Techmeme
May 13, 2022, 5:05 AM

Top News

@kayvz:
[Thread] Twitter product chief Kayvon Beykpour says he is leaving at the request of CEO Parag Agrawal, who wants to “take the team in a different direction”  —  Interrupting my paternity leave to share some final @twitter-related news: I'm leaving the company after over 7 years.
Bloomberg:
In a memo, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces a hiring freeze and other cost-cutting efforts; VP of product Jay Sullivan will take over as head of product  —  Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal announced a hiring freeze and other cost-cutting efforts on Thursday …
Tim Copeland / The Block:
Terraform Labs resumes Terra block production, with staking disabled, after halting the blockchain “to prevent governance attacks” following LUNA's collapse  —  Quick Take  — Terraform Labs has said the Terra blockchain has been halted.  — This is due to concerns …
Financial Times:
Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino declines to reveal details about the company's $40B US government bond holdings, for fear of revealing its “secret sauce”  —  Token's tech chief declines to provide details on Treasury holdings on fear of revealing ‘secret sauce’
Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk:
Joanna Ossinger / Bloomberg:
Yueqi Yang / Bloomberg:
Coinbase's market cap falls to $12.98B from a $75B+ peak in 2021 as its stock closes at $58.50, far below its first day closing price of $328.28 in April 2021  —  Coinbase Global Inc. has declined precipitously this year, largely mimicking the drop in Bitcoin prices and taking its market value …
Veronica Irwin / Protocol:
Masayoshi Son says SoftBank plans to cut its startup investments by 50%-75% through March 2023, after Vision Fund reported a $20B+ loss for its fiscal year  —  Japanese conglomerate SoftBank is severely cutting its planned startup investments through next March, Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said in a Thursday earnings call.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Ex-Facebook crypto chief David Marcus launches Lightspark, a payments startup building on Bitcoin's Lightning network, backed by a16z, Paradigm, and others  —  After his departure from Facebook in November, many crypto industry insiders speculated where long-time executive David Marcus would land.
Washington Post:
Interviews with 17 Hollywood insiders reveal that celebrities view Twitter as a high-risk, low-reward platform, and why Musk's ownership might make it worse  —  Elon Musk was right that Twitter's most popular accounts have gone quieter over the years.  Hollywood insiders explain what happened …
Tanaya Macheel / CNBC:
SEC filing: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried bought a 7.6% stake, worth $648M, in Robinhood, calling it “an attractive investment”; stock jumps 20%+ after hours  —  Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of crypto exchange FTX, has taken a 7.6% stake in Robinhood, according to a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Mahira Dayal / The Information:
PitchBook: 16 new VC funds with 60%+ female decision makers have raised $4.5B from January to April 2022; women-led funds raised $3.7B in 2021 and $1.8B in 2020  —  For years, women-led venture capital funds were the true Silicon Valley unicorns, a rarity in a sector where the vast majority of check writers are men.
Riana Pfefferkorn / Stanford CIS Blog:
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the enforcement of US laws should be seen as a strong argument for strengthening encryption, not weakening it  —  With the Supreme Court poised to rip away a constitutional right that's been the law of the land for nearly half a century by overturning Roe v. Wade …
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
MicroStrategy's massive bitcoin bet has become a $330M paper loss as bitcoin trades around $28K; MicroStrategy holds 129,218 BTC, bought for $30,700 on average  —  Quick Take  — Bitcoin's price fall has led to unrealized losses for MicroStrategy.  — The Nasdaq-listed company …
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times:

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
What will the next generation of developers do when AI writes the code?  —  Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon are betting that the junior devs we train today will be the senior engineers of tomorrow.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
UK tax compliance with Zoho Books  —  The evolving tax landscape in the UK has added an additional responsibility to business owners, accountants, and bookkeepers to ensure their choice of accounting software supports compliance …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Anthropic IPO Panic, A Spy At OpenAI?, The Great Food Slop Debate
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Great Chat:
What happened to tech's backbone?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The $7B Startup Mapping Your Health In Just One Hour | Neko's Hjalmar Nilsonne
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
The company building underwater drones for $50,000
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
BG2 Pod:
Jensen Huang | Does AI Revenue Justify Capex, '27 AI Bottlenecks, Singularity, Open vs Closed & more
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
How to Run a Political Campaign in the TikTok Era (And How Not To)
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:05 AM ET, May 13, 2022.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE:

Earlier Picks

Scott Stein / CNET:
Thomas Stackpole / HBR.org:
Reuters: