SoftBank Vision Fund
Mapping View Inc.’s Smart Building Strategy
November 29th, 2022View Smart Buildings Business and Financials Examined
June 16th, 2022
SoftBank Bets On Robotic Cleaning in Smart Buildings
It was not that long ago that a significant fall in the Yen was met with open arms by major Japanese companies seeking to be more competitive in the global market. However, when this month began with the currency at a 20-year low, the reaction from Japan’s biggest companies has been decidedly mixed. In recent […]
WeWork Differently Now
It wasn’t that long ago that WeWork’s rapid rise and fall was a regular feature in business and financial news but it soon faded into the background as the COVID-19 pandemic took center stage across all media. Taking the company out of the spotlight was likely already a strategy for Sandeep Lakhmi Mathrani when he […]
Massive Funding Rounds Flow into the Video Surveillance Market
Our smart buildings and smart cities are now being designed to sense and understand the world around them much like humans do. Networks of sensors hear via microphones in voice control, smell via air quality or gas monitors and feel via temperature, humidity, or pressure sensors. However, like in humans, sight is generally accepted as […]
Convenience Store Retrofits Enable a Checkout-Free Shopping Experience
This article was written by Daphne Tomlinson, Senior Research Associate at Memoori. There is a surge of interest in autonomous checkout technology for convenience stores, as the retail industry struggles more than most through this extended global crisis. The pandemic has helped bolster the case for a checkout-free contactless shopping experience, which mitigates the spread […]
Will SPACs Offer an Alternative Exit Route for Companies in the Smart Buildings Space?
This article was written by Daphne Tomlinson, Senior Research Associate at Memoori. In 2020, an alternative to a conventional IPO – Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) – took the innovation landscape by storm, according to Michael Holman of Lux Research. “A SPAC is an alternative to a conventional initial public offering (IPO) in which an […]
End of the Road for WeWork? Recession Spells Uncertain Times for Co-Working
In August 2017, a New York co-working startup named WeWork was squeezed into a unicorn outfit and hurled on to the world stage by a $4.4 billion investment from Japanese conglomerate Softbank. By August 2018, as WeWork’s astronomical growth continued, we started to question our assumptions of this as a fad, contemplating WeWork as the […]
The WeWork Carnival, Softbank & the Future of Co-Working
“I think I’ve run out of the words to describe what’s been going on, from surreal to crazy to unbelievable to — someone texted me yesterday — “bonkers,” all of those things are true and yet the reality is that we’re still here and we’re still here together. I just want to remind all of […]
We-Don’t-Work: Neumann Cast Adrift as Sharks Continue to Circle
The WeWork saga continues as the co-founder and CEO, Adam Neumann, stepped down yesterday amid a torrent of corporate and personal scandal in the wake of the firm’s postponed IPO; which Scott Galloway described as ‘flinging feces at retail investors visiting the unicorn zoo’! This may just be another story of an over-indulgent startup with […]