Niantic announced a Pokémon GO feature today that will incentivize users to conduct more AR scans of landmarks in their neighborhood. This user-generated data will help Niantic build its “real-world metaverse,” which will be powered largely by Lightship, its free AR Development Kit (ARDK). In Pokémon GO, users visit PokéStops, which represent real-world places —…
At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June, the company teased its plans to incorporate support for home, office, and hotel keys into Apple Wallet, as well as state driver’s licenses. Today, Apple is announcing Hyatt will become the first hotel partner to support the new technology. The hotel chain will roll out support for room…
Minly, a MENA-based media and entertainment startup, announced today that it has acquired Oulo, a Dubai-based celebrity shoutout platform, for an undisclosed fee. The acquisition is coming six months after Minly raised a $3.6 million seed round and off the back of an impressive year of growth that saw the platform — which connects fans…
The world’s largest card company just doubled down on its bid to capture the crypto market. Visa announced today that it has launched a crypto advisory practice for its clients and partners under its Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) arm. The news comes just a few months after Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, declared…
The same day in February 2020 that Credit Karma planned to announce that it had been acquired by Intuit for more than $7 billion, the stock market tanked, spooked by news that a novel virus had the potential to start a pandemic. “I’m up at 5 o’clock in the morning, the Dow is flashing red…
Sometimes I wonder if the analysts on Wall Street, who I’m sure are smart people, understand how the technology industry works. There is this persistent notion among investors that stocks that did well during the pandemic like Zoom, DocuSign and Okta will suddenly fade from our minds as soon as the pandemic subsides (if that…
Felix Capital, the London VC firm that has built a portfolio emphasizing investments in startups in the ecosystem that supports the creative class, is bringing on two more partners, Julien Codorniou and Susan Lin, as it continues to expand into a wider range of categories. Codorniou had been a longtime executive at Meta (formerly Facebook),…
A virtual bank is soon coming to Indonesia. WeLab, a Hong Kong-based fintech unicorn, announced Tuesday its acquisition of Bank Jasa Jakarta (BJJ), an Indonesian commercial bank. With the deal, WeLab is planning to launch a digital bank to capture the country’s enormous unbanked population in the second half of next year. A consortium led…
Microsoft has seized control of a number of websites that were being used by a Chinese-government backed hacking group to target organizations in 29 countries, including the U.S. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCI) said on Monday that a federal court in Virginia had granted an order allowing the company to take control of the websites…
Berlin-based smartphone-as-a-service provider, Everphone, has topped up with $65 million in a Series C equity raise in addition to taking $135M in debt financing — for a total raise of $200M. The latest tranche of funding is led by German private equity investor, Cadence Growth Capital (CGC), which is now Everphone’s biggest shareholder. Deutsche Telekom,…
