🪙 Stripe Raise // 🤖 MetA.I. - new focus? // 🌐 Amazon Web Browser

Update 2023-03-16

News

• Amazon Launches Survey To Gather User Input on New Web Browser

• MetA.I.? Shifting focus from Meta to AI

• U.K. Reevaluates Potential Ban on TikTok for Government Phones

• TikTok Launches Dedicated STEM Feed for US Users

• Stripe Reduces Valuation To $50 Billion In Latest Funding Round

• Jack Dorsey's Decentralized Social Network Bluesky Now in Private Beta

PRO section

👉 Stripe and its valuation

👉 An Amazon web browser

👉 TikTok's features and ban

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Big Tech

Amazon Launches Survey To Gather User Input on New Web Browser

Amazon has sent a survey to users asking which features would convince them to download and use a new browser from Amazon

• The survey asked questions about privacy, syncing passwords, text-to-speech, extensions, and blocking third-party cookies.

• Google is moving closer to killing third-party cookies in Chrome, so Amazon's web browser could have an unusual impact on the advertising business.

• If the company collects data from the web browser, it could give Amazon an edge in internet advertising.

• The survey also asked users what they use their browsers for, how often they experience frustration with their tabs, and how many hours they spend using it.

• This isn't Amazon's first attempt at creating a web browser; Silk was used on Amazon devices, but this would be their first desktop version.

📝 See our thoughts on this news in the PRO section at the bottom of the newsletter 👇

MetA.I.? Shifting focus from Meta to AI

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would invest in new AI tools to help engineers write better code faster and improve user experience. This announcement comes after a difficult year for the company and follows several other tech companies investing heavily in AI.

Shareholders have welcomed the investments as it signals a shift from previous metaverse ambitions and increased efficiency. Shares in Meta have surged more than 50% since the start of the year, signaling investor confidence in the new direction set by Zuckerberg.

U.K. Reevaluates Potential Ban on TikTok for Government Phones

The U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hints that the Chinese app TikTok may be banned on all British government phones.

• The U.K. initially resisted pressure to follow the EU and U.S. in announcing such a move, but is reevaluating following an assessment of the app by GCHQ's National Cyber Security Center.

• TikTok's parent company is based in Beijing, but it has said it doesn't share data with China; its data centers are located in other countries.

• Last month, British Digital minister Michelle Donelan said a ban on government officials using the app would be a personal choice, to which she strongly believes in.

TikTok Launches Dedicated STEM Feed for US Users

TikTok will launch a new dedicated STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) feed for users in the US in the coming weeks.

• Common Sense Networks will inspect videos posted in this section to determine relevance and by Poynter to assess accuracy.

• The new feed is an expansion of TikTok's existing "Topic Feeds" initiative aimed at gaming and sports fans.

• The move is intended to provide a positive space for co-learning and enrichment on the platform and capitalize off the 110 billion views STEM-related hashtags have gained.

• CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to address the House committee regarding privacy, security, and child safety concerns next week.

📝 See our thoughts on two TikTok news articles in the PRO section at the bottom of the newsletter 👇

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Startups

Stripe Reduces Valuation To $50 Billion In Latest Funding Round

Digital payments company Stripe announced it raised $6.5 billion in Series I funding, valuing the company at $50 billion. We mentioned the raise in an earlier newsletter.

• The funding round included new investors GIC, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and Temasek, as well as existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, and others.

• Proceeds from the raise will be used for employee taxes and retire Stripe shares.

• Stripe had previously cut its internal valuation to $63 billion six months prior to this raise.

📝 Interested in Stripe's earlier valuation levels? We show this in the PRO section at the bottom of the newsletter 👇

Jack Dorsey's Decentralized Social Network Bluesky Now in Private Beta

Jack Dorsey created the project Bluesky at Twitter in 2019 to create a social network under a decentralized structure that is now in private beta.

• Supported by the AT protocol, users need just a username and password to create an account.

• The interface is very familiar to Twitter with three tabs for timeline, search, and notifications as well as side menu access to user profile and app settings.

• Interactions share similarities with Twitter's, such as replies, reposts, quotes, or likes.

• For now, there are no ads or GIFs support and notifications may be broken. No web version or apps exist yet for iPad, Mac, Android and Windows.

• Supporters are enthusiastic about Bluesky, but it remains unclear if it will replace Twitter when launched to everyone.

📝 Cloudly PRO

👉 Stripe and its valuation

Stripe has seen its valuation fluctuate over the past decade, with multiple funding rounds raising. Accounting for the last $6bn round, Stripe has raised about $8.3 billion since 2011, which means that the valuation is about 6x the amount of capital raised. We have posted this data in a Twitter thread; please like and share it if you can.

• In 2011, Stripe raised $2 million in a seed round with a post-money valuation of $20 million.

• 2013 saw Stripe's first Series A round of $18 million at a post-money valuation of $100 million.

• In early 2017 Stripe raised $80 million at a valuation of $1.75 billion.

• In late 2014 Stripe raised $70 million at a valuation of $3.5 billion.

• 2015, Stripe raised <$100 million in a funding round at a valuation of $5.0 billion.

• 2016, $9 billion after a $150 million funding.

• In 2018, Stripe secured its biggest round to date at that time for $245 million and was valued at around $20 billion.

• 2021 saw Stripe raise another massive round for $600 million, which saw it valued at close to the record-breaking figure of $95 billion.

• 2023 $50 billion valuation mark for its Series I raise of $6 billion.

👉 An Amazon web browser

It makes sense that Amazon is afraid of Google's coming cookies change, as it will make attribution tracking much harder. However, building and competing with Chrome is very hard. What will the unique selling point be? "We help you buy more stuff!"?

What is likely more feasible would be the acquisition of some of the up-and-coming browsers. However, they often have a privacy focus (as the selling point), and users do not want the tracking. So Opera, which has about 2.3% market share, could be an alternative. It's a Norwegian company owned by Chinese Kunlun (majority). The company has listed SDR and a market cap of nearly $1 billion.

👉 TikTok's features and ban

The pressure on TikTok is heating up. As seen in the past few weeks, the number of articles discussing the ban on TikTok is increasing. The response from TikTok seems, in many cases, to make their product "less bad" and improve safety measures. However, the issue is the ownership of Bytedance and possible data usage that the massively popular app posses. More focus on solving those issues, then adding "good features" would be a wise move.