1)

Disney+ surpasses Netflix in subscriber game  

The entertainment giant Disney’s streaming service Disney+ has now more subscribers than Netflix. While announcing its latest quarterly results, Disney said that its streaming services now have 221 Mn subscribers globally, which is a tad more than Netflix’s current subscriber numbers that stands at nearly 220 Mn. But mind you, Disney+’s subscriber numbers are cumulative numbers as it includes subscribers of other streaming services like Hulu and ESPN+. This means that on a standalone basis Disney+ is still behind Netflix when it comes to paid customers. Besides, Disney is still not making any profit from its streaming business, reporting a loss of nearly $1.1 Bn in the quarter.

2)

Elon Musk has just offloaded $7Bn worth of Tesla shares

Elon Musk has just sold nearly $7 Bn worth of shares in his electric vehicle company Tesla. Musk sold the shares between August 5 and August 9, as per the regulatory filings. This stake sale has come at a time when Musk has been locked in a high-profile legal battle with Twitter. This is also the first time that Musk has sold shares in his electric vehicle company since April this year. Back then he had sold shares worth $8.5 Bn for financing the $44 Bn Twitter deal. But as things stand today the Tesla boss wants to exit the Twitter deal and is all set to gear up for a long legal battle against the microblogging company.

3)

SoftBank plans to sell Partial stake in Alibaba

SoftBank is planning for a big stake sale in the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, according to Reuters. The Japanese technology and telecom giant is planning to raise nearly $34 Bn through this stake sale, which will eventually reduce its stake in Alibaba from 23% to 14%. This stake sale will help in improving the cash flow for SoftBank, after announcing a net loss of whopping $23 Bn during the first quarter. As for Alibaba, SoftBank’s partial exit has come at a time when the Chinese government has been unleashing a crackdown against the company.  As a result of this crackdown, Alibaba is reportedly planning to delist its stocks from the New York stock exchange.

4)

Ex-Twitter Employee found guilty of spying for Saudi Arabia

A former Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo has been convicted by a U.S. court for spying for the Saudi Arabian government. Abouammo worked as a media manager for Twitter between November 2014 and December 2015. The U.S. court found him guilty of passing e-mail addresses and phone numbers of several people to the Saudi Arabian government. These people were actually those who repeatedly tweeted against the Saudi Arabia and created negative sentiments against the middle eastern kingdom on Twitter. The court also found that Abouammo also took expensive gifts from Saudi Arabia for spying on their behalf.

5)

Meta’s new AI Chatbot Bashes Mark Zuckerberg         

Last week Meta introduced the prototype of its new AI chatbot BlenderBot to couple of journalists and media personnel, hoping that this will create a buzz for its chatbot in the media. However, to the embarrassment of Meta, its chatbot proved to be way too smart. Responding to a query by a BuzzFeed journalist on Mark Zuckerberg, the chatbot called Meta’s boss creepy and manipulative. Causing further embarrassment for Meta, the chatbot went on to add that Facebook is a breeding ground for scandals and his life has been much better after deleting his account from Facebook.

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1)

Google hit by outage across the world

World’s most popular search engine Google was hit by a major outage on Monday morning, according to DownDetector. In the U.S. alone, nearly 40,000 people had problems in accessing Google. Internet users in Singapore, United Kingdom and Singapore also reported problems in accessing Google. However, it is still not known whether Google’s other services like Gmail and YouTube were also affected not. As far as India is concerned, India largely remained unaffected by this outage. Last time, Google face major outage in December 2020. Back then the outage had impacted millions of neitzens across the world.

2)

SoftBank sells its entire stake in Uber

Japanese tech and investment giant SoftBank has offloaded its entire stake in the ride hailing company Uber. However, SoftBank did not disclose exactly how much amount it was able to raise through this stake sale. This information became public exactly a day after Softbank’s technology investment arm SoftBank’s Vision Fund reported a massive loss of $21.68 Bn for the June quarter. The Japanese tech giant had invested in Uber in 2018 and again in 2019 and at one point was its largest stakeholder. SoftBank has also invested in scores of high-profile Indian startups that are yet to turn profitable. This includes the likes of Ola, Oyo rooms and Paytm.

3)

Baidu secures China’s first-ever driverless robotaxi license

In a big win for Chinese internet giant Baidu, the company has been granted a license to operate fully driverless robotaxi services in two Chinese cities – Wuhan and Chongqing. With this Baidu has become the first company in China that has been granted the permission to offer driverless taxi services without any human intervention. If this experiment is successful then Baidu may soon expand its services to other Chinese cities. Although driverless technology is still very much in its infancy, many top companies including Google, Uber and Tesla are spending millions on this technology. Even tech giant Apple is secretly working on a self-driving electric car.

