Bulletins

Data labeling startup Scale reaches $3.5 billion valuation in series D round

Scale announced the close of a series D funding round in which it raised $155 million at a $3.5 billion post-money valuation.

The funding round — which more than tripled Scale's previous valuation — was led by investment firm Tiger Global Management.

Founded in 2016, Scale set out to automate data labeling, one of the most labor-intensive stages of AI development. Scale developed internal machine learning programs for data labeling, though it also uses human contractors to perform manual reviews in some cases. General Motors, Toyota, Airbnb, OpenAI, Otto Motors and the U.S. military have all contracted data-labeling services from Scale.

Hirsh Chitkara
Hirsh Chitkara (@ChitkaraHirsh) is a researcher at Protocol, based out of New York City. Before joining Protocol, he worked for Business Insider Intelligence, where he wrote about Big Tech, telecoms, workplace privacy, smart cities, and geopolitics. He also worked on the Strategy & Analytics team at the Cleveland Indians.
Latest Bulletins

Former Netflix engineer will face prison over insider trading

A former software engineer for Netflix was sentenced to two years in prison for taking part in an insider trading ring that generated more than $3 million, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Washington announced Friday.

Keep Reading Show less

Parag Agrawal shakes up Twitter leadership

Parag Agrawal, Twitter's newly-minted chief executive, will restructure the company's leadership team, shifting to a "general manager" model for its consumer, revenue and core tech teams. As part of the shakeup, Michael Montano, Twitter's engineering lead, and Dantley Davis, the company's design and research lead, will exit at the end of the year.

Keep Reading Show less

Sony is building an Xbox Game Pass competitor for PlayStation

Sony is planning its own competitor to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, according to a report from Bloomberg. Sony intends to merge the service, codenamed Spartacus, with its PlayStation Plus membership program and its PlayStation Now cloud service.

Keep Reading Show less

US State Department iPhones were hacked by NSO Group software

The phones of U.S. State Department officials were hacked using NSO Group software, Reuters reported Friday. Sources told Reuters that the cyberattacks hit officials with ties to Uganda. The hackers have not yet been identified.

Keep Reading Show less

DiDi will de-list in the US

Chinese ride-hailing firm DiDi Chuxing will begin the process of de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange as it plans to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the company announced late Thursday.

Keep Reading Show less

Better.com fired 900 workers after getting $750 million from SoftBank

Mortgage startup Better.com shed at least 10% of its workforce on Thursday, firing 900 in the U.S. and India.

Keep Reading Show less

Google delays its January office return

Google is pushing back its return-to-office date again.

Keep Reading Show less

FTC sues to block $40 billion Nvidia acquisition of Arm

In another blow to Nvidia's planned $40 billion acquisition of Arm, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Thursday it had launched a lawsuit to block the deal.

Keep Reading Show less

Google is working on a Pixel-branded smartwatch

Looks like Google wants in on smartwatches.

Keep Reading Show less

Big Tech CEOs are selling their stock at a record pace

CEOs and insiders at major companies have sold off more than $69 billion in shares so far in 2021.

Keep Reading Show less

A former employee may have been behind the Ubiquiti hack

The Department of Justice arrested a former Ubiquiti employee on Wednesday, claiming he stole confidential files and then extorted his company for almost $2 million. The saga continued as the employee, Nickolas Sharp, told news outlets that the company mishandled the leak, the DOJ reported, leading to a significant drop in share prices. The DOJ never names Ubiquiti, but the details in the indictment match the wireless tech company's security breach in January.

Keep Reading Show less

Former Google AI ethicist Timnit Gebru launches her own AI institute

Timnit Gebru, who was fired by Google after raising concerns about the tech giant's AI work, has launched a new nonprofit organization called the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute. DAIR is a continuation of Gebru's activism against misuse of AI, and aims to be a home for "community-rooted AI research free from Big Tech's pervasive influence," according to a press release on DAIR's website.

