August 20, 2023: Rising Concerns Send Markets Down

Last week was another tough week for investors, Dow Jones fell 2.2%, S&P 500 lost 2.1%, and Nasdaq fell 2.6%. SoftBank is in talks to acquire the 25% stake in Arm it does not directly own. Arm’s revenue fell 1% to US$2.68 billion in its last fiscal year, Bloomberg reported. The chip designer’s revenue fell a further 2.5% in the June quarter. Instacart is aiming for a September IPO. Instacart last raised money in 2021 at a US$39 billion valuation, but is likely to go public around the US$10 billion mark. SpaceX profit hit US$55 million in Q1 on US$1.5 billion in revenue. In 2022, the company had US$559 million in losses on US$4.6 billion in revenue. Europe’s Stripe rival Adyen fell 39% after its slowest sales growth on record. Adyen attributed the tepid print to increased hiring, firmer wages and to a shift in its North American customers’ business prioritization from growth to cost savings in the first half of the year. Shares of Hawaiian Electric plunged as much as 41% on Monday and are down 49% since the devastating Maui fires broke out last week. Intel scrapped its US$5.4 billion deal to buy Israeli contract chipmaker Tower Semiconductor Ltd after their merger agreement expired without regulatory approval from China. Microsoft is planning a new AI service with Databricks, hedging its OpenAI bet. Gemini, Google’s answer to OpenAI’s core software, will launch this fall with the ability to generate conversational text as well as imagery. In Canada, Sophic Client OneSoft reported Q2 revenue of $2.5 million (+87% y/y). Annual recurring revenue increased q/q by 59%. Management reiterated its gross profit guidance of $7.6 million in Fiscal 2023. Squamish, BC-based cleantech startup Carbon Engineering has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by oil -and-gas company Occidental Petroleum for US$1.1 billion.

Sophic Client OneSoft Solutions Inc. (OSS-TSXV, OSSIF-OTC) reports Q2 2023 results for fiscal 2023.

Revenue in Q2 2023 was $2.5 million, an increase of 87% or $1.2 million over Q2 Fiscal 2022 revenue of $1.3 million. Annual recurring revenue increased quarter over quarter by $733,051 or 59% due to greater CIM use by existing customers and the inclusion of IM Operations software maintenance revenue. Adjusted EBITDA, a Non-GAAP measure reconciled to the net loss in the MD&A filed on SEDAR+, improved from a loss of $0.7 million in Q2 2022 to a loss of $0.2 million in Q2 2023. Liquid assets increased by $1.0 million to total $5.7 million at June 30, 2023 ($4.7 million as at December 31, 2022), comprised of cash and cash equivalents of $5.0 million and accounts receivable of $0.7 million. Management reiterates its gross profit guidance of $7.6 million in Fiscal 2023 as forecasted. A replay of the Q2 call is available at https://www.onesoft.ca/. https://bit.ly/3YCpQwO

Sophic Client Legend Power Systems Inc. (LPS-TSXV, LPSIF-OTC) schedules Fiscal Q3 (Jun) 2023 financial results release and conference call.

Legend Power will release its Q3 (Jun) F2023 financial results for the nine months ended June 30, 2023, prior to market open on Friday, August 25, 2023. The Company has also scheduled a conference call to provide a business update and discuss its Q3 2023 financial results for Friday, August 25, 2023 at 11:00 AM ET (8:00 AM PT). https://bit.ly/44hFfUC

Sophic Client LuckBox (LUCK-TSXV, LUKEF-OTC) provides 2023 operational and corporate update.

Following the Company’s operating update for May 2023, over $23.9 million has been wagered across the site from a Registered Player Base of over 450,000. The Company has also achieved yet another high in July for Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). These KPIs have been achieved from a near standing start at the beginning of this year and shows the extensive growth of the Luckbox brand given the protracted platform issues in 2022. The Company also continues to develop a proprietary, live micro-betting product which is expected to launch later this year. The Company also confirmed significant optimization and reduction in operational costs, and given this, have been able to achieve Positive Net Contribution (defined as Net Gaming Revenue less Cost of Sales less Marketing) for the first time in both June and July of this year. This is an encouraging step forward for the Company to be Cash Flow Positive and its mission to grow shareholder value. Despite these encouraging metrics and management’s conviction on many of its Key Objectives, the Company has been unable to satisfactorily complete the proposed Private Placement, announced on July 7, 2023. The Company has received significant interest from industry investors in both its B2C platform and wholly owned B2B micro-betting product and is now actively exploring alternative strategic options. The management team and Board are reviewing these options, that will allow the Company to grow and maximize value for all shareholders. There can be no assurance that this process will result in any specific strategic plan or financial transaction and no timetable has been set for its completion. The Company does not plan to provide updates on the status of the review unless there are material developments to report. https://bit.ly/3KHEddD

Sabio holdings (SBIO-TSXV) announces closing of convertible note offering.

