Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, July 01

• Zenefits halves its previous valuation to $2B to head off investor lawsuits: Zenefits is executing a change in its current ownership structure that will increase the overall ownership of the company for late-stage investors; it’s a move that revalues the company’s Series C round at $2 billion and looks to placate investor concerns over the company’s regulatory investigations. As part of accepting the new ownership changes, the investors participating will sign a release of claims against the company. It’s another move that new CEO David Sacks is doing in what’s been a massive cleanup effort of the company following report after report of the company skirting insurance regulation. Since all those regulatory issues came to light, the company has laid off more than 350 employees and parted ways with its former CEO Parker Conrad. The biggest issue stemmed from a program called “The Macro” that would aid in circumventing state licensing requirements.All this is basically a way to reset expectations for investors, as well as try to retain employees following the changes in the company’s ownership structure. Shareholders were kept in the dark in relation to the existence and use of “The Macro,” which required a reset of the relationship. Zenefits grew like a rocket ship, reaching a $4.5 billion valuation in just about two years after the company started. That, at the time, labeled the company as one of the fastest-growing SaaS startups ever — but, obviously, there was a bunch of shady stuff going on behind the scenes to pad that growth.

• Apple is in “exploratory talks” to acquire Tidal, the streaming music service run by Jay-Z, the Wall Street Journal reports. Recode has confirmed that the companies are discussing a deal. The fact that Tidal, which has been shopping itself for some time, is now talking to a buyer with incredibly deep pockets — and a streaming service — is not a surprise. One thing seems certain: This is a different situation from when Tim Cook, Eddy Cue and companypaid $3 billion for Beats two years ago. Then, it was acquiring several executives, including Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, plus the Beats Music team and a hardware business that was selling lots of expensive headphones. Tidal, on the other hand, has much less to offer: Tidal has about four million paying subscribers, according to the WSJ. (For context, Apple Music has 15 million.) Those can’t automatically be moved over to Apple Music, but Apple should be able to persuade many of them to come over. It has whatever Jay-Z brings to the table for consumer marketing and artist relationships. Perhaps most importantly, a deal would take Tidal off the market as a competitor for artist exclusives, which have created much of its buzz. This presumably means Apple wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to stream the new Beyoncé album, for example. (Though Tidal’s artist and label deals will likely expire upon acquisition, as is typical.) Apple also probably doesn’t have much competition for this deal, so it would be in a strong position. Samsung, the most logical buyer, walked away from its earlier talks with Tidal, according to a source close to the deal. Spotify can’t afford it. Google, which also owns a streaming service, could possibly also be interested for similar reasons as Apple. All this is worth something, but not a ton.

• Oracle ordered to pay HP $3 billion in Itanium case: A California jury ordered Oracle  to pay Hewlett-Packard $3 billion in damages in a case over HP's Itanium servers, an Oracle spokeswoman said on Thursday. Oracle said it would appeal the verdict. The Itaniuum processor is made by Intel. Oracle decided to stop developing software for use with HP's Itanium-based servers in 2011, saying that Intel made it clear that the chip was nearing the end of its life and was shifting its focus to its x86 microprocessor. But HP said it had an agreement with Oracle that support for Itanium would continue, without which the equipment using the chip would become obsolete."HP is gratified by the jury's verdict, which affirms what HP has always known and the evidence overwhelmingly showed," John Schultz, executive vice president and general counsel of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, said in an e-mailed statement, saying that Oracle's decision to stop the software development "was a clear breach of contract."

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, June 30

• Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family: For years, Facebook has courted publishers of all sizes, asking them to depend more and more on the social media giant to expand their audiences. Now, Facebook has a new message for publishers: Tamp down your expectations. Facebook said on Wednesday that it planned to make a series of changes to its news feed algorithm so that it will more favorably promote content posted by the friends and family of users. The side effect of those changes, the company said, is that content posted by publishers will show up less prominently in news feeds, resulting in significantly less traffic to the hundreds of news media sites that have come to rely on Facebook. The move underscores the never-ending algorithm-tweaking that Facebook undertakes to maintain interest in its news feed, the company’s marquee feature that is seen by more than 1.65 billion users every month. It is also a reminder that while Facebook is vastly important to the long-term growth of news media companies, from older outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post to upstarts like BuzzFeed, Vice and Vox Media, publishers rank lower on Facebook’s list of priorities.

• Landing with a bump? Germany's Rocket falls back to earth: When German e-commerce investor Rocket Internet launched Jumia in 2012 as a would-be African Amazon, it was optimistic that a rapidly expanding middle class would quickly shift from street markets to shopping online. Four years on, falling sales for sites like Jumia and slower growth from Nigeria to Russia and Brazil is casting doubt on Rocket Internet's ambition to become the world's biggest Internet company outside the United States and China. Jumia made a loss of 17 million euros ($18.8 million) in the first three months of 2016 on sales that fell more than a third. The devaluation of Nigeria's naira last week is a new blow for Jumia, which now operates in more than 20 countries in Africa. Revenue growth has also slowed at most of Rocket Internet's other 11 leading start-ups, ranging from furniture e-commerce and food delivery in Europe to online fashion in markets from India to Latin America and the Middle East. That is the consequence of Rocket's shift to rein in spending on marketing and logistics as it seeks to stem losses which it said peaked at 1 billion euros in 2015. As a result, shareholders have cast doubt on the valuation Rocket has put on its portfolio and questioned the strategy of sending business school graduates to set up 150 start-ups in more than 110 countries in just a few years. Exclusive interviews with shareholders reveal growing scepticism about Rocket's sprawling empire as emerging markets sour and technology stocks cool. Its share price has fallen 39 percent this year.

• Google Capital Makes First Public Company Investment in Care.com. Shares in Care.com Inc soared 18 percent in extended trading, after the home care provider announced a $46.35 million investment from Google Capital, the growth equity arm of Alphabet Inc. Google Capital’s investment makes it the largest shareholder in Care.com, and Laela Sturdy, a partner at the fund, will join the company’s board, Care.com said Wednesday in a statement. The company provides child, adult, senior, pet and home-care services and had a market capitalization of $276 million as of Wednesday. Google Capital was founded in 2013 and has invested in numerous private companies. It pairs its companies with advisers spread across Alphabet, and in the last six months has tapped 300 different people to give advice to its companies, Sturdy said. This deal marks its first investment in a public company.Care.com said it used a portion of the Google Capital investment to repurchase 3.7 million shares of its common stock from Matrix Partners at a price of $8.25 per share, a 5 percent discount to the 30-day volume-weighted average price. It also issued a new series of convertible preferred stock to Google Capital at an initial conversion price of $10.50 per share. Dividends on the stock will accrue at 5.5 percent annually, the company said. Matrix had been an investor since 2006 and wanted to make some divestments, so it was a good time to do a buyback, said Sheila Marcelo, Care.com chairwoman and chief executive officer. “It helps us reduce pressure on our stock,” she said.

• It’s official: Kleiner just pulled off a $1.4 billion fundraise: So much for losing its mojo. Despite twists and turns in recent years that have sometimes rivaled those of a telenovela, and even with its most famous member, John Doerr, no longer a general partner, Kleiner Perkins has raised two new funds totaling $1.4 billion, show newly processed SEC filings. The firm’s digital growth fund — its third — has secured $1 billion in commitments. The capital will be managed by Mary Meeker, Ted Schlein, Mood Rowghani and Noah Knauf, who very recently joined Kleiner from Warburg Pincus. Kleiner’s newest (17th!) early-stage fund, meanwhile, has closed with $400 million in commitments. As you’ve read here recently, Kleiner’s early-stage team now features five general partners: Schlein, Mike Abbott, Eric Feng, Beth Seidenberg and Wen Hsieh.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 29

• Lyft Tells Investors to Expect No Growth in Rides for June: Lyft Inc. may be hitting a wall in its war with its richer competitor. Lyft told investors in a recent memo obtained by Bloomberg that it expects the number of rides it handles to be flat or down in June, compared with May. That follows a record month for rides in May. Lyft expects to beat its target for second-quarter ride volume by 35 percent, Lyft told its investors. "This implies June will be flat to slightly down from the record May level given we face traditional seasonality headwinds in June as most college students leave their campuses for the summer," the note said. "Additionally, June represents the first full month without Austin, after pausing operations in the city in May." (Uber and Lyft pulled out of Austin, Texas, after the city passed legislation that would require them to conduct fingerprinted background checks on their drivers.)  One Lyft investor told Bloomberg that, given the company’s heavy losses, if Lyft could sell itself for $5.5 billion -- the value of the company at its latest valuation -- that would be an acceptable price. Qatalyst could also help the startup sell a stake, rather than the whole business. The company also said in the memo that it reached a nearly $1.9 billion annual revenue run rate based on its performance in May. In November, it touted a $1 billion run rate. Revenue run rates apply monthly figures to a 12-month period. Investors use them to gauge the potential for growing businesses.While Lyft expects to lose hundreds of millions this year, Uber has lost money on a much larger scale. In three quarters last year Uber lost $1.7 billion. The company has committed to spending billions in China and India, and Uber has continued to subsidize rides against its global competitors like Didi Chuxing and Ola. Like Lyft, as a private company, Uber’s financials are private.

