• Business Insider asked 11 top venture-capital investors which media startups they thought would thrive in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, including companies they were and weren't invested in.
• Gaming and esports startups that are helping widen the audience for the sector were a major theme among the companies the investors thought were poised to take off.
• Four of the investors' 19 startup picks were in the gaming sector, including PlayVS, Roblox, Treehouse Games, and 12traits.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

The gaming industry underwent a major transformation as mobile devices made gaming more accessible. Now, pandemic lockdowns are granting some players more time to explore and immerse themselves in gaming.

Research firm Nielsen found in early June that 82% of global consumers surveyed said they'd played video games and watched video-game content since the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns started in March. More gamers in the US, France, the UK, and Germany also said they were spending more time playing video games than before the pandemic.

Gaming studios like Epic Games have found creative ways to engage with the influx of people who are stuck at home. The Fortnite creator organized new concerts by artists like Travis Scott and Diplo within the game.

Sports fans may also be helping drive the lift in interest in gaming. When lives sports were forced to go off the air in mid-March, organizations such as NASCAR looked to esports to keep fans engaged. Professional soccer players and other athletes also started livestreaming on platforms geared toward gamers, like Twitch.

Viewing on Twitch spiked toward the end of March thanks to people who were stuck at home, Nielsen found. 

Business Insider asked 11 investors which media startups they thought would surge this year amid the coronavirus pandemic and why, including startups they were and weren't invested in. Gaming startups were a major theme among the investors' 19 company picks.

Venture-capitalist investors including Shanti Bergel, managing director at Transcend Fund, told Business Insider that the expansion of the gaming market was accelerating amid the pandemic and startups that play into that trend were poised to take off.

"The most exciting things that are happening in games these days have to do with the expansion of the audience," said Bergel, whose fund invests in early-stage startups in the gaming sector.

The gaming startups the investors picked touched on esports, collaborative gaming, and gaming analytics.

The four picks in the gaming sector are listed below in alphabetical order.

Read about all the VCs' media startup picks on Business Insider:

PlayVS

Total funding: $96 million, according to Crunchbase

What it does: PlayVS is a software startup that organizes high school and collegiate gaming competitions across the country. 

Why VCs like it: Investor Marlon Nichols, managing general partner at MaC Venture Capital, said PlayVS has the opportunity to be king-maker for game developers who want a game to gain visibility among high school and college students.

PlayVS supports esports competitions for more than 13,000 schools, and has worked with the National Federation of High Schools to establish varsity programs in 18 states.

"For every professional sport, there's a training ground," Nichols said. "For esports and the way that the sport is growing in the professional ranks, there's going to be more and more people wanting to be esports athletes, and there isn't a set training path or a platform that powers the amateurs that leads into the professional ranks. And so that is essentially what PlayVS has become, and that makes it super important."

Read more: How one startup managed to bring 'Fortnite' and 'League of Legends' esports to 13,000 schools in exclusive deals

Roblox

Total funding: $335.7 million, according to Crunchbase

What it does: Roblox is an online-entertainment platform where users can build and share games. 

Why VCs like it: Shanti Bergel, managing director of Transcend Fund, said Roblox is what the gaming industry jokingly calls a "10-year overnight success story." Roblox has been around for a while in various forms. But its latest iteration — an online platform where users can build and share games — is having a moment now, especially among kids who are also picking up coding skills through the platform. 

"It's really a training ground for the game developers of the future in a lot of ways," said Bergel, who is not invested in the company. "Some of them are building real businesses on it."

Roblox said in March that it reached 100 million monthly active users, a new milestone for the company. 

"Roblox is exposing kids (40% of whom are female) to basic coding principles," said Jana Messerschmidt, a partner at Lightspeed, which is not invested in the company. "It is unclear whether kids can safely return to school this fall and many are dealing with an enormous amount of COVID-related stress. I'm glad that these kids have 'metaverses' such as Roblox."

Read more: A video game you've never heard of has turned three teens into multimillionaires — and it's just getting started

Treehouse Games

Total funding: $2.6 million, according to Crunchbase

What it does: Treehouse Games is a new game studio that's developing collaborative games. 

Why VCs like it: Transcend Fund managing director Shanti Bergel said the most exciting startups in gaming today are widening the audience for the sector. Treehouse Games is part of that trend.

The gaming studio, cofounded by Michael Chu and Ryan Sullivan, is building games in the vein of The Sims and Farmville that create online communities, said Bergel, who is invested in the company.

"They're working with a canvas that is better and a little more nuanced than the things that have come before them," said Bergel, who also worked on The Sims franchise earlier in his career at gaming company Electronic Arts.

Bergel said to watch Treehouse Games in the next two to three years, as its initial slate of games gets off the ground.

12traits

Total funding: $2.2 million, according to the company

What it does: 12traits is a two-year-old gaming analytics company that builds psychographic profiles of gamer cohorts.

Why VCs like it: The gaming sector has been heating up as it moves beyond niche audiences and into the mainstream thanks to mobile games and other developments.

Game studios are trying to learn more about their audiences. And 12traits investor Michael Sackler, the founder and managing partner of Rooks Nest Ventures, thinks the startup can help by providing data that tries to make sense of what motivates different gamers and why they make certain choices.

Sackler said 12traits has roughly 30 clients in the gaming industry.

"They've just found their product market fit and tearing through the gaming space," Sackler said.

Read about all the VCs' media startup picks on Business Insider:

• TikTok star Dixie D'Amelio recently released her first single, "Be Happy." 
• The song was released under a new family-owned label, DAM FAM Recordings, and reached over 1 million Spotify streams within its first weekend.
• With millions of followers across many social-media platforms, D'Amelio and her family are a powerhouse in the influencer industry.
• Her sister Charli is TikTok's most followed creator with 73 million followers, and their parents Heidi and Marc also have large followings online. 
• Business Insider spoke with the family's comanagers about developing a song with Dixie and their plans to work with more talent on music going forward. 
• Subscribe to Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Influencer Dashboard.

TikTok star Dixie D'Amelio and her internet-famous family aren't betting on an established record label for her introduction into the music industry. Instead, they are counting on the massive fanbase their family has built across social media. 

At the end of June, Dixie released her first single titled "Be Happy" under her family-owned label, DAM FAM Recordings. The song reached over 1 million Spotify streams within its first weekend and at the beginning of July, Dixie made Billboard's list of Emerging Artists. 

She first teased to the song on TikTok in June, singing an a capella rendition of it for her 30 million TikTok followers. The music video, which was released on July 1, has 52 million views on YouTube. 

With millions of followers across many social-media platforms, Dixie and her family are a powerhouse in the influencer industry. Her sister Charli is TikTok's most followed creator with 73 million followers (that number will have likely changed by the time you read this), and their parents Heidi and Marc also have large followings online. 

Outside of TikTok, the sisters have landed traditional Hollywood roles (Charli is the voice of a character in a new animated film), spent time with celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, and are the face of new product collabs with companies like Hollister and Morphe Cosmetics. 

To make it all happen, the D'Amelios are comanaged by the firms Outshine Talent and Manncom Creative Partners, and represented by United Talent Agency for larger business ventures, like going on tour, or a possible reality TV show which the family has teased recently. 

Barbara Jones, who is the founder of Outshine Talent, and Billy Mann, the founder of Manncom Creative Partners, weren't initially brought on to help the family with music projects. But as they discovered Dixie's interest and talent, they were able to create a plan using the deep knowledge of the industry they shared from past experiences working at top record labels. 

For Dixie, the launch of her new song is the start of a larger strategy, Jones said. It will rely on the family's celebrity-level team and the massive distribution funnel the D'Amelios have built across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, rather than a traditional record label.

Business Insider spoke with Jones and Mann about developing the song and their plans to work with more talent on music going forward. 

Inside developing the song 

The idea to work with Dixie on a song came after her dad Marc shared a video of her singing at a school event with Mann and Jones late last year.

"We have to remember, a year ago Dixie was in school and the parents were carpooling to dance class," Mann said. "She can really sing and has her own style and her own manner of singing which is a lot harder to come by. There's a distinct character to her voice."

The song was recorded in Mann's private home studio earlier this spring, he said. 

Mann said he sent Dixie dozens of songs to look over and they would spend hours talking about them over FaceTime.

She eventually choose "Be Happy," which was produced by Christian Medice (who has worked with Halsey) and was cowritten by Medice, Samantha DeRosa, Joe Kirkland, and Mann.

"When she heard 'Be Happy,' it really resonated with her and I think it resonated with her because sometimes being happy is not easy, especially with the way the world is now," Mann said. 

"It felt like Dixie," Jones added. "This was a good song for her style and her range. There's nothing wishy-washy about Dixie." 

Days before the song was released, Mann told the family that given her audience online, and the fact that she was a brand new artist, Dixie could expect between 100,000 and 250,000 streams within the first week. 

But like most everything the family does online, the song was instantly trending and received widespread interest across many social-media platforms. 

How the team behind Dixie's music came together 

Both Mann and Jones have worked for a variety of record companies over the years.

In 2007, Jones was the head of marketing for Columbia Records in New York, and she later started her own influencer-marketing agency. She shifted her business to talent management after meeting and signing the D'Amelios as talent. 

Mann has been writing and producing for over 25 years, has worked with artists like P!nk, and has cowritten songs nominated for a Grammy. He met Jones over a decade ago while they were both working at Columbia Records, and Jones reached out to him last year looking to see if he would be interested in managing the family together. 

The D'Amelios are also represented by UTA agents Greg Goodfried and Ali Berman, who cohead the digital talent department, and music agent David Klein, who also played a role in the song development.

Since working with the family, Jones and Mann have constantly scoured social-media for new talent, and they are "always texting each other links to potential talent," Mann said. They want to continue to work with digital clients who sing and dance on new projects. 

