News
Ahead of going public, Spotify just announced it’s killing it on the subscriber front. As of today, Spotify has 70 million subscribers compared to Apple Music’s 30 million. Last July, Spotify had more than 60 million paid listeners and over 140 million active users.
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London was the top city in Europe for technology investment last year, with more funding going into companies in the British capital than into firms based in Paris, Berlin and the next seven cities combined, data showed on Friday.
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On Thursday, automakers Hyundai and Volkswagen both announced a new partnership with Aurora, the autonomous driving startup with a killer pedigree and good momentum early on – but they also both revealed that each is planning to deploy self-driving cars by 2021 on roads in a commercial capacity.
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Earlier today, we reported that Didi was in the process of acquiring 99, a ridesharing company in Brazil, and now the two companies have confirmed the deal as part of Didi’s plans to expand its service into Latin America.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed — we are asking — but earlier today we noted that Didi was effectively putting in $900 million — $600 million to buy out investors, plus an additional $300 million of further investment into the business and its expansion plans — effectively giving the company a valuation of $1 billion (after you add in Didi’s original $100 million investment in 99 in January of last year).
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UK peer-to-peer lending platform Funding Circle is eyeing an IPO.
According to Sky News, the firm is reportedly looking to hire advisers to oversee a £1bn-plus flotation in London, which could happen as soon as late autumn.
The firm, which launched in 2010, made headlines last year after it announced a $100m investment round led by Accel.
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Tech giants such as Google and Facebook could face multimillion-pound tax bills if they don’t do more to combat extremism.
Speaking to the The Sunday Times, Ben Wallace, the UK’s security minister, accused tech firms of being “ruthless profiteers” and said they were failing to help security services to identify terrorists and eradicate online extremism.
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ProFinda, an AI platform which maps organisations’ talent pools, has raised £4.8m from investors.
Backers in the round included Notion Capital and Nextlaw Ventures.
Speaking about the fundraise, Roger Gorman, CEO of ProFinda, said: “Our work is helping to disrupt the future of work landscape. ProFinda’s latest investment puts us in a powerful position to continue to deliver our fast-paced and ambitious roadmap.
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Using their DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI), Google’s Alphabet AI research lab developed a synthetic speech system called WaveNet back in 2016. The system runs on an artificial neural network that’s capable of speech samples at an ostensibly better quality than other technologies like it. The voice of AI is becoming more human-like, so to speak. WaveNet has since been improved to work well enough for Google Assistant across all platforms.
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Muscle Food, a UK-based healthy eating company, received a £10m investment from BGF.
BGF, which has backed close to 200 companies in the UK & Ireland, has taken a minority equity stake in the group.
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Every year, the Queen's New Year's Honours list awards people in the UK who have made important contributions to society, including everything from charity, to journalism, and technology.
This year, the New Year's Honours list includes 16 people from the world of tech. The list features everyone from an artificial intelligence pioneer, a cybersecurity expert, and a pioneering investor.
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