Eat Just, the plant-based food startup, is launching a new Asian subsidiary through a partnership with Proterra Investment Partners Asia. The agreement includes building Eat Just’s first factory in Asia, which will be based in Singapore.

As part of the deal, Proterra, which focuses on agri-tech, will invest up to $100 million in the facility, while Eat Just will invest $20 million. The new subsidiary, called Eat Just Asia, will focus on creating a fully-integrated supply chain, working with manufacturers and distributers for Eat Just’s flagship product, vegan egg substitute Just Egg, which is made from mung beans.

In addition to Just Egg, Eat Just and Proterra said they are also in talks to expand their partnership to include the development of plant-based meat alternatives.

Eat Just Asia also received support from the Singaporean government’s Economic Development Board.

Eat Just’s current distribution partners in Asia include SPC Samlip in South Korea, Betagro in Thailand and an as-of-yet undisclosed new partner in China, where Just Egg is already available on Alibaba’s Tmall and JD.com.

Based in San Francisco and formerly known as Hampton Creek, Eat Just has received total of about $220 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Its investors include Khosla Ventures and Li Ka-Shing.

Eat Just announced in March that it will focus on global expansion this year, with partnerships in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Over the following months, it announced a succession of distribution deals for Just Egg, including ones with American food manufacturer and distributor Michael Foods, a subsidiary of Post Holdings, and European plant-based food manufacturer Emsland Group.

In Asia, demand for plant-based protein foods grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, due in part to concerns about the safety of meat and other animal products. In an April 2020 Reuters article, Eat Just said sales of Just Egg on JD.com and Tmall had grown 30% since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak.

Other plant-based food startups focusing on Asian markets include Impossible Foods, which announced funding of $500 million in March to expand in Asia; Karana, a Singaporean startup that makes meat substitutes from jackfruit; and Malaysian-based Phuture Foods, which uses a variety of plants to make pork substitutes.

Source

Video calls have increased due to the coronavirus pandemic, and companies such as Facebook and Zoom have taken full advantage of that. Earlier in the year, WhatsApp increased the group call limit from four to eight people. Now, it seems like the chat app will soon introduce the calling feature on its desktop app.

According to renowned WhatsApp sleuth WABetaInfo, the company has started creating the feature in one of its test builds. The under-development feature includes support for voice and video calls for both individual contacts and groups.

[Read: Google Assistant displays get a new UI, a dark theme, and more features]

Screenshots posted by WABetaInfo suggest that when you’ll call someone through the WhatsApp desktop app, a new window will open up with controls to manage the call.

It’s important to note that you can already make video calls to people through WhatsApp for desktop if you use the shortcut to create Facebook Messenger Rooms. However, the upcoming functionality will bank on WhatsApp’s own infrastructure to make calls.

Since it’s an under-development feature, we don’t know when WhatsApp will roll out support for calls on its desktop app. We’ll keep an eye out for you when this feature becomes available to everyone.

Source

SK Hynix, one of the world’s largest chip makers, announced today it will pay $9 billion for Intel’s flash memory business. Intel said it will use proceeds from the deal to focus on artificial intelligence, 5G and edge computing.

“For Intel, this transaction will allow us to to further prioritize our investments in differentiated technology where we can play a bigger role in the success of our customers and deliver attractive returns to our stockholders,” said Intel chief executive officer Bob Swan in the announcement.

The Wall Street Journal first reported earlier this week that the two companies were nearing an agreement, which will turn SK Hynix into one of the world’s largest NAND memory makers, second only to Samsung Electronics.

The deal with SK Hynix is the latest one Intel has made so it can double down on developing technology for 5G network infrastructure. Last year, Intel sold the majority of its modem business to Apple for about $1 billion, with Swan saying that the time that the deal would allow Intel to “[put] our full effort into 5G where it most closely aligns with the needs of our global customer base.”

Once the deal is approved and closes, Seoul-based SK Hynix will take over Intel’s NAND SSD and NAND component and wafer businesses, and its NAND foundry in Dalian, China. Intel will hold onto its Optane business, which makes SSD memory modules. The companies said regulatory approval is expected by late 2021, and a final closing of all assets, including Intel’s NAND-related intellectual property, will take place in March 2025.

Until the final closing takes places, Intel will continue to manufacture NAND wafers at the Dalian foundry and retain all IP related to the manufacturing and design of its NAND flash wafers.

As the Wall Street Journal noted, the Dalian facility is Intel’s only major foundry in China, which means selling it to SK Hynix will dramatically reduce its presence there as the United States government puts trade restrictions on Chinese technology.

In the announcement, Intel said it plans to use proceeds from the sale to “advance its long-term growth priorities, including artificial intelligence, 5G networking and the intelligent, autonomous edge.”

During the six-month period ending on June 27, 2020, NAND business represented about $2.8 billion of revenue for its Non-volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG), and contributed about $600 million to the division’s operating income. According to the Wall Street Journal, this made up the majority of Intel’s total memory sales during that period, which was about $3 billion.

SK Hynix CEO Seok-Hee Lee said the deal will allow the South Korean company to “optimize our business structure, expanding our innovative portfolio in the NAND flash market segment, which will be comparable with what we achieved in DRAM.”

Source