• Airbnb’s new funding round makes it the second-most valuable startup in the United States: Last year, Airbnb raised $1.5 billion at a $25.5 billion valuation. Earlier this month, the companyraised $1 billion in debt financing. And now, sources close to the company tell Recode, Airbnb is currently raising an undisclosed amount of cash at a $30 billion valuation. Such a deal would make Airbnb the second-most valuable startup in the United States, trailing only the $62.5 billion Uber. The New York Times first reporteddetails of Airbnb’s latest round. With all the new money, Airbnb plans to grow its global operation. Bloomberg has previously reported that the company plans to add booking features later this year for things beyond short-term home rentals (think museums, restaurants, etc.). In the meantime, Airbnb is being kept busy on the legal front. Earlier this week the company filed suit against the city of San Francisco for imposing stiff penalties on home rental registration rules that Airbnb helped write. The company is also locked in a battle with the New York government, where state legislatorsrecently passed a bill that would further restrict the company’s listings.

• Amazon Expands Items on Dash Buttons as Order Rate Doubles: Amazon.com Inc. has added more than 50 new brands to its Dash Button service for instantly reordering everyday items, citing a doubling in the frequency of orders over the last three months. After introducing the WiFi-connected plastic tabsthat can be mounted to the fridge, washing machine or kitchen cupboard in 2015, the online retailing giant has steadily increased the number of brands available for replenishment to more than 150, Amazon said in a statement Thursday. Amazon also expanded its product categories to include toys, such as Play-Doh and NERF darts and added new items like Campbell’s Soup and Cascade dishwashing soap. Members of Amazon Prime, which offers free two-day delivery on many items, are placing orders at a pace of more than twice a minute, Amazon said, up from once a minute three months ago. Total orders increased more than 70 percent in the last three months.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, June 28

• Lyft Is Said to Hire Qatalyst as Uber’s Rival Explores Deals: Lyft Inc., the second-largest U.S. ride-hailing startup, is working with Qatalyst Partners LP to explore deal options, said a person familiar with the matter. Qatalyst, an investment bank founded by Wall Street veteran Frank Quattrone, has orchestrated high-profile sales of technology companies. Lyft and Qatalyst declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal, which earlier reported the hiring, said Quattrone has contacted large automakers about buying a stake in Lyft. In January, Lyft said General Motors invested $500 million into the San Francisco company. Lyft, which was last valued at $5.5 billion, has been overshadowed by Uber. While Lyft only operates in the U.S., it has teamed up with China’s Didi Chuxing and other global ride-hailing companies to form an alliance to take on Uber.

• JD.com Loses Luster as Hedge Funds Backpedal Amid Slowing Growth:JD.com Inc., the Chinese online retailer that a year ago was a favorite among hedge fund managers including Tiger Management LLC’s Julian Robertson, is quickly losing its allure. The U.S.-traded stock has plunged 37 percent this year, wiping out almost $17 billion in market value. The number of shares borrowed for short selling touched a record on June 15 after more than doubling in less than a month. Hedge funds including Tiger and Lone Pine Capital have been bailing out. The turnaround comes as China’s slowing economy and intensifying e-commerce competition crimp the company’s expansion. With sales growth flagging, investors are increasingly questioning when, or even if, the 12-year-old company will ever become profitable.After revenue more than quadrupled over the past three years, the shortcomings of the country’s second-largest e-commerce company are now being laid bare by China’s slowing consumption. JD.com’s self-owned inventory and logistics have helped it grab market share by offering authentic products and speedy shipping. That model, similar to Amazon.com Inc.’s, also has driven up costs and led to operating losses as the company builds warehouses and employs more than 59,000 delivery staff, more than the total number of employees of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., its larger Chinese competitor.The stock slump has deepened since May 9, when JD.com said first-quarter revenue growth fell to 47 percent, from 57 percent the previous period. Its loss widened to 10 cents per share, from 8 cents a year earlier. The company warned that revenue may increase as little as 40 percent in the second quarter.

• Amazon Unveils Online Education Service for Teachers: Just ahead of the back-to-school season, Amazon plans to make a major foray into the education technology market for primary and secondary schools, a territory that Apple, Google and Microsoft have heavily staked out. Monday morning, Amazon said that it would introduce an online marketplace with tens of thousands of free lesson plans, worksheets and other instructional materials for teachers in late August or early September. Called Amazon Inspire, the education site has features that may seem familiar to frequent Amazon shoppers. Search bar at the top of the page? Check. User reviews? Check. Star ratings for each product? Check. By starting out with a free resources service for teachers, Amazon is establishing a foothold that could expand into a one-stop shopping marketplace — not just for paid learning materials, but for schools’ wider academic and institutional software needs, said Tory Patterson, co-founder of Owl Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in ed tech start-ups. Amazon is joining other tech industry giants in a push to expand the use of technology in the public schools. Last year, primary and secondary schools in the United States spent $4.9 billion on tablet, laptop and desktop computers, according to a report by Linn Huang, a research director at the International Data Corporation, a market research firm known as IDC. Schools bought 10.8 million Apple, Google Chrome and Microsoft Windows devices in 2015, he said. Because its devices tend to cost more, Apple accounted for the largest slice of school computer sales, amounting to $2.2 billion, Mr. Huang said. By volume, however, Chromebooks — the inexpensive laptops that run on Google’s Chrome operating system — have taken schools by storm, accounting for more than five million devices bought last year, he said. Even so, ed tech industry analysts said the growing market for digital educational materials, which Amazon is entering, is likely to prove much more valuable over time than the school computer market.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, June 27

• Brexit Pounds Some Technology Companies: Online marketplace operator EBay sank as much as 8.2 percent on Friday, outpacing declines by the wider U.S. equity market as analysts singled it out for its large exposure to the U.K. and Germany. Chipmaker ARM, based in Cambridge, U.K., gained as much as 6.8 percent on calculations that a weaker British pound will make its repatriated earnings more valuable. The pound sank more than 8 percent against the U.S. currency Friday, to its lowest level in 30 years. The U.S. dollar rose 2 percent against a basket of foreign currencies tracked by Bloomberg. A strong dollar hurts mainly when proceeds from goods and services sold in foreign currencies are exchanged into dollars. That can also make it more expensive to buy U.S. tech products. EBay has the most significant exposure among U.S. internet companies to the U.K. and Europe, according a report by Needham & Co. The disruption caused by Britain’s exit from the EU and currency fluctuations could slow cross-border transactions on online marketplaces. "EBay gets 31 percent of revenue from U.K. and Germany, more than Google or Amazon," said Needham analyst Kerry Rice. "This really impacts cross-border trade more than anything. It could shift spending behavior if currency fluctuations make a purchase cost-prohibitive." ARM investors were quick to turn to its own calculations on the impact of currency moves and bet on an increase in profit. The company, which licenses chip technology and designs, gets more than a third of its sales from the U.S., 19 percent from China and another 25 percent from Taiwan and South Korea. Singapore and Switzerland supply it with more revenue than its home market at around 3 percent each, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. According to a company presentation from April, more than 95 percent of ARM’s sales are in dollars. A 10 percent move in the value of the pound against the dollar moves earnings per share by 15 percent, it said. That suggests the recent drop in the British currency could boost profit by about 10 percent for the rest of this year.

• China Tightens Internet Rules for Baidu and Other Search Engines: Chinese authorities will require Baidu Inc. and other search engines to report banned content and verify advertisers’ qualifications in its latest attempt at Internet regulation. Under rules to take effect Aug. 1, search engines operating in the country will be prohibited from providing banned information in various formats including links, summaries, cached pages, associative words, related searches and relevant recommendations, the Cyberspace Administration of China said in a statement. They will also be required to report websites and applications that contain prohibited content when spotted, the regulator said. Baidu, China’s biggest search engine, has been criticized recently for misleading users with search results. The Cyberspace Administration launched aninvestigation earlier this year after the death of Wei Zexi, a 21-year-old computer science major, who sought out a controversial treatment advertised among search results. Baidu said it would restrict the number of sponsored posts to 30 percent of a results page and establish a 1 billion yuan ($151 million) fund to fight fraud after the death of the student.