Sabio closed a non-brokered private placement financing of secured convertible notes (the “Secured Notes”) and unsecured convertible notes (the “Unsecured Notes” and together with the Secured Notes, the “Notes”) for aggregate gross proceeds of up to CAD$3,000,000 (the “Offering”). The closing of the Offering was comprised of the issuance of Secured Notes in the aggregate principal amount of CAD$1,200,000 and Unsecured Notes in the principal amount of CAD$537,850, for total gross proceeds of CAD$1,737,850 (the “Closing”). The Notes issued in connection with the Closing will mature on August 16, 2025 (“Maturity Date”). The Notes will be convertible in whole or in part, at the option of the holder, into common shares in the capital of the Company (“Common Shares”) at a price of CAD$1.00 (“Conversion Price”) per Common Share at any time before or on the Maturity Date. The Company reserved the Conversion Price through a price reservation form submitted on July 24, 2023 to the TSX Venture Exchange (“TSXV”). https://tinyurl.com/4cd9sy9t

Carbon Engineering sold to US oil and gas company Occidental for US$1.1 billion.

Squamish, BC-based cleantech startup Carbon Engineering has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by oil -and-gas company Occidental Petroleum for US$1.1 billion ($1.48 billion). Founded in 2009, Carbon Engineering develops technology that captures industrial-scale quantities of CO2 directly from the atmosphere, also referred to as “direct air capture (DAC).” https://bit.ly/3KQKPGD

Dcbel closes US$50 million Series B led by climate-focused Idealist Capital.

Montréal-based cleantech startup Dcbel has closed over US$50 million in Series B funding to hasten the delivery of its r16 Home Energy Station. The company’s r16 product enables bidirectional electric vehicle (EV) charging, allowing customers to charge EVs using solar panels and stationary batteries and leverage EV-stored energy to power their homes. Dcbel’s Series B financing was led by climate-focused Montréal growth fund Idealist Capital. According to Dcbel, fellow new investor Investissement Québec is also participating in the round. Existing Dcbel backers include Volvo Cars, Coatue, Kevin Mahaffey, and Real Ventures. The round comes more than two years after Dcbel closed nearly $60 million in equity and debt to bring its EV charging solution to market. Dcbel, which did not disclose its latest valuation, described its Series B financing as an up round. Founded in 2015 and formerly known as Ossiaco, Dcbel develops smart home energy products. https://tinyurl.com/mr4yzshu

Cybersecurity startup Field Effect on the hunt for acquisitions following $30 million debt facility from Scotiabank.

Led by former cyberspies, Field Effect has secured a $30 million debt facility from Scotiabank’s Technology Innovation and Banking Group to scale its suite of cybersecurity solutions for businesses. Before this debt financing, Field Effect closed its first external capital raise in October 2022 a $41 million (US$30 million) equity Series A round that the company later upsized to around $47 million in December. It was previously bootstrapped since its inception. https://bit.ly/3OHP7Bj

AI startup Voiceflow raises US$15 million to help companies collaborate on customer-service agents.

Toronto-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup Voiceflow has raised US$15 million ($20.1 million) at a US$105 million valuation. OpenView Venture Partners led the round, which closed in April. Voiceflow says it will use the funds to invest in its core product. Returning investors include Felicis Ventures, Craft Ventures, True Ventures, veteran voice-user interfaces designer Cathy Pearl, Google, Operator’s Collective, Ripple Ventures, Amazon, and the CEOs of Figma, InVision, Webflow, Ada Support, Eventbrite, and Product Hunt. The company’s total funding to date now tops US$35 million. Voiceflow raised $24.9 million (US$20 million) in Series A funding in 2021. In 2019, Voiceflow raised a $4.7 million seed round following its takeover of American competitor Invocable. https://bit.ly/44fmFwk

InnerSpace Closes $10 million Series A funding.

