✂️ "Alexa, Give me a Haircut"
Nasa flies a helicopter on Mars, the UK government explores crypto & MI5 joins Instagram
So, what happened this week in the Tech & Startup world? 🌍
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The Grapevine Newsflash 🔥
11 tech & startup stories in 129 super-duper short seconds.
💰 Starling Bank has raised £50m in funding from Goldman Sachs. The UK neobank has 2 million total users, £6bn in deposits, and has 350k business banking users (about 6% share of Britain's small-medium banking market. Read more here.
💻 Apple, Find My Keys! Apple has made a number of exciting announcements over the Apple Card, the new iMacs, iPads, and the long-anticipated Airtag, a trackable dongle that can be attached to keys or wallets (hello… isn’t this what Tile has done for years?). Get more detail on these excitement announcements here.
🎮 Ready Player One Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite, have raised $1bn at a valuation of $28.7bn. The money will go towards their vision of building the ‘metaverse’ - not just a virtual world, but the virtual world. If you can’t quite picture this, and missed our story a few weeks ago, you can get a sense of it by checking out their MetaHuman Creator here.
🎤 Clubhouse Series C! Clubhouse has raised an undisclosed Series C funding round at a $4bn valuation. The round was led by A16z. Unsure what all the Clubhouse fuss is about? Watch this great video by slide bean on if Clubhouse is an instant success or simply a bunch of hype.
🚁 Nasa has flown a helicopter on Mars. See it in action here.
🚘 Tesla Challenged After two men were killed in a Tesla after it crashed into a tree last week, there’s been a lot of discussion around how safe their ‘Autopilot’ feature really is. The answer? It can be ‘easily tricked’ according to a prominent US magazine. Images we’ve seen suggest you can fool the autopilot with nothing but an orange or a bottle of water.
💇 Amazon Launches A Salon! Amazon has launched Amazon Salon, a hairdresser in London where users can use augmented reality to see how they would look with different hairstyles. Read more here.
📈 Everyone Starts Somewhere Coinbase’s stock has gradually fallen since it’s incredible IPO a week ago, but it’s a huge win for their early backers, founders & the wider crypto world. How did it all start? Check out Coinbase’s very first pitch deck from YCombinator’s demo day here.
💰 RishiCoin? Chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak has announced a new fintech task force that’ll investigate “a potential central bank digital currency”. Read more here.
🏍️ Now You See Me… An influencer that appeared to be a young Japanese woman biker has been unearthed to actually be a 50 year-old man called Soya. He used photo editing apps to create the personality - which he says enabled him to get many more likes and followers. It highlights a possible future filled with deepfakes and a change to what we consider ‘identity’.
🍸 Bond, James Bond! Mi5 now has Instagram, read more here.
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Over & Out,
Nick & Louis