Juul Labs, an e-cigarette startup that has raised more than $12 billion in funding, is reportedly nearing a deal to purchase a high-rise building in downtown San Francisco to house its rapidly growing staff.

According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday, Juul has its sights on 123 Mission Street, a 29-floor building near the city's Transbay area in the Financial District. The company recently purchased a renovated historic building near Pier 70 in the city's developing Dogpatch neighborhood, the report said.

Read More:Founders Fund made its first alcohol investment. Here's how the 28-year old woman who founded the company is trying to change drinking culture for the better.

Juul spokesperson Ted Kwong would not confirm the report, but said that the company had grown from 200 employees to 2,000 in the last year, with a a majority of the workers located in the company's San Francisco headquarters.

"As a result, we are currently looking for additional office space in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area, but we have nothing to announce at this time," Kwong told Business Insider via email.

Juul first gained notoriety for its aggressive marketing for its flavored e-cigarettes aimed at teens. The company is now partly owned by Altria, the tobacco giant that makes Marlboro cigarettes, and has come under intense scrutiny from federal and local health officials for its claims that vaping is a healthy alternative to cigarettes.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle report, the building in question is five times the size of the company's current office space, and was last sold in 2018 for $290 million. If Juul purchases the building, the deal will be one of the largest in San Francisco history for a tech company that doesn't specialize in real estate, according to the report.

The company's Dogpatch presence ignited a firestorm among San Francisco politicians and residents, and officials introduced legislation in March that would prohibit e-cigarette companies like Juul from occupying city-owned property, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report.

Motus Ventures announced on Tuesday a $30 million fund in partnership with the Stanford Disruptive Technology and Digital Cities Program to help build companies around Stanford University's renowned artificial intelligence and machine learning research programs.

The Motus Smart World Innovation Fund will also have a membership and advisory role in the Stanford program, which counts global corporations like Amazon, Bechtel, Microsoft, and Visa as partner groups.

Motus Ventures cofounder and Managing Director Jim DiSanto told Business Insider that, while some of the greatest companies have come from college dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg, the firm prefers to deal with those researchers who are continuing to innovate while reamining under Stanford's banner. DiSanto said the Motus Smart World Innovation Fund will focus on researchers who "run their own labs," like professors or lecturers.

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"Companies like Yahoo and Facebook started in college dorm rooms and companies like Google started on Stanford's campus," DiSanto said. "Larry Page started Google and dropped out of his Ph.D. program and commercialized that into a company. I don't want to discount the dorm room, could be another Larry Page on campus, but if we have to rely on lucky strikes that are in the dorm rooms here, that's a little too risky."

The surest bet DiSanto sees is with technology that applies artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in robotics, including technical components like cameras that are necessary for building robots with near-human intelligence.

"The ability to replace human, physical tasks is the largest technology opportunity of all time," DiSanto told Business Insider. "As in all technological revolutions, jobs are gained and jobs are lost and jobs are changed. The hope is that pie will get larger but there are no guarantees. We're looking at ways and thinking of ways to make this better for everyone but we are a for-profit institution and this is the best opportunity for growth."

DiSanto explains that larger corporations are starting to realize the potential in automation as well, and says Amazon's cashierless Go stores are a prime example of what this trend could look like over the next five years. He predicts more legacy companies will wade into the world of corporate venture investing to attempt to keep up with smaller upstarts tackling complex issues like autonomous trucking.

"We've seen big changes rolling into Silicon Valley, some of which are quite permanent," DiSanto explained. "One that's unmistakable and that is the role of the corporate investor and they are here to stay and they are here with a vengeance. Every large corporation around the world is here, and you will see thousands more of them setting up shop and starting 'corporate innovation centers' or 'Silicon Valley innovation centers' and that opens up new opportunities for all of us now."

In its capacity as member and advisor, The Motus Smart World Innovation Fund will attend Stanford's annual Digital Cities Summit and advise research teams on how to best monetize their technology during twice annual research reviews.

The enterprise startup tech world was shocked on Wednesday by the news that Bob Muglia suddenly left hot startup Snowflake, replaced as CEO by Frank Slootman, another well-known name in the business.

Muglia was famously known as one of Microsoft's top executives, who served under both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer — the latter of whom fired him twice, Muglia once told Business Insider.

The first time, Ballmer demoted him from a star position to a tiny role. Muglia fought back, he said, and climbed his way back up the ladder.

His hard work in the face of that demotion won Ballmer's admiration so thoroughly that Ballmer put Muglia in charge of one of the company's four major units, the Servers and Tools business, which was doing $15 billion in revenue at the time and had 10,000 employees. Ballmer wound up firing him a second time over strategy disagreements. Ballmer promoted Satya Nadella to take Muglia's place; Nadella later became CEO after Ballmer resigned.

New Snowflake CEO Frank SlootmanSnowflakeMuglia went on to a role at Juniper Networks before landing the CEO job at a tiny, 30-person data storage startup called Snowflake that had yet to bring in its first dollar in sales.

