Entrepreneurs are invited to the 427th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, January 10, 2019, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious...
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Original author: Maureen Kelly
66 Hits
Jan
04
Aug
12
Sramana Mitra: Very well. It’s definitely the age of the incumbents these days on the B2C side. Nihal Mehta: Consumer venture funds are actually going down in size because gone are the days of...
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Original author: Sramana Mitra
126 Hits
Jan
04
In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:
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Original author: Maureen Kelly
52 Hits
Sep
04
Robinhood, the U.S.-based “zero-fee” stock-trading app and cryptocurrency exchange, is stealthily recruiting for a new London office ahead of plans to eventually launch in the U.K., TechCrunch has learned.
According to sources within London’s thriving fintech industry, Robinhood is hiring for multiple U.K. positions. These span recruitment, operations, marketing/PR and customer support. Notably, the company is also seeking people in compliance and product, including product design.
In other words, significant localisation and local product market fit appears to be the intention. Compliance is also an important part of Robinhood’s future U.K. regulatory requirements as it applies to local regulator the FCA for the appropriate licenses. Robinhood declined to comment on its U.K. plans.
Meanwhile, news that Robinhood is stealthily recruiting ahead of a planned U.K. launch is interesting in the context of local fintech startups that have launched or announced their own fee-free trading offerings.
Launched late last year, London-based Freetrade has built a bona-fide “challenger broker,” including obtaining the required license from the FCA, rather than simply partnering with an established broker. The app lets you invest in U.K. stocks and ETFs, but will soon add U.S. stocks, too. Trades are “fee-free” if you are happy for your buy or sell trades to execute at the close of business each day. If you want to execute immediately, the startup charges a low £1 per trade.
In June last year, Revolut, also headquartered in London, announced its intention to add commission-free trading to its banking app, in what was seen as a bid to compete with Robinhood. So far, no product has surfaced, although I’m told we should see trading added to Revolut in Q1 this year.
What’s intriguing about the Revolut-Robinhood comparisons is that the two companies share a number of investors, namely Index and DST. Both companies have incredibly high valuations, too, and, depending on respective burn rates, quite deep pockets.
Co-founded by Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev (pictured above), Robinhood claims 6 million accounts and is valued at $5.6 billion, having raised a total to date of $539 million. It has around 300 employees across its HQ in Menlo Park, California and its regional HQ in Lake Mary, Florida.
Revolut claims 3.5 million users, and at its last funding round was valued at $1.7 billion. The fintech has raised a total of $340 million, and has a headcount of 600 in London and across its various regional offices.
22 Hits
Jan
04
Today, many companies provide developer access to their services via APIs. Moesif, a San Francisco startup, wants to help these companies gain insight into their customer’s API usage patterns. Today, the company announced a $3.5 million seed round.
The investment was led by Merus Capital, with participation by Heavybit, Fresco Capital and Zach Coelius, whose investments include Cruise Automation, which was sold to GM in 2016 for $1 billion.
Moesif co-founder and CEO Derric Gilling says Moesif is akin to Mixpanel or Google Analytics, except instead of tracking web or mobile analytics, it looks at API usage. “As more and more companies are using and creating these APIs, there comes a point where you need to understand how your customers are using them, any problems they are running into and how do you actually decrease developer churn.”
Heat map showing API usage by region. Screenshot: Moesif
The company is aiming at two primary types of users. First of all, there are developers who can use the monitoring features to understand when there are issues with the API. These folks have access to the free tier.
Moesif also targets business units like product management, sales and marketing, which use the tool to understand who’s using the API, how often and, with machine learning, understand who is likely to stop using the product based on how they are using it. The tool can tie into other business systems like Mailchimp or a CRM tool to get a more complete picture of customers as they use the API.
The product was released last year, and Gilling says his company already has 2,000 customers, which includes both the free and paid tiers. He said they have had particular success with SaaS and fintech companies, both of which make heavy use of APIs. Customers include PowerSchool, Schwab and DHL.
While the company currently consists of two founders and one employee, flush with the seed investment, it intends to hire around 10 people in the next six months, including a VP of engineering, additional developers and sales and marketing folks.
