Change is coming for a small but blooming corner of the marijuana industry.

A compound in marijuana that's been linked to a range of potential health benefits — but doesn't cause a high — is increasingly being eyed for use in salves, oils, balms, and beverages. It's also the active ingredient in a new drug that's on the cusp of federal approval.

Cannabidiol, or CBD, is estimated to make up a roughly $1 billion industry. If and when the Food and Drug Administration approves the new CBD-based drug— a decision currently slated for the end of June— it will turn the compound into one that can be legally prescribed by a doctor.

That approval will also jump-start demand for products that have not been federally reviewed, opening up a huge opportunity for retailers and manufacturers to either work alongside the new regulations or take advantage of the legal grey area in which they're currently operating.

The move could unleash what Drug Enforcement Administration public affairs officer Barbara Carreno called a "sea change" for the existing market of less expensive but untested and potentially risky CBD products, such as those sold in convenience stores and marijuana dispensaries.

The drug that could revolutionize the CBD market

Courtesy GW Pharmaceuticals

Since at least 2017, drug company GW Pharmaceuticals has been presenting strong research data to suggest that its CBD-based medicine, a syrup called Epidiolex, can treat the symptoms of two rare forms of childhood epilepsy that are characterized by violent seizures (known as drop seizures).

Although the Food and Drug Administration is not slated to make a final decision on the drug's potential approval until June 27, experts say an official green light is likely.

"This is clearly a breakthrough drug for an awful disease," John Mendelson, a panel member and senior scientist at the Friends Research Institute, said during a public pre-approval meeting to discuss the drug's scientific benefits in April.

Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist at New York University Langone Health and a lead author on some of the GW Pharmaceuticals studies, told Business Insider, "I'd personally be very surprised if this drug was not approved."

If Epidiolex is approved, the DEA has 90 days to shift the classification of marijuana-derived CBD from the current categorization as something with "no recognized medical use" to either a Schedule 2 or 3 drug, much like the popular ADHD medication Adderall.

Once that happens, "all the [CBD] manufacturers have to be registered with us," Carreno said. "That's going to make a huge difference to the industry."

A legal grey area with unregulated products that range from teas to dog treats

Shutterstock But for now, thousands of CBD products exist in legal limbo.

That's because there are two main sources of CBD: marijuana (which includes the leaves of the plant), and hemp (just the stalks and sterile seeds).

While marijuana-derived CBD is only legal in the 28 states plus Washington, DC where marijuana has been legalized (as well as the 15 states where CBD alone has been legalized), hemp-derived CBD falls under a sizeable legal loophole: it is exempted from DEA regulation according to a 2006 law.

But there's a lot of confusion in the space about which CBD products are legal or not. That's made some CBD manufactuers skittish about selling products outside of states where marijuana is legal.

Even so, plenty of other CBD companies are looking to expand across the country, reasoning that because their products are hemp-derived, they're legally in the clear.

Denver-based company Phoenix Tears recently signed an agreement with MarketHub Retail Services, a distributor that works with 7-Eleven franchisees, to get its hemp-derived CBD products in up to 4,500 stores by the end of this year.

"This agreement confirms our belief that CBD's status as a mainstream wellness option has arrived," Phoenix Tears founder Janet Rosendahl-Sweeney said in a recent statement.

Regardless of where the product comes from, there's another pressing issue facing the CBD industry. The products are poorly regulated, and so there is wide variation in content, safety, and price.

For a 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers tested 84 CBD products purchased from 31 different online retailers. Roughly seven out of 10 items had different levels of CBD than what was written on the label. Of all of the items tested, roughly half had more CBD than was indicated; a quarter had less. And 18 of the samples tested positive for THC, despite it not being listed on the label.

"I've seen a lot of dirty CBD manufacturing facilities," said Kevin Harlyall, the CEO of a company called the CBD Palace that audits CBD companies and creates a list of vendors it deems safe for customers. "It's tough to know what you're getting."

According to the DEA, the approval of Epidiolex could change all of that.

"This is going to be a sea change if they approve it," said Carreno.

When Mathilde Collin, a 28-year-old entrepreneur, was ready to start raising venture capital for her company's series B round, she made a ground rule for herself.

Collin scheduled all meetings with investors for one week.

Having a short window creates a little competition among the venture capitalists, who might offer more attractive deals if the company is hot and time is wasting. For Collin, setting a deadline for herself was simply about speeding up the process.

"I don't necessarily like raising funding," Collin told Business Insider.

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She might not like it, but she's arguably very good at it. In January, her company, the shared-inbox platform Front, raised $66 million in a series B round led by Sequoia Capital. During her five-day fundraising binge, Collin snagged 10 term sheets, or investment offers, from 11 of the investors she pitched — an impressive achievement for a first-time founder.

Front has raised a total of $79 million to change the way teams get work done. The startup makes an app that lets teams handle messages from email, texts, Slack, and social media, all in one place. More than 3,000 businesses around the world use Front.

Raising venture capital for a startup is no cakewalk. There are high stakes, probing questions from investors, and pressure from employees to return to the office with a term sheet.

Collin said that before an entrepreneur takes the plunge, they should think critically about whether they're ready to raise funding.

