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Dinii, a cloud-based restaurant management platform, raises $45M Series B

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Dinii, a cloud-based restaurant management platform, raises $45M Series B

Japan has always been a strong market for bringing technology into the experience of consuming food, and now one of the startups leading on this idea is attracting investors from across the ocean. Dinii, which lets diners order food from restaurants and shops through a mobile platform, has raised $48 million (7.46 billion JPY). Bessemer Venture Partners and Hillhouse Investment Management are leading the investment, with Ecelectic and Flight Deck Capital participating. Notably, this is the first time that Bessemer is investing in a startup in Japan.

Mao Yamada (CEO) and Kazuki Otomo (CTO) started Dinii in 2018 while still students at the University of Tokyo, after working part-time in restaurants to put themselves through school and realizing how outdated those restaurants’ order and delivery systems were.

Dinii originally made its mark as a B2B SaaS business: Circumventing the need for would-be restaurant customers — already operating on thin margins — to take on special devices or other equipment, the pair made a foothold in the market with a lower-cost, cloud-based point-of-sale platform that restaurants could use with whatever phones or other devices they already owned. Now Dinii wants to build on its traction by expanding the financial services it provides to its customers, Yamada told TechCrunch.

“Since we already have a cloud-based POS platform, we believe we will be able to expand to many more product services such as employee management, [restaurants] reservation, and [food] deliveries, and more,” he said.

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Dinii was inspired by Toast, the cloud-based restaurant management system out of the U.S. that also started with POS and payment services (and also happens to have had Bessemer as an early backer). But Yamada says that he has yet to come across any company in Japan with capabilities (data and financial service for restaurants) similar to Dinii’s.

“Having been fortunate to be a key investor in Toast in the U.S., supporting it to become a $13 billion company, we see a similar element of success in Dinii: a strong team led by a young and visionary leader, a large underserved market, and the best all-in-one cloud-based solution,” Bryan Wu of Bessemer Venture Partners said. “We are confident that Dinii will emerge as one of the most prominent SaaS and fintech leaders in Japan.”

The Tokyo-based startup has a cashless payment solution, Dinii Payments, that it hopes to parlay into a bigger financial services product for its customers. “By first providing the cashless solutions, we can eventually move into back office operations, such as invoice settlement, inventory management, salary payouts,” said Yamada.

Another big focus will be services catering to the kinds of employees who tend to work in the restaurants on Dinii’s platform. A large proportion of them work part-time, Jorel Chan, chief of staff at Dinii, told TechCrunch. “They may be students who don’t really have stable jobs, and have poor credit scores, for example,” he said. “More often than not, they can’t wait until the end of the month to get their salary. They probably want daily payments. But there’s no ability to do that today.” One plan Dinii has is to introduce daily payouts for an additional fee.

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Other areas it hopes to break into include insurance, asset management, and loans, to help restaurants manage cash flow and expand their operations.

Restaurant scene in Japan

Most restaurants in Japan mainly use on-site point-of-sale systems. In other words, traditional restaurants work with companies like Toshiba or NEC to rent an on-site POS system for basic operations. These can be costly and limited in their functionality and are not really set up for modern demands such as ordering from mobile apps, paying by QR codes, cashless payments, and cloud-based customer-relationship-management tools, Yamada said.

By putting the POS system on the cloud, Dinii’s customers — restaurants ranging from SMBs to large enterprises — can offer instant capabilities and gather customer data through mobile ordering. Dinii’s technology helps restaurant owners understand which menu items are popular and enables them to communicate with customers through a CRM (customer relationship management) system, send customized coupons to their consumers, and eventually increase revenues,” Yamada explained.

Dinii also leverages an integration with Line, the popular messaging app, which allows local restaurants to collect customer data such as favorite menu items, gender, last visit, and the number of visits.

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The Japanese startup monetizes in two ways: by charging software subscription fees for its cloud-based POS system and fees for payments made through the cashless platform integrated into the POS system.

More than 900,000 restaurants are in Japan, and the food service market in the country is projected to increase to roughly $475 billion by 2030, up from $214.35 million in 2022. Dinii currently has around 3,000 restaurants across Japan, which is barely 0.5% penetration, so it has huge upside potential for this, Yamada noted.