Moesif was founded in late 2016, and the founders went through the Alchemist Accelerator last year.
23 Hits
Nov
21
A survey of 7,000 people conducted by the research firm Populous found that 3.6% of those surveyed had used a dockless scooter recently. Given the short period of time that dockless scooters have...
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Original author: MitraSramana
55 Hits
Jan
04
Sramana Mitra: How did this entrepreneur find you or how did you find him? Krishna Srinivasan: It’s the old myth of this business, which is you need a strong recommendation to be able to get to a...
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Original author: Sramana Mitra
78 Hits
Oct
24
Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank with more than a million customers and a unicorn valuation to boot, has quietly began working on a U.S. launch, TechCrunch has learned.
According to multiple sources, the fintech startup has set up a small team to begin laying the ground work to bring a version of Monzo to North America, which will initially be powered by a U.S. banking partner while Monzo works on the necessarily regulatory licenses to go it alone.
The plan, which could still be subject to change, is for Monzo to create a “lite” version of its product for U.S. customers, much in the same was as it first launched in the U.K. with a pre-paid debit card before eventually offering a fully fledged bank account.
The thinking, according to one person familiar with the company’s strategy, is that this will enable Monzo to build up a U.S. customer base and iterate its product for the U.S. market in parallel with the challenger bank’s federal charter bank application.
I understand that the plan is for the initial Monzo U.S. product to offer in-app signup, the trademark “hot coral” Monzo debit card, an account and routing number, the ability to make and accept payments, ATM withdrawals, and realtime transaction notifications. In other words, many of the same features that has endeared Monzo with U.K. customers.
Contacted by TechCrunch, a Monzo spokesperson provided the following statement:
We’re really excited about international expansion over the coming months and years. After all, it’s hard to build a bank for a billion people in the UK alone!
However, we don’t have anything specific to share at this stage about those plans. When we do, we’ll be sure to tell the world.
Meanwhile, news that Monzo has begun executing U.S. expansion plans isn’t entirely surprising, even it appears to be happening significantly faster than previously thought.
Co-founder and CEO Tom Blomfield has openly talked about his ambition to bring Monzo to the U.S. one day and the London-based challenger bank boasts an array of U.S. investors. They include most recently General Catalyst, along with the likes of Thrive Capital, Goodwater Capital, Stripe, Michael Moritz, and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom.
The fintech company also recently opened a Las Vegas office, from which it offers twilight hours customer support for U.K. customers. Or at least that is the party line. Now it appears that Las Vegas could soon have Monzo customers closer to home to keep happy, too.
93 Hits
Nov
21
Niantic is expected to make a "Harry Potter" game after its fundraise. Warner Bros.
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday.
Apple has slipped further down the ranks of the most valuable companies, dropping behind Google parent Alphabet to fourth place. Its valuation, once above $1 trillion, slipped to around $680 billion on Thursday. Wall Street took an apocalyptic view of Apple's shock sales warning, with analysts almost universally reducing their price targets. Analysts worried that China's economic slowdown had impacted Apple so severely. Apple's attempts to distract Wall Street by talking up its $10.8 billion services business were somewhat undermined by Netflix finding a way to circumvent iTunes billing. Figures show that Apple is hugely reliant on the revenue it earns from its unpopular 30% levy on app subscriptions, one-off payments, and in-app content purchases â but Netflix's latest move puts that revenue stream at risk. The comedian whose show was pulled from Netflix in Saudi Arabia said that the kingdom had played itself by encouraging more people to talk about and watch the show. Hasan Minhaj said that the removal of the episode made it go viral, and that more people saw it as a result. Mark Zuckerberg stopped selling off his Facebook stock in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to a Bloomberg report on Thursday. The decision to cease the sale of his options amid the stock's recent decline is likely Zuckerberg protecting his majority stake in the company. Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Snap's head of global strategic partnerships, is leaving the company. Herbst-Brady is the latest in a string of executives to leave Snap in recent months. New York's governor called Tesla to see if the company could help fix NYC's subway system. Andrew Cuomo was discussing an idea to improve the signal system used by NYC's subway, which he said would take seven to ten years to install. Enigmatic life science company Verily has raised a mega funding round of $1 billion led by technology investment firm Silver Lake. Formerly called Google Life Sciences, Verily aims to develop tools that help collect and organize health data. Payment firm Square has hired Amrita Ahuja as its new CFO, three months after predecessor Sarah Friar left to become CEO of Nextdoor. Ahuja joins from Blizzard Entertainment.Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings.