• Line, the biggest tech IPO of the year, struggles to show its growth plan can work: In delaying its IPO by two years, Japanese messaging app company Line Corp bought time to correct weak financial reporting controls, work on its business plan, bolster staffing - and left billions of dollars on the table as its valuation shriveled. Line's initial public offering in the next three weeks is set to raise about $1 billion, which given a global drought of such deals could make it the biggest tech listing this year, but skeptical fund managers point to tepid growth in Line's home market and doubts about its prospects for regional expansion. They also question whether its advertising revenue strategy will work. Fund managers who have watched Line's growth slow in a crowded global messaging app market assess the plan with caution. "I'm not interested," said Yasuo Sakuma, portfolio manager at Bayview Asset Management, which manages 270 billion yen ($2.64 billion). "Its growth outlook is very poor." "Among the four countries that it's focusing on, only Indonesia has big room for growth in use," he added. "Even there, the business outlook is not that easy." Growth in Line's monthly active users has tailed off after tripling across the world over the past three years. Last year, user numbers rose just 13 million to 218 million at the end of March, the IPO filing showed. The company isn't providing much visibility about the future either - it says in its filing that limited operating history makes it "difficult" to forecast future results. "I went to the company's meeting with investors... but nothing moved me," said a fund manager at a major Japanese asset management firm who declined to be named because of company rules against discussing individual shares. "It's not clear how it can make money out of its advertisement business." Line's likely valuation is far less than the $10 billion-$20 billion that was expected by investors when South Korean parent Naver Corp previously talked of a Line listing in 2013-2014, although Line may not have had much choice but to wait.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, June 24

• Twilio, a Cloud-Based Business, Soars After Its IPO: Shares of Twilio, a maker of software that helps companies like Uber and Nordstrom communicate with their customers, soared 92 percent on Thursday, their first day of trading after becoming the largest technology initial public offering of stock so far this year. Twilio began trading in a market that has not been receptive to tech initial offerings. Only three technology companies have made their debuts so far in 2016.The company said on Wednesday that it had raised $150 million, pricing 10 million shares at $15 each, above the range it marketed to investors. The I.P.O. price yielded a market valuation of $1.2 billion, slightly higher than the $1.1 billion valuation Twilio received in a private funding round a year ago. Twilio, based in San Francisco, has been hailed as a trailblazer compared with the almost 170 unicorns — companies with valuations above $1 billion — that have chosen to stay private for now. Twilio was a test of investor receptivity to the software company’s finances, which show 88 percent revenue growth over last year but consistent net losses. As markets became more uncertain, investors preferred that companies going public turn a profit. Twilio had $167 million in revenue last year from about 25,000 active customer accounts. WhatsApp, the messaging service owned by Facebook, represented 17 percent of that revenue.

• InMobi, fined $1m for tracking users, had fine reduced based on 'company's financial condition': Mobile advertising network InMobi has been fined $950,000 by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for tracking the locations of millions of consumers, including children, without their knowledge or consent. InMobi was subject to a $4-million civil penalty, but it was reduced to $950,000 based on the company's financial condition. In addition, the company will be required to delete all information it collected from children, and will be prohibited from further violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

• BlackBerry Rises on Profit Forecast After More Software Gains: BlackBerry Ltd. rose as much as 4.6 percent after forecasting better-than-expected profit and insisting there was a way to make its ever-shrinking phone business profitable again. Fiscal first-quarter earnings per share, excluding some items, broke even, compared with analysts’ average estimate of a loss of 7 cents. Revenue in the quarter was $424 million, including software and services revenue of $166 million that was 21 percent higher than the same period last year ($137 million). Analysts had estimated total revenue of $471 million. BlackBerry changed its reporting structure to include revenue from both smartphone sales and licensing deals. The new unit -- “mobility solutions” -- accounted for 36 percent of revenue. The company sold 500,000 devices in the quarter, compared with 600,000 in the previous quarter. Shares gained 2.4 percent to $6.90 at 9:57 a.m., after reaching as high as $7.05 in New York in Thursday.

• Uber switches out surge for price transparency: No more pop-ups asking you to agree to those murky “2.1x” (or some other “x” amount) surge fares on the Uber app. Soon Uber will just tell you the price of your ride up front. Uber pricing will still fluctuate with demand, but now you’ll know the dollar amount you’ll be paying for the ride, instead; “no math and no surprises,” says Uber. The new costs are calculated similarly to the old “x” surge pricing so you might still end up paying a ridiculous sum in certain places or times of day where demand for a ride home is going to be high. The price is based on expected time, distance, traffic, the number of riders requesting rides at that time and the number of drivers available nearby, but at least now you’ll know exactly how much of a punch the ride will make to your bank account. Uber will also allow either the driver or rider to update the app if you change your destination in the middle of the ride and says you’ll get a notification in the app with the change in price. The rideshare company also told me you won’t have to worry if your Uber driver goes way off the map and tries to charge you more or if the route is suddenly busy and they need to change course. The price you agreed on will still be the price you pay. So no more lightning bolts and pop-up screens asking you to agree to “3x” surge or whatever it is after you stumble out of the bar or head all the way across town. Just like with hotels and airfare, the prices change all the time, but you’ll know what the price is before you book. According to Uber, “hundreds of thousands of riders” have already received the pricing transparency rollout — including those in Miami, San Diego, Seattle, New Jersey, New York and some of the bigger cities in India like Mumbai and Hyderabad. Uber plans to roll out the changes to pricing in the app globally in the next few months.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, June 23

• Clash of Clans May Spur Tencent’s Marvel-Like Aspirations: Tencent is spending $8.6 billion to gain control of Supercell Oy -- the Finnish maker of mobile games including Hay Day, Clash Royale and Boom Beach -- from SoftBank Group Corp. To see how that portfolio may fit into Tencent’s emerging entertainment empire, look at how the Chinese company leveraged World of Warcraft and League of Legends into global powerhouses.League of Legend’s 67 million monthly users helped Tencent earn $9 billion in game revenue last year, and the Tencent-backed movie “Warcraft” is setting box-office records in China since this month’s release. Acquiring Supercell reinforces Tencent’s entertainment aspirations against Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Baidu Inc., and comes after Tencent bought the rights to 300-plus Japanese anime franchises in a push to become a worldwide multimedia brand like Marvel, DC and Disney. “Tencent has taken on a strategy to convert good IPs into movies and anime,” said Mark Tanner, founder of China Skinny, a Shanghai-based research and marketing agency. “It’s creating a world of superhero characters for entertainment.” Supercell occupied the top spot on researcher App Annie’s rankings of publishers fortwo years running. Clash of Clans was named an “essential” app by Apple Inc. and was promoted during the 2015 Super Bowl in a commercial featuring Academy Award-nominee Liam Neeson. Yet the game hasn’t been among the 10 top-grossing apps in China and Japan’s iOS Store since 2015, which is where Tencent’s clout can help.The company’s QQ and WeChat instant messaging apps have more than a billion users combined, and it could use those apps to promote Supercell games, Tanner said. That distribution system helped Tencent’s mobile-game revenue increase 16 percent to 8.2 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) in the quarter ending March 31, compared with the previous three months. China’s mobile gaming market expected to reach 68.8 billion yuan by 2018. “We do see there’s an opportunity for IPs of games and movies and video to cross and splice with each other, in the right way,” Martin Lau, Tencent’s president, said during a conference call Tuesday.

• Okta hires Goldman Sachs to lead IPO or sale: Okta Inc, a U.S. cloud identity management company valued at $1.2 billion in its latest private fundraising round, has hired Goldman Sachs Group to lead an initial public offering or outright sale, people familiar with the matter said. Okta's exploration of both an IPO and a sale underscores the dilemma faced by several technology companies this year, as frothy stock market valuations of many of their peers begin to come down, prompting potential buyers to enter the fray. Okta could file for an IPO as early as the second half of this year, the people said this week. However, the San Francisco-based company has also held talks with technology peers about being acquired, and could pursue a sale if it believes it can fetch a significantly higher valuation than in an IPO, the people added.Okta helps companies organize passwords and authenticate the identity of employees who log into work applications made by other software firms. Its customers include satellite TV provider Dish Network Corp and hospitality company MGM Resorts International. Okta has raised a total of roughly $230 million to date with investors such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Khosla Ventures, Janus Capital Group and Altimeter Capital.

