fortune--2020-11-20--It’s official: Biden wins handily in Georgia as hand recount comes to an end

Georgia officials completed a recount of the state’s Nov. 3 presidential vote that showed President-elect Joe Biden keeping a narrower but still decisive lead, dealing another setback to President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office said Biden had an advantage of 12,284 votes.
The hand recount of the state’s 5 million votes that began Friday was ordered after the initial count found Biden ahead by 12,780 votes, or about 0.3 percentage points.
“Georgia’s historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican. “This is a credit to the hard work of our county and local elections officials who moved quickly to undertake and complete such a momentous task in a short period of time.”
While the recount revealed uncounted ballots in four counties that bolstered Trump’s count, it wasn’t enough to change the outcome of the race, which was called for Biden last week, making him the first Democrat to carry Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Raffensperger ordered the recount of the presidential contest to reassure voters that the election had been conducted fairly, has until the end of the day Friday to certify the election results. Governor Brian Kemp would then sign off on a slate of electors.
Once the votes are certified, state law allows the Trump campaign to ask for another recount, given the narrow margins. The campaign has until Nov. 24 to make that request.
That recount would require counties to put paper ballots through scanners again, instead of the just-completed tally by hand. Only a court can order the state’s counties to count the ballots by hand again.
“We intend to pursue all legal options to ensure that only legal ballots are counted,” the Trump campaign said in a statement on Thursday night.
The president’s effort to reverse the results of the election has involved lawsuits and demands for recounts in several states.
In Georgia, the election and its aftermath have pitted Republican against Republican, as the Trump campaign and his supporters said without evidence that the vote was rigged.
Georgia’s U.S. Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are defending their seats in a highly competitive runoff election in January that could determine control of the Senate, called for Raffensperger’s resignation last week, citing unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
Raffensperger has defended the integrity of the vote. In an interview on Tuesday he criticized what he called a “campaign of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies about the process in Georgia.”
The secretary of state said Trump’s frequent and unsubstantiated accusations that mail-in voting is ripe for fraud may have cost him the state, as Republicans refrained from using absentee ballots.
Trump and his allies have also filed lawsuits in Georgia. One, alleging that fewer than 60 absentee ballots in Chatham County were improperly counted, has already been dismissed, while another that seeks to stop the state from certifying results is pending.


fortune--2020-11-20--The great disconnect: Big cash is surging into the markets, and yet COVID is socking stocks

One of the world ’ s strictest new lockdowns bans outdoor exercising and dog-walking

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.
Happy Friday, Bull Sheeters. Global stocks are higher, but U.S. futures are in the red as investors contend with a string of worrisome news: coronavirus cases are surging, America’s Thanksgiving travel plans are in doubt, the labor markets have taken a turn for the worse, and the clock ticks down on a federal emergency lending program.
Let’s check in on the action.
Markets update
Asia
The major Asia indexes are mixed in afternoon trading with the Shanghai Composite the best of the bunch, up 0.4% .
are mixed in afternoon trading with the the best of the bunch, up . Embattled Chinese social media firm Joyy Inc. bounced back on Thursday, with shares rising 17% in New York trading. That’s after the company challenged short seller Muddy Waters’ accusations it’s guilty of widespread fraud, including allegations it’s inflating its user numbers.
Joyy Inc. bounced back on Thursday, with shares in New York trading. That’s after the company challenged short seller Muddy Waters’ accusations it’s guilty of widespread fraud, including allegations it’s inflating its user numbers. Not so fast with the Remdesivir, doc. The WHO has warned against using the drug to treat hospitalized COVID patients on grounds there’s “no evidence that it improves survival or the need for ventilation.” Shares in Remdesivir maker Gilead Sciences were down 1.6% in pre-market trading.
Europe
The European bourses were largely flat at the open, before climbing. The Europe Stoxx 600 was up 0.3% a half-hour into the trading session.
were largely flat at the open, before climbing. The was up a half-hour into the trading session. The European Union could fork over as much as $10 billion to pay for a massive batch of COVID vaccine doses made by Pfizer-BioNTech and CureVac, Reuters reports in a big scoop. That would assume a €15.50 per dose fee ($18.34) for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
U.S.
U.S. futures are down with Dow futures off more than 250 at one point. On Thursday, the three major indexes closed higher after rallying in the final hour of trade.
are down with Dow futures off more than at one point. On Thursday, the closed higher after rallying in the final hour of trade. A rare public rift has emerged between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the Federal Reserve on the future of an ongoing emergency lending program for business and municipalities. The program was introduced in the spring when credit markets all but froze up. The Fed wants to extend it; Mnuchin would prefer to see the program expire at year-end.
has emerged between and the on the future of an ongoing emergency lending program for business and municipalities. The program was introduced in the spring when credit markets all but froze up. The Fed wants to extend it; Mnuchin would prefer to see the program expire at year-end. Airline stocks—including Delta Airlines United and Southwest Airlines—were all trading lower in the pre-market on Friday after the CDC issued a health advisory warning yesterday, saying please don’t travel for Thanksgiving this year.
Elsewhere
Gold is up, trading below $1,870/ounce .
is up, trading below . The dollar is flat.
is flat. Crude is up too with Brent trading around $44/barrel.
is up too with trading around Bitcoin has is up nearly 5%, topped $18,200.
***
By the numbers
742,000
We haven’t talked a lot about the U.S. labor market in a while. That’s because investors have repeatedly shrugged off the news. As long as a stimulus deal was a possibility they were willing to overlook it. But after yesterday’s worse-than-expected jobless claims numbers—742,000—a number of Wall Street vets are once again sounding the alarm that America’s economic recovery is in jeopardy. That makes the Mnuchin-Fed disagreement so unnerving. Economists see a need for adding stimulus to the U.S. economy, not taking it away. UBS chief economist Paul Donovan sums up that policy conundrum in a note to investors this morning: “Given that there are increased restrictions on the US economy, economists are inclined to side with the Fed. Markets prefer it when policy exhibits joined up thinking—this situation is not joined up and shows limited evidence of thinking.”
1,919.62
Usually in this spot I look at the trailing five-day performance of one of the big indexes. But they’re all flat as a pancake this week. So, let’s head straight to this week’s big winner, Bitcoin. The crypto currency is up 12.7% since Nov. 13, gaining an impressive $1,919.62. The Bitcoin bulls are out in force, eyeing a $20K handle by year-end. But you know who’s not convinced about the Bitcoin rally? Fund managers. As I detailed earlier this week, fund managers see Bitcoin underperforming the S&P 500, gold and oil next year.
-3.28
S&P 500 futures are in the red, as I type, and the benchmark index is down 3.28 points so far this week. The movement isn’t all that notable, but the backdrop is. Since Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election nearly two weeks ago, money has flowed into the markets at a brisk pace. According to Goldman Sachs, “U.S. equity mutual funds have experienced $34 billion of inflows in November, on pace for the first month of net inflows since September 2019. The recent trend of inflows has occurred alongside rising optimism around a vaccine and expectations of a divided government.” The S&P is up 3.7% in the past month, but has been trading fairly flat over the past two weeks. The fundamentals are there for a breakout. Stay tuned.
***
Postscript
With stocks on the move higher yesterday, Bull Sheeters found themselves in a creative mood. An additional two readers sent me their markets-inspired poems to share. Here they are:
First, from R.E., hailing from the lovely Channel Islands.
The markets were down due to Covid,
And shares could be had for a low bid.
But the bulls have come out since the vaccine
So increasingly yields will wax lean.
There’s a pivot from tech stocks to value
Lifting airlines, hotels and Total too
Elon Musk just sits pretty with Tesla
Making more return than an embezzler!
I’m guessing R.E. prefers to get around in a sailboat.
And here’s one from P.N. in South Africa. It’s untitled.
There once was a writer for Fortune
Who wrote about stocks to exhaustion
His favourite footnotes
Were Italian anecdotes
Which could fetch a fortune on auction
Thanks P.N.!… Ahem, boss. I think R.E. is talking about me.
Okay, you’ve inspired me to pen a knock-knock joke. Warning: it’s pretty awful. But, it’s Friday. So here goes:
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Boohoo Who?
Don’t cry. It’s only down 0.1% YTD.
I tried that one out on my kids first, and they said, go for it, dad! Honest.
I know. After that one the boss is going to mercifully put an end to our impromptu Postscript creative hour.
***
Have a nice weekend, everyone. I’ll see you here on Monday… But first, there’s more news below.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's read
Won't be home for Christmas. Or Thanksgiving, for that matter. Even before the CDC issued its stay-home advisory yesterday, would-be travelers were abandoning their holiday vacation plans. In recent days, a trio of airlines—United, Southwest and Alaskan Airlines—all reported that bookings have slowed and that cancelations have surged, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Some of these stories require a subscription to access. There is a discount offer for our loyal readers if you use this link to sign up. Thank you for supporting our journalism.
Market candy
Net zero
You've no doubt heard that term a lot lately as some of the world's biggest companies and mightiest economies unveil plans to cut emissions in the coming years and decades. The truth is they won't hit their targets without serious investment in innovative new power sources, none more promising than hydrogen. Hyped for years, the most abundant element in the universe is attracting all kinds of investment. Welcome to the hydrogen economy. Fortune's Katherine Dunn explains why the letter H is such a big deal.


fortune--2020-11-20--A Chinese vaccine maker says it’s inoculated 1 million people—even though its trials are incomplete

