Techmeme: Versatile Natures, which uses AI to improve construction processes, raises $5.5M in seed funding, led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)

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August 26, 2019, 7:30 AM

Top News

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:

Megvii, a China-based facial recognition focused startup, files for a Hong Kong IPO; Megvii has raised $750M, reportedly at a $4B valuation, earlier this year — KEY POINTS — An attendee uses his smartphone to record a facial-recognition demonstration on himself at the Beijing Megvii Co. booth …

More: TechCrunch, Reuters, Nikkei Asian Review, China Money Network, Bloomberg, Financial Times, and Bloomberg

Tweets: @tculpan, @luluyilun, @tculpan, and @tculpan

Matt Burgess / WIRED UK:

FireEye: China-linked hacking groups are increasingly targeting healthcare systems to obtain medical research data and intellectual property for medical devices — New research shows cyber espionage groups linked to China are targetting medical research data and the intellectual property for medical devices

More: ZDNet, Firstpost Tech, SiliconANGLE, FireEye, Tribuneindia News Service, and Nikkei Asian Review

Yun Li / CNBC:

J.P. Morgan Chase says it will shut down its digital wallet app, Chase Pay, in early 2020, but will continue pushing the Chase Pay button in apps and on the web — KEY POINTS — The bank plans to add more retailers that accept Chase Pay through merchant apps including food ordering company Grubhub.

Jeff Vogel / The Bottom Feeder:

Founder of Spiderweb, which has been making indie games for 25+ years, explains the business and design reasons for still making games with a retro, quirky look — We spent years working on this game. We're betting our family's future on it. So. Why does it look so bad?

Tweets: @carnage4life, @dgbaumgart, and @moomanibe

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:

Interview with Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify, as its market cap has surpassed eBay, and it sets its sights on Amazon, building out its own fulfillment network — Tobi Lütke, the Shopify chief executive, prefers his employees to refrain from checking the ecommerce company's share price too often.

Tweets: @hkanji and @hashim_warren

Marlize van Romburgh / Silicon Valley Business Journal:

Trump's tweets “ordering” US companies to look for alternatives to China rattled tech stocks on Friday, with Apple closing down 4.6%, Amazon 3.1%, and AMD 7.4% — Shares of Apple and Silicon Valley's semiconductor companies were pummeled on Friday as President Trump responded …

More: Telegraph, Bloomberg, Nikkei Asian Review, Blockonomi, Softpedia News, iDownloadBlog.com, CNBC, CCN Markets, Pocketnow, MacDailyNews, 9to5Mac, Associated Press, Politico, and BuzzFeed News

Facebook: Donald J Trump. Tweets: @realdonaldtrump, @realdonaldtrump, @realdonaldtrump, @realdonaldtrump, @maggienyt, @scaramucci, @briankarem, @billkristol, @philiprucker, and @adamschiff

Andrew Sheivachman / Skift:

Groups360, a booking engine for meeting spaces founded in 2014, raises $50M from Marriott International, IHG, Accor, and Hilton, bringing total raised to ~$55M — The hotel industry has had a tough time improving the painful process of selling event space and room blocks to meeting planners.

Tweets: @globalbta

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:

Versatile Natures, which uses AI to improve construction processes, raises $5.5M in seed funding, led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital — Versatile Natures, a startup using machine learning and AI to improve construction processes, has raised $5.5 million in seed funding.

Chua Kong Ho / South China Morning Post:

Interview with CEO of Razer, a gaming PC maker with 70M registered user accounts, which has steadily increased its share of revenue from software and services — Gaming company Razer reported a narrower loss in the first six months CEO Min-Liang Tan says Razer is a gateway …

Tweets: @chuakongho

Mary Loritz / EU-Startups:

Lunar Way, a Denmark-based banking app that raised €13M and expanded to Norway in February, raises €26M, says it has obtained a European banking license — Copenhagen-based banking app Lunar Way has raised a €26 million round led by SEED Capital, while obtaining …

More: Tech.eu

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Pew study: smartphone users in emerging markets have more diverse social networks than those without smartphones — The latest study from Pew Research Center takes a look at the impact mobile technology, including the use of smartphones and social media, is having on the diversity of people's social network in emerging markets.

Freedom to Tinker:

Chrome team's idea for a new, but still cookie-based, anti-tracking standard is technically disingenuous and aimed at protecting Google's business interests — By Jonathan Mayer and Arvind Narayanan. — Blocking cookies is bad for privacy. That's the new disingenuous argument from Google …

Tweets: @random_walker, @benadida, @random_walker, @marypcbuk, @carnage4life, @random_walker, @blakereid, @evanselinger, @martinsfp, @random_walker, @reneritchie, @abebab, @jason_kint, @firefox, @1br0wn, @dannolan, and @ashk4n

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From Mediagazer

BBC:

Three Bulgarians were found guilty of spying for Russia; they targeted journalists Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov, who have worked with Bellingcat

Anupreeta Das / New York Times:

A look at India's book festival boom, driven by young people who are increasingly reading literature in their native languages alongside books in English

Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter:

After Disney, WBD, Apple, Amazon and others resumed ads on X, five US senators have asked the DOJ to probe whether Musk is pressuring businesses to return to X

More News

Colin Harper / Bitcoin Magazine:

Inside PlusToken, a Ponzi scheme that collected ~$3B worth of cryptocurrencies from investors in China and SE Asia this year, and the efforts to trace the funds

More: FXStreet, Ethereum World News, CoinTrust, CryptoSlate, Cointelegraph, and The Block

Liam Tung / ZDNet:

Tech Nation report: investments in UK tech startups hit a record $6.7B in the seven months of 2019, exceeding the total amount of investment in all of 2018

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Capacity, formerly Jane.ai, raises $13.2M Series B for its AI tech that can help companies maintain a searchable index by consolidating info from various apps

More: FinSMEs, TechCrunch, HR Technologist, HCM Technology Report, VatorNews, DomainInvesting.com, Business Insider, SiliconANGLE, and Pulse 2.0

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:

Ally, which makes goal-planning and execution management software for enterprises, raises $8M Series A led by Accel, bringing total raised to $11M

More: Livemint, Business Wire, Inc42 Media, The Economic Times, and Pulse 2.0

Brian Bergstein / MIT Technology Review:

Profile of Rodney Brooks, the Australian roboticist who in 1990 co-founded iRobot, which used to make robots for US army and is now popular for Roomba vacuums

Tweets: @srikosuri

Antonia Hitchens / Wired:

Profile of Carla Engelbrecht, the director of product innovation at Netflix, whose experiments with interactive kids programs were a precursor to Bandersnatch

Earlier Picks

Nivedita Balu / Reuters:

Court filing: AT&T and FTC reached a settlement agreement in a 2014 mobile data throttling lawsuit, which still needs to be reviewed and voted on by FTC

More: CNET, 9to5Mac, Engadget, and AppleInsider

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

A graphic look at a columnist's web activity during a typical workday shows how websites and tech firms track users via tracking scripts, unique IDs, and more

Tweets: @jyasskin, @carlotorniai, @privacyproject, @peteskomoroch, @nadiehbremer, and @fmanjoo