Scooter startup Bird is betting on the French market in a significant way. The company plans to open up its biggest European office in Paris. Eventually, Bird wants to hire 1,000 people by mid-2021, which is a meaningful number for a company that has been around for a couple of years. Paris is an important…
Imitation meat is poised to expand its presence in our diets exponentially, if the success of dueling faux burger companies Impossible and Beyond are any indication — but where’s the chicken? Planted is a brand new Swiss company that claims its ultra-simple meatless poultry is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, better in other ways…
YL Ventures, a 12-year-old, Mill Valley, Ca-based, seed-stage venture firm that invests narrowly in Israeli cybersecurity startups, just closed its fourth fund with $120 million in capital commitments, bringing the total capital it now manages to $260 million. It’s an interesting firm in numerous ways that set it apart from many of its similar-size peers.…
Cities use paint and signs to communicate the rules of the road in a world where urban spaces must choreograph an infinite dance between pedestrians and personally owned cars, scooters and bicycles, ride-hailing services, delivery trucks, buses, rail, and someday autonomous vehicles. It’s a crude method for increasingly modern cities that are trying to juggle…
Against a backdrop of rising violence against religious minorities around the world, Twitter today said that it would update its hateful conduct rules to include dehumanizing speech against religious groups. “After months of conversations and feedback from the public, external experts and our own teams, we’re expanding our rules against hateful conduct to include language that dehumanizes others…
AT&T’s acquisition of HBO goes beyond just offering premium TV programming — the company revealed on Tuesday that it’s going to call its new WarnerMedia streaming service HBO Max, and that this will launch next spring, with more than 10,000 hours of content available to subscribers. It’ll have Friends, dear readers, which is all that…
Unmortgage, the London-based startup that lets you buy as little as 5% of a home and rent the rest, has announced a partnership with Allianz Global Investors (AllianzGI) to create a new fund to be used to purchase properties offered via the platform. The AllianzGI-managed fund is targeting a size of £500 million, according to…
Global ride-hail startup InDriver launches its app-based service in Kampala (Uganda) this week. After going live in Nairobi in June—the online taxi company now operates in four African countries: Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, and Tanzania Founded in Russia and now headquartered in New York, InDriver’s mobile-app allows passengers to name their own fare for nearby…
SpaceX has been awarded a new contract by NASA to launch the agency’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE. This research spacecraft will study polarized light from sources including neutron stars, pulsar wind nebulae and supermassive black holes, and provide much more imaging than existing space-based observation resources. The mission will help scientists in the…
Instead of switching between apps to secure a ride during rush hour, people in China can now hail from different companies using a single app. Some of the country’s largest internet companies — including ride-hailing giant Didi itself — are placing bets on this type of aggregation service. The nascent model is reminiscent of a…
