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.
Robinhood has built its own clearing system that will let it clear and settle transactions and custody assets for its now six million customers without using any third parties. The stock trading start-up expects Clearing by Robinhood, a two-year-old regulatory and engineering project, to provide a faster and cheaper offering for users. Co-CEO Vlad Tenev likened it to Apple building its own chips in-house or Amazon running and investing in its own fulfillment centers. Clearing, he said, is a foundational layer, but it impacts the end user experience.
With less than 10 days left until recreational marijuana is legal across Canada, Alyson Martin, co-founder of Cannabis Wire, explains how rollout will go. As for the future of legalization in the U.S., she says it's inevitable. "Young people might be the path to legalization," she said.
As Aston Martin stock stumbles in the days following its IPO, the British luxury automaker is not interested in expanding its potential market with less expensive "entry-level" cars. CMO Simon Sproule said the company is focused on new electric models and a forthcoming SUV. And they will be expensive.
The tech giant unveiled two new Pixel smartphones, a smart home assistant with a touchscreen, and its first-ever Pixel Slate Tablet. Hope King was at the launch event in New York to get a hands-on look at all the latest gadgets.
As VC funds shovel money into start-ups, they have noticeably stayed away from Juul, even as it exploded in growth and catapulted to become the most valuable vape brand. Erin Griffith, correspondent for the New York Times, said investors appear to be taking a moral stand, even as they simultaneously invest in other nicotine-delivery products.
SoundCloud announced Tuesday that it is expanding its "Premier" feature, which takes a focus on the scores of musicians who use the service to record and promote their work. CEO Kerry Trainor said this feature will allow artists to be directly monetized on the platform, and it will rival any process at other streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music.
Google's Pixel event kicks off on Tuesday in New York City. The company is expected to announce three new phones, with one costing upwards of $1,000. Russell Holly, Senior Editor at Android Central and Ajay Kumar, Mobile Analyst at PCMag, give their predictions for the future of Google's hardware ecosystem.
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The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Google had exposed over 500,000 Google+ users' data and failed to alert authorities. The company ultimately said it would shut down the consumer version of the social network. Douglas MacMillan, the reporter who broke the story for the Journal, said Google's handling of the information is causing a lot of speculation about the tech giant's business practices.
Grocery delivery has a new player in Los Angeles: Milk and Eggs. This service connects consumers with farmers and food producers, and the food is delivered straight from the source, made fresh for every order. Kenneth Wu, CEO and founder of Milk and Eggs, said that unlike Walmart and Amazon, his company is able to completely eliminate the grocery store.