• Twilio prices its IPO at $15 per share, above its previous target: Twilio today said it would price its initial public offering at $15 per share, which would value the company at around $1.23 billion. That would value Twilio above its previous $1 billion valuation from its last financing round. With the pricing, the company expects to raise around $150 million, with an option for another 1.5 million shares to be purchased. It’s also a higher price than the $12-$14 per share price that the company previously targeted. Twilio’s IPO will be an important one given the drought of tech IPOs this year. Anxiety has gripped many startups that have hit unicorn status given the complete lack of tech IPOs for 2016 (Twilio will only be the third of the year). The hope, for many startups, is that Twilio will re-open the tech IPO window with a strong showing after trading begins tomorrow. If that happens, it might convince investors that many startups that have hit frothy valuations have come back in line with reality, and these companies could be good investment targets if they choose to go public. Twilio is not profitable, with the company reporting a net loss of $35.5 million on $166.9 million in revenue last year. But it’s showing strong revenue growth, with the company bringing in $88.8 million in revenue from 2014. In total, Twilio has raised more than $200 million in venture financing, with Bessemer Venture Partners owning the largest chunk of the company at 28.5 percent per its last IPO filing. Twilio is expected to start trading tomorrow, and we’ll see whether or not the appetite for tech IPOs will be coming back with its performance.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 22

• Tesla offers $2.8 billion for SolarCity in 'no brainer' deal for Musk: Tesla’s stock drove off a cliff after the SolarCity bid was announced, and Elon Musk and his family could stand to gain $700 million in Tesla shares from SolarCity deal: Elon Musk on Tuesday sought to build a clean energy powerhouse as his electric car maker, Tesla Motors , made an offer to buy his solar installation firm SolarCity Corp in a stock deal worth as much as $2.8 billion. Tesla shares plunged more than 13 percent to $189.99 in extended trading - amounting to a loss in value of about $4.3 billion, or more than the value of the offer for the other company. Shares of SolarCity rose about 18 percent to $25.02. Musk, who is the chairman of SolarCity, CEO of Tesla and the largest shareholder of both companies, described the deal as a "no brainer" in a call with reporters. Tesla investors punished the company's shares, however.  Musk, who owns 19 percent of Tesla and 22 percent of SolarCity, said he would recuse himself from voting on the deal. He could not say how soon shareholders could vote on the deal, as due diligence needs to take place first. SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive, Musk's first cousin, said he supported the deal but would also recuse himself from voting. Rive's brother, Peter, is also a founder of the company and its chief technology officer.

• SoftBank President Nikesh Arora Plans to Step Down: A former Google executive and Silicon Valley star was on course to be the next chief executive of SoftBank of Japan, one of the world’s most prominent technology conglomerates. Now he is leaving, in an abrupt shakeout that shows cracks in SoftBank’s global ambitions. When the executive, Nikesh Arora, was poached two years ago from a coveted role as Google’s head of business operations, the hire was widely considered a coup for SoftBank. Its billionaire founder and chief executive, Masayoshi Son, crowned Mr. Arora heir apparent. Mr. Arora was vaunted for his deal-making prowess and seen as an international executive who would help transform SoftBank with a flurry of investments. One of Mr. Son’s most cherished ambitions was to turn SoftBank, a Japanese business with some notable overseas names like the American carrier Sprint, into a truly global enterprise. The honeymoon did not last.Investors have criticized Mr. Arora recently for his record of managing SoftBank’s overseas deals. Investments in start-ups like DramaFever and Housing.com, these shareholders have said, appear to have soured as the companies have faltered. And the carefully orchestrated succession plan — or what appeared to be — has collapsed. Mr. Son decided he was not ready to give up the reins soon. Mr. Son, 58, said in a statement that he still wanted to “work on a few more crazy ideas” at SoftBank. Mr. Son cited differences over when Mr. Arora would take over as chief executive as the reason he had agreed to step down. Mr. Arora, who was born in India, holds the titles of president and chief operating officer. “This will require me to be C.E.O. for at least another five to 10 years — this is not a time frame for me to keep Nikesh waiting for the top job,” Mr. Son said. Mr. Arora, 48, also presented the parting as amicable. “Masa and I are still in love with each other,” he posted on Twitter. “I will support everyone I invested in, and they know that.”

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, June 21

• VR is the future of porn, and it’s a creepy future indeed: This got real weird, real fast. And not just because I was demoing the technology in the middle of the E3 floor, surrounded by fellow show-goers. It’s just — well, even after all the explainers in the world, it’s hard to sufficiently brace your mind for all that virtual reality porn entails. It occupied a small space, tucked in the rear of the LA Convention Center, but Naughty America may just have had the one booth capable of rivaling Nintendo’s for sheer show buzz. We must have walked by the thing a dozen times during our three days on the floor, and there was always a small army of show-goers lined up to take it for a spin. Much like, say, your standard first-person shooter, the technology is built around a POV (point-of-view) shot, putting the viewer in the place of the camera. The effect is already a bit jolting (and, at times nausea-inducing) in standard VR, but all of that really goes next level when you look down and you’ve swapped your bits and bobs with someone else’s. The company’s demo cycles through a few short clips, in which the scenery, scenarios and co-stars change, but, well, the view pretty much stays the same. It’s hard to say how much of the initial shock is due to the newness of the technology and how much is firmly entrenched in the uncanny valley, though the company told me that many attendees enjoyed the demo, strange setting and all.Once you get past the somewhat off-putting nature of swapping nether regions with a professional, VR porn does offer an interesting way forward for an industry that, like many others, has been hard hit by the prevalence of free online content.

• Apple May Soon Open Retail Stores in India: After months of delays, Apple is likely to open its first retail stores in India, a fast-growing market for smartphones where the American technology giant has little presence. New rules issued by the Indian government on Monday exempt foreign-owned companies that want to open stores selling a single brand of products from requirements that 30 percent of the content of those products come from India. The exemption, which lasts three years, can be extended to eight years in the case of companies selling “cutting edge” items, such as Apple’s iPhones and Macs. Apple, which makes virtually all of its devices in China, lobbied for months for the loosening, and Timothy D. Cook, the company’s chief executive, discussed it with government officials during his first visit to India last month.An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the issue on Monday. The company has not yet received any formal response from the Indian government on its application to open stores. By themselves, new stores will have little impact on Apple’s small market share in India, beyond serving as a marketing tool. Although Indians will buy an estimated 139 million smartphones this year, Android models that cost less than $120 dominate the market, according to the Gartner research firm.Apple says its sales in India grew 56 percent during its last fiscal quarter, but its cheapest phones typically run $400 or more. Its total annual sales in India were around two million units last year, according to Gartner.

• Chinese Curb Cyberattacks on U.S. Interests, Report Finds: Nine months after President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China agreed to a broad crackdown on cyberespionage aimed at curbing the theft of intellectual property, the first detailed study of Chinese hacking has found a sharp drop-off in almost daily raids on Silicon Valley firms, military contractors and other commercial targets. But the study, conducted by the iSight intelligence unit of FireEye, a company that manages large network breaches, also concluded that the drop-off began a year before Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi announced their accord in the White House Rose Garden. In a conclusion that is largely echoed by American intelligence officials, the study said the change is part of Mr. Xi’s broad effort to bring the Chinese military, which is considered one of the main sponsors of the attacks, further under his control. As a result, the same political forces that may be alleviating the theft of data from American companies are also responsible for Mr. Xi’s stunningly swift crackdown on the Chinese media, bloggers and others who could challenge the Communist Party.

• Wal-Mart to Buy 5% Stake in JD.com as Part of Chinese Deal: Wal-Mart Stores will acquire a 5 percent stake in Asian e-commerce giant JD.com Inc. in a deal that will reshape the U.S. retail chain’s operations in China. As part of the agreement, JD.com will take ownership of Wal-Mart’s Yihaodian online marketplace, the companies said in a statement Monday. The Chinese branch of Sam’s Club also will open a store on JD.com, and the two companies will link up their supply chains. The partnership gives Wal-Mart a fresh start in China after it struggled to adapt to a slowing local economy and a rise in online shopping. Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon has said that the company needs to succeed in China, where it estimates that 25 percent of global retail growth will come from in the next five years.A 5 percent stake in JD.com would be worth about $1.5 billion at its current stock price. Wal-Mart will receive about 145 million newly issued Class A shares of JD.com in the transaction. That deal will increase the retailer’s earnings per share by 16 to 19 cents in the second quarter, according to the statement.

