Settembre, 2022

When you land in another country after a long flight and turn on your phone, you expect it to just work. Booking a cab, contacting your hotel or letting your loved ones know you arrived safely should be painless. With Google Fi, we make it easy to manage those moments when you’re traveling internationally. And today, we’re announcing several improvements to Fi coverage to help you stay connected on more types of phones and in more places.

Access more international 5G coverage

We’re tripling our international 5G network coverage by adding 5G to 26 more countries and making it available on compatible Samsung phones. So if you’re on the Flexible or Unlimited Plus plan and have a compatible Pixel or a Samsung Galaxy S22 series phone, you can now enjoy 5G speeds in 39 countries.

Even if you’re not using one of those devices, you can still get full-speed 4G coverage with Fi in over 200 countries. If you’re on the Unlimited Plus plan, there are no separate data caps on international coverage — so while you travel, you can use unlimited high-speed data up to 50 GB included in your plan. This is in addition to the fast coverage you already get on all Fi plans, including nationwide 5G[4162af]for supported phones.

We’ll expand 5G coverage to more countries over time so you can stay connected no matter where your travels take you.

Use your iPhone as a hotspot abroad

Our Flexible and Unlimited Plus plans include automatic international coverage in more than 200 countries and territories, with no extra setup required. And if you have an Android phone on either of these plans, you can already use hotspot tethering while abroad. That means you can use your phone as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot to share its internet connectivity with your tablet, laptop or other devices. Now, international hotspot tethering is available on iPhone, too.

Make Wi-Fi calls on your iPhone

If you have an Android phone on Fi and you’re in an area where your cellular coverage may not be as strong, like in a large building or underground on the subway, you can already use Wi-Fi to make phone calls if it’s available. Now, we’re bringing Wi-Fi calling to iPhone.

On both Android and iPhone, if both Wi-Fi and cellular networks are available, Fi will route your call over whichever one gives you the best connection. If you’re traveling abroad, Wi-Fi calling can even help reduce calling costs, depending on the country you’re in.

Get more value from your phone plan

We’re always working to give you even more value, and a few months ago, we announced reduced pricing for our unlimited phone plans and feature updates. With today’s coverage updates, you’ll see no changes to the price of your phone plan.

The Unlimited Plus plan starts at just $40 per month per line for four or more lines, and includes 100 GB of cloud storage with Google One for each person on the plan. If you don’t need international features, the Simply Unlimited plan starts at $20 per month per line for four or more lines. The Flexible plan will continue to help you save if you use less data, at $17 per month per line for four lines for unlimited calls and text, plus $10 per GB for data at home and abroad.

Whether you’re an international traveler or a homebody, all our plans include fast coverage, privacy and security features to protect your personal information, and family features to help you block contact from strangers, set data budgets, share your location with family members and more.

Explore our Fi plans to find the best option for you.

For too long, Black startup founders and Black investors have been locked out of the funding necessary to succeed. In 2020, Black founders raised less than 1% of all venture capital dollars invested in the U.S. This disparity has not only hindered innovation, but also limited opportunities for economic opportunity, wealth generation and upward mobility. That’s why we made a series of commitments in 2020 to improve access to capital for Black founders and funders.

We’re three years into these commitments, and we continue to invest in the Black startup community. In that time, we’ve expanded our Google for Startups Black Founders Fund globally. We have now provided $30 million in non-dilutive cash funding (meaning without taking equity in the startup) and support to entrepreneurs in the U.S., Brazil, Europe and Africa, where earlier this week we announced the second group of recipients to receive funding. We’ve also allocated $100 million to Black-led venture capital firms, startups and the organizations that support them. Today we’re sharing the latest recipients of these respective programs.

The next Google for Startups Black Founders Fund recipients in the U.S.

We’re welcoming 50 more entrepreneurs to the Black Founders Fund. Their businesses are solving important problems. Welfie, for example, provides equitable healthcare to families across the country, and Tanoshi serves tens of thousands of students with educational tools. These companies aren’t just doing good; they’re also growing quickly and building sustainable businesses. Here are a few more founders from this year’s group and their plans for the funding.

In addition to $100,000 in cash funding, founders receive $100,000 in Cloud credits, hands-on support from Googlers and access to mental health and business coaching at no cost. Founders have told us this funding has provided the spark they’ve needed to hire, boost revenues and raise the additional capital critical to their growth. In fact, the recipients of our first $10 million in funding in the U.S. have gone on to raise 13 times that amount — over $139 million in follow-on funding after our investment. With the help of our people, products and resources, we know Google is uniquely positioned to catalyze the growth of Black-led startups.

Investing in more Black-led venture capital funds

A historic scarcity of Black investors has contributed to the sparse funding levels among Black founders. Black investors are more likely to have Black founders in their networks and more likely to empathize with business models serving Black communities. By supporting Black funders we’re able to increase both our reach and impact.

In 2020, Alphabet committed $100 million to invest in Black-led venture capital firms, startups and organizations supporting Black entrepreneurs. Last year, our Alphabet-wide team led by leaders across CapitalG, GV and Google allocated $60 million in capital to six Black-led venture capital firms, as well as Black-owned startups and nonprofit organizations supporting Black entrepreneurship and business. In addition to capital, these investors received training, technology and advisory sessions from experts across Alphabet and Google. Today, we’re sharing the news that we’ve deployed the remaining capital to a number of nonprofit organizations and the following Black-led venture firms:

• Black Tech Nation Ventures: a Pittsburgh-based technology venture fund that is majority Black-owned and majority diverse-invested and focused on wealth creation for untapped markets and underinvested entrepreneurs.
• Collide Capital: a Los Angeles and New York-based 100% Black-owned VC firm aiming to usher in a new era of venture capital where opportunities go to the most deserving, not the most privileged. Building off of the success of their top-quartile Fund Zero of 34 companies, the Collide Capital team has closed a Fund I to invest in founders with the lived experiences, courage, and grit to create solutions for the next generation.
• Concrete Rose: a Bay Area-based investment fund focused on using financial and social capital to build exceptional early-stage companies and close gaps for underrepresented talent. Concrete Rose also received funding during the previous capital allocation announced last year.
• Heirloom Capital Partners: an Atlanta-based investment fund founded by founder-operator and board director Tristan Walker. Heirloom aims to partner with the founders of disruptive, meaningful companies committed to developing culturally connected products and services that improve lives and serve the needs of people of color.
• Serena Ventures: a San Francisco-based investment firm that champions founders whose perspectives and innovations level the playing field for all types of entrepreneurs. Serena Ventures invests in products and ideas that unlock value for investors, doors for founders and opportunities for everyone to live better.
• Share Ventures: a Los Angeles-based investment fund focused on performance management. Share Ventures is a venture studio building the infrastructure to repeatedly discover, validate, and scale new companies.
• Zeal Capital Partners: headquartered in Washington, DC, Zeal serves as a category-specific early-stage investment franchise that partners with exceptional, diverse management teams. Leveraging their market-backed investment discipline coined “Inclusive Investing,” they invest in financial technology and future of work startups that use technology to narrow the wealth and skills gaps.

We’ve seen firsthand how this powerful combination of financial support with mentorship, training, mental health coaching and community contributes to helping fuel innovation, wealth generation and equal access to economic opportunity. And we will continue to find opportunities to support these incredible Black founders and funders. Next up, our Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders, which provides deep technical support for later stage startups, kicks off with its newest group of participants this fall. And later this year, we’ll bring together our Georgia-based Black Founders Fund recipients, investors, partners and more in Atlanta to celebrate those founders and share more about their businesses. We’re looking forward to seeing where these companies go from here.