🔋 Google announced on Wednesday a new feature for electric vehicle owners that uses artificial intelligence to sort through thousands of public charging stations while finding the best route.

Google is using a newly developed routing algorithm that uses a type of math called “graph theory” to present charging stop recommendations to EV owners based on their location, the amount of range left in their vehicle, and the type of plug their vehicles use.

Google writes:
“Now when you enter a destination that requires two or more recharge stops, algorithms in Maps will search and filter through tens to thousands of public charging stations to find the most efficient route — all in less than 10 seconds. You can see how long each charge will take and your updated total trip time, so your final ETA will never again be a mystery.”

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/27/22252261/google-maps-electric-vehicle-charging-station-ai

💵 Apple delivered its largest quarter by revenue of all time on Wednesday at $111.4 billion in its first-quarter earnings report for fiscal 2021. It’s the first time Apple crossed the symbolic $100 billion mark in a single quarter, and sales were up 21% year over year.  

Apple released new iPhone models in October. The four iPhone 12 models are the first to include 5G, which investors believed could drive a “supercycle” of users clamoring to upgrade. iPhone revenue was up 17% from the same period last year. 

Cook said that Apple’s total install base for iPhones is over 1 billion, up from the previous data point of 900 million.

Apple’s results for the quarter ending in December weren’t just driven by 5G iPhone sales. Sales for every product category rose by double-digit percentage points.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-aapl-earnings-q1-2021.html

☁️ Amazon’s cloud-computing business reported 28% revenue growth in the fourth quarter.

Revenue at AWS climbed to $12.7 billion from $9.95 billion a year earlier. AWS revenue represented 10% of Amazon’s total sales.

Amazon said Andy Jassy, who runs the cloud division, will succeed Jeff Bezos as CEO of Amazon in the third quarter of this year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/aws-earnings-q4-2020.html

☁️ Google’s cloud business reported operating loss of $5.61 billion in 2020. It brought in $13.06 billion in revenue for the year.

The unit’s losses appear to be growing as the company invests heavily in sales staff.

The company said the cloud unit lost $4.65 billion on $8.92 billion in revenue in 2019, and lost $4.35 billion on $5.84 billion in revenue in 2018.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/google-cloud-lost-5point61-billion-on-13point06-billion-revenue-last-year.html

📰 Microsoft Corp said it fully supported proposed new laws in Australia that would force internet giants Google and Facebook Inc to pay domestic media outlets for their content.

Both Alphabet Inc’s Google and Facebook have called the laws unworkable and said last month they would withdraw some key services from Australia if the regulations went ahead.

Google’s search engine has 94% of the country’s search market, according to industry data.

Microsoft in its statement said it will offer small firms a chance to transfer advertising business to Bing with no costs and that it would invest further in the product to ensure it is competitive.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-media-microsoft-idUSKBN2A307W

🚙 Apple is close to finalizing a deal with Hyundai-Kia to manufacture an Apple-branded autonomous electric vehicle at the Kia assembly plant in West Point, Georgia.

The so-called “Apple Car,” which is being developed by a team at Apple, is tentatively scheduled to go into production in 2024.

“The first Apple Cars will not be designed to have a driver,” said one source with knowledge of the current plan. “These will be autonomous, electric vehicles designed to operate without a driver and focused on the last mile.”  That could mean Apple cars, at least initially, could focus on package food delivery operations and firms incorporating robotaxis.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/03/apple-and-hyundai-kia-driving-towards-deal-on-apple-car.html

🛰 SpaceX disclosed in a public filing on Thursday that its Starlink satellite internet service now has “over 10,000 users in the United States and abroad.”

Elon Musk’s company began a public beta program of Starlink in October, with service priced at $99 a month, in addition to a $499 upfront cost to order the Starlink Kit, which includes a user terminal and Wi-Fi router to connect to the satellites.

Starlink is SpaceX’s ambitious project to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a constellation.

