Roundup of news and ideas from the world of startups – Week ending 17th June 2018
News you can use
Blockchain in Trade Finance: Breakthroughs on the Horizon – Trade finance has long been ripe for digitization, and electronic trade documents are already in use by some supply chain participants. Blockchain technology has the potential to take this digitization to the next level, by providing a shared, tamper-proof ledger of digital records. Recent news concerning HSBC and ING underpins the promise of blockchain technology for trade finance. The banks participated in a live transaction that facilitated an electronic letter of credit covering a shipment of soybeans between Argentina and Malaysia. The trade finance application, based on R3’s Corda platform, processed the transaction in 24 hours, versus 5 to 10 days that it might normally take.
Chinese companies come to Silicon Valley for self-driving talent – Hopes are high for autonomous vehicles to be the next multi-billion-dollar business, especially in China. In the Nansha District in China’s southern city Guangzhou, a fleet of autonomous cars have been running on open roads for half a year. They belong to Pony.ai, a young self-driving startup founded a year and a half ago, but has already nearly reached an evaluation of one billion dollars.
Corporate M&A
PayPal acquires AI-based fraud detection startup Simility for $120M – PayPal has acquired its second startup in as many days, as the payments giant announced today that it was snapping up machine learning-powered fraud detection startup Simility. The transaction is valued at $120 million, in what will be an all-cash deal. The news comes two days after PayPal bought out payments startup Hyperwallet in a $400 million deal.
Stellar Could Acquire Chain the San Francisco-Based Blockchain Startup – Cryptocurrency project Stellar is in talks to buy a San Francisco-based blockchain startup called Chain. The price tag could be $500 million and would all paid in Stellar Lumens (XLM) coins.
Twitter acquires anti-abuse tech start-up Smyte – In an attempt to put its policies to work and help combat online harassment, Twitter announced it has agreed to buy San Francisco-based technology company Smyte. Founded in 2014 by former Google and Instagram engineers, Smyte offers tools to stop online abuse, harassment, and spam, and protect user accounts. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but this is Twitter’s first acquisition since buying consumer mobile startup Yes, Inc. back in December 2016. The company was founded by engineers with backgrounds in spam, fraud and security.
Startup shut and failed last week
Poncho weather app to shut down after being acquired by a drink company – After five years of delivering forecasts, the weather service Poncho will shut down. According to Fast Company, Poncho has been sold by its parent company, Betaworks, to Dirty Lemon, a beverage startup that makes expensive detox drinks ($7.50 to $10.83 for a 16-ounce bottle) that are mostly water and lemon juice. It’s a strange end for Poncho, though it’s kind of a wonder that the service lasted this long. Poncho launched in 2013 and immediately stood out in two ways: it texted the weather to your phone every morning, and the app pretended that all of its messages were written by a cartoon cat. The service eventually expanded into apps and chatbots and added other features like alarms, but it was ultimately the core weather-telling service and cuteness that was its main attraction.