Jan 12, 2022

Coinbase will shut down for four weeklong breaks this year Almost the whole company will take time to "recharge" during those weeks. Coinbase is testing out four "recharge" weeks. Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images January 11, 2022 Coinbase has embraced many of the workplace changes prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. The company became remote-first , and it’s even closing its San Francisco headquarters to hammer in its focus on working from anywhere. Now, nearly all of Coinbase will shut down for four separate weeks throughout the year so employees can “enjoy downtime without work piling up,” chief people officer L.J. Brock said. “Four weeks of coordinated recharge time might sound like a lot of time off for a company in hypergrowth, but given the intensity of our work throughout the year, we think this is the best way to ensure our pace is sustainable for the long term,” Brock wrote in a blog post Monday. Giving employees a week off here and there isn’t entirely uncommon . Some ad agencies gave workers a week off last year around Labor Day, and other companies like LinkedIn and Twitch carved out extended breaks. Hootsuite did the same to help support people’s mental health. Coinbase has also tested so-called recharge weeks before. Most of the company took one at the end of 2020, and it added two recharge weeks last year after finding that employees weren’t taking enough time off. Brock said over half of surveyed employees said the weeks off helped them reset. The company’s flexible time off policy won’t change even with the recharge weeks, but Brock said Coinbase is encouraging workers to schedule vacations during those weeks “when they can.” X SOURCE CODE Want your finger on the pulse of everything that's happening in tech? Sign up to get Protocol's daily newsletter. Email Address Source Code Thank you for signing up. Please check your inbox to verify your email. Email me an authentication link A login link has been emailed to you - please check your inbox. Sarah Roach is a reporter and producer at Protocol (@sarahroach_) where she contributes to Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. She is a recent graduate of George Washington University, where she studied journalism and mass communication and criminal justice. She previously worked for two years as editor in chief of her school's independent newspaper, The GW Hatchet. Tony Xu, the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, has joined Meta’s board of directors . The tech executive is known for a painstaking attention to detail that many credit for his food delivery company’s success, and could help Meta as it expands its focus on commerce and the metaverse. “Tony has built a great service for millions of people to get food and more from hundreds of thousands of restaurants and small businesses. I’ve always thought it’s important to have great tech leaders on our board, and Tony has direct experience both running a tech company and solving complex challenges in commerce,” said Mark Zuckerberg. Xu moved to the United States from Nanjing, China with his parents at 5 years old, taking dishwashing jobs at local restaurants and starting his own lawn-mowing business at age 9. The 37-year-old CEO was made a billionaire in 2020 when the company went public with a $32 billion valuation. In the time since, the pandemic has only boosted the company’s growth, raising Xu’s net worth to over $2 billion. But DoorDash, like Facebook, has also faced harsh criticism over its business model. After all, the company is dependent on independently contracted gig workers to deliver food. It also contributed $52.1 million alone to California’s Prop 22. Xu’s expertise navigating the controversy and optimizing a contracted workforce may be helpful to Zuckerberg, though, whose company uses a largely contracted workforce of content moderators. Xu will be joining Mark Zuckerberg, Peggy Alford, Marc Andreessen, Drew Houston, Nancy Killefer, Robert M. Kimmit, Sheryl K. Sandberg, Peter Thiel and Tracey Travis on the board. Keep ReadingShow less Wordle is the newest viral game taking over your Twitter feed and group chats, and with popularity comes cloning. If you search "Wordle" on the App Store right now, you'll find nearly a dozen copycat versions of the game, many of which shamelessly use the game's name in the app title with little to no alteration. Most of the games look identical to the version created in private and for free by software engineer Josh Wardle, who maintains the game but has not asked for any monetary compensation for doing so. But as is the case with anything organic and popular on the internet, there are always those interested in profiting off it in one way or another. That's especially true in the world of mobile gaming where so-called cloning is a rampant practice with little to no recourse for creators. Usually, cloned apps are made by relatively anonymous developers whose skill lies in quickly turning