In an interview with the BBC, however, he also admitted that he only went through with the takeover because a judge wanted to force him to buy it. Also, Softbank is dumping most of its Alibaba shares.
Good morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.
The top topics:
Twitter is on the verge of achieving positive cash flow, according to CEO Elon Musk. In an interview with Britain’s BBC, Musk said advertisers would return to the platform. Musk has made harsh cuts and laid off thousands of social media employees to make more money off Twitter and recoup his multibillion-dollar investment.
In the interview, Musk admitted that firing the employees was “not fun” and that the acquisition was “painful” and “stressful.” According to Musk, Twitter now only has 1,500 employees. Before the takeover there were just under 8000. Musk also revealed that he does sleep in the office from time to time — on a sofa in the seventh-floor library at Twitter headquarters. It was already announced yesterday that Musk had arranged for Twitter’s company name to be changed to X Corp. is converted. The company is now officially registered in Nevada and no longer in Delaware. [Mehr bei BBC, CNBC und Wall Street Journal]
On Founder Scene: The idea for the business of Talpasolutions came to the founders at a depth of 1500 meters. They read the data from the sensors of heavy mining equipment. The software should then be able to recognize, for example, whether the huge excavators should be serviced more quickly. A failure of the devices means considerable costs for the operator. Today you can read how the startup from Essen makes a lot of money with its business. [Mehr bei Gründerszene+]
And here are the other headlines of the night:
Die Ali Baba-Shares are down almost 3 percent in after-hours trading after it was announced that Softbank sold a large part of its stake in the Chinese e-commerce group. The Japanese tech investor sells shares worth around 7.2 billion US dollars, according to a report by the Financial Times. After the sale, Softbank only owns 3.8 percent of Alibaba. The latter equates to a market cap of nearly $250 billion. [Mehr bei Financial Times]
Warner Bros Discovery announced on Wednesday that the new streaming service, dubbed “Max,” which will replace the previous offering, HBO Max, will launch on May 23. The new service will combine entertainment from HBO Max with Discovery’s reality shows. The highlight of the new service is likely to be a Harry Potter TV series. However, it is not yet known when the show will be shown. [Mehr bei Reuters und Spiegel]
Rent the Runway forecasts that sales growth will slow to about ten percent in the coming year. At the same time, the clothing rental company announced a new strategy. The US company offers more items for the same price. Previously, it tried to upsell customers to add more items. The company reported fourth quarter revenue of $75.4 million and full year revenue of $296.4 million. This is an increase of 46 percent over the previous year. [Mehr bei The Information]
The insolvent crypto exchange FTX has recovered over $7.3 billion in cash and liquid crypto assets. That’s more than $800 million more than in January, the company’s attorney said at a hearing before a US bankruptcy court in Delaware on Wednesday. FTX clients, meanwhile, have filed a class action lawsuit to assert their claims over the firm’s dwindling assets. [Mehr bei Reuters]
OpenAI has received a deadline from Italy in a dispute over data protection. The artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT must meet the requirements of the data protection authority Garante by the end of April. Only then will the blocking of the program for users in Italy be lifted, it said. A statement from Microsoft sponsored US company does not yet exist. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt und Techcrunch]
Our reading tip on Gründerszene: Fierce Zoff about layoffs at Miele-Startup Agrilution Systems: The household appliance group sees the vertical farming company as a failure, but its works council is fighting back. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]
Don’t want to miss anything? Then subscribe to our Gründerszene newsletter! It appears every morning at 8:30 a.m. and brings you all the important news straight to your inbox.
A nice Thursday!
Your Gründerszene editors
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/elion-musk-interview-twitter/
