Business

Pendect, the community-sourced TL;DR news platform, is ceasing operations on April 19th. The company, which was founded in September 2019, stated that the platform would shut down due to "many challenges due to Covid-19 and an increasingly difficult capital-raising environment."

"We are grateful to all the people who participated and contributed to the community and to our investors who believed in the idea of an open-source news platform. We truly believe that the current news environment needs a makeover, a fresh perspective and an open, community-sourced and diverse approach – and we would have loved to fill that gap in the industry. Shutting down Pendect was one of the hardest decisions we as a team had to make but one we had to make," the founders said in a statement.

And on a more personal note:

To all the Pentributors, readers, followers, investors and, especially, to my two lovely co-founders CJ & Érico. Thank you for being my business partners, my supporters, my rocks. This journey, while exhausting and demanding, was beautiful and so much fun. I've learned a lot. I hope you have too – all of you!

Thank you and good night!

Microsoft announced on Monday it would buy Nuance for $56 per share, about a 23% premium over Nuance’s closing price Friday.

Nuance has a strong reputation for its voice recognition technology, and it has been considered an acquisition target for companies like Apple, Microsoft and more for several years.

In an interview on CNBC's " Squawk on the Street" Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlighted Nuance's health care tools as the key driver behind the acquisition.

Twitter held talks with Clubhouse around a potential acquisition of the live drop-in audio networking platform, with a deal value somewhere around $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Twitter has its own product very similar to Clubhouse - Spaces, a drop-in audio chatroom feature that it has been rolling out gradually to its user base over the past few months.

While we aren't privy to the specifics of these talks between Twitter and Clubhouse, it does seem like an awfully high price tag for the social network to pay for the audio app, especially given its own progress with Spaces.

LG Electronics announced Monday that it will terminate the company's loss-making smartphone business unit.

"LG’s strategic decision to exit the incredibly competitive mobile phone sector will enable the company to focus resources in growth areas such as electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics, artificial intelligence and business-to-business solutions, as well as platforms and services," the company said in a statement.

The retail company Amazon has apologised for misrepresentations about the working conditions of its couriers. A statement on Twitter, according to which Amazon employees do not have to pee in drink bottles during their delivery rounds, has turned out to be an "own goal", the company explained in a statement and apologised.

Previously, US Congressman Mark Pocan, a representative of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, had expressed his outrage on Twitter about Amazon couriers being forced to urinate in bottles, among other things. Amazon responded in a supposedly glib manner: "You don't really believe the thing about peeing in bottles, do you? If that were true, no one would work for us," it said in a reply to the tweet.

In a blog post, Unsplash's founder Mikael Cho says that it will continue to operate as a standalone brand inside of Getty and that the free content model won't be changing. "Over years of conversations, however, we learned about the level of respect they had for the Unsplash community and the rights of creators to choose how and where their imagery is made available," Cho writes. Cho says that after continued interaction with the Getty team, he and his fellow co-founders realized that the two brands were in "alignment" and that long-term cooperation was a good fit for Unsplash.

Founded in 2016 by Felix Ohswald (CEO) and Gregor Müller (COO) in Vienna, the start-up Go Student connects students and tutors on a virtual platform so that they can hold their tutoring sessions on computers, cell phones or tablet PCs. Especially in times of pandemics and homeschooling, the provider is getting a lot of interest - which in turn has now attracted new investors.

Go Student now announces that it has closed another investment round under the leadership of new investor Coatue together with existing partners Left Lane Capital and DN Capital. With a total investment of 70 million euros, Go Student says it is the best-funded start-up in the education sector in Europe. In the previous year, the Viennese company had already received a total investment of 13.3 million euros.

Robinhood Inc. – a 2013-founded commission-free investment and trading app – has filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering (IPO) and plans to go public later this year.

"Robinhood Markets, Inc. has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) relating to the proposed initial public offering of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The initial public offering is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions," the company's statement read.

Linktree, one of the most popular “link in bio” services with more than 12 million users, announced today it had raised $45 million in Series B funding. The Sydney, Australia-based startup latest funding will be used on tools that make social commerce easier.

Founded in 2016, Linktree is used for bio links by Shopify, Facebook, TikTok, YSL, HBO and Major League Baseball, and celebrities like Jonathan Van Ness, Jamie Oliver and Pharrell.