Snowflake offers a cloud data warehouse database, sold via Amazon Web Services, and, more recently, via Microsoft Azure cloud as well.

Over the next four years, Muglia grew the company to a $3.5 billion valuation, after two mega rounds of venture financing in 2018. All told, Snowflake has raised $923 million total.

Snowflake's backers include Sequoia, Red Point, Sutter Hill, and Capital One Growth Ventures. Snowflake also landed about 1,000 customers, it says, including Capital One, which opted to invest in the company after trying the product.

Normally, these are all signs of a healthy company; it's not common for a customer to become a strategic investor unless something is going right.

Read: A male Microsoft programmer who came from the military, not a university, describes how his career got tanked by the 'brilliant jerks' culture

And Snowflake was doing well, even in a market that forced it to go head-to-head with giants.

It competes with Amazon Redshift, a similar database product that launched a couple of years before Snowflake. Redshift has been a hugely successful database product for Amazon. As of Amazon's last quarter, Redshift now has 10,000 customers who analyze two exabytes of data with it every day. Capital One is also a Redshift customer, notably.

Meanwhile, the second-place cloud provider, Microsoft, also has its own popular database — one that Muglia originally helped to build. About six months ago, Microsoft launched a new version of its cloud data warehouse, a product which it said has drawn more than half the Fortune 1000 onto Microsoft's cloud.

None of this appeared to scare Muglia. Snowflake actually launched its product on AWS two years after Amazon Redshift debuted. And it was growing apace, even in Redshift's shadow.

A sudden move

Things were going so well, that in an interview with the Information that published just two weeks ago, Muglia said the company had plenty of cash in the bank, was going to remain in growth and investment mode, and that he didn't plan to pursue an IPO for another year or two.

But he's not going to get the chance.

On May 1, the company announced that Muglia left the company completely.

His role as both CEO and chairman was handed over to Frank Slootman, who is best known as the hired gun CEO who took ServiceNow public in 2012, in the first big tech IPO after Facebook debut as a publicly-traded stock didn't go so well. Slootman grew ServiceNow from $75 million in revenue to $1.4 billion in six years.

He left the CEO job at ServiceNow in 2017, staying on for a while as chairman. Prior to taking ServiceNow public, Slootman was the hired CEO of DataDomain, taking it public and then selling it EMC for $2.4 billion.

Indeed, it's possible that Slootman's appointment may have something to do with his history of taking companies public.

Snowflake board member Mike Speiser, from investor Sutter Hill Ventures, said that the company's directors were pleased with Muglia's performance but believed Slootman was the "right person" for the company today, he told the Wall Street Journal.

While Slootman told the Journal that he wasn't diving straight into an IPO, insiders believe this is really why he was brought in.

One industry analyst who knows both CEOs explained to Business Insider: "[Bob Muglia] was happy. Investors needed someone to take them to IPO. Bob is a great technical leader and visionary. An IPO-type CEO requires another type of demeanor."

The execs didn't reveal revenue to the Journal, except to say it had tripled in the last year. Slootman also told the WSJ that Snowflake is not profitable, as is common for young, high-growth tech startups.

A big question

A big question: Could the board have decided and hired a new CEO in the few weeks between the publication of his interview with the Information and now?

Possibly. The enterprise tech world is a tight-knit one. For instance, Snowflake venture investor Patrick Grady, a partner at Sequoia, has known Slootman for years. Grady was a venture investor and board member for ServiceNow when Slootman was CEO.

And Muglia, for all his unquestionable success at this startup, was burning the candle at both ends. He never fully relocated from his Seattle home to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Snowflake is based. For the past seven years, since he worked at Juniper Networks, he commuted home to Seattle every week on Thursdays, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

Muglia could not be reached for comment, however he told t he WSJ in an email that he was helping the company with a transistion. No doubt, this isn't the last we've heard of him.

BEVERLY HILLS— If you want to know the value of early stage venture capital in a world where mega-investors like SoftBank regularly write $100 million checks, look no further than a moment of crisis.

One of UpFront Ventures Partner Kara Nortman's biggest exits came after a follow-on round that almost didn't happen, she said Monday at the Milken Institute Global Conference.

"The lead investor got spooked and pulled out," Nortman said, who sat next to SoftBank's Akshay Naheta on the panel.

Ring, the video doorbell company, ultimately got acquired by Amazon for $1 billion in 2018. But just a few months before, the future of the company was in jeopardy due to a skittish late stage investor.

"The final round, they had a big late stage investor who was going to lead the round — they'll remain nameless — and [Ring] had a frivolous lawsuit out there against them," Nortman said. "In a very short period of time, a week or two, we stepped up and we led what became an $80 million round with a $20 million lead check...which ended up becoming a great financial return and success story."

While Nortman didn't disclose on stage which investor pulled out, Recode reported last year that it was Valor Equity Partners.

