Alibaba has jumped into the news business after the Chinese company confirmed on Friday that it has agreed to acquire the South China Morning Post (SCMP). The Hong Kong-based newspaper and SCMP Group’s other assets, which includes local editions of Esquire and Elle, will cost Alibaba a little over HK$2 billion — around US$262 million — according to a regulatory filing. Read More
from TechCrunch
With just 28 technology companies entering the U.S. public markets, 2015 was the worst year for IPOs since 2009, according to Dealogic. This compares to 62 last year and 48 the year before, with 131 “unicorns” opting to remain private longer. “We haven’t seen so few tech IPOs since the 2008-09 U.S. financial crisis,” notes Kathleen Smith, principal at IPO ETF… Read More
from TechCrunch
Today, OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company was announced to the world. Its director is a research scientist at Google, Ilya Sutskever. This comes a day after Facebook open-sourced its AI hardware.
Its reason for existing was explained in an introductory post:
Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole… Read More
from TechCrunch
“They’re going to be very embracing of risk and trying out new things and seeing what works,” says Caitlyn Fox, chief of staff of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. After weeks of critics jumping to conclusions before seeing details or results, Fox spoke with me for nearly an hour about the strategy for Priscilla and Mark’s philanthropic foundation. Read More
from TechCrunch
There is an increasingly large roster of personal assistant apps that use artificial intelligence in an attempt to make users’ lives easier. Mezi is the newest contender and while it has plenty of competition, the service wants to set itself apart with what its founders call a “maniacal” focus on e-commerce, helping users with the most time-consuming shopping errands. Read More
from TechCrunch
Seerene, an analytics platform that helps companies see how their other software is performing, has raised $5 million in seed funding and opened an office in Hong Kong, its first in Asia. The round was led by Earlybird Venture Capital and will support Seerene’s international growth. Read More
from TechCrunch
It’s the last big tech IPO of the year. Atlassian has just priced at $21 per share, above the expected range of $19 to $20. Releasing 22 million shares, the company is raising $462 million.
The Australian-based software company has a suite of enterprise products including Slack competitor HipChat, JIRA and Confluence. Read More
from TechCrunch
TRData, a London-headquartered startup with a development team based in Ukraine and the majority of customers in Russia, makes for an interesting European tech story. Read More
from TechCrunch
It’s been a while since we heard from Server Density, the UK.-based SaaS server monitoring startup, but sometimes that’s the nature of quietly going about building a business. Today, however, the largely bootstrapped company is disclosing that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by SP Ventures. Read More
from TechCrunch
Stealthy London-based fintech startup Curve has closed a $2 million seed round from a rather notable list of early backers. Read More
from TechCrunch