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser told staff that she is banning internal video calls on Fridays, encouraging workers to set boundaries for a healthier work-life balance and instituting a firm-wide holiday called Citi Reset Day as Covid pandemic fatigue takes a toll on employees.

"When our work regularly spills over into nights, very early mornings and weekends, it can prevent us from recharging fully, and that isn't good for you nor, ultimately, for Citi," Fraser said.

Bitcoin jumped 5% after billionaire Elon Musk announced Tesla would accept the digital asset as payment. Musk published his tweet soon after Twitter users noticed the updated bitcoin support for all models of Tesla's cars across online US stores.

The carmaker disclosed last month it invested $1.5 billion in the digital asset and said it would soon begin accepting it as payment for its products.

Oil prices jumped about 6% on Wednesday after a ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, and worries that the incident could tie up crude shipments gave prices a boost after a slide over the last week. The situation is affecting the connections of other ships that carry oil and may now have to look for alternative routes, reveals "Bloomberg" this Wednesday, March 24th.

The Evergreen container with 400 meters in length and 220 thousand tons was stranded when making the connection between China and the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, worthless the several attempts to get it afloat again.

According to sources talking to Bloomberg, Microsoft is in discussions with Discord to acquire the gaming-focused chat software for more than $10 billion.

VentureBeat reported earlier today that Discord was exploring a $10 billion-plus sale after multiple potential buyers expressed interest and that it had signed an exclusive acquisition discussion with one party, suggesting a deal could be close.

Discord's software is free for most users. Still, the company makes money through $9.99 monthly Nitro subscriptions that offer more advanced features like higher resolution screen sharing, extra sticker packs, and larger upload limits.

In a joint statement, Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company and Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners announced they had invested a combined $150 million in messaging app Telegram.

"Our investment in Telegram establishes a strategic partnership for us to further strengthen Abu Dhabi's technology ecosystem as well as bring new levels of tech skills and talent to the capital," Mubadala said in the statement.

Launched in 2013 by brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov as a secure messaging app, Telegram has its headquarters in the UAE.

FedEx shares have more than doubled in price since the pandemic forced government officials to shutter businesses and issue stay-at-home orders. The revenue for the quarter ended Feb. 28 grew 23% to $21.5 billion, boosted by a half-billion holiday package deliveries and COVID-19 vaccines shipments.

Average daily package volume for FedEx Ground, which counts Walmart among its top e-commerce shipping partners, jumped 25% to 13.2 million during the quarter.

The results came even as severe winter weather in February disrupted service at important facilities in Memphis, Indianapolis and North Texas and reduced quarterly operating income by about $350 million.

Nokia – the Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics company – announced Tuesday that it will cut up to 10,000 jobs internationally by 2023 to cut costs and invest in other technologies. The company currently employs around 90,000 people globally.

The digital payments company Stripe boosted its valuation to $95 billion after a Series H funding round of $600 million.

The company plans to "invest a ton more in Europe this year," using the new capital in 31 European countries of the 42 that it operates worldwide.

In its previous funding round last April, Stripe was early to highlight the Covid-19 outbreak as "pushing the economy online" and said, "several years of offline-to-online migration are being compressed into several weeks."

Roblox, a company that describes itself as a "metaverse" where players can make their own avatars and environments, saw its shares surge nearly 55% to $69.50 after the IPO. Roblox valuation is currently more than $45 billion.

The company generates nearly all of its revenue from the sale of its Robux currency, which can be used to purchase in-game virtual objects. Last year the total revenue was nearly $925 million, up 82% from 2019.

Roblox announced earlier this month that it now expects sales to rise about another 60% this year to a range of $1.44 billion to $1.52 billion.

The McKinsey partners have chosen a new boss. Bob Sternfels (51) will take over as head of the consultancy on 1 July this year, the company announced. Sternfels, who is a senior partner in San Francisco and heads global client relations, has primarily strengthened the firm's digital and analytical capabilities, but has also advocated for stricter risk controls in client selection, it added.

Less than a month after Buzzfeed acquired HuffPost, it now has laid off 47 US HuffPost employees – mostly journalists – and closed HuffPost’s Canadian operation, with more layoffs expected in the United Kingdom and Australia.

