A Goldman Sachs-led $117 million round is the last stop before ‘market leader’ Locus Robotics’ IPO

Locus robots work alongside workers in a Ceva Logistics warehouse. Locus Robotics Locus Robotics raised $117 million in a round led by Goldman Sachs. The Series F round brings the company’s valuation to nearly $2 billion. CEO Rick Faulk said the company is headed for an IPO as soon as the markets wake up. Locus…

Moscow is now the fourth largest offshore trading hub for the Chinese yuan, as sanctions spur Russia’s dash to an alternative currency

Russia has been accelerating its use of the Chinese yuan to counter sweeping Western sanctions. Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images Russia is now the fourth-largest user of the Chinese yuan — after Hong Kong, the UK, and Singapore. Russia wasn’t even one of the top 15 countries for yuan usage up till May, according to Swift. The…

Krispy Kreme has exited Russia over the war in Ukraine. ‘Krunchy Dream’ is taking its place.

A Krunchy Dream cafe in Moscow. Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters A chain of new donut shops called Krunchy Dream has sprung up in Russia, where Krispy Kreme once stood. They are owned by the Novikov Group, whose owner Arkady Novikov is Krispy Kreme’s only former franchisee in Russia. Krispy Kreme had terminated the franchise agreement following Russia’s invasion…

Kanye West said the IRS put a $75 million hold on 4 of his accounts because he owes $50 million in taxes

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. Edward Berthelot/GC Images On a podcast on Monday, Kanye West said the IRS put a $75 million hold on four of his accounts. The rapper said he owes around $50 million in taxes.  He’s now estimated to be worth around $400 million, a massive drop for the one-time billionaire….

AWS makes Lambda cold start latency a thing of the past with SnapStart

At its re:Invent kickoff keynote tonight, AWS announced a small but important update to Lambda, its serverless platform, that tackles one of the most common issues with the service. Typically, when a function isn’t used for quite a while, Lambda will shut the virtual machine down — and despite improvements like faster Firecracker microVMs, this…