Snowflake scoops up another blizzard of cash with $450 million round

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When Elon Musk acquired SolarCity in the fall of 2016, he paid for it using Tesla stock worth $2.6 billion at the time. Those shares are worth $8.4 billion today.

Tesla's CEO gave 0.110 Tesla shares to SolarCity stockholders for every share they owned in the solar-energy company. Based on the electric-car maker's $230 stock price in late July 2016, the deal valued each SolarCity share at $25.36 at the time.

However, Tesla's stock has surged roughly 320% to about $745 since then, and briefly passed $960 this week. Based on its current price, Musk paid over $80 per SolarCity share — more than triple what he planned to spend.

Musk is already fending off claims that he overpaid for SolarCity and bailed out a nearly bankrupt business. The facts that his cousins started SolarCity, and he was the company's chairman and biggest shareholder when Tesla acquired it, have also led some investors to question his motives in buying it.

As a SolarCity investor, Musk received Tesla shares from the takeover, meaning he didn't lose out from the transaction as much as other Tesla investors.

Musk used one of Warren Buffett's analogies to downplay the significance of Tesla's stock price last year. However, he seems to have missed the famed investor's warning about his "most gruesome mistake."

Buffett bought Dexter Shoe in 1993 and paid for it with 25,203 Class-A shares in his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, worth $433 million at the time. The Maine shoemaker collapsed years later. The Berkshire shares used to purchase it are worth over $8.6 billion today.

"I gave away 1.6% of a wonderful business ... to buy a worthless business," Buffett wrote in his 2007 letter to shareholders.

Now that Musk has personally seen the downside of stock deals, he may be wary of paying with Tesla shares going forward.

Back in 2012, Anthony Robb couldn't afford a smartphone.

Raised by a single father on a conveyor belt of grimy west London council estates, Robb knew money was in short supply, and that owning a phone with a camera attached was "not a priority."

But when friends introduced him to Instagram, which had just been acquired by Facebook for a hefty $1 billion, Robb very quickly realised he wanted a piece of the action.

"I saw all these accounts and how many followers, likes, and comments they were getting," he told Business Insider. "I was fascinated ... Very quickly, I was like: 'I could do that.'"

He recalls one friend quickly batting away the idea, laughing: "How're you gonna do that mate? You ain't even got a phone."

Almost a decade later, the global influencer market is valued at around $8 billion, a figure set to rise over the next few years – and Anthony "Antz" Robb, now 22, is the voice behind one of the best known Instagram accounts in the UK: Imjustbait.

A hodgepodge of music, memes, and offbeat viral videos, Imjustbait keeps a finger on the pulse of urban British culture, mixing the silly with the serious: sobering reports of racial abuse and rising knife crime are seamlessly mixed with music videos and viral clips from "Love Island" and "Eastenders."

At 3.7 million followers, the page outranks other British influencers like Joe Wicks, the fitness guru better known as the "Body Coach," and TV personality Alexa Chung.

After setting the page up in 2014, Robb says he "worked day and night" to boost his follower count, quickly garnering a reputation among his peers as "that bait [meaning blatant or obvious] kid off Instagram." He said: "It's literally just me. From day one, nobody else has ever even had the password."

The page's success soon got him noticed. First, Uber approached him about a promotional deal, gaining him a commission on every follower using his unique code. And as his reach continued to grow, he started word of his influence on the world of music – news that spurred him to set up his own record label.

"I would feature clips from underground artists on the page, then next thing I'm hearing is they've been signed," Robb said. "I won't name names but I've heard stories of A&R guys going into meetings, literally saying: 'Imjustbait just posted these guys, we have to sign them.'"

On the advice of his manager, Robb sought investment from Sony Music, who backed his new label, "We Are BLK,"18 months ago. He has now signed seven urban artists and plans to showcase their talent, alongside established acts like Krept & Konan and Dappy, at his Summer Crush festival in Barcelona this summer.

Robb laughs: "I just wanted to stop being the middleman and actually do something myself ... Why should I be doing all the hard work for them?"

