Technology

Oracle today announced that it has made another acquisition, this time to enhance both the kind of data that it can provide to its business customers, and its artificial intelligence capabilities: it is buying DataFox, a startup that has amassed a huge company database — currently covering 2.8 million public and private businesses, adding 1.2 million each year — and uses AI to analyse that to make larger business predictions. The business intelligence resulting from that service can in turn be used for a range of CRM-related services: prioritising sales accounts, finding leads, and so on.

&The combination of Oracle and DataFox will enhance Oracle Cloud Applications with an extensive set of AI-derived company-level data and signals, enabling customers to reach even better decisions and business outcomes,& notedSteve Miranda, EVP of applications development at Oracle, in a note to DataFox customers announcing the deal. He said that DataFox will sit among Oracleexisting portfolio of business planning services like ERP, CX, HCM and SCM. &Together, Oracle and DataFox will enrich cloud applications with AI-driven company-level data, powering recommendations to elevate business performance across the enterprise.&

Terms of the deal do not appear to have been disclosed but we are trying to find out. DataFox — which launched in 2014 as a contender in the TC Battlefield at Disrupt — had raised just under $19 million and was last valued at $33 million back in January 2017, according to PitchBook. Investors in the company included Slack, GV, Howard Linzon, and strategic investor Goldman Sachs among others.

Oracle acquires DataFox, a developer of ‘predictive intelligence as a service& across millions of company records

Oracle said that it is not committing to a specific product roadmap for DataFox longer term, but for now it will be keeping the product going as is for those who are already customers. The startup counted Goldman Sachs, Bain - Company and Twilio among those using its services.

The deal is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it shows that larger platform providers are on the hunt for more AI-driven tools to provide an increasingly sophisticated level of service to customers. Second, in this case, ita sign of how content remains a compelling proposition, when it is presented and able to be manipulated for specific ends. Many customer databases can get old and out of date, so the idea of constantly trawling information sources in order to create the most accurate record of businesses possible is a very compelling idea to anyone who has faced the alternative, and that goes even more so in sales environments when people are trying to look their sharpest.

It also shows that, although both companies have evolved quite a lot, and there are many other alternatives on the market, Oracle remains in hot competition with Salesforce for customers and are hoping to woo and keep more of them with the better, integrated innovations. That also points to Oracle potentially cross and up-selling people who come to them by way of DataFox, which is an SaaS that pitches itself very much as something anyone can subscribe to online.

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Twitter says it has removed several accounts affiliated with Infowars and Alex Jones

Twitter has cleared more Infowars related accounts off its platform. The company told CNN today that it permanently suspended 18 accounts affiliated with the far-right website, known for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories, on Monday after &numerous violations and warnings.& It added the removals were in addition to five Infowars affiliated accounts that had been already been banned.

Alex Jones and Infowars, which he launched in 1999, had their accounts permanently suspended by Twitter last month, one of the last major social media platforms to do so. Infowars, however, had been using affiliated accounts to get around the ban and promote its content, according to a Daily Beast report last week. These included the accounts of Infowars& &Real News& show, the Infowars store (which sells Jones& line of dietary supplements) and &News Wars,& which promoted videos by Infowars. All of these accounts, and several others, were mentioned in the Daily Beast article and included in Twitterpurge on Monday.

Alex Jones and Infowars are notorious for spreading some of the most pernicious conspiracy theories to emerge recently, including ones claiming the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings were faked. Their articles and videos have also frequently included racist and homophobic content and frequent calls for violence.

A wave of social media and tech companies began suspending accounts maintained by Alex Jones and Infowars in August for violating their policies on hate speech and violence. After weeks of prevarication and half-measures, including a brief temporary ban, Twitter permanently removed both @realalexjones and @infowars at the beginning of September. The list of platforms Infowars and Alex Jones are now barred from include Twitter, YouTube, Spotify, and the App Store.

TechCrunch has contacted Twitter and Infowars for comment.

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Water Abundance Xprize$1.5M winner shows how to source fresh water from the air

You may remember that back in March, the Water Abundance Xprize named the five finalists in its contest to demonstrate the sustainable and scalable collection of water from the air. Interestingly, none of those finalists were the winner — after one dropped out, an eliminated team stepped in and took the prize.

The goal of the program was to collect &a minimum of 2,000 liters of water per day from the atmosphere using 100 percent renewable energy, at a cost of no more than 2 cents per liter.& No simple task! In fact, I would have guessed it was an impossible one.

But many teams made the attempt anyway, and with a variety of approaches at that. For instance, the runner-up and $150K prize winner, HawaiiJMCC Wing, combined a large, super-efficient wind turbine with a commercial condenser unit.

