Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos among backers of £4.5m Wagestream start-up fund September 9, 2018 The founders of Amazon and Microsoft have backed a London start-up that allows workers to access their wages before payday. "Get-paid-as-you-go" platform Wagestream has received £4.5m of funding from supporters including technology billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Read more: Wonga goes under: Controversial payday lender placed into administration Wagestream, which aims to end the "payday poverty cycle", allows [...]
Elon Musk teases project to meld human brain with AI to create ‘superhuman cognition’ September 9, 2018 Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk has claimed he is just a “few months” away from a major announcement about a device which will fuse the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI). The eccentric billionaire, who has been the source of a host of controversies over the the past few months, said his Neuralink [...]
iPhone XS, Apple Watch 4, Mac Mini: Everything you need to know about Wednesday’s Apple event September 7, 2018 Apple is set to announce a whole new slate of products on Wednesday, including updates to the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac lines. Here's a roundup of what we've heard might come across the Steve Jobs Theatre stage this year. Three new iPhones Yes, you read that right. This year, Apple is slated to [...]
Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt at the V&A review: A fascinating deep dive into videogame design and culture September 7, 2018 Exhibitions about videogames frequently land wide of the mark. Either they’re bogged down in dusty arcade nostalgia – that decades old aesthetic of Pac-Man pixel art and bleepy chiptunes that just won’t go away – or they have the desperate air of a culturally sidelined medium crying out to be taken seriously by art critics. [...]
From Elon Musk to Elizabeth Holmes, beware maverick disrupters promising to save the world September 7, 2018 It has not been a good week for celebrity entrepreneurs. The world’s favourite failed healthtech unicorn folded for good. A maverick space technologist mired himself further in a pointless libel battle. And we also heard that Gwyneth Paltrow’s “wellness” brand Goop had agreed to pay $145,000 for making “unsubstantiated claims” about the healing properties [...]
Editor’s notes: Jeff Bezos should look closer to home for ideas on where to spend his fortune, new peer Bethell is a Lord to applaud, and the Economist shows how to stand up to social media bullies September 7, 2018 Amazon has joined Apple in the ranks of $1 trillion companies based on market capitalisation. Shortly before his company hit this massive (but meaningless) valuation, founder Jeff Bezos was pondering how to spend his vast wealth. Bezos is estimated to be sitting on a $130bn (£100bn) fortune – and earlier this summer he was asked [...]
Badoo founder backs London startup with a new dating app for over 50s September 7, 2018 Badoo founder Andrey Andreev has invested £3.5m into a new dating app for singles over 50, built by a London startup with former Guardian dating editor Charly Lester and app developer Antoine Argouges at the helm. Launching today in the UK, Lumen has put security at the centre of its operation by requiring all users to [...]
Shares fall as BA investigates data breach affecting 380,000 card payments September 6, 2018 British Airways has admitted that hackers stole customer data from its website and mobile app over the last two weeks. Shares in International Airlines Group, of which BA is a subsidiary, have fallen more than 2 per cent this morning as the airline launched an investigation into the theft, which it said affected at least [...]
Acorn OakNorth rises to $2.3bn valuation as it closes fresh $100m fundraise September 6, 2018 London fintech Acorn Oaknorth has been valued at $2.3bn (£1.8bn) after it secured $100m from two Singaporean state-backed funds EDBI and GIC, as well as NIBC Bank, Clermont Group, and Coltrane Asset Management. The deal represented a total 4.3 per cent holding in the group. The fresh capital, announced yesterday, will be used to power growth [...]
Magic Leap taps Andy Serkis’ CGI studio to power content for its new VR headset September 6, 2018 Virtual reality startup Magic Leap has teamed up with The Imaginarium Studios, a London firm founded by actor Andy Serkis to power additional CGI content for its latest headset, which it raised $2.4bn to develop. Imaginarium, which has worked on films such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, uses performance capture technology with actors to build [...]