China is not waiting to roll out its COVID-19 vaccines.
On Wednesday, state-owned vaccine maker Sinopharm announced that nearly 1 million people in China have received its COVID-19 vaccine candidates as part of the emergency use vaccination program China launched in July. Under the scheme, China is injecting frontline medical workers, government employees, customs laborers, overseas contractors, and other groups it deems essential or at high risk of contracting the virus before publishing safety data or concluding its final-stage testing.
Sinopharm is currently testing two separate COVID-19 candidates in phase III trials featuring tens of thousands of volunteers in countries like Egypt, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. (The UAE also announced its own emergency program in September using Sinopharm’s vaccines).
The 1 million figure suggests that Sinopharm’s inoculation program has rapidly expanded in recent weeks. The company announced in September that 350,000 people had received doses of its candidates at that point.
The data also suggests that China has a fairly broad definition of which populations merit “emergency-use” immunizations.
Sinopharm chairman Liu Jingzhen said on Wednesday that 100,000 people had been given the vaccine during the China International Import Expo, a trade fair that just concluded in Shanghai. Earlier this year, Sinopharm briefly opened an online portal that allowed students traveling overseas to apply to be injected with its vaccines. Over 90,000 students applied to take the shots before Sinopharm pulled down the portal days after putting it up.
Two other Chinese vaccine makers, Sinovac and CanSino, are also distributing vaccines via China’s emergency use program.
Experts believe that distributing vaccines before the conclusion of testing or prior to meeting pre-determined safety benchmarks is risky given that reviewing the data is important to determining whether a potential vaccine candidate is effective or has health side effects.
Such safety concerns are why Pfizer and Moderna have waited for more data before requesting emergency authorization in the U.S. even though preliminary phase III trial results show both companies’ doses are highly effective.
Pfizer, which is partnering with Germany’s BioNTech and China’s Fosun Pharma, now has the safety data it needs and is expected to file paperwork to the U.S.’s Food and Drug Administration for emergency use approval on Friday. Obtaining that permission would allow Pfizer to distribute its vaccine to high-risk populations, like healthcare workers.
Moderna is expected to file for similar emergency use authorization “soon,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said at a press briefing on Thursday. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who also spoke at the press conference, said that vulnerable populations could be just “weeks away” from receiving vaccines.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S.’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has criticized China’s deployment of the emergency use program without thorough, transparent testing.
“Claims of having a vaccine ready to distribute before you do testing, I think, is problematic at best,” Fauci said at a congressional hearing in July.
Chinese officials have defended the program, saying that all vaccine recipients participate in the program voluntarily and understand the risks involved in taking an unproven vaccine.
“China’s vaccine emergency use authorization process is strictly governed and conducted in accordance with related laws and regulations,” Zheng Zhongwei, head of China’s COVID-19 vaccine development task force, told Chinese media in October. “We have not received reports of any recipient of the Chinese COVID-19 vaccine approved for emergency use as having severe adverse effects.”


fortune--2020-11-20--Who becomes CEO in a pandemic?

Who becomes CEO in a pandemic?

This is the web version of CEO Daily. To get it delivered to your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning.
Who becomes CEO in a pandemic? COVID seems to have caused corporate boards to become more conservative in their searches, at least in the short term, according to a report out yesterday from Heidrick & Struggles. An analysis of 965 CEOs of the world’s largest companies found there were notably fewer new CEOs appointed between March 11 and June 30 than during the same period last year.
In the U.S., for instance, there was only one new CEO reported, compared to seven in the same period in 2019. Diversity also fell, with women accounting for only 3% of all new CEO appointments, compared to 12% in the five months leading up to the pandemic. And external appointments rose, accounting for 57% of the new CEOs appointed between March 11 and June 30, compared to 35% in the five previous months. Some 63% of the new CEOs had previous experience as CEOs—something true of only 44% of those named in the prior five months.
While the unique challenges of 2020 drove boards to seek experienced executives to fill the top job, CEOs also made clear that the demands of the job changed dramatically. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski, for instance, said “one of the necessary parts of leading through the pandemic has been having a sense of humility… You need to have empathy to understand how people are feeling and to be able to adjust your style to the myriad of ways they process.”
Dr. Johannes Bussmann, CEO of Lufthansa Technik, said the CEOs have had “to be proficient in a variety of virtual and face-to-face interactions. Their constant presence in their employees’ lives creates a level of personal closeness with the CEO not seen before.” You can read the entire report here.
Separately, Allstate CEO Tom Wilson called to report he had completed a $1.2 billion bond deal using only minority, women and veteran bankers—the largest corporate bond offering ever done exclusively by so-called MWVBEs. Those firms currently handle only 4% of corporate investment-grade bond issues. Wilson said he has called on the CEOs of a number of other firms to do similar deals. “This is not just pledging, it’s acting,” he said. “We just need to take a stand and do things differently” to create more equity in securities markets.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
Fed lending
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is going to let several of the Federal Reserve's emergency lending programs expire at the end of the year, stopping the Fed from being able to lend further trillions into financial markets. The Fed has publicly disagreed with the decision to remove the backstop. However, some say the programs could be revived if needed, either by Mnuchin or his Biden-administration replacement. CNBC
No remdesivir
Stop using Gilead Sciences' remdesivir to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients, says the World Health Organization. The WHO stresses that there's no evidence for the antiviral making survival more likely or reducing recovery times. It's a blow for Gilead, which has previously seen the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approve remdesivir approve the drug for use in the COVID context. Fortune
Cell therapy
The Swiss drugmaker Novartis has signed a $50 million deal with Australia's Mesoblast, securing the rights to develop, commercialize and manufacture its Remestemcel-L cell therapy for acute respiratory distress syndrome. The treatment could prove handy in treating COVID-19 patients. Reuters
Vaccine bill
The European Union has kept a lid on the amounts it's paying to secure hundreds of millions of potential coronavirus vaccine doses, but some details are coming out. According to Reuters, the EU will pay up to €3.1 billion ($3.7 billion) for 200 million doses (or €4.65 billion for 300 million doses) of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine, and at least €4.05 billion for 405 million doses of CureVac's vaccine. Reuters
AROUND THE WATER COOLER
Hydrogen power
Fortune's Katherine Dunn examines the much-touted potential of hydrogen to power cars, trucks and factories: "The most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen is viewed as a tantalizing substitute to natural gas and coal to help heavily polluting sectors such as aviation, steelmaking, and shipping de-carbonize. As an added bonus, some of the existing infrastructure in our carbon-dependent economy, from pipelines to refineries, can be retrofitted to hydrogen-based energy production." Fortune
China hopes
American companies in China reckon the Biden administration will bring better business prospects. In a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, over 60% of U.S. respondents said they were "more optimistic" or "much more optimistic" about the future, now Biden is president-elect. A mere two of the 124 surveyed companies are feeling more pessimistic now. Fortune
CDC plea
Please don't travel for Thanksgiving, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention begged Americans yesterday. CDC COVID-19 incident manager Henry Walke: "Covid-19 is turning out to be quite a formidable foe…We must unite in our efforts against this virus and now more than ever, not let down our guard." Wall Street Journal
Koch plea
In a piece for Fortune, Charles "Boy, did we screw up" Koch urges everyone in the U.S. to move on from the current "us-versus-them mentality of partisan politics" and sings the praises of democratic rituals, such as election losers conceding and all Americans acknowledging the outcome. Koch: "In these trying times, instead of doubling down on the contest for who will have power over others, we must unite to help empower every person from the bottom up so they can contribute and help others lead better lives." Fortune
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.


fortune--2020-11-20--A pizza shop worker lied to contract tracers—prompting unfounded fears of a new COVID-19 strain

South Australia will lift its lockdown early and immediately allow outdoor exercise after fears authorities were dealing with an extremely infectious strain of the virus proved unfounded.
The state was plunged into one of the strictest lockdowns in the world on Thursday, after contact tracers believed a man became infected after buying a takeaway pizza. It turns out he lied to contact tracers, and had worked at the restaurant and been in close contact with another infected worker for several shifts.
Authorities were “operating on a premise that this person had simply gone to a pizza shop, very short exposure and walked away with having contracted the virus,” Police Commissioner Grant Stevens told reporters. “We now know they are a very close contact of another person who has confirmed as having been positive with Covid. It has changed the dynamic substantially.”
Health officials said the situation remained dangerous and the cluster, currently at 25 infected people, was expected to grow over coming days. But thanks to the fast work of health officials, some 4,500 contacts or close contacts have been quarantined.
The original six-day lockdown that began Thursday will end at midnight Saturday. The ban on outdoor exercise and even dog-walking had made the measures among the strictest in the world.
The state of 1.7 million people, who are spread out over a landmass five times the size of the U.K., had largely eradicated community transmission of the virus after a nationwide lockdown earlier this year. The outbreak began after a cleaner at a hotel used to isolate returned overseas travelers was exposed to the virus.


fortune--2020-11-20--U.S. companies in China are ‘more optimistic’ about business under Biden presidency