"We aren't interested in one lane," Jones said. "We are looking for people who want a well-rounded career."

SEE ALSO: Inside UTA's deal with TikTok star Charli D'Amelio and how the talent agency plans to expand her influencer business

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• This is a preview of The Rise of Cloud Gaming research report from Business Insider Intelligence.
• Purchase this report.
• Business Insider Intelligence offers even more technology coverage with Connectivity & Tech Pro. Subscribe today to receive industry-changing connectivity news and analysis to your inbox.

A disruptive competitive dynamic is poised to shake up the gaming industry, and it's centered on the cloud. Cloud-based streaming has generated significant buzz in the entertainment business throughout the last decade, rocking the media and music industries with the likes of Netflix and Spotify.

Now it's gaming's turn in the spotlight, with a number of cloud service providers and telecommunications companies revealing plans to enter the cloud gaming fray by launching their own services. These companies, each with unique advantages to disrupt the video gaming space, are largely driving the hype in the cloud gaming market.

Cloud gaming, by nature, is also enough to turn heads: It expands the audience for premium games beyond the current console and PC audience by making them accessible anywhere, at any time, and on any device. That huge addressable market is creating a lucrative and growing opportunity for companies gearing up to enter the space, providing a long runway for growth. 

A convergence of technological and consumer behavioral forces is pushing cloud gaming to move the needle in the gaming industry, something it's failed to do in the past decade. Cloud gaming depends heavily on the cloud and connectivity — areas of strength for cloud service providers and telecoms that are launching their own services.

And advancements in connectivity standards and hardware functionality, new benefits to the end user over traditional gaming experiences, and the ability to meet gamers' evolving tastes are playing — and will continue to play — a significant role in helping cloud gaming reach its full potential.

In The Rise of Cloud Gaming, Business Insider Intelligence takes a deep dive into the evolving cloud gaming market. The report sizes the cloud gaming opportunity and examines the various drivers and barriers, identifies the most noteworthy big tech companies and telecoms poised to dominate the space, and discusses the distinct strategies they're undertaking to capture a piece of the multibillion-dollar market. 

The companies mentioned in this report are: Amazon, Google, LG Uplus, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nvidia, Sony, Tencent, and Verizon. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report: 

• Several significant changes in the decade-plus since cloud gaming's emergence have led the gaming format to move from a futuristic what-if to a massive opportunity for companies outside the traditional gaming space.
• Cloud service providers and telecoms are investing in cloud gaming because their technological strengths are well suited to the new format and can help them corner off the immediately massive addressable market.
• But nontraditional gaming companies will have to consider several factors — like identifying target audiences and building and maintaining appealing content libraries — before and after launching their cloud gaming offerings.

In full, the report: 

• Examines how recent technological and consumer behavioral developments are playing — and will continue to play — a significant role in helping cloud gaming reach its potential.
• Explores the disruptive class of companies whose unique advantages position them to capture a large share of the burgeoning market. 
• Identifies several factors that may be most inhibitive to consumer adoption of cloud gaming, and how new entrants to the space can work to overcome them. 

Interested in getting the full report? Here's how to get access:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now
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• Monday's highly anticipated tech antitrust hearing is likely going to be postponed, Politico reports. 
• Unnamed sources told Politico it's "highly likely" the hearing will be pushed back as Rep. John Lewis lies in state at the Capitol. 
• Lawmakers had planned to examine the business practices of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google, with the CEOs of all four companies testifying together for the first time. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Monday's congressional antitrust hearing with four major tech CEOs is likely to be postponed, Politico's Cristiano Lima reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources. 

The highly anticipated hearing, scheduled for noon on Monday, planned to examine the business practices of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google, with lawmakers probing whether those companies used their market power to crush smaller rivals. 

CEOs Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai were all scheduled to testify together for the first time, and it would also be Bezos' first appearance before Congress — Cook and Pichai have each testified once in the past, and Zuckerberg has testified twice before. 

Prior to news of a possible delay, Reuters reported that all four CEOs planned to appear virtually rather than in person due to the coronavirus. 

But sources told Politico that it is "highly likely" the hearing will be delayed as Rep. John Lewis lies in state at the Capitol next week. 

Lewis, a civil rights leader and representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district, died last week at the age of 80 after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on Thursday that Lewis would lie in state on the front steps of the Capitol and that a public viewing would take place Monday night and all day Tuesday. 

SEE ALSO: Lawmakers in charge of grilling Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook on antitrust own thousands in stock in those companies

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NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet

• As TikTok stars look for new ways to make money, some are turning to app marketing where they earn a commission for driving installs of an app.
• Unlike a typical sponsored post that is paid on a flat rate, app marketing is a form of performance marketing in which an influencer or publisher encourages their followers to click a trackable link that allows them to get paid for each app install they drive. 
• Creators and marketers told Business Insider that they can earn tens of thousands of dollars from a single promotional video that goes viral.
• Subscribe to Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Influencer Dashboard.

TikTok has helped bring about a new crop of digital stars. But the short-form video app is still in the early stages of releasing features that allow its creators to make money, an important step for keeping its top influencers from switching to apps with more mature monetization programs like YouTube and Instagram. 

The company announced this week that it's setting aside $200 million to pay creators who are "seeking opportunities to foster a livelihood through their innovative content." But it has yet to introduce some of the standard money-making tools for creators that are available on other platforms.

TikTok currently offers a "virtual gifts" feature, which allows creators to earn money while livestreaming by receiving digital "gifts" from fans that can be converted into cash. The company built a creator marketplace to help its users more easily connect with marketers for sponsored posts that are negotiated off-app. And TikTok has recently tested a shopping button feature for a few of its top users (a product somewhat in line with Instagram's shopping tools) on a limited basis. 

But many creators hoping to earn a living from TikTok don't rely on the app's built-in monetization features, turning instead to outside brand deals, paid song integrations, and more recently, app marketing.

Influencers and marketers told Business Insider that a single TikTok app promotion can generate tens of thousands of dollars in revenue for a creator. 

"I started doing apps around four weeks ago, and it was a gamechanger," said Reagan Yorke, a 19-year-old college student who was recently paid tens of thousands of dollars to promote the group video chat app Bunch to her 2.5 million TikTok followers.

Yorke worked with the app-marketing company Yoke, which provided her with a tracking link to add to her TikTok bio that would give her credit for any app installs she drove from her account. On June 14, she posted a video promoting Bunch to her followers, and the video took off, driving 11.5 million video views, 2.5 million likes, and 531,000 shares to date.

"I literally posted it right before I went to sleep," Yorke said. "I woke up the next day and I had like $20,000 in my account, so I was just like, is this real?"

Yorke told Business Insider she's typically paid a rate of 70 cents for each download she drives.

"If you promote an app that your audience is going to like, they'll trust you more," she said. 

UK-based TikTok creators Bobby Moore, 17, and Eloise Fouladgar, 22, also use Yoke to earn money from app marketing, posting videos that direct their millions of followers to click trackable download links that they include in their bios. Both creators are managed by Yoke in addition to using the company's app-marketing software as a source of revenue.

Moore's recent promotion of the VPN app Hotspot Shield on TikTok earned the creator roughly $40,000, according to Yoke.

"It's all based on performance, so if you're able to really engage with your audience and drive a lot of installs with your videos, you get paid per download," said Ercan Boyraz, Yoke's head of talent management. "There's not really a limit on how much you can earn."

Some TikTok app campaigns are still paid out on a flat rate rather than on a performance basis

While some TikTok creators are adding tracking links in their bios to get paid for driving app installs, mega stars with tens of millions of followers like Addison Rae Easterling and Dixie D'Amelio are still negotiating flat-rate deals for app promotions, according to Thor Fridriksson, CEO of Teatime Games, which recently hired the pair to promote a new app called Trivia Royale. 

"We did a couple of posts with both Dixie and Addison and I have never ever seen an influencer campaign work as effectively as those posts by those stars," Fridriksson said. 

"We didn't have any links," he said. "We had no way to attribute how many users came exactly from these influencers. But we know that when they posted the posts, the number of organic [installs] skyrocketed and kept going."

Easterling posted her promotional video for Trivia Royale on July 12. The next day, the app rose from being the 25th most downloaded free iPhone app to the sixth most installed, one rank below TikTok itself, according to data compiled by the app analytics firm Sensor Tower. 

"At the same time that we did this [campaign], we did introduce a new feature in the game that became very popular," Fridriksson said, noting that the app update likely contributed to its rise in the iPhone app store in addition to the company's TikTok campaign. "It's a little bit of these two things combined."

"We were just really lucky to get into this mode of viral marketing so early on because I'm pretty sure that the value of these stars will rise very quickly," Fridriksson added. 

For more stories on how TikTok users are earning money on the app, check out these other Business Insider posts:

• TikTok influencers are getting paid thousands of dollars to promote songs, as the app becomes a major force in the music industry: TikTok creators, talent managers, and music marketers shared how much influencers earn by promoting songs in videos on the app.
• A 15-year-old 'slime' influencer saw his sales and follower count soar after sending TikTok star Addison Rae samples of his homemade products: Slime creator Ricky Waite said his TikTok profile blew up after popular influencer Addison Rae Easterling reviewed one of his slimes.
• How to start making money from TikTok as a 'nano' influencer with fewer than 10,000 followers — and how much you can earn: The CEO of an influencer marketing startup focused on "nano influencers" shares how much it pays TikTok creators for a sponsored post.
• Inside the business of an 'adventure cat' TikTok influencer, who has 2 million followers and earns up to $60,000 for a sponsored video package: The travel and adventure influencer JJ Yosh and his cat Simon have millions of followers across Instagram and TikTok.
• A 'twinfluencer' with millions of followers says he's leaning into TikTok for brand sponsorships and getting 'low 5-figure deals': With tens of millions of TikTok followers, Alan Stokes and his twin brother, Alex, are represented by Amp Studios, a new content studio and talent incubator.

