Twitch, the video platform and community for gamers, has opened a new office in Austin with six employees and plans to hire more this year.

Twitch’s office is located on South Congress. Ken Demarest, director of product development for Twitch’s Developer Success team, will lead the new office. The company is also hiring front and back end developers, user experience and product management employees for its new office.

Twitch was attracted to Austin’s creative culture and engineering and developer talent.

“Some of the best and brightest engineers are based in Austin, and they have the ability to create cutting edge products that benefit from game broadcasting,” Demarest said in a news release. “Our goal is to help developers understand and utilize Twitch’s platform to strengthen their connections with their communities. This initiative also includes building out our product development teams to work closely with the local talent.”

Demarest has worked on classic games including Wing Commander, Ultima Online, BioForge, and Netstorm. He also worked at Accenture and PayPal.

Twitch has more than 100 million members and 1.7 million broadcasters. The company also has offices in the United Kingdom and New York City.

The world is awash in data.

Yet only a tiny amount – less than one percent – of all the data that gets collected and stored is ever analyzed, according to an IDC report.

An Austin-based startup, data.world, led by serial entrepreneur Brett Hurt, officially launched Monday with $14 million in venture funding, with the goal of making it fast and easy to find and use data to solve problems.

That’s a monumental task, but Hurt, founder of Bazaarvoice and three former HomeAway executives, are focused on building a platform for data that will make it easy to access, collaborate and share.

“Open data, which is data that can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose, is shaping up to be one of the most important forces impacting humanity today,” Hurt, co-founder and CEO of data.world, said in a news release. “This movement can speed our cure for cancer, help keep governments accountable, curtail climate change, and positively impact other important world issues. We’ve built data.world to facilitate these breakthroughs – by allowing professional and amateur data scientists, analysts, and researchers to instantly find, use, and share data.”

data.world received its Series A funding from lead investor, Shasta Ventures with participation from Capital Factory, Chicago Ventures, Floodgate, FYRFLY Venture Partners, Homebrew, Lead Edge Capital, LiveOak Venture Partners, and Rothenberg Ventures.

Several angel investors also participated including Clayton Christopher, Founder of CAVU Ventures, Sweet Leaf Tea, and Deep Eddy Vodka; Herb Simon, chairman emeritus of Simon Property Group and owner of the Indiana Pacers; John Mackey, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Whole Foods; Matt O’Hayer, founder and CEO of Vital Farms; Josh Kopelman, Co-founder of First Round Capital; Philip Berber, co-founder of A Glimmer of Hope and founder and CEO of Enable Impact; and Ralph Mack, CEO of Mack Capital.

“Once every two or three years, you see a company and idea that could be hugely transformational,” Jason Pressman, Partner at Shasta Ventures and data.world board of directors member, said in a news release. “data.world has the potential to re-define what we think is possible in our lifetimes and create massive value for society.”

The data world platform will be available starting today to select users.

In addition to Hurt, who founded Coremetrics and Bazaarvoice, three former HomeAway executives are also founders. They include Bryon Jacob, co-founder and chief technology officer, who formerly worked as prinicipal architect at HomeAway and also worked at Amazon and Trilogy. The other co-founders are Matt Laessig, chief operating officer, former executive at HomeAway and Bazaarvoice and Jon Loyens, chief product officer, and former vice president of engineering at HomeAway.

A few years ago, another Austin-startup, Infochimps, sought to tackle the same problem of making data sets easily accessible online. CSC bought that company in 2013.

Facebook is quadrupling the space at its Austin office at 300 W. Sixth, according to Buildzoom, which pulled several building permits the company filed with the city.

Facebook applied for building permits to connect floors nine through 12 at its office. The company currently is located on the 10th floor.

Since the beginning of the year, Buildzoom reported Facebook has filed 24 permits for work totaling $11.2 million.

“In addition to a general remodel on all four floors, permits indicate there is a $4.9 million interior remodel to create an accessory food service for employees only, an internal staircase connecting the four floors, and an external stairway giving the 9th floor direct access to the adjacent eight story parking lot,” according to the Builzoom blog post. “Permits also show us the space occupied by the office on each floor is a little over 27,000 square feet, meaning the total office is around 108,000 square feet.”

The contractor for the job is listed as Belfour Beatty Construction.

Austin ranks first in the nation for the best place for startups, according to a new survey from Sungard Availability Services.

Austin claimed the top spot, followed by New York, Seattle, Denver, Atlanta, San Francisco, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles and Houston.

The survey ranked the cities based on startup survival rates, graduate talent and density of entrepreneurs. It also ranked tech talent and affordability.

The survey found Austin’s high tech workforce accounts for 8.77 percent of the city’s jobs.

“Though the moniker ‘Silicon Hills’ may have had less traction for Austin’s City Fathers when they dreamt up the name in the 1990s, the fact remains that the capital of Texas is one of the most dynamic technology incubators in the world,” according to the report. “In our survey, Austin ranked 3rd in the percentage of workforce directly employed in a technology job. No wonder the city’s becoming a convincing alternative to Silicon Valley for both the venture capitalist and the engineering community.”

Google has issued a report showing it had an economic impact of $8.93 Billion for Texas businesses, nonprofit organizations and website publishers in 2015.