Ultimately, Nortman argued, early stage venture investors are more likely to have faith in a founding team and its vision, so they'll step up even when other investors have shied away.

So while investors like SoftBank can win deals based on the size of their checks alone, there's still a role for the old-school venture-founder relationship, she said.

"When you talk to [Ring founder] Jamie Siminoff about that now, he will say, 'they were my early stage fund.' But we had seen him execute all the way through, so when the market had a frightened moment, we could step up and catalyze that," Nortman said.

"I think that is the value of a longterm early stage investor. Our job is to help you build the team, help you get capital, and be your sparring partner. I don't think that ever goes away," she added.

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In 2018, 125,000 people congregated in Park City, Utah — a ski town whose population wouldn't top 9,000 in the US Census of the same year — for the largest independent film festival in the United States: Sundance.

Put on by the Sundance Institute, the festival functions as both a showcase and competition of new work from American and international independent filmmakers. Entries range from dramatic and documentary features and short films; series and episodic content; and New Frontier, which the Institute describes as "emerging media in the form of multimedia installations, performances, and films."

But you may be able to skip the flight, crowds, and $300-$4,000 ticket and still get close to the experience.

Sundance Now, founded in 2014, aims to bring Sundance Festival's ethos to the home viewer.

It's a streaming service that carries original and exclusive dramas, comedies, and true-crime series, in addition to award-winning movies from every genre, including foreign-language and documentary features — all streaming commercial-free. Each selection was chosen for its storytelling, unique voice, and/or unexpected global perspective.

It can be streamed using the Apple app store, Google Play, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, and Xbox One. Monthly, it'll cost you between $5 and $7.

Apart from using the Sundance Festival's principles as guides, the service also invites filmmakers who have made an impact at the Festival to create watch-lists of their favorite films as guest curators, sometimes with brief text introductions. As of March 2019, the collections include curations from Lisa Gardner, Danny Glover, and David Lowery, among others.

Mara Leighton/Sundance Now

How to use it:

To help you navigate, there are the typical streaming service curations: Must-watch series, new arrivals, Oscar-nominated films, true crime, indie hits, and a mix of popular genres you can click on like suspense, comedy, foreign, drama, and documentary. There's also a slew of topically curated categories for Women's History Month like leading ladies, women in history, and female filmmakers.

There's also a surprising variety for a service that could, at first blush, just sound like a library of cerebral foreign films. While the streaming service offers gritty indie hits like "Monster" and "Memento", the same user could also find "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" or "Friends with Money" with Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, and Frances McDormand. You can use member reviews to help guide your selections, and save titles to your "list" for later viewing.

If you're looking for a way to watch everything from classic to hard-to-find indie films, and do it on multiple devices — or even a way to discover new ones worth playing at home — Sundance Now may be worth looking into. Either way, you can check out the service for free for a week to see if it has enough to keep you interested. And, if it's worth re-upping, it'll cost you less than a large coffee at Starbucks.

Start your seven-day trail for free here

Following is a transcript of the video.

Alex Appolonia: These glasses will cost you $600. They're actually smart glasses called Foc als made by the Canadian startup North. Focals are meant for everyday use, and their main purpose: to make you rely less on having to pull out your phone. But these provide you notifications and other information right in front of your face, just like smartphones, but faster and arguably more convenient. But is it really as good as it seems? I wanted to see if smart glasses really will replace a smartphone or if it's just all hype. Watch out New York, Alex has a pair of smart glasses. So how do they work? There is a holographic display on the right lens that shows notifications and information directly from your phone. This is all controlled by a small ring called the Loop, which allows you to navigate and interact with your display all via Bluetooth.

Adam Ketcheson: The idea was, what can we create that can be part of your everyday life and seamlessly fit it into your life and give you all of those benefits of being connected to the world. Alex: From the home screen alone, I could check the time, weather, messages, calendar notifications, locations, and even my battery life. Pretty much everything I could check on my phone, well, maybe not everything, just the things I wanna know right away. It even has Alexa integrated into the glasses, so you can ask Alexa questions through the built-in mic and speaker. Foc als can even let you call an Uber. You better believe we tried all these features along the way. First stop: getting fitted. At North's showroom in Brooklyn, they custom-fitted me and even gave me a quick demo of what I would experience when wearing them. A pretty unique sizing process, measuring my head size, width between my eyes, and other measurements to make sure the hologram would perfectly align with my eyes. The crazy part is they are just made for me, so no one could see the hologram display while wearing my glasses.

Gene Kim: I hear little beeps in my right ear, but nothing showing up.

Kara Chin: Am I not looking in the right place?

Alex Appolonia: After a few weeks, my glasses were ready to be picked up and sized for my final fitting. I just got them, woo-hoo! It is officially day one of me wearing my Focal smart glasses. I'm heading into the office and mostly going to be sitting at my desk during the day just kind of performing simple daily tasks. I'm going to just try and get used to the look and the feel of these and see how my first day goes.

