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Snyk bags another $200M at $2.6B valuation 9 months after last raise

Published September 9, 2020

When we last reported on Snyk in January, eons ago in COVID time, the company announced $150 million investment on a valuation of over $1 billion. Today, barely nine months later, it announced another $200 million and its valuation has expanded to $2.6 billion.

The company is obviously drawing some serious investor attention, and even a pandemic is not diminishing that interest. Addition led today’s round, bringing the total raised to $450 million with $350 million coming this year alone.

Snyk has a unique approach to security, building it into the development process instead of offloading it to a separate security team. If you want to build a secure product, you need to think about it as you’re developing the product, and that’s what Snyk’s product set is designed to do — check for security as you’re committing your build to your git repository.

With an open-source product at the top of funnel to drive interest in the platform, CEO Peter McKay says the pandemic has only accelerated the appeal of the company. In fact, the startup’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) is growing at a remarkable 275% year over year.

McKay says even with the pandemic his company has been accelerating, adding 100 employees in the last 12 months to take advantage of the increasing revenue. “When others were kind of scaling back we invested and it worked out well because our business never slowed down. In fact, in a lot of the industries it really picked up,” he said.

That’s because as many other founders have pointed out, COVID is speeding up the rate at which many companies are moving to the cloud, and that’s working to Snyk’s favor. “We’ve just capitalized on this accelerated shift to the cloud and modern cloud-native applications,” he said.

The company currently has 375 employees, with plans to add 100 more in the next year. As it grows, McKay says that he is looking to build a diverse and inclusive culture, something he learned about as he moved through his career at VMware and Veeam.

He says one of the keys at Snyk is putting every employee through unconscious bias training to help limit bias in the hiring process, and the executive team has taken a pledge to make the company’s hiring practices more diverse. Still, he recognizes it takes work to achieve these goals, and it’s always easy for an experienced team to go back to the network instead of digging deeper for a more diverse candidate pool.

“I think we’ve put all the pieces in place to get there, but I think like a lot of companies, there’s still a long way to go,” he said. But he recognizes the sooner you embed diversity into the company culture, the better because it’s hard to go back after the fact and do it.

Addition founder Lee Fixel says he sees a company that’s accelerating rapidly and that’s why he was willing to pour in so big an investment. “Snyk’s impressive growth is a signal that the market is ready to embrace a change from traditional security and empower developers to tackle the new security risk that comes with a software-driven digital world,” he said in a statement.

Snyk was founded in 2015. The founders brought McKay on board for some experienced leadership in 2018 to help lead the company through its rapid growth. Prior to the $350 million in new money this year, the company raised $70 million in 2019.

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Sprinklr raises $200M on $2.7B valuation four years after last investment

Published September 9, 2020

Sprinklr has been busy the last few years acquiring a dozen companies, then rewriting their code base and incorporating them into the company’s customer experience platform. Today, the late-stage startup went back to the fundraising well for the first time in four years, and it was a doozy, raising $200 million on a $2.7 billion valuation.

The money came from private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, which also invested $300 million in buying back secondary shares. Meanwhile the company also announced $150 million in convertible securities from Sixth Street Growth. That’s a lot of action for a company that’s been quiet on the fundraising front for years.

Company founder and CEO Ragy Thomas says he sought the investment now because after building a customer experience platform, he was ready to accelerate and he needed the money to do it. He expects the company to hit $400 million in annual recurring revenue by year’s end and he says that he sees a much bigger opportunity on the horizon.

“We think it’s a $100 billion opportunity and our large public competitors have validated that and continue to do so in the customer experience management space,” he said. Those large competitors include Salesforce and Adobe.

He sees customer experience management as having the kind of growth that CRM has had in the past, and this money gives him more options to grow faster, while working with a big private equity firm.

“So what was appealing in this market for us was not just putting some more money in the bank and being a little more aggressive in growth, innovation, go to market and potential M&A, but what was also appealing is the opportunity to bring someone like a Hellman & Friedman to the table,” Thomas said.

The company has 1,000 clients, some spending millions of dollars a year. They currently have 1,900 employees in 25 offices around the world, and Thomas wants to add another 500 over the next 12 months — and he believes that $1 billion in ARR is a realistic goal for the company.