InnerSpace, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of a SaaS-based space utilization platform that leverages existing Wi-Fi infrastructure – without the need of sensors – to deliver actionable insights to optimize work space usage, raised $10M CAD in Series A funding. The round was led by Yaletown Partners, with previous round participants including BDC and IAF. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its product development roadmap and scale operations. https://tinyurl.com/2p92ebv5

Horizn acquired by US conversational AI firm Inbenta.

Texas-based Inbenta has announced its acquisition of Toronto software firm Horizn, which provides easy-to-embed interactive product demos. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition will see Horizn’s tech integrated into Inbenta’s artificial intelligence (AI) customer experience platform. https://tinyurl.com/2p92ebv5

Ford aims to secure battery material supply with new Canada facility.

Ford is partnering with South Korean battery manufacturers SK On and EcoPro BM to build a cathode manufacturing facility in Quebec, Canada. The $1.2 billion (US$890 million) joint investment will provide battery materials to supply future Ford electric vehicles. The onshoring of battery factories in the U.S. has boomed since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, which offers a range of tax credits for the production of clean energy. Ford, in partnership with SK On, has already pledged to spend close to $15 billion across three battery cell manufacturing facilities in the U.S. with an expected collective capacity of 164 gigawatt-hours annually. https://bit.ly/3OIhorh

SoftBank in talks to buy Vision Fund’s 25% stake in Arm.

SoftBank Group Corp is in talks to acquire the 25% stake in Arm Ltd it does not directly own from Vision Fund 1 (VF1), a $100 billion investment fund it raised in 2017, according to people familiar with the matter, potentially delivering a win for investors who have waited years for strong returns. The discussions come as SoftBank, which currently owns 75% of Arm, is preparing to list the chip designer on Nasdaq next month at a valuation of US$60 billion to US$70 billion. https://tinyurl.com/3fnnznty

Arm’s revenue fell 1% last year.

Arm’s revenue fell 1% to US$2.68 billion in its last fiscal year, Bloomberg reported, citing a draft of its IPO filing which is expected to become public next week. The chip designer’s revenue fell a further 2.5% in the June quarter, Bloomberg said. Arm’s financial trajectory is likely to be closely watched as a guide to its expected IPO valuation. On Friday, various outlets reported that SoftBank, which bought Arm for about US$31 billion in 2016, had valued Arm at US$64 billion in an internal SoftBank-Vision Fund transaction. That US$64 billion valuation is far higher than the US$40 billion price that Nvidia put on Arm in a 2020 deal that was abandoned in the face of regulatory opposition last year. https://tinyurl.com/tmfrpt3w

Instacart aims for September IPO.

Instacart is planning to go public next month and could file its public IPO prospectus as soon as next week, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The listing would cap more than a year of will-they-or-won’t-they speculation about the grocery delivery firm’s listing aspirations. It would also mark the most significant public listing this year by a venture capital-backed firm, and will be closely watched for what it portends for other startups stuck in the private market. Instacart will likely endure a substantial “down-round IPO,” in which the firm’s valuation is below the price at which it last raised money privately. Instacart last raised money in 2021 at a US$39 billion, but is likely to go public around the US$10 billion mark. But it will allow employees and investors, including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, to sell share after many years of waiting. https://tinyurl.com/2p9a47fx

This year’s best-performing IPO is a company that makes golf putters after shares soar more than 600%.

A company that makes US$400 golf putters has scored a hole in one with this year’s most successful initial public offering to date. Shares in Sacks Parente Golf soared more than 600% on their Tuesday debut, before paring gains after-hours. The California-based company, which claims to make the only putters that “naturally improve your stroke,” sold 3.2 million shares at US$4 apiece. They ended the day at US$28.97, before falling 29% to US$20.52 in after-hours trading. The 624% bounce cemented Sacks Parente as the best-performing market debut of 2023 and gave some hope for the subdued IPO market. There’s been a dearth of flotations partly due to higher borrowing costs from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate rises in recent months. The tech sector has been particularly hard hit. Just 10 companies raised US$100 million or more on the Nasdaq in the first half of the year, according to FactSet data reported by CNBC. During the same period of 2021, there were more than 500 floats worth at least US$100 million. https://bit.ly/3QKX0Zj

A Vietnamese electric carmaker is now worth US$85 billion – almost as much as Ford and General Motors combined.

