Crowdfunding platform Property Partner, has closed a £15.9m round led by Octopus Ventures. The platform enables anyone to invest in residential property.
UK broadcaster Sky has made a strategic $45m investment in iFlix, an early-stage Southeast Asia company which seeks to rival the likes of Netflix.
In other news
Following the Apple versus FBI encryption debate, Robert Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, said he hoped tech companies and academic researchers would find a way to allow government investigators to access encrypted devices without creating back door access that undermined computer security. During his talk, Hannigan said he didn’t want to ban encryption, but called upon tech experts to “sit down and work out solutions”.
International news
In international news, the Chinese government has employed China Electronics Technology Group to develop preventive crime software. It will work alongside the country’s extensive surveillance network analysing people’s online presence, their financial transactions, employment and regular habits. They are also planning on creating an AI system that will be able to identiy individuals’ faces from security camera footage.
Download of the week
Our download of the week is Debut, the graduate jobs app. Students can now fast track the recruitment process for jobs at blue chip companies by playing mobile games. The UK startup is pioneering mobile gamification applied to recruitment for organisations including L’Oréal, Microsoft and EY.
And finally
And finally, you might soon encounter a robot at a hotel reception to check you in. Hilton Hotels and IBM Watson have partnered to create ‘Connie’, the world’s first artificially intelligent robot concierge. By using Watson’s processing power as the brains, the cute robot is able to listen to questions and reply in a similar language used by humans.