Airship announced today that it has acquired Apptimize, an A/B testing company whose customers include Glassdoor, HotelTonight and The Wall Street Journal.

Formerly known as Urban Airship, the more concisely named Airship has built a platform for companies to manage their customer communication across SMS, push notifications, email, mobile wallets and more.

It says that by acquiring Apptimize, it can help customers test the impact of their messages. That means integrating Apptimize’s testing capabilities into the Airship platform, but the company says it will also continue to support Apptimize as a standalone platform.

“By combining Apptimize mobile app and web testing with Airship’s deep insight into customer engagement across channels, marketers and developers can focus innovation on the most critical areas while creating the seamless end-to-end experiences customers really want,” said Airship president and CEO Brett Caine in a statement.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Apptimize had raised a total of $18.6 million from US Venture Partners, Costanoa Ventures and others, according to Crunchbase.

Airship says it will be bringing over 19 Apptimize team members (a little less than two-thirds of the startup’s total workforce) across engineering, customer service and sales.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Airship acquires A/B testing company Apptimize

Peloton, the well-funded maker of internet-connected stationary bikes and treadmills, has finally revealed documents for its upcoming initial public offering. The business previously submitted a confidential draft submission of its S-1 statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June.

The New York-based company, which plans to raise $500 million in its Nasdaq offering, will trade under the ticker symbol PTON.

Peloton reported $915 million in total revenue for the year ending June 30, 2019, an increase of 110% from $435 million in fiscal 2018 and $218.6 million in 2017. Its losses, meanwhile, hit $245.7 million in 2019, up significantly from a reported net loss of $47.9 million last year.

The company has reached 1.4 million total community members, defined as any individual who has a Peloton account.

Peloton customers subscribe to the company’s digital library of fitness content, streamed live and on-demand, for $39 per month, in addition to purchasing its hardware, which costs $2,200 to $4,295 apiece. The company says 58 million workouts were completed by Peloton users in fiscal 2019, while its paying subscriber base reached an all-time high of 511,202.

As for subscription revenue, Peloton reports $181 million for fiscal 2019, up from $80 million last year.

Envisioning a world in which 67 million households own connected fitness equipment, Peloton co-founder and chief executive officer John Foley writes in the S-1 that “Peloton sells happiness.”

“Peloton is so much more than a Bike — we believe we have the opportunity to create one of the most innovative global technology platforms of our time,” writes Foley. “It is an opportunity to create one of the most important and influential interactive media companies in the world; a media company that changes lives, inspires greatness, and unites people.”

Peloton, founded in 2012, raised $550 million in venture capital funding last year at a valuation of $4.15 billion. The startup, which initially struggled greatly to convince venture capitalists of its vision, has since inspired a new wave of fitness tech companies to launch, including a smart mirror company appropriately named “Mirror.”

In total, Peloton has raised $994 million in venture capital funding, according to PitchBook. Its S-1 filing lists CP Interactive Fitness (5.4% pre-IPO stake) — an entity connected to the private equity firm Catterton — TCV (6.7%), Tiger Global (19.8%), True Ventures (12%) and Fidelity Investments (6.8%) as principal stakeholders, or investors with at least a 5% stake in the company.

Goldman Sachs & Co. and J.P. Morgan Securities are managing the IPO as lead underwriters.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Peloton files publicly for IPO

World-mapping computer vision startup 6D.ai is expanding support to new devices as its augmented reality platform exits beta.

The SF startup launched its beta in October and is now ready to let developers ship apps as it launches pricing for its services. The pay-as-you-go subscription rates for 6D move from a free tier to $20-$50 per app based on the number of map download calls that users prompt. 6D will have custom-pricing for customers ushering in more than 50,000 map downloads.

The startup boasts Autodesk, Nexus Studios and Accenture among its customers.

The company’s platform has previously been confined to iOS devices, but today, 6D announced that it is launching private beta support for Android phones and lightweight headsets.

Moving to the fractured Android platform presents more challenges than iOS, but 6D is beginning the rollout with recent ARCore-supported Samsung devices. The company plans to support all ARCore devices running Snapdragon 845 chips and newer.

The company is also announcing a partnership with Qualcomm, which is integrating the company’s tech into what basically seems to be a reference design for AR headset manufacturers. Headsets are a ways from being a central use case for the company’s technology, but 6D is pursuing early partnerships to ensure that future hardware plays nicely with their platform. They have also partnered with Chinese headset-maker Nreal.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | AR mapping startup 6D.ai expands platform as it exits beta

Sebastian Thrun can’t be described easily.

He’s a serial entrepreneur and educator, a computer scientist and inventor. He helped bring self-driving cars out of academia through X, the Google moonshot factory he founded. (That little project is now known as Waymo.) Thrun went on to co-found Udacity, the $1 billion online education startup where he is executive chairman.

Now, Thrun is pushing the “future of transportation” idea beyond self-driving cars. As CEO of Kitty Hawk Corporation, Thrun is working on bringing two aircraft to market — the one-person Flyer and a two-person autonomous taxi called Cora. Kitty Hawk recently formed a strategic partnership with Boeing on Cora and more broadly on urban air mobility, particularly around safety and how autonomous and piloted vehicles will co-exist.

We’re excited to announce that Thrun will be joining us onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF to give a behind the scenes look at Kitty Hawk and what the future of flight might look like.

Disrupt SF runs October 2 to October 4 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Tickets are available here.

Thrun’s visits to Disrupt SF always deliver something new. Who can forget the puppy? This year, we’re focused on flying cars, what they’ll look like and how Kitty Hawk, which is backed by Google’s Larry Page, will deliver on this promise of the future. 

Did you know Extra Crunch annual members get 20% off all TechCrunch event tickets? Head over here to get your annual pass, and then email extracrunch@techcrunch.com to get your 20% off discount. Please note that it can take up to 24 hours to issue the discount code.

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Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun is coming to Disrupt SF