The last week of August has been a roller coaster, filled with both great and not-so-great news for some of the biggest names in tech. The news cycle stops for no one, but we take some time out every Friday to bring you the week’s highlights.
So before leaving the office, let us quickly recap the good and the bad. We picked out the need-to-knows from the stories that made the top of Index’s algorithms for you.
This week in numbers
Bad monday for tech giants: @facebook -12.1%, Apple -10%, @google -6.5%, @Microsoft -5.8% #TechNews pic.twitter.com/QgmNfkrLB8
— Index (@indexdotco) August 24, 2015
Monday started off the week on a rocky note. Various sources reported significant downturns in Facebook (-12.1 percent), Google (-6.5 percent), Microsoft (-5.8 percent) and Apples‘ (-10 percent) share prices when the market opened, compared to the closing prices from the previous Friday.
Index recorded 127 funding events this week. The median investment was $1.7 million, a decrease of 15 percent compared to last week. The largest investment was hauled in by Uber’s China affiliate, constituting another giant $1 billion round for the company.
Four breakout funding rounds
Sports merchandising company Fanatics received $300 million in private equity from Silver Lake Partners, bringing their total funding raised to date up to $695 million.
Intercom raised a $35 million Series C round for their costumer support tool from Bessemer Venture Partners, Iconiq Capital and the Social+Capital Partnership. Total funding now stands at $65.8 million.
Online course provider Coursera snatched up a $49.5 million Series C investment led by New Enterprise Associates. The company has collected $134.5 million in funding to date.
ServiceMax, the mobile field-service company, raked in a late-stage $82 million Series F round to help its growth and expansion. The round was led by Premji Invest, and brings the company’s total funding to $204 million.
Headline highlights
Instagram photos no longer have to be square [The Next Web]
Facebook launches M, its bold answer to Siri and Cortana [Wired]
Tesla’s Model S P85D is so good it broke Consumer Reports’ rating system [The Verge]
Obama administration announces $171M manufacturing innovation hub in Silicon Valley [Venture Beat]
The appeal of free: 75 million users download Windows 10 in first month [New York Times Bits]
Alibaba says its new artificial intelligence platform is China’s first [Tech Crunch]
That’s our overview of the week in funding news and trending headlines, refined from raw Index data and curated by our team.
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