Techmeme
September 16, 2021, 11:35 AM

Top News

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Initial benchmarks show iPhone 13's A15 chip offers a roughly 15% improvement for GPU performance and 10%-18% improvement for CPU performance over A14  —  Earlier today, we reported on a Geekbench Metal result for the iPhone 13 Pro showing an approximately 55% graphics performance improvement compared to the iPhone 12 Pro.
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Dylan Patel / SemiAnalysis:
David McLaughlin / Bloomberg:
FTC says Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft made 819 unreported acquisition deals of $1M+, including for patents and acquihires, from 2010 to 2019  —  - Report shows hundreds of deals by tech giants went unchecked  — Antitrust enforcers must close loopholes, FTC Chair Khan says
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
Discord raises $500M led by Dragoneer, Fidelity, and others, source says at a ~$15B post-money valuation, more than double its valuation from last year  —  - Discord raised $500 million, led by Dragoneer Investment Group  — Startup turned down $12 billion offer from Microsoft
Sarah McBride / Bloomberg:
Brooklyn-based Genius, a music-annotating startup that provides context for lyrics, sells its assets for $80M, less than the total funding it raised  —  The sale price is less than the total funding raised.  —  Music-annotating startup Genius Media Group Inc., a site that drew attention …
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
After being sued by the state of California, Activision Blizzard is sued by a group representing employees, alleging it tried to prevent them from organizing  —  Organized by CODE-CWA, the suit claims Activision Blizzard engaged in coercive and intimidating behavior
Hugh Son / CNBC:
Goldman Sachs is acquiring buy now, pay later fintech GreenSky for about $2.24B, in an all-stock deal  —  - Goldman Sachs is acquiring fintech lender GreenSky for $2.24 billion as the investment bank pushes further into consumer finance.  — The all-stock deal for GreenSky …
Wenxin Fan / Wall Street Journal:
China's biggest movie star, Zhao Wei, who had 86M Weibo followers, was erased from China's internet on August 26, amid a clampdown on its entertainment industry  —  Zhao Wei was the Reese Witherspoon of China, then she was censored by the Communist Party amid a clampdown of the country's entertainment industry
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
French startup Skello, which develops a SaaS tool that lets companies manage their work schedules, raises €40M led by Partech  —  French startup Skello has raised a $47.3 million funding round (€40 million).  The company has been working on a software-as-a-service tool that lets you manage the work schedule of your company.
More: Tech.eu and EU-Startups
Andrew Fedorov / Input:
A look at CouchSurfing.com, which is now headed by Palantir alum Patrick Dugan, as it abandoned its always-free ethos at the start of the pandemic  —  Back in spring 2011 — the end of black truffle season, before the climbing roses bloomed — the Couchsurfers gathered at the Palazzo Massarucci …
Patrick Howell O'Neill / MIT Technology Review:
Sources: US firm Accuvant, now part of Optiv, sold iPhone hacking tool Karma to the UAE for $1.3M in 2016; the tool has been used against hundreds of targets  —  An American cybersecurity company was behind a 2016 iPhone hack sold to a group of mercenaries and used by the United Arab Emirates.
Christine Hall / TechCrunch:
CodeSignal, which automates technical assessments to reduce recruitment bias, raises $50M Series C led by Index Ventures, bringing its total raised to $87.5M  —  In less than a year after raising $25 million in Series B funding, technical assessment company CodeSignal announced a $50 million …
Politico:
Joe Biden announces a new Indo-Pacific security partnership with Australia and the UK to share tech in areas like AI, cybersecurity, and quantum technologies  —  President Joe Biden just announced a new working group with Britain and Australia to share advanced technologies …

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Catherine Thorbecke / ABC News:
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Elizabeth Culliford / Reuters:
Ryan Weeks / The Block:
Tom Warren / The Verge: