LA Tech Updates: Disney Earnings Include Big Mulan News; Microsoft Backs Irvine Chipmaker

Leslie Ignacio

Leslie Ignacio is dot.LA's editorial intern. She is a recent California State University, Northridge graduate and previously worked for El Nuevo Sol, Telemundo and NBC and was named a Chips Quinn Scholar in 2019. As a bilingual journalist, she focuses on covering diversity in news. She's a Los Angeles native who enjoys trips to Disneyland in her free time.

LA Tech Updates: Disney Earnings Include Big Mulan News; Microsoft Backs Irvine Chipmaker

Here are the latest updates on news affecting Los Angeles' startup and tech communities. Sign up for our newsletter and follow dot.LA on Twitter for more.

Today:

  • Disney Plus Surpasses 60 Million Subscribers
  • Rocket Lab Boosts Payload Capacity
  • Microsoft Backs Maker of Voice-Activated Chip, Syntiant, in $35M Round

          Disney Plus Surpasses 60 Million Subscribers

          black smartphonePhoto by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash

          Disney's earnings report Tuesday quantified the damage wrought by COVID-19 in the company's third quarter — which was entirely enveloped by the pandemic.

          Each of Disney's four business segments suffered losses except for its direct-to-consumer and international operations, which includes the company's streaming app, Disney Plus.

          The company also released new details about its release plans for the blockbuster live-action film, Mulan.

          First, the revenue figures by segment, compared to 2019's corresponding quarter:

          • Media Networks fell 2% to $6.6 billion
          • Parks, Experiences and Products tumbled 85% to $2 billion
          • Studio Entertainment dropped 55% to $1.7 billion
          • Direct-to-Consumer and International climbed 2% to $4 billion

          Disney Plus now has over 60 million subscribers, the company reported, a milestone Disney had previously announced it hoped to surpass by 2024. Add in ESPN+ and Hulu, and the company's total subscriber count now tops 100 million. Disney chief executive Bob Chapek said these numbers give the company confidence to "pursue even more innovative and bold initiatives as we grow our business."

          The day's headline-grabber: Disney will release Mulan on Disney Plus in most markets where the service is available, including the U.S., rather than premiere it on the big screen. That's a big shock to the movie industry, where the theatrical release window usually gives movie theaters an exclusive several-months period to show films before they reach home viewers. Mulan, which was originally meant to hit theaters in March, is perhaps the highest-profile and biggest-budget film to be released direct-to-consumer. It will be available on September 4th for a price of $29.99.

          Chapek called the decision a "one-off event" rather than a new way of doing business. It was the first call of Chapek's without his predecessor Bob Iger on the line.

          Rocket Lab Improves Payload Capacity

          Rocket Lab increased the payload capacity for its Electron launch vehicle to 600 pounds, far above the 225 kg it could support when the Electron launch vehicle first appeared in 2017.

          "When we created Electron, we set out to develop a launch vehicle that small satellite operators would turn to when they needed a dedicated ride to a unique orbit on their schedule," founder and CEO Peter Beck said in a statement.

          "We're proud to be delivering that capability and continuing to evolve our launch and satellite services to meet the market's ever-changing needs."

          The company attributes the improvement to advanced battery technology.

          The Long Beach-based lab is known for its 3-D printed and electric pump engines, known as Rutherford Engines, which company says are 90% more efficient than traditional gas pump engines. Their printing time: 24 hours.

          Rocket Lab is set to launch again later this month.

          Microsoft Backs Maker of Voice-Activated Chip, Syntiant, in $35M Round

          Microsoft's venture fund M12 led a $35 million investment round in Irvine-based Syntiant, a semiconductor-making company that's produced tiny voice recognition chips — smaller than a flea — that are faster than many others on the market.

          The company, which is also backed by Amazon's Alexa Fund, makes an "always-on voice interface" that reacts to speech. It has already shipped out a million of the units which are put into cellphones, smart speakers, earbuds and laptops.

          The venture capital arm of chip maker Applied Materials, Inc. also joined in the lead for the Series C round, along with Atlantic Bridge Capital, Alpha Edison and Miramar Digital Ventures also joined the round. The company has raised a total of $65 million since it was founded by four veterans of the chip industry.

          "It is a tremendous honor to know that some of the world's leading tech investors are supporting our growth stage, as we deliver our deep learning voice solution to customers across the globe," said Kurt Busch, co-founder and CEO of Syntiant. "We are especially thrilled that production volumes of applications using our neural decision processors are increasing and expect orders to ramp even higher throughout the remainder of 2020.

          It's estimated that the speech and voice recognition market is expected to reach $26.8 billion by 2025, according to report by Meticulous Research.

