SAP is making a big acquisition, Facebook faces an investigation into its moderation process and travel startups are soaring. Here's your Daily Crunch for November 12, 2018. 1. SAP agrees to buy Qualtrics for $8B in cash, just before the survey software company's IPO The deal is expected to be completed in the first half of 2019. Ryan Smith, who co-founded Qualtrics in 2002, will continue to serve as its CEO. On a conference call, SAP CEO Bill McDermott compared the potential impact of combining SAP's operational data with Qualtrics' customer and user data to Facebook's acquisition of Instagram. 2. Facebook to let French regulators investigate its moderation processes French regulators will launch an informal investigation on algorithm-powered and human moderation. Facebook says it's willing to cooperate and provide unprecedented access to its internal processes. 3. Travel startups are taking off Kate Clark examines the rise of travel startups — which, in the last five years, have raised more than $1 billion in venture capital funding. 4. Kofax to buy Nuance's imaging division for $400M in cash The acquisition is a notable move for Kofax as it continues to build up its business in Robotic Process Automation (the area of enterprise IT services that uses machine learning, computer vision and other AI-based tools to bring automation to repetitive or mundane back-office tasks). 5. Alibaba rival JD sees Singles' Day revenue jump 27 percent thanks to offline push Alibaba may have pioneered the concept of Singles' Day, the world's largest shopping day based on sales, but it's not the only e-commerce giant involved. Unlike Alibaba, which racked up $31 billion in gross merchandise volume in the 24-hour sale on November 11, JD's festival ran for 11 days. 6. Bubble lets you create web applications with no coding experience Meet Bubble, a bootstrapped startup that has been building a powerful service that lets you create a web application even if you don't know how to code. 7. Yep, it's time for another Monday podcast roundup This week, the Equity team takes a close look at SoftBank's debt load, while on Original Content, we reviewed Netflix's spooky reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. |