new and popular ideas in game design into quick, functional apps. In some cases, developers will rework existing apps and change the name, too. But slap some ads on there or attach a small price like $1.99 and they stand to make some money. However, in this case, a developer by the name of Zachary Shakked created a Wordle clone as a self-described fan of the game, and then released it on iOS with a $30-per-year pro version that allows you to keep playing and also modify the number of letters in the word you're guessing. It's one of the more popular of the Wordle clones on the iPhone right now. Shakked has since put his Twitter profile to private after users found older tweets in which he criticized those who shamelessly copy other's ideas. Cloning is not exactly what you would call honest app development work, and it's an endemic issue in mobile gaming that's not quite solvable given the industry-wide truce around abuse of copyright law and trademarks. Games wouldn't be very fun if you had to pay a licensing fee or risk a lawsuit every time you wanted to borrow a good idea, so most developers just treat copying and cloning as the cost of doing business. One of the most high-profile cases was the cloning of Asher Vollmer's Threes. The ingenious number game was cloned into a web game and then countless mobile apps under the name "2048" to viral success for the cloners, who opted to make their versions free while Vollmer initially took the paid route. The business model decision was one Vollmer later said he regretted but used as a teachable moment when he turned Threes into a free-to-play app and saw his revenue skyrocket. For Wardle, who doesn't sound like he's interested in making money off Wordle, the cloning of a word game he built for his puzzle-loving partner to play together in private may not bother him so much. In an interview with The Guardian published Tuesday, Wardle sounded more concerned about the newfound fame his game has earned him. He said going viral "doesn’t feel great to be honest," and that he now feels "a sense of responsibility for the players … to keep things running and make sure everything’s working correctly.” "I need to be really thoughtful. It’s not my full-time job and I don’t want it to become a source of stress and anxiety in my life. If I do make any changes, I would like to think they are changes I would have made even if it was just [my partner and I] playing," he said. Keep ReadingShow less The Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit against Meta for allegedly violating antitrust laws will proceed after a federal judge denied a motion to dismiss the agency's second complaint against the company formerly known as Facebook. Judge James Boasberg said Meta must face the complaint, which claims the company sought to undermine competition with its acquisitions, including the purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp. Last June, Boasberg dismissed the FTC's first suit but allowed the agency to submit a new version that more carefully defined the market Facebook was allegedly monopolizing — a key first step in competition lawsuits. The original complaint was filed in 2020, at the tail end of the Trump administration, but Lina Khan, President Joe Biden's choice for chair, oversaw the renewed filing , which used new data and said Facebook undertook the acquisitions because it had fallen behind on mobile. The renewed complaint is viewed as a test of the court's openness to new aggressive antitrust enforcement. Defendants generally face high bars to success on motions to dismiss, but in his explaining his decision, Boasberg wrote it's an open question "whether the FTC will be able to prove its case." Boasberg also noted that the company had tried "a flanking maneuver" by arguing Khan's statements about Facebook before she joined the commission suggest she was biased against the company and shouldn't have been able to participate in revamping the lawsuit. The judge said "such contention misses its target," because perfect neutrality is not required of those in prosecutor-like roles. Meta said in a statement it is "confident the evidence will reveal the fundamental weakness of the claims" and noted that the FTC has previously allowed the deals for Instagram and WhatsApp to proceed. The deals "have been good for competition, and good for the people and businesses that choose to use our products,” a spokesperson said. Holly Vedova, the director of the FTC's competition bureau, said in a statement: “FTC staff presented a strong amended complaint, and we look forward to trial.” This story was updated with additional details from Boasberg's ruling and statements from Meta and the FTC. Keep ReadingShow less Lobbying groups for top tech firms are pushing back against the Senate Judiciary Committee's plan to mark up a bipartisan antitrust bill on Thursday. The groups, including TechNet, Chamber of Progress, NetChoice and others, charged the committee with rushing the bill through without