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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, aims to secure $1 billion in equity financing to compete with industry leaders such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. The company, co-founded by Musk, has already garnered $135 million from investors, as revealed in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Artificial Intelligence: Let AI Take Over The Painful Job Of Training Your Dog
Researchers at Colorado State University have designed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can help train dogs when their owners are away. Such a situation may well come around soon as people return to offices after vaccination against the coronavirus and life returns to normal.
Venture Capital: SoftBank And Hughes Invest $400M In Satellite Internet Operator OneWeb
A consortium of investors including India’s Bharti Global and the UK government acquired OneWeb in bankruptcy proceedings. The latest investment, comprising $350 million from SoftBank (TYO:9984) and Echostar (NASDAQ: SATS) owned Hughes Network Systems, will allow OneWeb to continue the deployment of its initial 648-satellite constellation.
FinTech: “Absolutely, We Should Be Scared S—less” – Jamie Dimon On Fintech Threat
On a conference call on Friday, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon made no secret of his apprehensions about the threat from fast-growing fintechs and tech giants across the globe. He was responding to analysts who said that fintechs’ leap-frogging valuations showed their rising ascendancy over traditional banks.
Artificial Intelligence: Chinese Techs Filed Patents For AI That Detects Uighur Muslims (IPVM)
IPVM unearths a patent that shows Huawei used “explicitly racist technology.” IPVM, a world authority on video surveillance, said in an article Tuesday that Huawei, Megvii, and several other Chinese tech companies have filed patents in China for various devices and systems that include Uighur and ethnic minority detection. It published the article in conjunction…
Alternative Investments/Digital: The Highly Successful BTCetc Bitcoin ETP Lists On SIX Switzerland
The SIX Swiss Exchange announced Wednesday the listing of the BTCetc Bitcoin ETP (Primary Ticker: BTCE) by ETC Group. This is the ETP’s second listing in Europe after its launch on Deutsche Börse’s Xetra platform in June 2020.
Venture Capital: In Rich Week, Grab, Blend, MX, WeRide And Rapyd Each Score $300M Rounds
Venture capitalists were generous this week, investing $300 million amounts in as many as five startups across multiple geographies. The largesse flowed to Grab Financial, Blend, MX, WeRide, and Rapyd.
FinTech: Capitol Riot – Fintechs (And Techs) Hit Back At Trump
Fintechs took the lead in castigating President Trump for egging on a crowd of his supporters to attack and ransack the U.S. Capitol building last week. The horrific incident left five dead. Voices, and actions, from big tech followed with even Republican politicians welcoming the impeachment of Trump.
Venture Capital: Checkout.com Triples Its Valuation…Again
Fintech and online payments firm Checkout.com announced a Series C fundraising of $450 million led by Tiger Global Management. The valuation tag of $15 billion makes Checkout.com Europe’s most valuable fintech startup and the fourth most valuable globally.
Digital Assets: Crypto Volume On PayPal Scales Record High
Data revealed by crypto market aggregator Nomics showed that crypto-assets trading volume of $242 million on PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) on January 11 overshadowed its previous daily record of $129 million on January 6, 2021. The key question that arises is whether retail investors sold into bitcoin’s uptrend and booked profits.
Artificial Intelligence: Researchers Develop The AI Processor Of The Future
A research team led by Swinburne University of Technology Professor David Moss, Swinburne alum Dr. Xingyuan Xu, and Distinguished Professor Arnan Mitchell from RMIT University, has developed what is currently the world’s fastest, most powerful neuromorphic processor for AI. The optical neuromorphic processor operates a thousand times faster than previous ones.
Digital Assets: Bitcoin Nuggets
A student found the long-forgotten private keys to a 2011 stash of 127 bitcoin on December 22 when the crypto was trading in the $23,000s range. The lucky HODLer (“BitcoinHolderThankU”) them cashed them out for a net haul of $4.24 million at a price of $33,439.02 per coin minus a 0.15% fee.
Venture Capital: Games Platform Roblox And Cloud Security Developer Lacework Score $500M+ Funding Rounds
The new year is off to a good start with two funding rounds, each over $500 million, announced in its first week. Fast-growing Lacework, which allows companies to build securely in the cloud, closed a $525 million Series D round, earning a valuation tag of more than $1 billion. Online games platform Roblox raised $520 million in a Series H round that valued it at $29.5 billion. Both companies benefited from the digital shifts triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. Altimeter Capital was a lead investor in both companies’ rounds.
