This week in data, we've got news from a flying taxi unicorn, a $7.3B acquisition, and a 519% surge in e-commerce sales. Check it out below.
THIS WEEK IN DATA
60M infections: Shutdowns prevented 60M coronavirus infections in the US and 285M in China, according to a study published in Nature. A separate study found that lockdowns in Europe saved over 3M lives. We brought together our research on how Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns are affecting a broad range of industries — including funding reports for healthcare, consumer products, and fintech — on this resource page.
$1B: Flying taxi startup Lilium reached a reported $1B valuation, after raising a $35M extension to its $242M funding round announced in March. The new unicorn joins the 475-strong club of private companies last valued at $1B+. We partnered with Fast Company to identify 50 high-momentum startups poised to become the unicorns of tomorrow. See all of our predictions here.
70M customers: Europe-based Just Eat Takeaway is set to acquire its US competitor Grubhub in a deal worth $7.3B. The combined company will reportedly have an active customer base of 70M people. Just Eat Takeaway beat out Uber for the deal. We discuss Uber’s food delivery business in our report on how Uber makes money.
$1.5T: Apple’s market cap surpassed $1.5T for the first time this week. From corporate structure to network effects to the ideal team size, we look at 8 laws that helped guide companies like Apple as they became tech giants. Read the report here.
$2B: Lemonade, a home and renters insurance startup, filed to go public. The SoftBank-backed company has raised $480M in disclosed equity funding and was last valued at $2B. Lemonade was featured in our latest AI 100 list. See the rest of the top AI startups to watch here.
$13.7B: Grocery delivery app Instacart raised $225M at a valuation of $13.7B, an increase in valuation of 74% since its last funding round in late 2018. We discussed the changing last-mile delivery landscape in our client-exclusive analysis of Target’s recent acquisition of Deliv.
128 months: The US economy’s run of 128 months of expansion, the longest on record, ended in February, a US-based committee that tracks economic cycles announced this week. Some economists believe that the country’s economy may already be growing again as lockdown measures are eased and consumer spending rebounds.
0 snow days: Rhode Island is set to scrap snow days for schools in favor of remote learning. The move came as a result of the state’s reportedly positive experience with virtual education during its shutdown. Kids may not be the only ones working remotely more often even after the pandemic has passed. We look at the startups making it easier to skip the office in this market map.
2 months: Britain has gone 2 months without using coal — a major contributor of greenhouse gases — to generate electricity. The country’s grid prioritizes renewable energy sources and a pandemic-driven drop in electricity demand allowed coal plants to remain offline. As recently as a decade ago, the UK was producing around 40% of its power from coal.
In April, Japan's Kagawa prefecture passed rules that asked parents to limit the time minors under the age of 20 spent online — no more than 1 hour on school nights and an hour and a half on weekends. Though they have no official enforcement mechanism, there is heavy social pressure to follow these ordinances.
To aid in the battle, the boy has enlisted one of Japan’s top constitutional lawyers, who has said that these screen-time rules violate the rights to freedom of expression and overstep limits on government authority.
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