Jack Ma’s Ant Group forced to restructure after China crackdown April 12, 2021 Ant Group will be restructured as a financial holding company as part of a crackdown by Beijing on billionaire Jack Ma’s Alibaba empire. China’s central bank today said Ant Group had laid out a “comprehensive and feasible restructuring plan” following pressure from regulators. The agreement will mean the fintech firm cuts “improper” links between its [...]
Pensionbee targets £384m valuation as it gears up for London float April 12, 2021 Pensionbee is targeting a valuation of up to £384m as it prepares to list on the London Stock Exchange later this month. In a filing today the fintech firm priced its initial public offering at between 155p and 175p per share, giving a market capitalisation of between £346m and £384m. It plans to raise £55m [...]
Google accused of insider trading over secret digital ads programme April 12, 2021 Google has been accused of insider trading in the digital advertising market through its use of a secret programme that allegedly gave it an unfair advantage over rivals. Court documents filed in a Texas lawsuit state the scheme, dubbed Project Bernanke, used access to data about past bids in Google’s advertising exchange to give it [...]
Swedish payments firm Trustly plans to go public imminently April 12, 2021 Swedish payments firm Trustly plans to launch an IPO in late April or early May that could value the business at €9bn. Trustly’s owner, buyout group Nordic Capital, is working with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Carnegie on the IPO, Reuters reported in January. Trustly’s revenues were around €130m in 2019 and will be around [...]
Darktrace revenue hits $200m as it confirms London float April 12, 2021 Darktrace today said its revenue surged to almost $200m (£146m) thanks to the pandemic as it confirmed plans to float on the London Stock Exchange. In a filing this morning the Cambridge-based tech firm unveiled its intention to list in London, with its registration document due to be published later today. Darktrace did not provide [...]
Five big names who made CRISPR possible April 9, 2021 | City Talk Before becoming a reality, many of our craziest dreams had first been imagined in comics, movies and television shows. Being passionate about robotics and AI and also being a movie lover, I have devoured a large number of Sci-Fi movies, with Gattaca being one of my favourites. In this movie, new generations of humans are [...]
US outlines new global plan to tax tech titans April 8, 2021 The US has put forward a new plan on global corporate taxes in an effort to resolve disagreements over upcoming tech tax reforms. President Joe Biden’s administration has submitted proposals that would see tech giants and other large multinational corporations pay higher taxes in countries in which they operate, regardless of their physical presence in [...]
The game-changing applications of neuromorphic high-speed vision April 8, 2021 | City Talk In a very short time, the digital world has become dominated by visual data. Cameras are everywhere, pumping zettabytes of data into phones, cars, tablets, and robots. However, this data is not all created equal. We can categorise digital visual data in the following ways: 1) Static Vision Static vision entails huge repositories of pre-recorded [...]
The Accelerating Competition in the Bionic Hand Industry April 7, 2021 | City Talk The Emergence of Lower-Cost Devices If you wanted to purchase a multi-articulating bionic hand in 2015, you would have had only a few mainstream options, all costing between $35,000 and $70,000 US for a complete solution. Roll forward six years and at BionicsForEveryone.com we now list 14 bionic hands from 13 companies on our website, with another [...]
Plaid valuation tops $13bn after scrapped Visa merger April 7, 2021 Fintech firm Plaid has more than doubled its valuation to over $13bn (£9bn), just months after its takeover deal with Visa collapsed. The San Francisco-based firm today said it had raised a further $425m through a Series D funding round led by Altimeter Capital, alongside other new investors Silver Lake and Ribbit Capital. Existing investors [...]