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.
Snapchat employees are looking to jump ship in growing numbers after a botched app redesign and drop in stock price soured many on the company’s future, according to an internal, anonymous survey.
Markets may have closed off their lows of the day, but Jack Kramer, co-founder and co-CEO of MarketSnacks, said there's still plenty that could weigh on investors over the next year.
Teens are abandoning Snapchat and turning to Instagram and Brian Deagon, senior reporter for Investor's Business Daily, said that Snapchat could likely not recover from its recent blunders.
Notable short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research has turned positive on the electric-car manufacturer. But Daniel Sparks, contributing senior tech analyst at Motley Fool, said the call may be more of a short-term bet.
Facebook is unveiling a redesigned, simplified version of its Messenger app that recalls the basic chat service the social media giant released as standalone app in 2014. Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook's head and VP of Messenger, told Cheddar's Hope King that the purpose of the overhaul was to "go back to the roots" with a simple, easy-to-use interface that prioritizes chats between friends.
U.S. stocks took a major hit on Tuesday, with the Dow opening 400 points down and tech stocks still struggling. The Nasdaq reentered correction territory, down more than 10 percent from its all-time highs.
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President Erdogan of Turkey demanded action from Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the "premeditated" and "savage" murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as SoftBank's CEO became the latest top executive to pull back from Saudi Arabia's investor summit.
Viacom's MTV is rebooting its "Real World" franchise by launching the show on Facebook Watch. Wall Street Journal Media Reporter Keach Hagey explains what this means for the company's streaming strategy.
Ford's new "Built Ford Proud" campaign is the work of the Wieden+Kennedy agency, long known for its creative ads for Nike ($NKE) ー including its controversial ad featuring ex-quarterback and activist Kaepernick. The first "Built Ford" ad stars Bryan Cranston inhabiting a series of cinematic personas that all take subtle digs at the tech industry.
