Trash Cam Tops Fancy Toilet for Coolest CES Gadget

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Happy Friday, folks.

How much would you pay to receive a list of fish in the Amazon listed in the style of a Snoop Dogg song?

I think my limit is $26, but Microsoft is high rolling and pushing all of its chips to the center of the table with an investment into Open AI, the group behind the internet-famous Chat GPT tool.

The $10 billion investment values the company at $29 billion. Open AI will also have to pay Microsoft 75% of profits until the company's investment is paid back before Gates' boys take a 49% stake in the organization. Other investors in the company will control an equal 49% stake with just 2% remaining for the original team.

The product separately announced that it's attempting to monetize its services with ChatGPT Professional, an upgraded version of the tool promising no outages and faster, more accurate responses for paying users. @Microsoft, plz don't Elon-ify our new precious internet toy!

The gig AI day continues.

I might be in the minority in having never received a speeding ticket (*viciously knocks on wood*), but speaking for my family, most of us have been issued one or twelve. Pretty soon, though, you might be able to get out of it with the help of a hotshot AI lawyer.

DoNotPay, a startup with a real bone to pick with judges, is having a couple of defendants charged with speeding tickets wear earpieces while pleading their cases. Rather than being told what to do and say by some computer geeks in a van outside, the devices will actually be connected to their own phones, and an AI assistant will feed them instructions after listening to and analyzing what the prosecutor says.

The company has been publishing outlines and scripts for helping people get out of these minor charges and getting refunds from airlines in the past, all part of the company's mission to help underprivileged citizens who are unfairly targeted by the legal system. The company has promised to pay any fine issued during the experiment.

Unless you fear the sun like Edward Cullen or Howie from Benchwarmers, possibly the only good thing about January is finally getting the annual data released from the year before. For example, we finally have a full year's worth of VC trends from 2022:

• Much like the rest of the market, total startup funding dropped 35% YoY from $681B to $445B... This might seem massive, but it's actually still the second highest total in the past decade, showing that the money printer that was 2021 was really the anomaly

• Not all sectors were hit so hard, though. In fact, crypto investing actually doubled to $7B for the year

• The downturn also wasn't uniform across stages. Early stage companies brought in capital pretty easily, while later stage companies really felt the hit from the year before

• The trend worsened throughout the year with Q4 marking the fourth consecutive fundraising downturn. The good news is that firms are sitting on massive amounts of "dry powder" (term for uninvested cash), so it might be the case that once some activity begins to happen, it will spark a wildfire of VC activity

If you feel bad about your own returns from 2022, something tells me that the handsome people at the Swiss Central Bank are feeling even worse. This is after the group reported a $143 billion loss, its largest in its 116 years of operation and the equivalent of 18% of the nation's GDP.

Rather than being from aping into CryptoDickbutts a year too late, the bank actually managed to lose this massive amount of cash through pretty sound investments. Most of it was due to its positions in foreign currencies where it had bet on the franc's sustained low valuation. With the turmoil of inflation rocking financial markets everywhere, Switzerland's "low" 3% inflation was relatively attractive as a safe store of value, driving the value of the national currency up.

@Switzerland, maybe give up de day trading and pick up an application for De McDonald's.

This newsletter has been heavy on the AI... This makes sense given just how hot the industry is right now. If you blink once, you miss billions of dollars of deals and a dozen helpful new tools. I can't cover it all. Luckily, my friends over at Smoking Robot are the experts on all things AI tools. Subscribe to stay up to date on one of the most promising industries in existence.

I'm a gadget guy, so while most people's holidays wrap up with the New Year, mine last a few days longer with the annual CES Conference in Vegas. The Consumer Electronics Show brings together execs and managers from consumer-facing industries from around the globe to the Nevada desert to gamble away company money while betting on red and occasionally tell people about the inventions they brought along in their carry ons.

From self-driving strollers to multi-screened laptops, there was certainly no shortage of sci-fi-esque products. While most of the companies that pitch at this event are large, established ones showcasing their newest capital-intensive products, there were a couple of interesting startups to keep an eye on as well as some larger tech trends emerging from the demo as a whole.

First, auto is big, and everyone from Chrysler to BMW showed off their fanciest new tech. Smart cars were big, with Samsung, LG, and even Amazon offering updates. These systems do things like monitor drivers' faces for signs of drowsiness, check home appliances even while driving, and allow drivers to ask Alexa where the nearest Taco Bell is.

The wackiest one yet was BMW who debuted its own smart car system accompanied with a wraparound AR display and even an option to change the color of the car... Paint jobs were so 2022.

While many of us feel as if we spend all of our time in the car, we do occasionally have to water our plants in our kitchen, and nifty smart home setups were on full display, as well. In recently predicted that Matter (and interoperability more broadly) would be all the rage this year, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how much coverage was given to all of the tech hoping to capitalize on that at CES.

