SpaceX’s value on course to rocket to $24bn as fundraising targets $500m | City A.M. April 12, 2018 Elon Musk’s SpaceX is plotting a new round of funding which could see its value skyrocket to almost $24bn (£16.9bn). The company hopes to raise $507m in a move that would make it the third highest-valued private company in the US. Filings obtained by private analytics firm Lagniappe Labs showed that the company had authorised [...]
Fully electric Mercedes-Benz vehicles to zoom out as soon as 2020 April 12, 2018 Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz wants to challenge Tesla’s Model S by developing a purely battery-powered sedan about the size of its $90,000 (£63,362) S-Class. The new model is dubbed the EQ S and is also positioned to compete with the upcoming high-end electric Audi A8 and Jaguar XJ models. Mercedes management board chairperson Dieter Zetsche introduced [...]
Should Mark Zuckerberg step down? April 4, 2018 THE CEO HAS changed. That’s no longer a secret. For the first time in history, chief executives and business leaders are virtually expected to be in the public eye, communicating with the customer and offering opinions on social and political issues. This can have commercial benefits. People buy from other people: therefore if organisations leverage [...]
Canadian start-up looking to raise £35m for project to rival Elon Musk’s Hyperloop April 4, 2018 A Canadian startup has entered the futuristic transportation race by issuing a call to arms to raise $50m (£35m) to develop its own hyperloop technology. Bloomberg reported that TransPod is looking to raise funds to develop its own Hyperloop, a project first proposed by Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX. Hyperloop envisages passengers propelled in pods [...]
Gold up, dollar down: Markets react as China unveils retaliatory $50bn tariffs on US products April 4, 2018 Donald Trump has denied the US is in a trade war with China, as markets fell on the back of retaliatory tariffs unveiled by Beijing this morning. The US dollar fell against the yen, euro and pound this morning after China revealed its tit-for-tat $50bn measures. Beijing confirmed a 25 per cent levy on US [...]
Spotify begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange amid Wall Street tech rout April 3, 2018 Music streaming service Spotify began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) today at $165.90 (£117), a 34 per cent increase on the initial set reference price. The opening price puts the company’s value at nearly $30bn, making it one of the largest US listings for a tech company in history. The public listing [...]
Mark Zuckerberg hits back at Tim Cook after Apple CEO criticises Facebook’s data collection April 2, 2018 Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has pushed back against Apple CEO Tim Cook’s latest criticism of the social media giant, calling the critique “extremely glib and not aligned with the truth”. The comments come after Cook called out the Facebook’s business model as a scheme to monetise users. Zuckerberg made the comments in an interview with [...]
Facebook unveils privacy changes in bid to become more transparent after Cambridge Analytica scrutiny March 28, 2018 Facebook said today it will be making its privacy tools easier to find in a bid to boost transparency and improve trust after last week’s furore over the revelations involving Cambridge Analytica. The firm has been embroiled in controversy with Facebook over allegedly using the personal data of 50m users to influence the 2016 US [...]
The EU’s misguided tax on tech giants is doomed to fail March 27, 2018 Amid the moral panic about “tech giants”, trust the European Union to lead the way with a ham-fisted proposal to “level the playing field”. Politicians on the continent have worried for years about the tax planning of these (usually American) super-firms. Last week, they issued a proposal to deal with the perceived problem: allow individual [...]
Tesla billionaire Elon Musk deletes his brands from Facebook as Cambridge Analytica offices raided March 24, 2018 Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has deleted his Tesla and SpaceX brands from Facebook, following accusations that data firm Cambridge Analytica used data harvested from the social networking site to influence elections. In response to Twitter users calling for people to delete Facebook, Musk tweeted: “What’s Facebook?” When challenged to remove his own brands’ pages from [...]