Pokémon Go, the game that uses augmented reality-ish technology to allow players to catch Pokémon through their smartphone cameras, became a giant hit over the weekend. When Nintendo's stock opened for trading on Monday morning, it shot up more than 20 percent. The game is popular largely because Pokémon is something everyone is familiar with, but the tech backstory begins with a skunkworks project that Google spun out as a company last year.
[Kurt Wagner | Recode]
Last week, Theranos' troubles reached a new height when regulators announced that founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes is now banned from the blood-testing industry for two years. Behind the scenes, Elizabeth Holmes has been telling employees a sunnier, more factually-challenged version of the Theranos situation, which is perhaps past the point of no return.
[John Carreyrou | The Wall Street Journal]
When the Japanese messaging startup Line goes public later this week, it will raise over $1 billion at around $33 a share. It's the biggest tech IPO of the year thus far, but a relative disappointment for a once-hot company that's been rapidly losing ground to Facebook and others.
[Yuji Nakamura, Takashi Amano and Pavel Alpeyev | Bloomberg]
On the new Recode Decode podcast, Kara Swisher talks with Jeffrey Seller, producer of the runaway Broadway hit musical "Hamilton." Seller goes deep on why he thinks the show is an example of how "analog" stuff can survive in a digital world, and how the show is attempting to deal with the gobs of money that scalpers are making from reselling tickets.
[Eric Johnson | Recode]
Ultimate Fighting Championship, which spent the past few months denying reports that it was selling itself, has sold itself. Talent agency WME plus a consortium of private equity groups are buying the sports league for $4 billion in a deal that shows the premium investors are placing on live events.
[Michael de la Merced | New York Times]
