Technology Industry News: 20-24th August
Revolut Introduces A Metal Card
On August 22nd 2018, Fintech startup Revolut has launched a new premium card, which gives you a metal card and more benefits compared to Revolut Premium. Now you can claim cash back on spending’s in the fiat currencies: EUR, USD, BTC or ETH, and some cryptocurrencies. You can also get a higher ATM limit and withdraw up to €600/£600 without any fee, whilst premium users can only withdraw up to €400/£400. There is also a concierge service to book hotels, flights or restaurants if you’re a Metal subscriber. Revolut Metal costs €13.99 per month or €135 per year (£12.99 per month or £120 per year).
Uber Hires A CFO As It Heads For An IPO
Uber appoints its new CFO Nelson J. Chai, the former CEO of insurance and warranty provider Warranty Group. Chai will aim to navigate a successful IPO for the company by 2019. “I’m incredibly excited to bring on someone as experienced and thoughtful as Nelson,” Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said in a statement. “He will be a great partner for me and the entire management team as we move towards becoming a public company.”
TraceLink Raises $93 million
TraceLink, a nine-year-old SAAS platform that works with life sciences companies, helping them to protect patients and save lives by digitally transforming the pharmaceutical supply chain via its technology platform. It enables its customers to share real-time information with partners through out their supply chain all the way to the pharmacies themselves. TraceLink has announced it has raised $93 million in Series D funding. Investors include: Georgian Partners, Vulcan Capital and Willett Advisors, along with earlier investors such as Goldman Sachs, FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital and F-Prime Capital. The company has now raised $167 million altogether.
Farfetch Plans to Go Public As The Company Grows
The London-based online luxury marketplace formally unveiled plans for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, the latest sign of growth in a booming global fashion e-commerce space. Founded by José Neves in 2007, the platform has 500 independent luxury boutiques and 200 brands. It is now one of the biggest fashion technology companies in Europe, and is targeting a valuation close to $5 billion at IPO.
Semmle Raises $21M
Semmle provides software development tools that enable developers to identify and analyse their code more effectively. Combining a software engineering platform and deep data science insights, Semmle helps customers to better understand their code, engineering, development processes and people.
Semmle announced a $21 million Series B investment led by Accel Partners. It is now the second time Accel has invested in the company. “The key idea behind our technology is to treat code as data and treat analysis problems as simple queries against a database. What this allows you to do is very easily encode domain expertise, security expertise or any other kinds of specialist knowledge in such a way it can be easily and automatically applied to large amounts of code,” Pavel Avgustinov, Semmle co-founder and VP of Platform Engineering.
A Harry Potter-themed version of Pokemon Go is coming out
The company Niantic which created the game, will release a refined version of the game later next year. The title is going to be Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, and the game will allow you to play whilst exploring the real, physical world around you. The game is going to heavily rely on the Pokemon Go technology, that will enable you to wander around the real world collecting in-game items and exploring specific locations. In the game, you will likely use spells to transform things around you, and even play Quidditch and search for Voldemort.
Broadcom plans to acquire CA in $18.9bn deal
CA is one of the world’s leading mainframe software vendors and is now going to be acquired by Broadcom as the latter aims to become one of the world’s leading infrastructure technology companies’. Both companies boards agreed for CA’s shareholders to receive $44.50 per share in cash.
Hock Tan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Broadcom, said, “This transaction represents an important building block as we create one of the world’s leading infrastructure technology companies. With its sizeable installed base of customers, CA is uniquely positioned across the growing and fragmented infrastructure software market, and its mainframe and enterprise software franchises will add to our portfolio of mission critical technology businesses. We intend to continue to strengthen these franchises to meet the growing demand for infrastructure software solutions.”
Mike Gregoire, CA Technologies Chief Executive Offer added: “This combination aligns our expertise in software with Broadcom’s leadership in the semiconductor industry. The benefits of this agreement extend to our shareholders who will receive a significant and immediate premium for their shares, as well as our employees who will join an organisation that shares our values of innovation, collaboration and engineering excellence. We look forward to completing the transaction and ensuring a smooth transition.”