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.
Facebook is planning on launching a dating feature, fueling more competition in the online dating world. Sarah Jones Simmer, Chief Operating Officer at female-focused dating app Bumble, tells Cheddar that competition validates the industry and rids the stigma of online dating.
Public-radio platforms PRX and PRI are merging to capitalize on the growing appetite for podcasts. Kerri Hoffman, the CEO of Public Radio Exchange, tells Cheddar she wants the work of her producers to be heard."There are lots of podcasts," she said. "It's really important that we create lily pads along the way that help people get more successful."
Amazon's reported interest in Landmark Theaters may not only be about about showing the streaming giant's films, says Larry Dignan, editor-in-chief of ZDNet. It's likely a retail play by Amazon, the e-commerce giant, he says. "Remember, whatever Amazon does has everything to do with Prime subscriptions."
The outspoken CEO of Tesla told The New York Times, "this past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career." In a revealing, hour-long interview Thursday, Musk choked up several times describing his struggles leading the electric-car company.
Janet Comenos, the CEO of celebrity marketing company, Spotted sat down with Cheddar anchors to discuss the rise in "disgrace insurance," the cost to protect brands from scandals surrounding celebrity endorsers -- something prompted by Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement.
Citron Research's Andrew Left raised his price target on Twitter to $52 a share this week, more than 60 percent higher than where the stock closed Thursday. The long-time short seller, who earlier this year said the social media platform was more susceptible to regulation than its competition, is less concerned by privacy issues now and applauded CEO Jack Dorsey's efforts in video.
The SEC is reportedly moving forward with its investigation into Tesla and outspoken CEO Elon Musk. Laura Unger, former chair of the SEC, told Cheddar she suspects Musk hadn't truly secured funding to take the company private when he tweeted that he had. "I do think he's probably wishing right now that he's the CEO of a private company," she said.
The gaming headset maker Turtle Beach smashed revenue expectations in the second quarter, earning $60.8 million ー up from $19.1 million the year before. To build on growing sales in the console market, CEO Juergen Stark says Turtle Beach is introducing a new headset built for PC gamers.
Avis, the car-rental company, has a fleet of 100,000 connected vehicles and new partnerships with Airbnb, Lyft, and Waymo, the self-driving car company owned by Alphabet. It's part of a strategy to provide "mobility on demand for the global traveler," says Arthur Orduna, Avis's chief innovation officer.
In a converted Brooklyn warehouse, dozens of developers are the next internet of apps on the Ethereum network. Their work may be the foundation of all future transactions, says Joseph Lubin, the billionaire Ethereum co-founder behind the incubator Consensys. Cheddar went behind the scenes with Lubin to see how the future of the internet is being built on blockchain technology.