Original author: Shona Ghosh
88 Hits
Jan
04
FloWater, an eight-year-old, Burlingame, Calif.-based company whose reusable water bottle refilling stations produce purified water, has raised $15 million in its first major round of funding. Bluewater, a Swedish company that sells water purifiers, among other things, led the round.
FloWater caters to schools, colleges, fitness centers, hotels and offices, and, in the words of CEO Rich Razgaitis, set out to address four environmental concerns from the outset: obesity in the U.S., which has been tied in part to the rise of sugary, carbonated beverages; the nearly 40 billion single-use plastic water bottles that are used and tossed aside every year; the millions of barrels of oil and hundreds of millions of pounds of CO2 byproduct waste used to create and transport bottled water; and the toxins in single-use plastic bottles, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
It has a pretty compelling case to make, in short, as other purveyors of refilling stations would surely argue, and which clearly persuaded 13 investors altogether (according to a new SEC filing) to write checks to the company.
And it all started with an $18,600 bank loan, according to the company’s founder, Wyatt Taubman, who remains on the company’s board but stepped aside as head honcho in 2015 and has since founded a cold-pressed juice company.
Per his LinkedIn, Taubman, says he used that bank loan to launch a pilot refill station, before shaking $125,000 out of friends and family, and taking out a second, $62,000 loan to launch additional refill stations. The company later raised $950,000 from the Tech Coast Angels and the Hawaii Angels, hired Razgaitis, redesigned the look of its product and, in 2016, raised $2.6 million in Series A funding.
FloWater customers include Google, Airbnb, Specialized Bikes and, somewhat ironically, Red Bull.
It says its stations are now in nearly 50 states.
27 Hits
Jan
04
What does an operator of a self-driving car do when they're threatened or attacked by an angry motorist or pedestrian?
If you work for self-driving car company Waymo, you go to the nearest mall.
According to a spokesperson for Waymo, drivers feeling threatened on the road are instructed to find a secure location like a mall parking lot and decide whether or not to call 911.
Waymo has been testing its robo-cars on Arizona public roads for roughly two years. The cars have a Waymo employee in the driver's seat, serving as a back-up driver who can take control of the vehicle when necessary (the self-driving car technology is still not perfect).
Not everyone is enamored with the self-driving cars however, and the Waymo back-up drivers often find themselves on the front lines of anti-robot road rage. According to recent reports, Arizona residents have thrown rocks, brandished guns at and slashed the tires of the self-driving cars.
Over the past two years, there have been at least 21 incidents where police were notified, according to the Arizona Republic.
Read more: P eople are attacking Waymo's self-driving cars in Arizona by slashing tires and, in some cases, pulling guns on the safety drivers
Waymo's training manual encourages drivers to "report suspicious behavior. When it's safe to do so, pull into a secure location (E.g., a mall parking lot) and contact dispatch, or call 911 if you're being threatened or feel that you're in danger."
Most drivers, however, find it easier and more effective to use the hands-free option of calling the company dispatch center, the spokesperson told us. A call to Waymo dispatch will alert the entire fleet when incidents occur.
The spokesperson would not say how many threats have been reported to Waymo's dispatch center.
Waymo says there has not been a need to update its safety procedures for drivers, even as accounts of its cars being driven off the road by road-raged residents have surfaced.
"It's a pretty close-knit group of folks. They've had really great lines of communication and those continue," the spokesperson said.
Original author: Nick Bastone
83 Hits
Jan
03
Mobile AR gaming startup Niantic has closed a $190 million round of funding according to newly filed SEC docs.
The filing comes after a WSJ report last month suggested the company was in the process of closing a $200 million raise from investors, including IVP, aXiomatic Gaming and Samsung, at a $3.9 billion valuation. The round closed shortly after that report on December 20 according to the new documents.
