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.
VRt Ventures, a virtual reality studio, has partnered with street artist Shepard Fairey for a first-of-its-kind VR application. As Fairey and VRt CEO Jacob Koo explain, a newly launched app allows users to experience Fairey's latest exhibition up close, the way they would at a gallery.
Paperspace wants to make artificial intelligence more accessible, according to its co-founder and CEO Dillon Erb. Erb told Cheddar Tuesday that artificial intelligence is still so new and complex that mainstream companies find the tech difficult to harness.
Facebook is developing a camera-equipped device, codenamed Ripley, that sits on top of a TV and features video calling along with entertainment services, according to sources. The company is also working an AR projector device and other far-flung projects like a brain-computer interface.
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Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates and went on to become one of the country's most prolific philanthropists and technologists, died Monday at 65.
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The Palm brand seems to be so valuable that people can’t help but resurrect it. The latest incarnation from the 26-year-old computing brand launched Monday in the form of a credit card-sized mobile device.
Jason Browne, chief investment strategist at Fund-X, said it's still unclear if the market's activity over the last few days is a normal correction or if the economy is headed into a bear market. The Dow Industrials closed out the week rising as much as 400 points Friday morning, giving back all those gains, before finishing the day up more than a percent.
Despite the stock market's recent volatility, especially within the tech sector, cloud-based software company Anaplan had a strong showing during its first day of public trading. Frank Calderoni, CEO of Anaplan, said the company's reputation is what is resonating with investors right now.
Tom Forte, senior research analyst at D.A. Davidson, said Turtle Beach, which makes the headsets so popular with gamers, benefits from the huge popularity of Fortnite and could be an acquisition target for Microsoft. Shares, while down from their highs of the year, are still up 1,000 percent this year.
