JPMorgan Chase is helping advance racial equity in Chicago as the region works to recover from the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 along racial lines. The firm will:
Increase homeownership among 3000 Black and Latinx families.
Help +1500 Black and Latinx-owned small businesses grow.
Twitter's stock rose to near-record highs Tuesday after beating Wall Street estimates on top and bottom lines but failing slightly to meet expectations on user growth for the quarter.
Yes, but: Overall, Twitter still posted significant user gains in 2020, which the company attributes to the "global conversation around current events and ongoing product improvements."
Alternative vehicles have become the new biotechs, often racing into the public markets with little to no revenue.
Driving the news: Hyzon Motors, a hydrogen fuel cell truck and bus startup, is going public via SPAC at a $2.7 billion valuation. Its technology is commercialized, unlike Nikola, but says it plans to have only 5,000 vehicles delivered by the end of 2023.
A growing number of new web publishers aren't traditional media companies, but rather corporate marketers setting up blogs and websites to lure potential customers with content.
Driving the news: WordPress VIP (WPVIP), the enterprise arm of WordPress.com, is acquiring Parse.ly, a content analytics platform that's used by thousands of digital publishers.
The New York Times is planning to double down on digital games, its CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said Thursday. In particular, it's looking to invest more in puzzles.
Why it matters: Games have become a huge part of The Times' digital strategy over the past few years. The Grey Lady said Thursday it added 2.3 million digital-only subscribers last year, with about a third of those new adds going to its cooking, games and audio apps.
Bloomberg Media is expecting to bring in at least $100 million in consumer subscription revenue in 2021, according to an internal memo sent to staff from CEO Justin Smith.
Why it matters: Prior to the launch of its consumer digital subscription business three years ago, Bloomberg LP made pretty much all of its subscription money from enterprise subscriptions to the Bloomberg Terminal, a data and content platform for financial professionals.
The huge multinational oil-and-gas company Total on Tuesday unveiled new information about its diversification efforts — and the company's changing its name too.
Driving the news: Total said over 20% of its expected $12.1 billion in net spending in 2021 will be devoted to renewables and other electricity-related investments.
Super Bowl LV was watched by a total of 96.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings provided by CBS Sports.
Details: The broadcast broke records as the most live-streamed NFL game ever, averaging 5.7 million viewers per minute — up 65% from last year's big game.
Large and respected institutions, including a $1 trillion company run by the richest person on earth are starting to worry about the world's institutions, most notably the stock market and fiat currencies, and they are taking steps to hedge the risks.
Why it matters: Tesla's announcement that it will invest its reserves in bitcoin and gold as well as dollars makes the company part of a growing movement away from the greenback — which has long been the world's primary and most trusted store of value — and the largest and most high-profile company to do so.
Despite the incredibly weak job market investors are betting the U.S. economy will continue to strengthen and are pouring money into small-cap stocks.
What's happening: Small companies' stocks have lagged their large counterparts for years as bigger has meant better on Wall Street. But over the past six months, that trend has reversed and investors are playing small ball.
After years of focusing on producing content for the latest hot app, investors, tech leaders and newsrooms are starting to pay renewed attention to publishing on the open web, where independent publishers have more control over data and distribution.
The big picture: The open web — content that's accessible via any web browser, easily linked to, and doesn't require logging in to an account — is winning new attention even as "walled garden" apps like Facebook continue to dominate online distribution and the Google and Facebook duopoly controls most of the digital ad market.
When Elon Musk's Tesla spends $1.5 billion on bitcoin and announces that it will start accepting the cryptocurrency as payment for its cars, it's natural to ask why it would do such a thing.
Why it matters: The simplest explanation — it's just Elon being Elon — is almost certainly the correct explanation. But it also makes sense that the Tesla CEO would do such a thing.
Attention is a commodity, which means that memes — a way of focusing and scaling attention — are a way to create value. No one understands this better than Elon Musk.
Why it matters: People expert in propagating memes are finding that their skills can make them millions — or, in the case of Elon Musk, even billions.
Public parks have grown so important during the pandemic that planners are suggesting bold renovations.
Driving the news: In big cities around the world — like New York, Paris and Barcelona — major improvement plans for public parks are being unveiled one after the next, with inclusion and broader access at their heart.
As snow pelts so many cold-weather cities, it's warming to remember that many are home to splendid parks where one can social-distance year-round.
Where it stands: The Trust for Public Land — which last year spent $45.7 million building new playgrounds in city parks, per Salon — ranks nearly 100 cities by the quality of their parks.
Reddit said Monday that it raised more than $250 million in Series E funding from existing and new investors. Sources say the company raised the new funding at a $6 billion pre-money valuation.
Why it matters: The company has doubled its valuation since its last funding round of $300 million at a $3 billion valuation in 2019.
Americans heeding advice to skip their usual Super Bowl celebrations triggered the latest COVID ripple effect, with the amount of beer poured from taps down 46% nationally from last year — and nearly 70% in a Tom Brady-less Boston.
The big picture: Data from the Beer Board, a New York tech company that helps optimize beer flows in some 1,300 locations across the country, provided insight into which cities had the most liberal crowd policies and free-flowing taps.
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