Front wasn't strapped for cash. The company managed to burn only $3 million from a $10 million series A round in 2016, and Front is already making money as a paid service for enterprises.

Front makes a shared-inbox app that lets teams handle messages from email, texts, Slack, and social media, all in one place. Melia Robinson/Business Insider

Still, Collin said she wanted to grow Front more quickly and hire a significant number of engineers. She decided she was ready to raise when Front ended three consecutive quarters during which revenue, app usage, and employee headcount all increased and sustained their growth — though Collin admits that part of the decision came down to a feeling.

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She worked with employees on the data and business operations team to put together a pitch deck, a presentation that entrepreneurs give to investors when seeking a round of funding. In about 24 slides, the pitch deck told the complete story of Front. It addressed the pain points that Front aims to solve, the achievements of the company so far, and the long-term vision of how Front wants to reinvent email.

The pitch deck was also chock-full of data and insights, such as annual recurring revenue, the number of employees who have left Front so far (zero), and its marketing spend.

According to Collin, the investors she pitched seemed to be most impressed with three key metrics: efficiency, consistency, and net retention rate.

With these facts and figures in mind, Collin wowed several Silicon Valley investors. Participating in the company's series B round was actually so competitive that partners of Sequoia Capital built a custom Lego set to persuade Collin, a known Lego enthusiast, to accept their offer. The top-tier venture firm wound up leading the $66 million round.

Collin said that ultimately she was successful in fundraising because Front is a good idea.

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"Investors are driven by the fear of missing out — and if Front is successful, then Front will be very successful, because everyone uses email," Collin said. "Everyone needs a tool like this."

Amazon is the largest property taxpayer and private employer in Seattle. Since 2000, the metro area has added nearly 100,000 new jobs, leading to an influx of high-skilled workers and a thriving tech industry.

But some residents and local officials believe Amazon's growth has been the catalyst for several problems, including affordable housing and homelessness crises, since its arrival in the late 1990s. To ease those issues, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a "head tax" in May requiring large businesses to pay $275 per employee for the next five years. The money would go toward affordable housing and homelessness projects.

The city received pushback from Amazon, which at one point threatened to halt construction of a 405,000-square-foot office tower. Following the tax's passage, Amazon, Starbucks, and other large companies also quietly poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a signature-gathering campaign, called No Tax on Jobs, for a referendum against the tax on November's ballot.

Fearing this and more pushback from Amazon, the city repealed the tax.

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While Amazon may have won its battle, there could be more Big Tech head taxes to come. Multiple Silicon Valley cities are considering similar taxes, and Amazon's win in Seattle doesn't seem to be stopping them. The decision to repeal could set an anti-tax precedent in Silicon Valley cities that are considering similar legislation.

Mountain View, California — the home of Google, LinkedIn, and Symantec — may tax big companies like Google, which has 23,000 workers in the city, $150 per employee. On June 26, the city council will decide whether the initiative will appear on the November ballot.

Less than 10 miles away, Cupertino — the city that houses Apple's headquarters — is also polling the public on reopening a head tax proposal after one was shut down by business interests in 2016.

Mountain View Mayor Lenny Siegel — a proponent of the proposed head tax — told Business Insider his city is dealing with affordability issues that mirror what's happening in Seattle. Mountain View's tax would go primarily toward transit projects, and a sliver of the revenue would help finance affordable housing developments.

"It's hard for people in other parts of the country to visualize what our situation is," he said. "Everyone else wants to be in a position of having lots of good jobs, but they bring their own problems. And it's up to cities working with our business communities to solve those problems or we will kill the goose that laid the golden egg."

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

If the head tax passes in Mountain View, Google would need to pay up to an additional $3.45 million annually, based on its current number of employees.

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The rate for large companies in Cupertino is not set yet, but in 2016, former Mayor Barry Chang angled for a $1,000-per-employee tax that was struck down. Siegel considers these figures a drop in the bucket for the two companies, which collectively generate more than $300 billion in revenue each year.

Siegel predicts that Mountain View will pass the tax, since Google — its largest taxpayer — has not tried any intimidation tactics in the city. Since the city has been considering the tax for three years, Siegel said it's hard to compare what happened in Seattle to the debate in Mountain View.

However, an earlier version of Mountain View's head tax would have required Google to pay $300 per employee — double what the city is planning now. In early June, after Amazon halted construction on a Seattle office tower pending a vote on the tax, City Council members decided to lower the rate to $150 per Googler (The timing may be coincidental).

Google has stayed silent on the tax

According to Siegel, city officials have a relatively pleasant relationship with Google, which has a history of funding public works projects.

Since 2014, the tech giant has given more than $14 million to Mountain View nonprofits, including a $1 million grant for homelessness prevention and rehousing. In 2017, Google funded 2.5 miles of bike, pedestrian, and infrastructure improvements in the city.

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In September, Mountain View's city council had a brief spat with the company over an approval to create nearly 10,000 units of affordable housing on Google property. The next morning, an executive from Google called Siegel to apologize.

Siegel said Google has stayed silent on the subject of a head tax, which he interprets as an optimistic sign. (Google declined to comment on its policy position to Business Insider.)

"They just keep saying, 'We'll get back to you,'" he said. Siegel acknowledges that other large, local employers have openly opposed the tax. "Although we don't agree on everything, we have a long history of working with employers."