• Apple to lose weighting in Russell index, shares could fall: After dropping more than $200 billion in market capitalization in one year, Apple shares could fall further as they are set to lose their weighting and be reclassified in the annual reconstitution of the widely followed Russell indexes. When all is said and done, about $1.3 billion more will be sold in Apple Inc shares at the market close on Friday, when the reconstitution of the Russell indexes takes effect, according to an analysis by Credit Suisse. Because Apple has been aggressively buying back and retiring its stock, outstanding shares have dropped to less than 5.5 billion from 5.8 billion in late June 2015, when the Russell indexes were last recalibrated, according to Reuters data. Apple's weighting in the Russell 1000 will roughly fall to 2.52 percent from 2.77 percent, Credit Suisse said. The decline is due to the combination of fewer shares outstanding and Apple's smaller part of the index's capitalization. The performance of a market-weighted index is more influenced by larger companies, like Apple. Adding to the selling pressure, Apple will be classified as both a value and a growth company at Russell. After the close on Friday, 92 percent of Apple will be considered "growth" and 8 percent "value" according to index provider FTSE Russell, splitting it between two Russell subindexes. The move matters because value managers that peg their investments to the Russell indexes will be buying Apple while growth managers will be selling. Because there are more assets benchmarked to growth than to value, there will be net selling of Apple, said Meera Krishnan, U.S. index strategist at Credit Suisse in New York. She estimated there will be over $850 million of selling in Apple out of the growth component of the Russell 1000 and about $400 million of buying from the value side.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, June 20

• Phone Tracking, Nude Selfie IOUs See Chinese Bare All for Credit: Talkative people pay back loans. The very talkative default. Too taciturn is no good either. Also, don’t take out a loan at 4 a.m. Those are lessons from online lenders in China that are tracking people’s behavior -- via apps on their mobile phones -- and taking it into account when deciding what their credit ratings should be. Chinese consumers don’t mind handing over personal details that would spark outrage in the West, in exchange for lower interest rates. WeLab Ltd., a Hong Kong-based online lender that makes loans in China, looks at what apps people have downloaded, where they go using the phone’s GPS tracker, their social networks and their school records. It offers discounted interest rates for each extra piece of personal information that helps profile customers for credit ratings. In Hong Kong, for example, giving WeLab access to a Facebook account gets a 5 percent discount on the cost of a loan, and access to LinkedIn gets you 10 percent off, on loans with interest rates that otherwise reach as high as 20 percent. "Chinese people have no issue handing over their personal data, giving you their credit card number, giving you their bank account," said GGV Capital’s Shanghai-based managing partner Jenny Lee, whose Silicon Valley venture capital firm has invested in data-hungry tech giants such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. "Look at the whole internet finance sector, people are giving you their bank statement so you can do profiling." Some are perhaps over-sharing. University students desperate for cash have been sending nude photos of themselves as collateral to several online lending platforms, according to the official People’s Daily. Typically they get loans of 15,000 yuan ($2,280) -- more if they’re doctoral students or enrolled at a famous university, the report said, and at least one loan had a weekly interest rate of 30 percent. Delinquent borrowers face the threat of their naked selfies being sent to family if they don’t pay.

• Apple says iPhones still available for sale in China: Apple  said its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were still available for sale in China after Beijing's intellectual property regulators barred their sales saying the designs had infringed a patent held by a Chinese company. "We appealed an administrative order from a regional patent tribunal in Beijing last month and as a result the order has been stayed pending review by the Beijing IP Court," Apple said in a statement on Friday. The notice, dated May 19, banning sales of certain iPhone models in Beijing was posted on a Chinese government website. The Chinese market is vital to Apple, driving more of its sales than any other region outside the United States. But the tech giant has faced greater scrutiny there in recent months, with its online book and film services blocked by Chinese regulators earlier this year. Apple historically had enjoyed favorable treatment in China, but Beijing’s crackdown on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is a reminder that the tech giant is not immune to the scrutiny that other U.S. tech firms have long faced in the country, said analyst Colin Gillis of BGC Partners.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, 17 July

• Uber Rival’s $28 Billion Valuation Shows Size of China’s Ride-Sharing Market: The Chinese car-hailing app Didi Chuxing said on Thursday that it had brought in $7.3 billion in its latest round of fund-raising, which included Apple, Alibaba, and SoftBank as investors. The new funds give the company a total of $10.5 billion in disposable funds, and put its valuation at $28 billion, according to a person familiar with the fund-raising. That Didi’s valuation is now almost half that of the $62.5 billion valuation of its main rival in China, Uber, shows how much potential investors see in China. Yet the size of the cash infusions also underscores the market’s difficulties. In part because of China’s widespread blocking of foreign websites, the competition between Uber and Didi marks the first time in recent history a major foreign tech company has vied so intensely with a local Chinese business. In other markets the contest over ride-sharing has focused on regulation and technology, but in China it has been much more about cash, with the two companies spending billions. The most recent round has also pulled in Apple, pitting America’s biggest tech company against America’s best-known start-up, Uber, in a tricky Chinese market. Both see China as critical to growth. The fund-raising comes as executives from Didi and Uber have signaled that they are focusing on profitability in China. Since then both companies have been locked in a spending war. Though it has primarily taken the form of subsidies, both companies have also tried to develop technology specific to China, and have actively wooed both local and national government officials. Didi has focused on technology that better predicts car arrival times, given China’s unruly traffic, while Uber has developed a commute function that links drivers with riders based on where they live and work.

• Why back-up cameras haven’t stopped drivers from backing into stuff: With or without eyes in the back of their heads, drivers keep hitting things. Despite the growing prevalence of back-up cameras, federal data shows that this technology hasn't significantly cut down on cars backing into people and causing them harm. That research on so-called "back-over incidents" comes as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration moves to make back-up cameras standard and presses automakers to add a bevy of new technologies -- from automatic braking to lane collision warnings -- to even entry-level cars to reduce accidents on the road.As car companies and even regulators increasingly lean on technology to make roads safer, the tepid success of the back-up camera is a red flag. Sure, drivers can see more of what's behind them -- the cameras reduce blind zones while in reverse by 90 percent, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety -- but they keep hitting things.Even with back-up cameras, drivers still don’t look around their vehicles enough when in reverse and sometimes get distracted by any number of things as their cars roll backward. Back-up cameras also often beam images to display screens in the front of the car, and drivers can become too reliant on them. Instead of looking backward and through their rearview window or checking mirrors, their eyes are glued to a screen.

• LG Electronics sells mosquito-repelling TV in India: The Indian arm of South Korea's LG Electronics Inc has begun selling a TV with a feature that it says repels mosquitoes, which can spread diseases such as malaria, Zika and dengue. The TV's "Mosquito Away Technology" uses ultrasonic waves that are inaudible to humans but cause mosquitoes to fly away, according to the company. It was released in the country on Thursday, LG said. The same technology, which was certified as effective by an independent laboratory near Chennai, India, has been used by LG in air conditioners and washing machines, the company said. The technology, which also functions when the TV is switched off, is available in two models, priced at 26,500 rupees and 47,500 rupees ($394 and $706). The TV is targeted at lower-income consumers living in conditions that would make them vulnerable to mosquitoes. It will go on sale next month in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Kim Sang-yeol, an LG Electronics official, said there are no plans for now to market it elsewhere.

• Oracle's cloud strength boosts quarterly revenue: Business software maker Oracle Corp reported a higher-than-expected quarterly revenue as sales in its cloud business surged due to more customers. Shares of the Redwood City, California-based company rose as much as 3.8 percent to $40.10 in extended trading on Thursday. Like its rivals such as SAP SE, IBM Corp and Microsoft Corp, Oracle has focused on moving its business toward the cloud-computing model, essentially providing services remotely via data centers rather than selling installed software. Total revenue from the company's cloud-computing software and platform service rose 49.1 percent to $859 million in the fourth quarter ended May 31. It contributed 8 percent of Oracle's total revenue during thequarter. The company's total revenue fell 1 percent to $10.59 billion, beating analysts' average estimate of $10.47 billion. Oracle's net income rose to $2.81 billion, or 66 cents per share, in the quarter ended May 31, from $2.76 billion, or 62 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, it earned 81 cents per share, meeting average analysts' estimate. Up to Thursday's close, Oracle's stock had risen 5.8 percent this year.

