| Dear Insiders, Happy Friday! Today's stories delve into Apple's newly reached $3 trillion market cap, Niantic's layoffs and restructuring, and further antitrust scrutiny of Adobe's $20B acquisition of Figma. Scroll down for some quick hits and our calendar of events, and let us know what type of content you'd like to see in future issues. Thanks for reading! Beth
p/beth-duckett | |
| 1 | | Apple reached a market valuation of $3 trillion on Friday, becoming the first publicly traded company to achieve the milestone twice. AAPL shares hit a new record high on Friday, peaking above the $190.73 price required to reach the milestone. More: - To solidify a $3 trillion market cap, the company's shares would need to close at or above $190.74 on Friday.
- Apple, the world's most valuable-listed company, saw its market value briefly surpass $3 trillion in intra-day trading on Jan. 3, 2022.
- Its market value has surged by 45% this year, adding nearly $1 trillion in value, surpassing the 14.5% gain of the broader S&P 500.
- Analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities predicts Apple could reach a market cap of $4 trillion by 2025, citing a potential "mini super cycle" with this year's release of iPhone 15 and its plans for an augmented-virtual reality app store and headset.
- Currently, four other U.S. companies — Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Nvidia — have valuations exceeding $1 trillion.
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| 2 | | What happened: Niantic, the creator of "Pokémon Go," is undergoing a restructuring to improve its finances. The company said it will lay off 230 employees or 25% of its staff, close its Los Angeles studio, and cancel the games "NBA All-World" and "Marvel: World of Heroes." The big picture: After a surge in sales during the pandemic, Niantic's expenses have outpaced revenue growth, CEO John Hanke said. The company attributes this to a slowdown in the global macroeconomic environment and slower-than-expected progress in the development of the augmented reality (AR) market. Quotable: Niantic's flagship game, "Pokémon Go," has been a significant source of revenue for the company, outshining its other games and projects. In a memo to employees, Hanke said its "top priority is to keep 'Pokémon Go' healthy and growing as a forever game." By the numbers: "Pokémon Go" has seen an average annual revenue of $1B since its launch in July 2016, as per Sensor Tower data. However, the game's in-app purchase revenue has been declining since the price increase of Remote Raid Passes in March. From July 2022 to March 2023, Niantic earned an average of $70M per month in gross in-app purchase revenue. However, in the three months following the price increase, the average monthly revenue dropped to $53M. Niantic's annual mobile revenue has also decreased from its peak of $918.8M in 2020 to $713.5M in 2022. 
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| 3 | | Adobe's planned $20B acquisition of Figma, a cloud-based designer platform, may be headed for a full antitrust investigation in the U.K. The country's competition regulator has given the companies five working days to propose "acceptable" solutions to its concerns or face a more in-depth investigation. More: - Both Adobe and Figma provide software for designing digital apps and websites, with Figma challenging Adobe's broader suite of creative tools.
- The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has expressed concerns that the deal could lead to reduced innovation, fewer choice, and higher costs for companies relying on Figma and Adobe's digital tools
- The regulator specifically highlighted potential limitations in the supply of screen design software, an area where Adobe and Figma are competitors.
- In response, Photoshop maker Adobe said it has no intention to compete in the product design space and considers Figma's offerings complementary to its core creative products.
- The deal is also facing scrutiny from antitrust authorities in the U.S. and Europe.
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| 4 | | ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has released a music production app in the U.S. The Ripple app is designed to help creators compose and edit music for their content, particularly for short-form videos on TikTok and other platforms. More: - Ripple allows users to sing or hum a melody into their phone's microphone, and it generates matching instrumental tracks, such as drums, bass, and piano.
- The app also provides a virtual recording studio for audio editing on mobile devices, similar to portable digital audio workstations.
- It only generates instrumental music, and creators are responsible for adding vocals.
- ByteDance assures that Ripple's model was trained on its own licensed music and its in-house collection, not commercial music from labels.
- The closed beta app is currently open for invite-only testing for iOS users.
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| 5 | | Twitter appears to have made a change that prevents non-logged-in users from seeing content on the platform, according to The Verge. Previously, users without an account could view public tweets and profiles, but are now met with a sign-in prompt that blocks their view completely. More: - It is unclear if the move is intentional or a technical error, as Twitter has not made an official announcement.
- Users with free Twitter accounts can still view publicly posted tweets and access other available information.
- The move could be an attempt to push visitors to become registered users and possibly drive subscriptions to Twitter Blue.
Zoom out: - A majority of Americans who used Twitter in the last year or so took a break from the platform, and a quarter of them said they are unlikely to use it a year from now, according to results of a recent Pew Research Center survey.
- According to The New York Times, Twitter's U.S. ad revenue plummeted by 59% to $88M in the five weeks from April 1 compared to the previous year.
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| 6 | | Runway, known for its AI software that creates short videos from text prompts, nabbed $141M in a Series C extension round from investors including Google, Nvidia, and Salesforce Ventures. Runway's Gen-2 tool, which generates videos from text, has gained popularity among a diverse user base, from movie directors to small creators. More: - The Gen-2 software, released earlier this year, is described as the "first publicly available text-to-video model on the market." It also generates videos from existing images.
- The model is an upgrade from its Gen-1, which takes pre-existing videos and edits them using text or image prompts.
- Using the fresh funding, New York-based Runway plans to scale its research, expand its team, and launch more bring multi-modal AI systems.
- The $141M Series C extension values the company at $1.5B and brings its total funding to $237M, making it among the top 10 most well-funded generative AI startups.
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 | AI and technology writer | | Beth is a writer and editor at Inside.com covering artificial intelligence and daily technology news. She has written the Inside AI newsletter since 2019. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com. | | This newsletter was edited by Eduardo Garcia | |
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