Hi Guys! It’s the end of another busy week in the world of tech. From Tiger Global raising one of the biggest venture funds ever to LG exiting the smartphone business, the week was packed with stories.
Here is a quick roundup of some of the major stories around the globe you might have missed.
Twitter held acquisition talks with Clubhouse on potential $4B deal
According to reports, Twitter held talks to acquire Clubhouse, the live drop-in audio networking platform.
The talks occurred over the past several months, and have broken down but it was reported to have been a deal valued somewhere around $4 billion.
The reason for the break down was not revealed but it appears that Clubhouse is shifting strategy. Bloomberg reported that the company is seeking to raise a new round of funding at a valuation of around the same $4 billion.
Yahoo Answers shuts down forever
Yahoo Answers, one of the longest-running and most storied web Q&A platforms in the history of the internet, is shutting down on May 4th and all of the platform’s archives will apparently cease to exist.
The platform has been operating since 2005. However, as the years passed, its relevance as a forum has waned due to the rise of Reddit, Quora, and other competing internet hangouts.
Starting April 20th, the platform will no longer accept new submissions. Users will also have until June 30th to request their data or it’ll be inaccessible after that.
That includes “all user-generated content including your Questions list, Questions, Answers list, Answers, and any images.
Nigeria gets first Electric-Vehicle charging station
This week, the Federal Government of Nigeria has commissioned the country’s First Solar Powered Electric Vehicle Charging Station.
The EV Charging Station was set up by the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) under the Electric Vehicle Pilot Project in Collaboration with Usmanu Danfodio University, Sokoto.
The launch comes just 2 months after FG unveiled Hyundai Kona, Nigeria’s first locally assembled electric car.
Tiger Global raises $6.65 billion, one of the biggest venture funds ever
Investment giant, Tiger Global has raised a total of $6.65 billion for its thirteenth venture fund. The company had earlier announced that it was raising $3.75 billion, but a new SEC filing showed that it ended up almost doubling the initial raise.
Tiger Global’s portfolio company, Stripe is now valued at $95 billion
This revelation comes just days after the VC lead or co-lead in a $300 million round for HighRadius, a $192 million round for Cityblock Health and a $125 million round for 6sense.
LG’s exits the smartphone market
At the start of this week, LG announced that it is exiting the smartphone business.
However, the company will still continue its R&D efforts in the field of communication networks including its projects on 6G. It will also focus on strengthening its competitiveness in other fields.
The fields include electric vehicle components, IoT devices, smart homes, robotics, AI and business-to-business solutions.
The process of phasing out LG’s mobile division is expected to be completed by July 31 although product inventory will likely be available after that date.
The currently available LG smartphone inventory will still be sold and software support will be provided to existing customers for an unspecified amount of time.
It has also pledged to issue future Android OS updates to many of its smartphones for the next 3 years.
You can check out other news that happened during the week here. Have a nice weekend!!
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