Techmeme: Study: the median valuation for SaaS companies raising their Series C rose by 40% to $210M this year, while their median revenue grew 20% (Miles Kruppa/Financial Times)

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December 27, 2020, 6:50 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:

China's central bank tells Ant it must overhaul its lending, insurance, and wealth management businesses and come up with a timetable as soon as possible — - Authorities require Ant to overhaul business, set up timetable — Ant was blasted over governance, disdain toward compliance

More: Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and New York Times

Tweets: @doubleeph, @giorgiomomurder, @skupor, @business, @seyitaylor, @ashishdave, @spirosmargaris, and @luluyilun

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:

Apple's system status webpage indicates that the company has resolved an outage affecting iCloud Account and Sign In services — Apple's system status webpage indicates that the company has resolved an outage affecting “iCloud Account and Sign In” services.

More: Engadget, MacRumors, AppleInsider, The Verge, Gizchina, Pocketnow, Gizmodo, PCMag, iMore, Redmond Pie, Fortune, BleepingComputer, and Forbes

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:

Kuo: Apple Car's unclear development schedule means it may launch in 2025-2027, while changes in EV/self-driving market may push the launch to 2028 — Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Apple is targeting 2024 for production of its long-rumored electric vehicle with “next level” …

More: 9to5Mac, phonearena.com, 500ish, appleosophy.com, AppleInsider, iPhone in Canada Blog, iPhone Hacks, iMore, and Patently Apple

Tweets: @asymco, @angellamuno, @rsgnl, @bluelantern92, and @leaksapplepro

Lee Brown / New York Post:

Nashville mayor says the Christmas day explosion in the city appears to have targeted an AT&T building, amid reports the suspect was paranoid about 5G — Nashville's mayor said Sunday that the city's Christmas blast appeared to be an “infrastructure attack” on the AT&T building there …

More: AT&T, WSMV-TV, The Guardian, phonearena.com, and UPI

Tweets: @rstephens, @josephmenn, @charlesarthur, @hannonizer, @kurtbardella, @justinhendrix, @rolandixor, and @nc5_akoehn

Greg Ip / Wall Street Journal:

Due to the pandemic, trends that normally may have taken years to unfold, like remote work or the shift from physical to virtual commerce, happened in months — Spurred by the pandemic, business changes that normally might have taken years unfolded in months.

Tweets: @csapkota, @jessefelder, @mileskimball, and @mileskimball

Michelle Gao / CNBC:

From working remotely to benefiting from the new normal, tech companies led the way in pandemic response, but fell behind in stopping COVID-19 misinformation

Tweets: @mims, @necn, @joehall, @justrichwebster, @ruthbenghiat, @natbullard, @greg_ip, @mileskimball, @karaswisher, @cardiffgarcia, @nbc10boston, @shawndubravac, @gregorymcneal, and @alecstapp

Andrew Davis / Bloomberg:

Report: Facebook closed Irish subsidiary and moved billions in profits back to US following IRS suit; Irish subsidiary paid $101M in tax on $15B profit in 2018 — Facebook Inc. has moved to wind down several Irish holding companies that had allowed it to shift billions of dollars in profit to the country …

Source: The Times. More: The Guardian and Engadget

Tweets: @reflectingman, @cnada, @revolution_irl, @business, @_jack_poulson, and @blmohr

Paresh Dave / Reuters:

Laptop and desktop manufacturers are still months away from fulfilling outstanding orders as sales see a renaissance; shortages won't ease until 2022 — OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) - The world stocked up on laptop and desktop computers in 2020 at a level not seen since the iPhone debuted in 2007 …

More: phonearena.com, MSPoweruser, and Thurrott

Tweets: @seamus, @glenngabe, @sub8u, @tomwarren, @gadgets360, and @gadgets360

Miles Kruppa / Financial Times:

Study: the median valuation for SaaS companies raising their Series C rose by 40% to $210M this year, while their median revenue grew 20% — Valuations soar in Silicon Valley with venture capitalists racing to find next big thing — The surging value of cloud software companies …

Tweets: @trengriffin, @outsidadgitator, @julianklymochko, and @caffeinatedinv1

Kim Lyons / The Verge:

Citing environmental concerns Xiaomi CEO says its flagship Mi 11 phone will not come with a charger in the box; Xiaomi mocked Apple earlier over the same issue — Xiaomi's CEO confirmed the decision on social media site Weibo — Lei Jun, the CEO of Chinese phone maker Xiaomi …

Lars Eidnes / ITNEXT:

Analysis of the top 1M pages on the web finds that HTTP/2 is now more common than HTTP/1.1; jQuery, Google Analytics were the top JavaScript libraries by usage — We rendered the top 1 million pages on the web, tracking every conceivable performance metric, logging every error, noting every requested URL.