New Matter-compatible devices including smart lights plugs, roller blinds, and a universal hub left attendees golf clapping. In addition to announcing future devices that will work with the protocol, many companies also promised that their older devices will soon be made compatible as well.

There was also a strange abundance of toilet-related innovation. One was a device in the toilet which analyzes pee-ers' urine for nutrient and hormone levels. Another was a toilet seat which could track heart rate and various blood measures. Finally, if you have a $17K budget for your next personal throne, you can get yourself an Alexa-equipped, LED-illuminated, self-washing, automatically-opening toilet called The Numi.

Despite all of the cool tech, one of the products with the potential to be the most impactful (and biggest winner) is one that sits on a trashcan.

More than a third of all food in the world is wasted every year. That's equal to 2.5 billion tons, an unacceptable fact when there are still 828 million people going hungry every single day. This wasted food also has a massive environmental cost, producing 170 million tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the annual emissions of 42 coal-powered plants.

Much of this waste occurs in just the food preparation phase itself, with 14% coming from the food service industry. This would be able to feed 2 billion people and costs restaurants hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Anything to help cut down on this waste would not only save restaurants billions of dollars, but it would also help address two of the biggest issues facing humanity today in hunger and environmental degradation.

Orbisk produces cameras which can be hung in kitchens above trashcans to help reduce this waste. The sensors capture what is being thrown out, when, and in what quantities.

Then, the company analyzes this data for each individual customer and presents them with detailed recommendations on how to reduce their food waste footprint. Customers also get their own individualized dashboard which can track trends to see if internal initiatives are effective. This information can help inform operations, sourcing, and even purchasing decisions.

The Netherlands-based startup helps restaurants save an average of 55K euros every year, representing an average increased profit margin of 2-8%. This has a tremendous impact on business viability given the restaurant industry's very low typical margins.

The company was founded in 2018 but experienced a period of hibernation when the pandemic hit (shocking, I know). However, it was not until the company won 1.2 million euros in funding from Eurostars in late 2020 that the company really began to accelerate its growth. Now, the company's annual revenue is estimated at around $7.8 million.

After having raised both a pre-seed and a seed round in addition to a few government grants, the company has raised approximately $4.01 million. The company has helped restaurants save nearly 290K pounds of waste.

This traction has allowed the company to expand its team, now consisting of 35 full-time employees. It is being used in 200 locations in 10 countries across Europe and even India. The company has its eyes clearly set on further expansion, both in its existing markets and into new ones.

In fact, a major reason for the brand showcasing at CES was to expose itself to the North American market and find partners to help bring its innovative technology to the US. Orbisk also hopes to expand its team to 100 members and its customer base to over 2,000 locations.

The market for this product is also massive. Last year, the food waste management industry was valued at $62.6 billion, and it's expected to nearly double to $116.4 billion in the next decade. This will be driven both by the attractiveness of cost saving potential for restaurants, but also by a growing demand for ESG companies. There will be no shortage of potential customers for Orbisk.

Competitors include companies such as Shelf Engine, Afresh, and Savvie. The former two are much larger, established startups worth more than $60M each. They're also each more geared towards grocery stores as an optimization and restocking tool with a focus on automated ordering software rather than food waste reduction. Savvie is much more comparable in terms of size and mission, but its growth potential is limited by its specialization on bakeries.

The company was founded by Olaf van der Veen, a young but experienced former data consultant, Richard Beks, the CCO with years of operations and business management experience, and Bart van Arnhem, the CTO who combined more than a decade of software engineering experience with a passion for sustainability.

Orbisk also has multiple experts across its growing team tasked with perfecting the hardware components, interpreting data with AI, and managing relations with restaurants. It's encouraging to see such a young team of experienced people working towards solving a societal problem which impacts us all.

It's not just the people within the company that make this product so promising, but also the strong roster of partners in the food sustainability space that have collaborated with the team to help solve the larger problem. Groups such as the International Food Waste Coalition, Start Life, and EIT have all granted Orbisk the stamp of approval which should allow the company to not only grow its brand but even allow the company's leaders to access a large network of experts working on projects in the space.

Orbisk is a heavily value-driven brand. Their page is overloaded with phrases stating the team's commitment to making the world a better place. Having such objective clarity positions the company to succeed when others find themselves drowning in the ambiguity of not having a clear identity.

TLDR: Orbisk is a Dutch foodtech startup tackling the billion dollar problem of service industry food waste with its AI trashcan camera which tracks the type, quantity, and time of disposed food to provide insights to restaurants on how to save food, help the environment, and significantly increase their profit margins. The product is unique, and its strong team and partnerships position the company for significant growth as it attempts to expand to large new markets like the US.

Cheers to another day,

Trey

P.S. Interested in the business of college football? Make sure to check out Pigskin Economics, a once-per-week breakdown of the biggest topics going from the sideline to the executive suite.