Focus: At a time when world leaders (in Davos) call for Global regulations on technology companies NyTimes, Google DeepMind’s AlphaStar AI beat the world champions in StarCraft II Engadget having studied 200 years worth of StarCraft gaming.
What does this mean, will future games be – like a colleague commented to this – all about AI management instead of gaming the actual game? Well, that’s probably one of the more trivial questions coming to AI.
Tech
- Pressure ramping up on crowd-sourcing platform Tessin after another bankruptcy amongst its companies DiDigital
- Kognity who seek to enable platforms of digital schoolbooks raise USD 4.5 M from among others Norrsken Foundation DiDigital
- Doktor.se raise another SEK 100 M at a valuation above SEK 1 BN to continue to build out the platform of free digital healthcare calls in competition with Kry, MinDoktor and others DiDigital
- Alva labs raise SEK 10 M to back idea to make recruitments based on data DiDigital
- The end of the era of “Move fast and break things” HarvardBusinessReview
- Amazon rolls out their own delivery network to compete against FedEx and UPS WSJ and here in Sweden Apotea founder backs both BudBee and competitor AirMee who just raised USD 4 M DiDigital
- Google fined EUR 50 M by France for GDPR violations TheVerge
Media
- Samsung is making iTunes available as an application on its TV – making Apple able to sell movies through Samsung TVs TheVerge
- An argument to how Netflix manage to increase price to an existing subscriber base Stratechery
- Viacom acquires PlutoTV streaming platform for USD 340 M TechCrunch
- Tivo annual video trends report show that pay-TV still leads the market but the major ones (Netflix, Amazon Prime) lost market share to the free ones (Youtube, facebook etc) TiVo
- Mobile data is so cheap in India consumers spend most data in the world and more time than any other nation on video streaming than anywhere else WSJ
Transportation
- Uber exploring autonomous bikes and scooters TechCrunch
- Airmee – competitor to Budbee – raise SEK 38 M from A&D, Creades and Felix Hagnö to build out the best last-mile delivery service DiDigital
- Apple cuts 200 people from its autonomous vehicle project Titan TechCrunch
- Will all startups soon be scooter startups like Bird, Lime, Voi, Scoo, Popscoot etc. etc. Crunchbase
XR
- AR headset companies are challenged by META filing for bankruptcy following ODG MobileEngineering
- Facebook and Microsoft both join the AR glasses race with patent filings being publicly available VentureBeat
Finance, Politics and Other
- Ahead of the WEF – does the world leaders have the will to accomplish improvements TheGuardian
- The essential reading list ahead of WEF WEForum
- A hedge-fund manager’s takeaways from WEF NYTimes
- Rising debt levels
- More political divides
- Fake News
- US isolationism
This week’s podcast
- KindredCast podcast with Hearst Magazine (Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Men’s Health and more) Chairman David Carey on the printed magazines in a digital era Spotify
This week’s binge
- Brexit: The Uncivil War – a brilliantly showcased movie about how political strategist Dominic Cummings managed to (ab-?)use data knowledge with the help of research firms Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ Playpilot
Statistics
- App Annie released the state of Mobile for 2019 – Global app store spend reached USD 101 Bn AppAnnie
- SEB predicts with some pessimism the outlook for the Nordics coming years SEB
- CEO’s sceptical to climate adjusting their businesses Cision
