👁️ iSpy
Microsoft buys big, Spotify takes on fake news, and Facebook's original deck
So, what happened this week in the Tech & Startup world? 🌍
The Grapevine Newsflash 🔥
11 tech & startup stories in 136 super short seconds.
😎 UBS Buys Wealthfront. The Swiss bank has bought Wealthfront, a US ‘Robo-advisor’, for $1.4bn. This comes less than 12 months after JP Morgan bought Nutmeg in the UK for an undisclosed fee. Read more here.
🎮 A New Battleground? Microsoft is set to acquire games publisher Activision Blizzard for $75bn. The latter are known for creating games like Call of Duty & World of Warcraft. It is a huge signal of intent from Microsoft towards the buzzword of 2022 already, the Metaverse. Read more about the move here.
👁️ iSpy An investigation by the New York Times has found that Israel has used it’s incredibly powerful spyware, known as Pegasus, to advance its interests across the world including in their campaign against Iran. The report also shows the US bought the software, before deciding not to deploy it. The software claims to reliably crack encrypted communications of any smartphone. Read more here.
🎤 Spotifys New Platform Rules. Over the last few weeks Spotify has faced a-lot of criticism for not removing podcasts promoting ‘vaccine hesitancy’. In response, Spotify have released some new rules starting today. You can read the rules here or understand more about the criticism here.
🎥 Instagram Subscriptions. Instagram is testing a subscriber program whereby influencers can charge an Only-Fans style monthly fee to users who want to subscribe for special content. Read more here or hear it from Instagrams boss, Adam Mosseri, here.
🇨🇳 Shopify Takes on China? Shopify has entered a partnership with JD.com to make it easier for US E-commerce entrepreneurs to sell into the Chinese markets. To read more about the story, click here, or to better understand the history of Shopify you can listen to their CEO on this podcast here.
🤖 Facebooks Newest AI. Algorithms have become very good at identifying objects in photos and understanding text on a page, but not at the same time. Facebook is working on a machine learning algorithm to teach AI to multi-task. You can read more about it here.
💸 Bitcoin Fraud A key inhibitor of ubiquitous use of crypto is money laundering, and this is only on the rise. In 2021, an estimated $8.6bn was laundered, up 30% from 2020 (although down from 2019’s total). Will governments and regulators see this as a motive to step up or will it result in further delays?
🌎 Solving Bitcoins Climate Problem. Have a read of this article here on ‘bitcoin’s carbon problem’ and how to address it.
💰 Facebooks OG Pitch Deck. Want to see the first pitch deck Facebook used to raise money back in 2004? Click here.
🍺 Remember iBeer? The app that made your iPhone look like a glass of beer? It’s creator was recently interviewed and explained how it came to be, what it was like being #1 on the app store for a year, how they were making $10-20k a day, and his own issues with alcoholism.
🎉 Our Sponsor: Cosmos Video 🎉
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So, if you’re keen to learn more about their product you can find out more here, or if you are a remote-first team, set up your space in the metaverse by booking a chat with the Cosmos team by clicking on the big green button below.
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Over & Out,
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