Business related notes.
While the “Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung” moved to a new place and introduced a new concept, following the pandemic, Day 1 is still a traditionally good day to make announcements just like with any other fair. Here are a few of the headlines that emerged:
Volkswagen’s electric ID.Life concept car doubles as a gaming console
Mercedes unveils their new EV Lineup at IAA
Basemark launches Rocksolid Core Automotive OS – While BMW calls for a joint OS between Mercedes and VW
appfleet is a Poland based company that develops and offers edge hosting of containerised apps. Edge computing is a trend that emerged a few years back and allows to bring applications closer to the end user, therefore reducing latency and improving user experience. Cloudflare, a player strong in this space, now acquired appfleet, augmenting it’s portfolio of workers with container capabilities. No details of the deal have been made public, however, we will see more of these type of acquisitions with the market starting to consolidate.
Summary: Due to a great synergy between our products, I am happy to announce that Cloudflare and appfleet are joining forces! The appfleet platform is shutting down, with all clusters going offline on October 31st 2021. Long story: When we started working on appfleet our goal was to build an
from the article
Source: appfleet joins Cloudflare
Contentful, a Content-Management SaaS company, raised another round of financing. With the latest investment the Berlin founded and Headquartered is valued at over $3B.
Contentful locked in a $175 million Series F and a $3 billion-plus valuation as it looks to take advantage of a more digital-first marketplace
From Crunchbase
Source: Contentful Hits $3B-Plus Valuation After Tiger Global-Led $175M Round – Crunchbase News
Well, I guess, the message is you better wear helmets when going to England. Helmets have always been a great idea.
Great Ad, otherwise.
Fastly is one of the major CDN vendors globally. As a regular consumer you wouldn’t be aware of their service, until a failure hits. Today the service faced a configuration issue, that apparently hit global pages like NYTimes and Bloomberg, but also Amazon, Reddit and Twitter, as reported in multiple sources. The issue is reported resolved by the vendor as of this writing. Details on their status page:
Fastly’s Status Page – Global CDN Disruption.
Google’s Data Cloud Summit took place May 26th, 18PT. The summit is home to their big data products and offerings, that aim to help customers succeed in data driven businesses. Here is a summary of news and announcements:
Join us to learn how leading companies are powering innovation with our data solutions. Attend sessions, demos, and live Q&As to discover how data can help you make smarter business decisions and solve your organization’s most complex challenges.
Google Data Cloud Summit
Source: Home – Data Cloud Summit
Apple will regret they didn’t snap up MGM. Today Amazon buys MGM Studios for US$9 billion. There are only few other content outlets of this quality, and prices for all others will go up.
It’s official folks— Jeff Bezos now owns James Bond . After murmurs earlier this week, Amazon announced today that it had acquired MGM in an $8.45 billion deal that will bolster the e-commerce giant’s Hollywood ambitions.
Gizmodo on Amazon buying MGM
Source: Amazon Buys MGM Studios for $9 Billion
The news also appeared on lots of other channels, like The Verge or TechCrunch.
Snap acquires AR display supplier behind its new Spectacles for $500 million
The company behind Open Policy Agent, Styra, announced they raised $40 Million in funding today. The software, OPA for short, is capable of controlling access and managing authorization in complex environments. Among others, it comes with integration for Kubernetes environments, and allows to centrally control multiple aspects of access control.
Styra has raised a $40 million Series B funding round to continue driving the reinvention of policy and authorization for cloud-native applications.
Pitch, the startup founded by Christian Reber of Wunderlist Fame, raised a series B of $80 million. The Berlin based start-up in social presentations is on path to become a new unicorn. The investment demonstrates the believe in market potential for collaborative software in the cloud is still huge. Most of the potential comes from innovation that existing legacy software cannot deliver by being ported to the web. The actual potential comes from new ways to deliver software, enable cooperation and new ways to work, possibly disrupting legacy structures.
Powerpoint may still dominate the landscape for presentations in many people’s minds, but some might say that legacy status also makes Microsoft’s software ripe for disruption. Now, a startup out of Berlin called Pitch has just picked up a substantial Series B of $80 million to take it on with what it believes is a more dynamic approach.