• Salesforce also made a bid for LinkedIn, CEO Benioff confirms: Salesforce was also a serious bidder for LinkedIn, the business networking site that sold to Microsoft for $26 billion this week, said CEO Marc Benioff. While he would not give details of the effort, sources said Salesforce was primarily interested in LinkedIn's recruiting business, which makes up the bulk of its revenue. Sources said LinkedIn was already deep into negotiations with Microsoft when Salesforce made its approach, which would have required both debt and stock financing. Microsoft was able to buy LinkedIn in cash and also promised to let it operate independently. Interestingly, sources confirmed numerous reports that Microsoft had tried to buy Salesforce earlier this year, and both price and the way it would be operated within the company were among the issues that resulted in it not happening. Indeed. Salesforce recently bought Demandware for $2.8 billion.

• InMobi Technologies to discontinue use of mascot function on Miip platform:  InMobi on Thursday said it has shuttered the animated-discovery commerce part of Miip for now, a product it launched amid much fanfare in July last year. Instead, the firm will look to help e-commerce companies reach inactive customers using more traditional ad formats, using the underlying technology it built for the platform. In July, InMobi launched a beta version of Miip, which took the form of an animated monkey, that tracked users’ browsing habits across various mobile apps and showed ads in the forms of bubbles and animations instead of traditional display ads. It allowed consumers to interact with the mascot and tell it what they liked, and how they felt about the products and ads they saw. The promise of such a technology was that first, it enabled personalised discovery of products, and second, the completion of purchases within the ad itself as InMobi had tied up with payments providers like Stripe, AliPay and Paytm. This hasn’t worked out. “The larger vision behind Miip is to enable consumers to buy products and complete transactions through ads. The mascot was conceptualized simply as a ‘face’ to the Miip platform. Over the course of testing, users responded better to an advertiser’s brand as against the Miip branding on an ad unit,” said Arun Pattabhiraman, vice president and global head of marketing, InMobi

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, June 16

• Good VR is great — and bad VR is abysmal: VR is a powerful medium, but difficult to work with — because the developer is put in the position of creating a sense of self and presence, more is required of them, and while successes are almost impossible to describe properly, failures are conspicuous and easily dissected. It’s easiest to illustrate with actual examples. Easily the most interesting VR experience I’ve had at E3 (of a dozen or so) was an Oculus demo called “The Climb,” by a team at Crytek. Using the Touch controllers (a new innovation; previously a gamepad was used), you manipulate a pair of disembodied hands, gripping ridges and cracks to make your way up a cliff face. Like many VR games, it sounds rather… boring. In fact, it’s genius, but only within VR — and like so many other games, the only way to find that out is to play it. Nevertheless, It’s excellent for several reasons, and these act as sort of guidelines for content that fits VR’s strengths and avoid its weaknesses. Alas, I was disappointed by “Final Fantasy XV: The VR Experience,” despite being hyped for the game itself. Here, I found, was the worst possible outcome: a game that should and could be interesting, but does almost nothing right. Unlike “The Climb,” it sounds like a blast on paper. You and the other main characters from the game are in a battle with a Behemoth, one of the game’s most well-known monsters. You’re Prompto, the one who has a gun, supporting your buddies as they fight hand to hand. What it amounts to, however, and I’m heartily sorry to say it, is a disjointed and boring five minutes that may leave you less excited for the game than when you donned the headset.

• What are leveraged loans and why does Uber want one? Uber, fresh off $3.5 billion from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, is in talks to closeanother $1-2 billion in the form of leveraged loans. Over the last 24 hours, the term “leveraged loans” has been thrown around a lot, but few in the startup world have seen this term before.The Wall Street Journal reported that the company would like to settle on a 4-4.5 percent interest rate. This appears ambitious but let’s assume that it is accurate. While not completely applicable, Apple issued $12 billion in bonds at a 3.22 percent blended interest rate excluding floating rate debt. Yes, 4.5 percent is greater than 3.22 percent but junk bond references by the Wall Street Journal and Recode should be taken lightly. Junk bonds can generate upwards of 7 percent interest. Plenty of well-known publicly traded companies have issued bonds at rates higher than 4.5 percent and survived to fight another day. Yes, both leveraged loans and junk bonds have higher-than-normal interest rates. Unlike junk bonds, a 4-4.5 percent interest rate for Uber shouldn’t invoke images of the subprime mortgage crisis.

• SpaceX’s latest rocket landing ended in a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’: Elon Musk's SpaceX failed to complete what would have been its fifth landing of a reusable booster rocket Wednesday, a down note on what appeared to be an otherwise successful mission to deliver two Boeing-built communication satellites to high orbit above the Earth. "Falcon 9 was lost in this attempt," the company said in its webcast. As the satellites headed on their way Wednesday, the booster rocket began its descent toward the ocean for a landing on a special floating platform. Video footage of the attempt seemed to show the booster touching down, then flames, before the picture froze.As with previous attempts, SpaceX had said landing the reusable booster rocket would be made more difficult by the fact that it would be falling from higher up. And, the company said, the rocket would have less fuel than normal to control its descent. SpaceX founder Elon Musk later tweeted that it appeared the the thrust in one of three landing engines was insufficient, causing the rocket to come in far too fast. In what he said may have been SpaceX's "hardest impact" ever, the booster ultimately suffered an RUD, or "rapid unscheduled disassembly." Upgrades to compensate for the problem could come by year's end, said Musk.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 15

• Uber Sets Sights on Leveraged Loans for Even More Money: Uber has raised more than $14 billion using all sorts of creative funding sources. Now it may add something new to the list: the leveraged loan market. The ride-hailing start-up is looking to issue as much as $2 billion in securities to investors, said a person briefed on the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are managing the process, said the person, adding that the deal has not begun yet and may still fall apart.By tapping leveraged loans, Uber is adding to its trove of billions made up of many types of securities, which the company has been spending as it expands worldwide. Uber has raised equity from traditional venture capital sources, strategic corporate investors and private equity. This month, the company said that it had raised $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Uber has also raised billions in convertible debt, which can be exchanged for equity at a future date. Uber has redefined private fund-raising, drawing hundreds of millions in new cash or debt at a rapid pace of once every few months. The company needs financing as it now operates in at least 69 countries and is fighting an expensive battle in China against a rival, Didi Chuxing, which is also raising money to expand. Leveraged loans are rarely used among start-ups. A leveraged loan is a security issued to a company that has a lot of debt on its books already, and thus is perceived by investors as being a higher risk. The loans are typically used for leveraged buyouts and are seldom seen in Silicon Valley. Uber has been able to tap less traditional funding sources because investors think its size and scale make it a safer bet than other Silicon Valley companies. Uber’s valuation of $62.5 billion — making it the highest valued venture-backed start-up in the world — would not change with this new investment. Leveraged loans also allow Uber to raise money without diluting the holdings of its many equity investors — some of which have been through more than a dozen rounds of financing.

• Twitter has invested in music streaming service SoundCloud: Two years ago Twitter thought about buying SoundCloud, but ended up walking away from the music service. Now Twitter has bought a piece of SoundCloud instead. Twitter has invested around $70 million in the music service, as part of a round that should end up in the $100 million-range, according to sources familiar with the deal. The round is expected to value SoundCloud at about $700 million — the same value that investors placed on the company in 2014, when it raised $60 million; since then it has also raised a debt round. It’s unclear whether the Twitter investment is part of a strategic partnership, but that would make sense: Twitter might view via an integration with SoundCloud as a way to increase growth and engagement, and SoundCloud may look at Twitter as a way to promote its newly launched subscription service, which is crucial to the company’s plans. And both companies could use some help. Twitter has been punished by Wall Street for its inability to add users at a rapid clip; SoundCloud’s flat valuation indicates that investors are also worried about its own growth prospects.

• Alibaba Tries to Shore Up Investors’ Confidence: The Alibaba Group of China has disappointed investors since its record-breaking American stock listing nearly two years ago, as volatile financial results and regulatory run-ins have driven the price of its shares down almost to where they began. Now the e-commerce giant is trying to reassure. For the first time, Alibaba on Tuesday offered investors financial guidance for the coming year, saying that it expected revenue growth to accelerate from last year’s pace. At a meeting at its Hangzhou headquarters, Alibaba cited strength in its core business, despite China’s slowing economic growth, as well as benefits from new ventures that have raised eyebrows among some investors The forecast comes as Alibaba seeks to demonstrate that its strategy, which has long focused on growth, is good for business. In China, Alibaba operates online sales platforms that connect consumers with mom-and-pop stores, as well as with global brands like Burberry and Zara. It has been showing sales growth on its platforms using a measure called gross merchandise volume, a yardstick for transactions across its platforms. Alibaba said on Tuesday that it would de-emphasize that figure, saying it would no longer report it quarterly. It will continue to report an annual figure, and offered a target for 2020.