The winner was Skysource/Skywater Alliance, which has already deployed many of its units abroad (and, apparently, at Miranda Kerrhouse). They can run off the grid or alternative power sources, and use an extremely efficient adiabatic distillation method. The one for the contest was a new prototype they call Wood-to-Energy Deployed Emergency Water, or WEDEW.

Itcheaper and more efficient than desalination, and doesn&t require the presence of nearby water sources or rain. Skywater boxes, which range from somewhat smaller to rather larger than a refrigerator, can produce up to 300 gallons per day; thatabout 1135 liters, so two of them would meet the contestrequirements if the cost was low enough and it was running on renewables.

That was sufficiently demonstrated to the Xprize inspection teams, it seems, and the team was this weekend awarded the $1.5 million top prize despite not making it into the finals.

&It has been pretty intense but itreally been exciting for me to see water come out of our system, because this is connected to real lives in the world,& said team member Jay Hasty in an Xprize video.

This doesn&t mean water scarcity is a solved problem — by a long shot — but competitions like this are great ways of promoting new development in a space and also creating awareness of it. Hopefully Skywater systems will be installed where they&re needed, but development will almost certainly continue on those created by the other teams competing for the prize.

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In an attempt to enhance variety and inclusion efforts and civic engagement in between the growing technology market in Los Angeles and the community that surrounds it, over 80 venture capitalists and entrepreneurs signed up with the citymayor, Eric Garcetti, and the non-profit Annenberg Foundation to announce PledgeLA. The initiative is one way in which the Los Angeles innovation neighborhood is trying to guarantee that it does not duplicate the exact same mistakes made by Silicon Valley and San Francisco and alienate fellow residents who could feel overlooked of the chances created by techrise to prominence in the city. Anti-Tech Protesters Are Informing Kevin RoseNeighbors That HeA & Parasite &. & L.A.tech development is no mishap & it is a tribute to our regiontradition of imagination, leadership in development, and wealth of skill. With PledgeLA, we will promote openness in a growing sector and unlock of opportunity to our diverse base of workers, no matter their race, gender, or background, & stated Garcetti, in a declaration. As part of the diversity and addition effort, the signatories to PledgeLA have agreed to track civic participation and variety information each year and to make that data publicly available. The metrics that signatories will track include neighborhood engagement statistics like involvement in mentorship programs, volunteering, board service, providing internships, using regional banks, offering choice to suppliers owned by women or minorities, committing a part of yearly spending to regional impact initiatives, and buying local Los Angeles start-ups. Demographics at funds and start-ups will also be under the microscope, given that signatories have actually accepted report on their structure by race, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability status, immigration status, veteran status, educational attainment, socioeconomic origin, period at a company. PledgeLA participants will likewise need a code of conduct around diversity and inclusion and are needed to advantage diversity in corporate employing practices. Over the previous 5 years, Los Angeles has emerged as among the leading five destinations in the U.S. for technology investment and corporate advancement. Itone of the fastest growing tech hubs in the country with the 100 largesttech business in L.A. and Orange County reporting a 24 percent increase in work from the previous year, according to data offered by the Annenberg Structure. Southern California requires to find its hub for it to establish its own tech environment. The local non-profit was instrumental in establishing the PledgeLA effort, which grew out of discussions that the institute cultivated among the Los Angeles venture community. Varied talent remains significantly underrepresented in the workforce of the regional tech sector. The landmark. PledgeLA initiative grew out of a series of analytical sessions within the Los Angeles venture capital neighborhood. & This dedication from L.A.venture capitalists and Mayor Garcetti means that change is occurring, and this modification is great, as long as we can work to make Los Angeles a more varied, inclusive and community-focused city that benefits everyone, & stated Annenberg Structure Chairman, President and president Wallis Annenberg, in a declaration. For Los Angeles financiers like Upfront Ventures partner, Kobie Fuller, varied working with practices are simply great organization sense. & Investing in a varied range of founders, searching for talent in all corners of the city, and bringing various voices to the table when making choices on investments is simply wise business, & Fuller said in a declaration. & We understand business with a varied workforce are more effective, which, in turn, increases community engagement and offers opportunities for the community-at-large. PledgeLA will put Los Angeles on the right trajectory. &. Nearly every large investment firm and Los Angeles based business accepted sign on to the pledge with a minimum of three noteworthy exceptions. Neither Snap, SpaceX, nor Tesla appear on the list of business ready to participate in the variety pledge.
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As we noted six months ago, Tiger Global Management, the 17-year-old investment group, is starting to see a whole lot of its venture-related startup investments pay off. We also guessed that because of those wins, the outfit was likely lining up commitments for a new mega fund.

It was a safe bet. According to a new report from the Financial Times, the New York-based outfit has just closed its newest venture vehicle with $3.75 billion after actively marketing it for just six weeks.

