Technology

NASA and a clutch of startup and established companies are moving forward with plans to transform mobility in urban environments through the Urban Air Mobility Grand Challenge.

If itfully implemented, the new Urban Air Mobility system could enable air transit for things like package delivery, taxi services, expanded air medical services and cargo delivery to underserved or rural communities, the agency said in a statement.

The Grand Challenge series brings together companies developing new transportation or airspace management technologies, the Agency said.

&With this step, we&re continuing to put the pieces together that we hope will soon make real the long-anticipated vision of smaller piloted and unpiloted vehicles providing a variety of services around cities and in rural areas,& said Robert Pearce, NASAassociate administrator for aeronautics, in a statement.

The idea is to bring companies to collaborate and also give regulatory agencies a window into the technologies and how they may work in concert to bring air mobility to the masses in the coming years.

&Our partnership with the FAA will be a key factor in the successful and safe outcomes for industry that we can expect from conducting these series of Grand Challenges during the coming years,& Pearce said, in a statement.

Getting the agreements signed are the first step in a multi-stage process that will culminate in the challengeofficial competition in 2022. There are preliminary technological tests that will take place this year.

&We consider this work as a risk reduction step toward Grand Challenge 1,& said Starr Ginn, NASAGrand Challenge lead. &It is designed to allow U.S. developed aircraft and airspace management service providers to essentially try out their systems with real-world operations in simulated environments that we also will be flight testing to gain experience.&

Partnerships for the challenge fall into three categories:

• Developmental Flight Testing: These are industry partners providing vehicles that will fly in the challenge.

• Developmental Airspace Simulation: Companies will test traffic management services in NASA-designed airspace simulations for urban air mobility.

• Vehicle Provider Information Exchange: These partners are also working closely with NASA to provide information about their vehicles so NASA can prep them for possible flight activities that will occur during the 2022 Grand Challenge.

The Grand Challenge is managed through NASAAdvanced Air Mobility project, which was established in the agencyAeronautics Research Mission Directorate to coordinate urban air mobility activities.

Companies participating in the challenge include:

• Joby Aviation of Santa Cruz, California
• AirMap, Inc., of Santa Monica, California
• AiRXOS, Inc., of Chantilly, Virginia
• ANRA Technologies, Inc., of Chantilly, Virginia
• ARINC Inc., of Cedar Rapids, Iowa
• Avision, Inc., of Santa Monica, California
• Ellis - Associates, Los Angeles, California, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lacuna Technologies, Palo Alto, California
• GeoRq LLC of Holladay, Utah
• Metron Aviation, Inc., of Herndon, Virginia
• OneSky Systems Inc., of Exton, Pennsylvania
• Uber Technologies, Inc., of San Francisco, California
• The University of North Texas of Denton, Texas
• Bell Textron of Ft. Worth, Texas
• The Boeing Company of Chantilly, Virginia
• NFT Inc., of Mountain View, California
• Prodentity, LLC of Corrales, New Mexico
• Zeva Inc., of Spanaway, Washington

Google said in a blog post that it would roll out free access to advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers globally as the company pitches its remote work tools as an option for companies looking to let employees work from home.

Chief executive Sundar Pichai announced the initiative in a tweet on Tuesday.

&As more employees, educators, and students work remotely in response to the spread of COVID-19, we want to do our part to help them stay connected and productive,& the company wrote in its post. &And, as more businesses adjust their work-from-home policies and adopt reduced travel plans in response to COVID-19, we&re helping to ensure that all globally distributed teams can still reliably meet face to face, even if employees are not in the same location.&

Googlemove comes as some of the largest industry conferences and events around the world are cancelling due to fears of the spreading new coronavirus, COVID-19. Major canceled events include: GSMAMobile World Congress and FacebookF8 conference, along with the Geneva Motor Show and the Game Developers Conference.

Itnot just conferences that are closing their doors. Companies are also doing everything they can to encourage remote work. Twitter has encouraged its workers to operate remotely, and they&re not alone. Stripe, Slack, Square and others are all urging their employees to not come in to the office.

Googlepitch to companies and educational institutions during the trial is free access for capabilities, including for larger meetings of up to 250 participants per-call; live-streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain; and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive.

Google is enabling all of its customers to use the enterprise functionality for no additional cost until July 1, the company said in a statement.

&We&re committed to supporting our users and customers during this challenging time, and are continuing to scale our infrastructure to support greater Hangouts Meet demand, ensuring streamlined, reliable access to the service throughout this period.&

The company already has one happy customer for its services in Jack Dorsey and Twitter. The embattled chief executive wrote in a tweet, &We just held our first fully virtual Twitter global all-hands using @Google Meet and @SlackHQ.&

On a day that saw the U.S. Federal Reserve try to flip the only switch it can to light up investor confidence, investors remained unconvinced of the short-term financial prospects of the U.S. and global economies.

All three major indices saw red on Tuesday after a sharp Monday rally partially erased their historically bad week that came before. The see-saw of domestic equities continued for yet another day.

