Venture capital firm Social Capital wants to make going public cool again, this morning raising $600 million in an IPO for a blank check acquisition company that is designed to eventually acquire a tech "unicorn."
Unicorn? That's the Silicon Valley term for a privately-held startup valued at $1 billion or more.
Why it matters: There is a glut of highly-valued and well-capitalized startups that have avoided going public, often to avoid both the hassle of an IPO and the scrutiny that comes with being listed. The trend has frustrated a lot of startup employees and investors, who want to convert their equity into into cash. Social Capital hopes its approach can help alleviate the pressure.
Truck drivers are stuck in the middle of the first major battle in Congress over whether self-driving cars and other artificial intelligence-enabled technologies could take away people's jobs.
On one side, you have Democrats claiming that rolling out automated trucks too quickly will hurt employment and safety; on the other, Republicans who want to quickly move a legislative package meant to speed up the deployment of self-driving technology.
The bigger picture: Truck drivers might be the first set of workers caught in the tug-of-war between old jobs and new technologies. But with Google, Amazon, IBM and numerous other companies staking their future of artificial intelligence, they won't be the last.
