Taxi-app firm Uber signed a deal with Spotify last month, but it also faced a damaging scandal around its willingness to investigate critics in the media, including accessing their private data. Not that this damaged the company in the eyes of investors: it’s just raised a $1.2bn funding round (that’s not a typo: BILLION) valuing the company at $40bn. CEO Travis Kalanick outlined its growth in a blog post announcing the funding. “Today we are in over 250 cities in 50 countries. We are 6 times bigger today than 12 months ago – and grew faster this year than last… In 2015 alone, Uber will generate over 1mm jobs in cities around the world and with that millions of people may decide that they no longer need to own a car because using Uber will be cheaper than owning one.” But he also responded to the recent criticism, promising that Uber will be “making changes” that “lead to a smarter and more humble company that sets new standards in data privacy, gives back more to the cities we serve and defines and refines our company culture effectively”.
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In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…