Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 07/12 – Is InfoSec The New Fintech?

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

Is InfoSec the new Fintech when it comes to investor hotness? Did ByteDance make the right move by putting its IPO on ice? Why Amazon looks like it’s going heavy into the sleep gadget game. Why the EU is postponing its digital tax initiative. And why Black Widow’s release this weekend is giving Hollywood streaming hope. Sponsors: Gabi.com/techmeme Gainful.com/techmeme Links: Microsoft Agrees to Acquire Cybersecurity Company RiskIQ (Bloomberg) ByteDance Shelved IPO Intentions After Chinese Regulators Warned About Data Security (WSJ) Amazon.com Wants to Monitor You in Your Sleep, for Your Benefit (Bloomberg) Samsung’s next Galaxy Unpacked device lineup may have been entirely spoiled in huge new leak (The Verge) EU Delays Push for Digital Levy to Focus on Global Tax Deal (Bloomberg) Box Office: Marvel’s ‘Black Widow’ Debuts With Dazzling $80 Million in Theaters, $60 Million on Disney Plus (Variety) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Monday, July 12th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough. Today is Infosec, the new FinTech when it comes to investor hotness. Did BiteDance make the right move by putting its IPO on ice? Why Amazon looks like it's going heavy into the sleep gadget game, why the EU is postponing its digital tax initiative,

and why Black Widows release this weekend is giving Hollywood streaming hope. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. sources are telling Bloomberg that Microsoft has agreed to acquire SaaS security intelligence company Risk IQ. A source says Microsoft will pay over $500 million for the company if these rumors actually pan out. Quote, San Francisco-based Risk IQ makes cloud software for detecting security threats, helping clients understand where and how they can be attacked on complex webs of corporate networks and devices. Its customers include Facebook, BMW, American Express, and the U.S. Postal Service, according to the company's website. Known for its annual report on security called the Evil Internet Minute,

Risk IQ has raised $83 million from firms like Summit Partners and Battery Ventures, according to Crunchbase. It was founded in 2009. A spokesman for Microsoft declined to comment, and Risk IQ didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But Microsoft has been adding security features to products like Windows and its Azure cloud services to protect individual machines and detect attacks on network. The company has also added personnel who probe Microsoft's own products for vulnerabilities, help clients clean up after a cyber attack, and runs a lab called the Microsoft Threat Intelligence

Center that closely tracks nation-state hackers. The software maker has also acquired several companies to expand its security capabilities. Last month, for example, Microsoft bought ReFirm Labs, a maker of technology to secure Internet of Things devices for an undisclosed amount. In a blog post announcing the deal, the company said it has 3,500 employees. is working on security at Microsoft and a mission to help protect customers from the chip to the cloud, end quote. I'm leading with this story today because Microsoft has been telegraphing for a while now that it wants its platforms, as they say, from chip to the cloud, to be seen as anyone's, especially

enterprises' first line of defense in this world of hack attacks, which makes sense. It's a good way to differentiate your offerings in a cloud-based world. But also, I've been hearing from people for a a few months now that in this Wild West time of mega ransomware attacks, investors this summer seem to be seeing Infosec as the new FinTech in terms of being the new hot area of interest, which also makes sense. So I'm officially putting that on our radar for the rest of the year to keep an eye on. Will security just be another feature set for the big platforms, or can some startup, some new company, some new unicorn stand out and become one of the mega unicorns of this space. And following up on something we've been following all summer, sources are telling the Wall

Street Journal that ByteDance put its U.S. and Hong Kong IPL plans on hold this past March after meeting with Chinese regulators, which asked the company to address security issues. BiteDance, of course, owns TikTok. Quote, the Beijing-based social media giant last valued at $180 billion in a funding round in December had been weighing an initial public offering of all or some of its businesses in the U.S. or Hong Kong, according to people familiar with the company's plans. But the company's founder, Zhang Ye Ming, decided it would be wiser to put the plans on ice in late March after meeting with cyberspace and securities regulators, in which they asked the company to focus on addressing data security risks and other issues the people familiar with the

matter said. In ByteDance's case, Chinese regulators never called outright for a delay in possible share offerings, people familiar with the matter said, but regulators were concerned about the data security compliance of ByteDance's apps in China, the person close to the company said. During the meetings, the regulators were eager to understand how ByteDance collected, stored, and managed data according to people familiar with communication between the two parties. ByteDance runs apps used by hundreds of millions of people in China, including short video app Doyin, which is known as TikTok in the West, and Jinri Tao Tiao, or today's headlines. Personal information collected by Doyen can include mobile phone numbers, birthdays, real names,

