Re/wind: More Ridiculous Funding Announcements, Oculus Rift Comes in 2016 and More

A number of tech’s most well-known names were attached to big funding rounds, and Facebook’s highly-touted VR acquisition Oculus announced it has a product on the way for 2016.

Here are the headlines that powered Re/code this week:

1. 2014 was a banner year for venture capitalists raising money, and 2015 looks to be the same for those who want to spend it. Uber’s reportedly working on raising another $1.5 billion at a $50 billion valuation. Pinterest added another $186 million to give it a total of $553 million for its Series G round alone. The business-to-business software startup Zenefits raised a whopping $500 million and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin raised $275 million for his lending company Affirm. Oh, and the Chinese drone maker DJI raised $75 million from Accel Partners alone.
2. After days of frenzied speculation, a report says Microsoft isn’t interested in taking over Salesforce.com after all. That’s good news for Salesforce, for whom the best deal is no deal (so says us).
3. In a post on Facebook, COO Sheryl Sandberg left her first public comments since the tragic passing of her husband David Goldberg. She wrote: “Even in these last few days of completely unexpected hell — the darkest and saddest moments of my life — I know how lucky I have been.” GoPro executive Zander Lurie was announced as the interim CEO for the company Goldberg led, SurveyMonkey.
4. Apple’s music streaming service, when it launches later this year, will include original content programming, free samples and a paid subscription not dissimilar from Spotify Premium. Also big: Users will be able to upload some of their music online, like Google Play or SoundCloud.
5. Google lost out on precious Mountain View real estate to LinkedIn and it revamped Google+ to work and look a lot more like Pinterest. The company’s next move to keep its search business dominant is to get into food delivery, and Google wasn’t the only American company in the cross hairs of European regulators this week. (Hint: It was Uber.)
6. PopSlate adds a rear Kindle-like screen to your iPhone 6 for $129, and all in all it’s a pretty nifty item. It only shows images in greyscale, but Re/code co-executive editor Walt Mossberg thinks it’s a promising product that will get better with more third-party integration.
7. Last year, Facebook bought the crowdfunded virtual reality startup Oculus VR for $2 billion. In early 2016, the company’s signature Oculus Rift headset will go on sale for about $250.
8. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced her bid for the presidency, entering a crowded Republican primary. Aside from name recognition, one of Fiorina’s biggest challenges will be explaining the tens of thousands of jobs she cut while at HP.
9. It wasn’t too long ago that Zynga founder Mark Pincus said he’d be coming back to run the company, pushing out then-CEO Don Mattrick. The first thing on his list: Firing 364 people or 18 percent of the company’s headcount as part of an effort to cut $100 million worth of expenses.
10. A few months ago, Snapchat’s newly launched Discover feature was charging advertisers $100 per thousand views. Now the rates have normalized a bit, settling at about $20 per thousand views.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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