Alphabet CEO fires 12,000 people, says company ‘hired for a different economic reality’ TechCrunch
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Happy Friday! Let’s make a wish together Lorenzo A very warm welcome to the team! He’ll be joining our elite team of cybersecurity reporters, working alongside Zack and Carly. He just posted his first article on TC, about T-Mobile reports hackers accessing personal data of 37 million customers. Welcome on board!!
Enjoy your weekend! — Christine and haje
Top 3 TechCrunch
- Alphabet says dismissal: With all that has been said about tech layoffs over the past few months, it’s only a matter of time before we see something from Google’s parent company, Alphabet. The search engine giant announced it is cutting 6% of its workforce, which affects 12,000 people. And like everyone else, it was CEO Sundar Pichai’s turn to explain how the company “recruits for another economic reality,” Paul write.
- Game over: With gaming as popular as it is today, this next layoff story is a bit of a surprise, though not entirely a surprise given that media companies are being hit hard. Fandom Entertainment, which publishes content under the names Giant Bomb, GameSpot and Metacritic, has laid off about 10% of its employees on those publications, Ivan report.
- It’s all about money, money, money: Social media influencers in India must disclose promotional content, aka paid advertising, to the government and currently, the Department of Consumer Affairs has given some direction. instructions on how to do that. Jagmeet there are many more.
Start-ups and VC
The $32 million seed round for Chris DeWolfe’s latest games company seems like a throwback to a more mellow era, such as… 2021. But that’s it. How much PLAI Labs just raised in a deal led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)report connie. That’s a lot of moolah in a volatile market, she points out, even coming from two separate a16z funds: the company’s $600 million debut game vehicle and a crypto fund. its $4.5 billion valuation, both announced last May.
Here are a few more for you:
4 investors discuss the next big wave for alternative seafood startups
WildType’s sushi grade, lab-raised salmon image. Image credits: Arye Elfenbein/WildType
There’s a lot of hype around plant-based burgers and nuggets, but seafood alternatives are garnering more attention — and funding — from investors today.
“More than $178 million was injected into alternative seafood in the first half of 2022, and the value of the market is poised to reach $1.6 billion in the next 10 years,” she reports.
To learn more about this mature space, Christine Hall surveyed four investors for their thoughts on regulation, the “special challenges” companies face as they try to expand. size and how they approach growth and risk:
- Kate Danaher, managing director of oceans and seafood, S2G Ventures
- Friederike Grosse-Holz, director, Blue Horizon
- Christian Lim, managing director, Blue Oceans of SWEN Capital Partners
- Amy Novogratz, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Aqua Spark
Three other pieces of information from the TC+ team:
TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can register here. Use code “DC” to get 15% off your annual subscription!
Big tech company
Okay, no more layoffs. We’re gonna have some fun, because it’s Friday, damn it!
Are you still playing Wordle? Or perhaps you’ve switched to its Qordle clone. Wells, Quordle acquired by Merriam-Webster, Paul report. If you haven’t tried it, Quordle is similar to the basic Wordle concept, guessing a word in a certain number of attempts, except there are four five-letter words to guess at once, with only nine attempts. It could be just something to warm you up on a cold winter night.
Here are four more for you to enjoy on Friday:
- Your turn: amanda wrote that after weeks of backlash and outcry from content creators and fans, Publisher Dungeons & Dragons made the decision to place the game under a Creative Commons license.
- A sudden goodbye: After recently cutting out third-party clients, including Tweetbot and Twitterific, Twitter went ahead and officially banned them, Kyle write.
- ICYMI: Netflix Founder Reed Hastings resigns as co-CEO but will remain on the board, Taylor write. While, Netflix is eyeing free “FAST” streaming channels as a possibility to grow its advertising business, Lauren report.
- Up, up and go: Like Darrell writes, Canada is standing on the sidelines and joining the space race, saying they want to support the launch of the commercial space.
