Techmeme
January 24, 2019, 1:35 PM

Top News

CNBC:
Sources: Apple laid off 200+ employees this week from Project Titan; Apple acknowledges it has restructured its autonomous systems tech team  —  - Apple dismissed just over 200 employees from Project Titan this week, its stealthy autonomous vehicle initiative, people familiar with the group told CNBC.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Jack Dorsey's recent media tour is largely performative, substituting talking for doing, masking Twitter's slow response to many of its issues  —  Jack Dorsey has a lot to say — but he has more to do  —  Jack Dorsey is talking.  —  He is talking to the Huffington Post's Ashley Feinberg.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Sonos is planning to launch wireless, over-ear headphones with the ability to work with multiple digital assistants next year, for $300 or more  —  - Audio device maker seeks new markets after disappointing IPO  — Company targets growing but crowded market that includes Apple
Nate Lanxon / Bloomberg:
Bing appears to be accessible in China again, as sources say the earlier block was due to a technical error rather than censorship  —  Internet users in mainland China have begun to report that Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine is accessible again after outages in the country persisted for many hours Thursday.
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Verizon's Visible, which offers unlimited text, voice, and data for $40/month, announces Android compatibility and starts selling Galaxy S9, S9+, and iPhones  —  When Verizon stealthily launched a new startup called Visible last year, it operated under a bring-your-own-device model …
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Robert McMillan / Wall Street Journal:
Inside Google's 27-person in-house counterespionage team, the Threat Analysis Group, which tracks 200+ hacker groups, many of which are linked to US adversaries  —  Google likely has 'the most useful data set available to any private company for tracking state adversaries and intelligence services,' an expert says
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Humio, which provides real-time log analysis for $200+ per month, raises $9M Series A led by Accel and says Bloomberg and Microsoft are clients  —  Humio, a startup that provides a real-time log analysis service for on-premises and cloud infrastructures, today announced that it has raised a $9 million Series A round led by Accel.
More: Tech.eu and FinSMEs
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google partners with Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sony's visual effects and animation studio, to launch an open source render manager called OpenCue  —  Google today announced that it has partnered with Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sony's visual effects and animation studio, to launch OpenCue, an open source render manager.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Netherlands-based Geophy raises $33M Series B for its AI-based commercial real estate appraisal platform, to expand in the US and Europe  —  Corporate real estate (CRE) appraisals are fraught with peril — not to mention subjectivity.  The average gap between a standard estimate …
More: Tech.eu and PE Hub Blog
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
In a video posted online, Xiaomi teases a working prototype of a phone with a double-folding display and a more symmetrical design than Samsung's foldable phone  —  China's Xiaomi has become the latest smartphone maker to tease a folding smartphone, dropping the below video clip of its president …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Jyve, which aims to connect workers with retail companies to fill gig economy jobs, comes out of stealth, says it has raised $35M in funding  —  The so-called gig economy shows no signs of slowing — in fact, the opposite is likely true.  According to a recent Gallup poll …
More: TechCrunch
South China Morning Post:
Research firm says China had 713 VC deals in Q4, down 25% YoY, worth $18.3B total, down 12% YoY, amid cooling valuations and tighter hiring for tech startups  —  - The number of venture capital deals in China dropped 25 per cent year on year to 713 in the fourth quarter
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Earlier Picks

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
Paresh Dave / Reuters: