The fight against robocallers is just getting started, and the wheel of justice turns slowly, but the FTC just took down a handful of major operations responsible for billions of unwanted calls, some of them adding additional fraud to the mix. The money coming out of the cases is surprisingly small, however — but there’s…
Instacart is today launching a new feature aimed at allowing shoppers to access their earnings more quickly, the company announced this morning. Instant Cashout, as the option is called, was built in partnership with payments platform Stripe and is being made available to shoppers in-app for instant transfers to a debit card. Previously, workers would…
Qupital, a fintech startup that bills itself as Hong Kong’s largest trade financing platform for SMEs, has closed a $15 million Series A led by CreditEase FinTech Investment Fund (CEFIF), with participation from returning investors Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund and MindWorks Ventures, both participants in its seed round. To date, Qupital has raised $17…
Even by the standards of the often, ah, “wide-ranging” conversations on the Original Content podcast, this latest episode covers a lot of ground. The initial focus is “Triple Frontier,” a film directed by J.C. Chandor and starring Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal, Charlie Hunnam and Garrett Hedlund as friends who served in the special…
The Federal Trade Commission, in what could be considered a prelude to new regulatory action, has issued an order to several major internet service providers requiring them to share every detail of their data collection practices. The information could expose patterns of abuse or otherwise troubling data use against which the FTC — or states…
Australia-based Airwallex is the latest tech startup to enter the billion-dollar “unicorn” club. The company announced today that it has closed a $100 million Series C round that values its business above $1 billion. Started in Melbourne in 2015 by four Chinese founders, Airwallex provides a service that lets companies manage cross-border revenue and financing…
Mike Novogratz, a former hedge fund manager who was once captain of Princeton’s college wrestling team, has been described as many things, including in just one New Yorker article in which he was featured last year. An on-and-off-again billionaire. A sidelined Wall Street legend. “Bombastic.” “Full of shit.” A former party animal whose “lifestyle issues”…
On the heels of Apple announcing paid, monthly subscription services for video, games, and news, YouTube says it is also doubling down original video content. Parent company Google has denied a report in Bloomberg that YouTube has stopped accepting pitches for scripted shows. But it also confirmed another aspect of the same report: it plans a…
Anne Friedman Contributor Anne Friedman is of counsel at DLA Piper where she focuses her practice on structuring and negotiating large scale sourcing and technology transactions. Andrew Deutsch Contributor Andrew Deutsch is a partner at DLA Piper concentrating on intellectual property litigation and advice, including copyright, trademark, defamation and other First Amendment concerns, trade secret,…
Taylor Lorenz was in high demand this week. As a prolific journalist at The Atlantic and about-to-be member of Harvard’s prestigious Nieman Fellowship for journalism, that’s perhaps not surprising. Nor was this the first time she’s had a bit of a moment: Lorenz has already served as an in-house expert on social media and the…
