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.