That makes Tigernew vehicle one of the largest venture funds in a world suddenly clotted with ever-bigger pools of capital, including SoftBankmassive $93 billion Vision Fund, which closed last year, and the newest global fund assembled by Sequoia, which closed with $8 billion in capital commitments in late summer, a record-breaking amount for the storied venture firm.

In fact, Tigernew fund may be the second largest venture fund to close so far this year, just beating out YF Capitalnewest pool, which closed with $2.5 billion in July, and numerous other firms to close billion-dollar-plus funds in 2018, including: Tunlan InvestmentXiong&An Global Blockchain Innovation Fund, which closed in April with $1.6 billion; Lightspeed Venture Partners, which closed on $1.8 billion in capital across two new funds in July; General Catalyst, which gathered up at least $1.375 billion in capital commitments earlier this year; and GGV Capital, which just last weekclosed on $1.9 billion across three funds that will back both U.S. and China-based companies.

According to the FT, the Tiger fund closed exactly a week ago and will focus on both enterprise as well as direct-to-consumer companies in the U.S., China and India, where, according to The Economic Times, Tiger is stepping up its investments after hitting the pause button for a few years. Tigerapparent inspiration:the reported $3.3 billion it recently made from an early bet on Flipkart, which sold the majority of its e-commerce business to retail giant Walmart in May for $16 billion.

Other recent developments that Tigerinvestors have surely liked seeing include the sale ofGlassdoor, the jobs and salary website, acquired by the Japanese human resources company Recruit Holdings for $1.2 billion in cash back in May; Spotifydirect listing on the U.S. stock market back in April (the company is currently valued at $26 billion); and even more recent exits, including the IPOs of bothEventbrite and SurveyMonkey — though both have handed back some gains since going public last month. Eventbrite opened at $36 per share and is currently trading at $26 per share; SurveyMonkey has lost roughly one-third of its value since its first trading day.

Tiger was founded by Chase Coleman, a protégé of hedge fund pioneer Julian Robertson. According to the FT, the outfit now manages roughly $26 billion and about half of that is being funneled into venture-backed startups, with portfolio manager Lee Fixel largely overseeing its venture bets.

Some of its investments have been contrarian and underscore the extent to which Tiger is not like other investment firms. It took a stake of more than $1 billion in SoftBank Group earlier this year, for example, reportedly on the belief that it was undervalued at the time. Tiger is also an investor in the e-cig company Juul, which has come under intense regulatory scrutiny in recent months but remains among the fastest-growing companies in the Bay Area right now.

Interestingly, even SoftBankVision Fund — which is currently in an uncomfortable public position, having raised nearly half its money from Saudi ArabiaCrown PrinceMohammed bin Salman — couldn&t invest in Juul if it wanted to. According to Jeff Housenbold, a managing director with SoftBankVision Fund, like many other venture investors, SoftBank hasprohibitive clauses in its agreement with its own backers that include pornography, alcohol, drugs, weapons and tobacco.

Whether Tiger has also raised money from sovereign wealth funds, we don&t know. The firm has never publicly disclosed who, beyond its employees, owns shares in the firm.

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Guillermo del Toro is making a stop-motion Pinocchio movie for Netflix

Guillermo del Toro, the Academy Award-winning director of &The Shape of Water& (not to mention &Hellboy,& &PanLabyrinth& and &Pacific Rim&) is making a new version of &Pinocchio& for Netflix.

I&d thought that after del Toroawards victory earlier this year he might finally make his long-thwarted adaptation &At the Mountains of Madness.& And while I&m not giving up hope that I&ll see a del Toro-helmed version of the classic H.P. Lovecraft horror story one day, it seems that hegoing in a different direction for now.

The official announcement from Netflix describes this as del Toro&lifelong passion project,& and says that it will be both a stop-motion animated film and a musical.

&No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio,& del Toro said in a statement. &In our story, Pinocchio is an innocent soul with an uncaring father who gets lost in a world he cannot comprehend. He embarks on an extraordinary journey that leaves him with a deep understanding of his father and the real world. I&ve wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember.&

This isn&t the directorfirst project for Netflix — he previously created the animated series &Trollhunters,& and he has another series in the works for the streaming service, &Guillermo del Toro Presents 10 After Midnight.& Netflix says that in addition to directing the film with Mark Gustafson (&The Fantastic Mr. Fox&), he will co-write and co-produce it. The Jim Henson Company (which is also making a &Dark Crystal& prequel series for Netflix) and ShadowMachine are producing as well.

Netflix also announced today that itraising an additional $2 billion in debt to fund its original content plans. It says production on &Pinocchio& will begin this fall.

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