The cost savings are bearing fruit – despite the collapse in advertising revenue. Also: Meta’s next round of layoffs is imminent, Salesforce relies on AI and WeWork needs money.
Good morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.
The top topics:
Twitter has a chance to be cash flow positive in Q2 despite “a massive drop in advertising.” The short message service owes this to drastic cost cuts, said Twitter CEO Elon Musk during a Morgan Stanley conference for investors in San Francisco on Tuesday. But Musk, who appeared in person, also acknowledged that Twitter’s revenue is expected to fall to less than $3 billion this year.
At the same time, it was revealed that the US Trade Commission FTC has sent more than a dozen letters to Twitter since Musk took over. In these, the agency asked Twitter to publish all internal communications related to Musk, including Twitter’s interactions with journalists and internal communications related to personnel decisions. [Mehr bei The Information, Bloomberg und Wall Street Journal]
On Founder Scene: Business angels help a startup to grow, especially in the early phase. Not only money, but expertise and the network is crucial. However, there are far too few women in the fishing scene. And that’s a problem because men prefer to invest in men, leaving women-led startups on the back burner. That’s why our editor-in-chief, Alex Hofmann, has a list of them ten most active female business angels put together for you. [Mehr bei Gründerszene+]
And here are the other headlines of the night:
Meta according to a media report, is planning another round of layoffs this week. The new cuts could affect thousands of workers. This substantiates reports from the past few weeks announcing further job creation. The Facebook mother had already laid off 13 percent, a total of 11,000 employees, at the end of last year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg had also previously announced that the social media group would focus on cutting costs this year. He described 2023 as the “year of efficiency”. [Mehr bei Bloomberg]
Salesforce joins the current ChatGPT mania: the SAPRival announced on Tuesday that it would release artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software designed to help salespeople, customer service agents and marketers do their jobs. Salesforce calls the offer Einstein GPT and relies on how Microsoft on the technology of OpenAI. [Mehr bei CNBC]
Wework appears to be negotiating new investments after having just $287 million in cash left. The talks are about raising more money and restructuring debt. The biggest supporter of the office broker, the Japanese tech investor Softbank, but will not raise more money. That’s apparently why WeWork got the real estate software company Yardi in sight. The current outstanding debt amounts to more than three billion dollars. [Mehr bei New York Times]
Infineon buys the Canadian company Gan Systems and thus bet on the future of gallium nitride. The German chip manufacturer pays 830 million US dollars for the medium-sized company, which hardly makes any sales and only has 200 employees. But Infineon boss Jochen Hanebeck believes that the innovative material justifies the high price. At the same time it became known that Intel would like further subsidies of four to five billion euros from the federal government for the construction of a chip production complex in the country. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt und Bloomberg]
Embark, a developer of self-driving trucks based in San Francisco, is about to go into liquidation. Shares in the autonomous trucking company plunged 33 percent on Monday after the firm said it was reviewing a range of options, including dissolving the company and liquidating its assets. Embark was valued at more than $5 billion two years ago when it went public on the Nasdaq tech exchange through a merger with a special purpose vehicle. [Mehr bei The Information]
Our reading tip on the start-up scene: Homemeal wants to turn private individuals into food suppliers. Hobby cooks can use the app to market the dishes they have created and have them delivered. Now the founders are preparing for expansion. [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 Wednesday!
Your Gründerszene editors
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/twitter-elon-musk-positiver-cashflow/