I wanted to take my Foc als a step further today. I figured it's day one, why not? So I tried out the GPS feature to get me from my apartment to the PATH station. Alexa, how do I get to the Hoboken PATH station? Alexa: Directions to PATH station: Hoboken on Hudson Place in River Road in Hoboken. Turn left onto First Street. Alex: It's kind of neat having each step pop up, and then it will go away in about five seconds, so it's not very distracting if I'm walking or crossing the street. And at one point I intentionally wanted to make a wrong turn to see if it would reroute me, and it didn't, so that was like a little disappointing and kind of shows that their GPS is not so accurate.

I'm used to wearing glasses. I do wearing them on a daily basis, but after wearing these Foc als for a full day, my eyes do seem more tired. Alexa, what's the weather today?

Alexa: In Hoboken, it's 6 degrees Fahrenheit with clear skies.

Alex Appolonia: I just got to the office, and I'm going to put my phone down for the day and just rely on my smart glasses. I was already informed that when I'm sending a voice-to-text message to one of my contacts, a different number will appear when they receive the message. OK, so I did pick up my phone just because I posted an Instagram Story, but no more phone today. I can't help it if my glasses don't let me check social media. Stay warm. My eyes took awhile to get adjusted to the Foc als. At times they felt heavy, slid down my nose, became loose, and I even had to make them refitted. As my week went on, the holographic display was very out of focus and even glitchy at times. I even lost the nose pad, which kind of threw off all the display, and I couldn't really see anything. So I ended going back to the store to get them realigned and tightened to fit my face. Let's just say day four was the true test, when I tried calling an Uber right from my Foc als. Jay Street Subway station. I have the option to walk or Uber, and we are going with Uber. This Uber is six minutes away, and it's $8. Looking for ride! It's a little complicated ordering the Uber from my Foc als. I did have to bring out my phone just to kind of see some of the notifications from when my driver's arriving. It's kind of neat. It is giving me updates throughout my ride, and it's saying I'm three minutes away from my destination.

I tried texting and responding more and even using my calendar with the glasses. Schedule a meeting for tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. I ran some errands and asked Alexa to guide me to the local grocery store.

Alexa: Would you like directions to Organic Basic Food LLC on 204 Washington St. in Hoboken? Alex: Which wasn't an easy experience. Before I knew it, my journey into the future of tech had come to an end.

Alex Appolonia: After a full week of wearing my Foc als, here are my final thoughts. As for the comforting fit of the Foc als, they were really uncomfortable at times. They felt even heavy, and they would slide down my nose, so I had to kind of keep pushing them back up, and just really bulky on the sides. Alexa was not very effective when I was in a loud or noisy environment. She couldn't easily connect and understand the commands that I was asking her. This just became really frustrating sometimes, and I wanted to just pick up my phone. The holographic display wasn't super clear and easy to see in the sun, so I often used my sun clips. As for the Loop, it died a lot faster than the Foc als, and that could've just been because I was navigating most of the time with the Loop. But the good part was I was able to get all my notifications on my Foc als, and I was a lot more hands-free and relied a lot less on my phone. North has a lot of great features so far, and they have a lot more to kind of grow and integrate into these Foc als, but it would be nice if I could play my music on them, maybe even pick up a phone call, and watch some videos. Since trying them out, North has added a few new features like music controls and transit updates to the Foc als. But it's going to take a lot more than telling it to skip to the next song before it's a must-have device. My overall rating for the Foc als would be 3 out of 5. Personally, I did not find them to be an ideal everyday wearable. I'm not really a techy person, but it was a really nice challenge to wear these smart glasses for a week and step into the future.

I also responded to What is this? What is this? Hey!

"Avengers: Endgame" is now the eighth-highest-grossing movie worldwide of all time. After just a week in theaters (it hit China last Wednesday), it's already made $1.5 billion globally. And it's on its way to another huge weekend at the box office in the US.

Movie-ticket service Fandango announced Wednesday that 85% more repeat customers are seeing "Endgame" than they were "Avengers: Infinity War" at the same point last year.

"Endgame" shattered the domestic box-office opening-weekend record with $356 million. How much will it dip in its upcoming second weekend?

"Infinity War" grossed $258 million in its domestic opening weekend and dropped 55% in its second weekend with $114 million. If "Endgame" drops 55%, it will still make over $160 million.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" currently holds the record for the biggest second-weekend box office ever with $149 million. It dropped just 40% in its second weekend.

The Hollywood exec Jeffrey Katzenberg's yet-to-be-launched mobile streaming-video service, Quibi, is courting several big-name advertisers in a bid to secure up-front ad deals.

Quibi is seeking commitments from both media agencies and brand marketers, Digiday first reported. The company's executives are in conversations with at least four big brands, including Procter & Gamble and Anheuser-Busch InBev, multiple sources confirmed to Business Insider.

