Real IT Center

* Helsinki-based indoor farming startup iFarm has raised a $4 million seed round. * iFarm's indoor farm tech is automated and allows customers to start growing salads, greens, berries and vegetables in urban environments. * iFarm's platform is powered by computer vision, machine learning, and data about thousands of plants collected from a distributed network of farms as well as industry knowledge. * "COVID-19 been a boost to our business, it's boosted our number of farms, requests from customers also increased, we were in the right place at the right time," Max Chizhov, cofounder and CEO of iFarm, told Business Insider in an interview. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Helsinki-based indoor farming startup iFarm has raised a $4 million seed round to continue its growth from the coronavirus pandemic. iFarm's indoor farm tech is automated and the firm claims to allow customers to start growing salads, greens, berries and vegetable...

* 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 o...

* Uber and Lyft are still attempting to battle the new AB5 law in California which classifies rideshare drivers as employees, entitled to benefits such as health insurance and paid time off. * The companies say they want to create a new category of workers, gig workers, that allows them to pay workers cash for things like health insurance premiums. * But Stanford economics professor Paul Oyer tells Business Insider that neither the law nor the new category are very good ideas.  * Oyer is a labor economist who specializes in the gig workforce and who drove for Uber himself in 2018 as part of his research. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Uber and Lyft are facing what could be an existential crisis in California as they are obligated, under the new AB5 law, to classify hundreds of thousands of drivers as employees.  The companies have been fighting the law on multiple fronts, including by proposing that a new, third classification be created to cover gig w...

* Last week, the wildly popular game "Fortnite" got an update on Apple and Android smartphones that allowed players to bypass the companies' digital payment systems. Payments went directly to the "Fortnite" studio, Epic Games, instead of Apple and Google.  * In response, Apple and Google pulled "Fortnite" from their digital storefronts and cited the update as a terms-of-service violation. Epic Games sued both companies shortly thereafter for what it says is anticompetitive behavior. * If you already had "Fortnite" on your iPhone, Apple has no way of removing it — and some iPhone owners with "Fortnite" have taken to eBay with their phones, with listings as high as $10,000. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. If you were one of the millions of people who downloaded "Fortnite" before it was pulled from Apple's App Store last week, then you've still got it — Apple can't remove the game fro...

* Customer service startup SupportLogic just raised $12 million in a fundraising round backed by Sorenson Ventures and Sierra Ventures.  * Founded in 2016, SupportLogic promises clients the "world's first intelligent support platform," using AI and natural language processing to extract data from customer queries. This can reduce churn, prevent complaint escalations, and help companies better understand customers' needs, SupportLogic claims. * The customer experience industry is predicted to be worth close to $15 billion globally by 2025.  * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. SupportLogic, the San Jose-based startup trying to revolutionize customer service through AI, just raised $12 million in a Series A funding round backed by Sorenson Ventures and Sierra Ventures.  The firm promises clients the "world's first intelligent support platform," using AI and natural language processing to extract useful data from their online tick...

* Tim Sweeney is the CEO and founder of Epic Games, the company that brought the world "Fortnite." * Despite having a net worth just shy of $10 billion, according to Bloomberg, Sweeney enjoys the simpler things in life like Diet Coke and fried chicken from Bojangles'. * Read on to learn about the life and rise of Sweeney as he changes the way the world thinks about video games.  * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.  In many ways, on paper, Tim Sweeney is an average guy. He likes hiking, tinkering with technology, the occasional Diet Coke, and fried chicken from Bojangles'.  In reality, he's anything but average: Sweeney is the CEO of Epic Games, the company behind "Fortnite" — the wildly popular battle royale video game that's earned billions since launching in 2017. Epic Games is also responsible for Unreal Engine, the software suite used to create some of the world's biggest games. Sweeney has a net worth of nearly ...

* Amazon announced that it's expanding its physical offices in six "tech hubs" around the country and adding 3,500 jobs. * The expanded offices will be based in Dallas, Detroit, Denver, New York, Phoenix, and San Diego. Amazon is investing $1.4 billion in building out those offices, it said.  * Amazon's office hubs follow a larger trend of tech companies reconsidering how and when employees return to the office. Facebook and Google aren't requiring workers to return until next summer, while Twitter has said employees may work from home forever. * Hiring more workers outside of Seattle, where the company is based, allows Amazon to expand its talent pool and potentially adjust salaries down in more affordable cities. * Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. For Amazon, the future of office work, post-coronavirus, means thousands of new jobs and office hubs in six cities across the US.  The ecommerce giant announced Tuesday that it's plann...