Posts

ByteDance announces that its CFO Shouzi Chew will now also become the CEO of TikTok; TikTok's interim head Vanessa Pappas will be TikTok's COO (David Pierce/Protocol)

Image
David Pierce / Protocol : ByteDance announces that its CFO Shouzi Chew will now also become the CEO of TikTok; TikTok's interim head Vanessa Pappas will be TikTok's COO   —  Shouzi Chew, the CFO of ByteDance, got a new job title on Friday: CEO of TikTok.  Vanessa Pappas, who's been running the company … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3vxuk8l

TikTok Names CEO and COO (TikTok)

Image
TikTok : TikTok Names CEO and COO   —  ByteDance CFO Shouzi Chew named TikTok CEO in dual role  —  Singapore and Los Angeles - TikTok today named a new CEO and COO, in a strategic reorganization to optimize TikTok's global teams and support the company's unprecedented growth. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3eIbtke

Geothermal technology has enormous potential to power the planet and Fervo wants to tap it

Image
Tapping the geothermal energy stored beneath the Earth’s surface as a way to generate renewable power is one of the new visions for the future that’s captured the attention of environmentalists and oil and gas engineers alike. That’s because it’s not only a way to generate power that doesn’t rely on greenhouse gas emitting hydrocarbons, but because it uses the same skillsets and expertise that the oil and gas industry has been honing and refining for years. At least that’s what drew former the former completion engineer (it’s not what it sounds like) Tim Latimer to the industry and to launch Fervo Energy , the Houston-based geothermal tech developer that’s picked up funding from none other than Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures (that fund… is so busy) and former eBay executive, Jeff Skoll’s Capricorn Investment Group . With the new $28 million cash in hand Fervo’s planning on ramping up its projects which Latimer said would “bring on hundreds of megawatts of power in the nex...

Rapchat tunes into $2.3M as its music-making app hits 7M users

Image
YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook’s Instagram have upended the film and TV industries, with a new wave of cinematographers, directors and actors leveraging innovations in technology to create new work and connect directly with billions of consumers to see it. Today, a startup is announcing some funding as it looks to make a similar impact in the world of music. Rapchat , an app that lets people create music tracks — raps, as its names suggest, or something else — using a platform that crowdsources beats and lets people put vocals on top of them, has raised $2.3 million. Co-led by Sony Music Entertainment and NYC VC firm Adjacent, this is an extension to Rapchat’s seed round of $1.7 million back in 2018 , and CEO and co-founder Seth Miller tells me it’s coming as the startup is getting ready for a bigger Series A. With no connection to Snapchat — not now at least, except that founders Seth Miller and Pat Gibson did think it was a funny pun at the time that they were fi...

The health data transparency movement is birthing a new generation of startups

Image
Ariel Katz Contributor Share on Twitter Ariel Katz is the founder and CEO of H1 , a global healthcare platform that helps life sciences companies, hospitals, academic medical centers and health systems connect with providers, find clinical research, locate industry experts and benchmark their organization. In the early 2000s, Jeff Bezos gave a seminal TED Talk titled “ The Electricity Metaphor for the Web’s Future .” In it, he argued that the internet will enable innovation on the same scale that electricity did. We are at a similar inflection point in healthcare, with the recent movement toward data transparency birthing a new generation of innovation and startups. Those who follow the space closely may have noticed that there are twin struggles taking place: a push for more transparency on provider and payer data, including anonymous patient data, and another for strict privacy protection for personal patient data. What’s the main difference? This sector is still som...

DOJ says SAP voluntarily admitted to violating Iran sanctions and exporting software to users in the country 20K+ times between 2010 and 2017, and will pay $8M+ (Charlie Osborne/ZDNet)

Image
Charlie Osborne / ZDNet : DOJ says SAP voluntarily admitted to violating Iran sanctions and exporting software to users in the country 20K+ times between 2010 and 2017, and will pay $8M+   —  SAP says it accepts “full responsibility for past conduct.”  —  SAP has reached a settlement with US investigators to close … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3u8SUvU

Roku removes YouTube TV from its channel store following failed negotiations

Image
Earlier this week, Roku warned customers that the YouTube TV app may be removed from its streaming media players and TVs, and alleged that Google was leveraging its monopoly power during contract negotiations to ask for unfair terms. Today, Roku is announcing the deal has fallen through — meaning YouTube TV will no longer be available to new Roku subscribers. However, the company says it has taken steps to ensure existing subscribers can continue to use the YouTube TV app. Roku had argued that as a part of its attempts to renew the carriage agreement for YouTube TV, Google was asking for special treatment, including a preferential ranking of YouTube content in search results, and even the permission to override Roku customer’s default settings when the YouTube app was open. That is, if a customer used the voice search button to ask for music, Google wanted YouTube Music to play the request — even if the customer had set another app, like Pandora, as their default. The company also a...

Developer-focused video platform Mux achieves unicorn status with $105M funding

Image
Barely more than eight months after announcing a $37 million funding round , Mux has another $105 million. The Series D was led by Coatue and values the company at more than $1 billion (Mux isn’t disclosing the specific valuation). Existing investors Accel, Andreessen Horowitz and Cobalt also participated, as did new investor Dragoneer. Co-founder and CEO Jon Dahl told me that Mux didn’t need to raise more funding. But after last year’s Series C, the company’s leadership kept in touch with Coatue and other investors who’d expressed interest, and they ultimately decided that more money could help fuel faster growth during “this inflection moment in video.” Building on the thesis popularized by A16Z co-founder Marc Andreessen, Dahl said, “I think video’s eating software, the same way software was eating the world 10 years ago.” In other words, where video was once something we watched at our desks and on our sofas, it’s now everywhere, whether we’re scrolling through our social medi...

As concerns rise over forest carbon offsets, Pachama’s verified offset marketplace gets $15 million

Image
Restoring and preserving the world’s forests has long been considered one of the easiest, lowest cost, and simplest ways to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It’s by far the most popular method for corporations looking to take an easy first step on the long road to decarbonizing or offsetting their industrial operations. But in recent months the efficacy, validity, and reliability of a number of forest offsets have been called into question thanks to some blockbuster reporting from Bloomberg. It’s against this uncertain backdrop that investors are coming in to shore up financing for Pachama , a company building a marketplace for forest carbon credits that it says is more transparent and verifiable thanks to its use of satellite imagery and machine learning technologies. That pitch has brought in $15 million in new financing for the company, which co-founder and chief executive Diego Saez Gil said would be used for product development and the continued expansi...