🐦 Twitter's New $20 Billion Valuation

Update 2023-03-28

News

• Twitter Staff Receive Stock Grants From Elon Musk Valuing Company at $20 Billion

• Amazon HR Rejects Petition to Allow Remote Work, Employees Express Disappointment and Frustration

• Meta Argues Big Tech Companies Should Not Pay Additional Costs Toward Telecom Operators

• Apple Acquires WaveOne to Enhance its Video Streaming Technology with AI Capabilities

• Apple CEO Tim Cook to Attend China Development Forum in Closed-Door Summit

• France Bans Popular Apps, Games, and Streaming Platforms on Civil Servant Devices

• Lyft Founders Step Down, Amazon Alum Takes Over CEO Role

• Databricks Democratizes AI with Launch of Dolly Model

• Salesforce & Elliott Issue Joint Statement to Move Forward - No Stockholder Action Required

• Zoom Introduces AI-Powered Features to its Video Conferencing App

• First Citizens Acquires Silicon Valley Bank in FDIC-Backed Deal

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Big Tech

Twitter Staff Receive Stock Grants From Elon Musk Valuing Company at $20 Billion

According to reports, Elon Musk has offered stock grants to Twitter staff that value the company at $20 billion. Musk paid $44 billion to take control of Twitter in late October but has since admitted that the company is now worth less than half of that.

He told staff that Twitter had been through a period of necessary change and that the financial incentives of employees should now align with the company. Musk also reportedly told staff that he saw a "clear but difficult path" to a $250 billion valuation. The stock grants will be based on a third-party valuation and will be available for sale every six months during liquidity events.

Amazon HR Rejects Petition to Allow Remote Work, Employees Express Disappointment and Frustration

Amazon employees are upset after a petition to cancel the company's return-to-office plan was rejected by HR. The petition, which was signed by approximately 30,000 workers, argued that employees are more productive and have a better work-life balance in a remote work environment. However, Amazon's HR chief, Beth Galetti, rejected the petition and signaled that the return-to-office plan will move forward as scheduled.

The plan requires most employees to work on site at least three days per week starting on May 1. The rejection of the petition has caused internal grumbling among employees, with some expressing disappointment and frustration on an internal Slack channel. The rejection of the petition is the latest sign of discord at Amazon, which recently announced another round of layoffs.

Meta Argues Big Tech Companies Should Not Pay Additional Costs Toward Telecom Operators

Meta executives have criticized proposals to impose new fees on Big Tech companies to pay for broadband networks, arguing that such proposals are based on a false premise. They argue that investments in content drive the business model of telecom operators and that telecom operators and content application providers are symbiotic businesses occupying different but complementary roles in the digital ecosystem.

Meta invests tens of billions of euros in apps and platforms to facilitate content hosting, which drives telecom operators' revenue and business model. Telecom operators argue that Big Tech companies should pay a "fair share" toward network-building costs. However, Meta argues that there is no credible evidence of an investment gap in either fixed network capacity or mobile coverage.

Apple Acquires WaveOne to Enhance its Video Streaming Technology with AI Capabilities

Apple has acquired WaveOne, a startup that develops video compression algorithms using artificial intelligence.

• WaveOne sought to bring the power of AI to bear on compressing video for streaming over networks where it’s necessary to cut down the size of video streams in order to reduce latency for better viewing experiences.

• The company claimed its approach could reduce the size of video files by up to half, and those gains were even better on more complex scenes.

• The technology is hardware-agnostic, meaning it could run without the need for new chips to process the machine learning technology in data centers or consumer TVs and devices.

• There are no details on how much Apple may have paid for the company or when the technology will be integrated into its services.

Apple CEO Tim Cook to Attend China Development Forum in Closed-Door Summit

Apple CEO Tim Cook will attend the China Development Forum (CDF), a high-profile summit hosted by the Chinese government, along with other top US executives.

• The two-day meeting will be the first offline CDF gathering in three years since the Covid-19 outbreak.

• The closed-door summit will take place as international businesses are reassessing their presence and prospects in the country following its draconian three-year pandemic lockdowns and amid rising geopolitical tensions.