a substantive hearing process. "This bill deserves a thoughtful policy discussion around its impact to our economy, user privacy, consumer harms, national security, and American competitiveness instead of being rushed through the markup process without a single hearing," TechNet SVP Carl Holshouser said in a written statement. "We urge the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights to hold hearings to learn more about potential unintended consequences of the legislation." The Judiciary Committee did hold a series of hearings on competition and antitrust legislation last year, but none, tech groups argue, focused specifically on the bill at hand: the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. The bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley, would prohibit dominant platforms from giving their own products a boost on those platforms — a rule that would take direct aim at alleged self-preferencing by juggernauts like Amazon and Google. “For too long, tech giants have used their power to suppress their rivals, unfairly put their products first in their marketplaces, and force sellers on their platforms to buy more services from them in exchange for better placement on their site," Klobuchar said in a statement announcing the markup. "A broad, bipartisan group of our colleagues agree and have signed on to our legislation to implement common sense rules of the road for these platforms." Tech groups argue such a law would dramatically upend how the average American uses online services. “Sen. Klobuchar herself has marketed the American Innovation and Choice Online Act as highly important and critical to America’s economic future, so it’s clear such a bill requires a committee hearing to tailor and discuss the proposal,” Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel at NetChoice, said in a statement. A similar bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by Reps. David Cicilline and Ken Buck, has already passed out of the House Judiciary Committee. While tech groups have mostly sounded the alarm on how the bill would impact the tech industry, one group, Chamber of Progress, warned Tuesday of the impact the law could have not just on tech, but on Democrats' prospects in November. “Breaking Amazon Prime during an election year would be an even bigger political disaster for Democrats than rising inflation or closed schools,” Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich said in a statement. “If lawmakers want to regulate the tech industry, they should tackle popular issues like cybersecurity or privacy, not break two-day shipping.” Keep ReadingShow less Sequoia Capital and Paradigm have invested $1.15 billion in market maker Citadel Securities as their new portfolio company considers new assets such as crypto, the companies said Tuesday. The deal values the firm, which is majority-owned by founder and chairman Ken Griffin, at close to $22 billion in its first outside investment. Citadel Securities, one of the largest market makers on Wall Street, played a central role in the debate over meme stocks spurred by Robinhood's temporary blocking of share-buying for stocks like GameStop in January 2021, a controversy that spurred regulatory scrutiny over payment for order flow and other practices in retail investing. Matt Huang of crypto investment firm Paradigm said on Twitter that Citadel would be moving into other assets “including crypto.” Robinhood has been pushing to extend the payment for order flow model into crypto , and currently uses other specialized market makers for that part of its business. Jump Trading, a crypto market maker, has recently said it would expand into equities, a stronghold for Citadel. Keep ReadingShow less The warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, will get a second vote to decide whether to form a union beginning Feb. 4, in a second mail-in election after the results of a sweeping Amazon victory were thrown out by the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB ruled that Amazon interfered illegally in the first election earlier this year — which Amazon won by more than a 2:1 margin — and that a second by-mail election would begin Feb. 4 and end when ballots are counted on March 28. During the first election, Amazon's decision to have a mail-in ballot box installed in front of the warehouse was the primary violation of election rules that caused the NLRB to schedule a new vote. The months of mail-in balloting were rife with accusations of interference from Amazon, including the creation of anti-union Amazon Twitter accounts and an anti-union website. After the initial Amazon victory, the company declared that the vote proved that workers are not interested in a union. "It's easy to predict the union will say that Amazon won this election because we intimidated employees, but that's not true," an Amazon spokesperson said at the time . Keep ReadingShow less Apple will let users in South Korea pay for goods in apps through