Telegram will introduce advertising, TikTok's parent company is moving towards drug discovery, and President Trump continues his battle against Section 230. This is your Daily Crunch for December 23, 2020.
The big story: Telegram prepares to monetizeTelegram founder Pavel Durov said the messaging app will introduce advertising on public one-to-many channels next year. Durov wrote on his Telegram channel that the advertising platform will be "an easy-to-use platform, which respects privacy and allows us to cover server and traffic costs".
He also pointed to premium stickers as another way Telegram could monetize, pointing out that existing features will remain free and that it does not support ad display in private chats.
In addition to discussing the company's monetization plans, Durov said Telegram is "getting closer" to 500 million users.
The tech giantsNikola's shares plummet after announcing the cancellation of the contract with Republic Services for 2,500 garbage trucks - This is the latest deal to unveil for Nikola as he tries to patch up following recent devastating reports.
TikTok parent ByteDance is hiring for the AI drug discovery team - "We are looking for candidates to join our team and conduct cutting-edge research into drug discovery and manufacturing based on AI algorithms," he said. the company in a job posting.
Startups, financing and venture capitalChinese self-driving startup WeRide raises $ 200 million in funding - The new funding will see WeRide join forces with Yutong, a 57-year-old company, to make self-driving minibuses and city buses.
Voyager Space Holdings to acquire majority stake in commercial space leader Nanoracks - Nanoracks supplied the Bishop Airlock which was installed on the International Space Station.
Honk introduces an ephemeral real-time messaging app aimed at Gen Z: instead of sending messages in the void and hoping for a response, friends on Honk communicate via messages that are shown live as you type.
Extra Crunch tips and analysisDear Sophie: What awaits us for US immigration in 2021? - Sophie Alcorn assesses prospects for US visas and green cards.
Looking ahead after the epic 2020 M&A madness: This year, four deals involving chip companies totaled over $ 100 billion alone.
Towards 2021: Fundraising Venture, liquidity and bubble everything - Alex Wilhelm's last column of the year.
(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)
All the restTrump vetoes major defense law, citing Section 230 - President Trump vetoed the $ 740 million National Defense Authorization Act, a major bill that awards military funds every year.
XRP cryptocurrency crashes following announcement of SEC lawsuit against Ripple - XRP token value has dropped by more than 42% in the past 24 hours.
TaskRabbit is resetting customer passwords after detecting " suspicious activity " on its network - The company later confirmed this was a credential stuffing attack, in which existing sets of exposed or hacked usernames and passwords are compared with different websites to log into accounts.
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