Colombia’s Yuno secures $25m Series A funding. 2 other stories and a trivia

This line-up of stories will help you discover the latest happenings around the tech world, today.

1. Colombia’s Yuno secures $25m in Series A funding

A Colombian payments platform, Yuno, has secured $25 million in a Series A funding round, with participation from leading venture capital firms including DST Global Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Kaszek Ventures, Monashees, and US-based investment firm Tiger Global participating.

The Co-founder, Julián Núñez, confirmed this in a statement seen by Ripples Nigeria on Monday March 11, 2024.

Established in 2022 and headquartered in Bogotá, Yuno claims to serve clients in 40 countries worldwide.

Ripple Nigeria gathered that the startup offers services such as transaction routing, no-code webhooks, reconciliation, checkout functions, and audit logs through its payments orchestration platform.

According to the startup, it intends to utilize the latest funding, which supplements its $10 million seed funding in 2022, to bolster operations across the Americas and explore opportunities in new markets across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Speaking on the development, Julián states that the funding will play a crucial role in advancing Yuno’s technological infrastructure, expanding its team, and developing market strategies to enhance its global presence.

Trivia: Endianness refers to how data is ____?

A. Stored
B. Deleted
C. Transmitted
D. Transformed

Find answer below

2. Appeals Court overturns lower court’s judgement in favour of Binance

The U.S. Court of Appeals has breathed new life into a case where American residents seek to invalidate contracts made with Binance, citing Section 29(b) of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934.

The appellate court’s ruling allows U.S.-based Binance users to resume efforts to demonstrate that their grievances do not violate U.S. securities law’s jurisdictional limits.

According to court documents, users’ complaints arise from their acquisition of cryptocurrencies such as EOS, TRX, ELF, FUN, ICX, OMG, and QSP, which they allege Binance unlawfully sold to Americans, breaching federal securities regulations.

Many purchasers found these tokens to be “worthless” and suffered losses when their values plummeted, prompting some to seek legal recourse in a U.S. District Court, where their lawsuit was dismissed on March 31, 2022.

The District Court judge not only deemed the application of law improper but also ruled the claims untimely.

Subsequently, the U.S.-based Binance users, acting as plaintiffs, appealed to the Court of Appeals.

In its verdict, the appellate court determined that activities involving Binance’s American users constituted domestic transactions, subject to U.S. securities laws, as the parties finalized transactions within the United States, establishing irrevocable liabilities.

The Appeals Court also criticized the lower court’s premature dismissal of any connection between the users’ claims and the governing laws of the respective U.S.

3. Flutterwave to shut down virtual card service ‘Barter’

One of Africa’s leading startup, Flutterwave, has unveiled plans to discontinue its virtual card service, Barter, initially launched in 2017.

Flutterwave has, as a result of this decision, over the past four weeks, been advising its clientele to withdraw their funds from the application.

Sources suggest that the move to close Barter follows a thorough analysis of market dynamics and evolving customer preferences, with enterprise services serving as the primary revenue stream, compared to Barter’s modest contribution of just 1% to the $2 billion worth of transactions processed by the company in 2018.

Barter has held a significant position since its inception in 2017, pioneering international payment facilitation for Nigerians among early tech startups.

Despite its groundbreaking status, the platform encountered challenges. In 2022, it experienced prolonged downtime due to updates from Union54, its card-issuing partner based in Zambia, amid a $1.2 billion fraud attempt.

4. OpenAI announces new board members as CEO Sam Altman returns

OpenAI unveils its newly constituted board and concludes an internal investigation conducted by U.S.-based law firm WilmerHale into the circumstances surrounding the initial departure of CEO Sam Altman.

Joining the board are Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nicole Seligman, former EVP and Global General Counsel of Sony and President of Sony Entertainment, and Fidji Simo, CEO and Chair of Instacart, who also serves on the Board of Directors at Shopify.

These additions will work alongside existing members Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers, Bret Taylor, and senior management, including Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, with Microsoft securing a non-voting board observer position.

WilmerHale’s investigation, initiated in December, encompassed interviews with past and present board members, advisors, directors, and witnesses, revealing a significant breach of trust between the former board and Sam and Greg.

Bret Taylor, OpenAI’s board chairman, affirmed that the review unanimously determined Sam Altman and Greg Brockman as the suitable leaders for OpenAI.

Expressing gratitude for the review, Altman thanked Taylor, Larry, and WilmerHale, also acknowledging OpenAI’s CTO Mira Murati for her leadership during challenging times.

Altman’s abrupt dismissal as OpenAI CEO in November sparked controversy, resulting in board member departures and employee resignations.

Trivia Answer: Stored

Endianness is a computer science term that describes how data is stored. Specifically, it defines which end of a multi-byte data type contains the most significant values. The two types of endianness are big-endian and little-endian.

While Big-endian is the most common way to store binary data. It places the most significant (or largest) value first, followed by less significant values. The Little-endian stores the least-significant value first, followed by increasingly more significant values.

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