Beyond the world of music, he expresses an interest in journalism and reality TV. Imjustbait's sister Instagram feed, Imjustnews, has gained 667,000 followers since launching in 2018, resharing the latest headlines to keep them abreast of current affairs.

"That one's going well," Robb says. "I'd like to have someone come in and write original stories for it one day."

Meanwhile on YouTube, Robb says his Imjustbait channel will soon host a slew of original shows, including "Love Locked Down," a Love Island-style reality contest set inside a prison.

"We've got some big plans man, I'm excited to see what people think."

After six years of work, Robb admits it feels strange to have positioned himself as a focal point of the culture he loved while growing up. 

"A lot of people I know from back in the day can't really believe what's happening," he says.

"What can I say? It's a madness." 

The contentious debate over moderating misleading content on social media was reignited this week after President Trump posted a video of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that appeared to show her repeatedly ripping up a copy of the president's State of the Union speech.

That drama took another turn Friday when Pelosi's deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, took to Twitter to criticize  social media platforms for not taking down the video, which Hammill told Business Insider it had asked both Facebook and Twitter to remove.

"The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders' interests than the public's interests," Hamill wrote on Twitter.

That prompted a Facebook spokesman, Andy Stone, to respond.

"Sorry, are you suggesting the President didn't make those remarks and the Speaker didn't rip the speech?" Stone tweeted.

"What planet are you living on? this is deceptively altered. take it down," Hammill shot back.

Pelosi did, in fact, tear up a copy of the president's speech after he appeared to snub her attempt to shake his hand following a tense State of the Union address. The video Trump posted, however, was edited to make it seem like Pelosi ripped up the speech multiple times during his remarks.

"The American people know that the President has no qualms about lying to them – but it is a shame to see Twitter and Facebook, sources of news for millions, do the same," Hammill told Business Insider in a statement.

The edits raised questions about whether the video violated either Facebook or Twitter's policies against manipulated content. Facebook's policy bans most content manipulated using artificial intelligence, but not more typical video editing techniques — though the latter can still be reviewed by third-party fact checkers.

Twitter recently announced that users "may not deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm," and that it "may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand the media's authenticity and to provide additional context."

Regarding the president's video, a Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider that, since enforcement of these new policies won't begin until March 5, the company couldn't comment on hypotheticals.

As Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others have faced pressure to take more active roles policing misinformation on their platforms, they've unveiled a variety of new content policies. Reactions have been mixed, with many still uncertain about how exactly the policies will be enforced and whether or not they'll be effective.

This isn't the first time Pelosi has been the subject of deceptive social media content. In 2019, she criticized Facebook for refusing to take down a viral video that had been heavily edited to make it appear as if she was slurring and tripping over her words. 

Facebook's Twitter account was briefly hijacked by the hacking collective OurMine on Friday afternoon, but the company still appeared to retain some control over the account. 

"Hi, we are O u r M i n e. Well, even Facebook is hackable but at least their security better than Twitter. to improve your accounts security Contact us: contact@o u r m i n e .org For security services visit: o u r m i n e. org," a Friday afternoon tweet announcing the takeover said. 

The Twitter account belonging to Facebook Messenger was similarly compromised at the same time. 

But Facebook still appeared to have some control over the account, and deleted the tweet — posted at least five times — within seconds. Within 30 minutes, the hack appeared to stop.  

Twitter confirmed the hack to Business Insider, and said the accounts were hacked through a third-party platform.

"As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners at Facebook to restore them," a Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider. Facebook did not respond immediately to a request for comment. 

Security researcher Jane Manchung Wong was able to take a video of the tweets getting made and deleted in real-time: 

 

The tweet styles the hacker collective claiming responsibility for the hack as a "security group" and directs users to the company website, which offers personal security checks of social media accounts, emails, iPhones and iCloud for $30 — the pricetag for enterprise security checks is available upon request, it seems.

OurMine has long been targeting the social media accounts belonging to high-profile figures and companies. 