As he builds the company, Thomas, who is a person of color, has codified diversity and inclusion into the company’s charter, what he calls the “Sprinklr Way.” “For us, diversity and inclusion is not impossible. It is not something that you do to check a box and market yourself. It’s deep in our DNA,” he said.

Tarim Wasim a partner at investor Hellman & Friedman, sees a company with tremendous potential to lead a growing market. “Sprinklr has a unique opportunity to lead a Customer Experience Management market that’s already massive — and growing — as enterprises continue to realize the urgent need to put CXM at the heart of their digital transformation strategy,” Wasim said in a statement.

Sprinklr was founded in 2009. Before today, it last raised $105 million in 2016 led by Temasek Holdings. Past investors include Battery Ventures, ICONIQ Capital and Intel Capital.

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Sign up to learn about funding options with the IFundWomen team

Published September 8, 2020

Disrupt 2020 is mere days away, but we’ve added pre-Disrupt events to help startup founders up their game, increase their ROI and drive their business forward. What’s next on the agenda?

If you’re a founder with big ideas, get ready for a rare opportunity designed to help you fund your startup dreams. Thursday, September 10th at 10am PT / 1pm ET, IFundWomen, the go-to marketplace for women-owned businesses, will lead a three part workshop. The topic: Leveraging Online Fundraising for Your Business.

Note: Anyone with a Disrupt ticket can attend. Navigate to the Event Agenda section on the CrunchMatch homepage to register. 

“The financial system chronically underserving women is not a new phenomenon. Last year, female-founded companies raised just 2.7 percent of the venture capital pie. For founders of color, that figure is less than 1 percent. According to DigitalUndivided, Black-founded companies have raised just .06 percent of the $424.7 billion of total tech venture funding since 2009.” — Julia Steele, Director of Marketing and Communications, IFundWomen.

IFundWomen aims to change the disheartening numbers game by, according to Steele, “working tirelessly to expand access to capital for women-owned businesses so they can launch and scale more successful, lucrative businesses.”

What can you expect from Thursday’s event? Have a look at the agenda.

Part 1: The Funding Journey Overview (15 minutes)

How you can leverage the different funding options for your business (crowdfunding, grants, raising venture capital).

Part 2: Funding Options for Women Entrepreneurs Deep Dive (45 minutes)

Attendees can select from three different sessions to learn more about the funding option that is most applicable to their stage.

  • Crowdfunding: Alternative funding options are critical for women entrepreneurs. This session is for early-stage entrepreneurs who are just trying to prove demand and get their businesses off the ground.
  • Grants: Another great alternative funding option for women entrepreneurs who have some revenue and are interested in accessing grants as a debt-free funding option.
  • Venture Capital: How women entrepreneurs can approach the VC space.

Part 3: Virtual 1:1 Speed Networking (30 minutes: three 10-minute sessions)

A strong network is a key component of any strong fundraising effort. Use this time to connect with other entrepreneurs and build relationships.

IFundWomen hosts Leveraging Online Fundraising for Your Business Thursday, September 10th at 10am PT / 1pm ET. The workshop takes place on CrunchMatch. You can register here.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to explore your funding options, expand your business network and maximize your Disrupt 2020 experience. It’s a win-win-win!

IFundWomen is the go-to funding marketplace for women-owned businesses and the people who want to support them, providing access to capital, coaching, and connections critical to launching and growing sustainable businesses.

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Daily Crunch: Apple files countersuit against Epic

Published September 8, 2020

Apple strikes back at Epic Games, Android 11 is here and Microsoft announces a new stripped-down Xbox. This is your Daily Crunch for September 8, 2020.

The big story: Apple files countersuit against Epic

Apple has made the latest move in a legal battle against Epic Games, filing a lawsuit claiming that the company behind Fortnite is in breach of contract.

“Although Epic portrays itself as a modern corporate Robin Hood, in reality it is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that simply wants to pay nothing for the tremendous value it derives from the App Store,” Apple wrote in its suit.

This follows Epic’s attempt in August to avoid Apple’s 30% App Store fee, which led to Apple removing Fortnite and eventually Epic from the App Store. (Accounts tied to Epic’s Unreal game engine have not been removed.) Epic then launched a lawsuit and a PR campaign against Apple, arguing that the company is abusing its market power.

