It’s been a slow, nap-filled week for a lot of you (ourselves included), but we’re back at our keyboards and comin’ at you hot with the headlines you missed while you were sleeping off the stuffing.
The Pokémon Go team locked down $200m for a Harry Potter game
Niantic raised a new round of funding from Spark Capital to replicate the success of their breakout hit with another mega-franchise: Harry Potter. The game, out next year, will use augmented reality to let us Muggles fight Death Eaters in 7-11 — erm, “Diagon Alley.”
Elon built the world’s largest battery — and won a $50m bet
This past March, Elon Musk and the co-founder of Australian software company Atlassian made a bet: build Australia the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery in 100 days, or it’s free. Well, Tesla’s 100-megawatt battery farm in South Australia is officially ready for testing. $50m check, please.
Tencent has passed Facebook in the global rankings
Just a day after breaking into the $500B club, Chinese internet company Tencent upped their (Wall) street cred yet again. As of November 21st, they surpassed FB’s $519B market cap to close in Hong Kong with a $534.5B valuation.
Meg Whitman stepped down
After a 6-year run as CEO of HP, Whitman announced her departure last week. During her tenure, she oversaw one of the largest corporate breakups in history, cut thousands of jobs, and delivered “mixed” results — and when the news broke she was leaving, HP stock fell 6%.
Holy hail: Lyft’s looking to raise another $500m
To help fuel their expansion into Canada this December, Lyft wants to tack on an extra $500m to the $1B they raised last month. The deal hasn’t closed yet, but if it does, it will bring their overall valuation to $11.5B.
The Black Hole (Black Friday stories)
This Black Friday was less about elbowing for a mixer at Best Buy, and more about carpal tunnel from all that online coupon clicking. Here’s the latest from your favorite mall-made “holiday”:
The internet crushed big-box retailers
This year, folks spent a record-setting $5.03B online, up 16% from 2016 — and mobile represented more than ⅓ of all spending. Meanwhile, physical stores saw a 1% decline in sales — in part, thanks to Macy’s… (see below)
“Black Friday” has an unexpectedly dark past
The term was first used in 1870 to describe the day the gold market collapsed. Nearly a century later, when the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping craze began, Philly policemen who were driven to misery by aggressive crowds decided to give the day a dark-sounding name.
Jeff Bezos is now worth $100B
Jeff’s personal earnings have climbed $32.6B so far this year, and as of Amazon’s Black Friday bump, he’s officially worth over $100B. The last person to cross the threshold? Bill Gates, back in ‘99 — ya know, when PC’s were cool.
Macy’s has a major malfunction
With their stock trading at less than half of what it was a year ago, Macy’s needed a big win this Black Friday. Instead, their credit card scanners went down for the better part of the massive shopping day, leaving a lot of angry, cashless, turkey gluttons waiting in line. Chin up, Macy’s.