A Vietnamese electric carmaker is now worth almost as much as Ford and General Motors combined after its shares soared in their market debut Tuesday. VinFast jumped 255% to close at US$37.06 on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, leaving the company worth US$85 billion – far more than Ford (US$48 billion), General Motors (US$45 billion), or Chrysler Stellantis (US$31 billion). VinFast is yet to turn a profit and its first shipments to the US were met with criticism. VinFast delivered just 11,300 vehicles in the first half of this year, per a company presentation. That’s a fraction of its larger competitors such as Tesla and BYD that delivered 889,000 and 1.26 million vehicles respectively in the same period. The company went public via a special purchase acquisition company (SPAC), where a shell company is formed to merge with the floating company. https://bit.ly/3P5nmnS

SpaceX profit hit US$55 million in first quarter.

Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies showed a US$55 million profit on $1.5 billion in revenue in the first quarter of this year, according to financial data reported by The Wall Street Journal. In 2022, the rocket company had US$559 million in losses on US$4.6 billion in revenue, and US$5.2 billion in total expenses, according to the Journal. In 2021, SpaceX’s revenue was half of that—around US$2.3 billion—with US$968 million in losses, and US$3.3 billion in total expenses, according to the report. The company told some investors it plans to bring in US$8 billion in revenue in 2023, with earnings of about US$3 billion before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, The Information first reported in July. https://tinyurl.com/tkm7d7t7

Europe’s Stripe rival Adyen dives 39% after slowest sales growth on record.

Adyen attributed the tepid print to increased hiring, firmer wages and to a shift in its North American customers’ business prioritization from growth to cost savings in the first half of the year. The company reported much slower sales growth than a year earlier — in the first half of 2022, the company said revenues grew 37% year-over-year. “We’ve been quite open that since the beginning of 2022 we really want to invest in the business and to do that we needed to grow the team,” Ethan Tandowsky, Adyen’s CFO, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Thursday. “We see a real opportunity in payments and in the financial services space.” Adyen is one of the biggest fintech firms in Europe, with a market capitalization of 35.4 billion euros. The company provides payment services to the likes of Netflix, Meta, Microsoft and Spotify. The firm also said that inventory write-offs led to a 6.3 million euro hit to EBITDA. It competes directly with online payment staples, such as PayPal, Stripe, Block — formerly known as Square — and Fiserv. https://tinyurl.com/4ac7fc5u

Hawaiian Electric utility company sees its stock price plunge 49% after devastating Maui fires.

Shares of Hawaiian Electric plunged as much as 41% on Monday and are down 49% since the devastating Maui fires broke out last week. The Honolulu-based utility company engages in the production, transmission, and distribution of electricity in the islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, Lanai, and Molokai and serves 95% of the state’s residents. https://bit.ly/45BaJWM

Intel scraps US$5.4 billion Tower deal after China review delay.

Intel scrapped its US$5.4 billion deal to buy Israeli contract chipmaker Tower Semiconductor Ltd after their merger agreement expired without regulatory approval from China. U.S.-listed shares of the Israeli company fell about 11% in premarket trading. Intel, which had decided to buy Tower last year, will pay a termination fee of US$353 million to the latter, the company said in a statement. The development underscores how tensions between the United States and China over issues including trade, intellectual property and the future of Taiwan are spilling over into corporate dealmaking, especially when it comes to technology companies. Last year, DuPont De Nemours Inc scrapped its US$5.2 billion deal to buy electronics materials maker Rogers Corp after delays in securing approval from Chinese regulators. https://archive.li/t9VOi

Payments services firm Dlocal explores potential sale.

Uruguay-based Dlocal, a provider of payments services to businesses in emerging markets, is exploring options including a potential sale, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. Shares of the company rose 10% in late afternoon trading on the news. The company had a market value of about US$3.73 billion, as of Friday’s close. Dlocal is working with a financial adviser and talking with potential buyers, said the report, adding that it has also received takeover interest but no final decision has been made and it could opt to remain independent. https://tinyurl.com/yh5htdpe

Tesla Reignites EV price war with new round of cuts in China.

Tesla Inc. has cut the price of its two higher-end Model Y vehicles in China by 14,000 yuan (US$1,900) in the latest salvo in a bruising price war. The electric vehicle maker cut the price of its Model Y Long-Range and Performance to 299,900 yuan and 349,900 yuan respectively, the company announced on Weibo. The Model Y forms part of the stable of vehicles, along with the Model 3, which are the best-sellers for Elon Musk’s company. The latest cuts come after Tesla last year triggered a price war in China that left rivals with little choice to follow suit. Tesla’s China deliveries slumped 31% in July to the lowest level this year. https://archive.li/TWucM

iPhone 15 production begins in India as Apple aims to diversify from China.

