American manufacturing is showing fresh momentum, with factory activity climbing to its strongest level in four years as companies expand domestic production and investors warm to an industrial rebound. Recent data point to a broad pickup across the sector. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index rose for a third straight month, reaching its highest Read More…
A $16 billion financing package for a massive Oracle Corp. data center in Michigan has closed after months of difficult negotiations, the latest sign of both the enormous appetite for AI infrastructure and the growing wariness among investors asked to fund it. Bank of America sold $14 billion in bonds tied to the project, with Read More…
Daniel Loeb’s hedge fund Third Point has walked away from its activist campaign against CoStar Group, selling its entire position in the real estate data company after concluding that its original investment thesis no longer held, according to a letter to investors. Third Point had signaled in January that it would pursue a board challenge Read More…
A federal judge on Friday extended an emergency order keeping Nexstar Media Group and Tegna operating as separate companies for another week, as he weighs whether to issue a longer preliminary injunction that could halt the $6.2 billion merger while an antitrust lawsuit works its way through the courts. U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley of Read More…
A South Korean official who guided Seoul’s regulatory clampdown on cryptocurrencies was found dead on Sunday, according to a government spokesman. Jung Ki-joon, 52, was head of economic policy at the Office for Government Policy Coordination. He helped coordinate efforts to create new legislation aimed at suppressing cryptocurrency speculation and illicit activity, the spokesman said. Read More…
Insurance giant Anthem has pledged to make a $1,000 retirement contribution to all of its 58,000 employees and recent retirees in response to Republicans’ tax cuts legislation. Anthem made the announcement Monday. READ THE FULL STORY.
Apple on Wednesday made a slew of announcements about its investment in and contribution to the U.S. economy in part because of the new tax law. The headline from Apple is that it will make a $350 billion “contribution” to the U.S. economy. The company also promised to create 20,000 new jobs and open a Read More…
It was a nice run. For the first time in over a decade, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is worth less than its longtime rival, Morgan Stanley, at least in the eyes of equity investors. After reporting a plunge in bond trading, Goldman’s market capitalization fell to $99.4 billion at the close on Wednesday, a fraction Read More…
With Bitcoin crashing, some cryptocurrency HODLers are hurting. That might include the Winklevoss twins. Tyler and Cameron bought 120,000 bitcoins in late 2012 with money from the $65 million payout from their lawsuit against Facebook. That’s more than $1.32 billion worth of bitcoin at Wednesday evening’s value of about $11,000 per bitcoin. That seems like Read More…
Amazon has added a new $10 and Under section to its app and website, featuring, as one could infer, items that are priced $10 or cheaper. All items have free shipping, regardless of whether a user has Prime membership. The feature, first spotted by TechCrunch, looks to compete with budget shopping apps like Wish — Read More…
Google’s Project Fi cell service never played the “unlimited data” game that most carriers in the U.S. like to play (and which is never truly unlimited). Instead, Google simply offered data at $10/GB/month and would give you a refund for any data you paid for but didn’t use. Now, however, it’s taking its own stab Read More…
What happened Shares of Vista Outdoor Inc. (NYSE: VSTO) fell 62% in 2017, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, as firearm sales plunged in the United States. The company is restructuring in an effort to focus on key brands, but if the core firearm business doesn’t recover in 2018, it could be difficult Read More…
The US Supreme Court on Friday said it will consider whether businesses have to collect sales taxes on online transactions — a case that will affect how consumers are charged for their purchases on major e-commerce sites such as Wayfair, Overstock, and Amazon. The case, South Dakota v. Wayfair, will revisit a 1992 decision, Quill Read More…
Donald Trump campaigned as a jobs creator, with lofty promises of reviving American manufacturing and reclaiming jobs that had gone overseas. On a campaign stop in 2015, he proclaimed he would “be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of about 171,000 jobs were added Read More…
A couple of years ago, LG Display showed off an intensely futuristic 18-inch OLED display that could be bent and rolled up just like a newspaper. Today, that prototype has grown to 65 inches in size, with the company announcing that it’s managed to scale up the tech to the dimensions of a large TV. Read More…
When Amazon chose downtown Seattle for its massive urban campus, John Schoettler, Amazon’s vice president of global real estate, wanted to create a thriving “18-hour” neighborhood. To some extent, Amazon has succeeded. In a decade, nonstop development has transformed Seattle’s South Lake Union and Denny Triangle from a sea of parking lots, car rental agencies, Read More…
While much of the nation’s weather has turned frigid, the U.S. stock market remains red-hot. Notching its latest 1,000-point milestone, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 151 points, or 0.6 percent, to close at a record 25,073 Thursday. Stocks aren’t only scaling new heights — they’re reaching those peaks more quickly: The blue-chip index reached Read More…
CVS is confirming that it’s buying Aetna for $69 billion in a deal that will help the drugstore chain reach deeper into customer health care and protect a key client. CVS Health Corp. released a statement Sunday saying it will pay cash and stock for Aetna Inc. The mammoth acquisition pairs a company that runs Read More…
Sears Holdings Corp. drew down the remaining $60 million on a $200 million loan, signaling that the struggling department-store chain is quickly running through cash. The retailer set up a revised loan on Oct. 4 and borrowed an initial $100 million, according to a filing on Monday. It tapped an additional $40 million on Oct. Read More…
The Supreme Court on Monday accepted a second important case on digital privacy, agreeing to hear a dispute between the federal government and Microsoft about emails stored overseas. The justices increasingly have been called upon to settle legal battles between law enforcement and technology companies, and to interpret laws written before the technology revolution that Read More…
General Electric announced Monday that Jeffrey Immelt retired as director and chairman of the company’s board of directors, about two months earlier than expected. In June, GE said Immelt would retire from the board at the end of December. The board elected John L. Flannery, who became CEO of the company in June, to the Read More…