American companies in China are more optimistic about the prospect of doing business in China under a Biden administration versus a Trump presidency, according to a November survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
More than 60% of U.S. companies that took part in the survey, which was conducted days after the U.S. election result, said they are “more optimistic” or “much more optimistic” about doing business in China while President-elect Joseph Biden is in office.
A little over a third of respondents said they felt the same as they did before the election, and two of the 124 surveyed companies said they were more pessimistic following the election outcome.
“Businesses are signaling that a Biden administration will bring more stability to the U.S.-China relationship,” Ker Gibbs, president of AmCham Shanghai, said in a statement. “This will be welcome after several years in which American companies have had to deal with uncertainty and sometimes erratic policies.”
Under President Donald Trump’s administration, U.S.-China relations have have soured.
Actions by Trump, such as limiting visas for Chinese students and journalists and repeatedly blaming China for the spread of the coronavirus, have raised tensions between the two superpowers and contributed to an atmosphere of uncertainty and unpredictability for American companies in China.
U.S. firms strongly opposed Trump’s August executive order to ban Chinese social messaging app WeChat on the grounds that it is a vital tool for communication and business in China. According to an August AmCham survey, 88% of U.S. companies said the loss of WeChat would negatively impact their business operations. (The ban hasn’t gone into effect; a U.S. judge in late October blocked the ban request, saying the government hadn’t presented enough evidence that WeChat poses a security risk.)
And Trump pursued a drawn-out trade war with China that resulted in more than two years of tit-for-tat tariffs that hurt the U.S. economy and U.S. businesses that import to China. The trade conflict forced U.S. companies with supply chain links to China to divert some of those resources from the mainland.
According to the AmCham survey, 28% of U.S. companies think U.S.-China trade tensions will warm within a year, compared to the 14% who thought so in a July AmCham Shanghai survey. Almost 30% of respondents to the November survey think trade tensions will continue “indefinitely.”
Post-election, U.S. companies in China are more optimistic about revenue growth. Almost half of respondents to the November survey expect their 2020 revenue to grow compared to 2019 levels, versus 32.5% who felt that way in July.
Even with a more upbeat attitude, a little over half of respondents said a Biden presidency will not change their investment plans in China; one-fifth said they didn’t know how investments would be affected yet, while 14% said they will increase their investment in China with Biden in office. And a full third of respondents remain “somewhat” or “very” concerned about employee safety around issues like exit bans and detentions in China.


fortune--2020-11-20--WHO advises against using Gilead’s remdesivir to treat hospitalized COVID patients

The World Health Organization recommended against using Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients less than a month after U.S. regulators granted the drug a speedy approval.
“There is currently no evidence that it improves survival or the need for ventilation,” a panel of WHO-convened experts developing COVID-19 treatment guidelines said in The BMJ medical journal.
The recommendation is a blow to Gilead’s drug, which was one of the first thought to offer a meaningful benefit in treatment of coronavirus patients after a study showed it reduced their recovery time. The antiviral has been used widely to treat COVID and was among the drugs President Donald Trump received when he was diagnosed with the disease in early October.
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The experts made the recommendation after the results of a global trial sponsored by the WHO, called Solidarity, found last month that remdesivir didn’t reduce deaths. They also reviewed data from three other trials and said the drug “has no meaningful effect” on the time it took patients to clinically improve.
The Solidarity results were published Oct. 15. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug a week later, basing its decision on a trial run by the National Institutes of Health that showed remdesivir reduced hospitalized patients’ recovery time by five days.
Gilead has questioned the results of WHO’s trial and said the agency still has not released key data to allow the company or others to evaluate the reliability of the interim results.
Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed journals have show remdesivir, also known by its brand name, Veklury, is beneficial against the virus, particularly in improving recovery time, “which can free up limited hospital resources,” Gilead said in a statement Thursday.
“We are disappointed the WHO guidelines appear to ignore this evidence at a time when cases are dramatically increasing around the world and doctors are relying on Veklury as the first and only approved antiviral treatment for patients with COVID-19 in approximately 50 countries,” according to the statement.
Despite the discordance with the WHO, the FDA said in its review of remdesivir that “there were no issues identified that would benefit from discussion” by a panel of outside advisers. FDA typically convenes such a panel before deciding whether to approve a drug in situations where there are questions arising from clinical trial data.
The FDA originally granted emergency use authorization to remdesivir in May. Gilead requested full FDA approval in August. The European Commission granted the drug conditional authorization in July based on the U.S.-led clinical trial.
Other countries have also approved remdesivir as a treatment for Covid. Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Katsunobu Kato, said Friday there’s no need for the nation, which gave its nod in May, to review remdesivir’s approval at this time. Zhong Nanshan, a Chinese expert on infectious disease, said at a conference in Zhuhai that remdesivir isn’t “entirely useless,” citing shortened hospital stays among mild patients in the U.S.
The WHO experts wrote in The BMJ that their findings shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that remdesivir is ineffective, but that “there is no evidence based on currently available data that it does improve patient-important outcomes.”
The limited evidence for using the drug was weighed alongside the “relatively high cost and resource implications associated with remdesivir,” which is given intravenously, they said in a press release.
The FDA was earlier criticized for hastily authorizing an antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, to treat COVID-19. Trump repeatedly touted the drug early in the pandemic, though medical evidence was lacking to support his claims. The FDA then revoked its authorization after hydroxychloroquine was shown not to combat the virus and was linked to harmful side effects.


fortune--2020-11-20--Roblox files for IPO as pandemic drives video game growth

Online video-game company Roblox filed for an initial public offering, aiming to capitalize on a pandemic-fueled sales surge and the growing popularity of its platform.
The size of the offering was listed at $1 billion in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Thursday, though that’s a placeholder that will likely change. The company will disclose plans for the size and price range for the share sale in a later filing.
Roblox hosts millions of games that are built by its users, who then get a share of any related revenue. It says that two-thirds of all U.S. kids 9 to 12 years old use the platform.
The company had 31 million daily active users during the first nine months of the year, up 82% from the same period in 2019, according to the filing. The amount of time those users spent engaged on the platform more than doubled from last year to 22 billion hours, the company said.
Usage of most video games has exploded with the coronavirus pandemic keeping millions — including school-age children — at home with time on their hands. Global game revenue is expected to grow almost 20% this year to $175 billion, according to researcher Newzoo.
Roblox has been expanding its focus to become a social platform, where users can come not just for gameplay but also to attend virtual birthday parties and concerts with friends. Amid school lockdowns, Roblox also has been increasingly used to teach everything from coding to physics.
The company, based in San Mateo, Calif., was valued at $4 billion in a $150 million funding round in February that was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
For the nine months ended Sept. 30, Roblox lost $203 million on revenue of $589 million, compared with a loss of $46 million on revenue of $350 million for the same period last year, according to the filing.
Founded in 2004, Roblox added media executive Andrea Wong to its board last month. She was most recently the president of international at Sony Corp. The company’s investors include Altos Ventures, First Round Capital, Index Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners and Tiger Global.
The listing by Roblox will push IPOs even further past previous records. So far this year, an all-time high of more than $144 billion has been raised on U.S. exchanges, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Airbnb, DoorDash and Affirm filed this month to go public and are expected to add billions of dollars to that total.
Roblox’s offering is being led by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase. The company is seeking to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RBLX.


fortune--2020-11-20--Meet the unicorn founder that braved war zones and missed meetings to make his mark on the startup w

Meet the unicorn founder that braved war zones and missed meetings to make his mark on the startup world

