Techmeme
February 8, 2021, 8:40 AM

Top News

Steve Kovach / CNBC:
Filing: Tesla has bought $1.5B worth of bitcoin and says it will start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products in the future  —  - Tesla announced in an SEC filing Monday that it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin.  — The company also said it would start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products.
Wall Street Journal:
Bloomberg:
Hyundai and its affiliate Kia say they are not in talks with Apple to develop an autonomous vehicle; Hyundai shares fell ~8.4% in Seoul, while Kia dropped 14%.  —  - Apple's plans for own-branded EV are being intensely watched  — Hyundai's new EV platform can charge cars to 80% in 18 minutes
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Review: in 200+ charging docs filed in relation to the Capitol siege, 73 reference Facebook, 24 reference YouTube, 20 mention Instagram, and 8 mention Parler  —  Just after the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook chief operating officer admitted the company's ability to enforce its own rules was “never perfect.”
Charles Fitzgerald / Platformonomics:
Analysis: in 2020, Amazon's capital expenditure grew 69% YoY to $54B, Microsoft's grew 14% YoY to $20.6B, and Google's declined over 5% YoY to $22.3B  —  It is time for our annual bulletin to CAPEX obsessives (previous updates from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 as well as earlier installments).
TechCrunch:
Clubhouse is now blocked in China after a brief uncensored period during which it was rapidly gathering steam  —  Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening as the country prepared to start the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.
Julia Chan / Sensor Tower Blog:
Sensor Tower data on top apps worldwide: Telegram led with 63M downloads in Jan. 2021, as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger downloads fell from Dec. 2020  —  Telegram was the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide for January 2021 with more than 63 million installs, 3.8 times its downloads in January 2020.
Bloomberg:
Japan's Renesas Electronics says it has agreed to acquire UK-based Dialog Semiconductor, whose clients include Apple and Samsung, for ~$5.9B  —  - Transaction marks latest takeover of a U.K. technology firm  — Semiconductor M&A more than doubled to $144 billion last year
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Pony.ai raises $100M extension to its Series C round at a post-money valuation of $5.3B, up from $3B in Feb. 2020, bringing its total raised to $1B+  —  Self-driving car startup Pony.ai today announced that it raised $100 million in an extension of its series C round.
More: PYMNTS.com

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