Sarah Wynn / The Block:
A US judge sentences FTX co-founder Gary Wang to “time served”, meaning no jail time; Wang pleaded guilty in December 2022 to fraud charges after FTX collapsed — – Gary Wang pleaded guilty in December 2022 to fraud-related charges following the collapse of FTX a month earlier.
GSMA: 4.6B people are now connected to mobile internet, or 57% of the world; mobile subscriber growth fell to 160M in 2023, from 200M per year from 2015 to 2021 (Rest of World)
Rest of World:
GSMA: 4.6B people are now connected to mobile internet, or 57% of the world; mobile subscriber growth fell to 160M in 2023, from 200M per year from 2015 to 2021 — What happened to the “next billion” internet users? They’re already online. — 57% of the population is already connected to mobile internet.
Amazon unveils the $400 Echo Show 21, an upgrade to the Echo Show 15 from 2022, with a 21″ 1080p display and auto-framing camera, and updates the Echo Show 15 (Jennifer Pattison Tuohy/The Verge)
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Amazon unveils the $400 Echo Show 21, an upgrade to the Echo Show 15 from 2022, with a 21″ 1080p display and auto-framing camera, and updates the Echo Show 15 — Amazon’s first wall-mounted smart display just got a big upgrade. Today, the company announced the launch of the Echo Show 21 …
Vista sells a minority stake in IT infrastructure monitoring company LogicMonitor to investors in a deal valuing it at ~$2.4B; LogicMonitor also raised $800M (Ryan Gould/Bloomberg)
Ryan Gould / Bloomberg:
Vista sells a minority stake in IT infrastructure monitoring company LogicMonitor to investors in a deal valuing it at ~$2.4B; LogicMonitor also raised $800M — – PSG Equity, Golub, others inject $800 million in equity, debt — Vista acquired LogicMonitor for $415 million in mid-2018
Belgium-based Odoo, which develops open-source enterprise resource planning software, hit a €5B valuation in a secondary share round led by CapitalG and Sequoia (Ryan Browne/CNBC)
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Belgium-based Odoo, which develops open-source enterprise resource planning software, hit a €5B valuation in a secondary share round led by CapitalG and Sequoia — Odoo, a startup taking on SAP in the realm of enterprise software, boosted its valuation to 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) …
Samsung Galaxy Watch FE review: identical to the Watch 7 with similar health features, but has the guts of a three-year-old Watch 4, poor battery, and one size (Victoria Song/The Verge)
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Samsung Galaxy Watch FE review: identical to the Watch 7 with similar health features, but has the guts of a three-year-old Watch 4, poor battery, and one size — As an entry-level device, the FE doesn’t quite nail the right mix of price, features, and hardware. … Everybody loves a deal.
Israeli enterprise data security startup Cyera raised a $300M Series D led by Accel and Sapphire Ventures at a $3B+ valuation, up from $1.4B in April 2024 (Meytal Vaizberg/Globes Online)
Meytal Vaizberg / Globes Online:
Israeli enterprise data security startup Cyera raised a $300M Series D led by Accel and Sapphire Ventures at a $3B+ valuation, up from $1.4B in April 2024 — Cyera has more than doubled its valuation since its most recent financing round in April 2024, when it also raised $300 million.
As OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google reportedly see diminishing AI training returns, a break from the market hype could be useful, just as with previous innovations (Parmy Olson/Bloomberg)
Parmy Olson / Bloomberg:
As OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google reportedly see diminishing AI training returns, a break from the market hype could be useful, just as with previous innovations — Businesses will benefit from some much-needed breathing space to figure out how to deliver that all-important return on investment.
How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment, telling staff to destroy messages, avoid some words, and copy in lawyers, as it faces US lawsuits (David Streitfeld/New York Times)
David Streitfeld / New York Times:
How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment, telling staff to destroy messages, avoid some words, and copy in lawyers, as it faces US lawsuits — Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google systematically told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy the lawyers as often as possible.
SMIC’s Shanghai-listed shares are up 120% from a September 2024 low, outperforming Nvidia and TSMC, on an expected boost from China’s chip self-reliance push (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg:
SMIC’s Shanghai-listed shares are up 120% from a September 2024 low, outperforming Nvidia and TSMC, on an expected boost from China’s chip self-reliance push — – SMIC has more than doubled in two months as market eyes Trump — Competition looms and valuation not attractive: Morgan Stanley
