Hola,
 

Who’s a good picker?

Last year, in partnership with The New York Times, we used our data to identify 50 startups that would reach $1B valuations, i.e., unicorn status.

About a year in, we’re batting .300 on our predictions (30% for non-baseball fans). See below for more detail.

Not bad, eh?

The Amazon Go effect
 

Dollars to in-store retail tech topped $3.7B in 2019, as physical retailers face decreasing foot traffic and profits. 
 

From autonomous checkouts to inventory management, read more about the state of retail tech in our latest report.

Rooting for the healthcare tent
 

The Super Bowl is days away, but it’s not all beer and buffalo wings — a serious issue the NFL has had to contend with is the impact of concussions on its players. 

Expert Intelligence clients can read more about how Amazon and startups alike are transforming concussion care here.

Has society gone too far?
 

What do human-grade dog food and serums have in common? Both can now be custom-made for your (or your dog's) specific needs and delivered in handy subscription boxes.

The growing personalization of subscription services is one of 2020's retail trends to watch. Read more in our report here.

Look at all these jobs

Some of our friends are hiring:

• Interaction Design Director, Ford — Palo Alto, CA

• Lead Interaction Designer/Service Designer, Ford — Palo Alto, CA

• Full Stack Web Developer, The Hartford — Hartford, CT 

Have a great rest of the week.

• 450 unicorns: Healthcare company Alto Pharmacy, point-of-sale startup Pine Labs, and smart security camera company Verkada raised funding at $1B+ valuations to become the latest unicorns. There are now 450 unicorns in the world. Alto Pharmacy was included in CB Insights’ 2019 Future Unicorn list made in collaboration with the New York Times. See all the other predictions here.

• $140M: Warren Buffett is selling the newspapers owned by Berkshire Hathaway for $140M. The renowned investor is reported to have been surprised by the ongoing decline in demand for the publications. From not investing in bargains to the risks of debt, we highlight 24 lessons from Warren Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders here. 
   
• 64 emojis: Unicode announced 64 new emojis to be released this year. New entrants include a dodo, an array of ninjas, and an anatomical heart. 
   
• 341 GB: Google announced a new AI-powered chatbot, which it says has been trained on 341 GB of data to help it respond to questions in more natural and engaging ways. Chatbots are going through a resurgence after interest in the tech waned. Just this week, Samsung led a $20M investment into chatbot startup Directly. We dig into lessons from the failed chatbot revolution, and why the tech is back on the rise, in this report.

• $186,667 per second: The average cost of a 30-second ad for this weekend’s Super Bowl was reported to be $5.6M, or $186,667 per second of airtime. 100M viewers in the US are expected to tune in. 
   
• $1B+: Sweden-based fintech unicorn Klarna raised $200M, bringing its total disclosed funding to over $1B. Take a look at all the emerging fintech funding trends in our latest quarterly fintech report. 
   

• 35%: The UK announced that it would allow China-based tech co Huawei to help build its 5G network — a tech that promises to vastly improve internet connectivity. The move comes despite warnings from the US government that Huawei poses a security risk. The UK has tried to mitigate such concerns by setting restrictions on the company’s participation, including limiting the use of its equipment to 35% of the country’s network. Learn why 5G is attracting attention in our explainer. 

• 78.7 years: Life expectancy in the US rose to 78.7 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — the first rise in 4 years. Emerging tech may help push up life expectancy even further. See how in our future of aging report.  
   

• 4,309 feet: A 4,309-foot long tunnel (the equivalent of 16 Manhattan blocks) linking Mexico to the US has been discovered. 
   

• 18.5 miles: A new image of the sun has been released. It is the highest resolution photo taken of the star to date. Produced by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, the image shows features as small as 18.5 miles across — revealing a complex surface, reminiscent of a close up view of skin, made of Texas-sized cell-like structures.

The World Health Organization has declared the coronavirus epidemic a global public health emergency. Chinese officials have reported 170 deaths; most victims were between the ages of 65 and 80.

But there's been some confusion conflating Corona, the beer, and the coronavirus — Google searches for "corona beer virus," "beer virus," and "beer coronavirus" have surged since mid-January. 
 

You can almost hear the facepalm in parent company Constellation Brands’ response: “We believe, by and large, that consumers understand there's no linkage between the virus and our business.”