third-party payment processors, although the details of the plan are unclear, according to a report in The Verge . The iPhone maker currently routes transactions through its own systems, allowing it to take a 30% commission that has become the focus of controversy around the world and fueled calls for outside payment options that wouldn't demand the same level of fees. South Korea had passed a landmark bill last August that would regulate Apple and Google restrictions on third-party payment systems. Those payment options also lay at the center of last year's trial in the lawsuit between Apple and Epic Games. A federal judge had ruled in September against Apple's "anti-steering" provisions, clearing the way for developers to alert users that they could circumvent the fees elsewhere, perhaps by buying on the web. Some readings of the decision, however, might effectively allow lower-fee, outside payments options within the apps themselves, although an appeals court has paused the decision for now. Keep ReadingShow less For every law or regulation, from privacy rules to AI audit regulations, there’s a way for data and software to help businesses comply. It’s true of environmental rules, too, which is why IBM just bought Envizi, a company that provides software for managing emissions and carbon accounting, as well as environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting. Envizi works with customers like hospitals, shopping malls, banks, airports and schools, providing software that takes in data — think greenhouse gas emissions information associated with office locations — then employs machine learning and data science to analyze it, visualize it and help businesses manage workflows to prepare reports to regulators. Some of that building sustainability management data, such as data associated with HVAC systems, flows in via IoT sensors, for example. The company has worked with clients such as manufacturing and supply-chain management company Celestica and grocery distributor Metcash Trading. And, yes, Envizi’s software applications are available in multicloud environments through cloud platforms such as AWS. The plan for IBM is to integrate Envizi’s software with its existing systems used for environmental sustainability management, including its Environmental Intelligence Suite, Maximo asset management and Sterling supply-chain software. It will also tie it into its Turbonomic software, which automates decisions regarding where to run data- and compute-hungry enterprise data and application workloads. That stuff sucks up energy, too, of course. Envizi partners with companies including Accenture and Microsoft. According to an IBM spokesperson, those partnerships will remain intact. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal. Keep ReadingShow less Employees in Meta's U.S. offices will begin returning to in-person work on March 28, a company spokesperson said. Its in-person employees are required to be vaccinated against Covid-19, as well as receive boosters if they're eligible. Meta (formerly Facebook) employees can request to work remotely full-time or extend their remote work period for an additional 3 to 5 months through the company's office deferral program. The company had previously planned for its employees to return to the office on January 31 . “We’re focused on making sure our employees continue to have choices about where they work given the current COVID-19 landscape," Janelle Gale, VP of human resources at Meta, said in a statement. "We understand that the continued uncertainty makes this a difficult time to make decisions about where to work, so we’re giving more time to choose what works best for them.” Meta's decision to push its in-person return comes as the Omicron variant of Covid-19 spreads rapidly throughout the U.S. Meta follows other tech companies in pushing back timelines or removing them altogether. In early December Google told employees they could continue working from home depending on “local conditions” of Covid-19, rather than requiring in-person work for 3 days a week starting Jan. 10. Apple has stopped giving return-to-work dates as of mid-December . Keep ReadingShow less Intel's executive shakeup under CEO Pat Gelsinger continued Monday, when it appointed a new CFO and replaced the departing head of its client computing group. David Zinsner will take over as the company’s finance chief , replacing George Davis who will retire from Intel in May. Zinsner previously served as CFO of Micron Technology, which said that it had begun a search for his replacement. Intel also said that Gregory Bryant, head of the company’s client computing group, plans to leave the company at the end of January after 30 years “for a new opportunity.” Bryant will be replaced by Michelle Johnston Holthaus. Under Gelsinger, Intel has restructured the organization, and shaken up the executive team. Last year, Intel hired former VMware executive Greg Lavender as CTO. The company’s head of its data systems group, Navin