Tech News
Tech News and Analysis from around the web
Annie Njanja / TechCrunch:
Anchor, which offers cloud-based autonomous billing tools for companies, raises a $15M seed led by Rapyd Ventures and others — Companies often spend an incommensurate amount of time chasing overdue payments, which distracts them from their core businesses, and brings forth cash flow issues.
Alexander Osipovich / Wall Street Journal:
24 Exchange, which wants to let users trade stocks 24/7 like crypto, raises $14.25M led by Point72 Ventures; SEC approval or rejection is expected in 2022 — 24 Exchange aims for round-the-clock stock trading; Mr. Cohen's Point72 Ventures is leading a funding round
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Vancouver-based Klue, which uses data to help companies improve sales, raises a $62M Series B led by Tiger Global, following a $15M Series A in September 2020 — Klue, an AI-powered competitive enablement platform, has raised $62 million in Series B funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from Salesforce Ventures.
Michael Pooler / Financial Times:
Brazilian neobank Nubank lowers its IPO range from $10-$11 to $8-$9, targeting a $41.5B valuation and raising up to $2.6B — Implied $41.5bn valuation would make lender most valuable financial institution in its home country — Nubank has scaled back its planned initial public offering in New York …
Mark Sweney / The Guardian:
Niels Juul, who produced Scorsese's The Irishman, launches NFT Studios and plans to raise $8M-$10M to fund a feature film by selling 10,000 NFTs — Niels Juul hopes to raise up to $10m and says he wants to ‘democratise’ antiquated funding system — The executive producer behind blockbusters …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Indian food delivery service Swiggy is raising $600M-$700M at a $10.5B valuation led by Invesco, up from $5.5B in April — Indian food delivery service Swiggy is raising $600 million to $700 million in a round led by Invesco that's due to close this month, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Maria Armental / Wall Street Journal:
GlobalFoundries reports Q3 net revenue rose 56% YoY to $1.7B as profit reached $5M, up from a $293M loss YoY, in its first post-IPO earnings report — The financial report was the company's first as a public company, which started trading publicly in October
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Spain-based Jobandtalent, a marketplace matching temps with employers, raises a $500M Series E at a $2.35B post-money valuation led by Kinnevik — Spain's Jobandtalent, a “workforce marketplace”-cum-digital temping agency which uses AI to match workers to casual labor gigs in sectors like warehousing …
Joanna Ossinger / Bloomberg:
Crypto.com says it plans to acquire the North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex) and a ~40% stake in Small Exchange from IG Group for $216M in cash — - Small Exchange is backed by Citadel, Peak6, Jump Capital — Cash deal is expected to be completed in first half of 2022
Ross Young / Display Supply Chain Consultants:
Foldable smartphone shipments reached a record 2.6M units in Q3, up 480% YoY, with Samsung accounting for 93% of shipments followed by Huawei at 6% — Austin, TX - — Q3'21 was a record quarter for foldable smartphone shipments as expected, given the successful launch of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 …
Bloomberg:
Sources: China plans to ban companies from going public on foreign markets through variable interest entities, closing a loophole used by its tech companies — China is planning to ban companies from going public on foreign stock markets through variable interest entities …
Steven Levy / Wired:
Q&A with Frances Haugen on becoming a whistleblower, leaving Facebook after moving to Puerto Rico due to health, Meta, plans to run simulated social networks — When the Wall Street Journal launched a series of explosive articles based on internal Facebook documents in September, people naturally wondered about the source.
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Sydney-based Harrison.ai, which uses AI-based tools to help improve the diagnosis process in health care, raises a $92.3M Series B led by Horizons Ventures — Harrison.ai, a Sydney-based company that creates medical devices with AI technology, announced today it has raised $129 million AUD …
Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
The “omicron” crypto token soaring in value following news of the COVID-19 variant is yet another example of how cryptocurrencies create artificial scarcity — Also ghost kitchens, call spreads and RugSeekers. — Omicron — The basic innovation of crypto is the production of artificial scarcity.
Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
Qualcomm plans to integrate Google's Vertex AI NAS into its Neural Processing SDK, starting with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, to automate the creation of AI models — The tech giants will collaborate on neural networking to speed up and optimize AI models. — KONA, HAWAII: Google Cloud …
I'm glad I read the book about the 1918 pandemic last year, because I understand something that most people should and don't. Mutations aren't necessarily bad, in fact over time the mutations will make the virus less deadly. It's all about evolution and survival of the fittest. Mutation is how evolution happens. A new variant shows up and if it is in some way more likely to propagate and survive than previous variants, it will stick around and thrive, and continue to mutate. If a virus kills its host -- that's not good for survivability. So what happens over time, a virus like Covid becomes less harmful and more transmissible, that's how it becomes "the flu." The 1918 influenza virus is still with us today. But it doesn't kill people in the numbers that it did a hundred years ago. Over time Covid will get less deadly too.
On Thursday it'll be two weeks since I got the Tesla Model 3. Here are some thoughts.
I haven't been using the autopilot more than just trying it, seeing it veer into a head on collision, I quickly took control. i'm pretty sure it wasn't actually going to kill me, it was a simple situation, Highway 28 from Boiceville to West Hurley, a wide road, easy for the autopilot.
But here's the thing -- like the self-driving features of the Subaru, the self-driving features of the Tesla are always there, ready to take over if it thinks you're fucking up. It did a thing weird on a drive out my little dirt road, it sounded an alarm that I was driving off the road. loud screeching sound. I was doing no such thing.
The thing that really distinguishes the Tesla as far as i'm concerned isn't the power, or battery, those are nice -- but the full integration of the computer system in the experience. The Subaru is a hodgepodge of different systems that don't know about each other. Very confusing. i've gotten to just using Car Play for everything and ignoring the rest.
What this says to me is that in a couple of years, there will be a Mercedes EV with a big screen like Tesla's and no dashboard again like Tesla. And the same or better integration. It'll be running Apple, Amazon or Google software. and it will be as good as Tesla's software because they hire out of the same talent pool.
Heather Cox Richardson confirmed something that I had been wondering about -- do Congresspeople in the US, esp Republicans, worry about the safety of their families if they were to act independently of Trump. I was sure that some of them do, but I had never heard this reported on the news. So far they only talk about threats involving losing their jobs. But if the threats were about physical well-being, that's another thing. That's how it works in Russia for journalism and politics. The one year I was at Davos I spent some time hanging out with Russian journalists. This was in 2000, when Russia had supposedly liberalized. I went to a big session in the main hall where one of the officers of the Russian government was speaking, someone who I had been introduced to by my sponsor, the person who got me my white badge (a journalists' credential, the best one available, got me entry to every session, unlike most journalists attending). At one point I stood up and asked a challenging question of the Russian. He gave me a typical evasive answer. But here's the thing -- after I did that, none of my Russian journalist friends would talk to me. Obviously their political system didn't work like ours. Today when there is no pretense at freedom in Russia, I imagine it's much worse. And according to HCR's reporting, we're headed down that path in the US. The next year seems to be our last chance to turn it around.
I hear there's some kind of controversy over a frying pan that VP Harris bought. I also hear this is getting a lot of play on the news. My filters must be working, because all I've heard of it are ridiculous rebuttals from people trying to argue somewhat logically that this is an illustration of old white men in charge of the Republican Party. I'm sure that's not it. It's marketing. They are always focus-group-testing bullshit like this to see if the people will pick it up, and then they shoot blasts of this bullshit at news people, and 1-in-10 of the focus-grouped bullshit gets picked up by the press. It's worth it, because it keeps the real news off the air, and helps people forget that Trump paid for his golf vacations at his own resorts with taxpayer money. Hundreds of millions of dollars. There's no logic to any of this. And they're not old white menu, that's bullshit. It's just marketing people, and computers.
I didn't give up on the Beatles on Disney. It is totally worth watching. The Beatles were falling apart, but all they needed was a little help. A manager. Someone to keep the assholes away. So many jerks were wasting their time and talent. And someone to make sure that George Harrison felt loved, and they were focusing on the music, which is what they were so incredibly great at. At one point, John Lennon is getting briefed on some bullshit plan for a concert, it's all nonsense, and in the background Paul McCartney is working out the music and lyrics for one of the greatest songs of all time -- Let It Be. I always wondered what their collaboration was like, they really did like each other. Such a shame. They had something incredible, and they just needed a little help.