Monday, March 9, 2020

Daily Crunch - Twitter makes peace with investors

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Monday, March 09, 2020 By Anthony Ha

Twitter receives a $1 billion investment from Silver Lake, the Gates Foundation is working on COVID-19 home testing kits and Robinhood goes down again. Here’s your daily Crunch for March 9, 2020.

Silver Lake makes $1B investment into Twitter; Twitter, Elliott call truce as Dorsey stays as CEO

After a week in which activist investor Elliott Management made rumblings about forcing out Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO, it looks like we have a truce of sorts between the two as part of a larger investment deal.

In other Twitter news, a video retweeted by Donald Trump is the first to be marked with Twitter's new "manipulated media" tag. The company formally unveiled a new policy last month that said media that has been "significantly and deceptively altered or fabricated" is likely to be labeled if it is determined to be deliberately misleading.

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Silver Lake makes $1B investment into Twitter; Twitter, Elliott call truce as Dorsey stays as CEO image

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Gates Foundation-backed program will soon be issuing home testing kits for COVID-19 in Seattle

The kit, based on a nose swab, should be able to return results in up to two days and will be shared with health officials who can then notify people who test positive.

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The Robinhood app is down again as stocks get routed on Wall St.

Investors using the trading app from Robinhood were once again locked out of trading this morning. This comes one week after an outage took down the app on what was one of the busiest trading days of the year.

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The Robinhood app is down again as stocks get routed on Wall St. image

Amazon is now selling its cashierless store technology to other retailers

The technology uses a combination of cameras, sensors, computer vision techniques and deep learning to allow customers to shop, then leave the store without waiting in line to pay. This is the same technology that powers the Amazon Go cashierless convenience stores and Amazon's newly launched Amazon Go Grocery store in Seattle.

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GM reveals an EV for (almost) every purse and purpose

GM’s announcement this week gave new life to its brand ladder — a portfolio that ranges from the heights of luxury to the most basic utility — and tipped its hand about how it will bring EVs "across the chasm." (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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GM reveals an EV for (almost) every purse and purpose image

Image Credits: GM

Crypto wallet app ZenGo launches savings mode

ZenGo is expanding beyond the basic features of a cryptocurrency wallet — letting you hold, send and receive crypto assets. You can now set aside some of your crypto assets to earn interest. In other words, ZenGo now also acts like a savings account.

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This week's TechCrunch podcasts

The latest full episode of Equity discusses Kleiner Perkins’ new, larger fund, while the Monday news roundup looks at the latest stock market turmoil. And on Original Content, we review the Netflix reality series “Love Is Blind.”

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Friday, March 6, 2020

Daily Crunch - Jack Dorsey defends his work as CEO

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Friday, March 06, 2020 By Anthony Ha

Twitter’s CEO defends himself from activist investors, Google takes additional coronavirus precautions and a fizzy drink maker raises $30 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 6, 2020.

Twitter CEO's weak argument why investors shouldn't fire him

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke yesterday at a Morgan Stanley conference, where he delivered remarks (also shared via Twitter’s investor relations account) that responded obliquely to activist investor Elliott Management’s efforts to pressure Twitter into a slew of reforms, potentially including replacing Dorsey with a new CEO.

Among other things, Dorsey said he might not spend six months a year in Africa after all, claimed the company’s real product development is happening under the hood and offered an excuse for deleting Vine before it could become TikTok.

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Twitter CEO's weak argument why investors shouldn't fire him image

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Google recommends Washington State employees work from home, citing coronavirus risk

The software giant has not closed its Washington offices outright, nor is it planning to make an official statement regarding the recommendation, but the news certainly points to a broader trend of serious precautions around the novel coronavirus outbreak. The move follows a similar decision by Lyft, which sent home employees in its San Francisco office.

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Spindrift, maker of fizzy drinks, has raised $29.8M

Spindrift, founded in 2010, is up against big players, like the beloved and decades-old LaCroix, another sparkling water brand. The company differentiates itself by emphasizing "real fruit" in its drinks — think cucumbers from Michigan, strawberries from California and Alfonso mangoes from India.

