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.
The smart location company that manufacturers a Bluetooth tracker to incorporate with your precious objects recently raised $45 million in funding.
Apple released its third quarter earnings on Tuesday after the bell, slightly beating expectations despite slowing iPhone sales.
Shark Week is back for its 31st year and fans can bite into a new lineup of shows featuring some of the ocean's fiercest predators.
Green Dot, the inventor of prepaid debit cards and the invisible banking platform behind fintech startups and brands like Uber and Apple Pay, is becoming a direct-to-consumer brand with the launch of (yet another) high-yield savings account and a cash-back checking account.
With Project xCloud, Microsoft throws its hat in the ring against the upcoming Google Stadia and the already-existing PlayStation Now service, allowing games to stream from hardware located in the cloud network.
Chicago-based cannabis company Cresco Labs unveiled a new dispensary and retail cannabis shop concept on Monday. Called Sunnyside, the concept emphasizes health and wellness and aims to create an accessible, immersive retail environment that pushes Cresco along on its mission of creating a nationally-recognizable cannabis brand.
Cheddar spoke to Twitter's head of global operations and emerging businesses Yannis Dosios after the social media platform shared strong earnings with the number of monetizable daily active users going up.
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.
The Department of Justice has required that Sprint divest its prepaid division to Dish in a move worth about $1.4 billion. Sprint and T-Mobile must also make 200,000 cell sites available to that provider as well.
Digital health company Livongo had a successful public debut Thursday on the Nasdaq. It's the latest in a wave of digital health companies entering the public markets. Hemant Taneja, managing director at General Catalyst, joins Cheddar to discuss.
