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.
As streaming services battle it out, technology and strategy consultant Michael Wolf says companies like Amazon and Apple, who can offer cross service bundles, will come out on top.
Cheddar spoke to Mike Massimino, former NASA astronaut and senior advisor for space programs at the Intrepid Museum, to get his take on films such as "Apollo 13" and "Gravity."
The search giant has partnered with Citi and Stanford Federal Credit Union, who will handle the heavy lifting in the backend and compliance, and is seeking to position those brands more front-and-center to customers than its own.
In addition to being a payment method for Facebook Marketplace, Facebook Pay will also compete with person-to-person payment apps like PayPal-owned Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and Square Cash App.
Consulting and research firm Magid found people are willing to spend about $42 a month on streaming services, an increase from $36 last year. But they only want four subscriptions on average, down from six in 2018.
The Apple credit card issued by Goldman Sachs stands accused of gender bias after reports from couples showing a major disparity between credit limits issued to women versus men despite shared assets or better credit scores.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, November 8, 2019.
CFO Steve Louden told Cheddar he is confident the company is positioned for success amid the ongoing streaming wars.
The ordinance, which passed with roughly 70 percent of votes, puts limitations on the number of short-term rental units in residential buildings and mandates safety inspections and an array of other compliance measures.
Rohit Prasad, head scientist for Amazon's Alexa unit, said developments in machine learning have led to leaps in Alexa's ability to recognize speech and provide useful answers in four main categories.