More: The Startup

Reuters:

Mastercard SpendingPulse: US online holiday sales from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24 grew 49% YoY, for a 19.7% share of overall retail sales, up from about 13.4% in 2019 — (Reuters) -U.S. retail sales rose 3% during this year's expanded holiday shopping season from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24 …

Source: Business Wire. More: PYMNTS.com, Wall Street Journal, TheStreet, and Bloomberg

New York Times:

Beijing's frenzied drive to free itself from a reliance on imported chips could prove to be one of the enduring legacies of Trump's trade policies toward China — Beijing's drive to free itself from reliance on imported semiconductors has lifted start-ups and big firms alike. Some have flamed out.

Tweets: @nytimesbusiness, @orangeman1992, @jchengwsj, and @nytimestech

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From Mediagazer

Max Goldbart / Deadline:

The BBC says its content spend will fall by £150M to £2.5B in the next 12 months as it faces an “unprecedented content funding challenge”

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:

Reach CEO Jim Mullen steps down with immediate effect after six years, replaced by Chief Revenue Officer Piers North; Mullen will join a horse racing company

Mike Allen / Axios:

Source: the White House plans to impose its own seating chart for briefing room reporters, taking over a function long managed by the reporters through the WHCA

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More News

Kevin Randall / Wired:

With traffic to Chatroulette booming amid COVID, the team is testing AI tools to moderate content; it now offers a filtered channel designed to exclude nudity

Tweets: @sub8u, @taylorlorenz, and @evelyndouek

Steven Overly / Politico:

Facebook critics say a general animosity toward Facebook in Washington may push the Biden administration into taking more proactive measures against the company

More: Associated Press, Slashdot, New York Times, and Bloomberg

Tweets: @justinhendrix, @fboversight, @rededdy56, @bruno_j_navarro, @alfonslopeztena, and @jason_kint

Will Knight / Wired:

David Silver, a principal research scientist at DeepMind, on AlphaGo, AlphaZero, and MuZero, applying reinforcement learning to real world problems, and more

More: furidamu and Towards Data Science

Tweets: @nickwaye, @alan_couzens, and @louisgray

Sarah Fallon / Wired:

Profile of Ray Holt, who in the 1960s jointly developed the F-14 Tomcat's Central Air Data Computer, considered by some to be the first microprocessor

Tweets: @bcantrill, @pomeranian99, @wired, @dantley, and @crispinburke

Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer:

Microsoft's patch for a zero-day privilege escalation Windows bug in June did not fix the vulnerability, which could still be exploited with some adjustments

Source: Google Project Zero. More: The Hacker News, Threatpost, TechRadar, and HotHardware.com News

Tweets: @maddiestone and @thehackersnews

Earlier Picks

Jordan Novet / CNBC:

2020 political campaigns secured emails with physical security keys from a nonprofit working with Google and Microsoft; source says Biden's campaign used keys

Tweets: @codinghorror, @netik, and @eladgil

Julia Alexander / The Verge:

2020 has been the beginning of major streaming exclusivity plays, forcing users to pay for four or five services as big studios prioritize their own platforms

Tweets: @loudmouthjulia, @tonyromm, @kibblesmith, @freak_leader, @loudmouthjulia, @jaspar, @sachgau, @charlie_l_hall, @samitsarkar, @hshaban, @sachinrekhi, @trengriffin, @stevie_mat, @themeganpurdy, and @robabramowitz

Gene Park / Washington Post:

Interview with Microsoft's VP of gaming ecosystem Sarah Bond, a former T-Mobile executive, on lowering entry barriers by selling Xbox as a subscription

Tweets: @launcherwp, @genepark, @genepark, and @htsuka

Ankit Malhotra / Counterpoint Research:

With 31% market share, MediaTek becomes the biggest smartphone SoC vendor globally in Q3, surpassing Qualcomm, which remains the largest 5G chipset vendor

More: phonearena.com, TechSpot, Pocketnow, Engadget, 91mobiles.com, The Indian Express, NDTV Gadgets 360, and Slashdot. Tweets: @liliputingnews