An aerial view of Apple Park in Cupertino, California. Google Earth

Siegel argues that Google and other Silicon Valley giants could benefit from the legislation, because it would allow more workers to commute into the city from elsewhere. One project Mountain View may pursue is a bus line that would connect downtown to Google's campus, he said.

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When asked whether he fears Google would move if Mountain View passed a version of the tax, Siegel said it would be unlikely. In any case, Siegel said, Mountain View's housing and infrastructure struggles are acute enough that "it wouldn't hurt if [Google] moved."

Apple has a history of pushing back against Cupertino

In Cupertino, Apple has not been as accommodating to the city, according to Siegel. The company has made few announcements of local philanthropy beyond its "Global Volunteer Program," which launched in 2011 to encourage employees to volunteer in local communities. The company has also planted over 9,000 trees at its headquarters.

Cupertino may have fewer bargaining chips than Mountain View in a head tax battle, because Apple accounts for an even larger share (three-fourths) of the workforce. That means the city is more dependent on the company for tax revenue.

Cupertino has paid a firm to begin polling residents about the tax and explore how the city could spend the revenue, City Manager David Brandt told The San Francisco Chronicle.

City of Cupertino/YouTube After former Cupertino Mayor Chang's head tax proposal was struck down in 2016, he told The Guardian that the legislation faced a great deal of opposition from Apple.

"Apple is not willing to pay a dime [for public projects]," Chang said. "They're making profit, and they should share the responsibility for our city, but they won't."

Siegel shares a similar view.

"Apple, unlike Google, doesn't donate a lot to the community," he said.

Apple did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment, but the company's past views on corporate-civic responsibility may offer a clue regarding its future attitude on a head tax .

In a now-infamous video from 2011, Steve Jobs presented his vision for a new headquarters (which opened in January 2018) to Cupertino's City Council. At one point, a council member asked how Cupertino residents would benefit from the campus, and whether Apple would consider granting the city free public wifi.

Jobs denied the possibility.

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"As you know, we're the largest taxpayer in Cupertino, so we'd like to continue to stay here and pay taxes," he said. "Because if we can't, we'd have to go somewhere like Mountain View, and we'd take our current people with us and over the years sell the land here. The largest tax base would go away. That wouldn't be good for Cupertino, and that wouldn't be good for us either."

Digital advertising continues to be plagued by hackers ripping off marketers. The ad-tech giant AppNexus says it has found a way to wipe this plague out.

Specifically the New York-based firm has inked a deal with the anti-fraud company White Ops. The partnership will see White Ops technology baked into AppNexus' ad buying and ad selling software.

The net result, according to AppNexus CEO Brian O'Kelley, is that AppNexus and White Ops will scan every single ad that may be bought or sold to determine if the traffic being delivered is indeed coming from a human, and not a bot.

If White Ops says the traffic isn't human, AppNexus won't let the transaction happen, O'Kelley said. This will all happen in milliseconds.

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If it works, O'Kelley believes this will significantly choke off bogus traffic from AppNexus and its customers - and he thinks this will pressure other ad exchanges (like say Google's) to follow suit.

"We think we can make this go away entirely," he told Business Insider.

That would be no small feat. Figures vary, but experts say that various forms of ad fraud cost the industry billions in wasted revenue; White Ops has estimated that the industry lost between $6 and $7 billion annually in recent years.

As programmatic advertising has exploded over the last decade, the digital ad business' embrace of automation has left it vulnerable to scam artists. And there are multiple flavors of fraud, such as scammers falsely listing their small websites on ad exchanges as well as on known sites (like say CNN.com or NYTimes.com).

Other fraudsters install malware on people's computers and even insert ads on top of existing web ads, cashing in along the way.

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One popular ad fraud scam involves creating bogus web sites, sending loads of non-human traffic to them using bots, and then selling all sorts of ads on these fake sites.

O'Kelley said that its White Ops deal won't eliminate all fraud, but he thinks it can wipe out the non-human traffic part. He says the industry needs to join forces on this quest if it wants to get any real headway.

A few years ago, AppNexus found itself with a significant fraud problem of its own. Since then, "we've been spending a ton of money every year to fight this," he said. "It's a big tax on the industry."

Different ad-tech companies work with different anti-fraud vendors, and ad buyers often chose to work with yet another partner.

AppNexus

"Not every company stands by the same standards," O'Kelley said. In the case of White Ops, "they only focus on non-human traffic, and they do it better than anybody else."

To date, White Ops has raised over $30 million to build tech designed to sniff out bot traffic. In 2016 the company claimed to have discovered a bot net that was stealing $5 million a day.

"We could use our partnership as a competitive advantage, but it's too important," O'Kelley said.

"But we've got tens of billions of dollars coming online. So we said, 'let's raise the bar so high for everybody.' This is a way to put fraud away for good."

McDonald's is ditching plastic straws in all its 1,361 UK and Ireland restaurants, in what could turn out to be a playbook it repeats in the rest of the world.

More environmentally-friendly paper straws will replace plastic ones starting September.

The BBC reports that McDonald's currently uses 1.8 million straws a day in the UK alone.

