Techmeme
August 2, 2021, 9:45 AM

Top News

Jon Porter / The Verge:
YouTube trials Premium Lite subscription for €6.99/month, offering ad-free viewing across all major platforms, currently available in Europe  —  Currently being piloted in parts of Europe  —  Google is piloting a more affordable premium subscription tier for YouTube …
Reuters:
Square says it's buying Australia-based buy now, pay later service Afterpay for $29B in an all-stock deal, paying a 30% premium on Afterpay's last closing  —  U.S. fintech company Square Inc (SQ.N) said on Monday it had agreed to purchase Australian buy now/pay later giant Afterpay Ltd …
Greg Ahlstrand / CoinDesk:
Square reports Q2 revenue of $4.88B, up 143% YoY; Cash App's bitcoin yearly revenue was $2.72B, up 200%, as Square's bitcoin holdings had a $45M impairment loss  —  Cash App's bitcoin gross profit rose to $55 million, Square said in its Q2 letter to shareholders.
Olivia Solon / NBC News:
Female journalists and activists share how they were targeted and harassed by authoritarian regimes through hack-and-leak attacks using the Pegasus spyware  —  Ghada Oueiss, a Lebanese broadcast journalist at Al-Jazeera, was eating dinner at home with her husband last June when she received …
Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
A now-deleted tweet by an Intel executive suggests Thunderbolt 5 could double the bandwidth of existing Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 connections to 80 Gbps  —  An executive visiting various research divisions across the globe isn't necessarily new, but with a focus on social media driving named individuals …
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Zoom agrees to pay $85M and bolster its security practices to settle a class action lawsuit over alleged user privacy violations and Zoombombing  —  Zoom Video Communications Inc (ZM.O) agreed to pay $85 million and bolster its security practices to settle a lawsuit claiming …
Heather Somerville / Wall Street Journal:
Non-VC funds invested in a record 42% of tech startup funding deals in Q2 2021; H1 '21 US startup funding was $150B, with FY 2021 on pace to double 2020's total  —  Hedge, mutual and pension funds are investing heavily, leading to higher valuations and more leverage for company founders
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Bangalore-based online learning startup Unacademy raises $440M led by Temasek at a $3.44B valuation  —  Unacademy has raised $440 million in a new financing round as the Indian online learning startup looks to expand into multiple additional categories.  —  Temasek led the Bangalore-based startup's …
Emmanuel Akinwotu / The Guardian:
Analysis: Nigeria is second only to the US in bitcoin trading volume, hitting $2.4B in May from $684M in Dec. 2020, as the government tries to curb its use  —  As leaders around the world grapple with cryptocurrencies, what happened when the African country tried to ban them?
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Estonian ride hailing startup Bolt, formerly known as Taxify, raises $713M at a ~$4.75B valuation, led by Sequoia, Tekne, and Ghisallo  —  - Estonian ride-hailing start-up Bolt has raised $713 million in fresh funding to push into the rapidly-growing online grocery delivery industry.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/22 - An LLM Siri But... Only The Year AFTER Next?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:45 AM ET, August 2, 2021.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Politico:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Brent Lang / Variety:
Maya Wolfe-Robinson / The Guardian:
Stitch / The Verge:
Kyle Chayka / New Yorker: