Elon Musk wants 1 billion Twitter users

The tech billionaire spoke to employees via video conference for the first time. Also: Circle launches euro stablecoin and Tesla, Rivian and Ford raise EV prices.

Good morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.

The top topics:

Elon Musk participated in the first question-and-answer session with employees from Twitter commented on the future of the short message service. At the same time he said Teslaboss, he’s aiming for at least one billion users. Twitter currently has 229 million users. However, the growth is to be managed with fewer employees and a savings plan: “At the moment, the costs are exceeding the income,” says Musk. Employees who are relevant to the company have nothing to fear, it said. At the end of 2021, Twitter had 7,500 employees (Facebook had 45,000).

Musk was ten minutes late for the video conference. He commented on the possible existence of extraterrestrials and other space civilizations, arguing that Twitter should help “civilization and consciousness.” He gave few details about the takeover of the service, so it is still unclear when this should take place. Musk reiterated his dislike of working from home. Many employees expressed disappointment after the conference. Twitter shares fell more than 2 percent in later trading, and Tesla lost 10 percent. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg und CNBC]

On Gründerszene you read today: The Berlin investor Project A has closed the largest fund in its ten-year history. And that in the midst of the tech crisis. However, the strategy has changed. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

And here are the other headlines of the night:

Circle is launching a euro-based version of its popular USDC stablecoin. Euro Coin – EUROC – will be available to customers on June 30th as a regulated, euro-backed stablecoin. The euro coin is fully backed by euro-based reserves, Circle said. USDC’s market value has increased to approximately $55 billion from $42 billion at the end of the year. [Mehr bei Bloomberg]

Tesla, Rivian and Ford increase the price of electric vehicles. This brings the average price per EV vehicle to over $60,000. Market leader Tesla is increasing prices by up to $6,000 per car, the third price increase this year. Ford has raised the price of its Mustang Mach-E and Rivian is also following the trend. That doesn’t seem to deter buyers: “We’ve seen a real acceleration in demand at Rivian,” said CFO Claire McDonough. [Mehr bei Bloomberg und CNBC]

Reddit buys the machine learning platform Spell. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed. Spell was founded in 2016 by former Facebook engineer Serkan Piantino. The company defines its mission as striving for “the best possible platform for everyone who wants to develop powerful, reliable and secure software with machine learning and AI”. [Mehr bei Techcrunch]

Die venture capital funding has been declining faster in Europe than in the US since January. According to Crunchbase data, the region saw $13 billion in investments in January, $9.3 billion in February and $8.9 billion in March. The slowdown continued in the second quarter, with total funding in April down 12.3 percent from March to $7.8 billion and in May down 16.7 percent from April to $6.5 billion. The slide is expected to continue in June. [Mehr bei Techcrunch]

Jokr ceases service in New York and Boston. Co-founder and CEO Ralf Wenzel said the startup will focus on Latin America: “We have decided to temporarily suspend our business activities in the US, which last accounted for only about five percent of our business.” He continued, “given our unique position in In Latin America, we have decided to organically increase our investments in the region and expand our service offering to become the leading and customer-strongest online grocery store in all of Latin America.” [Mehr bei Bloomberg und Techcrunch]

Our reading tip on Gründerszene: Again Shitstorm against The Female Company: On social media, founder Ann-Sophie Claus and her team are accused of wanting to profit from the issue of domestic violence. The founder defends her idea. [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.

Happy Friday!

Your Gründerszene editors