Apple bought Drive.ai, an autonomous driving startup once valued at $200 million, and has hired dozens of Drive.ai engineers, Apple confirmed to Axios on Tuesday.
Why it matters: The deal and hires confirm that Apple hasn't given up its autonomous driving project.
When Slack went public last week via a direct listing, it got the benefits of algorithmic market pricing, speed and lower fees. But it didn't raise any capital for what remains a money-burning enterprise, as it would have via a traditional IPO, nor did it get to pick its new investors.
The big picture: The question, therefore, is if IPO and direct listing structures could be combined so as to receive the best of both floats. The answer is yes. Probably.
A Bill Gates-led venture fund that invests in next-wave climate technologies wants to get bigger.
The big picture: Gates, chair of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, said Monday that the $1 billion fund that began investing in 2017 plans to raise another $1 billion to $1.5 billion late next year.
Africa is the world's fastest urbanizing region, but limited public transit in most cities has led to severely congested roads, creating an acute need for investment and innovation in transportation.
Why it matters: Traffic takes a toll on both economic output and quality of life in Africa's megacities. But with mobile phone penetration approaching 50%, new technology platforms could help motorbike taxis and other services bridge the gaps in the continent's urban transportation systems.
Apple again led S&P 500 companies in buybacks, spending a new record $23.8 billion in Q1, more than doubling its spend from the previous quarter, data from S&P Global shows.
Context: Apple has long been a buyback behemoth. The company holds 8 of the 10 all-time records for quarterly buybacks, and has spent more than $75 billion on buybacks over just the past year.
Linkedin will today announce algorithm changes made over the past 12-18 months to favor conversations in its Feed that cater to niche professional interests, as opposed to elevating viral content, its executives tell Axios.
The big picture: News feeds that were fundamentally built to connect one voice to many are struggling to deliver on value as communication trends move to more personal and ephemeral conversations.
Around the world, companies big and small are feverishly plotting our future lifestyle — smart cities, driverless vehicles, wearable technology, internet-connected everything at home, and more, all of them activated by our voices and thoughts.
What's happening: For almost two decades, a tiny handful of companies — Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and China's Alibaba and Tencent — have sought to know every possible thing, public and private, in real time, about you and every other reachable individual on the planet — where they go, what they do, say, and feel.
Alarm bells are going off in the U.S. and Europe over Big Tech's invasion of our privacy. The companies are betting hard on one thing: That consumers — especially younger ones — won't care too much what you know about them as long as you give them really cool stuff.
Public spaces are underconstant surveillance from AI cameras, cellphone towers and advertisers that can follow people from home to work and back again.
But life inside the home, too, is increasingly transparent to watchful outsiders, the result of mushrooming internet-connected devices that consumers are setting up in their dens and bedrooms.
A top Facebook executive on Monday urged Europe and America to move towards regulating major internet companies — saying that if they don’t, the Chinese government will.
Why it matters: Policy and communications chief Nick Clegg’s comments delivered in Berlin are part of the social giant’s push to influence new regulations in areas like hateful content and data privacy.
Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) today introduced a bill that would require large tech platforms to disclose how they use consumer data and how they value it. Dan and Axios' Kim Hart dig in.
Female researchers, for decades largely boxed out of computer science, have in recent years entered the field in record numbers, but new research suggests the current rate of change is not nearly rapid enough to bring parity to the field within a lifetime.
Why it matters: The direction of computer science research is determined by the people who make up the field.
As deals from venture capital, private equity and real estate firms produce more headlines about billion-dollar deals and millionaire backers, investors are clamoring for ways to sink their teeth into so-called alternative investments. Big banks and asset managers are finding ways to help them do it.
Driving the news: Indexing giant Vanguard Group has reportedly started discussions with private-equity firms about a push further into alternative investments.
During an interview with "Axios on HBO," California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) criticized Facebook for not pulling the doctored video of Nancy Pelosi off its platform, saying, "It’s just fake — it's made up. It's doctored. It's done for political purposes."
For the second year in a row, Snapchat has chosen to showcase its innovation at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity through an art exhibit, rather than a flashy stunt like the branded Ferris wheel it constructed at the festival in 2017.
Why it matters: Snapchat wants to elevate its brand by proving its technology can make the world a better place. It's doing that by investing in art collaborations around the world, showing ways that art can be redefined through augmented reality (AR).
California Gov. Gavin Newsom warned in an interview for "Axios on HBO" that his state’s Big Tech giants — Google, Facebook and others — will soon get "steamrolled" by federal regulations, and deserve to be hit with new restrictions on their wealth and reach.
Why it matters: Newsom is friends with several tech moguls, including Tesla's Elon Musk and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. And his state relies heavily on the big profits of Big Tech to fund California. Big changes will hit them at the state and federal level, he said.
