In today’s Bulldog wrapup of the latest tech news:

  • ‘Fintech’ startup SoFi moving into traditional banking
  • E3 electronic entertainment show offers glimpse of future
  • Verizon takes over Yahoo to complete $4.5 billion deal
  • GM raises output of self-driving Bolts, boosts test fleet

The details:

  • ‘Fintech’ startup SoFi moving into traditional banking

Online lender and financial startup SoFi has taken the first step toward competing with the nation’s biggest banks on their home turf: the checking account.

Last week, the San Francisco provider of student and personal loans submitted an application for federal deposit insurance, a protection normally only available to conventional banks. In its application, the company said its SoFi Bank subsidiary will offer bread-and-butter banking products, including checking accounts, debit cards and eventually credit cards.

SoFi is one of a wave of new financial-technology, or “fintech,” startups that aim to reengineer the way Americans manage their savings, take out loans and pay for things.

The company, whose name comes from the moniker Social Finance, was founded in 2011 with a focus on refinancing student loans. The company quickly branched into other products aimed primarily at millennials, including personal loans, mortgages, wealth management and, recently, insurance.

Unlike other fintechs such as Prosper and Lending Club, SoFi funds all of its loans from its own capital. That allows it to make loans more quickly and sometimes at lower rates than its competitors.

  • E3 electronic entertainment show offers glimpse of future

E3, the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, opened Tuesday in Los Angeles with thousands of video game enthusiasts, analysts and industry representatives in attendance to play and show off the latest technology that will soon be hitting store shelves.

The show at the Los Angeles Convention Center has typically only been open to those in the industry and media that cover it. But this year organizers allowed 15,000 members of the general public onto the show floor.

[VIDEO: Watch IGN’s recap of early E3 action at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYDBYbF_yl8 ]

“This is like the Mecca of the gaming industry so to be here is like a huge honor to be able to come here and see what’s going on and get the first glimpse of all the greatest stuff coming out,” said Bob Lease, who traveled from Pennsylvania to attend the show.

Analysts say one of the biggest announcements this year came from Microsoft with the release of its Xbox One X, claimed to be the most powerful gaming console ever made.

It’s intended to push the boundaries of gaming to make even more realistic visuals, said Ian Sherr, executive editor at CNET News.

“They’re trying to make them look like almost real life,” he said. “They want to be the video industry in the movie industry.”

The expo runs through Thursday with about 60,000 people expected to attend.

  • Verizon takes over Yahoo to complete $4.5 billion deal

Verizon has taken over Yahoo, completing a $4.5 billion deal that will usher in a new management team to attempt to wring more advertising revenue from one of the internet’s best-known brands.

Tuesday’s closure of the sale ends Yahoo’s 21-year history as a publicly traded company. It also ends the nearly five-year reign of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who isn’t joining Verizon. She will walk away from Yahoo with a compensation package currently worth about $125 million, including her severance pay and stock awards that will be fully vested with the deal’s completion.

Yahoo’s email and other digital services such as sports, finance and news will be run by Tim Armstrong, who has been running AOL since Verizon bought that company for $4.4 billion two years ago. Armstrong will now be CEO of a new Verizon subsidiary called Oath, which will consist of Yahoo and various AOL services.

About 2,000 Yahoo and AOL workers are expected to lose their jobs as Verizon trims expenses and eliminates overlapping positions.

“Now that the deal is closed, we are excited to set our focus on being the best company for consumer media, and the best partner to our advertising, content and publisher partners,” Armstrong said.

Verizon won’t be getting Yahoo’s prized stakes in two Asian internet companies, Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. Those will belong to a newly formed company called Altaba, which also will inherit Yahoo’s $8 billion in cash and any money that might have to be paid in various shareholder lawsuits filed against Yahoo leading up to the sale.

  • GM raises output of self-driving Bolts, boosts test fleet

General Motors Co. says it has built 130 self-driving Chevrolet Bolt electric cars at a factory in suburban Detroit, making it among the first automakers to mass produce self-driving vehicles.

The automaker has been building self-driving Bolts at its Orion Assembly Plant in Orion Township, Michigan, since January. Unlike GM’s earlier self-driving test vehicles, the new cars were built on the same assembly line as regular Bolts that are being sold to customers. Once they rolled off the line, the self-driving Bolts went to another area of the plant to get computers, sensors and other hardware installed. The cars use software from Cruise Automation, a self-driving startup GM bought in 2016.

GM CEO Mary Barra wouldn’t say Tuesday if the company plans to make more self-driving Bolts.

What GM is doing is similar to what Waymo and Fiat Chrysler did last year, says Sam Abuelsamid, a senior analyst with Navigant Research. Fiat Chrysler assembled 100 hybrid Chrysler Pacifica minivans with modified wiring and then sent them to Waymo, which installed the hardware and software needed to make them self-driving. Fiat Chrysler is currently building an additional 500 Pacificas for Waymo.