and ID numbers. Given Beijing's concerns, BightDances, Mr. Zhang, assessed that the time wasn't right for an IPO because of the political and regulatory environment, the people familiar with the matter said. The company had other reasons for delaying the listing. It didn't have a chief financial officer at the time. A person close to the company said, BightDance's cautious approach, contrast with that of Chinese ride-hailing giant D.D., which runs the country's ubiquitous car-hailing app. D.D. pressed ahead with listing plans in the U.S. despite suggestions from the cyberspace administration not to amid concerns that some of its data would fall into foreign hands, the Wall Street Journal reported. Didi raised $4.4 billion in late June, but is now the subject of a cybersecurity investigation

and has since had its main app and 25 others. It operates ordered removed from Chinese app stores, end quote. Poor Didi, but poor bite dance. They are without a doubt the biggest unicorn of this era, and yet they have been batted around like a beach ball in a sea of geopolitical troubles. One year it's the Trump administration, the next year it's the Chinese government. There are some big-name Western investors, including Tiger Global, General Atlantic, Sequoia, just to name a few, that are nervously wondering if they will ever get their money back out of BiteDance. And yet, given what happened to D-D-D last month, I bet they're glad that ByteDense did hit the pause button on their IPO plans, at least for now. The FCC has approved Amazon's request to use radar sensors to sense motion and, quote,

enable contactless sleep tracing functionalities, end quote. Quoting Bloomberg. Amazon on June 22nd asked the FCC, which regulates airwave uses, for permission to market a device that uses radar. The technology captures movement in three dimensions, enabling a user to control its features through simple gestures and movements the company said in a filing. The capability, according to Amazon, could help people, quote, with mobility speech or tactile impairments, and it could monitor sleep with a high degree of precision. Quote, the use of radar sensors in sleep tracking could improve awareness and management of sleep hygiene, which in turn could produce significant health benefits for many Americans. Amazon said in its filing, radar sensors will allow consumers to recognize potential sleep issues, end quote. The company has also long been developing technology designed to let customers control devices by using hands.

or other gestures, that functionality was a selling point of the ill-fated fire smartphone and appears in patents related to Amazon's echo smart speakers, end quote. So one more thing to put on our radar, some sort of comprehensive sleep device coming from Amazon soon, perhaps. This is for your radar or your calendars. Well-known rumor monger and gadget leaker Evan Blass tweeted over the weekend that Samsung's next Galaxy Unpacked event will be on August 11th and shared renders of new phones, smartwatches, and wireless earbuds, quoting the verge. First up, the foldables. Blass has already leaked what appear to be official renders of the rumored Galaxy Z-Fold 3, which could support the S-Pen stylus and Galaxy Z-Flip 3,

but the new GIFs he shared give looks at both devices at all angles. Blass's thread also includes jiffs of what looked to be the rumored Samsung Galaxy S-21F-E in white, a yellowish gray, purple and black. The phone, if released, will likely be a mid-range version of the S-21 and looks to take a lot of design inspiration from the Samsung flagship, like how the S-20 FE looked similar to the S-20. Whether or not this phone is actually in production has been something of an open question. In June, in response to a report claiming Samsung had stopped production of the phone, Samsung said that, quote, nothing has been determined regarding the alleged production suspension, end quote. These gifs from blasts might be a sign that the

phone is a go. But Blass didn't just share GIFs of phones. He also tweeted gifs of two new Samsung watches. One model seems to match closely with rumors of the Samsung Galaxy Watch for Classic, with what appears to be a rotating bezel and two buttons on the right side. The watch, which Blass tweeted in white, black, and gray is also expected to run Google and Samsung's new smartwatch platform. Blass's gif thread also reveals three colors of unannounced galaxy Buds that match rumors about the Galaxy Buds 2, which, according to Leaker Ice Universe, will have active noise cancellation. Blasses, jiffs show the buds and the inside of the white case in gray, purple, and white, matching the style of a leaked render shared by 91 mobiles

that showed green, black, and white bud slash inner case combos, end quote. Samsung does tend to do unpacked events in August, so this makes sense. Maybe do it back at the Barclays Center again so we can cover it in person. Samsung? I know it's hard to keep track of, but one of the many threads in the European regulation of big tech has been the threat to impose taxation that targeted specifically digital tech platform giants. These new taxes were floated, prompting threats of retaliatory taxation by the U.S. But now, the EU says it will postpone plans for these digital taxes to focus instead on that new G20 global tax deal that we spoke about recently, quoting Bloomberg.

