Elon Musk is Time’s Person of the Year; NSO could shut Pegasus; Apple faces probe; Flipkart again invests in Ninjacart
Elon Musk is Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ for 2021. Musk’s startup rocket company, SpaceX, has blasted past Boeing and others to own America’s spacefaring future. His electric car company, Tesla, controls two-thirds of the multibillion-dollar electric-vehicle market it pioneered. It is valued at $1 trillion, the magazine points out. That has made Musk, with a net worth of more than $250 billion, the richest private citizen in history. His interests include robots, solar power, cryptocurrency, climate tech, brain-computer implants and underground tunnels to move people and freight at high speeds. In the future Musk envisions, robots perform all the labour, and goods and services are abundant, so people work on what they love. “There’s, like, plenty for everyone, essentially,” he says in Time’s profile of him. “There’s not necessarily anyone who’s the boss of you. I don’t mean to suggest chaos, but rather that you’re not under anyone’s thumb. So you have the freedom to do whatever you’d like to do, provided it does not cause harm to others.” NSO Group, the Israeli spyware company—whose software was used to target human rights activists, journalists, government officials and others, around the world—is in danger of defaulting on its debts. It is exploring options that include shutting its controversial Pegasus unit and selling the entire company, Bloomberg reports. NSO has held talks with several investment funds about refinancing or outright sale. The prospective new owners include two American funds that have discussed taking control and closing the Pegasus spyware unit. Under that scenario, the funds would then invest about $200 million in fresh capital to turn the know-how behind Pegasus into strictly defensive cyber security services and perhaps develop the Israeli company’s drone technology, according to Bloomberg. Apple is being investigated by the US Department of Labor over claims that it retaliated against an employee who complained of workplace harassment and unsafe working conditions, according to a Reuters news digest of the FT report, which is behind a paywall. Ninjacart, a supply chain company for fresh produce, has raised $145 million from Flipkart and its US-based parent, Walmart, in what could be the biggest funding round for an Indian agri-tech startup, Economic Times reports. This is Flipkart’s third investment in Ninjakart, according to ET. It first invested an undisclosed amount in the Bengaluru-based startup in 2019 and then added around $30 million late last year, with Walmart. Manish Maheshwari, a former Twitter India boss, is leaving Twitter to start an ed-tech venture, TechCrunch reports. Maheshwari had recently moved to San Francisco to work at a different division within the company. He is in talks with potential investors to raise funds for a new Bangalore-headquartered ed-tech startup that promises to deliver MBA courses in four months, according to some of the investors to whom he has pitched the new startup.