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• Slack is offering an online course in how to become an administrator for people who manage their organization's usage of the workplace chat app. 
• The course is part of Slack's broader goal of creating an online training academy to teach skills for those managing and administering the tool or developing apps for it, while also building a community of users, said Christina Kosmowski, Slack's VP of customer success.
• Typically, Fortune 500 companies, like Verizon, IBM, and Oracle, are the ones hiring people dedicated to managing Slack usage because the sheer size of the organization requires it.
• As much as Slack expects to see a boom in demand for administrators, the job market doesn't seem to have caught up quite yet. However, as the company grows there will likely be more Slack-specific roles that start to pop up.
• The new course costs $300, but Slack is also offering a scholarship to those who can't afford it. 
• Click here to read more BI Prime stories. 

Slack continues to sign on larger customers, even as it becomes a critical tool to keep businesses running amid the pandemic. That growth has created a new job title — Slack administrator — as Fortune 500 companies like Verizon, IBM, and Oracle now require dedicated manpower to managing their use of the work chat app. 

Now, Slack, the company, is ramping up its existing efforts to train those administrators. Slack started offering in-person administrator training late last year; the sudden boom in interest thanks to the remote work boom is seeing the introduction of an online course to reach even more people, with plans for more to come. 

The ultimate goal is to build an online academy to help administrators and developers alike make the most of Slack, said Christina Kosmowski, VP of customer success.

"We've got this whole new category, we've got a whole bunch of Slack administrators who are really supporting and championing within their organizations, how they utilize Slack," Kosmowski told Business Insider. "And so they've been wanting and desperate for this deeper set of knowledge and really to be recognized for that knowledge that they have." 

When the pandemic started Slack saw huge customer growth, signing on 12,000 new paid customers in the first quarter of this year. It also signed on more large customers, including Amazon and Verizon, last quarter. Those are typically customers using the Enterprise Grid version of the product, geared towards large organizations. The size alone often means there needs to be someone managing it all, Kosmowski said.

The online course costs $300, though Slack is offering a handful of scholarships right now to those who can't afford the fee. At the end of the course, participants receive a Slack certified administrator badge, which they can list on their resume or on LinkedIn. The model is similar to what Salesforce has created with Trailhead, its successful online learning platform that's helped many job-seekers start a career in administering the tool.

It's unclear what the typical salary range for a Slack admin is, but Kosmowski said she would expect the pay to be similar to general IT or Salesforce administrator roles, which in San Francisco can command a salary of around $150,000, according to data from careers site Glassdoor. 

Who is hiring Slack administrators?

The job titles vary. IBM employees in the role are called Slack Admins. Apple has a job opening for a Slack Product Integrations Manager. Life insurance company Northwestern Mutual is hiring a Slack engineer. Consulting firm Latitude is hiring a Slack Enterprise Service Manager. 

While all the job titles are a bit different, all of them want people who can set information sharing and privacy preferences for Slack users, build integrations between Slack and other productivity apps the company uses, and generally make sure people are using the product to the fullest extent, which is what the course teaches. 

As much as Slack expects to see a boom in demand for administrators, the job market doesn't seem to have caught up quite yet. As of July 6th, Glassdoor listed 11 open roles with the word "Slack" in the job title — which doesn't seem like much, but is still double the number of listings as recently as January. As the company grows, however, you can expect to see more Slack-specific roles start to pop up.

"While demand for roles specifically oriented around Slack administration is still relatively low, it's likely we'll see new opportunities be created as more employers continue to adopt new technologies like Slack in the current state of remote work," said Glassdoor analyst Amanda Stansell. 

Kosmowski similarly believes that as Slack usage ticks up in an enterprise, so too will the demand.

"It's something that customers know that they need because they picked this very transformational tool that they're using across their entire company," Kosmowski said. 

Creating a Slack ecosystem

The next step is to build the kind of ecosystem around Slack that's already enjoyed by the likes of larger rivals like Salesforce or Dropbox. 

In addition to offering an online Slack admin course, it's going to be adding courses for developers who want to build apps for Slack, and a course for experience designers who want to create custom workflows in the app. Slack sees both as burgeoning future job titles. 

Ultimately, Kosmowski said, it's all because there's already a need for this kind of training in the market, and the company just wants to build a community that can become the ecosystem it's looking for.

"There's a group of people that are really coming out of that and feeling that passion and they want to take that expertise to the next level," she said. "This is really just the beginning steps for certainly working with our customers and partners to find out what methods work best for them in terms of learning style."

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• Cybersecurity startup Mitiga just raised $7 million in a funding round backed by ClearSky Ventures and Glilot Capital Partners. 
• The global cybersecurity market has been valued at $112 billion – and is set to double to around $282 billion by 2027. 
• Arik Kleinstein, managing partners at Glilot Capital, told Business Insider it would "be hard to find a better team" for the task. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Mitiga, the Israeli cybersecurity firm, just raised $7 million in a seed funding round backed by ClearSky Ventures and Glilot Capital Partners. 

Cybersecurity has become a pressing issue for businesses during the pandemic, with firms having to rapidly adapt to the bulk of office-workers working from home and accessing company systems outside secure networks.

In 2019, the global cybersecurity market was valued at $112 billion, according to Fortune Business Insights, and is predicted more than double to $282 billion by 2027. 

Mitiga uses a continuous "expedition rover" to discover and build out a map of investigative paths within a company's network, so when an incident happens, all the preliminary investigative work is done automatically, reducing the time it takes to respond to an incident.

The company is the brainchild of Ariel Parnes, chief engineering officer and previously a senior officer in the IDF, Ofer Maor, CTO and serial entrepreneur, and CEO Tal Mozes, a former partner at professional services firm EY. 

"You would be hard-pressed to find a better team with this type of experience to reinvent incident response," said Arik Kleinstein, managing partners at Glilot Capital.

"With the accelerated trend of cloud infrastructure adoption in the market, the attack surface for enterprise companies is on the rise.

"In the current age of enterprise security, it's a must to have clear visibility into the incident response before any breaches happen," added Hiro Rio Maeda, MD at DNX Ventures.

"We are thrilled to partner with phenomenal founders like Tal, Ariel, and Ofer to tackle this issue."

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• Smartwatch maker Garmin's website, app, and call centers are down after it was reportedly the victim of a ransomware attack.
• Garmin confirmed the outage but did not say anything about its cause, including whether it was the result of a ransomware attack.
• ZDNet reported that the company shut down these services to deal with a ransomware attack, saying that it could be a strain of ransomware known as WastedLocker.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Smartwatch maker Garmin's website, Connect app, and call centers are down as the company is said to be grappling with the aftermath of a ransomware attack.

Garmin confirmed the outage on its website, but has not shared any information on the cause. ZDNet reported on Thursday evening that the company had shut down these services to deal with a ransomware attack, but the company has not confirmed this.

"We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin.com and Garmin Connect," the company said in a statement on its website. "This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for this inconvenience."

Business Insider has contacted Garmin with questions about whether a ransomware attack was tied to the shutdown, and whether any customer or employee data was compromised if so. We will update this story accordingly when we hear back.

In addition to impacting the company's consumer fitness products, the outage is also said to have affected the service that supports Garmin's line of aviation equipment, according to ZDNet, which cited conversations with pilots that use the software. Garmin has not yet responded to Business Insider's question about which Garmin products have been affected by the outage.

Garmin Connect is the companion app to the company's wearable devices for tracking workouts, participating in fitness challenges with friends, and managing health data. At the time of writing, services provided through Garmin Connect were still down, according to the company's status website.

Some Garmin users mentioned the outage on social media, expressing some frustration about the service being down.

It's unclear who was behind the reported ransomware attack, but it could be a strain of ransomware known as WastedLocker, according to ZDNet, which cited online posts from Garmin employees.

Attacks made using the WastedLocker ransomware are usually targeted at organizations, according to a blog post from cybersecurity software company Malwarebytes. 

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Bluetooth speakers come in all shapes, sizes, and price ranges.
• The Sonos Move is our top pick because it has excellent sound quality, offers voice control, and you can move it around your home.
• In this guide, we also have several picks that are more portable and lightweight than the Move for those of you who want to bring your speaker everywhere.
• For more speaker recommendations, be sure to check out our roundup of the best speaker deals.

A great listening experience for all your favorite music services shouldn't be limited to one spot in your home, and while the days of carrying around a boom box on your shoulder are by and large over, you can still get a great on-the-go music playing device for you and your friends in the form of a Bluetooth speaker.

Whether you're getting a speaker for use around the house or a day at the park, there's almost certainly a great Bluetooth speaker for you. But there are a number of things to consider before you buy.

• Size matters: You'll want to think about how big you want the speaker to be. Now, speaking very generally, larger speakers will be louder, and while you can often get quite a racket out of a smaller speaker, for larger parties and gatherings, a larger speaker may be a little more appropriate. Of course, size also affects portability. If you're looking for something you can slip in your bag and carry around easily, then a smaller speaker may be a better choice for you.
• Battery life: You'll obviously want a longer battery life if you're looking for a speaker that can last all day, but sometimes a speaker with a shorter battery lifespan will do the job — especially if you plan on being able to charge the speaker often or even while in use.
• Durability and water resistance: Durability is another important factor if you plan on carrying the speaker around a lot. Not only will your speaker last longer if it's more durable, but it might be a little more versatile, too. For example, you probably won't want to take a non-waterproof speaker to the pool or the beach.
• Sound quality: Some may not care too much about how a Bluetooth speaker sounds, but others will want to ensure that they're getting the best audio performance they can for their money.

We have a pick for everyone in our buying guide whether you're an audiophile who's ready to spend the big bucks, a college kid on a budget, or someone whose needs fall in between the two ends of the spectrum.

