Sunday, July 12, 2020
OnePlus 8 5G phone with Snapdragon 865 to go on sale at 12pm today via Amazon
Govt may have to pay 'fair' sum for non-personal data from companies
WeWork’s chairman says it expects to have positive cash flow in 2021
After aggressive cost-cutting measures, including mass layoffs and selling several of its businesses, WeWork’s chairman expects the company to have positive cash flow in 2021. Marcelo Claure, who became WeWork’s chairman after co-founder Adam Neumann resigned as chief executive officer last fall, told the Financial Times that the co-working space startup is on target to meet its goal, set in February, of reaching operating profitability by the end of next year.
Claure is also chief operating officer of SoftBank Group, which invested $18.5 billion in the co-working space, according to leaked comments made by Claure during an October all-hands meeting.
SoftBank said in April that it would lose $24 billion on investments, with one of the main reasons being WeWork’s implosion last year. The company’s financial and management issues brought its valuation down from as much as $47 billion at the beginning of 2019 to $2.9 billion in March, according to a May report by CNBC.
In addition to the layoffs, WeWork sold off businesses including Flatiron School, Teem and its share of The Wing. Claure told the Financial times that WeWork also cut its workforce from a high of 14,000 last year to 5,600.
Neumann resigned as CEO in September, reportedly at the behest of SoftBank, over concerns about the company’s financial health and his behavior. Then the company postponed its IPO filing. The next month, SoftBank took ownership of WeWork as part of a financing package.
Claure is credited with orchestrating a turnaround at Sprint, cutting losses and increasing its stock price in 2015, three years after it was acquired by SoftBank. He has served as SoftBank Group’s COO since 2018.
Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many people to work from home, Claure said that companies have been leasing spaces from WeWork to serve as satellite offices close to where employees live. But he also said that revenues were flat during the second-quarter because many tenants terminated their leases or stopped paying rent.
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LA-based Kernel, which wants to offer a "Neuroscience as a Service" that can provide clients access to its brain imaging devices, raises $53M Series C (Darrell Etherington/TechCrunch)
LA-based Kernel, which wants to offer a “Neuroscience as a Service” that can provide clients access to its brain imaging devices, raises $53M Series C — LA-based bio science startup Kernel has raised $53 million from investors including General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures …
What will happen to the Hagia Sophia now that it’s a mosque again?
Enlarge (credit: Maksym Kozlenko / CC BY-SA (https://ift.tt/2E6q6du)
The 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey, will become an active mosque beginning on July 24, ending its 85-year run as a secular museum.
Byzantine Emperor Justinian I ordered the building's construction in 532 CE; for nearly 1,000 years, its 55.6 meter (180 ft) dome covered the largest indoor space in the world. Over a millennium and a half, the monumental structure has been an Eastern Orthodox cathedral, a Roman Catholic cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox cathedral again, and then a mosque.
Today, the Hagia Sophia is one of Turkey’s largest tourist attractions; an estimated 3.7 million people visited the site in 2019. It became a museum in 1934, under a decree from the Cabinet of Ministers under then-president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
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Profile of Ime Archibong, the Head of New Product Experimentation at Facebook and one of the most important voices in its efforts around diversity and equality (Salvador Rodriguez/CNBC)
Profile of Ime Archibong, the Head of New Product Experimentation at Facebook and one of the most important voices in its efforts around diversity and equality — - Ime Archibong became Facebook's head of new product experimentation a year ago, tasked with finding the company's next hit product.
Qualcomm Ventures says it will invest $97M in Reliance Jio Platforms to acquire a 0.15% equity stake (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
Qualcomm Ventures says it will invest $97M in Reliance Jio Platforms to acquire a 0.15% equity stake — Qualcomm has become the latest high-profile investor in four-year-old Reliance Jio Platforms, which has raised more than $15.7 billion in the past 12 weeks from as many investors.
Qualcomm Ventures to invest Rs 730 crore in Jio Platforms
National Board of Examinations Recruitment 2020 – Apply Online for 90 Sr Asst, Jr Asst & Other Posts
Qualcomm to invest $97 million in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms
Qualcomm has become the newest high-profile backer of four-year-old Reliance Jio Platforms, which has raised more than $15.7 billion in the past 12 weeks from as many investors.
On Sunday evening, Qualcomm Ventures said it will invest $97 million in Reliance Jio Platforms to acquire a 0.15% equity stake in the top Indian telecom operator.
Steve Mollenkopf, chief executive of Qualcomm, said the firm believes that Reliance Jio Platforms, which has disrupted the Indian telecommunications market by offering cut-rate voice and data plans, “will deliver a new set of services and experiences to Indian consumers” in the future.
Reliance Jio Platforms, which competes with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea in India, has amassed nearly 400 million subscribers and has become the top carrier in the world’s second largest internet market in less than four years of its existence.
Its dominance in the Indian telecom operator while maintaining an ARPU (average revenue per user) that match those of its rivals has made Reliance Jio Platforms — a subsidiary of India’s top firm Reliance Industries — an attractive firm for a roster of high-profile investors. Facebook, Silver Lake, General Atlantic, Intel are some of the firms that have backed Jio Platforms at the height of a global pandemic. Jio Platforms has sold 25.24% stake in the firm during the period.
“With unmatched speeds and emerging use cases, 5G is expected to transform every industry in the coming years. Jio Platforms has led the digital revolution in India through its extensive digital and technological capabilities. As an enabler and investor with a longstanding presence in India, we look forward to playing a role in Jio’s vision to further revolutionize India’s digital economy,” said Mollenkopf in a statement.
Some investors have told TechCrunch in recent months that Reliance Jio Platforms’ owner — India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani — and his closeness to the ruling political party in India are also crucial to why the digital unit of Reliance Industries is so attractive to many.
They believe that buying a stake in Jio Platforms would lower the regulatory burden they currently face in India. The investors requested anonymity as they did not wish to talk about the political tie ups publicly.
A person familiar with the matter at one of the 12 firms that has backed Reliance Jio Platforms said that the Indian firm is also enticing as globally companies are trying to cut down their reliance and exposure on China.
India, and the U.S., in recent months have taken actions to limit their reliance on Chinese firms. New Delhi last month banned 59 apps and services including TikTok that are developed by Chinese firms. Reliance Jio Platforms has interestingly yet to raise capital from any Chinese investor.
“Qualcomm has been a valued partner for several years and we have a shared vision of connecting everything by building a robust and secure wireless and digital network and extending the benefits of digital connectivity to everyone in India,” said Ambani in a statement Sunday.
Chris Larsen, a co-founder of Ripple, is paying for the installation of a private network of over 1,000 security cameras across San Francisco to fight crime (Nellie Bowles/New York Times)
Chris Larsen, a co-founder of Ripple, is paying for the installation of a private network of over 1,000 security cameras across San Francisco to fight crime — Chris Larsen knows that a crypto mogul spending his own money for a city's camera surveillance system might sound creepy.
Alibaba's DAMO Academy releases RynnBrain, an open-source foundation model to help robots perform real-world tasks like navigating rooms, trained on Qwen3-VL (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg : Alibaba's DAMO Academy releases RynnBrain, an open-source foundation model to help robots perform real-worl...
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Amrith Ramkumar / Wall Street Journal : An interview with White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios, a Peter Thiel protégé confirmed by ...
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