The tech giants

Android 11 has arrived — Android 11 isn’t a radical departure, but there are a number of interesting new user-facing updates that mostly center around messaging, privacy and giving you better control over all of your smart devices.

Microsoft confirms compact, $299 Xbox Series S arriving on November 10 — The Series S is essentially a stripped-down version of the upcoming Series X, without true 4K rendering and with a lot less processing power.

Apple’s next event is September 15 — The event will almost certainly feature the new Apple Watch.

Startups, funding and venture capital

General Motors takes $2 billion stake in electric truck startup Nikola — Through the deal, GM gets 11% ownership in startup Nikola, and will, in turn, produce Nikola’s wild fuel cell pickup truck by the end of 2022.

Silver Lake leads $500 million investment round in Indian online learning giant Byju’s — The round values the Indian online learning platform at $10.8 billion.

Progress snags software automation platform Chef for $220M — Progress, a Boston-area developer tool company, is boosting its offerings in a big way.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

How to respond to a data breach — How a company responds to a data breach can make or break its reputation.

9 proptech investors talk co-living, home offices and other pandemic trends — TechCrunch surveyed nine firms that are writing checks today, and this second installment focuses on the opportunities and risks for startups.

JFrog’s IPO strong initial price range values it ahead of the larger Sumo Logic — The IPO wave continues to crest as a number of well-known technology companies line up to float their equity on American exchanges.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

‘Mulan’ drove Disney+ app downloads up 68% week-over-week, but didn’t beat ‘Hamilton’ — According to early data, the launch helped grow Disney+ mobile installs by 68%, compared with one week prior.

Original Content podcast: ‘Teenage Bounty Hunters’ is more interested in relationships than bounty hunting — Despite the show’s silly name, we ended up surprisingly invested in the characters.

Drew Houston will talk about building a startup and digital transformation during COVID at TechCrunch Disrupt — This is next week!

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Lidar startup Ouster raises $42M in push to grow sales, diversify products

Published September 8, 2020

Lidar startup Ouster has spent the past several years expanding and improving its line of sensors as it jostles for a piece of the crowded and competitive market place. Now, Ouster says it has raised $42 million, fresh capital that will be used to fund product development and ramp up sales.

In short: Ouster is keeping the fight alive and there are signs that the San Francisco-based startup is making progress despite some headwinds. The $42 million Series B round didn’t feature any new investors — existing backers Cox Automotive, Fontinalis Partners and Tao Capital Partners all participated — and it was less than its previous raise of $60 million. Ouster, like many others, also reduced its workforce by 10% due to COVID-19, the company confirmed.

However, it’s worth noting that Ouster managed to close the round in the midst of COVID-19 and has continued to increase sales, even as its San Francisco-based manufacturing facility was shuttered temporarily due to a COVID-related government shutdown. The business grew enough to avoid further layoffs and to fully pay all employees and temp workers, according to the company. Ouster has raised $140 million to date.

Ouster wouldn’t share specific revenue numbers, but the company said its 12-month revenue has grown 62%, with third-quarter bookings up 209% year-over-year — a stat that makes sense, considering its business model and the expansion of its product line.

Lidar measures distance using laser light to generate highly accurate 3D maps of the world around the car. Lidar is considered by most in the automated vehicle technology industry a key sensor required to safely deploy robotaxis and other autonomous vehicles (with perhaps the exception of Elon Musk and a few others).

Ouster is taking a different technological and business approach than many of its competitors.

The company’s lasers and photodetectors are printed onto two chips using a standard process to produce integrated circuits (known as CMOS to those in the know). Ouster says this allows it to ditch the more common practice of stacking discrete components on top of each other to reach the desired resolution. Ouster argues that its approach results in a less complex sensor that is more reliable and cheaper.

“Ouster’s digital lidar architecture gives us fundamental advantages that are winning over customers in every market we serve. Digital CMOS technology is the future of lidar and Ouster was the first to invent, build, patent, and commercialize digital lidar. Once our customers experience the resolution and reliability of these sensors at an affordable price, there’s no turning back to legacy analog lidar,” Ouster CEO Angus Pacala said in a statement.