Quibi did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

While Quibi was first asking for an up-front ad commitment of $25 million, that figure has now whittled down to the $8 million to $10 million range, a source said. Business Insider was unable to confirm the CPM — or the cost per thousand ad impressions — that Quibi is quoting, but one source familiar with the CPM said it was "very high," while another one called it "outrageous."

Quibi is gearing up for an April 2020 launch with a focus on subscriptions. It has two different subscription tiers: a $5 ad-supported subscription version and an $8 ad-free version. Tim Connolly, the company's head of partnerships and advertising who was recruited from Hulu, is leading the charge to recruit advertisers on the former, two sources said.

Business Insider does not know of any contracts or deals that have been finalized, and Quibi is still in active negotiations with a number of big-name brands, multiple sources said. According to a deck obtained by Digiday in December 2018, advertising could account for between 24.9 to 30% of Quibi's revenue, depending on the number of subscribers it is able to get.

If P&G does indeed sign on the dotted line, it will not be the first investment it makes toward a streaming platform. Just last week, P&G released two documentaries for Queen Collective in partnership with Queen Latifah, which were made exclusively available on Hulu.

While Katzenberg is an industry veteran with connections and has talent on board Quibi already, some advertisers remain skeptical of its chances of success. They question whether consumers will actually have an appetite for premium mobile-first video content, a source said, and are also concerned about ad formats on such a platform — most advertisers don't readily invest in six-second ads, for instance.

An entertainment exec said he was "skeptical" of whether the platform would be successful, while a media-agency exec said that one of the agency's biggest clients had been approached by Quibi and had "sticker shock."

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd on Wednesday said the tech giant has a "long list of underfunded competitors" in the software-as-a-service market that he predicted "will go away" in a couple of years.

It's a striking statement from a tech behemoth that had been seen as taking a hit from the rise of software applications offered to businesses via the cloud, doing away with the high cost of setting up and maintaining applications on their own servers and data centers.

But in a meeting via telephone with media at Oracle headquarters in Redwood City, California, Hurd touted Oracle's gains in the software-as-a-service industry, or SaaS, which he said will eventually be dominated by the big players.

"The SaaS market will consolidate," he said. "It will be a long tail, but many of the companies will go away."

Rise of software-as-a-service

SaaS makes it possible for businesses to pay for their software via a subscription, usually based on the number of users to whom they want to grant access. This allows companies to cut the costs associated with huge licensing fees for software that gets installed on their own servers, while also granting more flexibility.

Oracle emerged as a dominant tech behemoth based on that original business model. But the Silicon Valley database giant has pivoted to focus more heavily on SaaS in the past few years — a bright spot in its overall cloud business, which is otherwise widely seen as lagging behind the market-leading Amazon Web Services.

Oracle is now considered a major player in the software-as-a-service industry, although it is still lagging Microsoft and Salesforce in the SaaS and cloud-software market. That market totaled $107.5 billion in 2017, according to the analyst firm IDC. In that same year, Microsoft led the SaaS pack with 9.3% market share, followed by Salesforce with 8.7% and Oracle with 4.1%. SAP was in fourth with 3.6%, followed by Google with 3.5%.

But Hurd's prediction about "underfunded competitors" was affirmed by a couple of tech-industry analysts.

Analysts see SaaS consolidation

"Hurd's analysis is correct," Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, told Business Insider.

"Smaller SaaS companies are underfunded and will have trouble competing with the big players in this market. If they have unique technology they could become M&A targets. It is expensive to market and serve the SaaS markets and being under-capitalized will hurt their chances to compete for the same businesses big SaaS companies go after today," he said.

Ray Wang, the president of Constellation Research, agreed, saying: "We are still in a market of consolidation."

"Buyers want to reduce the number of vendors they work with and the costs of having a large footprint," he told Business Insider. " There is also a lot of innovation at the edges that is happening so it's important to build ecosystems."

The SaaS and cloud-software market is also expected to grow dramatically in the next few years. IDC is forecasting the market to grow to $259.1 billion in 2022 with a compound annual growth rate of 19.2%, Mike Shirer, a spokesman at the firm, said.

In its quarterly earnings released today, Qualcomm said it would record $4.5-$4.7 billion revenue in the coming quarter as part of its settlement of a long-running intellectual-property quarrel with Apple.

Go deeper: Apple, Qualcomm settle long-running legal dispute

Streaming movies and TV shows to your mobile device is decadently convenient, but there are times when streaming isn't an option. If you're going somewhere that doesn't have Wi-Fi — like a plane, or a remote cabin in the woods, you might want to plan ahead by downloading video onto your phone or tablet in advance.

Amazon makes it possible to download content so you can watch it offline, but there are caveats. You can't download to a computer, for example — downloads are only permitted to mobile apps. That means you can't store Amazon Prime videos on a laptop. And even on your phone or tablet, not everything can be downloaded.

Amazon warns that "Only selected Prime Video titles are available to download, and the time period you have to view a downloaded title while your device is offline varies by title." You might also find that some content is only available for download in certain geographic regions, and Amazon may impose a limit on the total number of shows you can download at once, so to download more, you may see a notification to delete something you've already seen.

For the most part, though, you don't need to worry about most of that. If you want to download a show, simply open it in your Prime Video app and see if it can be downloaded. If it can, proceed.

How to download an Amazon Prime video on a phone or tablet

1. Open the Prime Video app.

2. Search or browse for the TV show or movie that you want to download. Tap on it to open the video's Details page.

3. If it's available for download, you should see a downward arrow.

Many Prime movies can be downloaded to your mobile device with a single tap. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

You can download episodes of many TV shows on Amazon Prime. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

How to view a downloaded Amazon Prime video

Once you've downloaded a video, you can watch it the same way that you'd ordinarily view it using streaming.

1. Open the Prime Video app.

2. Search for the show or movie you want to watch. Tap on it to open the video's Details page.

3. You should see a check mark next to any show that is downloaded to your device. Tap the Play button to start watching. Note that if you don't have an internet connection, downloaded video will play fine, but anything that isn't downloaded will display an error message if you try to tap the Play button.

You can see an episode has been downloaded if it has a check mark instead of the download icon. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

How to delete a downloaded Amazon Prime video you no longer need

After you watch a downloaded video, you might want to remove it from your mobile device to get the storage space back, especially if your phone or tablet is running low on space.

1. Open the Prime Video app.

2. Search or browse for the TV show or movie that you want to delete from your device. Tap on it to open the video's Details page.

Eventually, you will probably want to delete downloaded videos to make space on your phone or tablet. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

The wearables maker Fitbit reported better-than-expected results, sending shares up 2% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. 

The company reported a loss of $0.15 a share, better than the $0.22 loss that was anticipated. In addition, first quarter revenues totaled $272 million, 5% above the $260 million forecast.

Fitbit has been under increasing pressure as Apple has focused on the space. Fitbit's shares are down almost 90% from its 2015 highs, which were reached just months after The Apple Watch first shipped to customers in April 2015.

Under cofounder and CEO James Park, Fitbit has increasingly sought to pivot to more affordable products to lessen competition with Apple. Fitbit is the No. 2 smartwatch maker after Apple.

"New users are continuing to join the Fitbit platform with active users increasing in the first quarter, underscoring the effectiveness of our strategy to bring more users onto the Fitbit platform with the introduction of more accessible, affordable devices," Park said in the earnings release.

Including Wednesday's after-hours action, Fitbit shares are up 10% this year.

Markets Insider

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Square reported second-quarter sales and profits guidance on Wednesday that disappointed analysts' already tempered expectations, sending shares down by as much as 7% in after-hours trading.

Earnings forecasts for the mobile-payments company had already come down by about $0.04 a share in recent months after Square's guidance last quarter fell short of expectations.

"Given the significant market opportunity ahead of us, we will continue to be purposeful as we reinvest in our business to drive long-term growth," CEO Jack Dorsey and Amrita Ahuja, the company's chief financial officer, said in a shareholder letter. "Our guidance for the full year of 2019 reflects both investment and growing profitability."

Here's what Square reported, compared with what Wall Street analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting:

"We are revising our net income (loss) per share guidance for the full year of 2019, primarily as a result of the first quarter mark-to-market valuation of our investment in Eventbrite," the executives added in their shareholder letter.

Analysts have been telling clients that Square had to dazzle investors on several fronts — such as sales and EBITDA — to justify its pricey valuation of more than 100 times forward earnings.

"SQ has exceeded Street revenue and EBITDA estimates by an average of $15M and $3M, respectively, the past four quarters," JPMorgan analysts led by Tien-tsin Huang wrote in a note to clients on April 23. "We see this momentum continuing in 1Q, which is required for SQ to maintain its premium valuation."

Still, the analysts trimmed their 2019 and 2020 earnings expectations.

"We expect full year revenue guidance could move up, but see EBITDA holding firm recognizing now is the time for Square to invest in consumer/card initiatives; hence we are front loading more expenses for the year," the JPMorgan analysts wrote.

"With lots of energy and competition for on-demand banking services like Cash App, we expect investments to drive habitual usage (e.g. Boost) to stay elevated," they added.

Read an excerpt of Business Insider Intelligence's Payments Briefing: Square is making a slew of updates across its product offering

In a mid-April note to investors, SunTrust analysts led by Andrew Jeffrey said that while the Square is the "most dynamic and disruptive name we follow," its high valuation has everything priced in.

As such, the analysts trimmed their revenue and EBITDA expectations for this year and next.

More broadly, Wall Street analysts are nearly split between bullish and neutral. Of the analysts polled by Bloomberg, 18 rated the stock a "buy," 16 recommended "hold," and four said "sell." 

