Meta decimates its workers because the social media large lays off 11,000 • TechCrunch

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Whooo-weee attention-grabbing instances for crypto land, as Bitcoin crashes right down to underneath $17,000 for the primary time shortly. Wild, on condition that the cryptocurrency was buying and selling at $65,000 or so a yr in the past. That’s a 74% lower. What sort of winter is that this — are we seeing a crypto chilly snap or crypto permafrost? Solutions on an immutable blockchain transaction, please.

Should you’re excited to make sense of the crypto world, we’ve obtained an occasion in Miami developing in a few weeks — particulars and tickets right here!  — Christine and Haje.

The TechCrunch Prime 3

• Extra social media struggles: Although the subject material was a downer, Paul wrote a terrific story about Meta’s confirmed layoffs of 11,000 staff, explaining what occurred, why and what it means within the better context of Meta’s future. Extra in Large Tech under.
• It was good whereas it lasted: For a number of hours this morning, us TechCrunchers have been elated to see our treasured Twitter deal with get the “Official Twitter Badge,” however as Amanda writes, what Twitter giveth, Twitter rapidly taketh away.
• That is what actually occurred: It was Elon Musk, within the boardroom, with the badge code. As we simply talked about, Musk was killing spirit throughout Twitter at present, rolling out grey checkmarks for high-profile accounts after which deleting them. Kyle has extra.

Startups and VC

Edge computing cloud and international knowledge community Macrometa has raised $38 million led by Akamai Applied sciences, as the 2 announce a brand new partnership and product integrations, Catherine experiences. The funding additionally included participation from Shasta Ventures and Sixty Diploma Capital. Akamai Applied sciences CTO Andy Champagne will be part of Macrometa’s board.

Startups is likely to be in a funding midwinter, however the ray of solar shining on some VCs speaks of a special pattern, experiences Ingrid. EQT Ventures, the enterprise fund arm of Sweden’s funding large EQT making early-stage bets on startups primarily in Europe, has closed its newest fund and stuffed its coffers with €1 billion (and $1.1 billion in whole commitments).

Like our headline tales, however extra summarized:

Three ideas for managing a distant engineering workforce

Distant work isn’t for each enterprise, and it is probably not everybody’s cup of tea. When Greg Soh and his co-founder determined to construct a distributed engineering workforce for his or her startup, quite a few questions raced by way of their minds: Will the workforce be productive? How will selections be made? How do they maintain the tradition alive? In the present day, the startup manages a distant workforce of a few dozen engineers, they usually’ve realized fairly a bit alongside the way in which.

On TechCrunch+, he shares a number of the ideas and recommendation the corporate has realized — many of the recommendation is greatest relevant to earlier-stage startups.

Three extra from the TC+ workforce:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup groups get forward of the pack. You possibly can join right here. Use code “DC” for a 15% low cost on an annual subscription!

Large Tech Inc.

Following at present’s Meta announcement concerning the layoff of 11,000 staff, Ingrid did a deep dive into the corporate’s 8-Okay and emerged with some recent catch, together with the predictable — that slashing bills on hiring and capex investments will assist the corporate’s 2023 backside line.

In the meantime, Frederic writes about IBM’s Osprey quantum processor, which isn’t precisely the 4,000 qubits the corporate desires to realize by 2025, however at 433 qubits, it’s a superb begin.

And we’ve 5 extra for you:

• Extra layoffs: You didn’t suppose you’d get off that straightforward, did you? Ron experiences that Salesforce has laid off a whole bunch of staff, whereas Aria experiences that Astra lays off 16% of its workers after practically tripling it within the final yr.
• Brrr, it’s chilly in right here — there have to be some crypto within the environment: It’s like Anita had some sixth sense or one thing. Earlier at present, she wrote that the proposed Binance and FTX M&A deal seemed unlikely to shut. Lo and behold, simply earlier than this went out, Binance determined to stroll away from the deal, Jacquelyn experiences.
• Collaboration station: Able to Freeform? Unsure it’s going to be a verb but, however Apple hopes its collaborative whiteboard is one thing that sticks, Ivan experiences.
• Sensors and software program and EV, oh my!: Volvo unveiled its first all-electric SUV at present, and we’re drooling. Jaclyn has extra.
• We’re guessing he didn’t win the Powerball: Elon Musk offered extra of his Tesla shares, Rebecca writes. The 19.5 million shares have been price virtually $4 billion. Surprise what he’s utilizing the cash for…