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          The Influencer-to-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready to Explode

          Nat Rubio-Licht
          Nat Rubio-Licht is a freelance reporter with dot.LA. They previously worked at Protocol writing the Source Code newsletter and at the L.A. Business Journal covering tech and aerospace. They can be reached at nat@dot.la.
          The Influencer-to-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready to Explode
          Evan Xie

          It’s no secret that men dominate the podcasting industry. Even as women continue to grow their foothold, men still make up many of the highest-earning podcasts, raking in massive paychecks from ad revenue and striking deals with streaming platforms worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

          But a new demographic is changing that narrative: Gen-Z female influencers and content creators.

          Read moreShow less
          nat@dot.la

          NASA’s JPL Receives Billions to Begin Understanding Our Solar System

          Samson Amore

          Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

          NASA’s JPL Receives Billions to Begin Understanding Our Solar System
          Evan Xie

          NASA’s footprint in California is growing as the agency prepares for Congress to approve its proposed 2024 budget.

          The overall NASA budget swelled 6% from the prior year, JPL deputy director Larry James told dot.LA. He added he sees that as a continuation of the last two presidential administrations’ focus on modernizing and bolstering the nation’s space program.

          The money goes largely to existing NASA centers in California, including the Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory run with Caltech, Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.

          California remains a hotspot for NASA space activity and investment. In 2021, the agency estimated its economic output impact on the region to be around $15.2 billion. That was far more than its closest competing states, including Texas ($9.3 billion) and Maryland (roughly $8 billion). That same year, NASA reported it employed over 66,000 people in California.

          “In general, Congress has been very supportive” of the JPL and NASA’s missions, James said. “It’s generally bipartisan [and] supported by both sides of the aisle. In the last few years in general NASA has been able to have increased budgets.”

          There are 41 current missions run by JPL and CalTech, and another 16 scheduled for the future. James added the new budget is “an incredible support for all the missions we want to do.”

          The public-private partnership between NASA and local space companies continues to evolve, and the increased budget could be a boon for LA-based developers. Numerous contractors for NASA (including CalTech, which runs the JPL), Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Northrop Grumman all stand to gain new contracts once the budget is finalized, partly because NASA simply needs the private industry’s help to achieve all its goals.

          James said that there was only one JPL mission that wasn’t funded – a mission to send an orbital satellite to survey the surface and interior of Venus, called VERITAS.

          NASA Employment and Output ImpactEvan Xie

          The Moon and Mars

          Much of the money earmarked in the proposed 2024 budget is for crewed missions. Overall, NASA’s asking for $8 billion from Congress to fund lunar exploration missions. As part of this, the majority is earmarked for the upcoming Artemis mission, which aims to land a woman and person of color on the Moon’s south pole.

          While there’s a number of high-profile missions the JPL is working on that are focused on Mars, including Mars Sample Return project (which received $949 million in this proposed budget) and Ingenuity helicopter and Perseverance rover, JPL also received significant funding to study the Earth’s climate and behavior.

          JPL also got funding for several projects to map our universe. One is the SphereX Near Earth Objects surveyor mission, the goal of which is to use telescopes to “map the entire universe,” James said, adding that the mission was fully funded.

          International Space Station

          NASA’s also asking for more money to maintain the International Space Station (ISS), which houses a number of projects dedicated to better understanding the Earth’s climate and behavior.

          The agency requested roughly $1.3 billion to maintain the ISS. It also is increasing its investment in space flight support, in-space transportation and commercial development of low-earth orbit (LEO). “The ISS is an incredible platform for us,” James said.

          James added there are multiple missions outside or on board the ISS now taking data, including EMIT, which launched in July 2022. The EMIT mission studies arid dust sources on the planet using spectroscopy. It uses that data to remodel how mineral dust movement in North and South America might affect the Earth’s temperature changes.

          Another ISS mission JPL launched is called ECOSTRESS. The mission sent a thermal radiometer onto the space station in June 2018 to monitor how plants lose water through their leaves, with the goal of figuring out how the terrestrial biosphere reacts to changes in water availability. James said the plan is to “tell you the kind of foliage health around the globe” from space.

          One other ISS project is called Cold Atom Lab. It is “an incredible fundamental physics machine,” James said, that’s run by “three Nobel Prize winners as principal investigators on the Space Station.” Cold Atom Lab is a physics experiment geared toward figuring out how quantum phenomena behave in space by cooling atoms with lasers to just below absolute zero degrees.

          In the long term, James was optimistic NASA’s imaging projects could lead to more dramatic discoveries. Surveying the makeup of planets’ atmospheres is a project “in the astrophysics domain we’re very excited about,” James said. He added that this imaging could lead to information about life on other planets, or, at the very least, an understanding of why they’re no longer habitable.

          https://twitter.com/samsonamore
          samsonamore@dot.la

          Three Wishes Cereal Co-Founder Margaret Wishingrad on ‘The Power of No’

          Decerry Donato

          Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

          Three Wishes Cereal Co-Founder Margaret Wishingrad on ‘The Power of No’
          Provided by BHE

          On this episode of Behind Her Empire, Three Wishes founder and CEO Margaret Wishingrad talks about creating brand awareness and shares the key component to running a successful business.

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