Apple has announced the new device; Amazon opens a hair salon and adds Venmo cryptocurrency support. This is your daily crunch on April 20, 2021. Apple unveiled a bunch of new products at its press event today. As expected, there will be a new iPad Pro that will represent a 50% performance increase over the previous model, starting at $799 for the 11-inch model.
Also, Apple has announced a newly designed podcast app with support for paid subscriptions, a new purple iPhone 12, its long-awaited AirTag device for searching for lost things, a new Apple TV 4K with a new remote (you can also buy the remote separately Color) and colorful new IMAX with M1 chip.
Amazon is opening a London hair salon to test AR and other retail technologies – the salon will occupy more than 1,500 square feet of space on Brushfield Street in Spitalfields, London. Adding Venmo to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies – this is similar to the support that Venmo’s parent company PayPal added late last year.
Netflix has blamed “lighter content slates” for slowing customer growth – but the company says production has resumed in every major market except Brazil and India.
Discord Microsoft has moved away from negotiations, an IPO could follow – the company was valued at about $10 billion in negotiations before Discord left. Clearbanc is back on track for a unicorn – fintech raises $100 million Series C.
Tom Brady and Salesforce Ventures pour into millions of classes, a zoom-friendly edtech startup – integrating the product exclusively with Zoom to make distance learning more elegant.
Who funds the privacy technology? – New laws, stricter cross-border data transfer rules, and growing calls for data sovereignty have helped increase privacy start-ups.
Insurtech startups are growing rapidly to raise big money – since the end of the first quarter, we have seen several players in the Broad startup division announce new capital, including Clearcover, Alan, Next Insurance and The Zebra.
