TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

David Marcus Joins Facebook As Messaging Products Head

By TechTaffy Desk

davidmarcus

David Marcus, president of PayPal at eBay, has joined Facebook as the social network’s new messaging head. His new role will be vice president, Messaging Products.  Mr. Marcus will however not be overseeing the WhatsApp or Slingshot instant messaging services also owned by Facebook, according to Forbes. 

In a Facebook post talking about his new role, Mr. Marcus said leading 14,000 people from a few hundred people took a toll on him in the first year of his starting with PayPal. Though the second year became more natural, he says he realized his role was becoming a managemen one, versus building products that mattered to a lot of people. He says he decided to move on to something that is closer to what he loves to do everyday after much deliberation.

Mr. Marcus joined PayPal three years ago, when his company Zong was acquired by the payment’s network. According to a statement released by Facebook, Mr. Marcus taught himself to code when he was eight and launched his first startup when he was 23.

Every day around 12 billion messages are sent on Facebook. Messenger, the standalone messaging app from the social networking giant, is used by more than 200 million people every month.

[Image courtesy: Facebook]

Just in

Series A

Tembo raises $14M

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Tembo, a Postgres managed service provider, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round.
Around the web

Raspberry Pi is now a public company — TC

Raspberry Pi priced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning at £2.80 per share, valuing it at £542 million, or $690 million at today’s exchange rate, writes Romain Dillet. 
Fundings

AlphaSense raises $650M

AlphaSense, a market intelligence and search platform, has raised $650 million in funding, co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners.
Around the web

Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6B to take on OpenAI — VentureBeat

Confirming reports from April, the series B investment comes from the participation of multiple known venture capital firms and investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, writes Shubham Sharma. 
IT

Capgemini partners with DARPA to explore quantum computing for carbon capture

Capgemini Government Solutions has launched a new initiative with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate quantum computing's potential in carbon capture.