Tope Awotona didn’t intend to get his startup off the ground in the middle of a war zone.
It was February 2014. Ukraine’s capital was engulfed in fire as anti-government protesters armed with molotov cocktails battled against gun-touting police forces. What had started as a peaceful movement against President Viktor Yanukovych and his decision to forego a trade deal with the European Union had devolved into a bloody state of emergency that would claim the lives of dozens in just days.
Most were packing their bags and flying out of the city. But Awotona’s thoughts veered back and forth from determined—to desperate. He had done something perilous and uncommon even in the world of venture capital. The now 39-year-old had poured every single penny in his own wallet and more into his startup idea, quitting a stable job in the sales department of cloud services company Dell EMC, emptying out his retirement, maxing out credit cards, and taking out expensive small-business loans to found a company that had yet to post any revenue. And he was no software engineer: He needed a business in Kiev to help him build out the tech behind his scheduling software company dubbed Calendly.
Luke Beard—Courtesy od Calendly
So shaking off multiple warnings from friends and family, he flew into Kiev that month. He had been there twice before for the same reason—though it was his first time flying in as international news media covered the growing violence and death tolls.
“I was scared,” he says, recalling the sounds of explosion and chaos barging into the confines of his hotel room in Kiev, a mile or two miles from the center of the riots where protestors at one point set up a ring of fire to ward off police officers. “But Calendly was my life. I felt like I had no option.”
If Calendly would be built by a company in the Ukraine, Awotona was determined to see with his own eyes whether the country was stable enough for a partnership to last. So he kept his head down, traveling only between his hotel room and the company’s offices to build up the app with the Ukraine-based company. Not long after he left the country, protestors stormed Yanukovych’s palace.
“Looking back, it was probably stupid for me to go,” Awotona says, recalling that five months later, a Malaysian passenger flight was mistakenly shot down over eastern Ukraine.
But it was also this single-mindedness that has helped fuel Calendly’s remarkable rise. Largely eschewing venture money, Calendly, founded in 2013, has primarily bootstrapped itself to profitability. Set to post nearly $70 million in annual recurring revenue this year, over double its figure from the year prior, it now has no shortage of venture capital and growth equity investors nipping at its heels. (Storied firms including Accel, Iconiq, and Sequoia are among the names that have courted the company, sources tell Fortune. The three firms declined to comment for this story).
“I think everyone wants to invest,” says Mercedes Bent, partner at Lightspeed Ventures. In 2020, having raised just $550,000 from investors such as Atlanta Ventures in total since its founding since 2013, some of Calendly’s would-be suitors have casually valued the company “well north” of $1 billion, says Awotona. While Calendly has not consummated a deal that values it at over that figure, “it is very much a unicorn.” Indeed, as this story published, sources tell Fortune that the company has engaged in conversations that value it around $3 billion and would provide liquidity to existing shareholders.
But while some 240 companies in the U.S. are unicorns, according to CBInsights, a number in that neighborhood would make Awotona a rarity on another front: Compass, a real estate brokerage last valued at $6.4 billion, and Zume, a producer of compostable packaging last valued at about $2 billion before the pandemic hit are among the only others who have Black founders.
It’s not a status Awotona would’ve been familiar with in his early days, when even getting a meeting with an investor was a struggle. While in Kiev, a potential investor in North Carolina bailed on a planned 2 a.m. video call
It was fate that the investor in North Carolina was unable to keep his appointment. Scheduling is after all, Calendly’s business. Capitalizing on the irritations of agreeing on a time to visit the stylist or meet a school teacher, the company has attracted some 5 million monthly active users, including users at Linkedin and Zendesk who may use the tool to say schedule a sales call or interview a new hire. While a single meeting can take multiple back-and-forths via email, Calendly shows only the available time slots of a user—bypassing any need for a lengthy email exchange. Ideally, a time could be agreed upon with one click. Boom: The slot is blocked off in Google Calendar and Outlook too.
Awotona was by no means the first person to come up with the idea of scheduling software—it’s part of the reason investors stayed away from the company in its early days. But Calendly took off because it was designed like a consumer product, inspired by Awotona’s frustrations trying to schedule a demo call with clients while at various tech companies including Dell EMC. And it had a natural potential for virality: Calendly’s most basic tier is free. But to use it, consumers have to share their Calendly-branded schedule with friends. And if those friends like the product, they’ll sign up and maybe even pay for their businesses to use it too. This kind of word-of-mouth helped marketing costs at the company low.
“Scheduling tools at the time were focused on lots of bells and whistles, but Calendly provided an Instagram-like experience for a business tool,” says Blake Bartlett, a partner at Openview Venture Partners who invested in 2017. “And it was viral.”
Awotona now credits that early lack of cash that as being a huge benefit to his business model. Calendly’s base version is indeed completely free—but that was in part because at inception, Awotona didn’t have the money to build a payments rail for the project. The lack of cash, “forced me to double down,” Awotona says, dressed in a black, but cheery Calendly shirt from his home office overlooking the verdant Atlanta BeltLine, an African mask acquired from Room and Board hanging on the wall across his desk while a far more genuine early 20th century Ghanan shrine figure sits serenely on a sideboard. An evergreen plant—an idea from his fiancé who was also introduced through a Calendly client—peeks out from the edges of our Zoom call from its white planter.
A different type of founder
In some ways, Awotona fits the quintessential founder mold: Yes, he did spend an inordinate amount of time designing and picking out shirts with his company’s logo. Yes, he meditates. He is also a former whiz kid who graduated high school two years early and earned admission to a U.S. university at the tender age of 15. He would’ve gone, too, had his mother not worried over his ability to adjust to such a rapid change, pushing him to take on two more years of high school. And like many founders, his early professional start was bred in tech companies: First at IBM, then at various sales roles at Perceptive Software, Vertafore, then Dell EMC. And in the final check mark of the founder bingo board: He has built startups before Calendly—though ones that he admits were less than groundbreaking. His first foray was a dating website, after he read that the founder of Plenty of Fish made $10 million a year working 10 hours a week in a New York Times piece. Another, called ProjectorSpot, sold projectors, while yet another, YardSteals, was a platform for home and yard equipment.
But the parallels diverge wildly from there. First, he’s not in Silicon Valley—his company sits in Atlanta, Ga. And Awotona spent his early years as the second youngest in a family of seven in a lower upper class neighborhood of Lagos, Nigeria. When he was 12, a group of men followed Awotona’s father home and demanded access to his car. His father threw them the keys. They shot him anyway, and Awotona saw the whole thing. While he didn’t know it at the time, the incident left him with post traumatic stress disorder. The insomnia lasts to this day.
When asked if his skin color may have contributed to his early struggles to raise venture capital funding, Awotona is deliberate with his words, and doesn’t make it simple. He was never explicitly denied funding on the basis of his skin color, nor does he recall any veiled insults—and, he adds, trying to fundraise for a company that has $200,000 in revenue is never easy, especially in the Southeast. But how deeply rooted prejudices might stealthily infiltrate an investors thinking is not something he, nor any technology currently on the market, can quantify.
There were other tortuous moments in the company’s founding too: In late 2014, Calendly decided to add a premium paying version—a decision that users cursed out in app stores, even if they eventually stuck around. Around the same time, his first Chief Technology Officer quit, unexpectedly, during a disagreement about strategy. “Those were the moments I felt like the whole thing could fall apart,” he says. Funnily enough, six years later, he can’t remember what exactly the disagreement was about. “You become more resilient in some ways to set backs. The things that seem so scary at the time seem silly now.”
Certainly the Awotona back then would’ve been ill-equipped to handle scaling Calendly. The company has recently faced a swath of exits as its scaled, adding positions such as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Marketing Officer for the first time while others have left for different ambitions or to be based closer to home rather than Atlanta. Oji Udezue, its vice president of product, was based out of Austin and left earlier this year out of a desire to find a job closer to home. The head of revenue, David Rostan, left to start his own business in New York, his home base. And the company’s former head of business operations, Brent Chudoba, had ambitions to run a company as a CEO and moved onto Biteable, sources say. The three declined to comment for this article.
The pressures don’t stop there: Other companies have also caught onto the benefits of Calendly’s scheduling model, with Square, which markets to small businesses, also now also offering scheduling tools not unlike that of Calendly’s. Zurich-based Doodle has also recently gained traction. To stay ahead, Awotona’s mind is on making Calendly more intuitive for its users, using data to determine for example which potential clients should be prioritized for a sale, or perhaps one day automatically suggesting the best times for the involved parties. And the question that everyone inevitably asks is, will Microsoft or Google jump into the fray?
An eventual exit
Onlookers may also draw comparisons between Awotona’s business and that of Mailchimp’s, another Atlanta-based business that was entirely bootstrapped into unicorn status.
As a matter of fact, the heads of the two companies do know each other, meeting on occasion for coffee before the pandemic hit after being paired together on a Inc magazine segment on startup mentoring (Mailchimp CEO Ben Chestnut describes Awotona as a “thoughtful and quiet guy, humble and a little secretive—I don’t think intentionally. He reminds me of me.”).
Mailchimp can in theory stay private forever—the CEO has taken no outside money and arranged a profit-sharing agreement with employees over a stock-based compensation, but Awotona has given employees stock. Which means eventually, he will have to accept more outside investors, though he is hoping it is one that won’t involve a change in control.
“[An IPO] is certainly a strong option I am considering. But keep in mind that the private markets are really really robust these days, so some investors really just want to participate in the liquidity event. So employees can sell their shares, but I as a majority shareholder don’t need to sell my stake in a transaction like that,” he says. “I’m focused on building Calendly into a massive standalone business.”
As for what keeps him going these days?
“Initially it was for financial reasons—I literally needed to pay my bills,” he says. “But the motivations have shifted over time. As Calendly has grown, I just get a lot of people who don’t fit the mold who reach out to me, who are women, men, people of color—that have been so inspired by the story— that keeps me going through the tough days.”


fortune--2020-11-19--Apple defends decision to delay privacy feature, slams Facebook

Apple on Thursday slammed Facebook and other internet giants for their ad targeting practices in response to a letter questioning a decision by the iPhone maker to delay a new privacy feature.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based technology company criticized Facebook’s approach to advertising and user tracking, according to a written reply sent to several human rights and privacy organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Human Rights Watch:
“By contrast, Facebook and others have a very different approach to targeting. Not only do they allow the grouping of users into smaller segments, they use detailed data about online browsing activity to target ads. Facebook executives have made clear their intent is to collect as much data as possible across both first and third party products to develop and monetize detailed profiles of their users, and this disregard for user privacy continues to expand to include more of their products.”
Apple’s letter, reviewed by Bloomberg, defended the company’s decision to delay an iPhone feature that requires users to give explicit permission before letting apps track them for advertising purposes. The enhancement was added as part of the company’s iOS 14 operating system in September, but a requirement that all apps use it was delayed until early 2021 after several developers, including Facebook, said the change would hurt their businesses.
The human rights and privacy organizations criticized the delay in a letter earlier this year to Apple. “This means that these privacy protections will not be available during the critical weeks leading up to and following the 2020 U.S. elections, when people’s data can be used to target them with personalized political ads,” they wrote.
Jane Horvath, Apple’s global head of privacy, said the company delayed the requirement to “give developers the time they indicated they needed to properly update their systems and data practices.” Apple remains “fully committed” to the feature, she added.
Facebook responded Thursday afternoon with a long statement accusing Apple of trying to distract users from its own privacy issues. The social network also accused Apple of using its size to block competitors, like Facebook, from running their advertising business.
“They are using their dominant market position to self-preference their own data collection while making it nearly impossible for their competitors to use the same data,” Facebook said in the statement. “They claim it’s about privacy, but it’s about profit.”


fortune--2020-11-19--Exclusive: Apple hires Intel’s Barbara Whye as its new head of diversity

