Tootfinder

Insurance tech company Ethos raised ~$200M in its Jan. 29 IPO, selling 10.5M shares at $19 each; it reached a $1.1B market cap, below its 2021 $2.7B valuation (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/29/how-sequoi…

How Sequoia-backed Ethos reached the public market while rivals fell short | TechCrunch
The profitable life-insurance platform was one of the first major tech companies to test the 2026 public markets.

Presented without comment
«Economic convergence, demography, labour markets: what progress have EU candidate countries made?
Candidate countries remain far from European Union averages in terms of GDP per capita and their demographic and labour market characteristics»
…

Economic convergence, demography, labour markets: what progress have EU candidate countries made?
Candidate countries remain far from European Union averages in terms of GDP per capita and their demographic and labour market characteristics

Wishing all our readers a peaceful weekend, but before you head out, don't forget to read today's Metacurity for the most crucial cybersecurity developments you should know, including
--US ODNI ignores her remit and is investigating 2020 election fraud claims,
--US law enforcement are probing if WhatsApp employees can read users' messages,
--Popular AI app exposes millions of users' private messages,
--Darkweb market Empire Market creator pleads guilty,…

US ODNI drops her remit to investigate 2020 election fraud claims
US law enforcement are probing if WhatsApp employees can read users' messages, Popular AI app exposes millions of users' private messages, Darkweb market Empire Market creator pleads guilty, US seizes $400m in darknet crypto mixer Helix's assets, UK safety charity warns about The Com, much more

Weekend Reads
* Peering market evolution
https://blog.lacnic.net/en/peering-market-at-a-glance/
* BGP path security with ASPA

LACNIC Blog | Peering market at a glance
By Flavio Luciani, Namex CTO and John Souter, Namex Advisor Trends, transformations, and regional dynamics of Internet interconnection Abstract Over the past decade, the Internet’s interconnection landscape has been shaped by sustained traffic growth, changing content distribution models, and increasingly complex relationships between networks. Internet Exchange Points sit at the center of these dynamics, yet […]

Sächsisches Luftfahrtprojekt zielt auf Markt für Regionalflieger
Am Flughafen Leipzig/Halle entsteht ein Werk zum Bau eines kleinen, sparsamen Regionalflugzeugs. Regionalflüge sollen dadurch nachhaltiger werden.

OpenAI fired an employee for insider trading on prediction markets like Polymarket; Unusual Whales has flagged 77 suspected insider trades around OpenAI events (Kate Knibbs/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-fires-employee-insider-trading-polymarke…

OpenAI Fires an Employee for Prediction Market Insider Trading
Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are big business, and some Big Tech employees are testing boundaries by making trades based on insider knowledge.

TechCreate's shares surged ~1,995% in the past week; the payment software company says it is not aware of any info that would account for the trading activity (Luke Kawa/Sherwood News)
https://sherwood.news/markets/techcreate-keeps-going-pa…

TechCreate keeps going parabolic and the company doesn’t know why
There are short squeezes, and then there’s this.