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.
Elliott Management Corporation, an activist investment firm, called for major changes at AT&T on Monday and unveiled a plan that it says could boost the telecommunication company's stock by 65 percent in the coming years.
Stripe, which has become the highest valued private fintech company at $22.5 billion by giving merchants a way to accept digital payments, launched Stripe Capital on Thursday.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Facebook Dating — a service that will pair users up based on location, listed interests, and Facebook activity — launched in the U.S. on Thursday.
Once a skill solely possessed by so-called computer nerds, now even parents and toddlers are learning how to code. Cem Eltutar, founder of Creoqode, explains how his technology uses robots and games to easily teach people how to code.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, September 5, 2019.
Slack beat expectations in its second quarter earnings report, posting $145 million in sales after the bell on Wednesday. The company was expected to report $141.25 million in sales.
The terms of the settlement between YouTube-parent Google and the FTC and the New York state attorney general were announced on Wednesday. Google and YouTube will pay $136 million to the federal government and another $34 million to New York.
The new funds will help Elliptic develop its offerings as it prepares to add more digital assets and address more types of risk for new and different types of customers, mainly in banking and financial services, CEO James Smith told Cheddar.
Fact or Fiction: search engine optimization has lost its value thanks to podcasts, video, and social media. Brian Fanzo, founder of iSocialFanz, joins Cheddar to break down this myth and help entrepreneurs grow their business.