"Reflecting the broader public debate, our customers told us they wanted to see a move on straws," Paul Pomroy, chief executive of McDonald's UK and Ireland, said.

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"The government's ambitious plans, combined with strong customer opinion, has helped to accelerate the move away from plastic and I'm proud that we've been able to play our part in helping to achieve this societal change."

McDonald's say the new straws will use paper from sustainable sources.

UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove called it a "significant contribution" to helping the environment, and said it was "a fine example to other large businesses."

The Ocean Cleanup

The ban on plastic straws comes as a result of a series of successful trials in certain outlets — and they will soon start in the US, France and Norway.

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Recycling non-profit Eco-Cycle claims that the US uses 500 million plastic straws every day.

While plastic straws are technically recyclable, their small size and weight mean they are often missed by sorting machines and the sheer number of straws used every day means they make a big contribution to the millions of tons of plastic that end up in our oceans every year.

Most straws are made from plastics that take hundreds of years to decompose and instead break down into microplastics— which are extremely dangerous to the environment.

McDonald's isn't the first food corporation to buck the plastic trend in the UK; JD Wetherspoon, Burger King and Costa Coffee have all phased out plastic straws in the last year.

Hyped augmented reality startup Blippar has posted losses and warned that it needs to raise more money to stay afloat.

In earnings for the year to 31 March 2017, published on Companies House, the company said it was in talks with strategic investors for new cash, but said the funding was not yet agreed.

The firm said: "The group has incurred losses from operations as it continues to prioritise investment into technology over short term profits. This investment has resulted in the need to obtain additional funding to continue with further investment... and continue as a going concern."

Here are the important numbers from Blippar's earnings for the year to the end of March last year:

Due to a change in the way Blippar reports its finances, it's difficult to compare the company's 2017 performance with how it did in 2015/2016.

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In the 16-month period to 31 March 2016, Blippar posted revenue of £8.5 million and a loss of £24 million, according to its adjusted results. While a direct comparison is difficult, the most recent numbers suggest that Blippar has lost more money in a shorter timeframe.

Blippar also said it had raised $26.3 million (£19.9 million) after March 2017 through loans from existing undisclosed investors, and a further $500,000 (around £378,000) from selling its shares in another startup, WaveOptics.

It didn't say whether the new cash was sufficient to keep the company going for the next year. The company would not comment on Thursday when asked about raising new funding.

It was five months late in postings its financials for the year to 31 March 2017, and has not explained the delay.

The Blippar app. Blippar

Blippar was founded in 2011 by CEO Ambarish "Rish" Mitra, CTO Omar Tayeb, and directors Steven Spencer and Jessica Butcher.

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The company is best known for its augmented reality app, which can recognise everyday objects and overlay them with more information. It predominantly makes money through selling augmented reality advertising to brands and advertising agencies, and through licensing its technology to third parties.

Sources told Business Insider last year that, despite its charismatic and visionary chief executive, Blippar has always struggled to nail down a strategy and had inflated its user numbers.

It has pivoted from augmented reality to computer vision and, the sources said last year, was on the brink of running out of cash. They said Blippar had shuttered offices in Japan, Turkey, and Amsterdam, something the firm acknowledged in its 2017 earnings.

Blippar blamed its losses on its investments in computer vision and said it employed more than 116 technologists, compared to 54 sales and marketing staff.

That number is now likely to be lower, after Blippar shut another office in Mountain View in May this year. The Mountain View hub was Blippar's biggest office and houses its computer vision engineers, although the company has not confirmed any job losses.

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The filings also reveal that Blippar has lost another board member. Javier Santiso represented one of Blippar's biggest investors, the Malaysian government's sovereign wealth fund. He resigned in March. Non-executive board member Doreswamy Nandkishore also stepped down earlier this year.

LONDON — Social trading platform eToro is setting up a new over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk in London for cryptocurrencies amid growing interest from institutional investors.

eToro CEO Yoni Assia told Business Insider: "We are launching an OTC desk for institutions. We've seen more and more interest from corporates and institutions."

OTC desks cater to clients who want to place large orders that may otherwise move markets for certain assets. OTC brokers pool liquidity across different exchanges to fill these orders. eToro, which lets people trade stocks, crypto, and other assets, has connections to 15 cryptocurrency exchanges around the world and is planning to launch its own exchange.

Assia said: "We've actually set up our corporate team here in the UK to start setting up accounts to trade on eToro. We've announced that we're launching the exchange as well so, between the exchange and the OTC desk, we're also starting to serve more potential institutions and financial institutions."

Assia with ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin. eToro Mainstream financial institutions were largely dismissive of cryptocurrencies until last year but have grown increasingly interested after a surge in the value of bitcoin. Exchange operators CME Group and CBOE both launched bitcoin futures at the end of last year to offer more traditional investors exposure to the space.

The cryptocurrency market crashed from a peak of over $800 billion in December to around $280 billion today, but institutional interest has persisted.

Goldman Sachs-backed cryptocurrency startup Circle and Cumberland Mining, a division of Chicago high-speed trading company DRW, both offer OTC crypto services and have reported rising interest from institutions. Goldman Sachs has begun setting up a desk to trade on cryptocurrencies on behalf of clients, and the likes of JPMorgan and Fidelity are also assessing the space.