These are good times for AI entrepreneurs. Recent analysis of venture data shows that funding for artificial intelligence startups continues its upward trend in 2017, with investment hitting new highs. (For deep dives into aggregate Q2 venture performance, head here for the world, and here for just the U.S.) Venture, corporate and seed investors have put an estimated $3.6 Read More…
Playground Ventures — the VC fund co-founded by Android inventor and former Google exec Andy Rubin that sits alongside an eponymous incubator/startup studio and is making some big bets in areas like artificial intelligence and new generations of hardware– is raising more money. A Form D filed with the SEC notes that Playground Ventures is Read More…
Apple is getting closer to the $1 trillion mark. Shares of the iPhone maker hit another all-time high Wednesday. At $163.89, they are just $30 a share away from making Apple the first U.S. company to cross the $1 trillion threshold in terms of market capitalization. That would put Apple’s size slightly less than the Read More…
Expedia’s chief financial officer will be promoted to CEO, the company said on Wednesday. Mark Okerstrom will take over for Dara Khosrowshahi as president and CEO of the travel tech conglomerate. Khosrowshahi was recently named CEO of Uber. His job begins on Tuesday but Khosrowshahi will remain on Expedia’s board. (Expedia owns CarRentals.com.) READ THE Read More…
Patrick and John Collison have come a long way from the quiet village outside of Limerick, Ireland where they grew up. With little around except “mooing cows,” the brothers turned to coding to occupy themselves. To access the internet, their parents had to buy a special satellite. In 2011 the Collisons founded Stripe, an online Read More…
NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) – I spend a lot of time at Fox 5 covering startups. One of the biggest compliments you can pay a startup is to call it a disrupter, changing not just local business, but entire industries across the country and even around the world. Former TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus says we haven’t had such Read More…
Wikileaks today published a trove of documents, allegedly taken from the CIA, that detail the government’s efforts to hack popular devices like iPhones, Android phones, and Samsung smart TVs. But Apple is pushing back against claims that the CIA’s hoarded vulnerabilities for its devices were effective. The documents, if they are indeed legitimate, include charts that Read More…
Norwegian startup Gobi raised $500,000 at a $15 million valuation to take on Snapchat with its “Stories” communication tool. The platform enables users to create public and private groups where users can share photos and videos that stay around for three days before vanishing into digital pixel-dust. “We originally created a Snapchat group for our college,” says Kristoffer Lande, Read More…
The problem with the iPhone is that the current design isn’t suited to wireless charging. Apple makes use of a metal rear cover, and metal and wireless charging just don’t go well together (although there are budding technologies that allow wireless charging through metal, none are yet ready for prime time). In order to add Read More…
Amazon plans to hire 100,000 people across the U.S. over the next 18 months. The online retailer said Thursday that the jobs are full time and come with benefits. Many of the new jobs will be at fulfillment centers currently being built in a number of states, including California, Florida and Texas. From KULR 8
Apple will launch a legal challenge this week to a record $14 billion EU tax demand, arguing that EU regulators ignored tax experts and corporate law and deliberately picked a method to maximize the penalty, senior executives said. From CNBC
xAd, the ad network that serves you ads in apps and mobile web pages based on your location, is today announcing another hefty round of funding, as well as its first acquisition in the world of consumer apps to grow its audience and dataset. The company has raised $42.5 million, and it’s buying WeatherBug, the popular weather Read More…
After taking the top spot at Disrupt San Francisco’s Startup Battlefield, Mobalytics has been hard at work preparing to roll out their analytics-driven competitive gaming coach to more and more of the nearly 20,000 users who have signed up for early access. In the six weeks since Disrupt SF, the company has been raising Read More…
Google and Facebook are teaming up to build a 120 Terabits per second (Tbps) submarine cable that will connect Los Angeles with Hong Kong. The two companies are working with Pacific Light Data Communication — a wholly owned subsidiary of China Soft Power Technology that’s relatively new to the sub-sea cable game. Once the Read More…
Wyoming has the most competitive tax code in the nation according to the 13th annual State Business Tax Climate Index, released today by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. The report measures how well-structured each state’s tax code is by analyzing over 100 tax variables in five different tax categories: corporate, individual income, sales, property, and unemployment Read More…
Crowdsourcing live traffic data has been one of Waze’s key competitive advantages in navigation software for a while, but Germany’s HERE might give it a run for its money with new services that pull traffic info from cars on the road. The data gathered by Here’s upcoming traffic services, which it’s set to debut during Read More…
Uber today announced yet another rewards program for its drivers and riders, this time in partnership with retailer Sears and its “Shop Your Way” loyalty platform. The program offers drivers points redeemable for products at Search, Kmart and Lands End, as well as discounts on vehicle maintenance and repairs at Sears Auto Centers. Meanwhile, riders who Read More…
There’s an EpiPen Tycoon computer game. In it, you are the CEO of Mylan, Heather Bresch, the daughter of a US senator who has been handed a drug that lays a golden egg — EpiPen, an emergency anaphylaxis treatment that stops people’s throats from closing in the event of an allergic reaction. It’s Read More…
When Lori Goler, Facebook’s Vice President of People, joined the company in 2008, she got to work making the company a “strengths-based” organization. It’s a term based on Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman’s 1999 bestselling management guide “First, Break All the Rules.” The coauthors were Gallup analysts at the time and drew insights from 25 years Read More…
Women are going nuts overLuLaRoe, a clothing brand that has catapulted from near obscurity to cult status in the past couple of years. The brand, which sells brightly-colored shirts, leggings, and dresses, isn’t available in stores or on a company website. Instead, tens of thousands of people across the US — many of whom are Read More…