World Of News

Huawei’s struggles amid U.S.-China trade tensions are driving it to seek opportunities in other smart devices, setting itself up against a raft of hardware makers at home and abroad. The Chinese tech giant recorded sluggish revenue growth in 2020 , climbing just 3.8% to 891.4 billion yuan ($136 billion), as its net profit grew 3.2% to 64.6 billion yuan. The results were in line with Huawei’s forecasts, the company said Wednesday at its annual report day in Shenzhen, a rare occasion to get a glimpse into the private entity’s financials. To put the numbers in comparison, Huawei’s revenues were up 19% and 19.5% in 2019 and 2018, respectively. The slowdown in 2020 was primarily due to a slump in Huawei’s overseas smartphone sales after U.S. export controls cut the firm off core chipsets and Google services critical to consumers. But the challenge has also sped up the firm’s pace to diversify and offset losses from its phone business. For the past two years, Huawei’s has been ratchet...

Independent music distribution platform and tool factory UnitedMasters has raised a $50M series B round led by Apple. A16z and Alphabet are participating again in this raise. United Masters is also entering a strategic partnership with Apple alongside this investment.  If you’re unfamiliar with UnitedMasters, it’s a distribution company launched in 2017 by Steve Stoute, a former Interscope and Sony Music executive. The focus of UnitedMasters is to provide artists with a direct pipeline to data around the way that fans are interacting with their content and community, allowing them to connect more directly to offer tickets, merchandise and other commercial efforts. UnitedMasters also generally allows artists to retain control of their own masters. Neither of these conditions are at all typical in the music industry. In a typical artist deal, recording companies retain all audience and targeting data as well as masters. This limits an artist’s ability to be agile, taking advantag...

According to a McKinsey report , the total number of mobile money services worldwide was 282 in 2017, with more than half of those operating in sub-Saharan Africa.  In 2020, these numbers increased significantly, but the ratio remained similar.  In 96 countries, there are 310 live mobile money services, according to a GSMA report . Out of that number, 171 are from Africa, while 157 are in sub-Saharan Africa. In Tanzania, mobile money services can be relatively difficult to use due to unstable internet and high service fees . Benjamin Fernandes noticed this as a national television host while building a mobile money service to enable people to pay for TV subscriptions in East Africa back in 2011 .  Six years later, he would start his own mobile money and wallet aggregator, NALA , to solve these issues. Its first mobile application allowed users to make mobile money payments and utilize mobile banking without an internet connection . The business grew to 250,000 ...

Kaya VC’s new €72 million ($80m) fund will focus on startups in Prague, Warsaw and the wider CEE region. Previously called Enern, the Central and Eastern European VC — which, historically, started out investing in wind-farms and ended up invested in software — has changed its name to better reflect its modern focus. The firm will also back startups “at any stage” of funding. LPs in the fund include the EIF and a number of successful entrepreneurs from the region. This is the team’s fourth fund, and together with the previous funds, the AUM is around €250m. The fund has invested in 27 companies with the latest investments into B2B marketplaces, healthtech and blockchain.  The decade-old Prague-based VC (“KAYA” will be the official naming format) has previously invested in Booksy (raised $70 million in January 2021), Twisto (€16 million this year), DocPlanner (€80m in 2019), and Rohlik ($230m this year). Kaya previously participated in liquidity events for Skype, Wise (formerly Tr...

imToken , the blockchain tech startup and crypto wallet developer, announced today it has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Qiming Venture Partners. Participants included returning investor IDG Capital, and new backers Breyer Capital, HashKey, Signum Capital, Longling Capital, SNZ and Liang Xinjun, the co-founder of Fosun International. Founded in 2016, the startup’s last funding announcement was for its $10 million Series A, led by IDG, in May 2018. imToken says its wallet for Ethereum, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies now has 12 million users and over $50 billion in assets are currently stored on its platform, with total transaction value exceeding $500 billion. Ethereum wallet imToken raises $10M Series A from IDG to expand in the US, Asia and Africa The company was launched in Hangzhou, China, before moving to it current headquarters to Singapore, and about 70% of its users are in mainland China, followed by markets including South Korea, the United States an...

Global logistics company Geodis has tapped startup Phantom Auto to help it deploy forklifts that can be controlled remotely by human operators located hundreds, and even thousands, of miles away. The aim is to use the technology to reduce operator fatigue — and the injuries that can occur as a result — as well as reduce the number of people physically inside warehouses, according to the Geodis. The use of remotely operated forklifts won’t replace employees — just where they work. It’s that detail that Geodis, which often has operations outside of city centers, finds appealing. Stéphanie Hervé, chief operating officer for Geodis’ Western Europe, Middle East and Africa operations, told TechCrunch that use of the remotely operated forklifts will help the company attract a new group of workers, including those with physical disabilities. The intent isn’t to outsource workers to other countries, but to find more workers within a region, according to the company. Under the partnershi...

By now you’ve probably heard of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) ratings for companies, or ratings for their carbon footprint. Well, now a UK company has come up with a way of rating the ‘ethics’ social media companies.     EthicsGrade is an ESG ratings agency, focusing on AI governance. Headed up Charles Radclyffe , the former head of AI at Fidelity, it uses AI-driven models to create a more complete picture of the ESG of organizations, harnessing Natural Language Processing to automate the analysis of huge data sets. This includes tracking controversial topics, and public statements. Frustrated with the green-washing of some ‘environmental’ stocks, Radclyffe realized that the AI governance of social media companies was not being properly considered, despite presenting an enormous risk to investors in the wake of such scandals as the manipulation of Facebook by companies such as Cambridge Analytica during the US Election and the UK’s Brexit referendum. Ethic...