In January, Ouster launched its second-generation lidar product line, which includes three different 128-beam sensors to be used for different purposes, including one designed for navigating urban environments and warehouses. The other two sensors include a mid-range model with a 120-meter range and a 45-degree field of view, and a long-range lidar sensor with a more than 200-meter range for high-speed vehicle automation. All three products are currently shipping to customers and are available in 50 different configurations, according to Ouster.

The company’s business model is also slightly different than many others. Instead of targeting automakers or companies trying to commercialize robotaxis, Ouster has cast a wider net to diversify its business. The company is selling its lidar sensors to robotics, drones, mapping, defense, building security, mining and agriculture companies. The company launched in January its second-generation lidar sensors, which included three new 128-beam models that have different applications. The second-generation line is an improvement from its previous 64-beam models, with better resolution.

The strategy has appeared to pay off. Ouster has doubled its customer base since March 2019, according to the company. Today, Ouster says it has 800 customers across 15 markets, including Konecranes, Postmates, Ike, May Mobility, Kodiak Robotics, Coast Autonomous, the U.S. Army, NASA, Stanford University and MIT. Some of that growth has come from sales to Chinese automation companies such as idriverplus, WhaleAI, Hongjing Drive and qCraft.

Despite the growth, Ouster needs the capital to scale, as designing, manufacturing and selling lidar sensors is an expensive undertaking. Ouster has opened offices in Paris, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Suzhou to expand global sales and customer service capabilities. It also has two manufacturing facilities. Its San Francisco facility, which opened in March 2019, is primarily used to introduce new products. Production volumes are lower at this facility. Once the product is validated, they’re transferred to Ouster’s contract manufacturer Benchmark in Southeast Asia.

Benchmark is now producing hundreds to thousands of second-generation sensors per month, according to Ouster.

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Snowflake’s IPO could value it as high as $24B, Salesforce and Berkshire to invest

Published September 8, 2020

On the heels of new filings from both Sumo Logic and JFrog, Snowflake, a venture-backed unicorn looking to go public on the strength of its data-focused cloud service, set an initial price range for its IPO.

The $75 to $85 per-share IPO price target values the firm at between $20.9 billion and $23.7 billion, huge sums for the private company. Its IPO could raise more than $2.7 billion for the startup.

Snowflake was last valued at around $12.5 billion when it raised a Series G worth $479 million earlier this year.

Built into those valuation projections are two private placements of stock in Snowflake, $250 million apiece from both Salesforce, the well-known CRM player, and Berkshire Hathaway, better known for its investment returns in the 80s and 90s, Cherry Coke and Charlie Munger’s humor.

Jokes aside, the inclusion of Salesforce in the IPO is notable, but not a shock, but Berkshire taking part in the public market debut of Snowflake, a company with historic losses that are nigh-tyrannical, is.

Here’s the S-1/A text on the setup:

Immediately subsequent to the closing of this offering, and subject to certain conditions of closing as described in the section titled “Concurrent Private Placements,” each of Salesforce Ventures LLC and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. will purchase $250 million of our Class A common stock from us in a private placement at a price per share equal to the initial public offering price. Based on an assumed initial public offering price of $80.00 per share, which is the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, each of Salesforce Ventures LLC and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. would purchase 3,125,000 shares of our Class A common stock. […]

In addition, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has agreed to purchase 4,042,043 shares of our Class A common stock from one of our stockholders in a secondary transaction at a price per share equal to the initial public offering price that will close immediately subsequent to the closing of this offering.

That second paragraph makes it clear that Berkshire is actually looking to snooker even more shares into its corner, for a total purchase price that might scale to more than $500 million.

What is so attractive about Snowflake? TechCrunch wrote a bit about that when the company filed, but the short gist is that it has epic growth, improving gross margins and dramatically curtailed losses. The package adds up to one valuable IPO, and something durable enough to tempt Buffett.

Regardless, what could be the most highly valued IPO of the year — Airbnb depending — here in America just got a lot more exciting.

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How to respond to a data breach

Published September 8, 2020

I cover a lot of data breaches. From inadvertent exposures to data-exfiltrating hacks, I’ve seen it all. But not every data breach is the same. How a company responds to a data breach — whether it was their fault — can make or break its reputation.