Shenoy, also left the company last year, among other notable changes. Keep ReadingShow less Moxie Marlinspike, CEO of encrypted instant messaging service Signal, announced Monday that he will step down from his position. Brian Acton, co-founder of messaging service WhatsApp, will take over as interim CEO of the company. Marlinspike, who started working on Signal almost a decade ago, said in a post on the company's website that it has been a goal for it to "sustain beyond [his] involvement." Marlinspike will remain on Signal's board of directors. The company has been talking with candidates to replace Marlinspike over the past few months. Acton, who will transition into the interim role over the next month, also helped co-found Signal Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to develop open-source privacy technology, with a $50 million loan in 2018. "It’s difficult to overstate how important Signal is to me, but I now feel very comfortable replacing myself as CEO based on the team we have, and also believe that it is an important step for expanding on Signal’s success," Marlinspike said in the post. Launched in 2015, Signal has poised itself as a leader in privacy. It's reportedly gained more than 40 million users over the past six years and is often a go-to messaging service for journalists, lawyers and activists. Its next leader could pave the way for increased privacy in consumer messaging as the service continues to grow. The announcement comes days after Wired reported Signal has been quietly working to broaden its anonymous, encrypted payment feature since November, a move which could draw scrutiny from regulators, anonymous Signal employees told the Verge . Keep ReadingShow less Many observers believed China was killing its tech golden goose and hurting its entrepreneurial future with year-long regulatory strikes against the country’s tech giants. But to their surprise, China’s startups not only held up but thrived in the past year: Together in 2021, they received a record $131.6 billion in VC funding, Bloomberg reported Sunday, about 50% higher than the 2020 figure. The stunning growth was achieved despite regulatory crackdowns on the country’s Big Tech giants such as Alibaba, Meituan and Tencent, as well as the entire online learning industry. But startups and venture firms were quick to see which direction the regulatory wind was blowing: They doubled down in investments in key tech sectors, such as chips, robotics and SaaS products, and steered clear of the soft internet business that was no longer in favor. According to Bloomberg data, China still lags behind Silicon Valley in VC funding: U.S. startups received their own record-smashing $296.6 billion in 2021, more than doubling their Chinese peers’ performance. However, in several key areas where China and the U.S. compete for innovations and resources, China has surpassed the U.S. in terms of VC investing. Chinese semiconductor makers, startups and integrated circuit designers received $8.8 billion from VC investors, according to Preqin data, significantly more than the $1.3 billion their U.S. peers raised during the same year. Analysts believe the investing shift away from consumer internet platforms and toward expanding sectors such as semiconductors, health care, enterprise software and advanced manufacturing will continue in 2022 and in years to come as China diversifies its tech ecosystem. As tech experts told Protocol earlier, Beijing’s tough stance on Big Tech by no means threatened the country’s booming startup scene. Actually, “China's entrepreneurial fervor is at an all-time high,” said Rui Ma, a China tech investor and the creator of Tech Buzz China. Correction: this story was updated on Jan. 10, 2022 to put the correct $131B figure in the headline. Keep ReadingShow less In a sign of super-sized seed times, Y Combinator will now invest half a million dollars in every startup accepted into its program, it announced Monday. The famed startup accelerator had previously invested $125,000 in exchange for 7% of a startup as part of the terms of going through its program. Now it will be adding an additional $375,000, for a total of $500,000 for each company. The idea is to give founders more upfront cash in the hopes "it will remove the immediate pressure to fundraise and accept less than favorable terms," Y Combinator said in its announcement. The extra $375,000 will be part of an uncapped SAFE with "most favored nation" status — in other words, it will enjoy the favorable terms offered to any subsequent investor, a safeguard often sought by early backers. Keep ReadingShow less Furniture startup Fernish has settled with California regulators who said that Fernish overcharged customers late fees and didn't provide rent-to-own disclosures required by law. It's the first action against a rent-to-own company taken by California regulators under the California Consumer Financial Protection Law (CCFPL), which was established in 2020. The Los Angeles