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Internal docs show Facebook's weak response after staff flagged human traffickers and drug cartels using its platform for recruitment in developing countries
Nate Chastain, the head of product at OpenSea who was accused this week of a form of NFT insider trading, appears to no longer be working for the company
London-based Form3, which provides cloud-based payments tools to banks and fintechs, raises $160M Series C led by Goldman Sachs, bringing total funding to $220M
Deutsche Bank survey: Walmart+, Walmart's Amazon Prime rival, has grown to ~32M US subscribers since its 2020 launch, and ~86% of them have Amazon Prime also
Online education giant Byju's says it has acquired Tynker, which offers courses on coding, sources say for around $200M in cash and stock
China's biggest movie star, Zhao Wei, who had 86M Weibo followers, was erased from China's internet on August 26, amid a clampdown on its entertainment industry
Initial benchmarks show iPhone 13's A15 chip offers a roughly 15% improvement for GPU performance and 10%-18% improvement for CPU performance over A14
Brazil's Senate and Supreme Court nullify rules issued by President Bolsonaro banning social networks from removing content that breaks their policies
Oppo is cutting around 20% of its staff in key software and device teams after it merged operations with affiliate OnePlus
French startup Skello, which develops a SaaS tool that lets companies manage their work schedules, raises €40M led by Partech
Brooklyn-based Genius, a music-annotating startup that provides context for rap lyrics, has sold its assets for $80M, less than the total funding it raised
Research: Didi's average daily user count for August fell to 10.9M, from 15.6M in June after its NY IPO triggered a fierce backlash by Chinese regulators
FTC asks health apps, such as those tracking fitness or menstrual cycles, to notify consumers of data breaches as per the 2009 Health Breach Notification Rule
Melio, a B2B payments startup for small businesses, raises $250M Series D led by Thrive Capital and General Catalyst at a $4B valuation, up 3x from January
Joe Biden announces a new Indo-Pacific security partnership with Australia and the UK to share tech in areas like AI, cybersecurity, and quantum technologies
FTC says Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft made 819 unreported acquisition deals of $1M+, including for patents and acquihires, from 2010 to 2019
Goldman Sachs is acquiring buy now, pay later fintech GreenSky for about $2.24B, in an all-stock deal
Discord says it has raised $500M led by Dragoneer, Fidelity, and others, source says at a ~$15B post-money valuation
Rebellion Defense, the Eric Schmidt-backed developer of AI defense tech, raises $150M led by Insight and Venrock at a $1B pre-money valuation
Sources: US firm Accuvant, now part of Optiv, sold iPhone hacking tool Karma to the UAE for $1.3M in 2016; the tool has been used against hundreds of targets
DoorDash files another lawsuit against NYC, saying a new law requiring it to share customer data with restaurants constitutes an invasion of user privacy
Adobe says it will launch a payment service via PayPal for Adobe Commerce by the end of the year, adding native payments to customers' digital storefronts
The iPhone 13 might as well be called the 12S, as the updates to the lineup are iterative and lacking a major new addition like last year's MagSafe
Thoughtworks shares close up nearly 40% in its Nasdaq debut, valuing the company at ~$9B, after raising roughly $773M in its IPO
UN rights chief calls for a moratorium on sale and use of AI tech that threatens human rights, including facial recognition, until safeguards are put in place
Apna, whose networking app lets blue collar workers upskill and find jobs, raises $100M Series C led by Tiger Global, becoming India's youngest unicorn
Crypto wallet startup Abra raises $55M Series C led by Ignia and Blockchain Capital to expand wealth management tools, bringing total funding to $85M
Xiaomi launches flagship 11T series, including the 11T Pro with 120W fast charging, claiming 100% charge in 17 minutes, starting at €649
Xiaomi unveils 11-inch Pad 5 tablet starting at €349, an updated Mi Smart Band 6 with NFC for €55, and Mi Smart Projector 2 with Google Assistant for €599
Internal documents: Facebook's own research found that a 2018 change to encourage positive interactions had the opposite effect; Zuckerberg resisted any fixes
Canadian company Rewind, which offers data backup and recovery tools for SaaS apps, raises $65M Series B, following $15M Series A in January
Chainalysis: Africa's crypto market grew 1,200%+ in value between July 2020 and June 2021 to reach $105.6B; retail-sized transfers made up 7%+ of overall volume
NFT marketplace OpenSea acknowledges that its head of product, Nate Chastain, purchased NFTs he knew were going to be displayed prominently
Constructor, which helps companies optimize e-commerce listings using AI, raises $55M Series A led by Silversmith Capital
Relyance AI, which builds tools to help companies comply with privacy laws at the code level, emerges from stealth with $25M Series A and $5M seed
Persona, an identity verification startup used by Robinhood, DoorDash, and Square, raises $150M Series C led by Founders Fund at a $1.5B valuation
StrongDM, which builds tools to manage servers, databases, and other infrastructure, raises $54M Series B led by Tiger Global, bringing total funding to $77M
WhatsApp launches its first test of a public directory for businesses within the app, starting in São Paulo
After being sued by the state of California, Activision Blizzard is sued by a group representing employees, alleging it tried to prevent them from organizing
Senate Commerce Committee's consumer protection panel to launch a probe into Facebook after reports it was aware of the harm Instagram can cause teenage girls
theverge.com · 3 days ago