The group hacked the Twitter accounts of 15 NFL teams at the end of January. In 2016, the group managed to hack the Twitter accounts of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and even Twitter's own CEO Jack Dorsey. OurMine even hacked Business Insider's website during the same year.

NASA is investigating a previously undisclosed software issue that arose during Boeing's test flight of a spacecraft designed to shuttle astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

The Boeing spaceship, called the CST-100 Starliner, is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which asked private companies to develop new astronaut-ready spacecraft. Boeing and SpaceX came out on top in the competition, and the two companies are now racing to launch their first astronauts into space.

But during a crucial orbital flight test in December, a clock software error (it was set 11 hours ahead) led Boeing's Starliner to initiate a phase of the mission it had not yet reached. That caused the spaceship to burn through 25% of its fuel, so Boeing had to skip docking with the space station — the primary goal of the mission — to save the Starliner from total failure.

Now, NASA has revealed a second software issue with the Starliner, which ground controllers had to fix in the middle of that test flight. In a call with reporters on Friday, Boeing and NASA officials said the error could have caused a collision between two units of the spacecraft: the crew module and the service module. 

If Boeing hadn't corrected the software error mid-flight, a collision could have sent the crew module tumbling or significantly damaged its protective heat shield. That might have led to "catastrophic spacecraft failure," Paul Hill, a member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said at a meeting on Thursday, according to SpaceNews.

Before that meeting, neither NASA nor Boeing had publicly disclosed the error.

No astronauts were onboard for the test flight, but the error has prompted NASA to launch a larger investigation into Boeing's coding and culture.

Symptoms of a deeper problem 

Boeing said it found the second issue after the first error with the clock, since that prompted engineers to review the spaceship's code while it was flying. 

If they hadn't caught the second error, it could have caused the wrong thrusters to fire just before the spacecraft re-entered Earth's atmosphere. That's the point when the crew module separates from the service module.

Boeing and NASA officials said that incorrect thruster-firing could have bounced the service module back toward the crew model, potentially causing a crash.

"Nothing good can come from those two spacecraft bumping," Jim Chilton, senior vice president of Boeing's space program, said in the call.

Following the failure of Boeing's test flight, NASA convened a team to examine the issues that occurred.

"They are likely only symptoms. They are not the real problem," Doug Loverro, a NASA associate administrator, said in the Friday call.

The heart of the problem, the NASA investigators found, is several coding defects that Boeing's testing team didn't catch before flight.

"We want to understand what the culture is at Boeing that may have led to that," Loverro said.

The team is still investigating some other intermittent issues that disrupted communications between the spacecraft and ground control as well.

"Software defects, particularly in complex spacecraft code, are not unexpected. However, there were numerous instances where the Boeing software quality processes either should have or could have uncovered the defects," NASA press officer Marie Lewis wrote in a blog post on Friday.

2 journalists say Boeing downplayed or denied the glitch

Ars Technica reported that a source had tipped the publication off to the second Starliner software error in mid-January. But when reporter Eric Berger reached out to Boeing about it, he said, a company spokesperson "downplayed the gravity of the situation."

"According to the source, Boeing patched a software code error just two hours before the vehicle reentered Earth's atmosphere. Had the error not been caught, the source said, proper thrusters would not open during the reentry process, and the vehicle would have been lost," Berger wrote.

But the Boeing spokesperson, he said, told him that the software patch "had nothing to do with Crew Module reentry." 

Chris Gebhardt, of NASASpaceflight.com, said on Twitter that he'd faced a similar situation: Boeing and NASA had denied a second software issue altogether when he inquired.

NASA administrators on Friday defended themselves and Boeing for not discussing the second error while the investigation was ongoing.

"Had we had the discussion back then, we probably would've gotten it wrong. I think it's not that we were not revealing something," Loverro said. "We didn't want to speculate on that at the time."

This failed orbital flight test was not the first time that Boeing has come under fire for a software glitch with catastrophic consequences. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the company uncovered yet another software error in its 737 Max airplanes, which have been grounded since March 2019. Software errors caused the plane to crash twice in five months, killing 346 people.