Square shares have jumped 32% this year through Wednesday's close, but remain 26% below their all-time high of $101.15 set in October. 

Now read more markets coverage from Markets Insider and Business Insider:

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Markets Insider

"Fortnite" creator Epic Games will acquire Psyonix, the San Diego-based game developer responsible for "Rocket League" — one of the most popular games in the world, with more than 50 million registered players worldwide. "Rocket League" is, essentially, the game of soccer as played with cars.

"Rocket League," like "Fortnite," allows users on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC play together online. It was the second game added to Sony's PlayStation cross-platform beta program, following "Fortnite" by a few months. In a statement announcing the deal Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and Psyonix founder Dave Hagewood said the two companies have been friendly for years, and the purchase will formalize their relationship.

Founded in 2001, Psyonix contributed to titles in Epic's "Gears of War" and "Unreal Tournament" franchises, as well as numerous games built using Epic's Unreal Engine development software. Psyonix released "Rocket League" in 2015 to critical acclaim, and has a 132-person staff focused on developing the game's community.

Read more:'Rocket League' joins 'Fortnite' in the PlayStation Cross-Play Beta, letting players on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PC, and PS4 play together for the first time

"We've been working closely with Epic since the early days of 'Unreal Tournament,' and we've survived changing tides as partners, so combining forces makes sense in many ways," Hagewood said in a statement. "The potential of what we can learn from each other and accomplish together makes us truly excited for the future."

The PC version of Rocket League will come to the Epic Games Store in late 2019. Until then, it will continue to be available for purchase on Steam. Players who own "Rocket League" on Steam and other platforms will still be able to continue playing the game after it moves to the Epic Games Store. A spokesperson for Epic Games told the Verge that the company is still assessing a long-term plan for the game, including which platforms it will be available on.

In a statement posted on the "Rocket League" website, the company said the move will also help expand the reach of Rocket League Esports, which includes a circuit of events for professional players. The Rocket League Championship Series will close out its season during the finals in Newark, New Jersey from June 21st to 23rd.

The acquisition deal is not totally official yet; Epic and Psyonix currently expect to close the acquisition by the end of May or early June.

Amazon Fire TV is a video streaming device created by Amazon.

Amazon released the first version of the Fire TV in 2014, and since that time has sold several different versions and models.

What Amazon Fire TV can do

The Fire TV is similar to other media players, like the Roku family of streaming boxes, Google Chromecast, and the Apple TV. It is a device that connects to a TV via an HDMI port and lets you choose from among thousands of streaming channels (like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and many others).

In that way, the Fire TV turns an ordinary TV into a "smart" TV. You can also connect Fire TV to a smart TV, though the benefits won't be as significant, since the TV can already do at least some of the things Fire TV can do.

The Fire TV family of media players streams video from the internet to your TV. Amazon

How Amazon Fire TV differs from its competitors

The Fire TV line of streaming devices stands out from competing products in a couple of important ways.

First and foremost, since it's an Amazon product, it emphasizes Amazon services in its menus. Of course, you have access to a vast array of channels, but Amazon makes sure you can't miss Prime Video and Prime Music.

In addition, while some other streamers include voice control, Fire TV relies on Alexa, the same personal assistant found in Echo smart speakers.

It comes in three models

The Fire TV comes in three models: The Fire TV Stick, the Fire TV Stick 4K, and the Fire TV Cube. All three products work basically the same way.

They include a library of tens of thousands of streaming channels, work with Amazon Alexa for voice control of the TV and media functions, and also include music (via services like Amazon Prime Music and Spotify) and a large selection of games.

The Fire TV Stick is the least expensive at $40 and is a good choice if you don't need 4K video (it delivers 1080P high definition resolution). Like the Roku Stick, it's a self-contained media player that looks like a USB flash drive and plugs directly into the HDMI port of your TV.

The Amazon Fire Stick looks like a USB flash drive but connects your TV to a vast library of video content online. Amazon

The Fire TV Stick 4K is a step up. At $50, it upgrades the video resolution to 4K, but is otherwise the same. It's a good choice if you have a 4K TV.

Amazon's Fire TV Cube costs $120 and is, as the name suggests, cube-shaped. It sits on your media console and includes a built-in speaker. And while Fire TV Sticks require the remote control for Alexa voice control (there is a microphone built into the remote), the Cube understands your voice from across the room, without the need to speak into the remote. The Cube also has built-in Ethernet support, so you can wire it directly to your internet router if you want to; the Fire TV Sticks require Wi-Fi or an optional Ethernet adapter.

The Fire TV Cube is Amazon's premium media player. It includes an Ethernet port in case you have sluggish Wi-Fi, built-in speakers, and Alexa voice control. Amazon

YouTuber PewDiePie — real name Felix Kjellberg — has released a video calling for his fans to end the "subscribe to PewDiePie" meme, which he himself started.

