Latest Techmeme Headlines Today
June 19, 2021
- Koo, the Indian microblogging app that has positioned itself as a government-friendly alternative to Twitter in India, is taking a similar approach in Nigeria (Rest of World)
- PayPal will increase US sellers' costs to 3.49% plus $0.49 per transaction on its payment products starting Aug. 2, up from 2.9% plus $0.30 on most transactions (Reuters)
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Dealroom and Tech Nation: UK becomes the third country, after the US and China, to have 100 or more tech unicorns; 34% of UK unicorns are fintech companies (Michiel Willems/cityam.com)
- WH unveils new US broadband map that uses data from FCC, Ookla, Microsoft, and more, showing a greater gap in internet access, as it pushes for more spending (Margaret Harding McGill/Axios)
- US appeals court rules Huawei can't subsidize the sale of its 5G tech with federal funds earmarked for US broadband development, upholding a 2019 FCC order (Laurel Brubaker Calkins/Bloomberg)
- Dealroom: European startups have raised €43.8B in the first six months of 2021, surpassing the record €38.5B raised in 2020 (Ryan Browne/CNBC)
- Goldman Sachs has begun trading bitcoin futures in partnership with Mike Novogratz's merchant bank Galaxy Digital (Hugh Son/CNBC)
- PitchBook: $17B have been invested in crypto startups this year, including $10B of digital assets from Block.one to capitalize crypto exchange Bullish Global (Brandon Kochkodin/Bloomberg)
- YouTube says it is rolling out picture-in-picture support for YouTube Premium users on iOS and plans to launch the feature for all iOS users in the US (Sami Fathi/MacRumors)
- California launches a digital vaccination record built using the open-source SMART Health Card Framework, with a QR code to show COVID-19 vaccine record (Emily DeRuy/Mercury News)
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Roku says from May 20 to June 3, more Roku viewers streamed a Roku Original than Quibi users who streamed Quibi shows during the nine months of Quibi's lifetime (Dade Hayes/Deadline)
- The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, which ends Big Tech acquisitions, could backfire in several ways, like discouraging startups' productive behavior (Alex Kantrowitz/Big Technology)
- Fiddler AI, which makes tools to help engineers monitor machine learning systems, raises $32M Series B led by Insight Partners (Jonathan Vanian/Fortune)
- Two major Chinese banks now allow customers to exchange digital yuan for fiat at 3,000+ ATMs in Beijing, in an expansion of China's digital currency experiment (Andrew Asmakov/Decrypt)
- Sources: EU antitrust regulators plan to open a formal investigation into Google's digital advertising business before the end of the year (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)
- Study: 80% of organizations that paid a ransom were hit by a second ransomware attack; 66% orgs cited revenue losses after the attack and 53% cited brand damage (VentureBeat)
- Ukrainian police arrest members of ransomware gang Clop, the first time that a national law enforcement agency has carried out mass arrests of such a gang (Hannah Murphy/Financial Times)
- European companies' reluctance to offer free software and services have resulted in the region being over-dependent on US and others for communication platforms (Bert Hubert's writings)
- Social health activists in India have been tasked with curbing COVID-19 misinformation, with many workers using WhatsApp to stop its spread (Sanket Jain/The Verge)
- OnePlus CEO Pete Lau says OnePlus and Oppo will have more integrations moving forward, further hinting at a possible merger (Sam Byford/The Verge)
- PUBG Mobile returns to Google Play Store in India with new name Battlegrounds Mobile India, after being banned for nine months on national security grounds (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
- Senate confirms ex-NSA director Chris Inglis as national cyber director; Congress still has not funded his office, despite authorizing him to hire 75 employees (Eric Geller/Politico)
- Splash Financial, a digital lending platform specializing in student loan refinancing, raises $44.3M Series B led by DST Global, Citi Ventures, and more (Jeremy Nobile/Crain's Cleveland Business)
- APK teardown of new version of Google Play Services suggests that Google is working to build an Android device network like Apple's Find My (Mishaal Rahman/XDA Developers)
- Seattle-based Leafly, which runs an online marketplace for cannabis, raises $23M from existing investors; Leafly has 120M annual visitors (Laurel Deppen/GeekWire)
- 23andMe goes public via merger with a Richard Branson SPAC, raises $600M in IPO at a valuation of $3.5B; shares were up 21% on its first day at Nasdaq (Eric Rosenbaum/CNBC)