Assia said institutional interest in the space was still at an early stage. "It's the owners of hedge funds at this point," he said when asked who was contacting eToro.

"What we're seeing is a sense of interest and people who want to experiment but not yet take their core assets in. Corporates are corporates. But we're seeing more interest from the city folk who potentially could take that interest institutionally but the initial interest is in experimenting — where we were in 2010."

Financial News reported recently that eToro had held preliminary talks with bankers about a potential IPO. Assia was circumspect, telling BI the discussions were "in a standard course of business for a business that raised $100 million and significantly scaled its revenues."

"Obviously, we have the surrounding people who are interested in taking us there but it's nothing that has been set in stone."

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He added that bankers were likely keen to capitalise on the surge in interest in cryptocurrencies among investors.

"I think there is growing institutional demand and interest of public investors to understand whether they can join the party," Assia said. "That is something we definitely see out there. We see more and more public market players and big banks who are interested in this space and feel left out because they're not allowed to invest in crypto or ICOs."

eToro was founded in 2006 and claims to have over 10 million retail customers worldwide, with the majority in Europe. The online platform lets investors track, follow, and even automatically copy the trades other investors. This week the business announced that customers can now buy and hold both stocks and cryptocurrencies in the same portfolio.

Apple is close to agreeing a deal to buy the distribution rights to a movie from Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, Bloomberg reports.

Cartoon Saloon is based in Kilkenny, Ireland and has produced three Academy Award-nominated features: "Secret of Kells," "The Breadwinner," and "Song of the Sea." It also produces the children's TV series "Puffin Rock," narrated by "Bridesmaids" star Chris O'Dowd.

Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg said a deal is being negotiated between Apple and Cartoon Saloon for the rights to an unnamed movie, which is more than a year from release.

One of the sources said a theatrical release would be possible, and noted that other potential movies are also in the works.

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While the deal is not yet closed, it is another signal of Apple's video ambitions. The company already makes shows like "Carpool Karaoke," and has a crop of original shows planned.

Business Insider has contacted Apple and Cartoon Saloon for comment.

DUBLIN, IRELAND — Grammy Award-winning Imogen Heap is using the proceeds from her score for the Harry Potter musical and a surprise ethereum windfall to fund a blockchain project to help musicians keep track of, and get paid for, their music.

Heap appeared at the MoneyConf conference in Dublin this week to talk about her project Mycelia. Heap wants to create a blockchain-based app that will allow musicians to store all the information about their work in one place. Currently, no central repository exists for information like publishing rights, recording rights, and composition rights.

"It's about how to ease flow of payments, how to ease collaboration, how to grow partnerships, how to make better collaborations on a business level and a creative level," Heap told Business Insider.

"If you're just a new musician out there and you don't know what to do, how do you know where to sign up? This is a guide as much as anything, a way to help the music maker navigate the industry."

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Heap admitted that blockchain was not the only way to solve this problem but said she is keen to piggyback on the popularity of the technology, which was first developed to underpin digital currency bitcoin.

"There are many ways to do it," she said. "But for me, it's important to be in this space because it's a growing space and the music industry has to move with the times and I just want to make sure that we're here and prepared — the music-makers are prepared."

Heap has been talking about creating Mycelia for around three years but said she is now taking the idea forward and hopes to have an app by September.

She said: "I didn't expect to be able to develop a thing — I didn't want to, to be honest, I just wanted to make music. I thought if I could just share an idea maybe someone would make something but in the end nobody was doing this thing."

Heap, perhaps best known for her song Hide & Seek, is planning to do a world tour to promote the project once the app launches. She will do 40 shows around the world connected to business conferences.

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Heap is self-funding the project and says she has benefitted from her work scoring the Harry Potter musical, playing on London's West End.

"I'm also in a position, thanks to Harry Potter to be honest, that I'm not needing to make money on the next album and the next tour. I've just lucky to be in a position where this magic play is essentially giving me a wage every week, which has never happened in my life before. Who would have thought? Harry Potter is the saviour — well, not a saviour but Harry Potter is enabling this."

She added that she has also benefitted from the surge in cryptocurrencies over the last year. Heap released the song Tiny Human on the ethereum blockchain in 2015, allowing people to download the song in exchange for the cryptocurrency ether.

"People paid $1, or 1 ETH, which was equal to $1 at the time," she said. "That was $200. I didn't think anything of it and then, of course, it went massively up and I took a bit out and put it into the project, and then it went massively down. It went up to £200,000."

Ether reached a peak of over $1,200 per coin in early January before declining in line with the wider cryptocurrency market. Ether is trading at around $480 as of June 14.

AP Photo/Richard Drew

Shares of iQiyi — the Baidu-owned video service widely seen as the Netflix of China — has more than doubled since its US initial public offering less than three months ago.

As its stock has skyrocketed from $18 at the IPO to $37 on Thursday, the streaming video service has become a darling for millennial investors on the stock trading app Robinhood, whose users skew markedly younger than that of traditional brokerages. The stock is now held by 31,302 Robinhood investors, the site’s data shows, making it the 30th most held stock. It first appeared in the top 100 in late May.

Ten-year-old iQiyi began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange in March after being spun off by the Chinese search giant Baidu. The offering raised $2.25 billion for the video service, which currently boasts 61 million subscribers. For comparison, Netflix has more than 100 million worldwide, but Chinese regulations have hindered its expansion in the country.

