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As data centers prioritize cleaner power, major tech firms are landing in what might seem like unlikely locations. Over the past few years, Google and Facebook have nestled into cities in the Tennessee Valley at ideal sites for data center development.

Jennifer Daly, 42, knew going back to the office would mean masks and hand sanitizer. She hadn’t known it would mean a growling stomach, too. After months of working from home, Ms. Daly craved a return to normalcy.

With perhaps half of all employees working from home, California offices are sparsely populated these days. As a result, vacancies are rising, new leases are dropping and some companies are putting some of their unused square footage on the market for sublease, commercial real estate brokerage CBRE reported.

French startup Luko has raised a $60 million Series B funding round (€50 million). The round is led by EQT Ventures, with existing investors Accel, Founders Fund and Speedinvest also participating. Some angel investors with a background in insurance and technology are also investing in the startup, such as Assaf Wand, the co-founder of Hippo Insurance.

In the United States and other developed countries, the pandemic has driven a large proportion of the workforce to work from home, and in the aftermath of the crisis, the number of people who permanently work remotely is likely to triple or quadruple.

After the experiencing its worst quarter since 2018 at the start of the pandemic, the rent tech space showed signs of recovery in the third quarter. RET Ventures tracks the market activity, and recently produced its first quarterly data report on the space.

The world of venture capital is notoriously insular. For tech startups hoping to attract millions of dollars from private investors, having the right connections is often key to getting a meeting—and persuading investors to take a chance on an unproven idea.

U.S. employees started heading back to the office in greater numbers after Labor Day but that pace is stalling now, delivering another blow to economic-recovery hopes in many cities. The recent surge in Covid-19 cases across the country has led to an uptick in Americans resuming work at home after some momentum had been building for returning to the workplace, property analysts said.

Starting in November, AvalonBay Communities is moving its first residents into a new concept community—Kanso Twinbrook in Rockville, Maryland—that aims to provide a luxury residential experience on a largely automated scale, with few physical amenities and no full-time staff on site

Stripe Inc. is teaming up with banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS -0.75% and Citigroup Inc. to offer checking accounts and other business-banking services, the startup’s latest attempt to become the internet economy’s financial supermarket.