The U.K. competition regulator today said it has provisionally ruled that Facebook Inc.’s acquisition of Giphy Inc. lessens competition and will force the social media giant to sell the company should the ruling become final. Facebook acquired Giphy, an animated GIF image sharing platform, for $400 million in May 2020. Giphy is wildly popular and ...

Ahead of its plans to go public via a special-purpose acquisition company, Circle Internet Financial Inc. has announced its intention to become a fully registered bank. Under the proposal, Circle will become a full-reserve commercial bank registered with the U.S. Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal ...

Shares in Airbnb Inc. dropped in after-hours trading today despite a solid earnings report after the company warned of the impact of the Delta COVID-19 variant on bookings. For its second quarter of 2021, Airbnb reported revenue of $1.3 billion, up 299% over the same quarter in 2020 and up 10% over the second quarter ...

Lidar startup Innovusion Inc. today announced it has raised $66 million in new funding to increase the production capabilities of its automotive-grade lidars, expand its global footprint and broaden its research and development efforts. Guotai Junan International Private Equity Fund led the Series B round. Other investors included Shunwei Capital, Nio Capital, F-Prime Capital, Eight Roads Ventures ...

Information technology consulting giant Accenture PLC has been struck by ransomware that resulted in customer data stolen. The attack is believed to have taken place today. The LockBit 2.0 ransomware gang took responsibility, claiming to have stolen 6 terabytes of data. It demanded a $50 million ransom be paid or the stolen data would be ...

Chinese self-driving car technology startup Pony.ai reportedly has scrapped plans to go public in the U.S. as the Chinese government continues to crack down and regulate various sectors of the country’s economy. Reuters reported today that Pony.ai had planned to go public through a special-purpose acquisition company in the U.S. in a $12 billion deal, but ...

In a strange turn of events, the hacker behind the theft of more than $600 million in cryptocurrency from cross-blockchain decentralized finance platform provider Poly Network has started to return some of the stolen funds. The hacker, who goes by the name of “Etherhood,” started by returning small amounts of the stolen funds, initially $4.8 ...

Uber Technologies Inc. is under investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for a partnership with food-delivery service Gopuff and its acquisition of alcohol delivery service Drizly, according to a report today by The Information. The investigation, said to have begun at the end of June, is looking at whether the Uber Gopuff partnership, as well ...

Cross-chain decentralized finance platform provider Poly Network has been hacked with more than $600 million in cryptocurrency stolen. The Poly Network provides a service that offers interoperability among multiple blockchains. It allows users to exchange digital assets such as cryptocurrency between various blockchains with support for bitcoin, Ethereum, Neo, Onotology, Elrong, Zilqa and various others. ...

Another busy day on the cybersecurity front: NortonLifeLock Inc. said late today it’s acquiring Avast plc, and McAfee Corp. beat analysts’ expectations in its second-quarter earnings. The acquisition of Avast PLC, formally referred to as a merger, was first reported in July. Under the terms of the agreement, Avast shareholders will be entitled to receive ...