Artificial Intelligence: Hyundai’s Flip-Flop On Self-Driving With Apple
Hyundai first confirms, then retracts its statement on a tie-up with Apple on self-driving EV cars. On Friday, Hyundai Motor (KRX: 005380) sent investors and motor enthusiasts into a flurry of excitement with its announcement of a potential tie-up with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) for an electric car (the so-called Apple car) and batteries.
Alternative Investments/ESG: The SP Funds S&P Global REIT Sharia ETF For Exposure To Shariah-Compliant Real Estate
This is a new faith-based ETF from SP Funds, home of North America’s largest family of Shariah-compliant ETFs. SP Funds has a solution for investors looking for Shariah-compliant exposure to real estate using the ETF vehicle. The asset manager has launched North America’s first Shariah-compliant REIT ETF. The SP Funds S&P Global REIT Sharia ETF (NYSEARCA: SPRE) launched on the New York Stock Exchange on December 30.
Digital Assets: CPPIB Takes $113M Haircut On Investment In SolarWinds
Around December 9, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Canada’s largest pension fund, bought approximately 5% of Texas-based software company SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI) for $315 million from private equity firm shareholders Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo. The price was $21.97 per share of SolarWinds. A week later, news broke of the very sophisticated cyberattack on SolarWinds. The price of the stock fell to a low of $13.98, knocking off 36% of CPPIB’s investment.
Alternative Investments/Digital: “Bitcoin Could Be Rat Poison, But The Rat Could Be Cash,” Says Bill Miller
Bill Miller, the founder of major investment management firm Miller Value Partners and Co-Founder of Legg Mason Capital Management, made some very bullish observations on bitcoin in his Market Letter for Q4.
Digital Assets: Bitcoin Smashes Past $35K
The leading cryptocurrency sets yet another new all-time high in 2021.
For those impressed by the 16.26% return the S&P 500 clocked in all of 2020, here’s something to chew on. At the time of writing, bitcoin is sitting pretty on a gain of nearly 19% achieved in just six days of the new year. For 2020, the crypto achieved a return of 301.33%. Bitcoin (BTC) struck a new high of $35,879 on January 5 but is currently trading around $34,400.
Venture Capital: Hinge Health, The Digital Clinic For Back And Joint Pain, Raises $310M
The Series D funding valued the startup at $3 billion post-money – a 6X increase in less than a year.
According to a report by TechCrunch, San-Francisco-based Hinge Health raised $310 million in a Series D round that valued it at $3 billion post-money. Hinge is the first digital clinic for back and joint pain and offers musculoskeletal (MSK) care at every stage from prevention to post-surgery.
Alternative Investments: Simplify Asset Management Launches Four New Disruptive Technology ETFs
Four new ‘bleeding edge’ ETFs are on the anvil from Simplify Asset Management. Founded by Paul Kim and David M. Berns, Ph.D., the firm’s new thematic ETFs focus on firms that have important technological or cultural edges and provide meaningful concentration to their stock price.
Venture Capital: Madrona Venture Group Raises Over $500M For Two New Funds
Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group has obtained more than $500 million in the largest-ever fundraising effort in its year history. Madrona has earmarked $345 million out of this capital for its eighth ‘early-stage’ fund targeting 35-to-40 Pacific Northwest tech startups. The balance amount of $160 million is for its second “acceleration fund” to be deployed for later-stage companies in North America.
Digital Assets: SEC Has Ripple In The Dock; Garlinghouse Fires Back
The SEC on Tuesday charged Ripple and two executives for raising over $1.38 billion via an unregistered securities offering.
The SEC filed the complaint in the federal district court in Manhattan alleging that the defendants violated the registration provisions of the Securities Act. It prayed for injunctive relief, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, and civil penalties. The two executives named in the complaint are Christian Larsen, Ripple’s co-founder, executive chairman of its board, and former CEO; and Bradley Garlinghouse, the company’s current CEO.
Artificial Intelligence: Stripchat Applies AI To Automatically Categorize LiveCam Sex Acts
Stripchat is using AI as a high-level marketing tool to make its live adult webcam streams more customer-focused. The webcam platform successfully developed AI to categorize live streams by the kind of sex act and present them accordingly on the main page of its website. It’s a win-win both for users and the cam models. Site traffic nearly doubled in 2020.
Digital Assets: MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin Binge Buying > $1B
MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), the business intelligence firm led by bitcoin evangelist CEO Michael Saylor, announced this morning that it had bought about 29,646 additional bitcoins for about $650 million in cash. The average price works out to approximately $21,925 per bitcoin, all-inclusive of fees and expenses.