Here are the best Bluetooth speakers:

• Best Bluetooth speaker overall: Sonos Move
• Best portable Bluetooth speaker: Bose SoundLink Revolve+
• Best waterproof Bluetooth speaker: UE Boom 3
• Best cheap Bluetooth speaker: Anker Soundcore Flare Mini
• Best small Bluetooth speaker: Bang & Olufsen Beoplay P2
• Best Alexa smart speaker with Bluetooth: Amazon Echo (3rd Gen)

Prices and links are current as of 07/24/2020. Added links to our full reviews of the UE Boom 3 and the Amazon Echo. Added details about the Bose Portable Home speaker and how it compares to the Bose Soundlink Revolve+. We downgraded the JBL Flip 4 and explained why. Updated by Steven Cohen. 

The best Bluetooth speaker overall

The Sonos Move looks good, sounds great, and offers multi-room audio as well as voice control with Alexa and the Google Assistant.

Sonos has long been a leader in the wireless speaker market, and the company has finally launched a Bluetooth speaker. The Sonos Move is easily the best Bluetooth speaker out there, thanks to its excellent design, awesome sound quality, and smart features.

There are plenty of things to love about the Sonos Move, but perhaps the best thing about it is its audio quality. The speaker offers a ton of bass, coupled with plenty of clarity and detail in the high end. That makes it excellent for listening to music. The speaker can even be calibrated using Sonos' Trueplay tuning technology, though you'll want to tune it for different environments when you move the speaker around.

Speaking of moving the speaker, that's another thing that's great about the Sonos Move. The speaker has a base station where you can keep it most of the time, but it's designed to be portable too, so you can take it outside when you have a BBQ or move it around the house as you need. It is a bit heavy, so you won't be carrying it around on all your excursions, but it's nice to have the option.

Like other Sonos speakers, the Sonos Move is smart too. You can choose to use either the Google Assistant or Amazon's Alexa, plus it integrates perfectly with Sonos' other speakers, allowing for multi-room audio. The speaker has a battery life of around 10 hours so it should easily get you through a day of listening when it's not being charged on its dock.

But what about the downsides? This speaker is a little pricey, and you won't get access to all of the smart features when you're using it with Bluetooth. Still, despite those downsides, it's gotten excellent reviews from many experts. TechRadar gave the speaker an impressive 4.5/5, while CNET gave it a still impressive 4/5.

Pros: Classy design, smart features, integrates with other Sonos speakers, excellent audio quality

Cons: A little expensive, a bit heavy

The best portable Bluetooth speaker

The Bose SoundLink Revolve+ looks great, it's easy-to-use, it offers 16 hours of battery, and it sounds good, too.

There are dozens of Bluetooth speakers out there, but the best speaker you can buy for moving around the house or backyard is the Bose SoundLink Revolve+. There are a number of things that make this speaker such a nice option for most people, from its great sound to its nice design.

Let's start with the design of the speaker, which is really quite good. It's reminiscent of new smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or Google Home, so it'll look right at home in any tech-savvy person's house. On top of that, it offers extremely easy-to-use controls, with six buttons located on the top of the speaker for things like volume control and Bluetooth control. Bose also added a handle to make it easy to bring the speaker with you outside or from room to room.

We tested it out and we were impressed by the SoundLink Revolve+'s great sound quality and how easy it is to move from room to room. It blended right in with our decor, too.

The speaker even has some smart features, including Bluetooth pairing with voice prompts, the ability to take calls, and access to Siri or Google Assistant from your phone. If you buy two speakers, you can sync them up together for party mode, too. 

The speaker will give you 16 hours of play time, so it should get you through the day very easily — especially if you're good at keeping devices charged up. The 16-hour lifespan makes it good for holiday parties and when you're at the beach. You won't have to worry too much about the speaker getting damaged, either, thanks to its water-resistant design. The speaker can handle splashes and other interactions with water, though we wouldn't recommend actually taking it in the water with you.

So what about audio quality? Generally, it's good enough for most people's needs. As any audiophile will tell you, don't expect any Bluetooth speaker to beat a good wired speaker. Still, it does offer generally louder volume than other wireless speakers and is able to offer deep and clean bass easily without distorting.

Other reviewers largely agree that this is a great speaker, too. CNET gave it 4/5 stars in its review. That's not to say, of course, that it doesn't have its downsides. The main downside is the fact that it's a little pricey.

Buyers should also be aware that Bose now has a newer Bluetooth speaker, the Bose Portable Home Speaker. This model features a very similar design but adds Wi-Fi connectivity and integrated support for Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. With that said, the Bose Portable Home speaker usually carries a higher price tag than the Soundlink Revolve+ and it offers shorter battery life. 

Pros: Good sound, nice design, easy to use, long battery life

Cons: Expensive

The best waterproof Bluetooth speaker

The UE Boom 3 is well designed and sounds pretty good, but it's also water resistant, making it great for use by the pool or at the beach.

Looking for something that you can take to the beach or use by the pool without fear of it breaking due to water damage? The UE Boom 3 is the way to go. This speaker is well designed and sounds great, but perhaps the best thing about it is that it's water resistant.

The speaker may not sound as robust as the Sonos Move, but it still sounds pretty great, especially considering how small it is. The speaker offers a decent bass response, along with a well-tuned mid range, and a decent amount of clarity in the high frequencies. One of the best things about it is that it can also get super loud, which is great for use outside.

The speaker is also pretty well designed. It's relatively small and portable, and it's available in a range of different colors. On the side, you'll get buttons for controlling volume, while on the top there are controls for things like Bluetooth pairing and power. Safe to say, the UE Boom 3 is super easy to use.

The UE Boom 3 is built for use near water. The speaker is not only waterproof, but it's also designed to float, so you won't have to worry about losing it at the bottom of the pool. The Boom 3 is capable of being submerged in up to 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes, so it shouldn't break due to water damage.

Like anything, the UE Boom 3 isn't perfect. While the audio sounds pretty good, audiophiles may want something with a little more detail in the high end. The battery life is also around the same as the previous generation speaker, though it's not that bad, coming in at 15 hours. Despite those downsides, it has gotten some excellent reviews. TechRadar and Trusted Reviews both scored the speaker 4/5, which is pretty impressive.

Pros: Good sound quality, nice design, water resistance 

Cons: High frequencies aren't as detailed as other speakers

• Read our UE Boom 3 review here

The best cheap Bluetooth speaker

The Anker Soundcore Flare Mini may cost less than any other model on this list, but it still looks and sounds pretty good.

Looking for an inexpensive speaker that still looks and sounds pretty good? The Anker Soundcore Flare Mini may well be the way to go. This speaker may carry a budget price, but it still sounds decent and won't break the bank.

The speaker is designed to look a lot better than other speakers in its price range. It's a cylindrical design with a fabric covering around the side and controls on the top. Those controls include power, volume, and Bluetooth pairing. There are even LED lights on the bottom, and you can control those lights through five different lighting modes.

The design of the speaker plays into how it sounds too. The speaker can deliver 360-degree audio, so no matter where you are around it, it should sound pretty good. It definitely won't sound quite as powerful as some of the more expensive speakers in this price range, but it can still get pretty loud and offers a decent amount of bass.

You'll get 12 hours of battery life out of the speaker, which isn't bad at all, and it's water-resistant with an IPX7 water-resistance rating. 

Considering the price range, perhaps the only real downside to the speaker is that it can't really match more expensive offerings in the audio department.

Pros: Well-designed, very inexpensive, water-resistant, good battery life

Cons: Sound quality is only fine

The best small Bluetooth speaker

The B&O Beoplay P2 doesn't just sound good and feature a slick design, it's ultra-portable, too.

The Bose and UE speakers are really nice, but they probably won't fit into your bag all that easily. Thankfully, there are plenty of speakers out there that will, like the B&O Beoplay P2.

Now, generally speaking, smaller Bluetooth speakers can be a little hit and miss, but the BeoPlay P2 is a hit. That's largely thanks to its sleek and stylish design, coupled with hidden and intuitive controls. For example, you can double tap the speaker grill to play and pause your music, or you can program the speaker through the accompanying app to activate your digital assistant of choice, whether it be Google Assistant or Siri. That happens through your phone because the speaker doesn't have those assistants built-in.

So how does the speaker sound? You can't expect studio-quality sound, but it's not bad. The speaker features mono audio and an impressive bass response for a speaker of its size. The high-end isn't as responsive, though it's still not bad.

So what do reviewers think? Well, TechRadar gave the speaker 4.5/5 stars, while PCMag gave it 4/5.

Pros: Great sound, very portable, intuitive touch-controls

Cons: A little pricey for its size, could use more high-end clarity

The best Bluetooth speaker with Alexa

The Amazon Echo is well-designed, sounds good, and has Amazon's super-smart Alexa digital assistant built right into it.

The original Amazon Echo paved the way for smart speakers, and now on its third generation, the Echo is still the best Bluetooth-enabled smart speaker out there. 

The Echo has gone through a few design tweaks since it first came out, and the current iteration looks pretty classy. It's a cylindrical design, with a fabric covering around the sides, a light ring at the top, and controls for those like volume and muting the microphone. It's available in a few different colors too, including Charcoal, Sandstone, Heather Gray, and Twilight Blue.

Of course, perhaps the best thing about the Amazon Echo is the fact that it has Alexa built right into it. In other words, using the speaker, you can control smart home devices, find out information from the web, play music, and more using only your voice. Alexa is already pretty smart, but Amazon routinely makes it smarter too. 

The 3rd-generation Echo has achieved some pretty stellar reviews too. In fact, we called it "the best smart speaker for its price" in our full review.

