Technology Roundup – Lyft, Bosch talked about self-driving vehicle partnership, Airbnb to aim for $3B in December IPO

科技精选——Lyft和博世商谈自动驾驶汽车合作,爱彼迎12月公开上市
Published on: October 2, 2020
Author: Amy Liu

Lyft, Bosch talked about self-driving vehicle partnership – The Information

The Information sources say Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT) had talks with German auto parts manufacturer Bosch over the past year about an autonomous vehicle tie-up.

Lyft has also considered a stake in its self-driving operation to an outside party, like Bosch.

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The sources weren’t sure about the current status of the talks.

Lyft shares are up 0.4% AH to $27.73.

Airbnb to aim for $3B in December IPO – Reuters

Airbnb (AIRB) will seek to raise ~$3B in its upcoming IPO, Reuters reports, aiming to take advantage of the surprising recovery in its business after the pandemic roiled the travel industry.

The company’s current plan is to make its filing publicly available in November after the U.S presidential election and is targeting an IPO in December, according to the report.

Airbnb could achieve a valuation of more than $30B in the IPO, which would be significantly higher than the $18B valuation in April when it raised $2B in debt from investors at the depth of the pandemic.

Intel wins second U.S. military chip contract

Under the second-phase contract, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) will help the U.S. military develop chip prototypes using its packaging technology. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

The work will take place at factories in Oregon and Arizona, where Intel’s $7B facility expansion in Chandler is now fully operational.

The project is overseen by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division. Intel received the first-phase contract last year.

Intel’s new work comes as US-China trade tensions add more fuel to the battle for domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

TSMC (NYSE:TSM) and Samsung (OTC:SSNNF,OTC:SSNLF) have similar packaging tech, but Intel is the only company that can perform the work within the United States.

SoftBank returns to tech options shopping spree – CNBC

Sources tell CNBC’s David Faber that SoftBank (OTCPK:SFTBF,OTCPK:SFTBY) might again be behind an unusual, $200M spike in call options yesterday morning.

The options were for tech giants Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet.

“A number of sources in the derivative markets on major trading markets noting that significant call buying, and they all point to Softbank as being behind it,” says Faber.

Earlier this month, FT sources said SoftBank was making a “dangerous bet” by snapping up “huge amounts” of tech stock options.

The news made SoftBank lose $12B of its market value as investors pushed for more details on the strategy.

Amazon Music partners with Universal Music, Warner Music on Ultra HD remasters

Amazon Music (AMZN -1%) has announced a partnership with Universal Music Group (VIVHY +0.9%) and Warner Music Group (WMG -1.7%) to remaster thousands of songs and albums at the highest quality streaming audio available, and deliver it exclusively.

The companies will remaster the music to Ultra High Definition – better than CD quality, with a 24-bit depth and sample rate up to 192 kHz.

Amazon Music HD already streams 5M songs in Ultra HD, as well as more than 60M lossless High Definition songs (16-bit, 44.1 kHz sample rate).

Now for the first time it’s bringing that top quality to songs from Eagles, Marvin Gaye, Nirvana, Tom Petty, Diana Ross, Linkin Park, J. Cole, Waylon Jennings, Ramones, 2 Chainz, Lady Gaga, The Notorious B.I.G., Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez and more.

The Amazon Music HD tier costs $12.99/month for Prime Members and $14.99/month for Amazon customers, or an additional $5/month for current subscribers.

Technology