The company reports 141,000 Texas businesses and nonprofit organizations used Google’s AdWords and Adsense tools in 2015. And Google donated $16.3 million in free advertising to Texas nonprofit organizations through its Google Ad grants program.

Google, which opened its first office in Austin in 2007, has 350 employees locally.

Overall, Google nationwide reported $165 billion of economic activity for businesses, website publishers and nonprofit organizations in 2015.

Google’s Texas report also features Austin-based Saatva Mattress, founded in 2011. The online mattress retailer used AdWords, Google’s advertising program, to market its mattresses. The company now has more than 100 employees and two offices. The company reports its sales have increased as much as 300 percent annually.

The key to a thriving technology center is tech talent.

And Austin has it, according to a new report from CBRE Group, a commercial real estate services and investment group. The city ranks fifth, up three spots from a year ago, in its annual Tech Talent Scorecard which ranks 50 U.S. and Canadian markets. The research report examines those cities ability to attract and retain tech talent.

Austin is a top “brain gain” market with 9,758 graduates between 2010 and 2014 and the city added 24,590 tech jobs between 2011 and 2015, according to the report. During that time, Austin had a net gain of 14,832 jobs.

The top market for tech talent is San Francisco Bay Area followed by Washington, D.C., Seattle and New York City, according to the report.

The CBRE report also shows emerging tech markets in Nashville, Charlotte, Tampa, Seattle and Phoenix.

CBRE compiles its Tech Talent Scorecard from 13 metrics including tech talent supply, growth, concentration, cost, completed tech degrees, industry outlook for job growth and market outlook for both office and apartment rent costs.

Another Texas city, Dallas/Fort Worth, ranked sixth on the list. It was followed by Boston, Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta and Baltimore.

Another key to a thriving tech market is to have highly educated people. “Nearly 70 percent of the top 50 tech talent markets have an educational attainment rate above the U.S. average of 30 percent. Austin was the No. 7th market for educational attainment at 47.6 percent.

Having a young workforce is also important.

“Austin’s population of 20-something millennials grew by 12,800, or 7.5 percent, since 2009–representing 11 percent of Austin total growth in a population of 913,000,” according to the report. “Austin’s population is made up of 20.2 percent millennials, compared to the U.S. average of 14.2 percent, making it one of the top 10 most concentrated millennial markets among the 50 markets examined in the report.”

“Although a relatively small portion of the economy, tech-talent employers spurred economic activity and added more than 1 million tech jobs during the past five years,” Colin Yasukochi, Director of Research & Analysis, CBRE, said in a news release. “As a result, tech talent growth has recently been the top driver of office leasing activity in the U.S. and high-tech companies are now one of the main drivers of commercial real estate activity.”

All that activity led to a 30 percent increase in rents in Austin from the first quarter of 2011 through the first quarter of this year, according to the report. Office rent is now $32.65 per square foot, the third greastest increase in the CBRE study behind San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. Austin’s vacancy rate dropped 12.2 percentage points to 10.1 percent over the same period, the largest drop of the 50 markets in the CBRE study.

Another startup has entered Austin’s ride hailing market.

iCars, based in San Francisco, launched its web and mobile platform on Wednesday to connect customers to executive car service operators and chauffeurs in Austin.

The company first began offering service in the San Francisco Bay Area in February.

“iCARS’ expansion into Austin signifies the growing demand for safe and reliable options in the luxury transportation market, especially in the hospitality space,” Gary Bauer, founder and CEO of iCARS, said in a news release. “Too often, concierges and doormen don’t have sufficient information about the driver or the car they are putting guests into. iCARS gives hotel operators peace of mind that their guests are being safely transported, allowing them to fulfill their duty of care obligations in a simple and seamless way.”

The iCARS fleet in Austin includes Sedan Class, SUV Class and Sprinter Class vehicles.

“iCARS only partners with transportation companies that carry at least $1 million in commercial liability insurance, regularly maintain their vehicles, conduct random drug testing and background checks on their employees, provide driver training courses, fingerprinted employees, and pay employee benefits as required by their respective states,” according to its news release.

KKR, a global investment firm, has entered into a deal to buy Epicor Software Corp. from Apax Partners.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Bloomberg News is reporting the deal is worth about $3.3 billion.

Austin-based Epicor provides software to customers in the manufacturing, distribution and retail industries in more than 150 countries.

“Our top priority continues to be delivering cloud-ready, market-leading solutions paired with a world-class customer experience,” Joe Cowan, president and CEO of Epicor, said in a news statement. “KKR shares our vision of providing innovative technology with a clear focus on helping customers grow business, not software. This is an exciting time for Epicor, and I am extremely appreciative of Apax’s support during the last five years.”

“KKR is very pleased to be partnering with Epicor to accelerate its next phase of global growth,” Herald Chen, member of private equity and Head of technology at KKR, said in a news statement. “Through a world-class Epicor team, leading cloud-ready technologies and a keen focus on its customers, the company is in tremendous position to build on its long history of success.”

KKR expects to close the acquisition by the end of August, pending regulatory approval.

Founded in 1972, Epicor Software with 3,900 employees had almost $1 billion in revenue last year.