Apple has announced a new vice president of inclusion and diversity. Barbara Whye, who has made a name for herself as Intel’s head of D&I, will join the iPhone-maker in early 2021. (Apple refers to the function as “inclusion and diversity” versus the more commonly used “diversity and inclusion.”)
“An engineer by training and a globally-recognized leader on issues of representation in the technology industry, Barbara has spent 25 years at Intel, helping the company make meaningful and durable positive change,” Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokesperson, said in a written statement provided by the company. “Now, she will bring her immense talents and deep experience to Apple, expanding our companywide effort to hire, develop and retain the world-class talent, at all levels, that reflects the communities we serve.”
Apple’s last head of diversity, Christie Smith, left last June. Since then, the company had been in the process of looking for a new exec. (Smith came on board after long-time Apple insider Denise Young Smith left the position and the company in late 2017.)
Whye, who made this year’s Fortune Most Powerful Women list for the first time, has set a high bar for heads of diversity during her time at Intel, which she first joined in 1995. Unlike most other tech companies, the chipmaker set—and met—a goal of reaching representation within its employee base: the racial and gender breakdown of its nearly 111,000-person workforce mirrors the breakdown of the “skilled” labor market in the United States. Under Whye’s leadership, the company reached this goal two years ahead of schedule.
It’s no wonder, then, that Apple came knocking at Whye’s door.
In June, following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a $100 million racial justice initiative. Other tech executives have also spoken out against racial violence and in support of increasing racial representation across their ranks. But there is growing concern that the racial reckoning that began in the United States and across the world last spring will be a moment and not a continuing movement.
Apple has made incremental but consistent progress in diversifying its workforce. According to its diversity website, 24% of the company’s U.S employee base in 2018 was composed of “underrepresented minorities. But in that same year, 53% of new U.S. hires were from underrepresented groups. (The company is in the process of updating these figures.)
Whye will report into Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s SVP of retail and people, and start at the company in the new year.


fortune--2020-11-19--BuzzFeed buys HuffPost from Verizon in latest new-media deal

BuzzFeed is buying the HuffPost online news service from Verizon, marking the latest shake-up for new-media publishers.
BuzzFeed and Verizon’s media arm also agreed to syndicate each other’s content in a broader partnership, the companies said in a statement Thursday. As part of the deal, Verizon is acquiring a minority stake in BuzzFeed, which will use the telecom giant’s advertising platform to reach more customers. Specific terms weren’t disclosed.
The deal is a reunion of sorts for BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, who co-founded HuffPost.
“I have vivid memories of growing HuffPost into a major news outlet in its early years, but BuzzFeed is making this acquisition because we believe in the future of HuffPost and the potential it has to continue to define the media landscape for years to come,” Peretti said in the statement.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the deal.
The two websites will remain independent of each other, and BuzzFeed has begun a search for a new editor-in-chief of HuffPost.
The digital-media industry has increasingly sought ways to gain heft in an ad landscape dominated by Facebook and Google. Last year, Vox Media bought New York Media, the parent of New York Magazine, and Vice Media acquired the female-focused Refinery29.
BuzzFeed, famous for its lighthearted quizzes and lists, has been trying to diversify into new lines of business, including cookware, after relying heavily on making specialized ads for brands.
The company has clawed its way back to profitability this year after the pandemic led to the cancellation of lucrative ad deals, forcing a round of layoffs and pay cuts. Earlier this month, Peretti told staff that BuzzFeed was back on solid financial footing and would restore payments to employees who took salary cuts in April.
The deal heralds yet another owner for the left-leaning HuffPost, which was co-founded in 2005 by Arianna Huffington and became a model for attracting large amounts of web traffic. AOL bought Huffington Post in 2011 for $315 million, then Verizon bought AOL in 2015, turning the site into a small piece of a telecom giant. Huffington left in 2016 to turn her attention to her wellness startup. A year later, the site shortened its name to HuffPost, underscoring the split from its namesake personality.
“HuffPost is one of the few digital content brands that is universally known, with significant scale, and a passionate, loyal audience that is different from ours,” Peretti said in a memo to employees. “That’s why we will continue to operate HuffPost as its own brand and its own digital destination.”
Verizon, meanwhile, has been seeking ways to pare down a media business that was previously led by Tim Armstrong. Under his plan, the company set out to turn a collection of dot-com brands — like AOL and Yahoo! — into a thriving online-advertising business, but the strategy never took off. After changing the name from Oath to Verizon Media Group and cutting staff, the carrier’s new CEO has focused primarily on what the company does best: wireless service.


fortune--2020-11-19--Macy’s CEO to Biden administration: Please hurry up with a vaccine

Just as Macy’s beagn making inroads toward improving its financial performance during the COVID crisis, the struggling department store company’s executives say the resurgence in case numbers is posing a renewed threat to its business.
The retailer reported on Thursday that comparable sales fell 21% during the third quarter—a smaller drop than in the two previous quarters—and that its gross profit rate on merchandise had soared thanks to deft inventory management and cost cutting.
But with new cases of COVID-19 exceeding 150,000 per day, and uncertainty about when unemployed Americans might get some relief from a new stimulus package, CEO Jeff Gennette listed two ways in which the incoming Biden administration could help.
“One way is that we get a stimulus package passed and the second one is that we accelerate, as much as we can, a safe and scalable vaccine plan,” Gennette tells Fortune.
While Macy’s sales results were terrible compared to those Target and Walmart reported earlier this week, they represent progress for the retailer, whose heavy reliance on apparel for going out or work have hurt it during the pandemic. But those improvements are fragile, especially in markets where it relies on tourists and in city centers.
“COVID is surging again across the country and that continues to impede our recovery in international tourism and urban areas,” chief financial officer Adrian Mitchell said on a conference call. The absence of office workers in markets like Chicago and New York is hurting stores in city centers there.
The CFO added: “We remain conservative given the uncertainty.” Macy’s expects sales to again decline during the fourth quarter at a similar rate.
When COVID struck in March, forcing Macy’s and countless other physical retailers not deemed essential to close stores for weeks, Macy’s was able to set up services like curbside pickup quickly and get relief from its large online business. Since re-opening stores, Macy’s has limited the number of shoppers allowed inside at once and required them to wear masks. Additionally, it has installed plexiglass at cash registers, among other measures.
Gennette says whatever happens, barring mandated closings, the retailer is prepared, and such measures will help to keep its stores open, particularly as the Black Friday weekend approaches. “We’ve played through all the scenarios and my team is ready,” Gennette says.
And it will need in-store sales to improve significantly to return to growth overall. For all of Macy’s e-commerce firepower, its online business grew only 27% year-over-year last quarter, a fraction of the pace Target and Walmart saw, and a more modest pace than it experienced earlier this year. The stodgy growth reflects the retailer’s broader problems that precede COVID, one analyst said.
“One of the issues with online is that Macy’s is not a destination of choice in the same way as Amazon, Target, or Walmart are. Neither does it have the specialist pulling power of retailers like Best Buy, Ulta or Wayfair,” GlobalData managing director wrote in a research note.
Overall sales fell 23% to $3.99 billion compared with $5.17 billion a year ago, but it reported an adjusted profit, helped by gross merchandise profit margins that were almost back to pre-COVID levels. Inventory was way down, meaning Macy’s had to sell far less merchandise at clearance prices.
On sounder footing now, despite the cloud cast by COVID, Macy’s will next year resume its turnaround plan announced in February, which entails opening a small fleet of smaller stores away from malls with amenities like cafes and a more stylish presentation of merchandise, as well as improving its e-commerce site.
“We’re back on that horse,” Gennette said.


fortune--2020-11-19--Facebook reveals that massive amounts of misinformation flooded its service during the election

Facebook added warning labels to more than 180 million posts that included election misinformation between March and Nov. 3, providing the first accounting of the huge problem faced by the company in countering lies on its service about the democratic process.
The company added labels to the posts it flagged that provided users with additional context about voting and the election’s projected winners. The labels also included links to information from credible sources.
Although Facebook patted itself on the back for flagging misinformation, it didn’t have any numbers for how many election-related lies that it missed. So it’s unclear whether the 180 million posts represented the majority or just a sliver of misinformation that flooded the service.
Facebook released the data on Thursday as lawmakers from both parties pummel it over its handling of the election. Democrats argue that Facebook’s labels don’t do enough to stop the spread of misinformation, while Republicans say the company unfairly polices posts by conservatives.
In addition to flagging election misinformation, Facebook said it removed 265,000 posts on Instagram and Facebook for violating its policy against voter suppression.
The company also rejected U.S. political ads 3.3 million times after ad publishers failed to complete the authorization process, which was made more strict leading up to the election. One week before the vote, Facebook temporarily halted all political ads and has yet to say when it will reinstate them.
“All of these efforts were part of our goals of … protecting the integrity of our election by fighting interference, misinformation, voter suppression,” Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, said on a call with the media on Thursday.
The report also come as Facebook tries to prove it has a better handle on elections following the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which Facebook allowed a data analytics firm to harvest user information in an attempt to influence the election.
Last week, Twitter released a similar update about its elections work, saying it had labeled nearly 300,000 tweets for disputed and potentially misleading content from Oct. 27 to Nov. 11. That represented .2% of U.S. election-related tweets posted during that period.
Facebook on Thursday also touted the work it did to help people access reliable election information and register to vote. The company said it had helped nearly 4.5 million people register to vote via Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger and that it had assisted 100,000 sign up as election poll workers.
Facebook said since the debut of its voter information center in June, that about 140 million people visited the hub, which connects users to information from credible political organizations, media groups, and governmental authorities. And 33 million people visited the hub on Election Day.
As it continues a crackdown on hate speech, Facebook also provided a new metric as part of its quarterly content moderation report released on Thursday: the prevalence of hate speech. Between July and September, hate speech was included in .1% to .11% of posts viewed, or 10 to 11 of every 10,000 views.
“From the beginning, we’ve mentioned how prevalence we believe is really the correct north star metric for work like this,” Rosen said. “It represents not just what we caught but what we missed and what the actual experiences are of the people on this platform.”


