Month: February 2022

Calvin Broadus, a.k.a. Snoop Dogg, rocked the stage at Sunday’s Super Bowl, and now his Casa Verde Capital team is pumping new funds into Frankfurt-based Cansativa Group, touted as the “largest medical cannabis distributor” in Germany. Cansativa Group came onto the scene in 2017 with business-to-business tools for customers to manage every stage of the
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Small businesses are the backbone of Southeast Asia’s economy, but many struggle to secure working capital loans because they don’t have traditional credit records or collateral, say the founders of Funding Societies. The fintech, which claims to be the region’s largest SME digital financing platform, uses alternative forms of credit-scoring and has disbursed more than
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Neighborhood social network Nextdoor is revamping its product. The changes, which aim to simplify the app and promote better relationships between neighbors, follow last year’s hire of Nextdoor’s new Head of Product Kiran Prasad, who joined the company after serving at LinkedIn. Combined, the updates are laying the groundwork for a new strategic direction for
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Tech healthcare unicorn Ro announced today that it has raised $150 million exclusively from existing investors, led by ShawSpring Partners, with participation from FirstMark Capital, General Catalyst, Seven Seven Six, BoxGroup, Altimeter Capital, Baupost Group, Initialized, TQ Ventures and TCG. Sources close to the company, as well as Bloomberg, confirm that the money was raised
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When consumers started buying cars, many predicted the transportation revolution would lead to air pollution, traffic and life-threatening collisions. But no one gave much thought to the security aspect. Early autos were very easy to steal: With a little practice, almost anyone could hot-wire an ignition, and Vehicle Identification Numbers were decades away. Most cars
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The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has called for a bloc-wide ban on the controversial Pegasus spyware tool, warning its use could lead to an “unprecedented level of intrusiveness.” Israeli’s NSO Group, the developer of the notorious spyware, claims to only sell Pegasus to governments for the purpose of fighting crime and terrorism. However, multiple
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Contact Financial Holding, Egypt’s non-bank consumer finance provider, has invested $9 million in the country’s ecommerce super-app Wasla, setting the stage for the rollout of new online shopping capabilities, products and regional expansion. Contact has been in the business of consumer finance since 2001, while Wasla was founded in 2018 by former Serag Meneassy and
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A coordinated enforcement action focused on public sector bodies’ use of cloud services is kicking off across the European Union. More than 80 public bodies in a wide range of sectors, including health, finance, tax, education and IT service supply and procurement, will face contact from local data protection authorities — ranging from fact-finding exercises
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Mental wellness startup MindFi operates throughout APAC, but wants to deliver “culturally competent” care in each of its markets. To do that, it develops programs for its app, available as an employee benefit, with local providers that take into account religion, gender stereotypes, racial representation, communication style and values, co-founder and CEO Bjorn Lee told
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Upcycling polyethylene (the normal ubiquitous plastic we are all familiar with) into high-value plastics that can compete with “virgin” plastic (meaning plastics made directly from petro-chemicals) is a fiendish problem to solve. The fact that it’s been extremely hard to do so means billions of tonnes of plastic is never recycled, and it’s out there pouting the
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Meta over Facebook’s facial recognition practices, his office announced on Monday. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which notes that the lawsuit seeks civil penalties in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The lawsuit alleges that the company’s use of facial
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Depending on your age, getting from point A to point B might have involved paper maps — what we called an “atlas,” the giant book that lived in the pocket behind the passenger seat of the car. As maps went digital, you might have relied on MapQuest to help plot the fastest route to your
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Apple has been fined another €5 million in the Netherlands after the country’s antitrust watchdog said the tech giant is applying “unreasonable” conditions to local dating app providers which want to make use of non-Apple payment technology in their apps. Apple’s total fine, including earlier penalties for failing to comply with the regulator’s order, now
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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai sits down with Emily Chang on this episode of “Bloomberg Studio 1.0” to discuss his company’s $2 trillion valuation, artificial intelligence, the metaverse, climate change initiatives, China and data privacy. ——– Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrM7B7SL_g1edFOnmj-SDKg Watch the latest full episodes of “Bloomberg Technology” with Emily
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