Apple will be halting sales of its Series 9 smartwatch, TechCrunch has confirmed.
The news, shared by 9to5Mac, follows an October ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC), owing to a patent dispute with California-based med tech firm, Masimo.
This includes pausing sales of Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 from Apple.com starting December 21, and from Apple retail locations after December 24.
Apple strongly disagrees with the order and is pursuing a range of legal and technical options to ensure that Apple Watch is available to customers.
Should the order stand, Apple will continue to take all measures to return Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 to customers in the U.S. as soon as possible.
Adobe’s $20 billion mega-bid to buy rival Figma is now officially dead, after the companies said today that regulatory pushback in Europe had caused them to put an end to the acquisition plans.
First announced in September last year, the deal was always going to attract regulatory scrutiny due to the size of the transaction and the fact that it took one of Adobe’s major rivals out of the picture.
Irrespective of that outcome, the two companies were already facing significant headwinds in Europe.
As a result of all this, Adobe will now have to pay Figma a termination fee of $1 billion, which was contractually payable in the event of the transaction failing to attain regulatory clearance — or if it failed to close within 18 months of the acquisition’s announcement last September.
That 18-month stipulation hadn’t yet been reached, and no regulatory body had actually announced their final findings — but Adobe and Figma clearly saw no way through this, and with the DoJ also weighing up regulatory action, in the end it just made more sense to pull the plug on the deal entirely.
Elon Musk’s X marks the spot of the first confirmed investigation opened by the European Union under its rebooted digital rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Its earlier actions were focused on concerns about the spread of illegal content and disinformation related to the Israel-Hamas war.
So the Commission’s official scrutiny of X could have real world implications for how the platform operates sooner rather than later.
However the Commission obviously has doubts X has gone far enough on the transparency front to meet the DSA’s bar.
The investigation may also test Musk’s mettle for what could be an expensive head-on clash with EU regulators.
Businesses are working hard to conform to traditional heuristics like Rule of 40 (i.e., the idea that the sum of revenue growth and profit margin should equal 40%+, a metric that Bessemer helped popularize).
The world has over-rotated into an FCF margin mindset over a growth mindset, which is backward for growing efficient businesses.
Long-term models show that even in tight markets, growth should be valued at least ~2x to 3x more than FCF margin.
While a margin increase has a linear impact on value, a growth rate increase can have a compounding impact on value.
We show the detailed math below, and it’s confirmed by public market valuation correlations when you backtest the relative importance of growth versus FCF margin.
Days after freeing the (fictionalized) nipple, Twitch is backtracking on its “artistic nudity” policy that allowed streamers to show illustrated, animated or sculpted renderings of breasts, butts and genitals.
The announcement comes days after Twitch announced sweeping updates to its sexual content policy, which streamlined the platform’s community guidelines and allowed nudity in certain contexts, such as art streams.
Moderating “artistic nudity” or “non-sexual nudity” is trickier because the line between nudity and sexual content tends to be subjective.
The sites with the clearest guidelines either allow nudity and sexual content altogether, or don’t.
Conditional nudity policies that attempt to separate “good nudity,” like in art, from “bad nudity,” or sexual content, aren’t as progressive as they’re made out to be.
“I think crypto has always been made by very technical people and for technical people,” Johann Kerbrat, the general manager of crypto at Robinhood, said on the Chain Reaction podcast.
“At the end of the day, I think customers, when they use crypto, they don’t really care what is the protocol under it?
Robinhood users can do more technical things like transfer to its crypto wallet and use “advanced charts and autotypes where you can put, for example, a stop loss,” Kerbrat said.
The platform might not be as highly technical as one that’s crypto-focused, Robinhood is doing research to understand what customers want and are missing.
With that said, the platform still has 14 cryptocurrencies and one stablecoin, USDC, available for users to buy and sell.
Instagram launched a new feature where you can create customized “Add Yours” templates with GIFs, images and text, allowing you to make your own meme-able Stories for followers to participate in.
To create an Add Yours template, start uploading a Story and add elements like a GIF, custom text or an image from the gallery.
Then tap on the “Add Yours Templates” sticker and select which elements you want to pin.
Now anyone can take an Add Yours prompt and add their own spin to it, allowing for more creative expression and collaboration.
Similarly, Instagram introduced a “template browser” for Reels in July, letting you discover and customize pre-made templates to add to your videos.
Until recently, many startups have prioritized growth at all costs, using abundant venture capital to acquire users and dominate markets without regard for profitability or sustainability.
However, recent market conditions have shifted toward “efficient growth,” balancing growth with profitability to create a sustainable path to scale.
The churn rate is not stable enough to accurately forecast customer lifetime.
With a product improving over time by adding features that address customers’ needs, we would expect the churn rate to decline.
Despite an improvement in a product, there are external factors beyond a company’s control, such as macro headwinds, that may encourage a higher churn rate.
The crypto winter may or may not thaw, but not everyone is going into the new year without hope: A majority of founders are optimistic about the opportunities for crypto startups in 2024, per a new survey shared exclusively with TechCrunch+.
The CoinFund Founder Forecast survey gathered responses from 30 of CoinFund’s web3 portfolio companies across the pre-seed, seed and Series A stages.
The survey ran from November 7 to November 17, when cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum were starting to show signs of price recovery.
While some crypto startups may be going out of business, Alex Felix, managing partner and chief investment officer at CoinFund, said these 30 companies have sufficient runway and are thinking about the new year.
According to the survey, the top areas primed for growth in the coming year include AI integrated with web3, zero-knowledge technology, decentralized finance, consumer apps, gaming, layer-2 blockchains and crypto wallets.
What is happening with all these new venture funds?
A growing number of venture firms may be uncorking champagne ahead of the New Year.
Today, a handful of investment firms announced new funds: Artis Ventures, BoxGroup, Playground Global and Singular all closed on funds, while Partech said it was launching a €360 million venture fund.
Steph Choo, a partner at the venture firm Portage, maintains that it’s still a “tough fundraising environment.” She thinks what we’re seeing is the result of continued interest in funds with strong track records and distributions to paid-in capital.
), which may drive renewed interest next year.”In the meantime, LPs may not be responding so much to what’s around the corner in 2024 but looking across the longer horizon, particularly given that venture funds typically invest across a 10-year period.