With the close of this round, Niantic has now raised more than $415 million to date. The startup’s other investors include Founders Fund, Spark Capital and Alsop Louie Partners, among others. The filing details that there were 26 investors in this funding round.
The new influx of cash comes as the creator of Pokémon GO prepares to release its next major title, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The augmented reality game does not have a release date yet, but is expected to launch this year.
74 Hits
Jan
26
For the first time in history, China landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moonâ the part we never see from Earth.
The Chinese moon mission is called Chang'e-4, and it set down a robotic lander and rover at 2:26 a.m. UTC on Thursday (Wednesday night in the US), according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
"Chang'e" is the name of a mythical lunar goddess, and the numeral "4" signifies the fourth robotic mission in China's ambitious quest to explore the moon. No other nation â the US and Russia included â has ever touched the far side of the moon.
The CNSA shared photos of the landing through state media, and the latest picture (above) shows the Yutu-2 or "Jade Rabbit" rover rolling off the landing spacecraft and onto the moon's unexplored far side.
The agency has been less forthcoming about other details of its mission, but lunar researchers have been analyzing data to help confirm there was a landing and also track the rover's precise location.
Noah Petro, a planetary geologist, told Business Insider that he used images distributed by China on social media to pinpoint the landing site.
"Looks like Change-4 landed near 45.47084 South, 177.60563 East," Petro, who is a project scientist on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, tweeted on Thursday.
As the graphic below shows, those coordinates place Chang'e-4 within two impact sites that are very important to geologists and planetary scientists. The larger of the two is the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Within that expansive site, Chang'e-4 landed inside Von Kármán Crater.
China landed its Chang'e-4 lunar mission inside an ancient crater located on the far side of the moon. Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
The South Pole-Aitken Basin is a 1,550-mile-wide scar left by a horrendous collision that occurred about 3.9 billion years ago. This smash-up likely busted all the way through the moon's crust, leading part of the moon's deeper-down geologic layers to spill out onto the surface.
"It's possible this basin is so deep that it contains material from the moon's inner mantle," Tamela Maciel, an astrophysicist and communications manager at the National Space Center in England, tweeted after the mission's launch on December 7. "By landing on the far side for the first time, the Chang'e-4 lander and rover will help us understand so much more about the moon's formation and history."
The Von Kármán Crater within the basin stretches about 111 miles in diameter and should provide good access to the area's scientific wonders.
China built its solar-powered moon rover to last about three months and its lander to function for about a year. But once they stop phoning home â through a relay satellite called Queqiao, which makes the mission possible â China won't stop exploring the region.
The nation is intent on launching crewed missions to the moon in the early 2030s. If that happens as planned, it could be the first time people set foot on the lunar surface since NASA's Apollo program ended in 1972.
A crewed landing would give China the upper hand in exploring the moon and space around it. The stakes are high; the lunar poles are rich in water ice and other resources that could support permanent moon bases, make rocket fuel, and power deep-space exploration.
"Von Kármán crater would be a worthy target for future crewed landings," Mark Robinson, a planetary geologist and leader of the LRO mission, said in a blog post about the landing site.
Original author: Dave Mosher and Shayanne Gal
188 Hits
Sep
02
It's 2019, and the marijuana M&A market is already heating up.
Cannabis technology company TILT Holdings on Thursday signed an agreement to acquire Jupiter Research, a vaporizer-maker, for $210 million in cash and stock.
"We never expected to acquire a hardware company," Joel Milton, TILT's senior vice president of software and services told Business Insider in an interview.
But when Milton and TILT's CEO, Alex Coleman, met with Jupiter's CEO, Mark Scatterday, "we were really impressed with what they were doing," said Milton.
Read more: A top marijuana CPA says the 'bubble will burst' for weed M&A deals
That, coupled with the "exponential growth" vapes offer made Jupiter a nice fit within TILT's arsenal, said Milton.
Jupiter booked over $100 million in orders last year, up from under $25 million in 2017, according to a December note from Canaccord Genuity.
The deal is expected to close in the "near future," said Milton.
TILT was created out of a four-way merger between marijuana software company B aker Technologiesâ where Milton served as CEO â with Briteside Holdings, Sea Hunter Therapeutics, and Santé Veritas Holdings in May 2018.