• While Cook may be trying to reduce Apple's reliance on China and has made progress, the world's second-largest economy remains an important market for the company.

• Despite US-China political tensions, Apple's products remain popular among Chinese consumers.

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Startups

France Bans Popular Apps, Games, and Streaming Platforms on Civil Servant Devices

France has banned civil servants from downloading social media platforms, gaming, and video-streaming apps on their work phones due to cybersecurity and privacy concerns. The ban includes TikTok, Candy Crush, and Netflix, effective immediately.

The French government is also targeting Western apps and platforms from Europe and the United States. Exceptions could be granted for "institutional communications" purposes. The National Assembly's top officials have also encouraged MPs to limit their use of social media apps and messaging services. The government is working on a streamlined policy for civil servants.

Lyft Founders Step Down, Amazon Alum Takes Over CEO Role

Lyft co-founders, CEO Logan Green and president John Zimmer, are stepping down from their roles and will serve as chair and vice chair of Lyft’s board, respectively.

• David Risher, a former retail executive at Amazon, will take over the CEO position at Lyft. Risher joined Amazon in 1997 as the company’s first VP of product and store development. He moved up through the ranks at the side of Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos, and served as SVP of marketing and merchandising before leaving Amazon in 2002.

• Risher, who joined the Lyft board of directors in 2021, will take over the full leadership responsibilities for the company’s operations on April 17, according to the company.

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SaaS and Cloud

Databricks Democratizes AI with Launch of Dolly Model

Databricks has released an open-source large language model (LLM) called Dolly, which can be used to create instruction-following chatbots similar to ChatGPT.

• The model can be trained on very little data and in very little time, and Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said that with $30, one server, and three hours, Dolly can be taught to start doing human-level interactivity.

• The release of Dolly is part of Databricks' mission to democratize AI for the enterprise.

• The company believes that most machine learning users are best served long term by directly owning their models.

• Databricks found that instruction-following does not seem to require the latest or largest models, and that much of the qualitative gains in state-of-the-art models like ChatGPT may owe to focused corpuses of instruction-following training data, rather than larger or better-tuned base models.

Salesforce & Elliott Issue Joint Statement to Move Forward - No Stockholder Action Required

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) and Elliott Investment Management L.P. have issued a joint statement regarding the Company’s 2023 Annual Meeting of Stockholders and related director elections.

• In light of the Company’s “New Day” multi-year profitable growth framework and Board & management actions, Elliott decided not to proceed with director nominations.

• Marc Benioff (Chair & CEO, Salesforce) expressed his gratitude towards Jesse Cohn (Managing Partner, Elliott), while Jesse committed to continuing a productive relationship with Salesforce team.

• The upcoming annual meeting will proceed in the ordinary course; no action is necessary from stockholders at this time.

Zoom Introduces AI-Powered Features to its Video Conferencing App

Zoom has partnered with OpenAI to bring AI-generated summaries, message drafts, and other features to its video conferencing app through its Zoom IQ AI-powered assistant.

• The assistant can create chapters and highlights for recorded meetings, generate whiteboards based on text prompts, and provide recaps of meetings.

• It can also summarize threads in Zoom Team Chat and generate responses to colleagues using AI.

• Zoom plans to roll out AI-powered message and email drafts on an invitation-only basis in April and introduce select Zoom IQ meeting summary features more broadly.

• The company has also added new features, including a Calendar and Mail app, and a video-enabled virtual coworking space called Huddles

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Funding, Venture Capital and M&A

First Citizens Acquires Silicon Valley Bank in FDIC-Backed Deal

First Citizens has agreed to buy the commercial banking business of Silicon Valley Bank, which recently collapsed and was seized by the U.S. government. The deal includes SVB's 17 branches, which will reopen under the First Citizens brand, and all SVB depositors will become depositors of First Citizens.

First Citizens will assume $56.5 billion of deposits and $72.1 billion of loans from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the latter of which came with a $16.5 billion discount. The FDIC estimates that SVB will cost up to a $20 billion loss from its Deposit Insurance Fund. SVB's securities business and venture capital investment portfolio are not included in the transaction.