this week were layoffs at Zume, a robotic pizza delivery venture that is no longer pursuing robotic pizza delivery. Now it’s working on sustainable packaging. Cool, but it’s going to be hard for the company to grow into its valuation while pivoting.

Other issues have come up — more here — that paint some cracks onto the Vision Fund’s sunny exterior. Don’t be too beguiled by the bad news, Danny says; venture funds run like J-Curves, and there are still winners in that particular portfolio.

After that, we turned to China, in particular its venture slowdown. The bubble, in Danny’s view, has burst. The story discussed is here, if you want to read it. The short version for the lazy is that not only has China’s venture scene slowed down dramatically, but startups — even those with ample capital raised — are dying by the hundred. But one highly caffeinated Chinese startup continues to find growth in the world’s greatest tea market.

Finally we hit on the Sam Altman wager and the latest from Sisense, which is now a unicorn. All that and we had some fun.

Kevin Groome, Founder of Pica9, has done an excellent job of bootstrapping his tech company without a tech background. Inspiring story for many in his shoes. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very...

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Sramana Mitra: What sized checks do you write? Karthee Madasamy: Right now, we write between $1 million and $3 million. We may go up to $4 million. We keep about one-to-one reserve for follow-on. We...

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Just Spices, the German-founded spice mix brand, is disclosing €13 million in Series B funding. The round is led by Five Seasons Ventures and Coefficient Capital, with Bitburger Ventures also joining.

A direct to consumer play, Just Spices offers two main product lines: Spice Mixes and “IN MINUTES”.

The first consists of various spice blends, with new blends being developed based on the sales and customer feedback data the startup is amassing.

The second, launched in 2018, is recipe-driven, offering 27 “fix” meal preparations that sees Just Spices provide the recipe and spice mix needed to prepare a quick meal, with only a few additional fresh ingredients required to complete the dish. It appears to share some similarities with SimplyCook in the U.K.

“The need for innovative, fast and still balanced solutions in the food sector is greater than ever,” says Just Spices co-founder and CEO Florian Falk. “On the one hand, people have less time available so food has to be as uncomplicated as possible, but on the other, we still have wants and needs… With Just Spices, and especially with IN MINUTES, we offer a carefree alternative, which consumers can be confident is fast and tasty whilst still fitting into a conscious, healthy diet.”

As part of its customer acquisition strategy and to power a product development feedback loop, Just Spices says it has built a vibrant, active digital community of home cooks. More than 60% of its sales are generated online, and the company claims to be one of the most followed spices brands in Europe (on social media). And certainly the startup is investing in content, including operating its own in-house studio and producing podcasts.

“We want to become the world’s largest lifestyle spice brand,” adds Falk. “To achieve this, we have not only built a fantastic partnership network, we have brought together an amazing team. We want to bring the joy and fun of cooking to many more people.”

Scoodle, a U.K.-based startup that, in its own words, wants to help tutors become influencers, is disclosing $760,000 in pre-seed funding.

Backing the round is Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, alongside Tiny VC, IFG Ventures and a number of unnamed angels. Scoodle is also the first edtech company to join the University of Oxford’s accelerator, Oxford Foundry.

Launched in late 2018, Scoodle might be thought of as Quora-meets-tutoring. The platforms lets students post questions which tutors are then invited to answer as a way of boosting their reputation and influence, from which they can generate more tutoring work.

Tutors can also create a comprehensive profile and share learning resources as a further way of demonstrating their expertise. And, crucially, take tutor bookings.

Co-founder and CEO Ismail Jeilani, who most recently worked at Google, says the idea was born from his own experience tutoring so that he could save up for university and avoid taking out a student loan.

“It’s difficult to find good tutors, because parents don’t know what to look for,” he tells me. “We solve this with a content-driven approach. Our tutors share content like learning resources on their profiles, which parents get to view before booking a lesson. Through this approach, tutors begin to develop their own brands, like ‘an educator’s LinkedIn’”.

Scoodle says it hosts thousands of tutors from the U.K.’s best educational institutions, including the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and others.

Perhaps, most noteworthy, Scoodle is operating like a content-led marketplace for tutor bookings but doesn’t currently charge a booking fee.

Having grown to 100,000 users across mobile and web, the startup instead has introduced a subscription model: tutors pay £10 per month for boosted listings, and the company claims this secures tutors up to 30 times more enquiries.