Pros: Inexpensive, well-designed, sounds good, Alexa built-in

Cons: Still doesn't sound as good as Sonos speakers

• Read our Amazon Echo review here

What else we considered

JBL Flip 4:The JBL Flip 4 speaker was recently one of our picks, and it's still a fantastic Bluetooth speaker for the money. With that said, the less expensive Soundcore Flare Mini includes similar features for a more affordable price, making that model a better overall budget pick. If you're willing to spend a little more, however, the JBL Flip 4 features a bit more power and better sound quality.

Boasting a great design, nice sound, and waterproofing, the JBL Flip 4 remains a great choice for those that want a speaker they can take on the road with them. Let's start with the design, which is very nicely done. The speaker is available in a range of different colors, including black, red, gray, white, and even camo. On the outside, you'll find volume controls, along with playback controls, and a Bluetooth switch.

The speaker can connect to up to two different devices at a time, so you don't have to go through pairing the speaker again every time you want to switch devices. Battery life is rated for up to 12 hours, which is very good for this price. 

Of course, the best thing about the speaker is that it sounds great. There's a powerful bass response, and while the upper-mids aren't the most well-tuned, the high-end brings back some of that clarity that helps make music sound so great.

The JBL Flip 4 has been pretty well-reviewed, too. It received a score of 4/5 on Digital Trends.

Pros: Portable, lots of colors, inexpensive, easy to use

Cons: High-mids aren't super well-tuned

Check out our other great speaker buying guides

The best speakers

Speakers come in all shapes and sizes for many different needs. Floorstanding and bookshelf speakers offer the best movie and music performance. Bluetooth speakers are better suited for buyers who want a compact speaker with wireless playback and portability. If you're looking for a digital assistant, then a smart speaker is the way to go. With all those options in mind, we've selected the best speakers you can buy.

The best smart speakers

Smart speakers include integrated digital assistants with support for voice commands, allowing you to ask questions, control compatible smart home devices, and more. The two most popular smart speaker assistants are Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. There are many different smart speaker models to choose from, and certain models are better suited for specific needs and budgets. Here are the best smart speakers you can buy.

The best soundbars

Soundbars offer a nice upgrade over built-in speakers used on most TVs, while still saving you some space and money compared to a full home theater speaker setup. Some soundbar models include wireless subwoofers, and more expensive packages even feature rear satellite speakers for true surround sound. Through research and testing, we've picked the best soundbars you can buy.

• Tesla's second major US car plant will be in Austin, Texas, the company announced this week.
• President Trump took credit for the move in an interview with Fox News on Thursday night. "I said, 'Elon build a factory in Texas.' He just announced today they're building one of the biggest plants in the world."
• Plans for Tesla's second major car production facility in the US have been in the works for some time, and ultimately Tesla chose Texas over Oklahoma. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On an investor call Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Tesla's second major car production facility in the US would be built in Austin, Texas.

On Thursday night, President Trump took credit for the move in a Fox News interview.

"I was with Elon Musk," Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity. "I said, 'Elon, build a factory in Texas.' He just announced today they're building one of the biggest plants in the world — auto plants for Tesla. And it is going to be in Texas."

Trump said as much while discussing his longstanding goal to increase US manufacturing.

"We're gonna make things here. We're gonna make them here," Trump said. "Right now, China and many other countries are doing what we're supposed to be doing. They became globalists. These great geniuses became globalists, and they really hurt our country. We're gonna start making it here."

And Trump cited Tesla's newly-announced Texas plant as an example of a success in that regard.

"He [Elon Musk] called me up just a little while ago to say, 'I got it done.'" Trump said. "So, meaning he got it done, but I was pushing that job very hard for Elon because we work with him and we do a lot for him. And I said, 'It's time,' and he was great, he's doing a good job."

Trump doubled down on statements from the interview using Twitter on Friday morning. "Great job by @elonmusk in agreeing to build, in TEXAS, what is expected to be the largest auto plant anywhere in the world," Trump said. "He kept his word to me. Texas & @Tesla are big winners. MADE IN THE USA!"

Other than Texas, Tesla considered Oklahoma as the location for its new $1 billion factory. Ultimately, Texas won out with an offer that included over $65 million in tax rebates over 10 years. The new factory, Tesla says, will hire 5,000 new employees.

Got a tip? Contact Business Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email (bgilbert@businessinsider.com), or Twitter DM (@realbengilbert). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.

SEE ALSO: It's official — Tesla picks Austin, Texas, as the location for its new $1 billion Cybertruck factory

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• Intel reported quarterly earnings on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations for revenue and earnings per share.
• But the company also said the release of its next-generation chips would be delayed by six months.
• Shares of the company fell as much as 18% Friday. 
• The company also gave a weaker-than-expected third quarter guidance. 
• Watch Intel trade live on Markets Insider. 
• Read more on Business Insider. 

Shares of Intel plunged as much as 18% Friday to $49.50 per share after the company said that the release of its next-generation chips would be delayed by six months.

The announcement came during Intel's second-quarter earnings results, released Thursday. The company reported  earnings per share and revenue that beat Wall Street's expectations. 

"We are seeing an approximate six-month shift in our 7nm-based CPU product timing relative to prior expectations," Intel CEO Bob Swan said in a statement. "The primary driver is the yield of our 7nm process, which based on recent data, is now trending approximately twelve months behind our internal target. " 

He continued: "We have identified a defect mode in our 7nm process that resulted in yield degradation. We've root-caused the issue and believe there are no fundamental roadblocks, but we have also invested in contingency plans to hedge against further schedule uncertainty." 

Read more:Jason Tauber is crushing the market this year by finding the tech companies enabling the biggest disruptions. He told us how he's adjusting his game plan as valuations soar — and 7 of his top picks today.

Intel had previously said that its 7-nanometer chips would launch in 2021.

In addition to the delay in releasing the 7-nanometer chips, Intel offered a weaker-than-expected guidance for its third quarter earnings results. The company foresees adjusted earnings per share of $1.10 on $18.2 billion in revenue, where analysts had expected slightly higher EPS. 

Shares of rival chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices climbed as much as 12% Friday on the news. 

Intel had risen 1% year-to-date through Thursday's close.

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• Poshmark is an online marketplace where users can sell and buy used items. Some sellers have even turned it into a six-figure business for themselves.
• Business Insider spoke with two sellers in their early 20s who use Poshmark as their main source of income. One has done over $80,000 in sales and another said she paid for a full year of college tuition with her Poshmark earnings.
• The sellers, Jack Ermisch and Kaitlin Kao, are also building content creator careers and using Instagram and TikTok to drive customers to their Poshmark Closets.
• Subscribe to Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Influencer Dashboard.

Reselling has become a side hustle and even a full-time job for many, with some making six-figure incomes by reselling clothing and other items on ecommerce apps such as Poshmark, Depop, or Etsy.

And using social-media apps like Instagram to build an audience and get new customers is becoming a substantial part of some successful resale businesses.

The #Poshmark hashtag has over 2.8 million posts on Instagram and 37.2 million views on TikTok. Sellers are becoming content creators, turning to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to share videos and pictures documenting their careers, style, and tips on how to thrift or start your own resale business.

For young twenty-somethings like Jack Ermisch, 23, of flippedthrift and Kaitlin Kao, 20, of kaocloset, launching Instagram and TikTok accounts for their Poshmark Closets (the app's name for their digital storefronts) has bolstered their careers and driven sales, they said. 

Ermisch, a full-time Poshmark seller, quit his part-time job at Walgreens when he was in college after his Poshmark sales took off.

"It was ramping up my senior year of college, to the point where it was full-time income equal to what a lot of people would make at a quote-unquote normal job," he told Business Insider. After he graduated, he made the decision to pursue reselling full-time since his social platforms were growing.

Poshmark is free for any user to set up, but takes a 20% commission on sales of $15 or more and charges a flat rate of $2.95 for sales under $15. Buyers pay for the shipping.

Each week, Ermisch makes about $1,000 in sales (after the app's cut) and will spend between $150 and $250 on new inventory and supplies, he said. Some weeks he'll splurge, spending over $400 if he finds a lot of new items.

By going to thrift stores to build his inventory, Ermisch spends an average of $5 per item, but sometimes spends up to $30 or more on some finds.

With packaging, sourcing inventory, selling, and managing his social accounts and interacting with his followers, he works a full 40-hour week.

"It just doesn't feel like 40 hours a week because I enjoy it all so much," he added.

His Poshmark Closet is his main source of income and he has made $87,460 in sales (after the app's commission) since he started selling in 2018, according to a screenshot from Ermisch's Poshmark dashboard viewed by Business Insider. 

Instagram helps builds a brand and community 

Ermisch now has over 22,000 followers on Instagram and a growing audience on YouTube, where he has just over 5,200 subscribers.

His content on Instagram and YouTube consists of hauls from thrift stores, recent sales, and how both he and his boyfriend are making money using Poshmark and other resale platforms. In his Instagram bio, he links to his Poshmark Closet.

"It's given me a lot more returning customers," Ermisch said. "There are people that specifically buy from me and my boyfriend just because they like our videos and they like our pictures. They like talking with us on Instagram and it also adds that level of trust."

Trust, Ermisch said, is very important as a reseller since customers want to know that they are purchasing authentic and accurate items. These last few months, sharing how he's been cleaning and sanitizing his items has also been important to his customers, he said. 

Besides reselling, Ermisch makes money through brand partnerships, such as collaborating with the shipping company UpakNShip on a packaging design and giveaway on Instagram. B&G Trading, a wholesale clothing company, also partnered with him on YouTube for an unboxing video.

He also uses affiliate links and referral codes, which get him a cut of sales he drives for brands like List Perfectly (a service that cross lists items on eBay, Poshmark, Etsy, and other resale sites), B&G Trading, and The Real Real.

TikTok can drive sales if a creator goes viral

Kaitlin Kao started selling on Poshmark when she was 16 with her own clothes, then her sister's, her parents, and eventually buying thrifted pieces to resell. 

Kao is now a student at UCLA and said she had used her Poshmark earnings to pay a full year of her in-state tuition.

Over four years, Kao has made $24,354 in Poshmark sales after the app's commission, according to her Poshmark dashboard. She said she'd done several thousand more dollars in sales across other resale sites like Mercari and Depop.

She estimated that between all the different reselling sites and apps she has used, she has spent around $6,000 on inventory in total and made around $30,000 in profit after fees.

Kao spends about $250 to $350 per month buying new inventory (about 30 to 50 pieces) from thrift stores or bulk wholesale orders, she said. The prices she sets vary piece by piece. But for items she buys for $10 to $15, she'll usually sell these for $40 to $50, she said. 

As a full-time student, Kao took a step back from selling, but when she returned home this spring to quarantine, she started it back up again. Each week, she puts in about 20 hours of work into her business.

In March, she started a TikTok for her Poshmark closet and caught the attention of Poshmark. The company used her video as a TikTok ad that ended up having over 50 million views, Kao said. 

"The TikTok algorithm is crazy," she said, explaining how after joining TikTok and posting a video almost every day, her audience grew quickly to over 11,300 followers and her sales started picking up.

"Every other video gets lucky," she added, which floods her page with new followers and traffic to her Poshmark closet.

Besides resellers, TikTok has also been a lucrative selling platform for some artists, who previously told Business Insider they had driven thousands of dollars in sales by sharing videos of their artwork that is sold on Etsy, another ecommerce platform.

On TikTok, Kao uses hashtags like #SmallBusiness, #Thrift, and #Poshmark to gain views and use the algorithm to group her videos within a niche. Her most popular TikToks reach over 100,000 views.

TikToks about how to start a resale business, packaging up recent sales, and ones about thrift shopping or asking for donation suggestions in the comments have been her most successful videos, she said.

Kao has also worked closely with Poshmark in additional ways, such as becoming a Posh on Campus ambassador this spring. This allows her to be rewarded in Poshmark store credit when she recruits new users to Poshmark using a unique code. Most of these have come from TikTok, she said.

Read more about how influencers are using the resale industry to earn money:

• How artists are using TikTok to drive thousands of dollars in sales and find new customers: Artists are using TikTok's fast-growing audience to generate art commissions and sales on the ecommerce platform Etsy.
• Sneaker influencers are seeing unexpected wins as the coronavirus pummels the $2 billion resale market: Business Insider spoke to Michael Mitchell, also known as MikeTheCompass, a "shoetuber" who earns thousands of dollars a month on YouTube from posting videos about sneakers.
• How entrepreneurs use apps like Poshmark to turn side hustles selling clothes into full-time gigs earning 6 figures or more: With more than 200,000 followers, some sellers with large followings can become style influencers.

Join the conversation about this story »

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Nvidia has reportedly approached SoftBank to discuss acquiring UK-based Arm, in what would likely be the most expensive deal to date within the semiconductor industry, per Bloomberg. Though SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has touted Arm as "the center of the center" of his sprawling investment portfolio, the Japanese tech conglomerate faces pressure from activist investor Elliott Management to streamline its operations.

Besides discussing a deal with Nvidia, SoftBank reportedly reached out to Apple about a potential Arm acquisition, but the company wasn't interested. Arm could also pursue an initial public offering in 2021, which would garner an estimated $44 billion valuation, according to New Street Research cited by the Washington Post. SoftBank originally purchased Arm in 2016 for $31.4 billion.

Here are three key points to understand about this potential deal: 

• Nvidia and Arm have distinct business models. The key difference resides in where the companies operate within the value chain: Arm generates intellectual property (IP) through research, which it then sells to other companies to use, whereas Nvidia largely designs its own chips and sells them directly to consumers and enterprises. In recent years, Nvidia has capitalized on the proliferation of AI across cloud computing, autonomous vehicles, and industrial robotics to expand its target market. Just this month, Nvidia surpassed Intel to become the most valuable semiconductor provider. Arm, by contrast, licenses its semiconductor designs to companies including Nvidia, Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung. 
• Because of this difference in business models, it would be challenging for Nvidia to reap benefits from an acquisition without disturbing Arm's partner ecosystem. Nvidia would be able to work more closely with Arm following an acquisition and get a leg up on integrating the latest Arm IP in its proprietary chip designs. But this strategy risks damaging Arm's relationship with enterprise clients such as Apple, should they perceive Arm giving an unfair edge to Nvidia. This could also create issues in the other direction, whereby Nvidia would need to protect its proprietary IP from Arm, since Nvidia wouldn't want to indirectly license IP to competitors. A firewall between the two companies could be implemented to control the extent to which they collaborate, but that would limit the upside of the acquisition in the first place.
• If Nvidia decides to proceed with an acquisition attempt, it would likely be met with intense regulatory scrutiny. According to the Bloomberg report, SoftBank was seen as a relatively neutral buyer for Arm when it made the acquisition in 2016, which helped the deal pass regulatory scrutiny. Many of Nvidia's competitors license Arm architecture, and they may oppose the potential acquisition on these grounds.

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• The country's once obscure cold-storage property sector is beginning to garner attention from investors who see big demand for temperature-controlled spaces. 
• The coronavirus pandemic prompted millions of Americans to shop for groceries online, creating demand for a new category of cold warehouses close to population centers.
• Developers are building cold storage spaces on speculation, a leap of faith many have been wary to take in the past given the high costs of developing the projects. 
• To deal with the financial risks of building on spec, builders are adopting new design techniques that allow them flexibly reconfigure spaces based on the needs of users.   
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

What's hot but can dip as low as -20 degrees?

The country's cold-storage sector, long overlooked by real-estate investors, is getting fresh interest as the coronavirus pandemic has boosted online grocery shopping and millions of square feet of decades-old spaces reach the end of their useful life.

The Dallas-based industrial real-estate developer Hunt Southwest, finished a 300,000-square-foot cold storage warehouse it built on speculation in Fort Worth a little over a year ago and then recently leased to a large chilled-goods logistics tenant.

Another investor, Bridge Development Partners, headquartered in Chicago, announced late last year a $150 million partnership with PGIM Real Estate, the real estate investing arm of Prudential Financial, that will seek to build cold storage spaces nationally. The venture, which plans over $400 million of projects, recently broke ground on a new cold warehouse just outside of Miami that it is raising on spec.

Read More: Wall Street analysts say this earnings season could be a bloodbath for big real-estate firms like CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield, with a Great Recession-sized hit packed into just a few months.

In southern New Jersey just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, real-estate investor Scout Capital Partners purchased a 330,000 square foot warehouse last month that is under construction and that it says it will convert to cold storage. The company's chief executive, Vincent Signorello, told Business Insider that the firm has already leased a portion of the roughly $50 million project to a large food tenant.

Signorello said the company, which presently owns about 1 million square feet of cold-storage space, plans to dramatically grow its portfolio to 5 million square feet within the next 3 years.

"The cold storage industry is at a bit of a tipping point," Signorello said. "It's the shift to e-commerce and also the fact that the average age of the existing cold storage warehouse is 30 or more years."

Cold storage has long been dominated by specialized players

Cold storage has long occupied an obscure corner of the real-estate market dominated by specialized industry giants such as Americold and Lineage Logistics.

Read More: 20% of WeWork's New York space is sitting empty. Here's a look at key vacancies the city's biggest office tenant is trying to fill.

Increasingly, investors see an opportunity to crowd in as demand for new space picks up.

Matt Walaszek, an industrial and logistics research analyst at CBRE who has studied the cold-storage market, projected there could be the need for 100 million square feet of new space in the next 5 years, a roughly 50% increase over the present inventory of about 220 million square feet across the country.

A report by Savills said the cold storage sector, presently valued at $98.11 billion globally, will expand 12.1% annually through 2025. The report pointed out that shares in 10 of the largest third-party logistics providers with cold-storage spaces in their portfolios outperformed peers without cold space by 12.1% from the end of 2019 to April 15 of this year.

Interest in cold storage spaces from both tenants and investors could be accelerated by the pandemic, which prompted millions of Americans to try online grocery shopping during recent lockdowns and supply shortages at local food stores.

Just as e-commerce touched off interest in warehouse spaces across the country, a shift to online food ordering, along with healthier eating habits that prioritize fresh produce and meats, could create the need for new cold warehouses, especially those close to or within major metropolitan centers.

"It's all about access to the consumer and servicing that last mile," said Tony Pricco, president of Bridge Development Partners, which is building the Miami project and is considering further development in places such as New Jersey, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago.

Pricco noted that many online grocery services were overwhelmed by recent demand during the pandemic and are now eager to build out a better logistics network, including more cold storage sites.

"We have had inquires from Amazon recently where they have told us 'if you have any available freezer spaces, we want to know about them,'" Pricco said.

Read More: Co-living is the real-estate industry's big bet on dorm-like housing for young professionals. Here's why players like Nuveen and Cushman & Wakefield remain bullish even during the pandemic.

A look inside cold-storage spaces

Chilled by industrial-sized refrigeration units, encased with heavy insulation, and outfitted with other special features, such as temperature regulated floors that resist cracking from the extreme temperatures, cold-storage buildings cost about three times more to build than a conventional warehouse.

Those hefty expenses, along with what are often very specific user requirements, have made developers wary in the past to undertake cold-storage projects without a tenant in hand first.

"For value-add real estate funds there's still money sitting there and they're looking to invest in it, but they're unsure of the returns," said Adam Petrillo, who heads Savills' industrial services group, speaking about the hesitation among some real-estate investors to undertake spec cold-storage projects. 