The combined entity went public via a reverse merger on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) last December and began to roll-up other marijuana companies shortly after.
"We're a little differentiated from some of our other peers in the market in that we take a much more B2B (business-to-business) approach in terms of how we look at the industry," Milton said.
Whereas other US-based marijuana companies, known as multi-state operators, are focused on acquisitions that expand their geographical retail presence, TILT is focused on supplying software and services â and now hardware â to marijuana dispensaries.
TILT acquired Blackbird, a marijuana distribution and software company in December.
"So rather than solely focused on opening retail stores, we're really focused on providing solutions to the whole industry," Milton said, adding that the Jupiter acquisition is an "unbelievable" way to expand TILT's reach into a new category.
"When you look at the data within the states [where marijuana is legal], vaporizers are growing rapidly," Milton said. "When you have that growth within a market over time plus new markets, you get exponential growth. And quite frankly we have really, really high expectations for what the vaporizer market's going to look like."
Vape companies, whether used for marijuana or otherwise, have been prime acquisition targets in recent weeks. Altria, the tobacco-maker behind Marlboro, sank $12.8 billion into a 35% stake of Juul, a popular e-cigarette maker in December.
Marijuana is legal in Canada and for adult use in 10 states, and medical use in 33. In December, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said legalizing the adult use of marijuana is one of his top legislative priorities for next year.
Original author: Jeremy Berke
36 Hits
Jul
03
Apple's shock announcement that the holiday quarter turned out worse than expected not only provided investors a warning about uglier than expected earnings for the company, but also boosts one of President Donald Trump's key arguments in favor of the trade war with China.
Despite reports of pain for American businesses and workers, Trump has long said that the trade war is taking a much larger toll on China than the US. Given the relative strength of the American economy, Trump argues, the US can afford to wait for the economic pain to force China into concessions.
"China, which is for the first time doing poorly against us, is spending a fortune on ads and P.R. trying to convince and scare our politicians to fight me on Tariffs â because they are really hurting their economy," Trump tweeted on August 4.
In Trump's line of thinking, the US can withstand blows from tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods because the underlying economic fundamentals are stronger than those in China. Apple's sudden revenue disappointment seems to support the argument, as the company placed nearly all the blame on the shoulders of China.
"While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China. In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad.," Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday.
Cook also explicitly named Trump's trade war a contributing factor for the Chinese slowdown.
"We believe the economic environment in China has been further impacted by rising trade tensions with the United States," he wrote.
Read more: Tim Cook blames Trump's trade war with China as a big factor in Apple's slowdown»
Other companies are also reporting troubles in China due to the slowdown and trade war. The head of aircraft manufacturer Airbus' China business said the trade war will have a "negative impact on China's aviation growth."
Kevin Hassett, the Chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, told CNN that American companies with significant operations in China will get similarly whacked.
"It's not going to be just Apple," Hassett said. "There are a heck of a lot of US companies that have sales in China that are going to be watching their earnings being downgraded next year until we get a deal with China."
While China's slowdown is not entirely attributable to the tariffs â internal factors like high debt levels are also contributing â Apple and others make clear that the pain caused by the trade war is a contributing factor.
Trump's argument is twofold:
That Beijing will eventually give in to US demands to alleviate some of the economic pressure on the country, especially if non-tariff factors dragging down the Chinese economy get worse. And that the US economy remains strong in spite of the trade war and can withstand pain for longer."The Wall Street Journal has it wrong, we are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us. Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing," Trump said in December.
Apple's announcement and other company warnings seem to echo the first element of Trump's argument.
At the same time, US economic data remains relatively strong. Despite some softening data, unemployment remains historically low, wage growth is picking up, consumer confidence is high, and Americans are still spending money at a solid clip. This could change, but the American economy appears to be on more solid footing than China.
The US and China are currently in negotiations on a trade deal during a 90-day truce. The pause in action â which is set to end March 1 â comes after months of back-and-forth tariff announcements. In total, the US placed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods and Beijing hit back with tariffs on $110 billion worth of American goods.