Similarly, there is also a subscription option for students whereby anybody can book, message and access tutor content for free, but a higher tier Scoodle Pro membership lets you ask questions directly to tutors for a more on-demand service.

“It’s very common that a student discovers Scoodle on the back of a Google search,” adds Jeilani. “When they view an answer, they also see other answers from that tutor, along with how many students they’ve helped. This helps create trust”.

In the U.K., the tutoring space includes companies like Tutorful, Tutorhunt and myTutor, but remains fragmented. Jeilani argues that Scoodle’s key differentiator is its focus on tutor branding driven by content.

“Unique content gives us a different user acquisition channel along with long term defensibility,” he says. “This tutor-focussed approach also means we’re the first to have a 0% commission model. This keeps tutors on our platform longer than anywhere else”.

PayU is acquiring a controlling stake in fintech startup PaySense at a valuation of $185 million and plans to merge it with its credit business LazyPay as the nation’s largest payments processor aggressively expands its financial services offering.

The Prosus-owned payments giant said on Friday that it will pump $200 million — $65 million of which is being immediately invested — into the new enterprise in the form of equity capital over the next two years. PaySense, which employs about 240 people, has served more than 5.5 million consumers to date, a top executive said.

Prior to today’s announcement, PaySense had raised about $25.6 million from Nexus Venture Partners, and Jungle Ventures, among others. PayU became an investor in the five-year-old startup’s Series B financing round in 2018. Regulatory filings show that PaySense was valued at about $48.7 million then.

The merger will help PayU solidify its presence in the credit business and become one of the largest players, said Siddhartha Jajodia, Global Head of Credit at PayU, in an interview with TechCrunch. “It’s the largest merger of its kind in India.” he said. The combined entity is valued at $300 million, he said.

PaySense enables consumers to secure long-term credit for financing their new vehicle purchases and other expenses. Some of its offerings overlap with those of LazyPay, which primarily focuses on providing short-term credit to consumers to facilitate orders on food delivery platforms, e-commerce websites and other services. Its credit ranges between $210 and $7,030.

Cumulatively, the two services have disbursed over $280 million in credit to consumers, said Jajodia. He aims to take this to “a couple of billion dollars” in the next five years.

As part of the deal, PaySense and LazyPay will build a common and shared technology infrastructure. But at least for the immediate future, LazyPay and PaySense will continue to be offered as separate services to consumers, explained Prashanth Ranganathan, founder and chief executive of PaySense, in an interview with TechCrunch.

“Overtime as the businesses get closer, we will make a call if a consolidation of brands is required. But for now, we will let consumers direct us,” added Ranganathan, who will serve as the chief executive of the combined entity.

There are about a billion debit cards in circulation in India today, but only about 20 million people have a credit card. (The official government figures show that about 50 million credit cards are active in India, but many individuals tend to have more than one card.)

This has meant that most Indians don’t have a traditional credit score, so they can’t secure loans and a range of other financial services from banks. Scores of startups in India today are attempting to address this opportunity by using other signals and alternative data of users — such as the kind of a smartphone a person has — to evaluate whether they are worthy of being granted some credit.

Digital lending is a $1 trillion opportunity (PDF) over the four and a half years in India, according to estimates from Boston Consulting Group.

PayU’s Jajodia said PaySense and LazyPay will likely explore building new offerings such as credit for small and medium businesses. He did not rule out possibility of getting stakes in more fintech startups in the future. PayU has already invested north of half a billion dollars in its India business. Last year, it acquired Wibmo for $70 million.

“At PayU, our ambition is to build financial services using data and technology. Our first two legs have been payments [processing] and credit. We will continue to scale both of these businesses. Even this acquisition was about getting new capabilities and a strong management team. If we find more companies with some unique assets, we may look at them,” he said.

PayU leads the payments processing market in India. It competes with Bangalore-based RazorPay. In recent years, RazorPay has expanded to serve small businesses and enterprises. In November, it launched corporate credit cards and other services to strengthen its neo banking play.

At CES 2020, one of the more well-represented gadget categories was definitely consumer robots – but none was more adorable than MarsCat, a new robo-pet from industrial robot startup Elephant Robotics. This robot pet is a fully autonomous companion that can respond to touch, voice and even play with toys, and it’s hard not to love the thing after spending even just a brief amount of time with it.

