Bay Area tech leaders respond to U.S. Capitol riots. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitch and others announced bans on President Donald Trump’s respective social accounts for spreading disinformation and encouraging violence in the wake of Wednesday’s violence in Washington, D.C.
Last week, Facebook removed several of Trump’s posts and placed a temporary ban on his Facebook and Instagram accounts. The ban will last up until Inauguration Day.
YouTube removed a video by Trump uploaded on Wednesday. In the one-minute clip, the president told his supporters to go home while continuing to insist the election had been “fraudulent.” He referred to the rioters as “very special” people.
Twitter initially restricted the same video, and later removed it, along with at least two other tweets from the president. Additionally, the company locked the president out of his account for 12 hours before moving Friday to ban the account altogether. [Built In SF]
Edtech wins big but are students of color being left behind? Due to the pandemic, consumer interest in remote learning platforms significantly spiked last year. As a result, fresh financing followed for several Bay Area-based edtech companies including Masterclass, Quizlet, Udemy, Coursera, Course Hero, and Springboard. Following a substantial year of funding in the edtech space, several Bay Area tech companies are setting their sights on closing the digital divide. Roughly 16 million U.S. students report lacking sufficient technology to learn remotely and a disproportionate amount of them are Black, Native American or Latinx. [Built In SF]
Google workers unionize. Workers from Google and Alphabet launched the Alphabet Workers Union last week. The union is the first of its kind for a major tech company and is supported by the Communications Workers of America union and members of CWA Local 1400. In the union’s statement, it calls out transparency problems in high-profile firings, government contracts deemed unethical and large exit packages for executives accused of sexual harassment. The union is open to anyone who works for Google or any of its subsidiaries — including companies like Fitbit, Waymo, Verily and more. [Built In SF]
Clover Health goes public. The company began trading on the Nasdaq exchange on Friday with the symbol CLOV and a valuation of about $6.7 billion. Clover’s opening price on Nasdaq was $15.30. The company has raised $925 million in financing to date and investors include Alphabet, Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital and Greenoaks Capital Partners. In addition to its San Francisco headquarters, the company has offices in Jersey City, Nashville, and Hong Kong. [Silicon Valley Business Journal]
SoFi goes public. SoFi, short for Social Finance, is set to go public via SPAC. Special purpose acquisition companies raise money through a shell company to buy an existing company. The fintech company agreed to go public via a reverse merger with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. V at an $8.65 billion valuation. SoFi received preliminary, conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national bank charter in October of last year. [Axios]
Bay Area tech companies made bank in 2020. Despite the pandemic, money continued to flow in Silicon Valley. The top 10 funding rounds for Bay Area companies amount to more than $8.5 billion in investments. Autonomous driving startup Waymo led the way with $3 billion and fintech giant Robinhood followed with $1.26 billion in new funding split across multiple rounds. Impossible Foods, Stripe and Instacart also made the list. [Built In SF]
New leadership at Goldman Sachs. The bank promoted Sam Britton and Matt Gibson to run its global tech, media and telecom group after Nick Giovanni, who ran the team for two years, left to become CFO of Instacart. Last year, Goldman led overall in tech IPOs and mergers and acquisitions, beating Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase in both categories. [CNBC]
