Tag Archives: Silicon Valley

Reuters reports: More than 100 venture capitalists including entrepreneur Mark Cuban threw their support behind U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Wednesday, a counterweight to tech billionaires backing Republican rival Donald Trump. Silicon Valley has traditionally been seen as a liberal bastion, but Republicans have won support from prominent industry figures in this election cycle. They were bolstered by …

Reuters reports: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will attend a fundraiser hosted by two tech venture capitalists in San Francisco on Thursday, a high-dollar event expected to draw Silicon Valley investors turned off by the Biden administration’s policies. Venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, as well as Sacks’ wife Jacqueline, will host the reception and dinner with Trump, according …

The New York Times reports: If there is one enduring axiom in banking, it is this: Don’t run out of money. Silicon Valley Bank, a lender to some of the biggest names in the technology world, did just that on Friday, becoming the largest bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis. The move put nearly $175 billion in customer …

Axios reports: Elizabeth Holmes on Friday was sentenced by a California judge to 11 years and three months in prison for defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing company, Theranos. This is the end of a years-long saga that saw the celebrated startup founder become a cautionary tale of Silicon Valley’s “fake it ’til you make it” culture. Holmes in January …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Google will keep its employees home until at least next July, people familiar with the matter said, making the search-engine giant the first major U.S. corporation to formalize such an extended timetable in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. The move will affect nearly all of the 200,000 full-time and contract employees across Google parent …

Buzzfeed News reports: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey emailed employees on Tuesday telling them that they’d be allowed to work from home permanently, even after the coronavirus pandemic lockdown passes. Some jobs that require physical presence, such as maintaining servers, will still require employees to come in. “We’ve been very thoughtful in how we’ve approached this from the time we were …

Axios reports: Google’s philanthropic arm is doubling its planned coronavirus response donations to a total of $100 million, Google.org head Jacquelline Fuller told Axios. The effort is in addition to coronavirus-related moves by the corporate side and, in some cases, also comes with hands-on technical support from Google employees to help organizations with the technical aspects of their efforts. Google.org …

NBC News reports: A top HHS official who said he was transferred from his post for pushing back on “efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections” felt pressured to rush access to chloroquine treatments for coronavirus after Trump had a conversation about it with a mega-rich donor, a source close to the doctor told NBC …

USA Today reports: Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison has become one of the few tech moguls to publicly back President Donald Trump’s reelection bid after announcing a Feb. 19 campaign fundraiser to be hosted at his golf course and estate in the California desert. Less than two weeks before California’s Super Tuesday primary election, Ellison will host supporters on a golf …

Recode reports: Federal investigators are probing the conduct and practices of Mithril Capital, a venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, Recode has learned. US officials — including the FBI — have in recent months questioned some people close to Mithril regarding concerns of possible financial misconduct at the firm, according to people familiar with the matter who insisted on …

NBC News reports: Business is anything but usual for some of America’s largest companies, as they question — or blatantly decry — President Trump’s immigration ban. Google, Amazon, Starbucks, and Facebook are just a few of the big names to have stepped forward and denounce Trump’s executive order, which restricts the entry of refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, …

The Hill reports: The co-founder of LinkedIn said on Monday that he will give up to $5 million to veterans groups as part of a crowdfunding campaign if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump releases his tax returns. Reid Hoffman has pledged multiply whatever is raised in the effort, which is being run by an ex-Marine named Pete Kiernan, by five. …

Fortune calls it the “saddest $5B deal in tech history.” They write: Yahoo was once the king of the Internet, a $125 billion behemoth as big in its time as Facebook or Google are today. Now it’s being sold to Verizon for comparative chump change. On Monday morning, Yahoo is expected to announce the end of the long process to …

In response to the ongoing RFRA battles, a coalition of over 100 major tech industry corporations has issued a joint statement calling for full federal LGBT anti-discrimination protections. The values of diversity, fairness and equality are central to our industry. These values fuel creativity and inspiration, and those in turn make the U.S. technology sector the most admired in the …

Via press release: The values of diversity, fairness and equality are central to our industry. These values fuel creativity and inspiration, and those in turn make the U.S. technology sector the most admired in the world today. We believe it is critically important to speak out about proposed bills and existing laws that would put the rights of minorities at …

From Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page: Today we moved into our new Facebook building in Menlo Park, California. Our goal was to create the perfect engineering space for our teams to work together. We wanted our space to create the same sense of community and connection among our teams that we try to enable with our services across the world. To …

Published yesterday in the San Jose Mercury News. A digital version of the ad is also running on  tech websites and sites owned by the Wall Street Journal.

Using a Los Angeles Times database of donations to the 2008 Proposition 8 campaign, stats guru Nate Silver has compiled a list of how the staffers of major Silicon Valley tech companies weighed in with their wallets. The list includes Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Cisco Systems, Apple, Google, Sun Microsystems, eBay, Oracle, Yahoo, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Symantec. I limited the …

Technology news site ArsTechnica reports that numerous Mozilla staffers are today tweeting demands for the resignation of CEO Brendan Eich. This morning, a number of Mozilla employees took to Twitter with a united, nearly simultaneous message to new Mozilla Foundation CEO Brendan Eich: “Step down.” Brendan Eich’s Prop 8 donations come to light, and internal response is mixed. The internal …

“I am deeply honored and humbled by the CEO role. I’m also grateful for the messages of support. At the same time, I know there are concerns about my commitment to fostering equality and welcome for LGBT individuals at Mozilla. I hope to lay those concerns to rest, first by making a set of commitments to you. More important, I …