company, which is backed by investors including Khosla Ventures, agreed to refund at least 387 customers for overcharges and "desist" from violating the CCFPL. "Our team here at Fernish is happy to have gone through the compliance process and to be working closely with the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation," Fernish CEO Michael Barlow said in a statement. "We will continue to operate our business in as consumer-friendly of a way as possible, similar to how we always have." Fernish, which has raised $42 million according to Pitchbook, offers rent-to-own, subscription and traditional purchase of furniture. The company didn't disclose information about the maximum price it would charge consumers as required by law, according to the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. Keep ReadingShow less Amid its legal battle with Activision Blizzard, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing appealed a decision which denied it from intervening in the game developer's $18 million settlement with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to documents filed Friday . Activision settled a lawsuit in September with the EEOC which alleged a toxic workplace culture, ending with a consent decree in which the company would create an $18 million fund to compensate employees. Though the lawsuit was separate from the California DFEH's ongoing suit with Activision, the agency sought to get involved, filing a motion in October which was denied by a judge in December. The DFEH is appealing the judge's decision, worried that the consent decree, which resolved the dispute between Activision and the EEOC without an admission of guilt, could free the game developer of claims that the state has against it, as well as allow the company to destroy evidence related to the case. The DFEH's ongoing lawsuit against Activision alleges sexism, harassment and discrimination against female employees. Filed in July, the suit has started a domino affect of turmoil for the company, including a 500-person employee walkout and a petition signed by thousands of employees for CEO Bobby Kotick to be removed from his position. Keep ReadingShow less Intel has quietly removed language about Xinjiang from a letter addressed to its suppliers, following a huge wave of public condemnation against the U.S. chipmaker that prompted it to apologize to the Chinese public, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Intel sent the open letter, which asked its suppliers to not source labor, products or services from Xinjiang, in December. After conservative Chinese media in late December discovered the letter on the Intel website, the company found itself facing a public outcry on Chinese social media. A Chinese Intel brand ambassador announced promptly he was ending his partnership with the chipmaker amid the controversy. The public denouncement prompted Intel to issue an apology on Dec. 23, in which the company emphasized that the letter didn’t intend to declare a stance on Xinjiang, and instead was written merely to comply with U.S. law. The Wall Street Journal on Monday found Intel had since lifted the part in the letter where it required its supply chain didn’t use “any labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region.” For transnational tech companies such as Intel, any public reference to Xinjiang or a business plan involving Xinjiang today could put them in a tricky political situation. On Dec. 23, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that bans all imports from Xinjiang. Meanwhile, an increasing number of transnational companies have recently come under fire from Chinese state media, social media and consumers over toeing the U.S. line on products, labor or services from the region. Keep ReadingShow less A new filing by Apple showed CEO Tim Cook was paid 1,447 times what the typical Apple employee made last year, prompting fresh discussion of what top tech execs earn. The median pay for Apple employees was $68,254 in 2021, according to Apple's annual proxy statement released Thursday. Cook received $3 million in annual base salary. He also received $82.3 million in a one-time stock grant, a $12 million cash incentive for helping the company meet financial goals and $1.38 million in other expenses, which includes $712,488 for personal air travel. In total, he earned $98.7 million in 2021. And this amount doesn’t include the $750 million in Apple stock which vested in August . He sold or disposed most of the 5 million shares, which dated back to a 10-year grant he received in 2011 on becoming CEO of the company. More than half of those shares were withheld for taxes, according to an SEC filing . One Reddit user commented, “He deserves it, he made it a 3 trillion dollar company, that’s a lot of value made for the shareholders.” “I understand the high value of his position but that disparity is ridiculous,” wrote another. Other top Apple executives, including CFO Luca Maestri and COO Jeff Williams, each