20 richest tech billionaires will lose nearly half a trillion dollars in 2022

The past week in particular has been a stock market disaster for Big Tech. Also: After the Twitter takeover, politicians are targeting Elon Musk – hate comments are said to have already increased on the platform.

Good morning! Even during the weekend, work in the digital scene continued in many places.

The top topics:

The 20 richest tech billionaires have lost nearly half a trillion dollars this year. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s wealthiest people, the world’s wealthiest tech moguls – including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison – Seen more than $480 billion in paper assets disappear this year through Thursday. That’s more than the market value of most S&P 500 companies. And another comparison: In Germany, all 40 companies in the Dax together are worth around 1.5 trillion dollars.

Last week, the situation for Big Tech got even worse: This is the stock market value of Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft down $700 billion in three days. It was particularly bad for Meta, which lost 24 percent in two days, and Amazon, which slipped almost 15 percent. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt, Wall Street Journal und Wall Street Journal]

on Founder Scene: They characterize the cityscape in metropolises such as Berlin and Hamburg: Small, agile and electric mopeds. Nevertheless, the vehicles are an annoying obstacle for motorists. With a top speed of 45 kilometers per hour, they are simply too slow to keep up with traffic. That provokes dangerous accidents, believes our torque columnist Don Dahlmann. He demands: More speed! [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

And here are the other headlines of the night and the past few days:

Hardly is the Twitter– Takeover completed, the policy takes the new owner, Tesla-Chief Elon Musk, set your sights. The EU Commission has already made it clear that it insists on compliance with rules. Former US President Donald Trump now sees the platform “in sensible hands”, as he said on his own online platform on Friday Truth Social wrote. What will happen to his account on the short message service, which was suspended after the storm on the Capitol, is still unclear. Musk wrote on Twitter on Friday that there will be a “Content Moderation Council‘ before decisions are made. The latter is said to include “very different points of view”. According to Bloomberg, racist and hateful comments on the platform have already increased. [Mehr bei CNBC, CNBC, The Information, Bloomberg und Handelsblatt]

Die Twittershares will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange following November 8 takeover by Elon Musk. That’s according to a new filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The delisting takes place on the same day as the US midterm elections. At the same time it became known that the US group General Motors temporarily suspended paid advertising on Twitter following the Musk acquisition. “We are working with Twitter to understand the platform’s direction under its new ownership,” the company said. [Mehr bei Techcrunch und Techcrunch]

Elon Musk should after the takeover of Twitter have already ordered layoffs, as the New York Times reported on Saturday. On Sunday Musk tweeted, who now describes himself as “Chief Twit,” that “there seems to be ten people who ‘manage’ each person who programs”. The latter signals that he considers the company to be severely overstaffed. The New York Times did not report details of the layoffs. According to the Washington Post, up to 75 percent of the 7,500 employees could be affected. Some of the management team, including former CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal, were fired last week. However, Musk dismissed claims from the New York Times report that employees should be fired before Tuesday, November 1 to avoid receiving their stock grants as part of their compensation untrue. [Mehr bei New York Times, Washington Post und Techcrunch]

Binance is assembling a team to take care of how crypto and blockchain technology Twitter could benefit. A company spokesman told The Information on Friday, less than 24 hours after Elon Musk completed his takeover of the social media company. For example, the new team will explore how blockchain technology could help Twitter with problems with bots. Binance, the largest global crypto exchange by volume, backed Musk’s purchase of the company with a $500 million equity investment. [Mehr bei The Information]

Investments: The well-known VC Andreessen Horowitz has in the company Simple Things invests, a new home security startup founded by Andy Rubin. Ruby is the infamous one GoogleManager who was fired after an internal investigation found he had an inappropriate relationship with an employee. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the venture capitalist, is also said to be part of the board of Simple Things. [Mehr bei Semafor und The Information]

Our reading tip on Gründerszene: On Thursday he celebrated Startup Mortgage his anniversary. Economics Minister Robert Habeck addressed important topics, but also briefly caused astonishment with a slip of the tongue. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

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Have a good start into the week!

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