I’ve seen some of the worst responses: legal threats, denials and pretending there isn’t a problem at all. In fact, some companies claim they take security “seriously” when they clearly don’t, while other companies see it merely as an exercise in crisis communications.

But once in a while, a company’s response almost makes up for the daily deluge of hypocrisy, obfuscation and downright lies.

Last week, Assist Wireless, a U.S. cell carrier that provides free government-subsidized cell phones and plans to low-income households, had a security lapse that exposed tens of thousands of customer IDs — driver’s licenses, passports and Social Security cards — used to verify a person’s income and eligibility.

A misconfigured plugin for resizing images on the carrier’s website was blamed for the inadvertent data leak of customer IDs to the open web. Security researcher John Wethington found the exposed data through a simple Google search. He reported the bug to TechCrunch so we could alert the company.

Make no mistake, the bug was bad and the exposure of customer data was far from ideal. But the company’s response to the incident was one of the best I’ve seen in years.

Take notes, because this is how to handle a data breach.

Their response was quick. Assist immediately responded to acknowledge the receipt of my initial email. That’s already a positive sign, knowing that the company was looking into the issue.

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The $10B JEDI contract is locked, loaded and still completely stuck

Published September 8, 2020

The other day I took a moment to count the number of stories we’ve done on TechCrunch on the DoD’s $10 billion, decade-long, winner-take-all, JEDI cloud contract. This marks the 30th time we’ve written about this deal over the last two years, and it comes after a busy week last week in JEDI cloud contract news.

That we’re still writing about this is fairly odd if you consider the winner was announced last October when the DoD chose Microsoft, but there is no end in sight to the on-going drama that is this procurement process.

Government contracts don’t typically catch our attention at TechCrunch, but this one felt different early on. There was the size and scope of the deal of course. There was the cute play on the “Star Wars” theme. There was Oracle acting like a batter complaining to the umpire before the first pitch was thrown. There was the fact that everyone thought Amazon would win until it didn’t.

There was a lot going on. In fact, there’s still a lot going on with this story.

Oracle doth protest too much

Let’s start with Oracle, which dispatched CEO Safra Catz to the White House in April 2018 even before the RFP had been written. She was setting the stage to complain that the deal was going to be set up to favor Amazon, something that Oracle alleged until the day Microsoft was picked the winner.

Catz had been on the Trump transition team and so had the ear of the president. While the president certainly interjected himself in this process, it’s not known how much influence that particular meeting might have had. Suffice to say that it was only the first volley in Oracle’s long war against the JEDI contract procurement process.

It would include official complaints with the Government Accountability Office and a federal lawsuit worth not coincidentally $10 billion. It would claim the contract favored Amazon. It would argue that the one-vendor approach wasn’t proper. It would suggest that because the DoD had some former Amazon employees helping write the RFP, that it somehow favored Amazon. The GAO and two court cases found otherwise, ruling against Oracle every single time.

It’s worth noting that the Court of Appeals ruling last week indicated that Oracle didn’t even meet some of the basic contractual requirements, all the while complaining about the process itself from the start.

Amazon continues to press protests

Nobody was more surprised that Amazon lost the deal than Amazon itself. It still believes to this day that it is technically superior to Microsoft and that it can offer the DoD the best approach. The DoD doesn’t agree. On Friday, it reaffirmed its choice of Microsoft. But that is not the end of this, not by a long shot.

Amazon has maintained since the decision was made last October that the decision-making process had been tainted by presidential interference in the process. They believe that because of the president’s personal dislike of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, he inserted himself in the process to prevent Bezos’ company from winning that deal.

In January, Amazon filed a motion to stop work on the project until this could all be sorted out. In February, a judge halted work on the project until Amazon’s complaints could be heard by the court. It is September and that order is still in place.

In a blog post on Friday, Amazon reiterated its case, which is based on presidential interference and what it believes is technical superiority. “In February, the Court of Federal Claims stopped performance on JEDI. The Court determined AWS’s protest had merit, and that Microsoft’s proposal likely failed to meet a key solicitation requirement and was likely deficient and ineligible for award. Our protest detailed how pervasive these errors were (impacting all six technical evaluation factors), and the Judge stopped the DoD from moving forward because the very first issue she reviewed demonstrated serious flaws,” Amazon wrote in the post.

Microsoft for the win?

Microsoft on the other hand went quietly about its business throughout this process. It announced Azure Stack, a kind of portable cloud that would work well as a field operations computer system. It beefed up its government security credentials.

Even though Microsoft didn’t agree with the one-vendor approach, indicating that the government would benefit more from the multivendor approach many of its customers were taking, it made clear if those were the rules, it was in it to win it — and win it did, much to the surprise of everyone, especially Amazon.

Yet here we are, almost a year later and in spite of the fact that the DoD found once again, after further review, that Microsoft is still the winner, the contract remains in limbo. Until that pending court case is resolved, we will continue to watch and wait and wonder if this will ever be truly over, and the JEDI cloud contract will actually be implemented.

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Android 11 has arrived

Published September 8, 2020

Google today announced the launch of Android 11, the latest version of its mobile operating system. After a slightly longer public preview, users who own a select number of Pixel devices (starting with the Pixel 2), OnePlus, Xiaomi, OPPO or realme phones will now see the update roll out to their phones in the coming days, with others launching their updates over the next few months.

Android 11 isn’t a radical departure from what you’ve come to expect in recent years, but there are a number of interesting new user-facing updates here that mostly center around messaging, privacy and giving you better control over all of your smart devices.

At the core of the improved messaging and communication features are improved notifications for conversations from your messaging apps. These now live in a dedicated space at the top of the notification shade and feature a more “people-forward design,” as the company describes it. The new Bubbles API now also makes chat bubbles a core part of the Android messaging experience.

One additional feature Google lists under the communications section is screen recording, which is now finally a built-in tool that lets you record what’s happening on your screen, using either the sound from your mic, the device or both. Until now, you needed third-party apps like AZ Screen Recorder for this (and you will still need these for more advanced features like live streaming, for example).

Image Credits: Google

As for controlling your smart devices, Google notes how you now simply long-press your power button to get access to a new menu that gives you access to device controls (similar to what you’d find in the Google Home app, but with a different design), as well as payment methods and your boarding passes, for example. And yes, you can still restart and power off your device from there, too.

Media controls are getting a redesign, too, with the controls moving out of the notifications and to the quick settings bar instead. From there, it is now also easier to choose where you want to play your audio and video.

Over the last few years, the Android team added a number of privacy features to the operating system, but this clearly remains a moving target. With this update, the focus is on app permissions. It’s now easier to provide an app with one-time permissions to access your microphone, camera and location, helping you to ensure that an app won’t have perpetual access to your location, for example. After you haven’t used an app for a while, Android will also reset your permissions and you’ll have to re-grant access to the app the next time you launch it.

On the enterprise side, Google is also launching some new features to help employees who use some personal apps on their work phone keep their personal profile data and activity out of the hands of their company’s IT departments.

If you own a compatible phone, you should see an upgrade notification for Android 11 soon.

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Apple’s next event is September 15

Published September 8, 2020

The rumors of a new Apple Watch and iPad have thus far proven untrue. One thing that did pan out, however, is an invite for the company’s next big (virtual) event. Apple just announced that its annual fall event will kick off September 15 at 10 a.m. PT.

This may herald the arrival of the iPhone 12, which will finally find the company embracing 5G technology. This was, of course, going to be the year that 5G helped stem slowing smartphone sales — but like practically every other aspect of our lives, COVID put a major dent in those plans. The pandemic has also throw into question whether the company will be ready to announce the new handset in time for next week — or whether it will require yet another virtual event.

The smartphone market has seen further cratering, due to the virus. Though, the iPhone hasn’t taken nearly as big a hit as some of its competition, according to the latest analyst figures. The pandemic has also severely hampered the supply chain for many industries. On an earnings call in July, the company acknowledged that the 12 will be available “a few weeks later.” It was a fairly unprecedented move for the company, but these are fairly unprecedented times.

Almost certainly, it will feature the new Apple Watch. The device continues to be a big seller for the company — not to mention a category-leading product. Most of the rumors continue the wearable’s focus on health monitoring, including the addition of a pulse oximeter and blood oxygen levels. Also key is increased battery life — a necessary addition given the latest version of watchOS’s addition of sleep tracking.

Apple set a standard for live events back at WWDC, and will likely look to clear that bar again after a couple of months’ prep.

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