Even Signal is hopping on the Stories bandwagon

Like Instagram, Facebook and so many others, Signal is hopping aboard the Stories bandwagon. The privacy-focused messaging app started beta testing an ephemeral Stories feature this week. Users can share videos, images and text-based messages with their friends. Stories will vanish after 24 hours.

As with the rest of the platform, Signal’s Stories have end-to-end encryption. Users can choose who to share them with. Along with groups and custom friends lists, you may opt to share a story with all of your connections (your contacts and anyone else you’ve spoken with one-on-one). If you opt to post a story to a group, others can react, reply to and share it.

For now, the only people who will see Stories are other beta testers. If you don’t want to see Stories in Signal, you can switch them off in the settings. This will prevent you from posting Stories of your own, though.

It remains to be seen whether Stories can help Signal to get people spending more time in the app or even to bring in new users. Instagram famously aped one of Snapchat’s most-used features with its take on Stories. They’re now a core part of the Instagram experience. Not every platform that has tried Stories has stuck with it, though. In 2021, Twitter and LinkedIn both ditched their Stories features after less than a year.

Intel-owned autonomous driving tech company Mobileye files for an IPO

Mobileye, the self-driving tech firm that Intel had purchased for $15.3 billion back in 2017, has filed for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission. When Intel first announced its plans to take Mobileye public late last year, the autonomous driving firm was expected to have a valuation of over $50 billion. Now according to Bloomberg, Intel expects Mobileye to be valued at around $30 billion, due to soaring inflation rates and poor market conditions. Regardless, it’s still bound to become one of the biggest offerings in the US for 2022 if the listing takes place this year. 

Intel intends to retain a majority stake in Mobileye, but Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger previously said that taking it public would give it the ability to grow more easily. He also said that the company plans to use some of the funds raised from the IPO to build more chip factories. Intel revealed its big and bold foundry ambitions in 2021 when it announced that the company is investing $20 billion in two Arizona fabrication plants. Back then, Gelsinger even proclaimed that he was pursuing Apple’s business. Earlier this year, the CEO revealed earmarking another $20 billion to build two fabrication plants in Columbus, Ohio. The company expects that facility to eventually become “the largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet.”

Mobileye didn’t specify how much a share would cost in its filing with the SEC. It did say, however, that it will use portion of the proceeds it will get from the IPO to pay debts. The firm also talked about its history in the filing and how its revenue grew from $879 million in 2019 to $1.4 billion in 2021, representing a growth of 43 percent year-over-year.