In contrast to yesterdaysharp gains on slim positive news, todaydeclines came on the back of that surprise Fed rate cut of 50 basis points — the first such unexpected reduction since the 2008 financial crisis.

While itnice of the Fed to ease some during a period of uncertainty, the fact that it is cutting rates so sharply ahead of the markettiming expectation implies that things could be worse than previously thought.

There are a host of reasons for investor pessimism. Airline travel and the attendant business spending that goes with it is being sharply curtailed by fears of spreading the COVID-19 coronavirus. No one knows the extent to which supply chain disruptions in China in the first quarter will impact supplies in the second quarter. And the U.S. has yet to fully reckon with the coronavirus& spread, nor does it have a good handle on the extent of the virus& spread within the U.S.

A true cause may be unknowable, but the effect was that stocks got whacked. Herethe butcherbill:

• Dow Jones Industrial Average: -789.37, or 2.96%
• S-P 500: -86.86, or -2.81%
• Nasdaq Composite: -268.08, or -2.99%

The anti-stonking hit techlargest players as well, with Apple falling over 3%, Microsoft falling 4.8%, Alphabet slipping 3.4%, Amazon falling a more modest 2.3% and Facebook slipping the most with a 5.4% decline during regular hours.

SaaS stocks took things particularly hard, off nearly 4% a few hours before closing, the Bessemer cloud and SaaS index wrapped the day off 2.9%, as well. Some companies didn&t take too much damage. Slack lost about a point, and Uber recovered all losses on the day to post a gain.

What could bring about a slowdown to volatility isn&t clear.

This recent market turbulence is not stopping some companies from filing to go public — we&ve seen construction software firm Procore file, along with venture-backed Accolade, just in the last week.

Ita bit gauche to talk about positive economic impacts of what may become a global pandemic, but the novel coronavirus hasn&t been bad news for every company.

Video conference provider Zoom appears to be one beneficiary; after going public in 2019, its share price rose from around $68 at the start of the year to $115 today. Why? As governments lock down cities and close borders — and companies and conferences shift to virtual for the time being — services like Zoom are well-positioned to see increased demand. (Indeed, Zoom announced today that it is rolling out select products to new territories after improving its free service in impacted regions.)

That Zoomshares have appreciated is perhaps not surprising.

The company quickly moved from being a relatively unknown video chat upstart to becoming a celebrated profitable IPO that today is synonymous with its product category in the startup world. Seeing rising investor interest in Zoom merely matches its growing brand; naturally, folks looking for a trade — however that makes your moral center feel — might pile their chips on Zoom.

The rise in Zoomvalue begs two questions: Are future-of-work and remote work-focused startups seeing a global increase in demand? And if so, what impact is that having on their growth? (Are you a startup building remote-work tools? Email me if the outbreak has impacted your growth rates.)

Luckily for you and me, Zoom reports earnings tomorrow. The quarter that Zoom will report, the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2020, stretched from November 1, 2019 through the end of January 2020. So it does include a bit of time in which the novel coronavirus was active, impacting work and perhaps corporate behavior. Obviously, its next quarter will be more interesting, but Zoom should provide guidance for that period. So we&ll get a look at whatahead, even if it is provisional.

What about startups?

If Zoom has a bullish outlook, it could lift other, similar companies.

After Facebook canceled its F8 developer conference and Google itself moved its Cloud Next event in April to a digital-only conference, it doesn&t come as a huge surprise that Google is canceling its I/O developer conference in Mountain View for 2020 as well. The company has sent an email to attendees informing them of the cancellation. The event was originally scheduled to run from May 12 to 14, but because of concerns around the coronavirus, it is now canceling the show.

&Due to concerns around the coronavirus (COVID-19), and in accordance with health guidance from the CDC, WHO, and other health authorities, we have decided to cancel the physical Google I/O event at Shoreline Amphitheatre,& Google said in a statement. &Over the coming weeks, we will explore other ways to evolve Google I/O to best connect with and continue to build our developer community. We&ll continue to update the Google I/O website.&

Unlike with its Cloud Next conference, Google hasn&t announced any plans (yet) to still go ahead with its keynotes and sessions in the form of a remote conference. Googlestatement leaves that option open, though.

All attendees who purchased tickets will receive a refund and they won&t have to enter next yearI/O 2021 lottery to get a ticket. To make up for the economic impact of canceling the event, Google is pledging $1 million to local Mountain View organizations to support small businesses and increase STEM and computer science opportunities in Mountain View schools.

This marks the first time Google has canceled I/O, its flagship developer conference, which it first hosted in 2008. After a few years in San FranciscoMoscone Center, the event moved outdoors to Mountain ViewShoreline Amphitheatre in the companybackyard. Typically, about 5,000 people attend the event, where Google tends to announce both its latest tools for developers, as well as a good number of new consumer-facing features. Last year, for the first time, it also launched a new phone at the event, the Pixel 3a.