Canopy

Canopy was a startup founded by Brian Whitman and other people from Spotify in 2018. It raised $4.5 million from Matrix Partners and E14. Whitman had expressed disappointment with Spotify in regard to user privacy. He had worked at Spotify as a result of it acquiring his company the Echo Nest.

It worked on making machine learning recommendations while not sending user data to themselves (or anyone else), presumably via on-device ML.

The plan was to offer their technology to partners. They did not get any partners, but they did launch their own demo app, Tonic.

Around April of 2020, Canopy was acquired by CNN, a division of WarnerMedia, which is a division of AT&T. Tonic will be shut down, and the team will work on a new CNN team.

Whitman said this: “There has never been a more crucial time to help people discover trusted sources around topics and issues that matter most to them,” said Whitman in a statement. “We’re incredibly excited to join the team at CNN to build some amazing products for their millions of global users.”

This is very similar to what he said about the Echo Nest being acquired by Spotify.

Most startups exist to get acquired. This seems no different.

#business #startups #privacy