fortune--2020-11-19--The sad science of pandemic grief

The sad science of pandemic grief

Good afternoon, readers.
I want to talk about grief.
We all experience grief in different ways given the circumstances and our own personalities. Grieving someone who you may have never met isn’t going to be the same thing as mourning a loved one. Disruptions to your daily life, such as canceling funerals or weddings or any number of social occasions, takes a toll. So how does that all that add up during a pandemic?
In a year filled with suffering, I had the opportunity to speak with an expert on grief and bereavement this week.
“We all continue to be at risk for death and loss, the two things we fear the most,” says Dr. Katherine Shear, the founding director of Columbia University’s Center for Complicated Grief, of the COVID pandemic in an interview with Fortune.
“9/11 was traumatic, but it was over after a while. This is just ongoing, and it’s turned our lives upside down,” she said.
Shear and I spoke about all manners of grief. The temporary kind. The lasting kind (a particularly concerning one in times of malaise). The kinds that present themselves in all sorts of weird ways, since grief has a weird way of playing on our heartstrings.
“Grief is such a powerful thing to the specific loss that you’ve had,” said Shear. “The steps for recovering aren’t orderly.”
“The steps for recovering aren’t orderly.” Words to remember from a literal grief expert.
Read on for the day’s news, and see you next week.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
DIGITAL HEALTH
Capsule and Virtuwell team up on digital health deal. Digital pharmacy firm Capsule has teamed up with Virtuwell, which helps serve more than one million patients with common conditions such as pink eye and sinus infections, among others, to create a joint digital care platform. The companies announced on Thursday the telemedicine venture is both smart business and good for patients in the long run. "Together with Capsule, Virtuwell provides a fully digital and seamless continuum of care that ensures consumers get what they need - effortlessly and safely,” said Eric Kinariwala, founder and CEO of Capsule.
Pear Therapeutics launches digital insomnia app. You getting sleepy? There's an app for that. Digital health firm Pear Therapeutics has launched a new application for patients with chronic insomnia. If Pear's clinical study readouts are to be believed, it's... Some pretty serious snoozing. The "program reduced the amount of time it took to fall asleep by 45% while cutting the amount of time awake at night by 52%," according to FierceBiotech. (FierceBiotech)
INDICATIONS
Pfizer, Moderna expected to apply for emergency vaccine authorization in coming weeks. Two companies are well on their ways to filing for emergency FDA authorization for their COVID vaccines. Pfizer posted its own encouraging information last week; Moderna responded in kind. There's still plenty of data to wade through, such as whether the vaccines are more effective for certain populations than others. Still, good news is good news. The next step: Figuring out exactly how the distribution process will work (much more on that in the coming days and weeks). (BioPharma Dive)
THE BIG PICTURE
FDA clears its first rapid, at-home COVID test. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared Lucira Health's at-home coronavirus test, the first of its kind which can ostensibly return results within 30 minutes and doesn't require the use of health care professionals. This is an emergency authorization, not a full approval. But what makes it special is that it can actually be administered fully at home by allowing users to collect nasal swabs and then analyze them with a portable device which can provide the results. (ModernHealthcare)
REQUIRED READING
The Fortune and IBM Watson Health Top 50 Cardiovascular Hospitals, by Fortune Editors & IBM Watson Health
Skeptical Republicans begin to accept COVID precautions, by Aric Jenkins
The 2020 changes that will stick with us, by Alan Murray


fortune--2020-11-19--Nvidia plans to bring Fortnite back to the iPhone despite Apple ban

Apple has banned the popular mobile game Fortnite amid a legal battle with its publisher, Epic Games, but the iPhone maker’s customers may soon be able to resume playing the title.
Chip maker Nvidia said on Thursday that it’s bringing its cloud-based gaming service GeForce Now to Apple iPhones and iPads with a huge line up of games like Assassin’s Creed and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Those games require players to use a separate game controller (which connects to the iPhone via Bluetooth).
But Nvidia said it’s also adapting a version of Fortnite for its subscription service that can be played on iOS devices, and that it will not require a controller.
A subscription to GeForce Now costs $5 monthly, which means Fortnite fans used to playing for free before Apple banned the game will now have to pay to play. Nvidia’s service already runs on Windows PCs, Mac computers, and Android devices.
Nvidia didn’t give a specific release date for the adapted version. “We’re working to enable a touch-friendly version of Fortnite, which will delay availability of the game,” the company said in a blog post. “While the GeForce NOW library is best experienced on mobile with a gamepad, touch is how over 100 million Fortnite gamers have built, battled and danced their way to Victory Royale.”
Fortune requested comment from Apple and will update this story if it responds.
Fortnite was among the most popular free games in Apple’s iPhone app store until August. That’s when Epic Games updated the app to include its own payments processing service for in-app purchases like character costumes. Apple requires all iPhone apps to use its own payment processing service–and pay Apple 30% of all in-app purchases. Apple therefore banned the game and the two sides are now at war in federal court in California.
Just bringing cloud gaming to the iPhone at all is also somewhat controversial. Apple has blocked Microsoft’s xBox cloud gaming service and Google’s Stadia gaming service from iPhones, saying that the offerings don’t meet its terms of service. But first Amazon and now Nvidia have gotten around that ban by letting customers play cloud games via the Safari browser included on every iPhone instead of trying to distribute their own app from Apple’s app store.


fortune--2020-11-19--Facebook’s A.I. is getting better at finding malicious content—but it won’t solve the company’s prob

Facebook’s A.I. is getting better at finding malicious content—but it won’t solve the company’s problems

Facebook has revealed that the artificial intelligence systems it uses to police its social media sites are now good enough to automatically flag more than 94% of hate speech on its social media sites, as well as catching more than 96% of content linked to organized hate groups.
This represents a rapid leap in Facebook’s capabilities—in some cases, these A.I. systems are five times better at catching content that violates the company’s policies than they were just one year ago.
And yet this technological progress isn’t likely to do much to improve Facebook’s embattled public image as long as the company continues to make exceptions to its rules for powerful politicians and popular, but extremist, media organizations.
In recent weeks, Facebook has been under fire for not doing more to slow the false claims about the election made by U.S. President Donald Trump and not banning former Trump advisor Steve Bannon after he used Facebook to distribute a podcast in which he called for the beheading of two U.S. officials whose positions have sometimes angered the president.
Facebook did belatedly label some of Trump’s posts, such as ones in which he said he had won the election, as misleading and appended a note saying that “ballot counting will continue for days or weeks” to some of them. But critics said it should have removed or blocked these posts completely. Rival social media company Twitter did temporarily block new posts from the official Trump campaign account as well as those from some Trump advisors during the run-up to the election. Facebook said Trump’s posts fell within a “newsworthiness” exemption to its normal policies.
As for Bannon’s posts, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said they had been taken down but that the rightwing firebrand had not violated the company’s rules frequently enough to warrant banning him from the platform.
Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, acknowledged that efforts to strengthen the company’s A.I. systems so they could detect—and in many cases automatically block—content that violates the company’s rules were not a complete solution to the company’s problems with harmful content.
“I’m not naive about this,” Schroepfer said. “I’m not saying technology is the solution to all these problems.” Schroepfer said the company’s efforts to police its social network rested on three legs: technology capable of identifying content that violated the company’s policies, the capability to quickly act on that information to prevent that content from having an impact and the policies themselves. Technology could help with the first two of those, but could not determine the policies, he added.
The company has increasingly turned to automated systems to help augment the 15,000 human content moderators, many of them contractors, that it employs across the globe. This year for the first time, Facebook began using using A.I. to determine the order in which content is brought before these human moderators for a decision on whether it should remain up or be taken down. The software prioritizes content based on how severe the likely policy violation may be and how likely the piece of content is to spread across Facebook’s social networks.
Schroepfer said that the aim of the system is to try to limit what Facebook calls “prevalence”—a metric which translates roughly into how many users might be able to see or interact with a given piece of content.
The company has moved rapidly to put several cutting-edge A.I. technologies pioneered by its own researchers into its content moderation systems. These include software that can translate between 100 languages without using a common intermediary. This has helped the company’s A.I. to combat hate speech and disinformation, especially in less common languages for which it has far fewer human content moderators.
Schroepfer said the company had made big strides in “similarity matching”—which tries to determine if a new piece of content is broadly similar to another one that has already been removed for violating Facebook’s policies. He gave an example of a COVID-19-related disinformation campaign—posts falsely claiming that surgical face masks contained known carcinogens—which was taken down after review by human fact-checkers and a second post that used slightly differently language and a similar, but not identical face mask image, which an A.I. system identified and was able to automatically block.
He also said that many of these systems were now “multi-modal”—able to analyze text in conjunction with images or video and sometimes also audio. And while Facebook has individual software designed to catch each specific type of malicious content—one for advertising spam and one for hate speech, for example—it also has a new system it calls Whole Post Integrity Embedding (WPie for short) that is a single piece of software that can identify a whole range of different types of policy violations, without having to be trained on a large number of examples of each violation type.
The company has also used research competitions to try to help it build better content moderation A.I. Last year, it announced the results of a contest it ran that saw researchers build software to automatically identify deepfake videos, highly-realistic looking fake videos that are themselves created with a machine learning technique. It is currently running a competition to find the best algorithms for detecting hateful memes—a difficult challenge because a successful system will need to understand how the image and text in a meme affect meaning as well as possibly understand a lot of context not found within the meme itself.


fortune--2020-11-19--To jump-start America’s economy, invest in women entrepreneurs of color