The company has launched more than 1,000 Starlink satellites to date, including a launch of another 60 satellites early Thursday morning. SpaceX’s next Starlink launch is scheduled for Friday morning.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/04/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-service-has-over-10000-users.html

🚙 Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp. said that they aren’t in talks with Apple Inc. to develop an autonomous vehicle, responding to intense speculation about the potential new product by the iPhone maker and backing up reports that discussions paused weeks ago.

Apple paused discussions with Hyundai and Kia weeks ago about building an electric vehicle, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg late last week.

Apple has discussed similar plans with other auto manufacturers.

Shares of Hyundai fell as much as 8.4% in Seoul, while Kia slumped 15.3%.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-08/hyundai-kia-say-they-aren-t-in-ev-discussions-with-apple?srnd=technology-vp

📈 The price of bitcoin reached as high as $48,000 on Tuesday, building on gains following news that electric-car maker Tesla has invested $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency and may accept it as future payment for products.

For the bitcoin faithful, it was a monumental move by a big company to invest in the digital currency and allow payments. But on the other side, some analysts questioned Tesla’s move, given the volatility of the cryptocurrency, as well as share prices of the electric-car maker.

Bitcoin’s year-to-date gain is up more than 60% in 2021.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-blows-past-45-000-to-fresh-highs-above-47-000-driven-by-teslas-investment-11612861528

🚙 Electric-vehicle startup Rivian, which is backed by Amazon Inc and Ford Motor Co, is looking to go public as soon as September at a valuation of about $50 billion or more.

The company’s deliveries of pickups would start in June, while those of SUVs would begin in August. Launch editions of the vehicles are priced at $75,000 and $77,500, respectively, with a 300-mile (480 km) driving range for both.

In 2019, Amazon ordered 100,000 electric vans from Rivian. The first Amazon vehicles go into production at Rivian’s factory in Normal, Illinois in late 2021, with all deliveries to be completed by 2024.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rivian-ipo-idUSKBN2AA07S

🎧 Facebook has a team working on a new project that aims to replicate the core functionality of the buzzy new social media app Clubhouse.

The Facebook project is intended to create audio-based chat rooms for users, but it's still in the early stages.

Clubhouse quickly leapt from obscurity to notoriety in recent weeks, as big names like Elon Musk and even Mark Zuckerberg himself joined the service and participated in live chats.

Clubhouse's key functionality is voice-based communication: Users join group voice-chat rooms. Though Twitter has a similar function named Spaces, it hasn't caught on like Clubhouse has.

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-reportedly-working-on-clubhouse-competitor-2021-2

💛 Shares of Bumble, which operates a dating app under the same name, closed up 63.5% in their initial public offering Thursday on the Nasdaq.

The company closed trading with a market cap of about $7.7 billion.

On Bumble, founded in 2014 by CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, women have to initiate the first conversation for heterosexual matches. At 31, Wolfe Herd is the youngest female founder to take a U.S. company public.

The company said it had 12.3 million monthly active users as of Sept.

The company’s main competitor is Match Group, which owns Hinge, Tinder and several other dating competitors, and has a market cap of $45.5 billion.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/11/bumble-ipo-bmbl-starts-trading-on-nasdaq.html

⌚️ Facebook is pushing further into the hardware space by building a smartwatch that it plans to start selling to consumers sometime in 2022.

The company's foray into smartwatches will force it to take on companies like Apple, which leads the pack with around 55% of global smartwatch sales, Samsung, and Google, which acquired Fitbit.

Facebook has pushed further into hardware in recent years with its Oculus VR headsets and Portal video-streaming devices, hoping it can become less dependent on other dominant hardware makers, though it hasn't made much progress yet.

Still, Facebook hopes its smartwatch will make it less dependent on Apple and Google, whose operating systems power most of the world's mobile devices.

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-building-smartwatch-start-selling-2022-apple-health-data-privacy-2021-2

🚫 Facebook is being heavily criticized across Australia following its sudden decision to block news content there, amid a dispute over whether the social media company should be required to pay for stories.

Australians woke up Thursday to find they were unable to view or share news items on their Facebook feeds, while the pages of local and international news organizations were blank.

Australia and Facebook have been at loggerheads since the government introduced legislation last year that would force tech giants to pay local news outlets for featuring and linking to their stories.