4)

Whatsapp is working on login approval feature to prevent hacking

It seems Whatsapp is nowadays in the mood to test a lot of new features. As per the latest report, the meta owned platform is a beta testing a new log-in approval feature that will add an extra-layer of security to the platform. This means Whatsapp will instantly send an alert to you when a new person or an unknown device tries to login to your account. Whatsapp Users then obviously have the choice to allow or deny the log in attempts. The main purpose of beta testing this feature is keep hackers at bay. Despite continuously adding security updates, hackers still poses a huge threat to the Meta owned platform.

5)

India may ban Chinese smartphone companies from selling budget phones

In a major blow to the Chinese smartphone companies, the Indian government is reportedly planning to ban Chinese companies from competing in the budget smartphone category, which falls under the price category of Rs 12,000. As per reports, the Indian government is confident that this move will help the local Indian smartphone companies like Lava and Micromax. Over the years these once popular Indian companies have been literally destroyed by the rising popularity of Chinese smartphone companies like Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi. Interestingly, this plan by the Indian government has come at a time when all leading Chinese smartphone companies are facing serious charges of tax evasion and money laundering.

The post Google Hit by Outage across the World appeared first on Platform to Showcase Innovative Startups and Tech News.

Payment technology startup Juspay announced on Wednesday that it has raised $60 Mn in a fresh funding round. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the round by investing almost $50 Mn in the round while rest of the $10 Mn were invested by the existing investors. The existing investors include VEF and Wellington Management.

This is the maiden funding round for the Bengaluru based startup in 2021. It had raised $21.6 Mn in series B round last year. The company refused to divulge the valuation it commanded in the latest round. However, unconfirmed reports claim that the startup claimed nearly $450 Mn valuation in the current round.

Notably, this is SoftBank’s first major investment in Indian payment company after one of its portfolio payment company Paytm went public last month. But the Paytm IPO, which was India’s largest IPO, turned out to be a dud affair. Critics and experts unanimously termed Paytm lackluster IPO debut as one of the biggest IPO flops in recent decades.     

Juspay’s funding has also come months after PayU acquired Billdesk for $4.7 Bn, marking one of the biggest consolidation in India’s payment industry. But this consolidation is unlikely to have any adversarial impact on Juspay as the startup is more focused on mobile payment space.

Commenting about Softbank’s maiden investment in Juspay Vishal Gupta, Director, SoftBank Investment Advisers, said “Juspay is one of the most innovative deep tech companies in India’s fast growing digital payments market. It is solving the complex needs of an evolving fintech ecosystem. We believe in Juspay’s vision to simplify payments for billions of people globally and deliver higher revenue at lower cost for merchants.”

Juspay was founded in 2012 by Vimal Kumar. Currently, the company claims that it processes 300 Mn per month and is one of the leading mobile payment players in India.   

The post Juspay lands $60 Mn Funding in Series C led by SoftBank appeared first on Platform to Showcase Innovative Startups and Tech News.

1

Facebook launches TikTok like app for rappers

Facebook on Friday unveiled its latest experiment in the music space following its recent launch of music video app Collab. Facebook’s latest music experiment is called BARS app and this app is primarily targeted at amateur rappers. The app offers wannbe rappers collection of professional beats, which provides musical beat to rappers and then they can eventually record the video & share it subsequently. The app is social media giant’s yet another attempt to crave niche in the video-sharing space where TikTok still rules the roost.

2

Tom Cruise’s impersonator is invading TikTok

Hollywood star Tom Cruise may have quite a few impersonators across the world but probably none can beat the impersonator that is currently invading the TikTok space. The resemblance between Tom Cruise and this impersonator is simply jaw dropping. His deepfake videos are currently among the most trending TikTok videos in the U.S.

3

Bill Gates likes Android Phones more than Apple Phones  

Microsoft may have ceded the smartphone operating system battle to Google‘s Android and Apple’s IOS but Bill Gates seems to have moved over the failure. Today the Microsoft founder uses smartphone running on both OS but personally prefers Android smartphones. Gates revealed this information, according to MacRumours, during a community conversation on a clubhouse app.

4

     You can no longer keep your webcam off while using Microsoft Team

Microsoft has brought an update to its enterprise video meeting application Team that makes it mandatory for users to switch on their web camera. If they don’t, they will be put off from the platform. However, not many are happy with this update. This development was reported by Tech radar.

5

WeWork’s Neumann finally settles Lawsuit with SoftBank

WeWork’s founder Adam Neumann has finally settled his long drawn legal suit with Japanese investor Softbank. The details of the deal were not disclosed but, according to reports, SoftBank will pay Neumann close to $100 Mn and will give one year extension to WeWork founder to payback $450 Mn that he owes the Japanese investor.

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