The U.S. has lobbied against the levy on digital sales that was likely to hit Silicon Valley Giants' business in Europe. The EU has pledged to introduce a levy if there was no progress on a more sweeping effort to tax corporations more uniformly. Such a pact now seems more likely after the group of 20 endorsed the principles of a global tax agreement. Taxation is a hot topic in Europe with officials in Berlin and Paris taking aim at complicated structures used by multinationals, many of them American, that allow them to reduce their effective tax rates. A global deal may help governments capture more tax from sales in their countries. Over the weekend, G20 nations agreed on the outlines of a global corporate tax agreement. The deal is designed

to stop major corporations from moving to low tax jurisdictions and to establish a fairer system for distributing the taxation rights on multinationals based on where they operate instead of where they are headquartered. The latter component also includes an agreement to end so-called digital services taxes that several European countries have implemented to target the revenue of large tech companies like Facebook and Alphabet's Google, end quote. Finally today, as we've discussed in the past, Hollywood's move towards streaming is very much an experiment. We don't know yet for sure if Hollywood can make as much or more money with these new platforms as it could, you know, just doing the traditional thing, just putting movies out in theaters first, or at least

offering streaming options after a theatrical release with that depressed box office sales, which are still the main slice of the pie in terms of revenue, we just don't know if the math works out. Well, we've gotten the results back of a big test. Disney says that Marvel's Black Widow earned more than $60 million last weekend just via its premier access program, which left. That's Disney Plus subscribers rent movies for $30, even when they're in theaters at the same time. Combined, that helped the Black Widow film, well, quoting variety. Disney and Marvel Superhero Adventure Black Widow captured a massive $80 million in its first weekend, crushing the benchmark for the biggest box office debut since the pandemic.

The film, starring Scarlett Johansson, is the first from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to open simultaneously in movie theaters and on Disney Plus, where subscribers can rent Black Black Widow for an extra $30. Disney reported that Black Widow generated more than $60 million, quote, in Disney Plus Premier Access Consumer Spend globally, end quote, marking the rare occasion in which a studio disclosed the profits made from streaming. Directed by Kate Shortland, Black Widow collected an additional $78 million from 46 international territories boosting its global box office hall to an impressive $158 million. Combined with Disney Plus numbers, the final weekend figure sits at $215 million.

Curbing overall ticket sales, however, is the fact that Black Widow still doesn't have a release date in China, which is an all-important moviegoing market for the Marvel franchise. Disney began rolling out select movies under its premier access banner as a concession while moviegoing was impaired during the pandemic. The studio didn't share viewership data for the previously released Cruella, starring Emma Stone, and the animated Raya and The Last Dragon, which also premiered simultaneously in theaters and on Disney Plus for a premium fee. It's unclear if Disney will continue to report on digital rental data for its upcoming films

or if the studio will selectively parcel out information to only highlight strong results. That will be tested when Jungle Cruise, a family film starring Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson, opens in cinemas and on Disney Plus on July 30th. Black Widow marks a massive win for movie theaters which have been struggling to recover from the mass closures and capacity restrictions that decimated their business during the pandemic. It's also notable because it displays that movies can bring in solid box office receipts despite being available on streaming services at the same time. However, David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research,

notes that Marvel movies are in a league of its own at the box office. Not every new release has the built-in fan base needed to replicate those results. In total, the 24 films that populate the commercially unrivaled Marvel Cinematic Universe have brought in $22 billion theatrically since 2008. Certainly, the figure would be higher if every theater were open, if there were zero concern with COVID, and if there weren't a streaming option, Gross says. For now, those impediments make Black Widows opening all the more impressive, end quote. As the great Peter Kafka, who, you might recall, schooled us on the idea of the math, maybe not penciling out on streaming back when we discussed this originally, tweeted,

quote, this is a pretty satisfying pie chart for Disney, which, as Lucas Shaw notes, is why they're disclosing it. roughly equal black widow numbers for U.S. theaters, international, and streaming. That is, lots of people went to see it in person and lots of people watched it at home, end quote. So, yes, congratulations Italy. England fell at the final hurdle yesterday in Euro 2020. Yes, there is a tech angle to this beyond my own personal disappointment. Boris Johnson and others in Britain are condemning the racist abuse of players on social media.

with some calling for tougher action by the tech platforms. After some of the players who ended up missing the penalties were being viciously targeted on social media, there is one thing I can report being someone who follows both British soccer and American sports. Man, the online fan culture for especially British football is really ugly and gross in all sorts of ways that you kind of don't see in North American sports. fans in Britain turn on their players, turn on their teams, turn on each other at the drop of a hat from one game to the next depending on the result. I'm not saying that American sports fans are that much better. We're all ugly online in a way.

But for the most part, it is at least comparatively less ugly here in North America when it comes to sports on social medias and the like. Not sure why that is. Anyway, congratulations to all the teams and players and country. for one of the best football tournaments I can remember. And hey, World Cup is next year. Talk to you tomorrow.