The financial industry remains dominated by white men today: In the U.S., women make up only 26% of the executive committees in major financial services firms, and only 1% of the c-suite at financial services firms are represented by women of color.
It may come as no surprise, then, that women entrepreneurs of color face major barriers to accessing investment capital. The latest data show less than one percent of all venture capital, for example, goes to women of color.
With the U.S. economy struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic—and small businesses nationwide bearing the brunt—this disparity in access to capital is a recipe for disaster.
As a Black female, I am living proof of the challenges that many Black women, as well as other women of color, face—despite my Ivy League education and credible financial services background. My race has played a factor in my entrepreneurial journey.
I remember starting my own financial technology business in 2010 and how difficult it was to access “family and friends” seed capital, and then later angel investment dollars during our first few years of operation.
Along with another Black female, I founded my former company, known as Smarteys, Inc., to revolutionize how young professionals manage their money. Smarteys’ goal was to provide a platform for young professionals to see their transactions in one place, allocate their paychecks to various uses, and get personalized recommendations on products and services to meet their financial needs.
I eventually raised enough money to hire my first employee, pay my cofounder and myself a minimal salary, and build the technology. However, the fact that I had to adapt a bootstrapped approach slowed down our progress, made it difficult to build a technology product to properly test market fit, and prevented the company from achieving major milestones before it ran out of money.
I ultimately closed the company, and while this decision was the appropriate business decision, it left a lasting impression on me. I came to Next Street to tackle many of the systemic and structural barriers that play a part in the accessibility of capital based on race.
As a person of color, my difficulty in accessing capital is not an anomaly. As recently outlined in a major study, business owners of color overall, both male and female, are plagued by the challenges of finding equity capital to launch a new venture, or of accessing bank credit for expansion. Therefore, small business owners and entrepreneurs have a steeper hill to climb than their white counterparts in both growing and scaling their businesses.
My experience should concern you even if you aren’t a woman of color, because when women of color aren’t given the opportunity to innovate and bring new products and services to market, the whole economy is held back.
As of 2019, women of color account for 50%, or 6.4 million, of the 13 million women-owned businesses; they account for approximately 20% of the 31.7 million proprietor-owned firms in the United States. American Express calculated that four million new jobs and $981 billion in revenue would be added if the average revenue of all women-owned firms owned by persons of color matched that of businesses owned by white women. These achievements would be incredibly impactful on the overall economy.
Access to investment capital can make or break a business before its doors even open. But most importantly, access to equitable investment capital can help create local jobs with livable wages in communities often overlooked by traditional financial institutions.
And when you consider what types of businesses are growing the fastest, it’s those owned by women of color. Specifically, the number of firms owned by women of color grew 43% from 2014 to 2019, according to American Express. Black-women-owned businesses grew the fastest at 50%, followed by Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (41%), Latina/Hispanic (40%), Asian American (37%) and Native American/Alaska Native (26%). Women of color employ 2.4 million people and generate $422.5 billion in revenue (23% of total women-owned businesses’ revenue of $1.4 trillion).
Imagine how much further we can take this if we continue investing in women of color with our dollars and actions. In the midst of an unprecedented pandemic and civil unrest that has decimated small businesses, we need governments, corporate institutions, financial institutions, and individuals to think boldly and create avenues for capital and programs that will truly help women of color continue to innovate and contribute to our economic growth in heightened ways.
We don’t have to build from scratch. A recent report I co-authored for Next Street outlines four concrete solutions that we can act on today:
Create multiple new sources of equity capital focused on financing entrepreneurs of color. Encourage shifts toward equity-like capital products, such as revenue-based financing, that are a better fit with moderate-growth businesses. Hire, promote, and retain more racially and ethnically diverse people among general partners and key staff at equity funds and other institutional investors. Move beyond considering this issue as just a social issue, and understanding that closing the capital gap drives economic growth.
There has never been a more crucial time to expand investments in women of color. As we prepare our nation’s recovery, women of color entrepreneurs will be one of the most important parts of a healthy economy.
Inaction is not a viable option. Let’s do more together.
Charisse Conanan Johnson is manager partner at Next Street, an advisory firm that provides tools and strategies to drive equitable small business growth for a more inclusive U.S. economy.


fortune--2020-11-19--There’s more 5G available in big cities. But which carrier is fastest?

Wireless carriers in the middle of rolling out new super-fast 5G networks have focused on densely populated urban areas at the start. So for its latest 5G speed report, network testing firm Opensignal focused on five major cities: Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C.
Verizon came out ahead, with an average 5G download speed of 438 megabits per second, fast enough to download a high-definition movie in less than one minute. T-Mobile was second at 226 Mbps, and AT&T finished third at 109 Mbps.
All three carriers are spending tens of billions of dollars to add 5G. But it will take several more years before the superfast technology, which can theoretically offer download speeds 10 to 100 times faster than an average 4G connection, is widely available. And customers must upgrade to 5G compatible phones, like the new iPhone 12 line up, which starts at $700. Although consumers don’t rely on downloading much anymore—because they can stream movies and music on the go—the faster connections will eventually enable new applications, like mobile virtual reality games and multi-angle live sports broadcasts.
The Opensignal results, measured from March through October, reflected only the speediest form of 5G that the carriers are deploying. The companies are installing multiple flavors of 5G and some types are faster than others. Opensignal mainly focused on 5G over high-frequency airwave bands, like 28 GHz and 2.5 GHz, the fastest version available. It is also the hardest to find and has not been fully deployed even across the five major cities tested.
Verizon says its high-frequency network is available in parts of 55 cities. Analysts say it covers about 2 million people so far. T-Mobile says its 2.5 GHz network covers about 30 million people so far with a goal of reaching 100 million people by year end. AT&T hasn’t said much about its fast 5G plans lately, but offers coverage in parts of 35 cities.
Most 5G available in the U.S. is in lower frequency bands more typically used by cell phones such as 600 MHz and 850 MHz. The three carriers say they offer “nationwide” 5G coverage via this slower version.
Unsurprisingly, Opensignal’s 5G tests that included those bands found slower average speeds in the five cities. For example, T-Mobile’s average of 53 Mbps in Washington, where it has not deployed the faster type of 5G, was little faster than its 4G network.
Opensignal collects average download speeds from apps installed on millions of consumers phones, rather than by driving around with its own test phones, as rival Rootmetrics does. The crowd-sourced data provides many more measurements but without the same exact comparability of more planned phone tests.


fortune--2020-11-19--Charles Koch: Partisan politics don’t work. It’s time for a new way

Our republic now seems more divided than at any point in my lifetime. I congratulate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their victory. With the presidential campaign over, now begins the work of addressing the urgent crises that are holding our country back. Each of us must ask what role we can play to solve these problems. I stand with millions of Americans, ready to do my part.
This starts with putting the us-versus-them mentality of partisan politics behind us. These post-election days are an important part of that transition. Historically, now is when the winners are gracious, the losers concede, and all Americans acknowledge the outcome and turn their attention to the challenges of everyday life.
Far from being mere gestures, these rituals help ensure the vitality of our democratic republic. America is a place where hard-fought campaigns are designed to give way to a deeper feeling of unity. Americans have long known that while we may vote differently, we’re in this together, and we must work together to rise together. Politics do not define us.
What does define us is our ability to look past our differences to solve problems. This happens every day in businesses, communities, and classrooms across the country. In these trying times, instead of doubling down on the contest for who will have power over others, we must unite to help empower every person from the bottom up so they can contribute and help others lead better lives. We must not see each other as Republicans or Democrats, but for who we truly are: mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, neighbors, teachers, doctors, nurses, business and community leaders.
While government policy plays an important role, our constitutional order ensures it is a limited one. The more we look to partisan politics, the harder it is to find the common ground required to do the work it takes to overcome the coronavirus, create an economic recovery, eliminate racial injustice, or address the other barriers holding people back today. But if we work together civilly, we will find a path forward. It’s time to expect less of politics and more of ourselves and one another.
Take the current pandemic and resulting economic crisis. Millions of people have lost their jobs, and many of those jobs will not be coming back. While temporary government support provides some relief, it takes much more to help those who’ve lost jobs obtain new work in a rapidly changing landscape. We need to transform how people acquire skills and how businesses evaluate and hire employees. I’ve been inspired by the SkillUp coalition (supported in part by the Charles Koch Foundation), which brings together companies and educators to train laid-off workers for better positions. It’s just getting started and already helping more than 1,000 people per day. Solutions like these, which must be discovered and expanded, require no divisive partisan bickering.
The pandemic has also radically changed the education landscape for more than 60 million students. Families are proactively responding, forming learning pods and seeking out new opportunities for their kids. Teachers are becoming educational entrepreneurs and developing personalized education options once reserved only for wealthy families. Sal Khan, the innovator behind Khan Academy, has a new project (which the Charles Koch Institute has supported) that provides these options at no cost to students.
For students who have never had access to these opportunities, such programs could begin to erase decades of injustice in the education system. But it will take tremendous commitment by people who once thought of themselves as being on opposite sides. The disputes between charters, public, or private should give way to a discussion about a quality education for every student.
Making progress on these issues—as well as many others—doesn’t come from following any particular political party in lockstep. It comes from searching for common ground. As someone who has tested whether partisan politics works, I’ve found it doesn’t. Most people intuitively know this: Research by More in Common—a partner of the Stand Together philanthropy, which I founded—shows that about two-thirds of Americans are tired of partisanship. They’re an “exhausted majority” that wants a better way.
If we can work together to find one, we can even motivate politicians to follow suit. One of the most remarkable achievements of the past four years was federal criminal justice reform, which passed with overwhelming support from politicians in both parties. It happened because Americans from all walks of life united to support it—liberals and conservatives, prosecutors and public defenders, police officers and people with criminal records. They put partisanship aside and made progress possible, all because everyday Americans showed the way. Imagine if we tried the same approach on issues like poverty, education, and equal justice.
Though I did not support either candidate in this year’s presidential election, I wish the President-elect well. But let’s not ask him to do more than any President possibly can. The hard work of solving the country’s biggest problems falls to all of us. We each have a role, based on our unique talents, and we all have a responsibility to work together toward solutions.
When Americans have done so, they have moved our country forward, even when they vote for different people. If we do so now, we’ll be surprised at what’s possible, and instead of endangering our republic, we’ll keep it and even improve it.
Charles Koch is chairman and CEO of Koch Industries. With Brian Hooks, he is the author of the new book Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World.


