Doordash is Ending ❌ Its Delivery Partnership 🤝 With Walmart
Scott D. Clary | Daily Business, Tech & Finance Newsletter
Scott D. Clary
August 23, 2022
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Here’s whats happening:
- DoorDash is ending its delivery partnership with Walmart
- FDA authorizes emergency use for Novavax
- Australia’s new government is working on crypto regulation
- Keen Technologies secures $20 million in funding
- More Than Half Americans Regret an Impulse Buy
Doordash is Ending ❌ Its Delivery Partnership 🤝 With Walmart
Door-to-door delivery company DoorDash is ending its partnership with Walmart, which had a service delivering groceries and other items from the retail chain for more than four years.
Key Highlights
- DoorDash and Walmart first partnered in 2018 when Walmart started testing having groceries ordered through its site delivered by DoorDash.
- The service first went live in Atlanta, Georgia, to start, but has since expanded to several other US states.
- DoorDash has reportedly given Walmart a 30-day notice, which means the partnership will officially end in September.
What’s next? 🤔
Currently, it’s unclear whether DoorDash will offer deliveries from Walmart via its app.
While DoorDash’s partnership with Walmart is coming to a close, the company is all set to team up with Meta.
The delivery company’s DoorDash Drive is now in the early stages of testing a service that will allow DoorDash drivers to pick up and drop off Facebook Marketplace items to customers.
FDA Authorizes Emergency Use For Novavax
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine 💉 for emergency use in adolescents.
The good thing:
It is the fourth coronavirus vaccine available in the US, and unlike the others, it uses a protein-based technology.
The Timeline:
- Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine was granted emergency clearance for use in people aged 18 and older in July.
- With the latest emergency use authorization, the vaccine will also be available as a two-dose primary series for ages 12 to 17.
Significance of the Novavax vaccine
In contrast to mRNA vaccines, protein-based vaccinations take a more conventional approach, instructing the immune system to detect tiny modified fragments of the virus that the vaccine is targeting. This technology is also used for vaccines for conditions such as hepatitis B and pertussis.
For the age group of 12 to 17, the overall clinical efficacy of the vaccine is around 80%, while the vaccine has shown 90% overall efficacy in adults.
Australia’s New Government 🇦🇺 is Working on Crypto Regulation 📜
Australia’s new government has made its first real move into the country’s crypto-regulation landscape, announcing a Treasury-led “token-mapping” strategy.
The aim of the token-mapping
The Australian government will make “token mapping” a priority this year to help identify which digital asset tokens are being used in the country and how they should be regulated, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said in a statement.
The statement also noted that more than one million taxpayers have interacted with the crypto ecosystem since 2018, and yet, “regulation is struggling to keep pace and adapt with the crypto asset sector.”
Why is this important? 🤔
The crypto industry warmly welcomed the news, which has been anxiously waiting to see if the Australian Labor Party government would embrace it or not.
Notably, the Treasury may soon undertake work on some other crypto aspects, including a licensing framework for crypto asset service providers dealing in non-financial product crypto assets, a review of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), and much more.
Keen Technologies Secures $20 Million in Funding 💰
John Carmack’s AGI startup Keen Technologies has raised $20 million in its funding round.
The investors
The funding round saw participation from Former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Cue founder Daniel Gross.
Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison, Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke, and storied venture fund Sequoia also participated in the round.
“This is explicitly a focusing effort for me. I could write a $20M check myself, but knowing that other people’s money is on the line engenders a greater sense of discipline and determination. I had talked about that as a possibility for a while, and I am glad Nat pushed me on it,” added John Carmack.
Who is John Carmack?
John Carmack is the game developer who co-founded id Software and served as Oculus’s CTO.
What is AGI?
AGI, short for “artificial general intelligence,” is a category of AI systems that can theoretically perform any task that a human can.
More Than Half Americans Regret 😔 an Impulse Buy 🛍
Over 60% of social media users say they regret making at least one impulse purchase of a product they saw on social media, according to a recent survey from Bankrate.
On top of that, social media “inherently entices people to keep up with their neighbor,” Bankrate’s survey notes.
About 25% of respondents said they want to appear successful on social media, which can contribute to spending more to impress followers.
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