When insurtech company Metromile went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in February last year, it was valued at over $1 billion. A year and five months later, Lemonade acquired the company for less than $145 million. As the markets turned early this year, insurtech left most generalist investors’ playbooks almost as fast…
Monthly Archives: September 2022
Insurtech companies have been among the biggest victims of the public market selloff, especially those that went public in 2021. Notably, Metromile saw its valuation decline over 85% and was subsequently acquired by peer Lemonade, and it hasn’t been alone in losing a lot of value and being eyed by peers and incumbents. All this…
Twitter is adding new features to make it easier for users to watch and discover videos on its platform, the social network announced on Thursday. Most notably, the company is launching a scrollable TikTok-like scrollable video feed. In the coming days, users on iOS will be able to click on a video in their feed…
After a decade of explosive growth, the company formerly known as Facebook is planning to trim down. Bloomberg reports that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to freeze hiring and restructure some groups within the company Thursday in an internal all-hands call. According to Bloomberg, Meta plans to shrink budgets widely within the company, including…
Meta’s researchers have made a significant leap in the AI art generation field with Make-A-Video, the creatively named new technique for — you guessed it — making a video out of nothing but a text prompt. The results are impressive and varied, and all, with no exceptions, slightly creepy. We’ve seen text-to-video models before —…
Ontario Power Generation has partnered with Ontario Tech University to test the capabilities of a Boston Dynamics Spot robot dog to improve safety in the nuclear power sector. The robot can be sent on autonomous missions, conduct visual inspections, and even act as a first responding firefighter in the event of an emergency. Read More
The new AMD Software: PRO Edition 22.Q3 Driver has arrived – and AMD claims it delivers the “most significant performance advancements to date in all OpenGL applications”. According to the CPU manufacturer, users can expect up to 72% performance uplifts compared to previous versions. The team has also ensured support for the Windows 11 2022…
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is warning citizens that the number of SMS phishing attacks impersonating the tax office has gone through the roof lately. “So far in 2022, the IRS has identified and reported thousands of fraudulent domains tied to multiple MMS/SMS/text scams (known as smishing) targeting taxpayers,” the IRS said in a…
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 12: Student loan borrowers gather near The White House to tell President Biden to cancel student debt – all of it with no means-testing on May 12, 2020 in Washington, DC. Paul Morigi/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million Student loan relief is rolling out soon for borrowers, as guidance on…
Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers. AP Photo/Michel Euler Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers sees today’s market risks as similar to those seen right before the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.A series of inflation, interest rate, and currency shocks have led to increased market volatility around the world.“In the same way that people became anxious in…