latest
Google invests millions in Indian unicorn Glance and Dailyhunt
TikTok rivals Roposo and Josh also boosted by Google's cash injection
Earlier this year, Google committed a corpus of $10 billion for driving digital growth in India, of which a large portion went to Reliance Jio. Of the remaining fund, the search giant has now started investing in its own ambitious projects and various other local startups that align with its vision of digital inclusion. The services to get Google's backing include two major local news ports, Glance and Dailyhunt, alongside their sister short-video services.
HMD Global picks up $230 million investment from Google, Qualcomm, and others
This is the first leg of an ongoing funding round
Finnish startup HMD Global revived the Nokia brand by marrying the entire smartphone range to the Android One program. With their new identity, Nokia phones have grown popular, particularly in emerging markets where they can piggyback on the legendary brand image. In a bid to keep up with that growth trajectory, HMD Global recently announced that it has raised a total of $230 million from an investor group, including the likes of Google, Qualcomm, and Nokia Technologies.
Google invests $4.5 billion in Jio, plans to co-develop entry-level smartphone
Optimized versions of Android and the Play Store are also planned
Reliance’s Jio Platforms has been on a funding spree over the past few months with some sizable investment coming from Facebook, Qualcomm, and other global names. Joining this extensive list is Google, which will pick a minority stake in India’s biggest telco to create custom software and hardware solutions for India’s growing appetite for smartphones, particularly in the lower-end segment.
Read update
- This week, Robinhood started to roll out its Cash Management feature to a small number of users. As of today, the Annual Percentage Yield (APY) on unused funds is 1.80%, and these rates are subject to further changes. There are no account minimums or fees required to receive interest on unused brokerage funds, though other fees still apply.
It's been nearly a year since the stock investment and cryptocurrency company Robinhood paused its launch of no-fees checking and savings accounts. It was forced to make changes after mistakenly claiming that its industry-leading 3% interest rates were insured by the SIPC. Now, Robinhood is finally announcing plans to move forward with a revamped version called Cash Management.
Mozilla ended development on its smartphone operating system, Firefox OS, at the beginning of 2017. But since it was open-source, other companies have used the code for new products. KaiOS is one fork of Firefox OS, and was first released in March of 2017. Google has already developed applications for KaiOS, but now it's investing $22 million into the company building it.
The Chinese market is notoriously difficult for American businesses to thrive in, and that's as true in technology as in any other industry. Google is clearly keen to increase its standing there, however, and has just announced a new partnership with one of the country's largest online retailers.
The Google Assistant has come a long way in a short space of time, so far in fact that it's probably the most capable digital assistant around at the moment. However, the competition from Amazon's Alexa is stiff, and it's probably in more homes, so Google knows it mustn't rest on its laurels. To that end, it's opening a new investment program especially for startups who will drive the Assistant ecosystem forward.
Pluto TV continues its climb into relevance. For those of you who don't know, Pluto TV is a television service that provides access to news, live sports, and themed channels for free. The company just received a $5 million investment from Samsung of all places. This money will be used to expand Pluto TV's content and marketing reach.
Republic Wireless, the mobile virtual network operator that was doing hybrid Wi-Fi service before it was cool, is now an independent republic. The company received a $30 million capital investment from its parent corporation Bandwidth, according to The Verge, which allowed it to become its own separate entity. The Republic Wireless blog says that aside from a necessary change in names on customers' Terms of Service agreements, no significant changes to the service or business model are planned.
At the beginning of this year, we heard news of Microsoft investing some of its millions into Cyanogen Inc., the commercial arm of CyanogenMod. Bloomberg later reported that the Redmond-based giant decided not to invest in the startup and was instead possibly considering another form of partnership. Now Cyanogen Inc. has announced the results of its latest round of funding, and Microsoft's name is nowhere to be found.
When we hear about smartphone advancements, usually it revolves around cramming more pixels onto our screens or beefing up our devices with even more powerful processors. Yet in this move to take everything mobile, where are the bigger batteries?
Alibaba runs a global e-commerce site that is one of the most visited in the world. Now it wants to get into the smartphone business. If this idea sounds funny, remember, Amazon has been trying to do the same thing.
There are many ways to go after a competitor, and Microsoft isn't storing all of its eggs in one basket. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the company that challenges Android with Windows Phone is investing in Cyanogen Inc.
If Facebook's 19 billion dollar deal to buy WhatsApp didn't convince you that messaging apps are big business, then... well, this probably won't convince you either, but you'll be even more wrong. Tango Messenger, a solid entry in the crowded text chat market, has been given a huge investment by a group of companies including China's Alibaba.com. Alibaba invested a whopping $215 million, with an extra $65 million coming from previous Tango investors. The total capital raised to date for Tango is $367 million.
There's big money in online storage, in case the presence of Google, Microsoft, and a seemingly endless parade of startups didn't tip you off. Box.com has been one of the more consistent rivals to Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive OneDrive, and it looks like the small company is about to up its game in a big way. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Box is preparing for an initial public offering.
Sure, Verizon's running those ads that tells you how obvious it is their network is best, but AT&T wants you to know it's not sleeping on the job. Today, the carrier announced that it plans to have LTE coverage for 300 million people by the end of 2014. For those counting, that leaves only about 10 million out in the entire country.
SoftBank, a Japanese telecommunications and Internet corporation, has confirmed via a press release and a live event in Tokyo the $20.1bn investment that would give SoftBank a 70% ownership of Sprint. The news hit the rumor mill 3 days ago and was pretty much confirmed by CNBC yesterday. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2013 pending regulatory approval.
We've heard rumors that Sprint is considering outbidding T-Mobile for MetroPCS's affection. Just in case that doesn't work, though, Sprint wants us to know that there is another plan in the works: being purchased by Softbank. Since most of you likely aren't up to date on Japanese telecoms, here's the deal: Softbank is a Japanese telecom. The third largest wireless carrier in the country, so a bit of a kindred spirit with Sprint. Now, the Japanese company may be interested in purchasing big yellow. Rumors broke earlier today, and now Sprint has sent out this brief press release to confirm:
Finance radio! Are you excited yet? Good. Bloomberg has released an app for the company's 24 hour network of audio shows discussing economics, business, and investment. Through Bloomberg Radio+ you can either choose to listen to whatever's on the air right now, or pull from a list of on-demand shows. You can even download the episodes for offline listening.
GameFly To Start Publishing Android Games, Setting Up Investment Funds For Independent Game Developers
GameFly To Start Publishing Android Games
Well, this might be one of the most (potentially) awesome stories we cover this week. GameFly, the company best known for setting up a Netflix-style gaming rental service, has announced that it plans to open up a third-party gaming store on iOS and Android (think TegraZone, but with less hardware tie-ins). This would, presumably, be in addition to the already-existing GameFly app. Additionally, the company has "set aside a game development fund" that it will use to fund game developers with great ideas, but less cash flow. This is fantastic news.