That too is changing as the benefits of new space have become increasingly glaring. New cooling technology is more efficient and newly built spaces often feature soaring ceilings of up to 50 feet that allow for modern vertical storage systems that maximize efficiency. 

"The third-party logistics companies that lease a lot of cold storage spaces are looking at how many pallets of goods they can stack and store," Pricco said. "These news spaces can get you so many more pallets per square foot."

Some design experts have begun to devise ways to build spec spaces that can then be flexibly customized depending on the needs of the user. Jay Todisco, president of the Irvine-based architecture firm Ware Malcomb, has recently focused part of his practice on cold storage design to address this need for modification.

Todisco said he designs spaces modularly, using a network of smaller cooling units rather than a large central refrigeration plant so that developers can select which spaces within a warehouse will be cooled and to what degree.

Fresh produce and flowers need cool temperatures that remain above freezing, while other products such as ice cream and meat need a deeper chill to stay fresh. Temperatures in the warehouses can range from the 50s down to an arctic-like minus 20 degrees.

Todisco said he is talks right now to design projects for four builders.

"The demand for cold storage is exploding," Todisco said. "The barrier was the costs of building, but we're figuring out a way around that."

Have a tip? Contact Daniel Geiger at dgeiger@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 352-2884, or Twitter DM at @dangeiger79. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: A surge in grocery deliveries is creating a huge opportunity for industrial real-estate developers. Here's how the coronavirus is transforming retail and warehousing.

SEE ALSO: Amazon just signed its largest-ever warehouse lease in NYC. Here's how it's been making deals left and right to grow its massive storage and distribution network.

SEE ALSO: Warehouse properties are suddenly red-hot, with Amazon snapping up space while ailing companies sell. Here's a look at key deals and market forecasts that lay out a huge opportunity for industrial real-estate.

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NOW WATCH: July 15 is Tax Day — here's what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

• A new ad fraud scheme called Hydra is stealing millions from advertisers by impersonating app traffic, fraud watchers said.
• The operation was detected a year ago by Israeli company Protected Media, which recently brought it to the US ad industry's attention.
• "Operation Slay Hydra" is underway to stop it, but experts say Hydra is more sophisticated than other ad fraud operations they've seen to date.
• They say it points to the need for more apps to adopt fraud protection measures and for advertising companies to share information more widely.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A new ad fraud scheme dubbed Hydra has been creating fake app traffic that's going unseen by humans, and it's estimated to have cost advertisers more than $100 million.

The operation was noticed a year ago by Asaf Greiner, CEO of Protected Media, an Israeli-based network security firm. He said Hydra, as he called it, is more sophisticated than ad fraud operations of the past in that it mimics mobile phones to create fake traffic. It evades detection by selling small amounts of traffic through various ad networks and adjusting its tactics based on where ad dollars are going.

Greiner, whose firm has been tracking Hydra ever since, estimates that the scheme produces 100 million ad impressions a day in the US across some 8,000 lesser-known gaming and other leisure apps. 

It's hard to get industry agreement on the damage, but he estimates that Hydra has cost advertisers to the tune of $130 million, based on its monitoring of ads that are actually being served but not seen by humans.

"It's the most disciplined operation I've ever seen," he said.

"Operation Slay Hydra" is underway

Greiner brought his findings to the attention of Google and other companies and the Trustworthy Accountability Group, an industry body that fights fraud, malware, piracy, and a lack of transparency in digital advertising.

TAG was created by the IAB and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A's) and Association for National Advertisers (ANA). Its leadership council consists of ad platforms, agencies, and advertisers including Facebook, Google, GroupM, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, and NBCUniversal. 

Google said its Ad Traffic Quality team confirmed the attack and was able to wipe out the fake traffic in its ad systems by June; the company believes it lost a minimal amount of advertising from the fraud operation.

Meanwhile, TAG launched "Operation Slay Hydra" to share information about Hydra with digital ad sellers so they can protect themselves and share information about how Hydra is evolving.

Whether or not Hydra is bigger than other recent ad fraud schemes in terms of the dollar impact, those involved agree Hydra stands out in its sophistication.

"Hydra is a really accurate name because the impressions are being sold through many networks and being diluted — there are a lot of heads to slay," said Rachel Nyswander Thomas, COO of TAG. "What's newer is the degree to which it's focusing on in-app inventory and that it's hiding itself in newer ways."

Ad fraud has been around since there was money to be made in online advertising. But a 2019 report by the ANA and fraud detector White Ops said fraud was on the decline thanks to companies (like White Ops) and law enforcement that have made it less attractive. They estimated advertisers lost $5.8 billion to fraud that year, down 11% from 2017.

The existence of Hydra may seem like the industry's going in the wrong direction, despite tech giants like Google investing heavily in detecting and preventing invalid traffic and the formation of TAG.

But experts point out that ad fraud is always getting more sophisticated. The ANA and White Ops's own report warned that fraud was moving to new areas like mobile app and connected TV advertising.

Ad industry still has to catch up in combatting fraud

Greiner also believes ad fraud has also stayed profitable because across the supply chain, its victims just aren't incentivized enough to do so.

"Advertising platforms are ashamed of being victimized and they're threatened by it," Greiner said. "They could get into a situation where an advertiser asks them to pay them back. Most CMOs need to think about their next job. It doesn't look good on anyone's resume."

The industry is still getting used to sharing information on ad fraud (TAG is only 5 years old), and many of the apps being spoofed by Hydra weren't using the industry's ads.txt fraud protection program.

"We commend Protected Media for sharing information on the Hydra ad fraud scheme and collaborating with the broader industry, which is key to minimizing impact," said a spokesperson for Google. "The most important takeaway from this case is the need for all mobile app developers to implement app-ads.txt files to mitigate app spoofing risks."

TAG also is trying to create permanent sharing groups to get advertising companies more comfortable trading information to help such attacks from spreading, Thomas said.

"It's going to take time to build a culture of threat-sharing," she said. "We are brand new to this as an industry. But people are starting to have a great awareness that it's not just about playing whack-a-mole yourself."

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• Two of the largest career sites in the US have teamed up to get more jobs in front of Americans desperate for work, at a time when about half the country is unemployed.
• The new partnership, between Glassdoor and Indeed, will allow employers to cross-promote their brands and their available job listings on both sites. 
• Employers using Indeed's job advertising tools will now also be able to reach job seekers on Glassdoor, the latter said in a statement. 
• The job sites are also offering a "select branding bundle" that will allow employers to promote themselves on both websites.
• Glassdoor was acquired by Recruit Holdings, Indeed's parent company, in 2018, but the two have continued to operate separately.
• Glassdoor and Indeed said in a statement that the collaboration will help them reach about 80% of online job seekers.
• The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reports that just 52.8% of the population that can work actually has a job right now.
• About 58% of online job seekers use job sites to search for open positions, according to data from online résumé builder Zety. The majority (77%) search directly on company websites.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SEE ALSO: How PwC is using VR to shake up bias trainings and get employees to think about their hidden prejudices

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NOW WATCH: Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak

• The pandemic has not been kind to Airbnb. In May, the company laid off 25% of its global staff to keep business afloat.
• In a July 22 webcast with Reuters, CEO Brian Chesky said that despite setbacks, rentals outside of cities, particularly unique stays like treehouses and Airstreams, are "booming."
• Chesky attributed the recent surge in bookings to people wanting to get out of their houses and reconnect in a safe way.
• He says he's hopeful for a "new golden age" post-pandemic, predicting the industry will move away from mass tourism.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Airbnb has had a trying past few months.

In May, CEO Brian Chesky predicted that Airbnb's yearly revenue will be half that of 2019 due to the pandemic's impact on travel. The homesharing company also laid off 25% of its global staff.

Despite having to make difficult decisions, Chesky told Reuters' Global Editor Rob Cox and Columnist Gina Chon in a July 22 webcast that he is "optimistic" about recent numbers. Earlier in July, Airbnb saw one million room nights booked in a single day for the first time since March. Chesky attributed this uptick in bookings people wanting to get out of their houses.

"I think what this is starting to tell us is that people want to connect, but they want to do so safely," he said.

Travelers are heading to suburbs and rural areas

Two thirds of those one million bookings were located outside of cities, and 50% were located within 300 miles from guests' homes, according to an Airbnb news release. 

In lieu of touring major global cities and tourist attractions in double-decker buses, travelers are now heading to small towns where they can enjoy socially distanced activities, Chesky said.

"Paris" is out, and "Petaluma and Pittsburgh" are in, he told Reuters.

The pandemic has accelerated a new era of unique stays and 'private' travel

In particular, Airbnb's unique stays like treehouses and Airstreams are "booming," according to Chesky.

Not only are people booking rentals outside of cities, but they're also looking for "something more private, intimate, smaller, unique, special — something that could be a destination in and of itself," he said.

"Unlike a hotel where you're in a public space, Airbnb is a little more private," Chesky added. "So I think people feel like maybe for the first time in a long time, Airbnb is not the riskier option."

In June, Airbnb rolled out new cleaning protocols for hosts to assuage traveler and host concerns about COVID-19 safety while traveling. Guests can now look for an "Enhanced Clean" certification on listings to see whether a host has committed to following the new protocols, such as wearing head-to-toe personal protective equipment while disinfecting rooms.

Though no one knows when travel will fully recover, Chesky is hopeful that the industry is heading into "a new golden age of travel."

That future, he thinks, does not include double-decker buses filled with camera-toting tourists. "Travel will not be massive, but small and intimate," Chesky predicted.

SEE ALSO: Airbnb reveals the 10 most popular destinations in the US right now — here's where they are and where to stay in each

NOW READ: Airbnb announced vigorous new cleaning protocols for hosts in response to COVID-19. Here's how to know if the listing you're considering is participating — or not.