NBC News reports that Google advised employees in the US who complained about racism and sexism to take medical leave and undergo mental health counselling.

One former staff member, Benjamin Cruz, has said that they had complained to the company HR in 2019 after being told by a colleague that their skin was much darker than the co-worker expected. Google HR urged Cruz to take medical leave and tend to their mental health before moving to a new company role. Cruz went on medical leave and hoped to take the company up on its offer for a new position but was turned down from every role they applied for, so they were forced to quit.

Google denies wrongdoing and said it "rigorously" investigates complaints.

Disney has announced it will be closing 20% of its 300 retail stores in North America by the end of the year, hinting at additional closures and layoffs in the future. As the company closes its brick-and-mortar stores, it is working to improve its e-commerce business ShopDisney.

A new study has calculated that Brazilian farmers produced food for about ten percent of the world's population last year. The state agricultural research agency Embrapa has examined, among other things, grain and oilseed production and comes to the conclusion that Brazilian products fed almost 780 million people - on the one hand directly, and on the other hand by feeding grain or soy to animals that then ended up on the plate. Brazil is the world's largest exporter of soy, sugar, coffee, orange juice and beef and chicken.

Square, Jack Dorsey’s digital payments company, is acquiring a majority ownership stake in the music streaming service TIDAL. Jay-Z, who bought Tidal in 2015 for $56 million, will join Square’s board of directors.

Jack Dorsey tweeted: "Square is acquiring a majority ownership stake in TIDAL through a new joint venture, with the original artists becoming the second largest group of shareholders, and JAY-Z joining the Square board. Why would a music streaming company and a financial services company join forces?!"

"I said from the beginning that TIDAL was about more than just streaming music, and six years later, it has remained a platform that supports artists at every point in their careers," said Jay-Z.

For the first time since 1979, the German Bundesbank does not distribute profits. This was reported by Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann at the central bank's annual press conference on Wednesday.

The monetary crisis measures in the Corona pandemic have had a significant impact on the Bundesbank's balance sheet, the institution reported. In light of the associated risks, the bank is increasing its risk provisioning, it said

"The increased risk provisioning is the main reason why the Bundesbank is reporting a balanced annual result for 2020 and is not distributing a profit for the first time since 1979," Weidmann said at the presentation of the annual financial statements. In the previous year, the profit distribution had amounted to 5.9 billion euros.

Merck, an American multinational pharmaceutical company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, will help produce Johnson & Johnson's one-shot Covid-19 vaccine, the company announced in a statement.

"Merck [...] announced today it has entered into multiple agreements to support efforts to expand manufacturing capacity and supply of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 medicines and vaccines," and will "support the manufacturing and supply of Johnson & Johnson’s SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 vaccine," the statement reads.

“We are steadfast in our commitment to contribute to the global response to the pandemic as part of the remarkable efforts of the entire medical and scientific community,” said Mike Nally, executive vice president, Human Health at Merck. “This funding from BARDA will allow us to accelerate our efforts to scale up our manufacturing capacity to enable timely delivery of much-needed medicines and vaccines for the pandemic.”

The son of Ann Hebert, now-former vice president and general manager of its North America division, has according to a Bloomberg report used a credit card in his mother's name to purchase sneakers for his resale business. Hebert has resigned from her post with immediate effect after being with the company for over 25 years.

Further reasons are still unknown at this point.

Amazon has announced that the "Amazon.pl" website has been launched and customers can now start shopping in Poland.

Alex Ootes, Vice President, European Expansion for Amazon has stated that Amazon is "thrilled to launch Amazon.pl and to be able to offer Polish customers a selection of more than 100 million products, including tens of thousands of products from local Polish businesses".

Berkshire Hathaway bought back its own shares in 2020 for more money than ever before. In total, the conglomerate spent 24.7 billion dollars (20.5 billion euros) on this kind of share price maintenance, according to its annual report published on Saturday.

In the fourth quarter, Warren Buffett's investment company invested nine billion dollars in its own shares, which was almost exactly the same as the record volume in the previous quarter. Berkshire Hathaway was able to strongly increase its net profit at the end of the year.

DigitalOcean, which offers cloud computing services and web development tools to SMBs, filed on Thursday with the SEC to raise $100 million in an initial public offering. The company has filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “DOCN.”