Google rethinks its gaming technique, Microsoft rolls out its quantum computing platform and UiPath is now valued at $35 billion. That is your Every day Crunch for February 1, 2021.
The massive story: Google shutters inner sport studios
When Google introduced its Stadia cloud platform, it additionally mentioned it was forming Stadia Video games and Leisure, an inner studio that will create titles for the platform. Now it appears the company is abandoning this approach.
It’s a shocking transfer, not simply because Google has but to launch a single sport from the studio, but additionally as a result of the corporate opened studios in Montreal and Los Angeles, in addition to buying Storm Studios — so it looks like an actual funding.
“Given our give attention to constructing on the confirmed expertise of Stadia in addition to deepening our enterprise partnerships, we’ve determined that we’ll not be investing additional in bringing unique content material from our inner improvement group SG&E, past any near-term deliberate video games,” Google exec Phil Harrison mentioned in a weblog publish.
The tech giants
Microsoft’s Azure Quantum platform is now in public preview — Azure Quantum is Microsoft’s cloud-based platform for utilizing quantum {hardware} and software program instruments from companions like Honeywell Quantum Options, IonQ, 1QBit and others.
Xiaomi sues the US government over blacklisting — The submitting, which was submitted on Friday, calls the choice “illegal and unconstitutional.”
Google now gives you more information about the sites in your search results — Clicking the brand new hamburger-style menu icon will pop up a brand new data panel with extra details about the positioning.
Startups, funding and enterprise capital
Robotic process automation platform UiPath raises $750M at $35B valuation — The corporate’s automation platform goals to “rework the best way people work” by giving firms a option to construct out and run automations throughout departments.
Databricks raises $1B at $28B valuation as it reaches $425M ARR — Databricks is a data-and-AI centered firm that interacts with company info saved within the public cloud.
Weights & Biases raises $45M for its machine learning tools — Weights & Biases says it now has greater than 70,000 customers throughout greater than 200 enterprises.
Recommendation and evaluation from Additional Crunch
Robinhood’s Q4 2020 revenue shows a return to growth — Robinhood has been the world’s most mentioned startup over the past week.
Best practices as a service is a key investment theme to watch in 2021 — It’s one factor to offer folks and companies instruments, and one thing else to coach them to make use of these instruments successfully.
Lightspeed’s Gaurav Gupta and Grafana Labs’ Raj Dutt will tell us why they financially tied the knot (twice!) — The brand new and improved Additional Crunch Stay pairs founders and the traders who led their earlier rounds.
(Additional Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup groups get forward. You can sign up here.)
The whole lot else
Amazon says government demands for user data spiked by 800% in 2020 — Amazon mentioned it processed 27,664 authorities calls for for consumer information within the final six months of 2020.
What investors need to know about research and inspiration in the COVID-19 era — Distant analysis will stay the rule even because the worst of the pandemic mercifully ends.
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