Blockchain Foundry Inc. (CSE: BCFN)
Develops and commercializes blockchain-based business solutions and provides consulting services to corporate clients seeking to leverage blockchain technology in their businesses.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) company and the BMW Group (OTCPK:BMWYY) has collaborated to further accelerate the automaker’s pace of innovation by jointly developing cloud-enabled solutions that increase efficiency, performance, and sustainability across every aspect of the automotive life cycle, from vehicle design to after-sales services.
As part of the wide-ranging collaboration, the BMW Group will migrate data from across its business units and operations in over a hundred countries to AWS.
The companies will also invest in enabling and training up to 5,000 BMW Group-affiliated software engineers in the latest AWS technologies and empower the company’s global workforce to make better use of data.
AWS and the BMW Group will also collaborate on innovative products and solutions to improve operational performance and increase transparency in the supply chain.
“The BMW Group is driving digitalization and innovation in the automotive industry,” said Alexander Buresch, CIO and Senior Vice President, BMW Group IT. “We are making data central to the way we work and we look forward to collaborating with AWS to merge our talents, continuing to raise the bar for innovation among automakers and delivering exciting new experiences for our customers around the world.”
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) launches the long-awaited over-ear wireless headphones, the $549 AirPods Max.
For reference, the AirPods Pro cost $249.
From the press release: “AirPods Max combine a custom acoustic design, H1 chips, and advanced software to power computational audio for a breakthrough listening experience with Adaptive EQ, Active Noise Cancellation, Transparency mode, and spatial audio.”
The new wearables are available in five colors. Preorders start today with availability starting on December 15.
Background: In Apple’s recent FQ4 report, the Wearables, Home, and Accessories segment reported $7.9B in revenue, topping the $7.23B consensus estimate.
Apple shares are up 0.7% pre-market to $124.56.
Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) has increased the aggregate value of shares repurchase from $3B to $4.5B.
The 2020 Share Repurchase Program is effective through December 31, 2022.
Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ:AMZN) announces the Amazon HealthLake service for aggregating, normalizing, and identifying data for healthcare and life sciences organizations.
The HIPAA-eligible service structures all of the data into the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources industry standard format.
“With Amazon HealthLake, healthcare organizations can reduce the time it takes to transform health data in the cloud from weeks to minutes so that it can be analyzed securely, even at petabyte scale. This completely reinvents what’s possible with healthcare and brings us that much closer to everyone’s goal of providing patients with more personalized and predictive treatment for individuals and across entire populations,” says Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of Amazon Machine Learning for AWS.
Amazon has made its own push into healthcare in recent years, including the $753M acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack and the Amazon Care primary care clinics that initially launched for employees.
Yesterday, Uber (NYSE:UBER) announced selling its self-driving vehicle unit to Aurora Innovation. The unusually structured deal involved Uber investing $400M in Aurora to receive a 26% stake in the resulting combined company.
Today, Uber announces a similar arrangement for its flying taxi Elevate unit and Joby Aviation.
As part of the Elevate acquisition, Uber will invest $75M in Joby and the two companies will integrate their respective services into each other’s apps.
Uber Elevate had operated an air taxi service in NYC but it was shuttered early on in the pandemic.
Overall terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed. The deal is expected to close in early Q1.
Uber previously contributed $50M to Joby during a Series C funding round in January.
Uber is shedding its non-core business to help Eats offset the pandemic-related rideshare losses. The company has targeted quarterly adjusted EBITDA profitability before the end of 2021.
Uber shares are down 1.2% AH to $52.37.
