Sources: TikTok pauses plans to launch its e-commerce business in major European markets to focus on growth in the US where it's fighting a divest-or-ban law — - ByteDance halts plan to roll out shopping from Spain to Italy — Company aims to entrench itself in its most lucrative market
Sony says PS5 generated $106B in revenue in less than four years vs. PS4's $107B over seven years, PS5 in-game purchases spending up 176% over PS4, and more — Sony has published its annual business briefing. Here are the key takeaways about the performance of the PlayStation business and updates to the company's gaming strategy.
After a Cruise car hit and dragged a pedestrian, executives say they're in no rush to get back on the road, as Cruise slows its breakneck development to a crawl — An incident that seriously injured a pedestrian in San Francisco led Cruise to take all of its cars off the road.
Romanian startup FintechOS, a low-code platform to help banks and insurance companies compete with neobanks, raised a $60M Series B+, after raising $60M in 2021 — Over the years, fintech startups, particularly neobanks, have thrown a cat among the pigeons in banking and finance by building whole new banking software stacks.
Didi reports Q1 revenue up 15% YoY to ~$6.8B and a ~$190M net loss, in part due to higher sales and marketing costs, as well as higher driver fees — - Sales at Chinese ride-hailing firm jumped 15% on demand surge — Didi seeks to rebuild operations prior to next IPO push
EU Agency for Cybersecurity head Juhan Lepassaar says disruptive digital attacks, many tied to Russia-backed groups, have doubled in the EU in recent months — Disruptive digital attacks, many of which have been traced to Russia-backed groups, have doubled in the European Union in recent months …
Chinese government data: foreign-branded smartphone shipments, most of which are iPhones, rose 52% YoY to ~3.5M in April, after stabilizing in March 2024 — - Official data for April showed Chinese mobile demand returning — The iPhone's bad start to the year prompted retail price cuts
OpenAI begins training its new flagship AI model, a process that could take nine months or more, and creates a Safety and Security Committee to explore risks — The advanced A.I. system would succeed GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT. The company has also created a new safety committee to address A.I.'s risks.
How pro-Russian groups exploit Telegram, which has 41M MAUs in the EU, below the DSA's 45M threshold, to spread disinformation on Ukraine, immigration, and more — Pro-Russian disinformation groups are exploiting the “very, very lax” rules on Telegram and there's little EU authorities can do about it.
Defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, which collapsed in 2014, moves 140K bitcoin, worth ~$9B, to an unknown address, likely part of a plan to repay creditors — Nearly 107,000 bitcoin have been moved since early Asian hours on Tuesday, with bitcoin shedding 1.2% on expectations of selling pressure.
A look at the growing importance of ads for video streaming services, as Antenna says that 56% of new subscribers chose the cheaper ad-supported tier in Q1 2024 — Ads are here, there — almost everywhere — on streaming services now. — Not long ago, streaming TV came with a promise …
Dating apps are trying to woo Gen Z women by boosting moderation tools and more; Tinder has consistently lost MAUs since 2021 and paid subs fell under 10M in Q1 — Gen Z is a priority for Tinder and Bumble but threats and unsolicited material from potential suitors often turn users off
Elon Musk says all of the $6B in xAI's Series B is new money rather than shares “given” to investors in Musk's takeover of Twitter — - That said, there's plenty of overlap in the investor list, and it's unclear if the original Twitter/X backers also received additional equity in xAI …
Data.ai: of the top 20 education apps in the US App Store, five are AI agents that help with school assignments, the two most popular of which are Chinese-owned — Evan, a high school sophomore from Houston, was stuck on a calculus problem. He pulled up Answer AI on his iPhone …
A look at the UK's $5.5B gaming industry, as PE firm EQT makes a ~$2.8B purchase offer for Keyword Studios, and other developers shore up their balance sheets — Developers shore up their balance sheets after a difficult few years — Pass the controller.
Bloomberg : Sources: amid the Iran war, Asian bankers say rising power prices and energy security are becoming a bigger consideration in ...