But the Chinese appetite for economic pain could be much more expansive than Trump anticipates. For one, Chinese President Xi Jinping doesn't have to worry about an election anytime soon and Beijing may still have the ability to prop up domestic firms in the event of protracted trade war.
But Hassett made it clear on Thursday that the White House believes that the US has the upper hand in the trade battle with China, saying the declining earnings of companies in the country "puts a lot of pressure on China to make a deal."
Original author: Bob Bryan
31 Hits
Jan
03
On Thursday, the US State Department issued a new travel advisory urging Americans to "exercise increased caution" when traveling to the People's Republic of China.
According to the State Department, China may issue exit or travel bans in instances where there are business disputes and court orders to pay a settlement. Unfortunately, individuals and family members not directly involved with or even aware of the dispute can still be subject to a ban, the agency explained.
Thursday's advisory is based on concerns that the Chinese government may arbitrarily enforce local law and prevent US citizens from leaving the country.
Chinese authorities have asserted broad authority to prohibit US citizens from leaving China by using 'exit bans,' sometimes keeping US citizens in China for years," the State Department said in its advisory.
Read more: The US government is warning Americans that if they visit China they may not be able to return home.
The level-two advisory doesn't dissuade Americans from going to China. In fact, countries such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom all boast level-two travel advisories.
In addition, millions of Americans visit China every year without incident. So here's what you need to know before going to China, according to the US State Department.
Make sure your US passport has a valid Chinese visa and keep it with you. Ask officials to notify the US embassy in Beijing or the nearest consulate immediately if you're arrested or detained. Stay away from North Korea. Join the State Department's Smart Traveler Enrollment Program which is a free service offered to US citizens traveling abroad that alerts the local embassy or consulate of your presence in the country. Follow the State Department's alerts on social media Review the Bureau of Diplomatic Security's crime and safety reports. Have a contingency plan in place if an emergency does occur while traveling. The US Embassy in China is located at No. 55 An Jia Lou Rd, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100600, China. Its phone number is 86-10-8531-400. Its email is
Original author: Benjamin Zhang
31 Hits
Nov
21
Verily, the enigmatic life-science company formerly called Google Life Sciences, has raised $1 billion from investors.
The company announced the mammoth round on Thursday but did not include details of what the funds would be used for. Technology-investment firm Silver Lake is the leading new investor, and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan also joined on as a first-time backer.
"We are taking external funding to increase flexibility and optionality as we expand on our core strategic focus areas," Andrew Conrad, Verily's CEO, said in a statement.
A subgroup of Google's parent company, Alphabet, Verily aims to develop tools that help collect and organize health data. Its list of semipublic projects include work on a miniaturized continuous glucose monitor with partner organization Dexcom, contact lenses for people with age-related farsightedness and for sight improvement after cataract surgery, and a watch that lets researchers collect data for clinical studies.
Verily researchers had also been working on a contact lens equipped with sensors to measure glucose levels for people with diabetes, but announced in November that they were pausing work on the initiative, which began in 2014 as a partnership with Alcon, the eye-care division of drug giant Novartis.
As part of the new funding, Ruth Porat, Alphabet's chief financial officer, will be nominated to join Verily's operating board. Egon Durban, the managing partner and managing director of Silver Lake, will also be nominated to join the board.
"Verily's unique capabilities, world-class partnerships and bold vision are enabling the company to tackle the most significant problems impacting global healthcare," Durban said in the statement.
While more details about what the funds will be used for were scant, the round marks only the second time Verily has ever raised outside funds. The first, almost exactly two years ago, was an $800 million round led by Singaporean investment firm Temasek.
Read more: Alphabet's life sciences company Verily takes $800 million from Singapore investment company
"We look forward to working with Andy and the entire Verily team in their mission to use cutting-edge science and technology to change the paradigm of care delivery and improve clinical outcomes," said Durban.
Original author: Erin Brodwin
28 Hits
Jan
03
While software company stocks have taken a brutal hit from the volatility that closed out 2018, tech dealmakers have their eyes on a $1 trillion figure that tells a much different story.
That number: the total net cash that the top 10 tech companies could have on their balance sheets by 2020. Even if the economy enters a major downturn, the top tech companies will have a lot of cash throw around.