took home $1 million in salary in 2021, plus millions more in stock. The SEC began requiring that companies disclose the ratio of CEO compensation to median employees’ pay in 2015. Companies differ in how they calculate this ratio, making strict comparisons difficult. Keep ReadingShow less Can AI do investing better than highly-paid fund managers? SoftBank wants to find out. The multinational investment giant is pumping $146 million into an AI-based fintech company called Qraft to see how to use AI to manage its own assets. “We wanted to test how we could utilize AI, and we thought Qraft was the best way to do that,” Kentaro Matsui, managing partner of SoftBank’s investment advisory arm SB Investment Advisers, told the Wall Street Journal , which first reported the investment. According to WSJ, the investment is about access to the brains behind Qraft’s deep-learning algorithms as well as the tech itself. Founded in 2016, Qraft uses deep-learning models fed with market data to generate Exchange Traded Funds, build portfolios, manage data and execute trades. The company’s name is an amalgam of the terms “quant” and “craft.” The Wall Street Journal reported that the company manages $1.7 billion for Asian banks and insurance companies including through its U.S.-listed ETFs. A 2021 PWC report about the use of AI for investment management said asset managers were using AI tools to improve decision-making, operate more efficiently, save money and reduce risks. Keep ReadingShow less Take-Two Interactive, the game publisher behind Grand Theft Auto and 2K Sports, has agreed to acquire Zynga for a mix of cash and stock in a deal worth $12.7 billion, the two companies announced Monday . The number represents the highest ever acquisition deal between gaming companies. The deal is larger than both Tencent's purchase of Supercell in 2016 ($8.6 billion) and Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media in 2020 ($8.1 billion). Zynga is a public company, meaning Take-Two is paying a premium of about 64% to buy out outstanding shares and pay shareholders $3.50 in cash and $6.36 in Take-Two stock per share. The deal is expected to close by June 30, 2022. “We are thrilled to announce our transformative transaction with Zynga, which significantly diversifies our business and establishes our leadership position in mobile, the fastest growing segment of the interactive entertainment industry,” Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a statement. “This strategic combination brings together our best-in-class console and PC franchises, with a market-leading, diversified mobile publishing platform that has a rich history of innovation and creativity. Zynga also has a highly talented and deeply experienced team, and we look forward to welcoming them into the Take-Two family in the coming months." The deal in many ways represents the growing importance of the mobile game industry, which now accounts for more than half of total global games revenue, according to market research firm Newzoo . In 2021, the mobile market grew more than 7% to $93 billion, while the console market declined and the PC market stayed relatively flat. NewZoo estimates the gaming market will grow to $200 billion by 2024. Much of that growth is expected to come from mobile and a general expansion of the gaming audience, beyond the core group of players who buy and play higher-end games on console and PC. That audience has remained relatively flat for years. Take-Two, like many big publishers, has tried to get into the mobile market through a series of smaller-scale acquisitions, including of mobile game makers Playdots, Social Point and Nordeus. But similar to Electronic Arts' mobile push over the last couple of years , in which EA bought Glu Mobile and Golf Clash maker Playdemic in deals each worth more than $1 billion, Take-Two is turning to a much more established player in the mobile scene to make deeper inroads to reach new players. Many of Take-Two's biggest properties, like Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto and 2K's BioShock and Borderlands, are absent on mobile, outside of ports of classic games. With Zynga, Take-Two clearly sees an avenue for bringing those series to more players and also embracing more free-to-play design across the board. Zynga also has a newly established blockchain division , which gives Take-Two an opportunity to experiment with fast-growing new markets like NFTs and blockchain-based game design. For Zynga, joining a major game publisher seems like an inevitable outcome for the company. Zynga has long prided itself on maneuvering complex platform dynamics, like the shift from Facebook browser games to mobile, and figuring out how to reach the largest number of casual players possible. Much of Zynga's business now depends on big hits like Zynga Poker, Words with Friends 2 and inking big deals for mobile spinoffs of properties like Harry Potter and Star Wars. It also has a marketing and analytics division through its Chartboost acquisition. Zynga is now expanding into the console market with a planned released of Star Wars: Hunters on the Nintendo Switch later this year. Joining a company like Take-Two is a logical step to combine its talent for building casual games with even more established franchises. Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the cost of the Supercell acquisition. This story was updated on Jan. 10, 2022. Keep ReadingShow less This story contains mention of sexual assault. The fraud trial of Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, former president and COO of failed blood-testing startup Theranos, has been delayed. The trial is now expected to take place in March. Balwani's trial, which was set to take place on Feb. 15, was put off due to COVID-19 concerns. This is the second delay to Balwani's trial, the first of which was due to the unexpected length of Elizabeth Holmes' trial. Holmes was convicted Monday of four counts of investor fraud and conspiracy. She was found not guilty of defrauding patients, and no verdict could be reached for three of the counts. Balwani, who is charged with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, has plead not guilty. Each count is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, which will likely be served concurrently. Much of Holmes' defense pinned the blame on Balwani. Holmes testified that he was in charge of the lab operations and finances at Theranos, and she said she never questioned decisions he made. She also alleged that he controlled her life down to the minute, and sexually abused her, which his attorney reportedly denied. Keep ReadingShow less PayPal is working on the potential launch of its own stablecoin, showing the increasing potential for cryptocurrency to become used in mainstream payments. The payments giant confirmed the news after Bloomberg found evidence of code for a "PayPal Coin" in its app. Stablecoins, whose value is generally linked to a fiat currency, have exploded in use in recent years as a way for traders to move quickly in and out of crypto trades. Some in the industry see them as a way for crypto payments to go mainstream. But regulators have increasingly raised concerns that stablecoins, which are backed by reserves that might have to be liquidated in a crisis, could present a systemic risk to financial markets. Jose Fernandez da Ponte, senior vice president of crypto and digital currencies at PayPal, previously told Protocol that most stablecoins on the market have limitations in terms of scalability because they're build on the Ethereum ERC-20 standard, which makes them too expensive and slow. “I don't think that we have seen a stablecoin that works well for payments yet,” da Ponte said. PayPal is "exploring" a stablecoin and would "work closely with relevant regulators" if it goes ahead with a stablecoin, da Ponte told Bloomberg. Meta has long been trying to launch a stablecoin through its backing of the Diem project, though its Novi subsidiary recently introduced a crypto wallet that used the Paxos USDP stablecoin instead of the still-unreleased Diem. Keep ReadingShow less Amazon cut its paid COVID-19 leave for U.S. workers in half following the CDC shortening isolation time for asymptomatic people who test positive for the virus. Amazon will now offer one week, or up to 40 hours, of paid leave for those who test positive to quarantine, rather than the two weeks the company previously offered. The decision comes from Amazon “reviewing the newly released guidance" from the CDC , which cut recommended isolation from 10 days to 5 on Dec. 27, a company spokesperson told CNBC . Amazon follows in the footsteps of grocery giant Walmart, which announced plans to cut its COVID sick leave from two weeks to one week on Wednesday . Amazon and Walmart are the two largest employers in the U.S., employing roughly a combined 2.5 million people. Amazon reinstated its employee mask mandate in December due to the spread of the omicron variant, after lifting it just one month earlier. The company has yet to mandate that its employees get vaccinated. Keep ReadingShow less Reddit could make its stock market debut in March, Bloomberg reported. The social media company could seek a valuation as high as $15 billion. Reddit will reportedly work with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs for its IPO. But sources close to the matter told Bloomberg that the company's timeline, plans and valuation are not set in stone. Reddit revealed it had confidentially submitted a a draft registration with the SEC in December. The company scored a valuation of $10 billion in August after raising more than $400 million in funding from Fidelity and others. Though the social network has long been on the radar of Silicon Valley VCs, Reddit grabbed attention from individual and institutional investors alike after traders on the subreddit r/WallStreetBets led to the rise of meme stocks like AMC and GameStop in early 2021. Keep ReadingShow less