Opportunity or threat? Stripe has raised $600m at an eye-watering valuation of $95bn in a funding round that appears to have no purpose other than to provide a base from which to go public at an even more outrageous number. There is no doubt that Stripe is a good company as it has grown from nothing in 2010 to become...
Better late than never. Despite endless delays, Android Automotive is finally getting some mass-market traction as it is confirmed for the 2022 Volvo XC60 which is the first combustion engine model to be confirmed for Android Automotive. This is significant because, despite all the hype, noise and fuss surrounding electric vehicles, they are going to remain a small part of...
Long term prospects but wait for a dip. Roblox has the potential to morph into something far more interesting than it is today, but a large cash flow crunch when growth slows down may allow the long-term value investors to get their positions at a much lower level. At $38bn, Roblox is expensive but not in the same league as...
EV mania creates an issue for electricity generation. While everyone is getting very excited about the electrification of transportation, no one is worrying where the power is going to come from which is a problem being made even more difficult by the current desire to move away from fossil fuels. I have very little doubt that once the major problems...
A study that misses half the issue Waymo has released a study that extols the ability of autonomous driving to prevent fatalities on the road but as often with these sorts of studies, I don’t think that it is telling the full story. Waymo has published a study (see here) where it recreated the details of 72 fatal crashes that...
China doubles down on semiconductor unreality. While there is no doubt that China is in a better economic condition than most of its rivals its plan for self-reliance in semiconductors has very little chance of succeeding although its plans in AI look far more realistic. These plans were made official at the National People’s Congress last week where a GDP...
D-Wave makes a real(ish) world demonstration. D-Wave has demonstrated that its quantum computer can solve a “real-world” problem and in the process found that it completed the task somewhere between 1m to 3m times faster than a regular supercomputer powered with silicon CPUs would be able to do (see here). This kind of speed is not a new revelation but...
Mapbox reshuffles to go for automotive. Mapbox has moved into a new phase of its development by moving its founder and CEO into the role of chairman and chief strategy officer and promoting Peter Sirota to the role of CEO. At the same time, Mapbox has announced that it will follow-on from its success from landing a partnership with BMW...
Huawei finally hits the wall. After nearly 2 years of ducking and diving combined with superlative execution on the part of Huawei’s management, its dependence on US technology has finally hit home as Huawei is expecting shipments to fall by more than 40% this year. Although, The White House has taken a much softer tone towards China in its commentary,...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
Facebook – The Wizard of OZ pt. II
I am not convinced that Facebook is paying anything. Facebook has struck a 3 year deal with News Corp (see here) to “pay” for the Australian news that hosts on its site but given that financial terms were not disclosed, I suspect that Facebook may be paying almost nothing to News Corp for its Australian content. This is because the...