Daily Crunch - VMware completes Pivotal acquisition

TechCrunch Newsletter [TechCrunch logo]( [The Daily Crunch logo]( Monday, December 30, 2019 • By Anthony Ha Happy Monday VMware finishes a crucial acquisition, Spotify says it will pause political advertising and “The Mandalorian” will return next fall. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 30, 2019. Also, Darrell Etherington is writing the newsletter tomorrow, so I’ll see you all in 2020! [VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition]( VMware is closing the year with a significant new weapon in its arsenal. (I restrained myself from using a “pivotal” pun here. You’re welcome.) The acquisition — first announced in August — helps the company in its transformation from a pure virtual machine supplier into a cloud native vendor that can manage infrastructure wherever it lives. It fits alongside the acquisitions of Heptio and Bitnami, two other deals that closed this year. [Read more]( [VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition image] Image Credits: Pivotal [Spotify to ‘pause’ running political ads, citing lack of proper review]( The company told us that starting early next year, it will stop selling political ads: “At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content.” [Read more]( [‘The Mandalorian’ returns for Season 2 on Disney+ in fall 2020]( The last episode of the first season of “The Mandalorian” went live on Disney+ on Friday, and showrunner Jon Favreau wasted very little time confirming when we can expect season two of the smash hit to land: next fall. [Read more]( [‘The Mandalorian’ returns for Season 2 on Disney+ in fall 2020 image] [2019 Africa Roundup: Jumia IPOs, China goes digital, Nigeria becomes fintech capital]( The last 12 months served as a grande finale to 10 years that saw triple-digit increases in startup formation and VC on the continent. Here’s an overview of the 2019 market events that capped off a decade in African tech. [Read more]( [Maxar is selling space robotics company MDA for around $765 million]( Maxar’s goal in selling the business is to help alleviate some of its considerable debt. The purchasing entity is a consortium of companies led by private investment firm Northern Private Capital, which will acquire the entirety of MDA’s Canadian operations — responsible for the development of the Canadarm and Canadarm2 robotic manipulators used on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, respectively. [Read more]( [Maxar is selling space robotics company MDA for around $765 million image] Image Credits: NASA [Cloud gaming is the future of game monetization, not gameplay]( Lucas Matney argues that as is so often the case with the next big thing in tech, cloud streaming is much more likely to become the next big feature of a more traditional platform, rather than the entire platform itself. (Extra Crunch membership required.) [Read more]( [This week's TechCrunch podcasts]( Equity took the week off, but we kept [Original Content]( going with a review of Netflix’s new fantasy show “The Witcher.” [Read more]( [Read more stories on TechCrunch.com]( Newest Jobs from Crunchboard - [ELSEVIER TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATES 2020 at Elsevier (Philadelphia, PA, USA)]( - [Director of Product, Enterprise at Root Insurance (Chicago, IL, USA)]( - [Data Product Manager at The Rockefeller Foundation (New York, NY, USA)]( - [Senior Shopify Developer at Markacy (New York City, NY, USA)]( - [Driver Acquisition and Retention Analyst at Point Pickup Technologies (Greenwich, CT, USA)]( [See more jobs on CrunchBoard]( [Post your tech jobs]( and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month. [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Youtube]( [Instagram]( [Flipboard]( [View this email online in your browser]( [Privacy Policy]( | [Terms of Service]( | [Unsubscribe]( © 2020 Verizon Media. All rights reserved. 110 5th St, San Francisco, CA 94103