It’s the summer of the Megs: Startups raising upward of $100 million or more used to be a unicorn-level rarity. Now it’s practically routine — there were 273 last year, and even more projected for this year. The jump in oversize investments is led by relatively new investors, including the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, Chinese companies and sovereign wealth funds, who want to put their money down before young companies go public. The limitless pots of money are changing the normal way of building a tech company — they risk becoming too reliant on funding and never finding a path to profit. [Erin Griffith / The New York Times]
Recode Daily: This is the summer of the startup megadeal
Plus, the co-founders of Tinder and FanDuel are suing their parent companies; HQ Trivia jumps from smartphones to Apple TV; and will it be money or luck?
“The Meg” / Warner Bros.
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Tinder’s co-founders are suing IAC, the former parent company of the popular dating app, for at least $2 billion. Co-founder Sean Rad, along with eight former and current Tinder execs, says IAC purposefully deflated Tinder’s valuation in order to avoid paying him. Meanwhile, FanDuel founder Nigel Eccles didn’t make a dime when the fantasy sports site was acquired by a European gambling company earlier this year. Along with three other co-founders, he’s suing in Scottish civil court, demanding that the company be revalued, and is looking for more than $120 million. [Kurt Wagner / Recode]
Uber named Matt Olsen as its chief security officer, replacing Joe Sullivan, who left last year amid controversy over his handling of the company’s data breach, which affected 57 million riders and drivers and involved a payout to hackers to keep quiet. Olsen previously served as National Counterterrorism Center director and National Security Agency general counsel. [Kate Conger / The New York Times]
Chinese telecom companies ZTE and Huawei have been largely banned from use by the U.S. government and federal contractors after President Trump signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. Both companies were called a national security threat by a 2012 House report, and heads of U.S. security agencies have recommended against using their products. [Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge]
The FBI has warned U.S. banks that ATMs will likely face a coordinated global attack by criminals in the “coming days.” According to cybersecurity blog Krebs on Security, the FBI was tipped off that cybercriminals would hack payment card processors or banks and use ATMs all over the world to withdraw millions of dollars over the course of a few hours. Meanwhile, hundreds of Instagram users are reporting that their accounts were hacked.[Shannon Liao / The Verge]
In an attempt to return to its earlier viral growth, the live online quiz game HQ Trivia made its debut on Apple TV. HQ has seen 12.5 million unique installs, but on iOS, it has fallen from the No. 1 U.S. trivia game to No. 10, and from the No. 151 overall app to No. 585; it has seen a similar decline on Android. Meanwhile, clones of the game are popping up on mobile — this week, Fox unveiled the amusingly titled FN Genius, which looks and works almost exactly the same as HQ. [Josh Constine / TechCrunch]
What’s driving Elon Musk? We know you all love to read about him, so here’s an entertaining oral-history style portrait in aggregate of one of the tech industry’s most high-profile and controversial figures, as told by his family, friends and colleagues. [Amit Katwala / Wired UK]
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