Apple supplier Foxconn is beginning production of the iPhone 15 in India as the company moves forward with its effort to diversify its manufacturing from China, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Foxconn’s Sriperumbudur plant is getting ready to deliver the new phones weeks after they begin shipping from China-based factories, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources. Apple has been aiming to diversify its supply chain as the dynamic between the U.S. and China continues to grow tense. After a meeting with India Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that India represents a “huge opportunity.” Amid bipartisan U.S. skepticism of China’s government, the Biden administration has taken multiple actions to restrict the flow of key technologies and U.S. investment into China. China has also placed restrictions on the sale of some U.S. semiconductors. Apple has more recently ramped up iPhone production in India, assembling more than US$7 billion worth there in the last fiscal year, Bloomberg earlier reported. The outlet said in April that Apple produces nearly 7% of its iPhones in India, citing sources. Prior to that, iPhone assembly in India lagged China by six to nine months, Bloomberg reported, but that gap has significantly closed. https://tinyurl.com/jprtkh2d

Hedge funds beefed up A.I. bets in the second quarter.

Doubling down on Big Tech Despite the uptick in tech shares by the end of the first half, many hedge funds amped up their bets on Alphabet during the second quarter. After revealing a new position in the search giant during the first quarter, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square upped its stake in Alphabet to more than US$1.3 billion. Dan Loeb’s Third Point also added to Microsoft, while Tiger Cub hedge fund Coatue Management hiked its stake in the software giant by nearly 68% to about US$1.8 billion. David Tepper’s Appaloosa bet big on AI winners , growing positions in Alphabet, Amazon , Meta Platforms and Microsoft during the period. Further, the fund opened a stake in Apple worth about US$93 million. Amazon also garnered investor attention, with Baupost’s Seth Klarman and Third Point opening fresh stakes in Amazon , totaling US$125 million and US$534.5 million, respectively. Philippe Laffont’s Coatue more than doubled its stake. Tiger Global’s Chase Coleman upped his position in the Facebook-parent by 15% to nearly US$2.46 billion. https://archive.li/y3ZOC

The world’s biggest stock investor says if you don’t see opportunities in AI, then you are a ‘complete moron’.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is bullish on artificial intelligence, with the nascent technology contributing to the portfolio’s big gains this year. The US$1.4 trillion fund, which is also the world’s single biggest stock market investor, has returned 10% year to date, amounting to about US$143 billion. The gains were fueled by US tech giants like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, which have benefited from hype over artificial intelligence. In fact, those “magnificent seven” stocks accounted for about a third of the fund’s recent gains and 12% of its holdings. “If you don’t think there are opportunities with AI, then in my mind you are a complete moron,” Nicolai Tangen, the fund’s chief executive, told the Financial Times. He also said the fund is ramping up engagement with companies in its portfolio on artificial intelligence to ensure accountability on each board of directors. Meanwhile, he warned that regulating AI will be difficult because the US-China rivalry has made the technology critical to the “weapons race, medical race, self-driving race, financial race.” https://bit.ly/3YK1GR9

iPhone 15 rumored to support faster charging speeds with up to 35W.

Industry sources told 9to5Mac that at least some of the new iPhone 15 models can be recharged with up to 35W, which should enable even faster charging speeds on the new phones. Currently, the iPhone 14 Pro is limited to charging at 27W, while the regular iPhone 14 is limited to 20W. To fully recharge an iPhone 14 Pro Max at these speeds, it takes approximately two hours. Last year, Apple introduced a new 35W Dual USB-C charger that is capable of recharging all current iPhone models at full speed. If the rumors are true, iPhone 15 will be able to take advantage of all 35W provided by this specific charger when not connected with another device (since this splits the power delivery). https://tinyurl.com/45an8k85

Microsoft plans new AI service with Databricks, hedging OpenAI bet.

Microsoft’s Azure cloud unit is planning to release new software that helps customers make their own artificial intelligence apps rather than license software from AI providers like OpenAI, The Information reported on Thursday. The upcoming service, which could launch broadly in the coming months, is powered by Databricks, a startup whose software helps developers make AI apps. Databricks and OpenAI compete for developer customers by offering alternate routes to building such apps: Databricks lets companies customize open-source AI models while OpenAI offers ready-made AI models that are more sophisticated but harder to customize. By making Databricks’ software easier to use, Microsoft could divert some customers away from OpenAI. https://tinyurl.com/bdzcswyj

Google’s rival to OpenAI, Gemini, will power chatbot, enterprise apps.

