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Benjamin Powers / CoinDesk:
How US FinCEN became a honeypot for sensitive personal data, a situation made worse by the banking industry's defensive filing of suspicious activity reports — If a despotic government's bank transactions can be leaked, so can yours. — That's perhaps the most overlooked yet unsettling implication …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Arthur.ai, which develops a monitoring tool to ensure the accuracy of machine learning models doesn't slip over time, raises $15M Series A led by Index Ventures — At a time when more companies are building machine learning models, Arthur.ai wants to help by ensuring the model accuracy …
Seeking Alpha:
Pico, a provider of tech services from infrastructure to analytics for global financial markets, closes $135M Series C from investors including Intel Capital — Includes: BDNCE, INTC, NVS, PYPL, SFTBF, SFTBY … Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) Capital became a strategic investor in Pico …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Cisco is acquiring Slovakia-based Slido, which lets people moderate Q&A sessions and set up polls in virtual conferences and live events; Slido has 7M users — While Zoom continues to hold a lot of mindshare (and market share) in the world of videoconferencing, Cisco's WebEx division today announced …
Stephen Babcock / Technical.ly Baltimore:
Baltimore-based digital lending software company eOriginal to be acquired by Dutch information services company Wolters Kluwer for $280M in cash — eOriginal agreed to be acquired by a division of Dutch information services company Wolters Kluwer. The 24-year-old company's employees and local presence are staying in place.
Steven Burke / CRN:
Thoma Bravo says it is acquiring a majority stake in Venafi, a provider of machine identity management software, at a $1.15B valuation — “Thoma Bravo invests in category creators and leaders,” said Venafi CEO Jeff Hudson. “That ($1.15 billion) valuation is a good valuation.
Matthew Gault / VICE:
Indie game developers say Twitch's light touch with nudity in big games like Cyberpunk 2077, despite Twitch's rules against explicit content, is hypocritical — You can't show dicks or nipples on Twitch unless you're playing ‘Cyberpunk 2077.’ — Cyberpunk 2077 is full of dicks.
Liz O'Sullivan / Fast Company:
Salesforce's acquisition of Slack is emblematic of a long-standing trend of defensive acquisitions by Big Tech and speaks to the impact of weak antitrust laws — Slack wanted to stay independent. But in a landscape dominated by tech giants, that proved impossible.
James R. Hagerty / Wall Street Journal:
Eric Engstrom, one of the pioneers behind DirectX which helped make Windows a dominant gaming platform and paved the way for Xbox, died at 55 on December 1 — Eric Engstrom was part of rebellious team behind technology that paved way for Xbox — In the early 1990s, Microsoft Corp.'s …
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Sweden-based MTG acquires Hutch Games, a London-based game studio behind popular mobile racing games such as Rebel Racing and F1 Manager, for up to $375M — Sweden's MTG is making a significant acquisition in the mobile gaming industry. The company is acquiring Hutch Games …
Nickie Louise / Tech Startups:
Wisconsin-based Fetch Rewards raises $80M Series C led by ICONIQ Growth for its consumer loyalty and retail rewards app, bringing its total raised to $118M — Late last month, we wrote about the 50 most funded tech startups in the United States in 2020. Little did we know that Fetch Rewards …
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
Disney's stream of Disney+ announcements on Thursday finally delivered on ~$100B worth of acquisitions over 15 years of widely adored billion dollar franchises — Disney's big streaming event showed what Disney Plus will be — By the end of Disney's four-hour event …
Maureen Farrell / Wall Street Journal:
Internal memo: Roblox, citing soaring market debuts of Airbnb and DoorDash, says it is too difficult to price its shares and will delay its IPO until next year — Videogame company, citing Airbnb and DoorDash market debuts, says it is too difficult to price its shares
Sarah Harford / Silicon Republic:
Ireland-based Immedis, whose software is used to process payroll in 150+ countries, raises $50M from Lead Edge Capital and is now valued at more than $575M — Irish tech company Immedis has secured $50m in investment from Lead Edge Capital, a growth-stage investment fund based in New York and California.
Kaye Wiggins / Financial Times:
Amsterdam-based Catawiki, an online auction site that specializes in selling high-value collectors' items like classic cars, raises €150M from PE firm Permira — Private equity firm invests €150m in online marketplace for classic cars and artworks
Bloomberg:
Innoviz, a lidar company backed by auto suppliers Magna and Aptiv, is going public via a SPAC merger expected to close in Q1 2021 at a valuation of $1.4B — - Startup supplies laser sensors for BMW's iX model due in 2021 — Innoviz is fourth lidar company in 2020 to go public via SPAC
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Bionic, which helps businesses manage applications via automated app analytics, has come out of stealth with $17M in Series A and seed funding — App analytics startup Bionic today emerged from stealth with $17 million, a combination of series A and seed funding.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, the New York Times first reported on Friday night, and later supported by The Wall Street Journal. This EUA follows a recommendation by an independent panel of experts commissioned by the FDA to review Pfizer’s application and provide a recommendation, which the panel unanimously supported earlier this week.
Following this authorization, shipment of the vaccine are expected to begin immediately, with 2.9 million doses in the initial shipment order. Patients in the category of highly vulnerable individuals, which include healthcare workers and senior citizens in long-term care facilities, are expected to begin receiving doses within just a few days not was the EUA is granted.
This approval isn’t a full certification by the U.S. therapeutics regulator, but it is an emergency measure that still requires a comprehensive review of the available information supplied by Pfizer based on its Phase 3 clinical trial, which covered a group of 44,000 volunteer participants. Pfizer found that its vaccine, which is an mRNA-based treatment, was 95% effective in its final analysis of the data resulting form the trial to date – and also found that safety data indicated no significant safety issues in patients who received the vaccine.
On top of the initial 2.9 million dose order, the U.S. intends to distribute around 25 million doses by the end of 2020, which could result in far fewer people actually vaccinated since the Pfizer course requires two innoculations for maximum efficacy. Most American shouldn’t expect the vaccine to be available until at least late Q1 or Q2 2021, given the pace of Pfizer’s production and the U.S. order volume.
Still, this is a promising first step, and a monumental achievement in terms of vaccine development turnaround time, since it’s been roughly eight months since work began on the Pfizer vaccine candidate. Moderna has also submitted an EUA for its vaccine candidate, which is also an mRNA treatment (which provides instructions to a person’s cells to produce effective countermeasures to the virus). That could follow shortly, meaning two vaccines might be available under EUA within the U.S. before the end of the year.
FinSMEs:
Graphiant, a stealth startup working on next generation computer networking tech, raises $33.5M Series A co-led by Sequoia Capital and Two Bear Capital — Graphiant Inc., a Palo Alto, CA-based computer networking company, raised $33.5m in Series A funding.
