Founder and CEO of US online social media and social networking service Facebook Mark Zuckerberg. Photo by KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP via Getty Images/FILE)
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have donated $25 million through their foundation to a philanthropic effort organized by Bill Gates to explore new coronavirus treatments.
The Gates Foundation donated $50 million last week to what it’s calling the “COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator.” The initiative brings together life sciences companies to collaborate on the development of new vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments for COVID-19.
“The Therapeutics Accelerator will enable researchers to quickly determine whether or not existing drugs have a potential benefit against COVID-19,” Chan and Zuckerberg said in a press release. “We hope these coordinated efforts will help stop the spread of COVID-19 as well as provide shared, reusable strategies to respond to future pandemics.”
The two donations are the largest from tech billionaires since the coronavirus outbreak. Wellcome and Mastercard are supporting the effort as well.
The goal of the initiative is to either develop a new drug or adapt an existing treatment that it could help distribute alongside partnering pharmaceutical companies.
The 15 companies participating in the project kicked off the effort by sharing their proprietary libraries of molecular compounds that have some history of being tested with COVID-19.
The lineup includes big names in biotech such as Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Hugh Odom, founder and president of Vertical Consultants, shared his expertise on telecommunications with Cheddar on the safety issue raised about 5G deployment by airlines. The installation was partially delayed again on Tuesday as the airlines warned of potentially catastrophic delays in a letter to the Biden administration. Later, both Verizon and AT&T relented and put a pause on some of the implementations. "The first thing the Biden administration needs to do is get everybody in the room and say, look, aviation industry, identify the problem — wireless industry, come up with a solution," said Odom.
Microsoft announced on Tuesday it's acquiring video game publisher Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion in cash, a company that's is known for big titles like "Call of Duty" and "World of Warcraft." Lyron Bentovim, Glimpse Group president and CEO, and Dan Ives, managing director and senior equity research analyst at Wedbush, sat down to talk about what Ives called "a shot across the bow" towards the competition. "This is pretty exciting for the industry as a whole because another one of the big players is coming to the metaverse," said Bentovim. "Microsoft using metaverse in the quote from their CEO in their press release shows the importance of this deal."
Netflix may not be staying at the top of the streaming wars, according to some wary investors, as competition heats up and it raises prices yet again. Tuna Amobi, director and senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, spoke with Cheddar about what investors should be considering should they stick with the streaming pioneer or drop the investment. "I think it's always mostly about the subscriber growth for the Q4, which is going to be an indicator of how the company has been navigating the speed bumps that we saw early in the year," said Amobi.
L’Oréal is doubling down on its investment in tech. The French beauty giant unveiled two new high-tech products ahead of CES 2022, aimed at simplifying the hair coloring process. Guive Balooch, global vice president of L’Oréal Technology Incubator, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss the company's innovations for hair coloring, including the Colorsonic application device and the Coloright AI diagnostic tool.
Walmart is one of the latest companies looking to adapt to the emerging digital economy by possibly establishing its own cryptocurrency. The retail giant filed at least seven applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, including one for blockchain assets.
Bitcoin plunged below the $40,000 mark on Monday, hitting its lowest price since September. The world's most valuable cryptocurrency has had months of hot and cold streaks, and the latest drop now has investors wondering just what 2022 will have in store for bitcoin and the crypto space as a whole. Ben McMillan, CIO at IDX Digital Assets, joined Cheddar Movers to discuss.
You could be seeing more electric delivery vans on the road soon. Walmart and FedEx have inked deals with GM's all-electric brand BrightDrop to add thousands of vehicles to their fleets. Walmart has reserved 5,000 vans for the first time, while FedEx is expanding an initial order of 500 vehicles. Michael Zimmerman, partner and head of logistics at Kearney, joined Cheddar to discuss what this means for the electric vehicle market moving forward.
