DATA STORAGE

Founder of Carbonite launches online data-storage company

David Friend, who founded Boston-based Carbonite Inc. in 2005 to let consumers back up their personal computer files to the Internet cloud, just launched an online data-storage company for big businesses and small startups. The new company, Wasabi, will face off against a horde of giant companies that already offer similar services, especially Amazon.com’s S3 cloud computing services. Friend is going right after Amazon, with a marketing campaign that claims Wasabi will store data for one-fifth the cost of Amazon’s service, and let customers access their data six times faster. “Wasabi is cheaper than their cheapest and faster than their fastest,’’ Friend said. Amazon charges 2.1 to 2.3 cents per gigabyte per month for data storage. Wasabi charges a flat rate of just under four-tenths of one cent for the same amount of storage. Wasabi has raised $8.5 million from several individual investors, including Howard Cox of venture firm Greylock Partners and local technology entrepreneur Desh Deshpande. Even as he challenged Amazon, Friend predicted that no one at the giant company will lose much sleep over Wasabi. “They have 86 different cloud products,’’ he said, “and we’re only going after storage.’’ But Friend said that Wasabi can prosper by winning just a fraction of the enterprise storage market. — HIAWATHA BRAY

COFFEE

Dunkin’ saw fewer customers in first quarter

Dunkin’ Brands’ first-quarter revenue missed Wall Street’s view as fewer customers at its doughnut and ice cream shops left a key US sales metric flat. Still, shares rose 0.78 percent to close at $56.80. Revenue for the owner of the Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins chains rose to $190.7 million from $189.8 million, below the $192.2 million in revenue that analysts polled by Zacks expected. Sales at Dunkin’ Donuts stores in the United States open at least a year were flat during the quarter. At Baskin-Robbins locations, that figure fell 2.4 percent. For the three months ended April 1, Dunkin’ Brands earned $47.5 million, or 51 cents per share. A year earlier the Canton-based company earned $37.2 million, or 40 cents per share. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

MORTGAGES

Rates barely move

Long-term US mortgage rates barely moved this week after rising last week for the first time in five weeks. The benchmark 30-year rate remained above the key threshold of 4 percent. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday the average rate on 30-year fixed-rate home loans ticked down to 4.02 percent from 4.03 percent last week. The rate stood at 3.66 percent a year ago and averaged 3.65 percent in 2016, the lowest level in records dating to 1971. The rate on 15-year mortgages was unchanged from last week at 3.27 percent. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

REGULATORS

Credit Suisse pays $400m claims involving collapse of credit unions

Credit Suisse Group AG paid $400 million to settle a US regulator’s claims that the bank’s improper sales of mortgage-backed securities contributed to the collapse of three corporate credit unions, the agency said Wednesday. The agreement with the National Credit Union Administration resolves allegations in a 2012 lawsuit filed by the agency over the Zurich-based bank’s sales to corporate credit unions — financial institutions that provide loans and other services to customer-facing credit unions. Credit Suisse settled without admitting or denying wrongdoing, NCUA said. This is the latest in a series of deals NCUA has struck with big banks over their securities sales. The agency has collected more than $5.1 billion. Credit Suisse’s settlement is tied to losses at US Central Federal Credit Union, Southwest Corporate Federal Credit Union, and Western Corporate Federal Credit Union, the agency said. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

MEDIA

Viacom stock drops after CEO says its offerings are now in higher-tier cable package of Charter

Viacom Inc. plunged after chief executive Bob Bakish acknowledged that some of the media company’s most popular channels have been relegated to a higher-priced tier of service on Charter Communications Inc. New Charter subscribers can now only get Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, Spike, BET, and Comedy Central if they pay for the most expensive cable package, which could reduce Viacom’s viewership and fees from cable and satellite distributors — two critical sources of revenue. Class B shares of the New York-based company fell more than 7 percent to $36.46, after dropping to as low as $35.20 earlier. Cable and satellite-TV providers just suffered their worst first quarter of subscriber losses in history, and are testing packages with fewer channels at lower costs to keep customers. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

UNEMPLOYMENT

Fewer claims for jobless benefits

Fewer Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week after two weeks of small gains. The Labor Department says weekly jobless claims dropped by 19,000 to 238,000, the lowest level in three weeks. The less volatile four-week average edged up by 750 to 243,000. Overall, 1.96 million Americans are collecting unemployment benefits, down 8.1 percent from a year ago. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

TECHNOLOGY

Four games inducted into World Video Game Hall of Fame

Attention Halo Nation, ‘‘Halo: Combat Evolved’’ is in the World Video Game Hall of Fame. The science fiction shooter game that enthralled a legion of fans after its 2001 launch with the Xbox system is one of four games to be inducted into the hall Thursday. ‘‘Donkey Kong,’’ ‘’Pokemon Red and Green,’’ and ‘‘Street Fighter II’’ round out the young hall’s third class of honorees. All will be on permanent display at The Strong museum in Rochester, N.Y., where the hall of fame was established in 2015 to recognize an industry that the Entertainment Software Association said generated $30.4 billion in revenue in the United States last year. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

TECHNOLOGY

Justice Department opens criminal probe into Uber

The Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Uber’s use of a secret software that was used to evade authorities in places where its ride-sharing service was banned or restricted, according to a person familiar with the government’s probe. The federal criminal probe, first reported by Reuters, comes on top of a civil case that was launched into the software. The program, called Greyball, helped the company evade officials in cities where Uber was not yet approved. The software helped Uber identify transportation regulators that were posing as Uber customers and denied them rides. The officials were posing as customers to prove that the company was operating illegally. Both Uber and the Department of Justice declined to comment. — WASHINGTON POST

TRADE

US trade deficit narrows, but grows with China

The US trade deficit narrowed in March to the lowest level since October as both exports and imports fell. But the politically sensitive trade gap with China rose. The Commerce Department said Thursday that the gap in goods and services slipped to $43.7 billion, down from $43.8 billion in February. Exports dropped 0.9 percent to $191 billion, pulled down by falling auto exports. Imports fell 0.7 percent $234.7 billion as imports of crude oil and other petroleum products slid. President Trump was elected on a pledge to reduce America’s trade deficits, which he blames on unfair trade practices by China and other countries. The president says trade deficits are responsible for the loss of hundreds of factories and millions of manufacturing jobs. — ASSOCIATED PRESS