An 'even broader' assessment of Boeing's software practices

The NASA safety panel called for a broad assessment of how Boeing integrates, verifies, and tests its software.

"The panel has a larger concern with the rigor of Boeing's verification processes," Hill said. "Further, with confidence at risk for a spacecraft that is intended to carry humans in space, the panel recommends an even broader Boeing assessment of, and corrective actions in, Boeing's [systems engineering and integration] processes and verification testing."

NASA appears to be following this recommendation.

Lewis said NASA has asked its independent investigation team to do "a more in-depth analysis as to why the anomalies occurred, including an analysis of whether the issues were indicative of weak internal software processes or failure in applying those processes."

Citing "potential for systemic issues," panel chair Patricia Sanders said Thursday that the investigation will be similar to an internal safety review the agency did after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk smoked marijuana during a podcast recording.

Part of that investigation will involve reviewing all of the Starliner's software, which is comprised of roughly 1 million lines of code, officials said.

"Our NASA oversight was insufficient. That's obvious," Loverro said. "And I think that's good learning for us."

Boeing and NASA declined to say whether Starliner will re-do the orbital flight test. In an earnings report released January 29, Boeing included $410 million expense to cover a potential second uncrewed flight.

SpaceX's orbital flight test, meanwhile, went smoothly. The company is expected to launch its first astronauts — probably the first people ever to fly commercial spacecraft, given likely delays for Boeing — in the coming months.

"The Commercial Crew program is broader than a single provider, and that's intentional," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said. "We have two providers, SpaceX and Boeing, that are going to take American astronauts to the International Space Station."

Dave Mosher contributed reporting.

Ericsson and LG have both announced they will not attend the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona this month — the most important trade show for the telecom industry — as fears grow surrounding the spread of the coronavirus.

The virus has already killed more than 630 people, infected 31,000, and spread to at least 25 countries, prompting many countries to warn against travel to China. But after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency, companies are becoming cautious of any unnecessary travel.

Businesses with a significant presence in China have already banned or limited employees from traveling to the country as precaution, with some leaving exceptions for "business critical" travel.

Here's a list of major tech companies who have restricted employee travel so far.

Chris Lattner, the legendary former Apple engineer known for creating its popular iOS programming language Swift, has left Google for the artificial intelligence chip startup SiFive.

Lattner worked for nearly 12 years at Apple, where he was responsible for Swift as well as tools used to program in the language, like Xcode and Swift Playgrounds. Since Swift first launched in 2014, it has quickly picked up in popularity among Apple fans and iOS developers, and is now used in over 500,000 apps on the App Store, including Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and Square.

"I'm thrilled to be joining the SiFive team and for the opportunity to work with a company that is enabling the future of silicon, all the way from idea to silicon," Lattner said in a press release dated January 27th.

Lattner joined SiFive in January as its senior vice president of platform engineering, where he will build the software infrastructure that supports the startup's AI chips. SiFive, an upstart challenger to titans like Intel and AMD in the market for chips optimized for AI, has raised $129.56 million from investors like Sutter Hill Ventures, Spark Capital, and Samsung Venture Investment.

"SiFive is on a mission to democratize access to custom silicon, and innovative leaders in the industry are taking notice," Dr. Naveed Sherwani, president and CEO of SiFive, said in the release. "Chris has made significant contributions to the software used by millions of developers today. This is a significant period of strategic growth for us, and we are thrilled to welcome Chris to our product engineering practice."

Most recently, Lattner had been working at Google for the past two and a half years, where he was a senior director working on TensorFlow, the popular open source AI framework created by Google. He continued using Swift at this job, where he started and led the Swift for TensorFlow project.

Before that, after leaving Apple in 2017, Lattner served a brief, six-month stint at Tesla, where he headed its autopilot software. Business Insider previously reported that a source said that while Lattner enjoyed his job at Tesla, he did not get along with CEO Elon Musk. Google nabbed him shortly after.

Besides Swift, Lattner also created the high-profile LLVM infrastructure project.

Business Insider has reached out to Google for comment.

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