Its success in trading so far has led to optimism on Wall Street. Both Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse have positive ratings for the stock.

China will soon begin tracking the movements of all new cars.

Beginning next year, China will require all new registered cars to have an RFID chip installed on windshields which will help study and manage traffic, pollution, and public security, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Under the program, both a car's license plate and its paint color will be recorded. Card readers placed along roads will detect the RFID chips and pass information back to the Ministry of Public Security.

China's congestion is almost incomparable, with 5 million cars on the road in Beijing. China is also one of the most dangerous countries in the world for drivers, with the World Health Organization putting traffic deaths at more than 260,000 in 2013.

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But the RFID plan, which will initially be voluntary from July 1 2018, will also help another focus of President Xi Jinping's: China's domestic chip industry.

Despite being the world's factory, 90% of the chips China uses are imported or produced locally by foreign-owned firms, according to International Business Strategies Inc. Tens of billions of dollars are reportedly set to be poured into a new investment fund to finance local chip R&D.

But when Chinese smartphone maker ZTE was banned from buying parts, including chips, from US companies, the company essentially shut down. After the ban, Chinese officials reportedly held a number of meetings about speeding up the local industry.

While China won't be the first country to use such computer chips in cars — California has begun testing chip-enabled license plates that would allow drivers to automatically update their vehicle registrations and let police track stolen vehicles.

Amid punishing repeat jaywalkers and honking drivers, Beijing police have already started using facial-recognition glasses that can identify passengers and car number plates within milliseconds. Powered by artificial intelligence, the eyewear compares faces and cars to a "blacklist" in real time and display a red box and warning sign when a match is made.

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With China wanting to roll out a nation-wide social credit program, it's unlikely to be long until all cars are tracked and compared to various legal and social blacklists.

If you're a black or a Latino software engineer, now might be a good time to file your resume with Google.

Not only is the search giant struggling to add workers from those groups to its ranks but it also faring poorly at keeping them around, according to Google's annual diversity report released Thursday.

Google and the rest of the technology sector are trying to shed their reputations for not being inclusive. In the case of Google, the company at minimum deserves points for transparency, as managers each year reveal how they're progressing at hiring more women and workers from minority groups.

Still, in many areas the numbers show little if any progress.

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Blacks make up 2.5% of Google's US workforce, up from 2.4% the year before. The percentage of Latinos barely moved, from 3.5% to 3.6% (Google said it chose the term to use the Latinx because it describes all people from Latin American, including Brazilians who are not Hispanic, as well as people of all genders).

Women made up 30.8% a year ago and are now at 30.9 percent.

A worrisome brain drain

For blacks and Latinos, things appear even worse when considering attrition rates, a data point that Google added for the first time this year.

Blacks have the highest attrition of any of the ethnic groups listed by Google, with a weighted index rating of 127 (100 is the company's overall attrition rate). Latinos were the next highest at 115.

Screen shot of Google diversity report Google

Google wrote in the report, "Black Googler attrition rates, while improving in recent years, have offset some of our hiring gains, which has led to smaller increases in representation than we would have seen otherwise."

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This was "a clear low light," said Danielle Brown, Google vice president of Diversity and Inclusion, of the attrition rates in an interview with TechCrunch. "That's an area where we're going to be laser-focused."

The attrition rates for Whites came in at 108 while Asians possessed the lowest rate with 83.

Google did make headway from last year when it came to the management ranks. Over the past few years, the number of women in leadership roles globally has risen from 20.8% to 25.5%. Though that leaves plenty of room for progress.

Google's "solution" for minority attrition rates is facing a big problem

James DamoreYouTube/Joe Rogan ExperienceGoogle's struggle creating a diverse workforce is hardly unique in Silicon Valley, with companies such as Facebook, Apple and Microsoft all similarly underrepresented when it comes to women and minorities.

In its report, Google offers some thoughts on how to address the attrition rate:

"Based on employee surveys, we have learned that feeling included is associated with lower attrition for all employees, especially people of color. So we are accelerating efforts to ensure all Googlers—and in particular those from underrepresented groups—experience Google as an inclusive workplace," the report says.

But that goal might be tougher than expected given some of the recent events at Google.

Google's efforts to create a diverse workplace became a lightning rod earlier this year after an internal debate about diversity issues exploded in public, landing Google on the frontlines of the country's culture wars. Former Google employee James Damore, who famously suggested that women weren't genetically equipped to be great engineers, was fired for violating company policy.

Damore later filed suit, saying Google discriminated against white male employees as well as conservatives.

The incident highlighted a tricky tension between Google's commitment to gender and ethnic diversity and its commitment to free expression and debate. Damore is no longer at the company, but it's not clear if the issue is resolved.

This week, Tesla is firing around 9% of its employees in an effort to cut costs and eliminate redundancies, CEO Elon Musk said in an email to employees he shared on Twitter.

The move came as a surprise to some employees, who told Business Insider they were given no advance notice about the possibility of being fired. During Tesla's first-quarter earnings call in May, Musk said the company would restructure operations to boost profitability. At the time, he said the company would review its third-party contractors, though he didn't discuss specific plans to layoff company employees.