The "subscribe to PewDiePie" meme began as the result of the YouTuber's struggle to defend his title of most-subscribed YouTube channel against Bollywood music channel T-Series.

In an unusually sombre video, PewDiePie addressed the fact that since then, the slogan "subscribe to PewDiePie" has appeared in two abhorrent acts.

First was in March when a World War II memorial in New York was defaced with graffiti reading "subscribe to PewDiePie." Later that month, the Christchurch shooter referred to the meme during his livestream of the attack, in which the suspect killed 50 people in two mosques.

PewDiePie released a short tweet at the time condemning the act, and in his video said he didn't say anything more out of respect for the victims and their families.

"I just didn't want to address it right away, and I didn't want to give the terrorist more attention. I didn't want to make it about me, because I don't think it has anything to do with me. To put it plainly, I didn't want hate to win," he said. "But it's clear to me now the 'sbscribe to PewDiePie' movement should have ended then."

PewDiePie also addressed criticism of the two "diss tracks" he released mocking T-Series, which an Indian high court ruled must be blocked in the country because they contain racist jokes. PewDiePie said the tracks were meant "in fun, ironic jest," but said that he would keep the videos blocked.

"This was made to be fun, but it's clearly not fun anymore. It's clearly gone too far," PewDiePie said.

Apple has managed to sell more than a billion iPhones in the 12 years since the debut of its most popular product, and the iEmpire seems well positioned to sell at least a billion more devices.

No matter how expensive the smartphone gets or how long customers have to wait for the newest iteration, there's always plenty of demand to sustain the Apple craze.

The 2019 iPhone, which may be called the iPhone 11 or iPhone XI, should be released sometime this year, and to prepare you for its release date, we're keeping an eye on when the latest model should be coming out.

When will the new iPhone come out?

If Apple follows its previous launch cycles, we should be in for a new iPhone launch come September. But a launch is not a release date, and unfortunately, Apple has been much less predictable when it comes to actually offering up the iPhone for sale.

For example, last year, the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max arrived in stores in September, while the iPhone XR followed in October. The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, on the other hand, came out in September 2017, whereas the iPhone X made its debut in November 2017.

However, it's important to note that both these years saw iPhones with major changes as compared to previous iterations — the iPhone X saw the introduction of an all-screen design, Face ID, OLED, and wireless charging; while the iPhone XR was the first to have a single rear-facing camera. It's unlikely that the iPhone 11 will have as many major changes, which means that it could be the case that it's actually available to buy in stores in September as well.

We'll keep you updated on the launch and release date of the new iPhone as we learn more.

What models and sizes will be available?

It will likely be the case that the 2019 phones will be the same models and sizes as those from 2018: That means there will be an iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Max, and iPhone 11R (those may not be the actual names). Those phones should have screens that measure 5.8 inches, 6.5 inches, and 6.1 inches, respectively.

How much will the new iPhone cost?

Again, there's no exact word yet on how much we can expect to pay for the newest iPhone, but we certainly anticipate a price tag of at least $1,000 for the 5.8-inch iPhone 11 and more for the larger Max model. The R model should be cheaper like 2018's iPhone XR, which has a price of $750.

Generally, the silver lining is that Apple discounts older iPhones once the new ones come out, so you can get a deal on the 2018 iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR come September.

If you want to know more about how much every iPhone model costs, read our full guide to iPhone pricing.

Check back regularly, as we'll update this post when we know the official launch and release date of the 2019 iPhones.

While we wait for the 2019 iPhones to arrive, check out our current buying recommendations in the slides below:

China's technology and electronics sector has sweeping impact on its economy and the rest of the world. Chinese high tech firms have been leading the way in innovation for many technologies, such as 5G.

China's mobile 5G will be the No. 1 Chinese technology to watch in the coming years — with international leaders like Huawei, Qualcomm, and Intel transforming not only industries but entire countries with its broad applications and economic significance.

EqualOcean

But it's not the only technology you should have on your radar.

In the 2019 Technology Trends Report in China, EqualOcean, a leading China-focused industrial tech media and investment innovation research firm, breaks down eight evolving technologies that deserve special attention. These technologies are either currently undergoing or about to undergo major phases of change.

This report represents a guidebook outlining which of China's technology trends will be most significant in the next two to three years.

The technologies included in this report are:

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

In full, the report:

The companies included in this report are: IBM, AWS, Google, Intel, Alibaba, D-Wave, Regetti, 1QBit, Azure, Tencent, HPE, Cisco, Samsung, LG, BOE, Apple, Xiaomi, Visionx, Microsoft, Facebook, Baidu, ByteDance, iFlytek, NOKIA, ZTE, Ericsson, MSD, Novartis, BMS, Allogene Therapeutics, Junshi, BeiGene, I-Mab Biopharma, Hyperledger, Ant Financial, Mastercard, Ethereum, Ripple, SONY, HTC, Oculus, and Magic Leap.