“With more than 20 million [registered] users making food orders across over 3,000 restaurants, you can imagine how much traffic volume of data passes through Dinii’s platform every single second. Without revealing too much, we are currently building up capabilities for proprietary data solutions for restaurants that would help them in the future,” Yamada continued.  

Expansion to Southeast Asia

The Tokyo startup also has operations in Osaka — covering the country’s two biggest markets for restaurants. But with the new capital, it plans to expand to other Japanese cities like Nagoya and to countries across Southeast Asia such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Dinii’s workforce has quadrupled from 30 employees in 2022 to 130, and it will also be hiring more as it grow geographically.

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The startup has raised 8 billion JPY, equivalent to about $55 million, since its inception. Its previous investors include ANRI and Coral Capital.

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Raspberry Pi Blade crams 64 ARM cores and NVMe in 1U!

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Raspberry Pi Blade crams 64 ARM cores and NVMe in 1U!



Uptime.Lab’s 1U Blade is a rack-mountable Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4-based server.

UPDATE: The Compute Blade will be on Kickstarter—here’s the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/uptimelab/compute-blade?ref=bfyfme (or check out https://computeblade.com)

Capable of cramming 64 ARM CPU cores in 1U of rack space, this blade could make a powerful Pi cluster. And built-in features like PoE+ support, an M.2 slot for NVMe SSDs, and a TPM 2.0 module make it the best performing Pi server, ever!

Follow Uptime.Lab on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uptime.lab/
Get notified when the Kickstarter is live: https://uplab.us6.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=fdbd31aa8fdf802b1edc668f9&id=2de992b8de
Kickstarter link: Coming soon!

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NVMe Boot on the Pi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Womn10v71s

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/geerlingguy
Sponsor me on GitHub: https://github.com/sponsors/geerlingguy

#RaspberryPi #Blade #ARM

Contents:

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00:00 – What makes a good Pi server?
00:45 – Uptime Lab’s Blade
01:40 – Blade Features
03:27 – Powering it up
04:23 – Testing NVMe and USB
05:25 – Special Features: TPM 2.0
06:13 – Special Features: ID LED
06:41 – 1U Enclosure
07:17 – Prototype to Production
08:14 – Outtro and Outtakes .

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AMD launches Epyc embedded processors for compute-intensive, low-energy devices

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AMD Epyc Embedded chips are hitting their fourth generation.

AMD Epyc Embedded chips are hitting their fourth generation.


AMD launched its Epyc Embedded 8004 Series processors, driving its high-performance, low-wattage computing into the embedded market. Over the years, AMD has set the industry standard with its Epyc embedded processors offering exceptional performance, efficiency, connectivity, and innovation for networking, storage, and industrial applications. Toda…Read More

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Beta Technologies unveils first passenger carrying electric aircraft

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Beta Technologies unveils first passenger carrying electric aircraft

Beta Technologies unveiled Monday the next electric aircraft in its lineup — a passenger-carrying version of its ALIA vertical takeoff and landing and fixed-wing vehicles.

Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles don’t rely on a runway, whereas fixed-wing aircraft do.

The Vermont-based startup, which has raised over $860 million in equity to date from heavy hitters like Amazon’s The Climate Pledge, is pursuing electric aviation a little differently, and more discreetly, than others in the industry. Unlike competitors Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation, Beta doesn’t want to operate its own urban air taxi network. Rather, Beta has positioned itself as the OEM that will sell aircraft and charging solutions to a host of customers. 

So far, Beta has secured customers across defense, cargo delivery, and medical logistics – like United Therapeutics, UPS, Air New Zealand, and the U.S. Air Force – with a plan to launch in those markets by 2025. Customers like Archer rely on Beta’s charging network, which consists of 34 active sites, with more than 50 sites in progress. 

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“Flying passengers has always been a part of the plan,” Kyle Clark, Beta’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. “We designed everything in the aircraft from a safety and space configuration standpoint to accommodate passengers. It just made more sense, from a certification and customer acquisition standpoint, to first focus on medical and cargo, and then go to passenger,” he added.

Beta hasn’t yet built a full passenger-carrying prototype, but the concept relies on much of the same design and engineering as Beta’s existing models. Clark says this creates a streamlined path to certification, manufacturing, and commercialization. 