- JPMorgan buys UK-based digital wealth manager Nutmeg, which has 140K+ customers and about $5B in assets under management; sources say deal is worth about $1B (Simon Clark/Wall Street Journal)
- Transform, which develops tools for businesses to query and build metrics from data troves, comes out of stealth with $20M Series A, after $4.5M seed in 2020 (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
- Spotify has acquired Podz, a podcast discovery startup whose tech helps podcasters promote their show using ML to select 60-second clips of key moments (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)
- Report: Ring provided at least 100 LAPD officers with free devices or discount codes and encouraged them to recommend its products to fellow LAPD and the public (Johana Bhuiyan/Los Angeles Times)
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Adobe beats in Q2 with revenue of $3.84B, up 23% YoY, vs est. of $3.73B, with YoY revenues of Digital Media up 25%, Creative up 24%, and Document Cloud up 30% (Stephanie Condon/ZDNet)
- Nielsen announces a new metric, The Gauge, to measure streaming viewing in ~14,000 US homes via hardware that watches internet traffic passing through a router (John Koblin/New York Times)
- Palmer Luckey's Anduril raises $450M Series D led by Elad Gil, with a16z and others participating; Anduril is now valued at $4.6B, up from $1.9B in July 2020 (Taylor Hatmaker/TechCrunch)
- Study: 48% of ad traffic on "fake" news publishers and 32% of ad traffic on "low credibility sites" like Breitbart is served by Google (Ryan Barwick/Morning Brew)
- Delivery startup Gopuff buys rideOS, which builds real-time routing and dispatch software for autonomous car fleets, source says for $115M in cash and stock (Liana Baker/Bloomberg)
- Researchers: encryption algorithm GEA-1, used in GPRS data in 2G networks, was deliberately weakened by its designers; ETSI blames export regulations (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/VICE)
- UserLeap, which builds AI tools to give product managers user insights in real time, raises $38M Series B from a16z and others (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- Google says it is funding a project to increase Linux security by writing parts of the operating system's core in Rust (Stephen Shankland/CNET)
- Neo4j, which offers a graph-centric database and related products, raises $325M Series F led by Eurazeo at a $2B+ valuation (Danny Crichton/TechCrunch)
- Snap eliminates Snapchat's speed filter, which let users show how fast they were moving, after a US court ruled that Snap could be sued for a fatal car crash (Bobby Allyn/NPR)
- Instagram launches ads in Reels worldwide; the ads can be up to 30 seconds and vertical in format (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
- Mark Cuban calls for stablecoin regulation, after trading Iron Finance's algorithmic stablecoin DeFi Titanium, which then crashed from $60 to $0 in a day (Joe Weisenthal/Bloomberg)
- Snap launches Creative Kit for Spotlight, which will let developers put their apps inside Snapchat's TikTok rival Spotlight (Ashley Carman/The Verge)
- Profile of Doug Guthrie, an enthusiast for doing business in China who advised Apple from 2014-2019, as he now warns of the risks of China's nationalist turn (Jack Nicas/New York Times)
- The recent surge in ransomware attacks has upended the cyber insurance industry, increasing costs and requirements just as more companies need it (Washington Post)
- Unit, which helps companies build financial and banking products, raises $51M Series B led by Accel, bringing its total raises to ~$70M (Mary Ann Azevedo/TechCrunch)
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By acquiring promising VR games and software companies, Facebook seems to be cornering the VR market, reminiscent of its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions (Casey Newton/Platformer)
- Russian lawmakers pass legislation that would force US tech giants to open offices in Russia by January 2022 or face punitive measures (Reuters)
- Nylas, an API platform that helps developers integrate features like email and calendar into apps, raises $120M Series C led by Tiger Global (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)
- Claroty, which develops security tech for industrial companies, raises $140M Series D, bringing its total raised to $235M, ahead of an IPO (Joseph F. Kovar/CRN)
- Fleet management software provider KeepTruckin raises $190M led by G2 Venture Partners at a $2.3B valuation (Gillian Tan/Bloomberg)
- Sources: Google is downsizing its health team, which was working on sensors and health records, and moving them to Fitbit as part of a major reorganization (Insider)
- Beamery, which develops software to manage hiring and retaining staff, raises $138M, sources say at a $800M valuation (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
