Softbank rides e-scooter wave with $250m Tier funding deal November 10, 2020 Softbank has jumped onto the booming e-scooter market, leading a $250m (£190m) investment round in Berlin-based Tier. Tier has grown rapidly since its inception in 2018, and now operates 60,000 e-scooters in more than 80 cities across 10 countries. The latest funding takes its valuation to just under $1bn unicorn status, the Financial Times reported, [...]
Bad connection: Zoom shares sink after Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine breakthough November 9, 2020 Bad connection: Zoom shares sink 16% after Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine breakthough
Mobile trading – The power is in your pocket November 9, 2020 | City Talk In the 21st century, there is no longer a single factor that defines all traders across the markets. Your ‘typical trader’ is a thing of the past. In the FX industry a couple of decades ago, being a ‘trader’ mostly meant that you were dressed in a suit, sat coordinating trades on the phone all [...]
Social media firms to crack down on Covid-19 vaccine disinformation November 9, 2020 Major social media platforms have agreed a package of measures with the government in an effort to limit the spread of disinformation about any Covid-19 vaccine. Following a meeting with health secretary Matt Hancock and digital secretary Oliver Dowden, Facebook, Twitter and Google endorsed the principle that no company should profit from false or misleading [...]
Softbank’s Vision Fund posts record profit as startup valuations recover November 9, 2020 Softbank’s Vision Fund division posted a record ¥784.4bn (£5.7bn) profit for the third quarter after a recovery in startup valuations helped the unit rebound from a ¥612bn loss the previous year. The Japanese tech investment giant, which has stopped reporting operating profit figures, reported a net quarterly income for the entire group of ¥627.5bn. This [...]
Telus Corp agrees to pay £700m for Lionbridge AI November 6, 2020 Telecoms giant Telus Corporation has announced it will acquire Lionbridge AI for C$1.2bn, or £700m. The company will acquire Lionbridge AI via its global arm, Telus International. Darren Entwistle, Telus Corp’s CEO, said on Friday: “Today’s announcement advances TELUS’ commitment to harness the power of technology to provide outstanding customer experiences on a global basis, [...]
Screenshot: Ant Group, Jack Ma and China’s power paradox November 6, 2020 A weekly column from City A.M. bringing you all the biggest stories and trends in technology, media and telecoms This week: **Media Moment of the Week: Margaret Thatcher takes to Twitter **Ant Group, Jack Ma and China’s power paradox **Three’s a crowd: Why a telecoms mast deal could spark more mergers Media Moment of the [...]
UK’s Aveva to raise £2.84bn to fund OSIsoft acquisition November 6, 2020 British industrial software provider Aveva Group said this morning it intends to raise £2.84bn billion through a rights issue to partly fund the acquisition of SoftBank-backed peer OSIsoft. Aveva, which is buying the company for an enterprise value of $5bn, said the rights issue will offer 125.7 million shares at a price of £22.55 per [...]
Ghosted: Whatsapp rolls out disappearing messages in privacy push November 5, 2020 Whatsapp is introducing a new function that will delete messages from the app after seven days in an effort to ramp up its privacy credentials. The social media platform, which has more than 2bn users worldwide, said the new feature will help keep chats private and “more like a face-to-face conversation that is not recorded [...]
Alibaba gets post-pandemic revenue boost amid Ant Group float woes November 5, 2020 Chinese tech giant Alibaba has posted continued sales growth following the coronavirus lockdown, just days after Beijing slammed the brakes on Ant Group’s mammoth stock market float. The conglomerate, run by billionaire Jack Ma, posted a 30 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue to 155bn yuan (£17.9bn) in the three months to the end of [...]