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Spindrift, maker of fizzy drinks, has raised $29.8M image

Image Credits: Zing Images

Airbnb and three other P2P rental platforms agree to share limited pan-EU data

The European Commission announced that it has reached a data-sharing agreement with vacation rental platforms Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor — trumpeting the arrangement as a "landmark agreement" which will allow the EU's statistical office to publish data on short-stay accommodations across the EU.

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SaaS companies flirt with correction territory as another wild week comes to a close

Stocks are set to fall further today, likely forcing shares in SaaS and cloud companies down yet again. After two wild trading weeks, the high-flying tech category is off over 9% from recent highs before the bell this morning, putting it close to correction territory. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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SaaS companies flirt with correction territory as another wild week comes to a close image

Image Credits: Andrey Suslov / Getty Images

Mark Cuban backs ChatableApps, developer of a hearing assist app that removes background noise

The company has built a smartphone app that provides hearing assistance by removing background noise in near real time. Alongside auditory neural signal processing researcher Dr. Andy Simpson, the company's co-founders are Brendan O'Driscoll, Aidan Sliney and George Boyle — the original team behind the music discovery app Soundwave.

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Pex buys Dubset to build YouTube ContentID for TikTok & more

Pex is a royalty attribution startup that scans social networks and other user-generated content sites for rightsholders' content, then lets them negotiate licensing with the platforms, request a take-down, demand attribution and/or track the consumption statistics. Dubset, meanwhile, has spent 10 years tackling the problem of getting remixes and multi-song DJ sets legalized for streaming.

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Thursday, March 5, 2020

Daily Crunch - Twitter tests ephemeral Fleets

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Thursday, March 05, 2020 By Anthony Ha

Twitter tries out its own version of the popular Stories format, a court orders Otto’s founder to pay a big fine to Google and electric skateboard company Boosted makes cuts. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 5, 2020.

Twitter starts testing its own version of Stories, called 'Fleets,' which disappear after 24 hours

Twitter is testing a new sharing format called "Fleets," starting in Brazil, which will let users post ephemeral content to its social network for the first time. Unlike Tweets, Twitter's new Fleets can't receive Likes, Replies or Retweets. And they'll disappear entirely after 24 hours.

To be clear, Fleets are publicly viewable, but they’re a little less accessible. You could visit someone's public Twitter profile and tap to view their Fleets even if you don't follow them. But their Fleet won't circulate Twitter's network, show up in Search or Moments and it can't be embedded on an external website.

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Twitter starts testing its own version of Stories, called 'Fleets,' which disappear after 24 hours image

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Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

An arbitration panel ruled in December that Levandowski and Lior Ron had engaged in unfair competition and breached their contract with Google when they left the company to start a rival autonomous vehicle company focused on trucking, called Otto. (Uber acquired Otto in 2017.) On Wednesday, a San Francisco County court confirmed the panel's decision.

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Boosted lays off 'a significant portion' of its team as it looks for a buyer

Boosted — the company behind Boosted Boards and the Boosted Rev electric scooter — attributes the layoffs to the costs of developing, producing and maintaining electric vehicles and the "unplanned challenge with the high expense of the US-China tariff war.”

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Boosted lays off 'a significant portion' of its team as it looks for a buyer image

5G is now live in 24 markets, GSMA predicts it'll be 20% of global connections by 2025 — and eyes a big tech break-up

The next-gen flavor of mobile connectivity, 5G, is now live in 24 markets globally, according to industry group GSMA's annual state of the global mobile economy report.

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Despite earnings beat and upbeat forecast, Zoom shares fall after reporting Q4 results

Zoom came in ahead of both current-quarter expectations and full-fiscal-year anticipation. Why did the share price go down, given all of that? Perhaps investors expected an even more impressive beat? Or an even more impressive forecast? (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Despite earnings beat and upbeat forecast, Zoom shares fall after reporting Q4 results image

Image Credits: Getty Images

Hailo raises $60M Series B for its AI chips

What makes the Hailo chip stand out is its innovative architecture, which can automatically adapt resources to best run its users' custom neural networks. With this, the chip doesn't just run faster — it’s also far more energy efficient.

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Judge rejects Tulsi Gabbard's 'free speech' lawsuit against Google

Last July, Hawaii representative and longshot Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of violating her First Amendment rights to free speech when it briefly suspended her campaign's ad account. On Wednesday, California's Central District Court rejected the suit outright.

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