Newsroom
Bluesky Sees Surge In New Users
Bluesky, Brazilian-based social media company reported that millions of new users recently signed up on its platform. The rapid surge in users comes shortly after a Brazilian court banned X (twitter) in Brazil. Following the ban, Bluesky reported a 50% growth in new signups within a week. It now ran...
Salesforce Acquires Own For $1.9 Billion
Salesforce announced it has acquired Own, a data management company for $1.9 billion, all cash. Own provides data protection and loss prevention services and products. Salesforce believes the purchase will complement its vast user base and provide a comprehensive solution to the massive user data it...
Car Rental Company, Avis, Suffers Massive Data Breach
Avis, the car rental giant reported it was the victim of a cyberattack, affecting hundreds of thousands of its users. The company recently told its customers that unauthorized intruders had penetrated parts of its business, and sensitive customer data such as names, date of birth, mailing addresses,...
Magic, An AI Coding Startup Raises $320 Million
San Francisco-based startup, Magic, recently reported it has raised $320 million in new funding. Investors in the round included CapitalG (from Alphabet), Jane Street, Sequoia capital, Atlassian, and ex-Google CEO, Eric Schmidt amongst others. The company was initially looking to raise $200 million....
Apple Lays Off Again
Apple is reportedly cutting 100 jobs in many of its divisions, primarily, in its Books, News, and other services departments. Apple Books’ performance hasn’t been quite as expected, and the company is reassessing its investments in the business unit, amongst others.
Apple Books was i...
Uber Plans Further Expansion In South Korea
Ride-share giant, Uber, is reportedly planning to further expand in the South Korean market after a recent growth in performance and consumer demand in the country. At present, South Korea’s leader in ride-sharing is Kakao Mobility, with almost 98% market share. Kakao Mobility has almost 23 mi...
OpenAI Seeks $100B Valuation
OpenAI is reportedly in talks with investors to raise new funding, at a new valuation of around $100 Billion. New investors in the round include Nvidia and Apple. Microsoft, which is already an investor and a 49% owner in the company may be investing further, it is reported. OpenAI seeks to expand i...
Autry Stephens, Richest Man In Oil & Gas, Dies
Autry Stephens, the richest man in the petroleum industry and founder of Endeavor Energy Resources has died. He was 86 years old. He died from cancer. He recently (February of this year) agreed to sell his company to Diamondback Energy for $26 billion after becoming aware of his cancer diagnosis.
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Halliburton Hit By Cyber Attack
Oilfield services giant, Halliburton, reported in an 8-K public filing that it was recently affected by a cyber attack which allowed the public to gain access to its internal systems. Upon becoming aware of the attack, the company took steps to shut down other internal systems, apparently to prevent...
Andrew Ng, Former Coursera Founder Starts New Fund
The former cofounder of edtech platform, Coursera, is reportedly launching a new $120 million AI fund. Most recently, Mr. Andrew Ng was the CEO of Landing AI, the data-labelling and computer vision company he started in 2017. He will now become the executive chairman of Landing AI while current COO,...
X, (Formerly Twitter) Exits Brazil
Social media company, X, (formerly called Twitter) said it is ending its operations in the country of Brazil effective immediately. This is due to a legal dispute the company has with Brazil’s supreme court justice, Alexandre de Moraes. Alexandre wants X to block the accounts of certain indivi...
Jumia, African E-commerce Company Raises Almost $100 Million
In a recent secondary share sale, Africa based Jumia has raised $99.6 million. The company had intended to sell 20 million shares at $5.70 a piece. However, the shares were finally sold at $4.92 each, raising a total of $99.6 million. In a written statement, the company’s CEO, Francis Dufay sa...
Chevron Agrees To Pay $550 Million Settlement
Chevron has agreed to pay a $550 million settlement to the Richmond City Council in California. The settlement is as a result of a tax that the Council was planning to pass over Chevron’s Richmond refinery. The refinery processes approximately 250,000 barrels of oil per day and has been in Ric...
MIT Researchers Develop Tiny, Hair-Size Batteries
How do you power very tiny robots that can be used in critical and sensitive applications such as in drug delivery in humans or perhaps in monitoring pipeline integrity? These are some of the problems researchers in MIT were working on and have recently found a solution.
A team of MIT researcher...
New Drilling Technology To Unlock Almost 5 Billion Barrels of Oil
A new High-Pressure High-Temperature (HPHT) technology now makes it possible for operators to access reservoirs with bottom hole pressures of 20,000 psi (pounds per square inch). Previously, operators could only drill to reservoirs with bottom hole pressures of about 15,000 psi. This new technology ...