Gemini, Google’s answer to OpenAI’s core software, will launch this fall with the ability to generate conversational text as well as imagery, The Information reported. Google is betting on Gemini to power services ranging from its Bard chatbot, which competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to enterprise apps like Google Docs and Slides, the report said. Google also wants to charge app developers for access to Gemini through its Google Cloud server-rental unit in hopes of catching up with Microsoft, which has raced ahead with new AI features for its Office 365 apps and has also been selling access to OpenAI’s models to its app customers. Notably, Google engineers have discussed giving Gemini the ability to create video based on text descriptions of what people want to see, the report said. https://tinyurl.com/2cd9rzz7

Cruise vehicles cause weekend traffic jam one day after California approves 24-7 robotaxi service.

Last Thursday, California regulators voted to approve round-the-clock robotaxi service in San Francisco from two rival companies: Waymo, owned by Alphabet, and Cruise, owned by General Motors. The service expansion, approved via a 3 to 1 vote by California’s Public Utilities Commission, made San Francisco the first major U.S. city to allow two robotaxi companies to compete for service “at all hours of day or night.” Last Friday night, as many as 10 of Cruise’s driverless vehicles had stopped short in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, flashing hazard lights and causing a traffic backup for at least 15 minutes, according to reports. https://tinyurl.com/5d62e6b9

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt to launch AI-science moonshot.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is building an ambitious new organization to tackle scientific challenges with the help of artificial intelligence, according to people briefed on the plans. People familiar with the plans say the effort is modeled after OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which was founded with great fanfare as a philanthropic organization. Schmidt wants the new nonprofit to become a big draw for top talent in science and AI, two areas that are converging to potentially create breakthroughs in everything from drug discovery to material sciences. Funding will come mostly from Schmidt’s personal wealth, but outside funds may be necessary given the ambition of the project, people familiar with the plans said. Schmidt intends to offer competitive salaries and resources, in particular compute power that can be difficult to come by in academia. The project is still in the early stages, the people said, and exact plans could change. https://tinyurl.com/2nshva8k

Wegovy could prevent up to 1.5 million heart attacks, strokes over 10 years, study says.

Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy could prevent up to 1.5 million heart attacks and other cardiovascular events in the U.S. over 10 years, according to a study from UC Irvine. The study was partly funded by Novo Nordisk. The results complement the initial data Novo Nordisk released last week from a large clinical trial, which found Wegovy slashed the risk of serious heart problems and heart-related death by 20%. https://tinyurl.com/2szwue54

Netflix game streaming coming to Mac, PC, and TVs, but App Store bans cloud gaming.

Netflix recently shipped the “Game Controller” app for iPhone and iPad ahead of its big push into video game streaming. The company has more to say about how and when its new iOS app can be used. “We are rolling out a limited beta test to a small number of members in Canada and the UK on select TVs starting today, and on PCs and Macs through Netflix.com on supported browsers in the next few weeks,” Netflix announced in a blog post. Netflix is only testing the waters for game streaming at this point. Microsoft and Nvidia, however, have compelling game streaming services that customers would love to use on iPhone and iPad. https://bit.ly/3OD6Iuk

Millions of Amazon packages will now arrive without any packaging at all.

Millions of Amazon orders in the U.S. are now arriving without extra packaging, as the company moves to streamline its delivery process, boost sustainability, and appeal to customers who are turned off by the slew of brown boxes cluttering doorsteps and hallways, The Wall Street Journal reported. Roughly 11% of delivered items will now arrive without additional packaging, what the company refers to as “ships in own container,” and customers can choose whether they want extra packaging or not at checkout. The reduction or elimination of packaging is part of the company’s broader initiatives of cost reduction, environmental goals, and maintaining market dominance. Amazon is leveraging its influence over suppliers to improve packaging for shipping by offering incentives for vendors to eliminate extra layers of packaging, per the WSJ. However, there are challenges to the new initiative. Amazon needs to ensure that packaging is sturdy enough for individual shipping without adding excessive material, the WSJ added. Additionally, there is also the question of whether customers are comfortable with opting out of the protection that a box provides in regard to privacy and weather. https://tinyurl.com/3hhx5d6m