fortune--2020-11-19--Shopify will be a major winner in Affirm’s IPO

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The mega IPOs are shooting out of the gates again.
Following DoorDash’s filing, buzzy fintech Affirm also filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol AFRM in a deal reportedly valuing the firm at as much as $10 billion.
One big takeaway from the filing: Canadian e-commerce titan Shopify could stand to gain handsomely from the IPO. Shopify is listed as a party that owns over 5% of the business founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levichin.
In fact, Shopify could be set to become the company’s third-largest investor, leapfrogging venture firms including Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, each of which hold a hefty stake in Affirm and have invested in the company far longer, according to the S-1. Also, Shopify will pay very, very little for its shares.
I wondered a month ago how pandemic winners like Zoom or Shopify could use their lofty stock valuations to snap up or invest in other companies. But in this case, Shopify didn’t use its stock price or balance sheets—no, the company leveraged its massive network of merchants to ink out a deal with Affirm.
As part of a July agreement, Shopify will offer Affirm as a payment option on its platform, and also receive warrants to buy about 20.3 million in shares for a nominal penny a share. (Or as tech Twitter likes to call such agreements, free shares!) Shopify has already exercised a quarter of those warrants, while the rest is set to convert upon the IPO.
The TL;DR? In aggregate, Shopify’s 20.3 million in shares will be half-Class A and half-Class B—which also gives it that rare thing called voting power.
The fintech is paying a lot for access to Shopify’s merchants. It also indicates a turning point for Affirm that the company has yet to achieve: The company isn’t trying to simply be an installment plan lender. It wants to replace debit and credit cards for the next generation, not only lending funds to pay for that $2,000 couch or stationary bike, but also facilitating the banal payments. So far, its progress has largely been in the former.
“We have successfully demonstrated how our solutions can enable and accelerate commerce for larger, more considered purchases,” the S-1 read. “A key principle of our next phase of growth is expanding into higher frequency purchases which we believe will position us to increase engagement with consumers and merchants.”
And Affirm believes those higher-frequency purchases can come from Shopify.
“We expect that our commercial agreement with Shopify… will increase the mix of our shorter duration, low average order volume products.”
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
VENTURE DEALS
- SellerX, a Berlin-based acquirer of Amazon businesses, raised $118 million (€100 million) in seed funding. Cherry Ventures, Felix Capital, and TriplePoint Capital led the round and were joined by Village Global. Read more.
- Addepar, a Mountain View, Calif.-based platform for wealth management, raised $117 million in Series E funding. WestCap Group led the round and was joined by investors including 8VC and Sway Ventures.
- Medable, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company for digital clinical trials, raised $91 million in Series C funding. Sapphire Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including GSR Ventures, PPD, and Streamlined Ventures.
- Spring Health, a New York-based provider of behavioral health benefits, raised $76 million in Series B funding. Tiger Global led the round and was joined by investors including GingerBread Capital and Operator Partners.
- ZenBusiness, an Austin-based provider of a micro business management platform, raised $55 million in Series B funding. Cathay Innovation led the round.
- CAIS, a New York-based alternative investment platform, will raise $50 million in Series B funding from Eldridge.
- Abnormal Security, a San Francisco-based email security company, raised $50 million in Series B funding. Menlo Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Greylock.
- Aclima, a San Francisco-based air pollution and greenhouse gas measurement startup, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Investors included Clearvision Ventures.
- Duolingo, a Pittsburgh-based language-learning platform, raised $35 million in funding at a $2.4 billion valuation from Durable Capital Partners and General Atlantic.
- CloudBolt Software, a North Bethesda, Md.-based cloud management company, raised $35 million in Series B debt and equity. The equity was led by Insight Partners.
- Chipper Cash, an African cross-border fintech startup, raised $30 million in Series B funding. Ribbit Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Bezos Expeditions, 500 Fintech, Deciens Capital, and One Way Ventures Read more.
- Cogito, a Boston-based sales call analytics company, raised $25 million in funding. Goldman Sachs Growth Equity led the round and was joined by investors including Salesforce Ventures.
- Apprentice.io, a Jersey City-based software company for life science manufacturing, raised $24 million in Series B funding. Insight Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Pacific Western Bank, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, GFR Fund, and The Venture Reality Fund.
- Realync Corp., Carmel, Ind.-based multifamily virtual leasing site, raised $22 million. Susquehanna Growth Equity invested.
- Abacus.ai, a San Francisco-based AI platform, raised $22 million in Series B funding. Coatue led the round and was joined by investors including Decibel Ventures and Index Partners.
- Sofia, a Mexican healthtech startup, raised $19 million in Series A funding. Index Ventures led the round.
- Welcome, a virtual events platform, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Kleiner Perkins led the round and was joined by investors including YC, Kapor Capital and WIN.
- TRANSFR VR, a New York-based maker of virtual reality-based on-the-job training, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Firework Ventures led the round.
- ClosedLoop.ai, an Austin-based healthcare data science platform, raised $11 million in Series A funding. Greycroft and .406 Ventures led the round and were joined by investors including Silicon Valley Bank and Meridian Street Capital.
- Cardless, a San Francisco-based consumer credit card financial technology firm, has raised over $10 million from investors including Greycroft, Accomplice, Clocktower Ventures, and Pear.
- Farmstead, a San Francisco-based online groce, raised $7.9 million in Series A funding. Aidenlair Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Y Combinator, Gelt VC, Duro, Maple VC, Heron Rock, 19 York, and Red Dog Capital.
- build.security, a Tel Aviv-based authorization policy management company, raised $6 million in seed funding. YL Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including George Kurtz (CEO and Co-founder of CrowdStrike).
- Grouparoo, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based way to sync data warehouses to third-party tools, raised $3 million in seed funding. Eniac Ventures and Fuel Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Hack VC, Liquid2, and SCM Advisors.
- Sugarbreak, a New York-based maker of pills to reduce sugar consumption, raised nearly $3 million in funding. Investors included SKAGEN Conscience Capital, Bronze, BBG Ventures, and Sorven Capital.
- Datafold, a San Francisco-based firm seeking to automate testing and monitoring of data analytics, raised $2.1 million in seed funding. New Enterprise Associates led the round.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Ahold Delhaize (AS:AD) and Centerbridge Partners will acquire FreshDirect, the New York-based e-commerce grocer. J.P. Morgan backed the firm. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Creative Foam Corp., backed by Industrial Opportunity Partners, acquired the assets of Aetna Felt Corp., an Allentown, Pa.-based converter, fabricator, and distributor of felt used in podiatry and foot-care products. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Climate Pros, a portfolio company of Saw Mill Capital Partners, acquired The Hattenbach Company, a Cleveland-based provider of commercial refrigeration and HVAC services. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Clearlake Capital Group agreed to acquire nThrive’s Technology Division, a healthcare revenue cycle management platform from nThrive Holdings. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- GTCR recapped Jet Support Services, a private jet servicing firm. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Ascent, backed by Horizon Capital, acquired Mango Solutions, a U.K.-based data sciences consulting firm. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Service Champions, a portfolio company of CenterOak Partners, acquired Adeedo!, JW Plumbing Heating & Air, and A-Avis Home Services, three home services brands serving the Los Angeles and Riverside, California markets. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
- Prairie Capital recapitalized Applied Data Corporation, a Tampa-based provider of fresh item management technology for grocery and convenience stores.
- Payroc, backed by Parthenon Capital, acquired Bluestone Payments, a Peachtree City, Ga.-based provider of payments to merchants. Financial terms weren't disclosed.
EXITS
- Bain Capital is weighing a potential sale or initial public offering of Diversey, a Fort Mill, S.C.-based cleaning company, that could value the company at $6 billion including debt, per Bloomberg. Read more.
- Croda agreed to acquire Eurazeo Capital’s stake in Iberchem, a Spain-based maker of sunblocks, for about 820 million euros ($973 million).
- Rinse acquired Dryv, a Chicago-based on-demand dry cleaning and laundry provider backed by Breakpoint Ventures.
OTHER
- Intact Financial Corp. and Tryg will acquire RSA Insurance Group (LON: RSA), the U.K.-based insurer, for 7.2 billion pounds ($9.6 billion). Read more.
SPAC
- Arrival, a maker of electric vans and buses, agreed to combine with CIIG Merger Corp., a SPAC. Backed by investors including BlackRock, the company will be valued at $5.4 billion.
F+FS
- Searchlight Capital Partners closed Searchlight Capital III with of $3.4 billion in committed capital.
- Round Hill Music Royalty Partners closed its third private fund, Round Hill Music Royalty Fund III, with $291 million.
- Pike Street Capital closed Pike Street Capital Partners with $237 million.
PEOPLE
- LDV Capital, promoted Abigail Hunter-Syed to partner.