Clubhouse has become in just two months the place chosen for luminaries like Elon Musk or Drake to count from telepathic monkeys to stock market valuations. But the real winner of the stratospheric rise of the audio-chat app is a loss-making Shanghai start-up called Agora Inc.
Agora, known primarily by tech circles as a hard-working but low-profile software tool provider, has risen more than 150% since mid-January, when online talk about how the new networking forum works began to circulate. hottest social networks in the world. This is because the little-known company (now worth nearly $ 10 billion) provides developers with everything they need to create real-time voice and video features within applications: a template known as a software development.
Agora, an ancient Greek for a forum or market, has been publicly linked since its IPO last summer at Clubhouse, although it is not yet clear to what extent the social media forum used its software kit. The decompilation of the Clubhouse app reveals Agora’s name in the code, meaning Clubhouse uses at least part of the Chinese firm’s SDK, according to two engineers familiar with the matter, who asked that it not be named because removing software code violates Apple’s user policies for iOS.
Clubhouse co-founders Paul Davison and Rohan Seth have said in conversations on the app that they use Agora, according to two people who listened to these discussions but asked not to be named because Clubhouse does not speak publicly about its stack of technology. And in an experiment this week, German software engineer Andreas Lehr told Bloomberg News that he analyzed traffic coming out of his phone while connected to Clubhouse and noticed several calls to agora.io.
However, beyond fueling the price of Agora shares, this amorphous bond is beginning to raise concerns about application security. It’s the same vague fear that adheres to most of the companies owned by TikTok ByteDance Ltd. to unpublished suits: that Beijing has the power to not only demand that it hand over data at will, but also force Chinese companies to spy on its name. Agora declined to comment on his relationship with Clubhouse, but said in a statement that privacy and security are taken seriously.
“As in the case of Zoom, Agora continues to run its centralized service in different jurisdictions,” said Suji Yan, founder and CEO of startup Data Privacy Mask Network, which creates a tool for users to post encrypted messages on Twitter and Facebook. “It’s hard for a public corporation like Agora not to respond to a local government’s request.”
The debate over the scope of Agora’s involvement comes even when Beijing seems to be moving against Clubhouse. Many users of the app in China claim that they have not been able to access the service since Monday, after an explosion of discussions over the weekend on taboo topics from Taiwan to Xinjiang.
But it is the surveillance potential that worries international users. Chinese law requires its companies to provide information on request and even collect data on behalf of Beijing, if it is deemed to be in the interests of national security. This, along with accusations by U.S. lawmakers that Chinese companies can build back doors on devices and software that the Communist Party can exploit, is at the center of a growing hostility toward China’s largest technology providers.
Agora’s own customizable tools run on users ’devices as part of client applications like Clubhouse. Agora co-founder Tony Wang has told the media that the company does not store any end-user data, but serves as a “transfer”. But, from a technical perspective, it gets real-time voice data that helps transmit to Clubhouse. It will not be possible to cross-identify with users ’mobile numbers (which in turn unearth their real-world identities) because this data is managed by the Clubhouse itself, according to the two engineers familiar with the matter.
In theory, Chinese operators can verify Agora voice data with other voice data that is linked to real identifications (e.g., those of state-owned Chinese telecommunications operators) as a way to identify activists or dissidents. , said Mask Network. Yan.
“Right now I don’t think the government has the computing power to do that, but that possibility can’t be ruled out for the future,” Yan said. “And cross-referencing voice data linked to the same cell number will filter out more data and cause more potential problems than we thought.”
Launched in 2013 by software engineer Tony Zhao, Agora has become one of the largest providers of real-time communications technology in China, driving big names such as teaching service provider New Oriental Education & Technology Group and l dating application operator The Meeting Group. It has attracted investment from venture capital firms such as GIS, Coatue Management and Morningside of China, which is also one of the first sponsors of the short video application Kuaishou Technology.
Revenue grew 81%, to $ 30.8 million, during the September quarter, when companies outside China contributed more than 20% of sales, executives told analysts during a call subsequent to earnings in November.
Agora himself highlighted China’s complex Internet regulatory regime as a risk factor in its IPO, adding that additional measures may need to be taken to comply with privacy laws or regulations. the European Union GDPR elsewhere. It currently offers products in more than 100 countries.
Still, speculation about the Clubhouse’s Chinese roots hasn’t hurt its global popularity for now, nor has Beijing’s shares.
“The discussions in Chinese that I overheard over the past week were notable in that they addressed issues that are heavily censored in China, while allowing for open debate across the Chinese border,” Graham Webster said. from the Stanford University Center for Cyber Policy.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)