The legislation cleared the lower house of Parliament Wednesday with cross-party support.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/outrage-facebook-blocks-access-news-content-australia-rcna297

📈 Bitcoin’s overall market value rose to over $1 trillion on Friday, as a combination of institutional buying and speculative hype has repeatedly vaulted the digital asset to new highs this year.

Each Bitcoin was worth $55,400 around 2 p.m. ET. It’s up 86% on the year.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/bitcoin-market-value-1-trillion-alt-coins-51613766413

💸 Tesla's $1.5 billion bitcoin investment didn't just make headlines, it has also made the company more profit than its car sales last year.

On Friday, the cryptocurrency smashed through the $55,000 level, bringing its market cap above $1 trillion.

This means if Tesla owns the same amount of Bitcoin as it did on January 31, it made a paper profit of about $930 million since January.

That's almost 30% more than its $721 million revenue from electric vehicles, per the report.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/tesla-bitcoin-gains-bigger-than-car-sale-revenue-report-2021-2-1030103815

🚙 Lucid Motors is going to become a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in a deal that will leave the electric vehicle startup with $4.4 billion in cash.

The California startup, which is majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, plans to start shipping its first luxury electric vehicle — the 500-mile range Air sedan — later this year. An electric SUV is slated to follow in 2023.

The deal values Lucid Motors at $24 billion. It’s expected to close in the second quarter of this year, and Lucid Motors’ shares will trade on the NYSE under the ticker “LCID.”

Lucid Motors was founded way back in 2007 as Atieva. It was initially focused on battery technology, but ultimately pivoted into becoming an electric vehicle startup a few years ago. It has since grown to more than 2,000 employees and begun construction on a $700 million factory in Arizona where the Air will be built.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22268085/lucid-motors-spac-merger-public-nyse-cciv-deal-air-sedan

🤝 Facebook has reached an agreement with the Australian government and will restore news pages in the country days after restricting them.

The decision follows negotiations between the tech giant and the Australian government, which is set to pass a new media law that will require digital platforms to pay for news.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government introduced last-minute changes to the proposed news media bargaining code that is in parliament and is expected to be voted into law soon.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/23/facebook-to-restore-news-pages-for-australian-users-in-coming-days.html

💵 At a virtual event for investors Thursday, Twitter announced that it’s planning to debut a pay-for-posts feature, called Super Follows, in which users will be able to pay the people they follow for their best tweets.

With Super Follows, Twitter will allow users to make money from content that they make exclusive to particular followers.

Basically, the premise seems to be that this pay-for-post feature will help build more specific communities around specific topics.

Thursday’s announcement is a sign that Twitter wants to be more than an incredibly public online discussion space and that the company is leaning into the smaller “micro-communities” that organically form on its platform.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/2/25/22301741/twitter-super-follows-subscription-communities-fleets

✍️ Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on Thursday filed to become a public company and revealed that its revenue more than doubled last year.

According to the filing, Coinbase had net revenue of $1.14 billion in 2020, up from $483 million the previous year.

The company said it has 43 million verified users as of the end of 2020, with 2.8 million making monthly transactions. Trading in bitcoin and ethereum made up 56% of users’ trading volume, Coinbase said.

The company will use a direct listing to offer its shares instead of a traditional initial public offering. A direct listing is an alternative to an IPO, and it involves investors and employees converting their ownership stakes into stock that’s listed on an exchange.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/25/coinbase-files-for-direct-listing-after-revenue-more-than-doubles-in-2020.html

🇦🇺 Australia’s parliament passed a law on Thursday to make Google and Facebook pay media companies for content on their platforms in reforms that countries such as Britain and Canada are looking to replicate.

After robust negotiations in which Facebook blocked all news content in the 13th-largest economy, the vote makes Australia the first nation where a government arbitrator can set the price tech giants pay domestic media if private talks fail.

Facebook’s news ban, which also blacked out many nonprofit and government pages, would be lifted the following day, eight days after the measure took effect.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-media-idUSKBN2AO2ZL