The Tesla boss even wants to pay the originally agreed $ 44 billion. Also: Volocopter is threatened with legal trouble and Amazon is stepping on the brakes.
Good morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.
The top topics:
It’s a spectacular turn: Tesla-Chef Elon Musk wants to take over the short message service Twitter now do it. This emerges from a mandatory notification to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. Musk is also willing to pay the originally agreed purchase price of $54.20 per share. The latter values the platform at $44 billion.
With the tech billionaire giving in, the legal dispute over the deal should be shelved. The case went to court because Musk actually withdrew from the April purchase agreement in July. Twitter allegedly misrepresented the number of spam and fake accounts on its platform. However, experts assessed Musk’s chances in court as slim. Whether the latter brought about a turnaround remained unclear for the time being. The stock market reacted euphorically to the news: Twitter shares rose by 22 percent. [Mehr bei Welt, CNBC und Business Insider]
on Founding scene: Claire Hae-Min Gusko and Martin Weber were two of the first ten employees of the Berlin Food-Unicorn infarm, which introduced the topic of vertical farming to Germany with its greenhouse cabinets. What they observed there: It was difficult to pack the sensitive herbs safely and sustainably. In 2020 they started their own startup – and just landed an amount in the double-digit millions. Here you can see the pitch deck with which they convinced the investors. [Mehr bei Gründerszene+]
And here are the other headlines of the night:
Volocopter According to a media report, there is a risk of legal trouble with 177 of his investors. On Tuesday morning, the letter from a law firm was delivered to Dirk Hoke, who had just taken office, according to the “Handelsblatt”. Behind this is apparently the “Volocopter investor community”, which wants to achieve “fair participation” in the tech company from Bruchsal. The letter is said to have pointed out alleged “mistakes in the participation agreements”. These could possibly serve as a basis for a court case. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt]
Amazon is suspending new hires at its retail business through the end of the year. The move follows the general slowdown in online sales. The hiring freeze applies to corporate roles in the Worldwide Amazon Stores division, but not to the warehouse network, which employs most Amazon employees. Amazon Web Services, the company’s profitable cloud computing services arm, is also unaffected. [Mehr bei New York Times und Bloomberg]
Duolingo has taken over its first startup, an animation studio that previously worked with the language learning app, as well as for Amazon, Dropbox, Spotify and Google provides animations. A purchase price for the Detroit-based startup Gunner has not been announced for the time being. According to Duolingo, Gunner’s entire team of 15 will be integrated into Duolingo as part of the deal. The edtech company also announced plans to open an office in Detroit. So far, the company has branches in New York, Seattle, Beijing and Berlin in addition to the headquarters in Pittsburgh. [Mehr bei Techcrunch]
Micron Technology has agreed to invest up to $100 billion to build a semiconductor manufacturing campus in upstate New York. The US government is currently trying to boost domestic production of chips. In addition Samsung announced plans to produce some of the world’s most advanced semiconductors in five years. The roadmap for future chip production states that chips with two-nanometer technology should start to be manufactured by 2025 and 1.4-nanometer technology by 2027. [Mehr bei Wall Street Journal, CNBC und CNBC]
Cryptocurrencies: The influencer Kim Kardashian has to pay a fine of millions to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. She had named a crypto token to her more than 330 million Instagram followers in June 2021 Ethereummax recommended, which is now hardly worth anything. She herself received $250,000 for the “tip”. She now has to pay a fine of 1.26 million dollars. The latter could be an indication that the SEC will also apply stricter standards to others in the future. [Mehr bei Bloomberg]
Our reading tip on Gründerszene: From Beethoven to Vivaldi – musicians will soon be able to play everything from the iPad. The founding scene visited the conductor Boian Videnoffwhich explains how the app Units and the tech startup behind it work. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]
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Happy Wednesday!
Your Gründerszene editors
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/elon-musk-will-twitter-nun-doch-kaufen/