In the words of TV's favorite financial criminal George Bluth, there's always money in the banana stand.
When asked whether Apple's downgraded guidance and 10% stock decline was a sign of rough times ahead for the tech sector, Union Square Advisor president Ted Smith told Business Insider that nobody is "packing up and closing up business."
Companies still have access to capital, and they're still eager to move forward with the mergers-and-acquisitions deals on the docket, Smith said.
Read more: What tech bankers expect to see in tech M&A in 2019
For Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne, this means even if tech stocks continue to nosedive, software M&A "will provide a bit of a backstop for valuations."
"While we acknowledge that software stocks are 'at the mercy' of the broader markets right now, we believe one of the overlooked aspects in software is the likelihood of more M&A (and alpha generation) if stocks were to continue to pull back in 2019," Materne wrote in a note on December 19.
This means big players like Google and Microsoft will see lower price tags for companies they've had an eye on through the boom. Now that prices are lower, buyers can acquire their target companies at a steep discount.
The top 10 companies are expected to bring in a total of $600 billion in cash by 2020. Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Specifically, Materne called out the vast amount of "dry powder" that could make this happen. The top 10 tech companies have a combined $350 billion in net cash on their balance sheets as of the third quarter of 2018, and they're expected to generate another $600 billion in free cash flow through 2020, according to the note.
Assuming an unlikely world in which none of that money gets spent between now and 2020, the top 10 companies could have a total $1 trillion in cash by next year, according to the note.
The next 40 largest US software companies have a combined value of just $660 billion, Materne wrote. That means the top 10 companies could â at least in theory â buy up the whole market.
Of course, much of that money will be spent, most likely through share repurchases and dividends, like the ones promised by Apple CEO Tim Cook to return the company's $130 billion in net cash to shareholders.
But Materne writes that even if only 10% of the free cash flow and net cash from those companies was spent on M&A, that would mean nearly $100 billion in M&A activity just from strategic buyers.
Think SAP's all-cash acquisition of Qualtrics for $8 billion in November.
And even if software stocks continue to tank, Materne thinks M&A alone could keep software valuations afloat.
"It only takes one larger deal (great than $2 billion) to potentially lift relative valuations across the entire sector," he wrote.
Original author: Becky Peterson
32 Hits
Jul
03
When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo toured a subway tunnel nearly destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in December, he and an entourage of engineers from Columbia and Cornell Universities saw first-hand the tremendous damage that salt water can do to a century-old tunnel.
After the hurricane's 14-foot storm surge inundated the L train's tracks, it crippled a vital link between Brooklyn and Manhattan that carries more than 250,000 commuters every day. The only option, now more than six years later, seemed to be a complete closure of the tunnel for 15 months.
That's no longer the case, officials announced Thursday.
After carefully studying technologies in London, Hong Kong, and Riyadh, the team assembled by Gov. Cuomo â the de-facto leader of the state's Metropolitan Transportation Administration â recommended a ten-fold solution that would avoid a complete shutdown.
First, it's important to understand why the damage was so bad
New York's subway is old. Very old.
The Canarsie Line, which now carries the L train service from 14th street in Chelsea, under the East River to Williamsburg, through Bushwick and eventually to Canarsie, began service in 1924. It's only two tracks for its entire 10-mile length â a surprising anomaly, considering most of the system has multiple to accommodate express and local services.
A cross-section of the Canarsie tube shows the embedded cables, which were destroyed by flooding. Governor Cuomo's Office Despite being the first service of New York's 27 lines to receive an upgrade to a modern signal system, known as Communications Based Train Control, or CBTC for short, much of the electronic equipment was installed inside a concrete "bench wall" in the tunnel.
When the tunnel flooded, it got inside the wall and corroded the communications and signaling equipment.
The MTA was able to restore service following the storm, but warned for years that a complete shutdown would be necessary to remove and replace the destroyed infrastructure. In 2017, after three years of public input and several possible options, officials decided a 15-month closure beginning in April 2019 was the best course of action.
A surprise announcement
With just months until the closure was scheduled to begin, a cryptic tweet from the non-profit Transit Center foundation began to make the rounds on Thursday morning.
