Category: Technology

In boom times many big companies turn themselves into venture capitalists, backing young enterprises in a bid to stay competitive or discover the next big thing. But when the economy slumps — as it is now — some corporations rethink their ties to startup funding, as the investment divisions of food giants Kellogg’s and Kraft […]

Apple Inc. is back in a familiar role as market leader after a painful first half of the year that saw hundreds of billions of dollars in market value disappear, and individual investors are a big reason for the rally. Since bottoming in mid-June, the iPhone maker’s shares have surged 27%, outpacing the S&P 500 […]

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. let go of 9,241 employees in the three months to June, according to the company’s latest filing. The Hangzhou-based firm reported it had just over 245,000 employees at the end of the most recent reporting quarter, cutting back during a period that marked its first ever contraction in […]

ByteDance Ltd. has acquired one of China’s largest private hospital chains for about $1.5 billion, deepening a foray into health care via one of the largest domestic tech deals since Beijing’s internet crackdown. TikTok’s Chinese owner paid about 10 billion yuan to take full ownership of Amcare Healthcare, which runs women’s and children’s hospitals in […]

Snap Inc. is introducing tools for parents or trusted adults to better supervise teen behavior on its popular disappearing photo and video app, Snapchat. The new tool, called Family Center, lets parents or designated adults over the age of 25 to view their teen’s friends, see who they’ve messaged in the past week and anonymously […]

Thailand plans to overhaul its digital rules to confer more powers on the central bank and tighten the oversight of platforms offering cryptocurrencies and other tokens after a recent market rout left retail investors reeling from losses. The planned amendments to the regulations will “bring the central bank to be part of it,” Finance Minister […]

Alphabet Inc.’s Google search and website temporarily stopped working for some users, setting off confusion and a torrent of memes about what to do without the world’s most popular online engine. User reports of issues with the service began inundating Downdetector, an outage-tracking service focused on the US, from around 9 p.m. New York time […]