One former employee thinks more layoffs are coming

A former Tesla Energy salesperson who asked not to be identified by name said her team received an email at 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning asking them to clear four hours in their schedule that day for a video conference. The video conference turned into a conference call with a human-resources employee and Brent Baldwin, the company's director of energy sales.

During the call, 250 people, including the energy sales employee's entire training class, learned they would be let go, and Baldwin apologized for having to fire salespeople who had hit their quotas, the former energy salesperson said. Despite the apology, the former energy salesperson said she and her training class were made to feel as if they had failed the company.

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"font-weight: 400;">Musk said in an email on Monday that the company was laying off people now so& that it would never have to do it again.

But the former employee said she believes this round of layoffs won't be the last.

"My theory is that this is the first wave. I don't think there will be enough business for the staff levels that they have," she said. "I would be scared to lose my job if I still had one.

The former employee started at Tesla in January and said she had to work nights and weekends to hit her quota while dealing with a shifting commission structure that made it more difficult to hit her goals.

"Honestly, since I started with this company it's been nothing but a disaster," she said.

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The company broke promises more than once, she said, adding that she was not reimbursed for mileage, as promised, and never received any company apparel. Tesla also didn't mark out sales territory, so she would run into her coworkers in her region, she said.

In April, she said solar salespeople signed a new commission plan that would prevent them from receiving commissions at different stages in the sales process. Instead, they would only receive commissions at the end of the process. The former solar salesperson says she'll end up losing money she would have made under the old commission structure because she was fired before some of her clients had their installations completed.

"There's no way around it, they just got away with not having to pay people," she said.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment about her claims.

Employees were caught off-guard

Another employee, who worked in vehicle delivery and asked not to be identified by name, said he wasn't aware of the meeting that would lead to his firing before he came to work on Monday morning. An hour after he arrived at the office, two of his supervisors and a regional human-resources manager brought one of his colleagues into a conference room, putting the vehicle delivery employee on alert.

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"It was a little odd to see three managers show up," he said

Once his colleague left the conference room, she gathered her belongings and was escorted out of the building. The former delivery employee said he thought his colleague had been fired for performance reasons, but once he was called into the conference room, he said he realized his position was being eliminated.

He was given no advance notice of the meeting before Monday. For each of the prior two weeks, he had worked 60 hours over six days, he said.

He had worked for Tesla since 2015 and said during his time at the company his team had to adjust to a sixfold increase in deliveries while being told to increase delivery speed. Despite the raised expectations, his team decreased from its original size.

"How are we understaffed and you're still letting 9% of employees go?" he said, "It boggled my mind."

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A third employee, an engineer who still works at Tesla and asked not to be identified by name, said he discovered his manager had been fired after the manager didn't show up for a meeting on Tuesday. When a colleague of his attempted to email the manager, the email bounced back. He said he thinks they fired the wrong people.

"I think it was really squirrelly how they did it," he said.

If you've worked for Tesla and have a story to share, you can contact this reporter at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The biggest game announced at E3 that's actually coming this year is probably "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate," which arrives December 7.

Most of the best-looking games we saw at E3 are launching in 2019 or later.

— "Kingdom Hearts 3" was delayed out of 2018, and will now be released on January 29, 2019.

— The "Resident Evil 2" remake arrives in January 2019.

— "Anthem," "Metro Exodus," and "Crackdown 3" all arrive in February 2019.

— "Ori and the Will of the Wisps," "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice," "Devil May Cry 5," "Battletoads," and "Gears of War 5" will all arrive at some point in 2019.

— We have no idea when "Halo Infinite," "Doom Eternal," "The Last of Us II," "Beyond Good and Evil 2," "The Elder Scrolls VI," "Death Stranding," or "Cyberpunk 2077" will come out.

Facebook has got big plans for a new $750 million data center in Huntsville, Alabama.

On Thursday, the social networking giant announced it was building a new 970,000 square foot facility in Huntsville, a city in the northern part of the US state.

"As a growing tech hub, Huntsville seemed like a natural fit for Facebook," the company wrote on a new Facebook post dedicated to the planned data center. "It also provides reliable access to renewable energy, strong local infrastructure, a great set of community partners, and very importantly, an outstanding pool of talent."

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that it is investing $750 million in the project.

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The Birmingham Business Journal previously reported Alabama governor Kay Ivey as saying the average salary at the completed center will be $80,000, and it will create 100 new jobs.

It should be up and running by 2020, Facebook said.

The new Huntsville facility will join Facebook's sprawling network of data centers across America and around the world, that host its reams of user data and power its apps and services.

Today, we are excited to be in Huntsville to announce our newest data center. As a growing tech hub, Huntsville seemed like a natural fit for Facebook. The site, located in Northern Huntsville, is shovel-ready and allows us to break ground this year. It also provides reliable access to renewable energy, strong local infrastructure, a great set of community partners, and very importantly, an outstanding pool of talent.

This 970,000 square foot facility will host many of the videos, photos, and news articles you see on your Facebook feed every day. And once it becomes operational in 2020, it will help us continue to provide a great experience for people here in Alabama and people around the world.

