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Comfortable Friday! Be part of us in wishing Lorenzo a really heat welcome to the staff! He’s becoming a member of our crack staff of cybersecurity reporters, working alongside Zack and Carly. He simply printed his first article on TC, about T-Cell reporting a hacker accessed private knowledge of 37 million prospects. Welcome aboard!!
Take pleasure in your weekend! — Christine and Haje
The TechCrunch Prime 3
- Alphabet spells out layoffs: With all that discuss tech layoffs up to now couple months, it was solely a matter of time earlier than we noticed one thing from Google’s father or mother, Alphabet. The search engine large introduced it was chopping 6% of its workforce, which impacts 12,000 individuals. And just like the others, CEO Sundar Pichai took his flip explaining how the corporate “employed for a unique financial actuality,” Paul writes.
- Sport off: With gaming being as common as it’s, this subsequent layoff story is a little bit of a shock, although not completely surprising since media corporations are being hit onerous. Leisure firm Fandom, which publishes content material underneath Big Bomb, GameSpot and Metacritic, laid off roughly 10% of its employees throughout these publications, Ivan experiences.
- It’s all concerning the cash, cash, cash: Social media influencers in India need to disclose promotional content material, aka paid promotions, to the federal government, and now the Division of Client Affairs has launched some pointers on how to try this. Jagmeet has extra.
Startups and VC
A $32 million seed spherical for Chris DeWolfe’s latest gaming firm might seem to be a throwback to frothier instances, like … 2021. However that’s how a lot PLAI Labs simply raised in a deal led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), experiences Connie. She factors out that that’s numerous moolah in a unstable market, even coming because it does from two separate a16z funds: the agency’s $600 million debut video games car and its $4.5 billion crypto fund, each of which have been introduced final Could.
Right here’s one other handful for ya:
4 buyers focus on the following large wave for different seafood startups
Picture of WildType’s sushi-grade, lab-grown salmon. Picture Credit: Arye Elfenbein/WildType
There’s numerous hype round plant-based burgers and nuggets, however different seafood merchandise are attracting extra consideration — and funding — from buyers lately.
“Greater than $178 million was pumped into different seafood within the first half of 2022, and the market’s worth is poised to achieve $1.6 billion over the following 10 years,” she experiences.
To be taught extra about this maturing area, Christine Corridor surveyed 4 buyers to get their ideas on regulation, the “distinctive challenges” corporations face as they attempt to attain scale, and the way they’re approaching progress and danger:
- Kate Danaher, managing director of ocean and seafood, S2G Ventures
- Friederike Grosse-Holz, director, Blue Horizon
- Christian Lim, managing director, SWEN Capital Companions’ Blue Ocean
- Amy Novogratz, co-founder and managing associate, Aqua Spark
Three extra from the TC+ staff:
TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup groups get forward of the pack. You possibly can enroll right here. Use code “DC” for a 15% low cost on an annual subscription!
Massive Tech Inc.
Okay, no extra layoff discuss. We’re going to have some enjoyable, as a result of it’s Friday, rattling it!
Are you continue to enjoying Wordle? Or maybe you switched to its clone Quordle. Effectively, Quordle was acquired by Merriam-Webster, Paul experiences. In case you’ve by no means tried it, Quordle is just like the fundamental Wordle idea, guessing a phrase in a specific amount of tries, besides there are 4 five-letter phrases to guess directly, with simply 9 tries. It is likely to be simply the factor to heat you up on a chilly winter’s evening.
Right here’s 4 extra on your Friday enjoyment:
- Your flip: Amanda writes that after weeks of backlash and protest from content material creators and followers, Dungeons & Dragons’ writer decided to place the sport underneath a Inventive Commons license.
- An abrupt goodbye: After just lately chopping off third-party purchasers, together with Tweetbot and Twitterific, Twitter went forward and formally banned them, Kyle writes.
- ICYMI: Netflix founder Reed Hastings stepped down as co-CEO however will stay on the board, Taylor writes. In the meantime, Netflix is eyeing free streaming “FAST” channels as a chance to develop its adverts enterprise, Lauren experiences.
- Up, up, and away: As Darrell writes, Canada is getting up off the sidelines and becoming a member of the area race, saying it needs to help industrial area launches.
