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DoorDash, the ubiquitous U.S. food delivery app, has agreed to acquire British rival Deliveroo for 2.9 billion pounds ($3.9 billion) in cash, expanding its business in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. San Francisco-based DoorDash will pay 180 pence ($2.40) for each Deliveroo share, 29% more than the closing price on April 24, the day before the offer was announced, the companies said in a joint statement before the London Stock Exchange opened for trading on Tuesday. The deal is DoorDashs second major international acquisition in three years as the company expands from its traditional base in the U.S., Canada and Australia. After the purchase of Deliveroo, and the 2022 acquisition of Helsinki-based Wolt Enterprises, DoorDash will operate in more than 40 markets worldwide. I could not be more excited by the prospect of what DoorDash and Deliveroo will be able to accomplish together, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said in the statement. Both companies were founded in 2013, using the then emerging technology of smartphones to link restaurants and their customers to a network of delivery riders. Deliveroo now operates in nine countries, including the U.K. and Ireland, which accounted for 59% of its business in 2023. It also does business in France, Italy, Belgium, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar. The acquisition comes less than three months after technology investment company Prosus agreed to buy Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway.com for 4.1 billion euros ($4.29 billion), boosting its food delivery portfolio in Europe.
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E-Commerce
Big Four accounting firm PwC is laying off about 1,500 employees in the United States, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Monday. The workforce reduction equates to approximately 2% of our U.S. firm, the spokesperson said. PwC employs more than 75,000 people in the United States. “This was a difficult decision, and we made it with care, thoughtfulness, and a deep awareness of its impact on our people, appreciating that historically low levels of attrition over consecutive years have made it necessary to take this step”, PwC said in a statement. Last year, Reuters had reported that PwC was considering slashing up to half its financial services auditing staff in China, as a regulatory investigation and an exodus of clients darken business prospects. PwC last month shut operations in nine Sub-Saharan African countries following a strategic review. KPMG, PwC, EY and Deloitte make up the Big Four accounting firms. In November last year, Reuters had reported that KPMG would lay off less than 4%, or about 330 people, of its audit workforce in the United States. Jaiveer Shekhawat, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Cisco is the latest company to announce a quantum breakthrough. On Tuesday, the company said it has developed a prototype entanglement source chip that has the potential to cut the timeline for practical quantum computing by as much as a decade. The chip was developed in partnership with UC Santa Barbara and is novel in that it generates up to one million entangled photon pairs per second, and does so at room temperature, saving considerable resources. Additionally, Cisco is also announcing the opening of Cisco Quantum Labs, which will be the companys dedicated quantum research hub in Santa Monica, California. The chip itself was developed at Ciscos Outshift incubator, where Viljoy Pandey, senior vice president at Outshift by Cisco, says the company works on projects that are slightly out of the comfort zone. Were a networking company, says Pandey. Were looking at quantum networking and quantum security.” “Our thesis is pretty straightforward: To make [quantum computing] practical, you need to scale it out, he adds. You need a network, and to have a quantum network, you need a quantum entanglement chip. Thats the first building block. In practice, the chip will allow quantum computers to be networked togethersimilar to existing networks for classical computersenabling distributed quantum computing. ‘There’s going to be a ChatGPT moment for quantum’ While other companies are focused on building quantum computers themselves, Cisco is working on the infrastructure to make quantum computing actually workand it’s attempting to get ahead of things by developing the network and security frameworks while large-scale quantum demand is still likely years away. Moreover, while some experts have mused that quantum computing could be as far as 20 years down the road, Pandey says that Ciscos breakthrough likely cuts that timeline by between five and 10 years. [Photo: Cisco] Building the chip took between three and four years, and now Cisco is looking at moving it into production, says Reza Nejabati, head of Quantum Research and Quantum Labs at Outshift by Cisco. Were working toward more commercial fabrication, he says. Theres a whole bunch of hardware and software technology that were bringing up. The quantum proof of concept is happening. As for whats next, Pandey says Cisco will work on software to help build out a quantum network and continue work on a quantum roadmap. Theres going to be a ChatGPT moment for quantum, he says. We need to start putting the fundamental building blocks together to prepare.
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E-Commerce
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