Michelle F Davis / Bloomberg: Benchling, which makes cloud-based software to manage biotech R&D, raises a $100M Series F at a $6.1B valuation; Benchling was last valued at $4B in April — – New investor Franklin Templeton leads round with Altimeter — Companies using firm’s software include Regeneron, Eli Lilly
Author: Sophia
Sophia
Sophia is an entrepreneur and blogger. She is passionate about software, disruptive technology, personal development, and inspiring others.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Sensor Tower: Instagram became the world’s most downloaded app in Q4 2021, its best quarter since 2014 with installs up 10% QoQ, followed by TikTok and Facebook — Instagram is benefiting from TikTok’s ban in India, and has now reclaimed the top spot in terms of total global downloads as of the fourth quarter of 2021.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: T-Mobile says it blocked 21B scam, spam, and unwanted robocalls in 2021 via its Scam Shield service, as scam call traffic rose 116%+ YoY to 425M calls per week — T-Mobile says it blocked 21 billion scam, spam, and unwanted robocalls this year through its free Scam Shield robocall …
Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal: White House forms the Cyber Safety Review Board, loosely modeled on NTSB, to investigate major national cybersecurity failures, starting with the Log4j bug — The new panel is loosely modeled on the National Transportation Safety Board and will look into the recently discovered Log4j internet bug
Todd Spangler / Variety: Amazon says it has sold over 150M Fire TV devices worldwide — Amazon is touting a major milestone for Fire TV, claiming it has sold more than 150 million of the streaming devices worldwide. And it announced deals with Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis to bring Fire TV to the automakers’ in-car entertainment systems.
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol: Behind the scramble to revamp the White House’s plans for the Alliance for the Future of the Internet, meant to rally countries behind a vision for an open web — The White House is set to announce plans this week for its much-anticipated Alliance for the Future of the Internet …
Noam Scheiber / New York Times: Newly unsealed court documents show IBM executives disparaged older employees as “dinobabies” and discussed phasing them out to make room for millennials — Documents released in an age-discrimination case appear to show high-level discussion about paring the ranks of older employees.
David McCabe / New York Times: US judge dismisses a DC AG lawsuit against Amazon, which claimed that the company maintained a monopoly by locking wholesalers into anti-competitive agreements — The attorney general for the District of Columbia said Amazon made merchants on its site sell at the lowest price they charged on the web …
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch: Australian HR service Employment Hero raises A$181M at a A$1.25B valuation led by Seek Investments and says it is used by 80K SMBs, after raising A$140M in July — Human resources platform Employment Hero announced today it has raised $181 million AUD (or about $129 million USD) …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Conductor, which offers marketing tools for SEO and more, raises $150M led by Bregal Sagemount at a $525M post-money valuation — Conductor — a marketing technology company that was snapped up by WeWork at the height of the latter company’s expansion ambitions, only then to buy itself …