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But it's not only about the impact online, we are also committed to having a positive impact on this community. These data centers are real economic engines - and beyond just the four corners of the site. We are proud to say a recent study found that for every 1 million dollars in operating expenses at our data centers, there are 13 jobs supported in the economy. And for every 1 million dollars in capital expenditures, there are more than 14 jobs supported in the economy.

Facebook is also committed to powering our data centers with 100% clean and renewable energy. That is why we worked with the Tennessee Valley Authority to establish a renewable energy tariff that will let qualifying customers, not just Facebook, buy new renewable resources. We are also working closely with them to identify new solar projects in the area that will power 100% of our facility.

Over the coming years, we will continue to work on the foundational technologies needed to bring the world closer together - and the Huntsville Data Center will be a part of that.

If you're not already using Zelle, you may be one of the millions of users the platform is expected to add in 2018.

Zelle is a year-old service that lets you instantly transfer money to someone else, much like Venmo or Square Cash.

But Zelle differs from either service in a major way: because it was built by seven of the largest US banks, it's often able to integrate more seamlessly with your bank's mobile app. While other services make you wait a few days for the money you received from friends to show up in your bank account, Zelle can transfer the money almost instantly.

For those reasons, analysts at eMarketer expect Zelle to "leapfrog" other payments services before the end of the year.

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"One of the main hurdles new apps face is building trust and a sizable audience," eMarketer forecasting analyst Cindy Liu wrote in a report. "But Zelle has leapfrogged the early stages of adoption by having the benefit of being embedded into the already existing apps of participating banks."

Zelle is expected to grow more than 73% this year, eMarketer predicts, and will likely reach 24.7 million US users. That's more than Venmo's 22.9 million users.

Square Cash is the third most-popular payments app with 9.5 million users.

Take a look below at how Zelle's predicted user growth over the next four years:

Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

The Chicago Tribune reports Mayor Rahm Emanuel has selected a bid from Elon Musk's Boring Company to build a high-speed link between downtown Chicago and O'Hare Airport. Autonomous vehicles are supposed to make the trip in just 12 minutes, at over 100 miles per hour.

It sounds cool, but the proposal as described makes very little sense.

The Tribune says the project "would be able to handle nearly 2,000 passengers per hour in each direction." This is not a high capacity. You can fit 2,000 passengers on a single, crowded New York City subway train — and a subway line can handle 24 of those trains per hour. Even assuming a more comfortable subway load of 1,000 passengers per train, this system would have 1/12 the capacity of a subway line.

The low capacity would stem from the small size of the vehicles, which would carry just 16 passengers each. What is the point of using such small vehicles in a system that connects just two stations?

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This all assumes Boring can deliver on its promise of much faster and cheaper tunnel construction, which will rely on technologies the company has not yet shown can work. I'm glad Musk is trying to innovate here — underground rail projects in the US are far more expensive than they should be, and the space is ripe for innovation.

But I'd like to see him show that he can actually build faster and cheaper at a demonstration site before a major city like Chicago goes into business with him.

Plus, one of the ways the Tribune says he'd save money is concerning: His tunnels would only be 14 feet in diameter, about half the size of a typical subway tunnel. A smaller tunnel means smaller vehicles and lower passenger capacity, which can mean it's a false economy — you're spending less because you get less tunnel when construction is finished.

The best argument for this project is that Musk says the Boring Company will take on the entire construction cost, which he thinks will be only about $1 billion. So long as that remains true, sure, let him have at it and see if he can actually build the thing. (I wouldn't want to be one of his investors, though.)

But private megaprojects like this have a way of turning into public ones, when costs exceed projections and private operators say they have no way to finish construction without public support. If Chicago goes down this road, they need to be prepared to say "no" if Musk comes back in a few years and asks for money.

Self driving cars are all over the streets of San Francisco these days, with prototypes from GM's Cruise project and various other companies regularly spotted.

But sightings of more exotic specimens, such as the matte black Zoox car or the ever-elusive Apple car, are also possible for the alert car-spotter.

Business Insider was lucky enough to catch one such mystery robo-car this week in the city's Bernal Heights neighborhood.

The car drove by in the opposite direction, and your correspondent quickly flipped an ill-advised U-Turn to give chase (much to the consternation of several panicked passengers). Before long, we'd gained ground on our prey and managed to get on its tail to capture a few images.

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The customized Subaru Impreza sported a curiously oversized mechanical antler on its roof, with a triple stack of Lidars (the spinning laser sensors that help the car map and navigate its environment in real time) and numerous other markings.

Here's a closer look:

Alexei Oreskovic

Subaru is among the 55 companies with permits to test self-driving cars on California streets. But a Subaru of America spokesperson tells Business Insider this is not one of theirs.

"The Impreza in the image does not belong to Subaru of America, Inc. so we do not have any information on it or the mechanism mounted on the roof," the Subaru spokesperson said after inspecting the photo.

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The white decal on the rear window may hold a clue, though we have been unable to decipher it. It's also worth noting that the lidar stack could be for mapping purposes only, rather than to provide autonomous capabilities to this Subaru.

One thing is for sure, the triple lidar vertical "mechanism" seems somewhat impractical, especially in situations where the car might need to navigate in a space with low overhead clearance, such as a parking garage.

Do you know anything about this self-driving car? If so, contact the author at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..