And an hour later, a scheduled announcement appeared on the Governor's public schedule for 12:45 pm at his Midtown Manhattan office.
Assembled high above third avenue's bustling traffic was the team of experts assembled by Cuomo, including the deans of Columbia and Cornell's engineering schools alongside MTA acting chairman Fernando Ferrer and other agency officials.
Moments later, the governor would announce the cancellation of the closure that had seen Brooklyn rents plummet and businesses make contingency plans for the lost foot traffic and revenue.
The repaired tunnel will be the first of its kind in the US
Instead of replacing the cabling that's stuck inside the concrete benchwall, contractors will instead repair any damaged portions of the wall and convert it into a walkway for emergency situations and repairs going forward. For this, they'll use fiberglass patching that's been used on other infrastructure projects and is a bonafide method of construction, experts said at the press conference.
NY Governor's Office New electronic equipment will be sheathed in low-smoke, fire resistant cabling and "racked" or hung from the tunnel in a way that it avoids further damage and can be easily repaired if need be. A ground wire will be placed underneath the track bed, as is currently done on some outdoor and above-ground lines.
"This is a design that has not been used in the US before," Cuomo said. "It has been implemented in Europe, but has never been implemented in a tunnel restoration project. It uses many new innovations that are new, frankly, to the rail industry."
Some night and weekend closures of one tube will still be necessary, the MTA said in a press release, allowing for a limited service to continue at the same time as construction.
The "de-coupling" of the infrastructure has "never been done before," the governor added. Damaged cabling inside the benchwall will be abandoned and replaced with new electronics.
Fiber optic cables will also be installed along the entire 32,000 benchwall that can continuously monitor the tunnel for cracks or damage, before a catastrophe occurs. Lidar, a laser-like radar technology, can also be added onto trains for more thorough periodic inspections to the structure.
"This is really state of the art technology," Lance Collins, dean of Cornell's engineering school, said at the press conference. "This is an unusual application in that we're using it in rehabilitation, but its proven technology."
Other recommendations from the task force, all of which have been accepted by the MTA, include waterproof tunnel gates which can be closed in the event of high water to prevent flooding.
The technology could be rolled out to other infrastructure projects, too
The L train is far from the only piece of New York infrastructure experiencing a crisis.
The Gateway tunnel that connects New York and New Jersey via the Hudson River, which Gov. Cuomo also toured in December, is also badly in need of repair or a new tube for the critical Amtrak Northeast Corridor trains and commuter rail services. The Second Avenue Subway â a multi-decade boondoggle that only recently opened with three stops â could also use the technology, the MTA said.
"Human nature is to do what you have done that is tried and true," said Gov. Cuomo. "No designer wants to give you a plan that hasn't been done before, but you have to be willing to break the box."
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Original author: Graham Rapier
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Jan
03
Tesla is close to receiving approval to sell its Model 3 sedan in Europe, Bloomberg reports. The automaker is reportedly on track to begin delivering the Model 3 to European customers in February.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read more: Tesla's stock could drop another 27% after Wednesday's sell-off: JPMorgan
The automaker has reportedly received approval for safety, noise, environmental, and production requirements through the Dutch regulator RDW. The agency will likely approve the Model 3 soon, Bloomberg reports. If an automaker receives approval to sell a vehicle from one European Union nation, it is able to sell that vehicle throughout the EU.
The RDW did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, though the agency told Bloomberg it does not comment on its approval process.
The European and Chinese markets are expected to be important sources of growth for Model 3 sales. During Tesla's third-quarter earnings call in October, the automaker's CEO, Elon Musk, cited the prospect of European and Chinese deliveries as a reason why he did not anticipate the gradual expiration of a federal tax credit for electric vehicles to have a significant impact on Model 3 sales. Musk said at the time that he expected Tesla to produce a "significant" number of Model 3s for European customers in January.
Musk has said that he expects Model 3 deliveries to China to begin in March or April.
Tesla cut the price of each of its vehicles by $2,000 after a $7,500 federal tax credit for US customers was reduced to $3,750 on January 1. The credit will be cut to $1,875 in July and expire in 2020. The reduction was set in motion when Tesla sold its 200,000th vehicle in 2018.
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Original author: Mark Matousek
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