Daily Crunch - Google commits $10 billion to India

Google makes a big financial commitment in India, Robinhood raises more funding and SiriusXM acquires Stitcher. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 13, 2020.

The big story: Google to invest $10 billion in India

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, made the announcement during the company’s annual India-focused event.

“We’ll do this through a mix of equity investments, partnerships and operational, infrastructure and ecosystem investments,” he said. “This is a reflection of our confidence in the future of India and its digital economy.”

The company said investments will focus on four areas — enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language, building new products and services for India’s unique needs, empowering businesses in the middle of digital transformation and leveraging technology and AI for social good.

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The tech giants

Apple allocates its first $400M from $2.5B commitment to address California’s housing crisis — This year’s projects include 250 new units of affordable housing across the Bay Area, as part of a private-public partnership with Housing Trust Silicon Valley.

Trump’s account is back on Twitch following ‘hateful conduct’ suspension — This shouldn’t be a huge surprise, since the Amazon-owned streamer previously said that the suspension was temporary.

Microsoft spins out 5-year-old Chinese chatbot Xiaoice — The newly spun-off company will license technologies from Microsoft and will continue to use the Xiaoice brand. Microsoft will retain a stake in the company.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Robinhood raises $320 million more, bringing its latest round to $600M at an $8.6B valuation — The startup is seeing demand surge, but it has also pledged to tighten up parts of its platform to protect users.

Autonomous drone startup Skydio rises $100 million and launches the X2 commercial drone — The new X2 platform also marks a shift in focus for Skydio from consumer to enterprise customers.

Paige, the computational pathology startup targeting cancer, closes a Series B at $70 million — Paige’s platform is currently being used by clinicians who can no longer physically visit laboratories due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Second-quarter VC investing totals appear lackluster — Alex Wilhelm looks at second-quarter VC numbers from his old publication, Crunchbase News.

FlexJobs CEO Sara Sutton on what newly remote companies tend to get right and wrong — Sutton predicted, “All responsible, forward-thinking companies will have to integrate some element of remote work moving forward just because of this experience.”

Edtech exits show a need for better plumbing — The pandemic has led to a boom in edtech, which is forcing incumbents to think bigger and scoop up talent along the way.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

SiriusXM buys Stitcher for $325 million, steps up its march into podcasts — This comes less than a month after the satellite radio company acquired podcast analytics and distribution company Simplecast.

Equity Monday: India’s digital economy attracts ample attention, three funding rounds and earnings season — A quick look at recent headlines (just like this newsletter!), including Google’s India investment.

Original Content podcast: Yep, ‘Hamilton’ is still very good — For the most part, we raved about the show (and the recorded version on Disney+), but we had a few reservations.

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