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“Revel Announces Layoffs of 1,000 Ride-Hail Drivers, Emphasizing Preference for Contract Work”

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And it started an all-Tesla, all-employee ride-hail service, in part so its charging infrastructure would see guaranteed utilization. The move comes after Revel successfully piloted the model in late February with 100 Revel drivers and has since brought on 100 more. The question of flexibility has been at the heart of the debate over whether ride-hail drivers should be classified as gig workers or employees. That said, Rubinson says Revel’s ride-hail portion of the business recently hit gross margin positivity and was tracking to be EBITDA positive by the end of the year. In 2022, Frank Reig, Revel’s CEO, told TechCrunch that over 90% of its charging hub utilization came from Revel’s own ride-hail fleet.

“Staff Reductions at Synctera: The Newest Player in Banking-as-a-Service Industry”

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Banking-as-a-service startup (BaaS) Synctera has conducted a restructuring that has resulted in a staff reduction, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. While Synctera did not share how many employees were impacted, a report in Fintech Business Weekly pegs the number to be about 17 people, or about 15% of the company. Synctera built a platform designed to bring together fintech companies and sponsor banks. Treasury Prime slashed half its 100-person staff in February, a year after it announced a $40 million Series C raise. Meanwhile, Piermont Bank reportedly cut ties with startup Unit, FinTech Business reported.

“Revolutionary Dutch Company, Monumental, Deploys Cutting-Edge Robot Technology for Bricklaying”

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The U.S. firm specializes in building structures out of large concrete masonry blocks. Amsterdam-based Monumental, meanwhile, specializes in the more familiar red clay variety. Monumental has already been doing limited pilots in its native Netherlands, including the 15-meter exterior of an office building. “At Monumental, we’re working to help the industry meet these challenges,” says co-founder and CEO Salar al Khafaji. Funding will go toward hiring, scaling manufacturing and diversifying the manner of bricks/blocks its robots are capable of handling.

Flexport May Be Forcing Job Cuts Once More

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Flexport, a logistics company with $2.7 billion in venture and debt funding, is reportedly planning additional layoffs. Flexport, which provides freight forwarding and brokerage services, announced similar cuts in October, when founder Ryan Petersen returned as CEO and slashed the company’s workforce by 20% — affecting about 600 workers. An additional round of layoffs at Flexport would cap a brutal January for tech workers, as giants and startups alike have eliminated a combined tens of thousands of jobs across the industry. While San Francisco-based Flexport wouldn’t be an outlier for making cuts, the timing would be peculiar. Just last week, Flexport said it’d raised an additional $260 million in funding from Shopify.

Unity Announces Significant Workforce Reduction: Nearly 2,000 Employees to be Affected

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Just a few weeks after its most recent round of layoffs, Unity is once again reducing its workforce. Unity is the maker of a video game engine that is widely used in the video game industry. Under the old pricing scheme, indie developers who earn less than $100,000 per year would be able to use Unity for free. Bigger video game studios would have to pay $1,900 per user per year. And yet, that controversy had some wide-ranging consequences as many developers lost faith in the game engine company.