News

A profile of Eva Shang, whose investment firm Legalist uses AI to identify cases with a stronger chance of winning and has raised ~$400M in the past six months  —  Fund manager, startup founder, blogger: Eva Shang is cracking the private debt market.  The $400 million she raised in six months says Wall Street is…

A profile of Kuaishou, a Chinese TikTok rival, which is likely to hit a valuation of over $60B during its IPO this week, roughly one-third of ByteDance  —  Video sharing app is pivoting business model to advertising and ecommerce  —  Gu Jing spends two hours a day filming himself skinning pigs … Source

Apple says HomePod and HomePod mini will receive a software update in the future to natively support Apple Music Lossless  —  After a week of controversies, Apple released a support page with everything users need to know about Apple Music Lossless.  For example, we’ve now discovered … Source

Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, promising 10% faster CPU performance, 10% faster GPU clocks, and up to 30% better CPU and GPU power efficiency  —  Bragging rights (and battery life?) for gaming phones  —  Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 set the stage for the biggest Android smartphones of 2022 … Source

Adobe adds a new feature to Adobe Camera Raw called Super Resolution, which uses AI to double linear resolution of a photo, increasing its pixel count by 4x  —  Adobe has shipped the first version of Photoshop that can run natively on Macs equipped with Apple Silicon and also has announced … Source

Digital security company Elm, owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, jumps 30% to $44.30 in its Riyadh trading debut after raising $820M in its IPO  —  Elm Co., a digital security firm owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, surged 30% in its trading debut. Source

Apple pauses all product sales in Russia, removes RT News and Sputnik News from the App Store outside Russia, and disables Apple Maps’ live traffic in Ukraine  —  Apple today confirmed that it has stopped all product sales from its online website in Russia, which means customers in Russia … Source

Brightseed, which develops an AI-based system called Forager to identify and categorize plant compounds for human health, raises a $68M Series B led by Temasek  —  Who knows what secrets await in the hearts of plants?  Brightseed has found a couple of them, anyway, using an AI-based analysis method … Source

Online payments service Payoneer, which counts Airbnb and Amazon as clients, agrees to go public via SPAC at a $3.3B valuation  —  – Payment firm used by Airbnb, Amazon to merge with FTAC Olympus  — Company is profitable, expects $432 million in revenue in 2021 Source

Sources: VCs have approached Clubhouse about investing in its next round at ~$1B valuation, a 10X increase from the previous round; a16z is expected to lead  —  The race to invest in social audio app Clubhouse is on again.  Venture capital firms have approached the startup’s founders … Source