• India's Space Program Takes On Elon Musk: India’s space agency will launch a record 22 satellites on a single rocket as it tries to ease a global backlog and demonstrate the ability to compete with commercial spaceflight companies run by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.Satellites from the U.S., India, Canada and Germany will enter orbit after a scheduled June 20 liftoff from the Sriharikota barrier island along the southeast coast, the agency’s chairman, A.S. Kiran Kumar, said in an interview in Bengaluru.The 22 machines being launched next week include an Earth observation satellite to capture light invisible to the naked eye. It is the biggest single launch by India, trailing Russia’s 33 in 2014 and NASA’s 29 the year before. India last month successfully launched a scale model of a reusable spacecraft, a project that in time could pit the nation against Bezos and Musk in the race to make access to space cheaper and easier. The country also injected a probe into Mars’ atmosphere in 2014 for just $74 million, about 11 percent of the cost of the U.S.’s Maven probe.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, June 14

• Microsoft, Reasserting Its Muscle, Buys LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion:  Microsoft has made its most ambitious move in years to reassert itself in a technology market it once dominated. The software giant said Monday morning that it would acquire LinkedIn in a $26.2 billion cash deal. The acquisition, by far the largest in Microsoft’s history, unites two companies in different businesses: one a big maker of software tools, the other the largest business-oriented social networking site, with more than 400 million members globally. The deal is Microsoft’s biggest bet yet that the traditional software business is shifting quickly to cloud computing, a model in which customers rent software and other services delivered over the internet. While LinkedIn does not have the household name of Facebook, a much larger and more lucrative social network, it is the most widely used site for people to advertise their professional skills and work history.Though they operate in different businesses, Microsoft and LinkedIn make most of their money by catering to professionals. Executives involved in the deal said that the common thread prompted the acquisition. “They know the interconnections of the business world,” said Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner, a technology research firm. “That could really benefit Microsoft from a sales standpoint.”

• How generous is Microsoft’s takeover bid? It puts LinkedIn’s enterprise value at 79 times the social network’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, for the 12 months that ended on March 31. On the basis of that multiple, the transaction is more expensive than any big internet deal paid with cash, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Microsoft is paying $220 for each of LinkedIn’s monthly active users. By comparison, when Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion two years ago, it spent $40 for every user. For LinkedIn, the attractions of the deal are obvious: Its shares fell nearly 42 percent from the beginning of the year through last week, as investors expressed disappointment over a weak earnings forecast for 2016. Finding a buyer with deep pockets dulls the pain of being a publicly traded company.

• One Unspoken Reason Behind the LinkedIn Sale: “Let me explain why.” Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s chief executive, wrote a lengthy memorandum to his employees Monday morning, ticking off a list of reasons behind the surprise decision to sell the company to Microsoft for $26.2 billion: Most important, he said, was the heft that Microsoft gives LinkedIn “to control our own destiny.” But there may have been another reason that he left unspoken. That would be the company’s struggling stock price and its reliance — some might say overreliance — on stock-based compensation.On one grim day in early February, LinkedIn’s stock price plummeted more than 40 percent after it forecast weaker-than-expected growth for the year. The share price had hovered at $225 at the beginning of 2016; a month later it briefly got close to $100. The rapid devaluation has posed more than just a problem for investors. LinkedIn’s employees are paid largely in stock, and therein lies the rub: Around the company’s new 26-story skyscraper that opened in downtown San Francisco in March, as well as the corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., there have been persistent whispers about whether LinkedIn could retain its top talent as the marketplace clobbered their incomes.Mr. Weiner — who took over as LinkedIn’s chief in 2009, succeeding Reid Hoffman, the founder — has done a tremendous job in the past years building the company’s business, which is primarily about helping people connect to one another for employment and conduct business-oriented social networking. But despite all the headlines about growth and profits, LinkedIn has been a money-losing operation for the last two years. You wouldn’t know that if you only glanced at LinkedIn’s news releases. That’s because LinkedIn steers investors to focus on what’s known as its adjusted Ebitda, or non-GAAP earnings. The company purposely strips out the cost of stock-based compensation, which has the effect of turning losses into gains. LinkedIn paid out $510 million in stock-based compensation last year; over the last two years, that stock-based compensation represented a whopping 96 percent of operating income, or 16 percent of revenue, according to Mr. Mahaney. Companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook paid out about 15 percent of operating income, or well under 10 percent of revenue.

• Baidu Reduces Revenue Forecast on Ad Restrictions: Baidu, China’s biggest internet search engine, cut its revenue forecast for the second quarter, saying regulatory restrictions cut advertising from drug companies and other health-care groups. Shares declined as much as 8.9 percent in extended trading after the announcement. The company said it projects sales of 18.1 billion yuan ($2.81 billion) to 18.2 billion yuan compared with its previous forecast of 20.1 billion to 20.6 billion yuan. The new regulations on online marketing by health-care companies have caused a reduction or delay in advertising “from a significant portion” of medical customers, Baidu said in a statement Monday. The company said the lower revenue also is a result of the cut in the number of sponsored links, which Baidu announced last month. While these actions will have a negative impact in the short term, Baidu said it expects users to become accustomed to the changes and health-care advertising will eventually recover. Last month, Baidu announced that it will restrict the number of sponsored posts to 30 percent of a results page, and establish a 1 billion yuan fund to fight fraud after the death of Wei Zexi, a 21-year-old computer science student who sought out a controversial treatment advertised among search results.

• Does the LinkedIn sale put Twitter in play? Yes, it does: LinkedIn just gave Twitter investors something they haven’t felt in a long time: Hope. News that LinkedIn sold to Microsoft on Monday for more than $26 billion has pushed Twitter stock up more than 8 percent in early-morning trading. The reason? If Microsoft is willing to break the bank for LinkedIn, maybe there’s a savior out there for Twitter, too! There have long been talks that a big tech company like Google or Facebook or even Microsoft might swoop in for Twitter. Now that feels almost inevitable, especially given that Twitter’s stock is down nearly 60 percent from where it was a year ago when then-CEO Dick Costolo announced he was stepping down. Simply put, that means the LinkedIn acquisition has done more to boost Twitter’s value than CEO Jack Dorsey has. Of course, the stock move is typical investor arbitrage, but if Twitter’s shares stay up, it's a clear signal investors would rather see it in someone else’s hands. Who might save Twitter? It could still be Google, or perhaps a bigger media player like Comcast*. We talk all the time with smart people close to Twitter, and the growing feeling is that Twitter’s best option is to finally sell to someone with deep pockets. With LinkedIn now off the market, those deep pockets may come take a closer look.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, June 13

• Apple Starts to Woo Its App Developers: When Apple’s App Store opened in 2008, there were well under a thousand apps, and the relationship was obviously beneficial for both sides. But now, when there are more than 1.5 million apps fighting for attention in the App Store, the benefits for developers, particularly smaller ones, have become much less apparent. “Is Apple coasting on its relationship and lead with developers? I think the answer is yes,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners. “Their app store is considered an unappealing experience by many people. Their rules are arbitrary, and they take a big slice of money from sales.” For a long time, Apple didn’t have to care. But now it faces flat sales of its flagship iPhones, a lack of excitement about newer products like its smart watch and Apple TV, growing competition from Google’s Android platform and the rise of new challengers like Amazon’s Echo device, which responds to a user’s voice commands at home with the kind of magic that used to be an Apple hallmark. As the company prepares to hold its annual developer conference in San Francisco next week, there are signs that it wants to improve its relationship with app makers. Among the announcements expected at the gathering: Apple plans to finally give developers access to its Siri voice assistant so they can incorporate it into their apps.Apple’s charm offensive began in earnest in December, after it put Philip W. Schiller, its senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in charge of the App Store. Under Mr. Schiller, the company accelerated the app approval process, cutting typical review times from two weeks to a day or two. On Wednesday, Apple announced that it would soon begin allowing app makers to buy ads that would appear at the top of search results in the App Store, like the ads already on Google’s Play Store and website. Apple also said that it would cut its usual 30 percent commission on all subscriptions to 15 percent after an app subscriber had been active for at least a year.

