Roughly €20.5 Bn was invested in European start-ups in 2018 (increase of 4% YoY to 2017). The number of transaction dropped by 25.9% YoY showing larger rounds and fewer companies funded PitchBook
Tech
- AI company Peltarion raise USD 14 M more from EQT, EQT Ventures, FAM and Euclidian Capital DiDigital
- Match Group file claims on Tinder co-founder for stealing valuable business information right before his departure DiDigital
- Snoop a.k.a. Smooth (like in Smooth payments) Dog invests in Klarna Forbes
- Roughly €20.5 billion of total deal value across 3,384 deals (a 4.2% YoY increase and a 25.9% YoY decrease, respectively) in Europe 2018 PitchBook
- Nike released their first self-lacing shoes TechCrunch
- Google and now Facebook will both spend USD 300 M supporting journalism the coming three years ReCode
- Longer read from Roger McNamee who mentored Zuckerberg and now feel an urge to tell his story of Facebook Time
- Palantir’s revenue expected to exceed USD 1 BN for 2018 Crunchbase
Media
- NBC about to offer their SVOD service WSJ
- Tidal might have manipulated the number of listeners to JayZ and Kanye West with 350M – which increased payout rate to those while punishing other DiDigital
- Swedish Finance paper on Netflix’ 40% (now ≈50%) market value increase since Christmas 2018 Di
- Spotify is getting serious with podcasts Niemanlab
- Netflix decided to increase price for its US customers from USD 11 to USD 13 per month TheVerge
- Roku deletes Infowars from platform TechCrunch
- Spotify has a new major shareholder in the Scottish fund manager Baillie Gifford that now controls 9.7% of the shares DiDigital
- Disney already losing over USD 1 Bn in streaming and haven’t launched their SVOD service yet CNBC
- Netflix beat subscriber growth estimates (now 110 M international subscribers) but missed revenue forecast and increased monthly subscription price in the US to USD 13 per month from USD 11 Netflix
- Spotify has reached another milestone with 200 M MAUs ending Q4 2018 Billboard
Transportation
- Zoox picks new CEO from Intel WSJ
- Lime about to be valued USD 2 Bn in new investment round ReCode and Swedish competitor Voi poaches its global expansion manager DiDigital
- Tesla is cutting its (45,000 strong) workforce by 7% TechCrunch
XR
- Arvizio platform enables mixed reality experience cross–platforms Hololens and Magic Leap NextReality
- Facebook reforming and investing heavily in its AR headset(s) – some rumours say the headset(s) look like really high-end glasses BusinessInsider &
- Facebook poached Google’s AR/VR lead to its portals TechCrunch
- How Lyft envisions to bring VR and AR to your ride – it must respond to real-world events like red lights… TechCrunch
- Wacom and Magic Leap created an optimistic vision of the future of productivity TheVerge
Statistics
- Recent studies says we should eat no more than 100g red meat per week and person to sustain environmental stability according to study published in the Lancet