Tag: X
Alphabet will ‘wind down’ Loon’s internet-broadcasting balloons
In 2013 Google shocked us by announcing Project Loon, an effort to distribute wireless connections from balloons floating 20km above the Earth. Now, as first reported by Wired, Google’s parent company Alphabet is pulling the plug on it, apparently be… Source
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Waymo expands first external investment round to $3 billion
Waymo has added an additional $800 million to the $2.25 billion funding round that it first announced in March, bringing the total size of the financing (its first from investors outside of Alphabet) to $3 billion. The extension comes from new investors including those managed by T. Rowe Price, Perry…
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Alphabet’s Loon deploys internet connectivity balloons to Kenya for first commercial service launch
Alphabet-owned Loon, the high-altitude broadband connectivity company for hard-to-reach places, has launched the first balloons that will provide its first ever commercial connectivity services to Kenyans following the approval of its service deployment by the government of Kenya a couple of weeks ago. The balloons are now in testing, but…
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Alphabet’s Verily debuts a COVID-19 community testing toolkit as it scales its own testing efforts
While the origins of its coronavirus testing program were muddled by President Trump’s misleading announcements attributing its efforts to Google and inflating its scale, Alphabet’s Verily health sciences subsidiary has established and grown its community-based California testing initiative, deploying drive-up testing sites and ramping the number of tests completed from…
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Waymo suspends all self-driving services in light of coronavirus pandemic
Waymo has extended the partial suspension of its autonomous vehicle service pilots to include fully driverless vehicle testing, the company confirmed on Friday. While Alphabet-owned Waymo had already stopped operation of the autonomous driving vehicles in its fleet that have safety drivers on board, in the interest of minimizing the…
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Waymo brings in $2.25 billion from outside investors, Alphabet
Waymo, the former Google self-driving car project that is now a business under Alphabet, said Monday it raised $2.25 billion in a fundraising round led by Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Mubadala Investment Company. This is the company’s first external investment, which also included Magna, Andreessen Horowitz,…
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