- Wise, previously known as TransferWise, plans to go public on the LSE via a direct listing, the first company to choose an alternative listing in the UK (Bloomberg)
- In Q1 2021, global 5G smartphone shipments grew 6% QoQ, with Samsung up 79% QoQ and Vivo up 62% QoQ, while Apple maintained its lead despite a 23% dip (Strategy Analytics)
- Akur8, which uses AI to automate insurance claims, raises $30M Series B, bringing its total raised to $42M (Mike Butcher/TechCrunch)
- Xiaoetong, which offers digital tools to coordinate brand marketing, online traffic, and sales channels, raises $120M Series D from Hillhouse Capital, more (KrASIA)
- Sources: China's market regulator has begun an antitrust probe into Didi Chuxing, as it prepares for a US IPO (Reuters)
- Tel Aviv-based WalkMe, which helps users navigate UIs of other software services, raised $287M in its US IPO at ~$2.4B valuation; stock fell 7.1% after debut (Bloomberg)
- Leaked memo: ByteDance says its annual revenue in 2020 grew 111% YoY to $34.3B compared to 2019, while gross profit rose 93% YoY to $19B (Liza Lin/Wall Street Journal)
- Imply, which runs a real-time data analytics platform, raises $70M Series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners, at a $700M post-money valuation (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- Experts say India's courts, not India's government, have power to decide whether Twitter should keep its safe harbor protections in India under new IT rules (Nilesh Christopher/Rest of World)
- Filing shows that Confluent, which offers a streaming platform based on Apache Kafka, is seeking to raise $759M at ~$8.3B valuation in its US IPO (Sohini Podder/Reuters)
- Amazon Appstore unveils a new program that reduces its share of developer revenue from 30% to 20% for developers earning less than $1M per year, starting in Q4 (Elias Saba/AFTVnews)
- At the summit, Biden told Putin that certain critical infrastructure should be "off-limits" to cyberattacks; Putin agreed to "begin consultations" on the issue (Reuters)
- Microsoft has named CEO Satya Nadella as chair of its board, replacing independent director John Thompson who succeeded Bill Gates as chair in 2014 (Jordan Novet/CNBC)
- Sources: Google is developing a conversational AI product, known internally as Tivoli, which aims to teach foreign languages through Google Search (Sarah Krouse/The Information)
- Tractable, which uses computer vision and AI to help make damage appraisals for car insurance claims, raises $60M Series D, giving the company a $1B valuation (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
- With products like Dash Buttons and Echo Look, Amazon uses customers to test features then sunsets the devices too quickly due to low sales or negative feedback (Brian X. Chen/New York Times)
- Vianai Systems, an AI startup founded by former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, raises $140M Series B led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 (The Economic Times)
- In Xbox's June update, Microsoft adds a Stories-like feature to the Xbox mobile app and rolls out text-to-speech and speech-to-text accessibility features (Igor Bonifacic/Engadget)
- Twitch, where even niche artists can make thousands of dollars per month by cultivating fan tribes, is becoming increasingly attractive to musicians (Ben Sisario/New York Times)
- Facebook says it will begin testing ads on Oculus headsets, starting with the shooter game Blaston, and won't use data stored on devices to target ads (Salvador Rodriguez/CNBC)
- Around 150 of Mapbox's 222 US staff have signed CWA union cards; they assert maps are political, and workers should be able to refuse to work on some projects (Mathew Olson/The Information)
- In an email to creators, Facebook says it will launch its podcast platform on June 22; podcasters can link up RSS feeds and decide if users can clip shows (Ashley Carman/The Verge)
- Democratic Rep. David Cicilline, leading a push for a new antitrust package targeting Big Tech, says Apple would be banned from pre-installing its own apps (Rebecca Kern/Bloomberg)
- Apple's obsession with thin design has made the new M1-powered iMac less useful by removing ports and making it virtually impossible to replace components (Geoffrey Fowler/Washington Post)
- In a bid to become neobanks, Grab and Gojek are offering buy now, pay later services, which critics say could get millions hooked on spending beyond their means (Rest of World)
- Harry Stebbings, a 24-year-old Londoner with a popular podcast about tech investing, raises $140M fund from MIT, RIT Capital, and founders of Spotify and Calm (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)
- A look at Facebook's Oversight Board, which wants to double to 40 members, as observers say its long-term effectiveness rests on how Facebook reacts to rulings (Parmy Olson/Wall Street Journal)