Keep Reading Show less

Microsoft points to smartphones as the future of Xbox Cloud Gaming

Microsoft released some new data on Thursday on the number of video game players accessing games via the cloud on just their smartphones with no controller attached. The company said 20% of Xbox Cloud Gaming users rely on built-in touch controls to access games on its cloud service, and that implementing native touch controls is a fast way for developers to boost play time.

Keep Reading Show less

Meta's Oversight Board wants your thoughts on Facebook's VIP policy

The Meta Oversight Board is in the process of reviewing cross-check, Meta's controversial system of vetting posts by high-profile users. On Thursday, the Oversight Board opened that review up to public comments.

Keep Reading Show less

Meta has a new reporting tool for victims of revenge porn

Meta has partnered with a U.K. nonprofit to launch a tool that allows people to create unique identifiers — known as hashes — of sexually explicit or nude photos and submit those hashes to a nonprofit database. Tech platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, can then use that database to detect whether that specific photo has been posted or shared.

Keep Reading Show less

Meta will require hacker safeguards for vulnerable groups

Facebook Protect, a program to protect groups that hackers are more likely to target, will expand to include more categories of users, Meta, the social network's parent company, said Thursday.

Keep Reading Show less

Meta is opening an archive of content takedowns to researchers

Amid ongoing calls for more transparency from tech platforms, Meta announced Wednesday that it will begin opening up an archive of content it has removed to researchers around the world. The archive, which was built with CrowdTangle, will include posts removed under the company's policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior, a policy that was created largely in response to the propaganda campaign engineered by Russia's Internet Research Agency leading up to the 2016 election.

Keep Reading Show less

Amazon wants to make AI more accessible with new tools

Since Amazon launched its AWS machine learning platform SageMaker four years ago, the company has banked on the idea that more and more businesses will want to develop ML-based systems without having to get their hands too dirty. In its quest to create tools that make ML easier to build and deploy — even for business users who aren’t engineers or data scientists — Amazon unveiled a slew of new features in its SageMaker suite during this week’s annual re:Invent show.

“We need to lower the bar for adopting of ML,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Amazon AI, during a keynote talk Wednesday morning.

Keep Reading Show less

Square changes its name to Block after Dorsey leaves Twitter

Payments company Square has changed its corporate name to Block in an indication of its potential to go all-in on cryptocurrencies.

Keep Reading Show less

Capital One drops overdraft fees

Capital One is dropping overdraft fees for consumer banking customers, the bank said Wednesday.

Big banks have been cutting back consumer fees as they face pressure from both startup neobanks as well as Washington regulators.

Keep Reading Show less

TikTok adds new monetization features for creators

TikTok is rolling out new features to help creators make money, according to a company blog post published Wednesday. The newly announced Creator Next program expands the way creators can be compensated for their work, allowing viewers to send gifts and tips to their favorite creators.

Keep Reading Show less

Elon Musk said SpaceX could go bankrupt due to engine production

SpaceX, the high-flying launch company that broke a $100 billion valuation just months ago, could be in big financial trouble, according to its top executive.

Keep Reading Show less

Fortnite inches closer to the metaverse with new Party Worlds

Epic is making its hit game Fortnite less about firearms and more about self-expression and socializing. It launched a new game format that looks like it inches Epic closer to the sought-after metaverse so many tech and gaming firms keep going on about.

Keep Reading Show less

Reddit is joining the real-time bandwagon

Reddit is allowing users to see when others are typing, commenting and reading their posts in real time, the company announced Wednesday.

Keep Reading Show less

Debt collectors can now DM you on social media

The barrage of robocalls is about to get worse with a new frontier of attack: social media accounts. As if social media didn't have enough problems, a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule has gone into effect that allows debt collectors to reach out to people on Twitter, Instagram or wherever else they have online social accounts, as long as the DMs are private.

Keep Reading Show less