Mobile gadget and bag maker Targus says it is experiencing a “temporary interruption” to its business operations following a cyberattack on Friday.
In a notice with regulators on Monday, Targus’ parent company, B. Riley Financial, said it discovered “a threat actor gained unauthorized access to certain of Targus’ file systems,” and shut down much of its network to isolate the incident.
“The incident has been contained and Targus systems recovery efforts are in process,” the statement said.
B. Riley acquired Targus in a 2022 deal worth approximately $250 million.
When reached by email, a spokesperson for B. Riley did not immediately comment.
How many startups shut down last year compared to the year before?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our interview show, where we sit down with a guest, think about their work, and unpack the rest.
Lee is an angel investor as well the creator of Layoffs.FYI and co-founder of Comprehensive and Human Interest.
We also talked about:Just how many more companies shut down in 2023 compared to 2022 (spoiler alert, it was a lot!)
Tesla’s factory outside Berlin, Germany will likely be shut down for days and cost the automaker more than $100 million, after a suspected arson attack on the local power grid.
The fire didn’t spread to Tesla’s factory and nobody was harmed, though employees were evacuated.
A purported activist organization calling itself the “Volcano Group” took credit for the fire in a letter posted online Tuesday.
The same group took credit for a similar fire near the site in 2021.
Last month, Tesla’s plan to expand the factory was also voted down by the public.
Facebook plans to shut down its news tab in the U.S. and AustraliaMeta is trying to distance itself from news media-related regulations and payment complexities as it is planning to remove the news tab on Facebook in the U.S. and Australia.
The social media company said that the number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. dropped by 80% in the last year.
“This is part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most.
The fate of Facebook News’ shutdown is due to regulatory moves and Meta’s withdrawal from investing in new products.
Legislations passed in countries Australia and Canada resulted in authorities asking platforms to pay online publishers for their content.
Who knew M&A would be the thing we couldn’t shut up about?
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our startup-focused, Wednesday episode, so today we’re counting down important venture rounds, and chatting our way through other startup and VC news.
Here’s what we got into:We’ll be digging into the Brex situation on Friday, so stay tuned for more about fintech soon!
On Friday, the startup announced via a blog post it had made the decision to “wind down operations” of the app launched over a year ago, saying that the market opportunity wasn’t big enough to warrant continued investment.
It also employed several AI tools to summarize news, rewrite clickbait headlines, and surface the best content.
Existing posts will remain visible for the time being, and Artifact will continue to operate its “core news capability” through the end of February.
In part, the way users are finding news and information is changing with the arrival of AI.
The co-founder had spoken about AI’s role at Artifact at this past fall’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
The once popular third-party podcast app Castro has seemingly shut down, after earlier saying that it was “actively seeking a new home” for its product.
Concerns over Castro’s future, and the fate of the indie podcast app industry as a whole, have broadened in recent years as Spotify entered the market to compete with Apple Podcasts.
That move influenced the exits of other smaller podcast apps, which included the sale of Pocket Casts to a collective of radio broadcasters, including NPR and BBC Studios.
Satellite radio provider and Pandora owner SiriusXM also bought the podcast app Stitcher in 2020 for $325 million.
Another request for comment from Casto owner Tiny was not returned as of the time of writing, but we’ll update if more information is provided.
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