11:20 PM • | Adam Beam / Associated Press: CA State Assembly approves a bill letting parents sue social media companies if children become “addicted” to the companies' products; bill needs a final vote |
9:10 PM • | Kate Park / TechCrunch: SwipeRx, a digital platform for pharmacists in Southeast Asia for daily tasks like purchasing or inventory financing, raises a $27M Series B led by MDI Ventures |
6:40 PM • | Issie Lapowsky / Protocol: Spotify is slowly bringing back political ads on podcasts after pausing them in early 2020, and says it has strengthened its advertiser verification system |
6:05 PM • | Riley de León / CNBC: eBay partners with NFT startup OneOf to launch 13 digital collectibles featuring Wayne Gretzky, and plans more sports NFTs throughout 2022, starting at $10 each |
5:22 PM • | Kif Leswing / CNBC: Snap CEO warns employees the company will miss its Q2 revenue and earnings targets as its growth weakens, and plans to slow hiring; stock drops 29%+ |
5:05 PM • | Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: TikTok plans to roll out Live subscriptions, to let creators generate recurring revenue via payments from their top fans, in beta on May 26 with select creators |
4:40 PM • | Wall Street Journal: Sources: Broadcom is in talks to pay ~$140 per share, or about $60B, for VMware, and the companies are aiming to announce the cash-and-stock deal on Thursday |
4:27 PM • | CNBC: Zoom reports Q1 revenue of $1.07B, up 12% YoY, vs. $1.07B est., ~199K Enterprise customers, up 24% YoY, and raises forecasted Q2 and full fiscal year earnings |
3:53 PM • | Patrick Klepek / VICE: The QA team at Activision Blizzard's Raven Software votes 19-3 to unionize, as US labor board prosecutors determined the company “illegally threatened staff” |
3:40 PM • | The Information: Sources: Coinbase is testing an app from Ray Dalio's company Principles that lets staff rate each other on how well they exemplify Coinbase's 10 cultural tenets |
2:35 PM • | CTech: Sources: eToro is in the advanced stages of raising $800M to $1B at a $5B to $6B valuation, while its SPAC deadline has been extended to June 30, 2022 |
2:25 PM • | Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: The UK's data protection watchdog fines Clearview AI £7.5M+ for violating privacy laws and orders the company to delete UK citizen information from its systems |
2:17 PM • | Deirdre Bosa / CNBC: Sources: Airbnb plans to remove all mainland China listings for homes and experiences by this summer, but will keep a Beijing office focusing on outbound travel |
2:00 PM • | Stephen Wright / Wall Street Journal: The Buffalo shooting live stream demonstrated the strengths and limitations of the Christchurch Call accord, created in 2019 to counter online terrorist content |
1:10 PM • | TechCrunch: Sources: MainStreet, which helps SMBs find tax credits, is raising at a $200M valuation, down from $500M in March 2021, weeks after laying off ~30% of its staff |
12:55 PM • | Issie Lapowsky / Protocol: The 11th Circuit federal court upholds blocking Florida's social media “censorship” law to protect First Amendment rights, as SCOTUS weighs Texas' similar law |
12:40 PM • | Financial Times: On April 6, weeks before UST collapsed, Binance promoted the stablecoin on Telegram as a “High Yield, Safe & Happy Earn” investment with an annual 19.63% yield |
11:55 AM • | Mimi Billing / Sifted: Klarna tells employees it plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, after reports of raising money at a reduced $30B valuation; LinkedIn shows it has 6,500+ staff |
10:15 AM • | New York Times: A look at efforts by 50+ countries to control the data produced by their citizens, governments, and businesses, driven by privacy concerns, economics, and more |
10:05 AM • | Matt Burgess / Wired: As GDPR turns four, despite some positives, regulators struggle to keep up with complaints, the ad industry remains littered with potential abuses, and more |
9:45 AM • | Ryan Weeks / The Block: Sources: Seattle-based Protego Trust Bank, which provides digital asset custody and trading services for institutional investors, raised a $70M Series A in 2021 |
9:25 AM • | Coco Liu / Bloomberg: Didi shareholders vote to delist from the NYSE, clearing the way for Didi to work with Chinese regulators to revamp its data systems and prepare a Hong Kong IPO |
9:10 AM • | Eva Szalay / Financial Times: BNP Paribas joins JPMorgan's blockchain-based Onyx Digital Assets network, which has facilitated $300B+ in intraday repurchase market deals since December 2020 |
8:55 AM • | Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch: Cairo-based Sylndr, which is building an online used car marketplace, raises a $12.6M pre-seed led by RAED Ventures and plans to launch in Q4 2022 or Q1 2023 |
8:45 AM • | Wall Street Journal: Chat logs: Twitter employees are bewildered about what their jobs are and will be after Elon Musk takes over; VP Jay Sullivan expects a “chaos tax” to continue |
8:40 AM • | Spencer Soper / Bloomberg: Sources: Amazon, which has too much warehouse capacity now that pandemic-era shopping has faded, is looking to sublet at least 10M square feet across the US |
8:25 AM • | Mike Isaac / New York Times: Meta plans to give outside researchers more info on political ad targeting on Facebook and Instagram and to update Ad Library with more info starting in July |
8:15 AM • | Damien Wilde / 9to5Google: Xiaomi signs a long-term partnership with Leica and announces a jointly developed smartphone launching in July 2022, which is likely to be the Xiaomi 12 Ultra |
7:55 AM • | Financial Times: IT services group Atos sues the UK over a £854M meteorology supercomputer contract, awarded to Microsoft in 2021; a High Court trial is expected in June 2022 |
7:35 AM • | Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: Singapore-based MatchMove, which helps businesses embed financial services, acquires e-commerce startup Shopmatic for $200M; Shopmatic has 1M+ customers |
7:15 AM • | Rita Liao / TechCrunch: StepN, a Solana-based app that lets users earn tokens by walking and running, says it has 2M-3M MAUs and makes $3M-5M per day in net profit from trading fees |
6:10 AM • | Tripp Mickle / New York Times: Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are positioned to emerge stronger from this downturn; Refinitiv: from 2008 to 2010, the companies acquired 100+ firms |
4:30 AM • | Kamaron Leach / Bloomberg: Denver-based Velocity Global, which helps companies hire remote and international workers, raises a $400M Series B, and says it generated $125M in 2021 revenue |
3:05 AM • | Gavin Bonshor / AnandTech: AMD announces the Ryzen 7000 CPU series with up to 16 Zen 4 cores based on TSMC's 5nm process, PCIe 5.0 support, and DDR5 on the AM5 socket, coming in fall 2022 |
2:55 AM • | Chris J. Preimesberger / VentureBeat: Toronto-based Forma.ai, which helps companies manage and optimize sales compensation plans, raises a $45M Series B led by ACME Capital |
2:35 AM • | Bloomberg: Sources: Broadcom is in talks to acquire VMware, which has a ~$40B market cap; the discussions are ongoing and there's no guarantee they will lead to a purchase |
12:20 AM • | Aditya Kalra / Reuters: General Atlantic plans to invest $2B in India and Southeast Asia over the next two years, and is currently in early-stage funding talks with ~15 startups |