TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

DIRECTV Names Dan York Chief Content Officer

By TechTaffy Desk

[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Derek Chang, DIRECTV’s executive vice president of Content Strategy and Development will be leaving at the end of the year. Succeeding him will be Dan York, former president of Content and Advertising Sales for AT&T, who will join DIRECTV in early July as executive vice president of Programming, and chief content officer.

Mr. York, who will report to Mike White, chairman, president and CEO of DIRECTV, will initially lead DIRECTV’s efforts in programming and content rights, and then oversee the content and ROOT Sports teams as Mr. Chang transitions out of his role at year-end.

As president of Content and Advertising Sales for AT&T, Mr. York developed the content strategy and offering for AT&T U-verse and oversaw AT&T’s content activities across all of its platforms, including TV, online and mobile. In six years, he helped build U-verse from zero to more than $9 billion in annualized revenue.

Mr. York was previously head of Programming and Development for In Demand Networks. Before that he worked for 12 years at HBO, most recently managing the distribution, marketing, sponsorship, and select content acquisitions and programming operations for HBO’s Sports PPV business. He holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Michigan State University.

Just in

Fundings

AlphaSense raises $650M

AlphaSense, a market intelligence and search platform, has raised $650 million in funding, co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners.
Around the web

Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6B to take on OpenAI — VentureBeat

Confirming reports from April, the series B investment comes from the participation of multiple known venture capital firms and investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, writes Shubham Sharma. 
IT

Capgemini partners with DARPA to explore quantum computing for carbon capture

Capgemini Government Solutions has launched a new initiative with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate quantum computing's potential in carbon capture.
IT

Harness acquires Split Software

Harness has entered into an agreement to acquire Split Software, a provider of feature management and experimentation solutions.
AI

Snowflake to acquire TruEra AI observability platform

Snowflake has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire TruEra, providers of an AI observability platform. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.