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- More Twitter Layoffs in The Making 💦
More Twitter Layoffs in The Making 💦
And also: Apple and Ads, Nvidia on AI processing, Blocking of Adobe's Figma acquisition...
Update 2023-02-27
Twitter Lays Off Dozens More in Musk's Cost-Cutting Initiative
Google Scientists Achieve Major Quantum Computing Milestone
Justice Department Plans to Block Adobe's $20 Billion Acquisition of Figma
Apple Hires Ad Tech Executive to Build Video Advertising Business
Infosys and Microsoft Partner to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Transformation With AI and Data Analytics
AI-Driven ProGen Creates Artificial Proteins with Comparable Activity to Natural Enzymes
Nvidia Predicts 1 Million Times More AI Processing Performance Within 10 Years
Klarna Sees Rapid Growth in U.S. Market Despite Pre-Tax Losses in 2022
Shopify Announces Multi-Year Commitment to Partner Program with Enhanced Benefits and Incentives
Facebook Introduces New Policies to Reduce 'Facebook Jail' Penalties
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Big Tech and Startups
According to The Information, Twitter has laid off "dozens" more workers as part of Elon Musk's cost-cutting initiative. The most recent round of redundancies affected at least 50 staff, including engineers responsible for the platform's systems. Martijn Kuijper, who founded the Revue newsletter publishing platform bought by Twitter in January 2021, was laid off.
Since October 2022, when Musk took over the company, Twitter's headcount has reduced by almost 75%. In April 2022, Musk told bankers he could crack down on executive and board pay to cut costs and would look for new ways to monetize tweets. As of mid-January 2023 only 180,000 people had paid for the Twitter Blue feature in the US.
📝 Cloudly quick take: Elon Musk continues to try and optimize the staff counts at Twitter. We have looked at data based on LinkedIn headcount. The number of profiles has decreased significantly in the past six months. Interestingly the decrease started before Musk took the helm.
The actual result is tough to track; Twitter generates revenue primarily through ads, and looking at traffic levels of the page people visit when signing up for an ads account is a way to gauge interest in their service (https://ads.twitter.com). The traffic, estimated by SEMRUSH, has seen decreases, but not to a severe degree. We display the traffic level as an Index instead of the estimated figures.
However looking at the login page (ads.twitter.com/login) tells a different story. We want to stress that this is only estimated traffic by a third-party source.
Google scientists achieved a major milestone in quantum computing by reducing errors. Quantum computing involves entanglement to process information. Errors are caused by decoherence from external influences; Google's team used error-correcting code to detect and fix errors without affecting valuable information.
This breakthrough is seen as an important step towards potential quantum computing applications. Google previously claimed 'quantum supremacy,' but Chinese researchers disputed this.
According to reports, the U.S. Justice Department is planning to block the company's $20 billion acquisition of startup Figma. The deal, announced in September, would help Adobe spur fast growth to its portfolio and pick up technology that could enhance existing programs in its Creative Cloud bundle.
Competition authorities in the U.S. have become more willing to take a hard line on large companies’ efforts to expand, exemplified by the recent FTC lawsuit attempting to stop Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion.
An Adobe spokesperson said that “Adobe and Figma focus on very different product areas today” and “will deliver significant value to consumers and create new market opportunities”, but that they “are engaged in constructive and cooperative discussions with regulators”, expecting closure of the deal in 2023.
📝 Cloudly quick take: In our view, The Figma and Adobe deal should create more significant concerns compared to the Microsoft and Acquisition purchase. A Figma+ Adobe would make a definite juggernaut in the Design. According to sources, Figma + Adobe XD has a market share of about 52%. When combined with Adobe's other adjescent design tools, few competing services can stand their ground.
Apple recently hired Lauren Fry, a former ad tech executive, to build a video advertising business. An ad-supported Apple TV+ tier is likely given Apple's recent actions, such as displaying ads in the App Store and showing ads alongside Major League Baseball games.
Apple is reportedly building an ad network to support its 10-year deal with Major League Soccer. Introducing an ad-supported tier would be the most straightforward way to bring more ads to TV+, similar to how services like Netflix and Disney+ offer such tiers.
Facebook has loosened its rules for "Facebook jail," allowing users to get more explanations and fewer immediate penalties before suspending or banning them. Following Meta's Oversight Board feedback, users will receive up to seven warnings before harsher penalties.
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SaaS and Cloud
Infosys and Microsoft have extended their strategic partnership to accelerate enterprise cloud transformation journeys. This collaboration will see the onboarding of Infosys Cobalt solutions to Microsoft’s industry clouds, covering areas such as modernisation, AI and data analytics.
More than 300,000 Infosys employees can access technologies through an experiential app integrated with various enterprise systems. The joint capabilities of the two organisations are also set to drive extreme automation for product launches across the business value chain via Azure.
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AI
Researchers have developed an AI-driven technology called ProGen, which can generate artificial proteins from scratch. Experiments showed that these proteins had comparable activity to natural enzymes, even for sequences that greatly deviated from any known natural protein.
ProGen uses a natural language processing system to construct its proteins and is said to be more powerful than the Nobel-prize-winning directed evolution protein design technology.
The model was tested with 280 million proteins and fine-tuned with 56,000 sequences from five lysozyme families, after which two AI-generated proteins broke down bacterial cell walls with activity comparable to existing natural enzymes. ProGen is a versatile new tool by protein engineers that could be used for therapeutics and plastic degradation.
Nvidia predicted that GPUs would deliver an AI processing performance boost of 1 million times within a decade. This boost would enable AI models to be one million times more potent than current examples like ChatGPT.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes the next ten years will bring "AI factories" worldwide powered by these advances. A combination of new chips, systems, software and more will be used to reach this level of performance. This could lead to massive breakthroughs in AI technology and potentially true artificial intelligence.
📝 Cloudly quick take: As we have discussed before. Nvidia is an exciting "picks and shovels" bet on the rising AI trend, with an enchanted business outlook if AI services and tools become everyday usage for most people.
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Fintech
U.S has surpassed Germany as Klarna's largest market by revenue, with revenues in the U.S increasing by 71% year-over-year. Klarna's BNPL product saw major growth in 2018 and 2019, and COVID has accelerated their growth further.
Klarna now has 34 million users in the U.S., 8 million monthly active app users and 30 million downloads.
Beyond payment options, Klarna also offers money management tools, delivery tracking and other features to help facilitate online shopping.
heir fastest growing revenue stream is marketing related services such as ads, sponsored content, virtual shopping and shoppable videos to reach new consumer audiences.
In contrast to this rapid growth, 2022 saw Klarna pre-tax losses of 6.2 billion Swedish krona and a 85% valuation plunge from $45 billion in 2021 to $6.7 billion in 2022.
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Quick news
Shopify is launching the first phase of a multi-year commitment to its Partner Program, focused on providing exceptional rewards, upskilling partners, and creating simplified tools. New incentives provide an opportunity for partners to earn up to 2x more in revenue.
Facebook has loosened its rules for "Facebook jail," allowing users to get more explanations and fewer immediate penalties before suspending or banning them. Following Meta's Oversight Board feedback, users will receive up to seven warnings before harsher penalties.
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