MarsCat’s pedigree is a bit unusual, since Elephant Robotics is focused on building what’s known as ‘cobots,’ or industrial robots that are designed to work alongside humans in settings like factories or assembly plants. Elephant, which was founded in 2016, already produces three lines of these collaborative robots and has sold them to client companies around the world, including in Korea, the U.S., Germany and more.

This new product is designed for the home, however, not the factory or the lab. MarsCat is the startup’s first consumer product, but it obviously benefits immensely from the company’s expertise and experience in their industrial robotics business. With its highly articulated legs, tail and head, it can sit up, walk play and watch your movements, all working autonomously without any additional input required.

While MarsCat provides that kind of functionality out of the box, it’s also customizable and programmable by the user. Inside, it’s powered by a Raspberry Pi, and it ships with MarsCat SDK, which is an open software development library that allows you to fully control and program all of the robots functions. This makes it an interesting gadget for STEM education and research, too.

MarsCat is currently up for crowdfunding on Kickstarter, with Elephant having already surpassed its goal of $20,000 and on track to raise at least $100,000 more than that target. Elephant Robotics CEO and co-founder Joey Song told me that it actually plans to ship its first batch of production MarsCats to users in March, too, so backers shouldn’t have to wait long to enjoy their new robotic pet.

[gallery ids="1931424,1931421,1931422,1931425,1931428,1931426"]

There are other robotic pets available on the market, but Song thinks that MarsCat has a unique blend of advanced features at a price point that’s currently unmatched by existing options. The robot can respond to a range of voice commands, and will also evolve its personality over time based on how you interact with it: Talk to it a lot, and it’ll also become ‘chatty;’ play with it frequently and it’ll be a playful kitty. That, combined with the open platform, is a lot to offer for the asking backer price of just $699 to start.

Sony’s Aibo, the canine equivalent of MarsCat, retails for $2,899 in the U.S., so it’s a bargain when considered in that light. And unlike the real thing, MarsCat definitely doesn’t shed, so it’s got that going for it, too.

Lime is hoping to achieve profitability this year by laying off about 14% of its workforce and ceasing operations in 12 markets, Axios first reported.

“Financial independence is our goal for 2020, and we are confident that Lime will be the first next-generation mobility company to reach profitability,” Lime CEO Brad Bao said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We are immensely grateful for our team members, riders, Juicers and cities who supported us, and we hope to reintroduce Lime back into these communities when the time is right.”

That means Lime is shutting down in Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio, Linz, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Lima, Puerto Vallarta, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

This is not the first time Lime has pulled out of markets. Over the span of about a year, Lime exited at least 11 markets while it entered 69 new ones. Between 2018 and 2019, competitor Bird pulled out of 38 markets and entered 36 new ones.

And while layoffs are not fun, Lime is not alone. Last year, both Bird and Lyft laid off employees working on micromobility. In March, Bird laid off up to 5% of its workforce and then cut up to a dozen Scoot employees in December. Lyft, similarly, also laid off up to 50 people on its bikes and scooters team in March.

Following Lime’s $310 million round in February led by Bain Capital, it hit a valuation of $2.4 billion.

OrCam is expanding its product lineup with new devices that tackle new use cases. OrCam’s best-known device is the OrCam MyEye 2 — a tiny device for people with visual impairment that you clip on your glasses to help you navigate the world around you.

At CES, OrCam announced that the MyEye 2 is getting new features. In addition to being able to point at text and signs to read text aloud, recognize faces and identify objects and money notes, you’ll be able to let the device guide you.

For instance, you can say “what’s in front of me?” and the device could tell you that there’s a door. You can then ask to be guided to that door. The MyEye 2 is also getting better at natural language processing for interactive reading sessions.

When it comes to new devices, OrCam is expanding to hearing impairment with the OrCam Hear. It can be particularly useful in loud rooms. The device helps you identify and isolate a speaker’s voice so you can follow a conversation even in a public space. You pair it with your existing Bluetooth hearing aids.

Finally, OrCam is introducing the OrCam Read, a handheld AI reader. This time, you don’t clip a camera to your glasses, you take the device in your hand and point it at text. The company says it could be particularly useful for people who have reading difficulties due to dyslexia.