The biggest notable differences are that the passenger variant has more windows so people can look outside, and the interior features five seats plus a cabin for the pilot, a luggage compartment, and “some accouterments for people in the back to be comfortable,” like light switches and ventilation controls, according to Clark.  

Image Credits: Beta Technologies

All versions will be able to carry around 1,400 pounds, and in some cases they already are. Beta’s aircraft has already tested cargo-carrying missions for the military, and Clark says the startup has more flight hours than any other company in the industry. 

“I contend that we will have tens, if not hundreds, of cargo aircraft flying with tens of thousands of flight hours, generating the most important thing in aviation, which is trust in the safety of the product, before we start flying passengers,” Clark said.

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“I believe this strategy will actually have us flying passengers before anybody else because of the trust that we developed and the regulatory path we’ve chosen to get us through those wickets faster.”

Clark estimates that Beta’s aircraft are 13 to 14 months away from Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification. Today, Beta has secured a “market survey ticket,” which allows the startup to fly with potential customers so their pilots can test and evaluate the aircraft. 

And that strategy has already helped secure customers in the passenger arena. On-demand aviation startup Blade, which today helps the wealthy book helicopters or seaplanes to beat the traffic, placed their financially backed order for up to 20 of Beta’s eVTOLs in 2021. Other customers include aviation company LCI, which will use Beta’s aircraft to transport guests to the Aria Hotels in Greece, and Helijet, which has placed a firm order on four eVTOLs with an option to buy four more for cargo and passenger missions. 

Beta is gearing up to fill those orders and more over the next couple years. The company built its first aircraft in a prototype facility, but in January, Beta opened the doors to its production facility in South Burlington. Clark said the FAA has kept a tight watch on production, which means “it’s not rocket fast,” but he expects the facility to produce hundreds of aircraft in the next year and a half. In four years, Clark expects the facility to hit a maximum capacity of 300 aircraft per year. 

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Clark is most excited about a future in which electric aviation can bring down the cost of regional flight significantly, allowing people who normally have to drive two to three hours to reach a commercial airport to instead get there within minutes without breaking the bank. 

He noted that short regional flights today are so expensive because jet engine fuel is pricey and so are the recurring maintenance costs for jet engines themselves. 

“When you go from a turbine or jet-powered aircraft to an electric aircraft, you can effectively half the cost of carriage,” Clark said. “That opens up about 10 times more markets for transporting people.”

Correction: A previous version of this article stated Beta had 20 charging sites active based on an old number the company provided to TechCrunch.

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Dell PowerEdge R920 Rack Server Being Tested By ShopEzIT

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Dell PowerEdge R920 Rack Server Being Tested By ShopEzIT



Dell PowerEdge R920 Rack Server

Here is the newest and best server by Dell

Dell R920

We have the best price on Dell Servers

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please give us a call or email

(818) 477 3893

Nareg@shopezit.com

www.shopezit.com .

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eBay is off the hook for selling harmful products

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eBay is off the hook for selling harmful products

A US government lawsuit accusing eBay of selling almost 350,000 polluting and environmentally harmful products — including pesticides and “defeat” devices that let motor vehicles evade emission controls — has been dismissed by a federal judge. On Monday, District Judge Orelia Merchant ruled that eBay isn’t liable for items that users sell on the digital marketplace due to civil protections that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides for online platforms.

Under Section 230, online platforms cannot be held responsible for hosted content unless “it assisted in the development of what made the content unlawful.” The lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice last year alleged that eBay had violated the Clean Air Act (CAA) by knowingly selling, or offering unlawful products for sale.

Merchant dismissed the DOJ’s claim, ruling that eBay “must own or possess an item” to be considered a seller. Merchant also ruled that administrative and technical support that eBay provides to sellers, such as messages, email notifications, and processing payments, doesn’t materially contribute to the “alleged unlawfulness” of illegal products.

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42U Network & Server Cabinet: GR800-Series | FS

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42U Network & Server Cabinet: GR800-Series | FS



To meet the increasing high-density cabling, FS.COM tailors this multifunctional 42U network & server cabinet ( https://goo.gl/FwMXLT ) for you. This 42U GR800-Series cabinet will be equipped with PDU brackets and vertical cable managers for your flexible cable management. Watch this video, we will show you its features and application scenario. Also, the proper matching equipment suggestions have also been provided by our professional experts. .

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