• What happens when your search engine is first to know you have cancer:This week researchers demonstrated that by analyzing a person’s Web searches they could in some cases predict an upcoming diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. The team of researchers aren’t pancreatic cancers experts, but computer scientists at Microsoft. Unlike traditional medical professionals, they have the advantage of access to a trove of data that Microsoft collects through its search engine, Bing. The Microsoft researchers identified Web users who had recently searched for queries indicating they have pancreatic cancer, such as “I was told I have pancreatic cancer, what to expect,” and then looked back months earlier to examine patterns in the symptoms that the users searched for. This included phrases such as “dark or tarry stool,” “abdominal swelling,” “dark urine” and “yellowing skin.” From this analysis they realized trends in the queries of users who were soon to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, identifying 5 to 15 percent of cases with low false-positive rates. The research was published in the Journal of Oncology Practice.

• Alibaba Bears Pounce as SEC Probe, SoftBank Sale Squeeze Shares:Traders have never been more bearish on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the fast-growing Chinese e-commerce company facing a regulatory probe and the loss of a key investor. The total number of outstanding shares borrowed for short selling peaked at more than 124 million last week. That’s the most since its 2014 initial public offering and is up from about 60 million in December, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Markit. Prominent short sellers including Jim Chanos and John Hempton have been red-flagging Alibaba for months, suggesting that its growth figures might be too good to be true. Bearish bets spiked in the past two weeks after the company disclosed a regulatoryprobe of its Chinese delivery unit and SoftBank Group Corp. disclosed plans to sell a $10 billion stake. Alibaba, which claimed more than 75 percent of the e-commerce market share in China last year, made history with a record $25 billion initial public offering in September 2014. Traders in New York clamored for the stock, which was priced at $68 a share, as a way to tap into the potential profits available from the country’s growing middle class. The shares have dropped 6.4 percent to $75.92 since May 25 when the company said that the SEC is looking at data reported from the company’s Singles’ Day promotion, Alibaba’s biggest shopping day, and how the company consolidates results from affiliates, including logistics partner Cainiao Network. While SoftBank’s divestment comes as part of a broader strategy to find new investments in startups and strengthen its debt-heavy balance sheet, the move can be unsettling to investors as the Japanese technology giant first bought into the company 16 years ago, said Henry Guo, a New York-based analyst at M Science. “The stake sale by SoftBank caught the market off guard, which damped Alibaba shares as it’s one of the early investors,” Guo, who has been covering Chinese internet stocks traded in the U.S. for about 10 years and has a positive outlook on Alibaba, said by phone.

• Amazon is preparing to launch streaming music service - sources: Amazon.com Inc is preparing to launch a standalone music streaming subscription service, placing it squarely in competition with rival offerings from Apple Inc and Spotify, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The service will be offered at $9.99 per month, in line with major rivals, and it will offer a competitive catalog of songs, the sources said. Amazon (AMZN.O) is finalizing licenses with labels for the service, which likely will be launched in late summer or early fall, the sources said. Amazon, which offers a free streaming music service with a limited catalog to subscribers of its Prime shipping and video service, did not respond to a request for comment about the new, full-fledged music plan. Although it will be a late entrant to the crowded streaming space, Amazon believes a comprehensive music service is important to its bid to be a one-stop shop for content and goods, the sources said. The new music offering also is intended to increase the appeal of the Amazon Echo, its home speaker, which searches the Internet and orders products from the retailer with voice commands.

• Why Line’s Two-Year Wait for IPO Cost It $4 Billion in Valuation: Line Corp. has finally pulled the trigger on an initial public offering after a two-year hiatus. That period of hesitation may have cost the messaging service $4 billion in valuation as Facebook Inc. began encroaching on its turf and markets cooled on technology company debuts. Japan’s leading mobile messaging service is aiming to raise as much as 113 billion yen ($1 billion) in July at a market value of roughly 588 billion yen, according to data in its Friday IPO filings. That’s down 40 percent from an estimated 1 trillion yen when it first filed for an offering in 2014. The price range will be set on June 27, and the final price July 11. That may be as good as it gets. Line’s gearing up for a battle with far larger rivals like Facebook and China’s WeChat as it looks to expand its 218 million user base beyond its strongest markets of Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. The Tokyo-based company, owned by South Korean search portal Naver Corp., plans to use the proceeds to spearhead an expansion across Asia and, eventually, the U.S. “Line will have its market in Japan fairly fortified from the likes of WhatsApp or even Facebook Messenger,” said Amir Anvarzadeh, manager of Japanese equity sales at BGC Partners Inc. “Outside of its core markets, it’s going to be a massive challenge.”

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, June 10

• Thomas J. Perkins, Pioneering Venture Capitalist in Silicon Valley, Dies at 84: Thomas J. Perkins, who nurtured Silicon Valley’s venture capital industry into a force that later helped foster the growth of companies like Google and Amazon, died Tuesday night at his home in Marin County, Calif. He was 84. Mr. Perkins co-founded the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1972, at a time when parts of Silicon Valley were still fruit orchards. Mr. Perkins and his partners popularized a model of investment that involved putting small amounts of money into promising young start-ups in return for a stake in the companies, giving them advice and counsel to spur their growth. Some of the investments turned into gigantic hits. Mr. Perkins had said that his favorite investment was Genentech, a biotechnology company that has since been acquired by Roche. Over time, Kleiner Perkins — and its home on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Calif. — became a destination for other venture capitalists. Mr. Perkins helped recruit venture capitalists like John Doerr to his firm, leading to investments in a new generation of technology companies, including Netscape, AOL, Amazon and later Google. The firm’s success transformed Silicon Valley and the technology and biotechnology industries, leading to a proliferation of venture firms in the region and creating an ecosystem of investment in start-ups that today remains unrivaled in any other part of the world. Later in his life, Mr. Perkins was embroiled in several controversies. In 1996, he was convicted in France of involuntary manslaughter from a yacht collision. In another, he stepped down from the board of Hewlett-Packard in 2006 after he said the company had used illegal methods to obtain his phone records. The allegations led to the resignation of H.P.’s chairwoman and an overhaul of the board. He also publicly broke with Kleiner Perkins in 2014 after writing an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in which he compared the “progressive war on the American 1 percent” to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The comments set off a firestorm, and the firm moved to distance itself from Mr. Perkins, who later apologized for his language. David A. Kaplan, who wrote a biography of Mr. Perkins titled “Mine’s Bigger: The Extraordinary Tale of the World’s Greatest Sailboat and the Silicon Valley Tycoon Who Built It” (2007), said in an interview on Thursday that Mr. Perkins’s “legacy won’t be helped by all the excessive things he said in recent years and the grudges he nursed,” though he was a “seminal figure” for Silicon Valley.

• Amazon confirms international expansion of its Fresh grocery delivery service: Amazon announced an overseas expansion of its Amazon Fresh grocery delivery service on Thursday, starting with a rollout in certain neighborhoods in London. Recode reported two weeks ago that Amazon planned to expand to a variety of new markets this year, including the U.K. and Boston in the U.S., after an 18-month hiatus on new city launches. The service will cost Londoners about $10 a month on top of their regular Amazon Prime membership, or about $120 a year. In the U.S., an Amazon Fresh membership costs about $200 on top of the normal $99 Prime membership program. Orders of around $58 or more come with free delivery in London. Amazon delivers the groceries — which can include both packaged groceries as well as perishable items like meat and cheese — on the same day for morning orders, or the next day for late afternoon and evening orders. Amazon Fresh launched nearly a decade ago, but has expanded slowly as the company has tried to figure out a business model that works. The service was previously only available in parts of Washington, California, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The online grocery market is still tiny in the U.S., but is more mature in the U.K. That means more competition for Amazon, but perhaps the opportunity to grow the business more quickly.

• Uber Feels UberPop Hangover With French, German Legal Setbacks: Uber Technologies Inc. is feeling the sting of European judges from Paris to Frankfurt over UberPop, suffering setbacks in France and Germany months after it took the ride-sharing option out of its app there. On Thursday, a French criminal court fined the company and two of its executives a total of 850,000 euros ($960,000), half of which was suspended, and a German appeals court separately said it wouldn’t overturn a ban of UberPop in the country. French prosecutors had attacked Uber for fraudulent commercial practices and encouraging illegal activity through UberPop, as well as improper use of personal data. “UberPop went on for months illegally, though the company and its executives knew very well what the applicable legal context was,” judge Cecile Louis-Loyant said in Paris. She fined Uber France 800,000 euros, the head of its French operations, Thibaud Simphal, 20,000 euros and Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, the company’s general manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, another 30,000 euros, saying they incited others to break the law by working for the service, leading to riots and taxistrikes in the French capital. UberPop, which allows anyone with a vehicle and driver’s license to offer a cab-like service, stopped in July in France and was banned in Germany in March 2015. Meanwhile Uber’s main chauffeured-car service, that requires registration with authorities, is still going.