Twitter chair and ex-Google CFO Patrick Pichette just backed deep tech startup Apheris in a $3 million seed round

* Twitter chair Patrick Pichette just backed Berlin-based deep tech startup Apheris in a $3 million seed fundraising round. * Apheris helps private companies navigate the complexities of local data privacy laws, allowing them to extract insights from datasets through the use of AI technology. * A growing industry, the application of deep tech in privacy is predicted to be worth $50 billion globally by 2027, according to analysts at Meticulous Research. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Patrick Pichette, the chair of Twitter's board of directors and Google's ex-CFO, has backed deep tech startup Apheris in a $3 million seed funding round. Founded in 2019, Apheris helps clients analyse data without risking privacy infractions. The free flow of internal data can be a minefield for private businesses, with large bulks of valuable information remaining unusable or unshareable due to privacy, compliance, legal or security concerns. Apheris is part of Europe's burgeoning enterprise software market, which has produced high-flying startups such as Darktrace and UiPath. Seed investor LocalGlobe led the round alongside Dig Ventures and Pichette. Additional investors include Another.vc, System.One, and angel investors Charles Songhurst, NaturalMotion founder Torsten Reil, and Songkick founder Ian Hogarth. "What this year has crystallized is that the world's largest problems — from fighting pandemics and disease spread to developing life-saving drugs and reducing climate change — require collaborative efforts to solve," said CEO and cofounder Robin Röhm. "Apheris is the solution to enabling new ways to solve the complex problems of our time without sacrificing privacy or security." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: What it's like inside North Korea's controversial restaurant chain
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PayPal parts with top advertising executive after shifting its marketing strategy during the pandemic

* PayPal's chief creative officer Steve Simpson, its top advertising executive, left the company after about a year. * The move came after PayPal shifted its marketing strategy during the coronavirus pandemic, placing less emphasis on the brand and more on catering to small businesses, said a source with direct knowledge of the marketing operation. * Simpson's departure followed that of CMO and former Apple executive Allison Johnson in May. Both "decided to leave PayPal" as the company streamlines its global marketing functions, according to a PayPal spokeswoman. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. PayPal's highest-ranking ad executive Steve Simpson left earlier this month after just over a year as part of a restructuring of its global marketing business. Simpson, who was chief creative officer, was hired to make high-minded ad campaigns to help PayPal stand out from competitors like Square, Stripe, and Apple Pay. But this strategy chan

Neighbor, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup that wants to be the Airbnb of self-storage, has started partnering with landlords to turn empty offices into spaces for people's stuff

* The Airbnb of self-storage, Neighbor, has seen a surge in demand as a result of the pandemic, according to CEO and cofounder Joseph Woodbury. * The company announced a partnership Tuesday with landlord and operator Bridgeton Holdings to fill vacant office space with self-storage in San Francisco and eventually across the country. * This comes as the office market has taken a big hit from the coronavirus pandemic. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The coronavirus has accelerated the trend of using under-utilized real estate for other purposes, like turning retail storefronts and parking lots into distribution hubs for e-commerce fulfillment and redeveloping malls into communities by adding residential units. One area of commercial real estate that's in high demand is self-storage. The average spend on construction of new facilities per year jumped to $5 billion in 2018 from $1 billion in 2015. With the coronavirus prompting moves, a likely trigger f

The machines USPS is removing from distribution centers can sort more than 36,000 pieces of mail per hour. Here's how they work.

* The United States Postal Service has been deactivating mail-sorting machines around the US ahead of the surge expected from mail-in voting this fall, reports say. * Each machine can sort up to 36,000 pieces of mail per hour. * The machines sort letters, postcards, and other mail by bar code. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Mail-sorting machines used by the United States Postal Service (USPS) have been dismantled and removed from distribution centers around the country, according to postal workers. They told Motherboard that at least 19 machines were removed without explanation. An internal USPS letter from June included a plan to remove hundreds of more mail-sorting machines this year. Postal Workers Union members and some Democratic politicians have expressed concerns about changes to the USPS under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor who started his position this summer. President Trump has attacked the USPS and claimed that voting

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