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• Fintech challenger bank Monzo announced that its losses ballooned to £115.4 million ($151 million) in 2019 — twice that of 2018. 
• That is despite revenues at the London-based startup doubling to £90 million ($118 million) in 2019.
• Monzo said the ongoing uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic was a major threat to its future, but that it could raise more cash if needed. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. 

Fintech challenger bank Monzo announced Thursday that its revenues had doubled to £90 million ($118 million) in 2019 — but its losses ballooned to £115.4 million ($151 million), twice that of 2018.

The London-based startup attributed the losses to increased marketing spend, hiring, and more technology.

The results in its annual report cover the year to February, and do not account for Monzo's troubles during the coronavirus pandemic. It has laid off up to 80 staff and signed a new $76 million funding round from investors at a 40% valuation drop in recent months. 

"The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic poses a significant risk to the UK and global economy, and this year will be a challenging time for many businesses, including Monzo," Monzo cofounder and president Tom Blomfield said in the report. "With this unexpected change in landscape, we've seen organic customer growth slow as word-of-mouth drops, and we'll see reductions in revenues and higher credit losses."

The pandemic was a threat to Monzo's very existence, the company admitted. But Alwyn Jones, CFO, said Monzo had already raised cash during the pandemic, and could do so again if needed. 

Investors remain bullish: One London-based VC said the revenue growth of the 12 months to February, and increased internal discipline brought on by COVID-19, will serve the business well.

The startup bank, founded in 2015, has more than 4 million customers with current accounts — it also provides saving pots, access to loans, and other financial services. It has more than 36,000 business banking clients.

Over 2019, it added 2.3 million new customers and deposits grew to more than £1 billion ($1.31 billion). Its lending business grew to £143.9 ($189 million) in 2019, from just £19 million ($25 million) in 2018. It recently relaunched paid accounts in an attempt to diversify its revenue and push towards profitability.

It has relied on the wild popularity of its "hot coral" debit cards and easy-to-use app to win new customers, rather than conventional marketing.

Reshuffle of top jobs

Monzo kicked off the year by publicizing a prospective US launch, and the company has applied for a US banking license, a process which could take 12 to 18 months. Blomfield is stepping away from his current role as CEO to become president. And amid financial pressure during the pandemic, he has deferred his salary for a year.

Blomfield's old job has been taken up by TS Anil, the Visa veteran who joined Monzo as US CEO in February. 

Other executive changes include the departure of CTO Meri Williams, while former Deliveroo CTO and Blossom Capital VC Mike Hudack has joined as chief product officer. Sujata Bhatia, a former American Express executive in Europe, has been brought in as new COO. The start of the year also saw Monzo cofounder Paul Rippon leave the company to spend his time farming alpacas.

SEE ALSO: $1.6 billion challenger bank Monzo relaunches paid premium accounts with eye on profitability

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• The four big tech giants announced blockbuster earnings on Thursday, just a day after testifying before the Congress on anticompetitive behaviour.
• Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple added an additional $230 billion in market value.
• Analysts warn that while there may be tougher times ahead for these companies, their business is far from reaching its peak. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Four of the biggest tech companies in the world– Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook – announced stronger-than-expected second-quarter earnings on Thursday, defying worries about Wednesday's antitrust hearings and an ongoing pandemic. 

The strong results from the four companies, often categorized as "Big Tech," comes a day after their CEOs testified before Congress, defending the size of their companies

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook took part in an ongoing investigation by the House Judiciary's antitrust subcommittee that looked into whether the companies are using their position to control the market unfairly. 

It also comes when the world is in the midst of containing a pandemic, and the economic fallout is visible across all sectors and the economy at large. On Thursday, US gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate of 33% in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. It's the largest fall on record dating back to the 1940s. 

On Friday, the euro zone economy shrank at its fastest rate in history, losing 12.1% in the second-quarter. 

How big is Big Tech?

However, the pandemic seems to have helped Big Tech add another $230 billion of market value. With more people staying home during lockdown, there has been a surge in demand and usage.

On Wednesday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg implied at the historic antitrust hearing that every other company was beating the social media giant.

"The most popular messaging service in the US is iMessage," Zuckerberg said in his opening remarks, referring to Apple's texting service. "The fastest-growing app is TikTok. The most popular app for video is YouTube. The fastest growing ads platform is Amazon. The largest ads platform is Google. And for every dollar spent on advertising in the US, less than 10 cents is spent with us."

Yet on Thursday, Facebook's earnings jumped 11% year-on-year. It reported daily active users of nearly 1.8 billion, 12% higher than last year, and monthly active users of 2.7 billion, another 12% rise.

This contrast — a Big Tech CEO playing down their size one day and revealing impressive earnings the next — was replicated across Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet, Google's parent company. In Congress, these companies portrayed themselves as plucky success stories that faced fierce competition. Their balance sheets tell a different story.

Amazon reported record quarterly profit and a 40% bump in sales. In his opening remarks to Congress on Wednesday, Bezos had argued: "Every day, Amazon competes against large, established players like Target, Costco, Kroger, and, of course, Walmart—a company more than twice Amazon's size." This week, Bezos' net worth has increased to $181 billion thanks to the rise in Amazon's share price.

Apple reported Q3 revenues of $59.7 billion, more than $6 billion up on last year, and profits of $11.25 billion despite shuttering many of its stores.

Alphabet was the only one of the four to see revenue decline to $31.6 billion, down 2% year-on-year as advertising demand slowed, but it still beat Wall Street estimates.

Christopher Rossbach, CIO of J. Stern & Co., said in a research note that the antitrust hearings may mean some tough times ahead but these companies continue to grow. "Tougher times may lie ahead, and investors need to be aware that — as we have seen with the Congressional Hearing this week — politicians are growing increasingly concerned about the reach of these companies. But that doesn't mean the business has peaked, indeed far from it.

On Amazon, Rossbach said, "We expect that more people will use ecommerce in future as habits will form, while Amazon has many more areas of retail spend to expand into. For example, just this week, Amazon announced a new service for the UK grocery sector which has seen online food delivery almost double over the last four months during the pandemic. In the US, with its large and loyal Amazon Prime membership base, Amazon can capture even more share than the estimated 4% that they currently have in US retail spend — we expect it to double in the next decade," J.Stern & Co.'s Rossbach said. 

Meanwhile, Martin Garner, COO at CIS Insight said in a note that Facebook was insulated from the worst of the COVID-19 affects because smaller companies needed to move online quickly in order to reinvent themselves during the lockdown.

"Facebook saw healthy growth in user numbers, with those using any of the Facebook family of services in a month passing 3 billion for the first time during 2Q20. This extraordinary reach plus its strength in direct response advertising meant that Facebook saw less of a hit on its advertising business than others. These also helped increase the number of active advertisers on the platform to 9 million."

Apple has a similar story to tell. The iPhone maker beat analyst expectations with its stock price crossing $400 per share for the first time on Thursday. 

"COVID-19 has demonstrated that Apple is a more diversified and resilient business than many gave them credit for. The unique dynamics of the pandemic saw the usual growth dynamics reverse with Mac and iPad flying high whilst iPhone and Watch slowed. Meanwhile, services has become the recurring revenue stream that delivers with remarkable consistency," Geoff Blaber, Vice President Research at CCS Insight said in a note.

Market Performance

The stellar performance from the tech giants has pushed their stocks higher in pre-market. 

"The 'gang of four,' Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook all hit match-winning home runs with the release of their Q2 earnings in after-hours trading. Of the four, only Alphabet suffered a sales drop, and even that was less than expected. The other three showed impressive gains and blew forecasts out of the water," Jeffrey Halley, Senior Market Analyst for Asia Pacific at OANDA wrote in an email to clients on Thursday. 

Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid in his morning note, 'Early Morning Reid' said the four tech companies represent about 16% of the S&P 500 and over a third of the Nasdaq 100. 

"Apple (+6% after-market trading) reported quarterly revenues ahead of analysts' estimates as iPhone and laptop demand surged, causing revenues to come in 11% higher than a year earlier," he wrote.

"Facebook (+6% after-market trading) saw Q2 sales beat even the most bullish analyst's estimate, with revenues rising 11%. Amazon (+5% after-market trading) beat on profits even after increasing costs substantially through the pandemic. Q2 revenues were up 40% from the same quarter last year, which offset over $4bn in incremental covid-1 related costs. Lastly, Google's parent company, Alphabet, had falling revenues for the first time as companies lowered ad-spend during the pandemic."

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• The Twitter account of David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, has been permanently suspended..
• A Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider the suspension was for "for repeated violations of the Twitter Rules on hateful conduct," and was in line with recently updated policy on tweeting "harmful links."
• Asked about why Duke's account remained active earlier this month, a Twitter spokesperson said he is no longer a member of the KKK.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Twitter on Thursday permanently suspended the Twitter account of David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Duke's account has been active since 2009, according to an archived version on the Wayback Machine, and had more than 53,000 followers.

Activist account Sleeping Giants first spotted that Duke's account had been suspended.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the suspension to Business Insider, saying the account has been "permanently suspended for repeated violations of the Twitter Rules on hateful conduct. This enforcement action is in line with our recently-updated guidance on harmful links."

Twitter's "harmful links" policy means it can suspend accounts which tweet links to harmful content. Previously, this meant links that might infect a user with malware, or websites associated with terrorist groups. On Tuesday, July 28, it updated its harmful links policy to inlcude "hateful conduct and violence."

Duke's YouTube channel was also suspended in late June for violating the platform's policies on hate speech.

When asked about Duke's then-active account earlier this month, a Twitter spokesperson told Gizmodo that Duke was not currently a member of the KKK and "has distanced himself from the organization publicly."

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Duke began to distance himself from the KKK in the late 1970s, and in 1981 founded the "National Association for the Advancement of White People." The SPLC characterizes Duke as a "neo-Nazi" and an "international spokesman for Holocaust denial."

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