With Musk's purchase completed, NYSE will delist Twitter stock on Election Day

Friday, October 28, 2022

Happy Friday! Haje is enjoying some down time on the East Coast, so I am running solo. As you can see from the not-so-surprising move by Elon Musk last night and the sheer number of Twitter stories from our fabulous consumer tech team today, it has been all Twitter, all day. We promise to give you a little bit of that, of course, and a little of what else we’ve been working on. Let’s dive in, shall we? — Christine

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The TechCrunch Top 3

Flying the public coop: Now that Elon Musk owns Twitter, its days are numbered as a public company. In fact, Ivan writes, Twitter will be delisted on November 8 — voting day for the U.S. midterm elections.
Caging the bird: Over to Europe, where just a few hours into actually owning Twitter, Musk already found himself on the wrong end of European Union officials, who corrected him after he tweeted about how free he thinks Twitter is now. Natasha L has more.
Big Tweet Chief: Reports now say that Musk will take the CEO role for himself, Ivan writes, after he ousted Twitter’s four top executives, as reported by Amanda.

For more news on the blue bird, head down to the Big Tech Inc. section, where we have you covered.

Guide: What Is API-First and Why Does It Matter?

Startups and VC

Unfortunately, the hits keep coming for 54gene, an African genomics startup focused on providing more African genetic material to pharmaceutical research — there is just 3% now, Tage reports. After some months of layoffs and a CEO exit, the company confirmed that it not only made yet another round of layoffs — this time of 100 people — but it also slashed its valuation by over $100 million.

And we have three more for you:

Robot riot: Galen Robotics has a new robot that will assist with ear, nose and throat surgeries. Oh, and it secured $15 million in new funding, Andrew reports.
Follow the yellow brick road: Game studio Hidden Door is using narrative AI to turn fiction into immersive role-playing experiences, and Rebecca writes it is testing out “The Wizard of Oz.”
Does anyone else use this word?: I was delighted to see that there is a company named Skidattl. The company is using augmented reality to show users what people are doing around them, in what Rebecca writes is “like a Bat-Signal for fun.”

5 ways biotech startups can mitigate risk to grow sustainably in the long run

Thanks to R&D and clinical trials, life science startups have long lead times before they can bring their capital-intensive products to market.

“But,” asks Omar Khalil, a partner at Santé Ventures, “what happens when the funding suddenly dries up?”

In a guest post for TC+, he shares five strategies for biotech startups that are trying to stay warm through the winter ahead.

“It’s still too early to know whether this is a short-term correction, or if it’s a new normal that will be maintained for the foreseeable future.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

At least someone is soaring: Ron and Alex team up to write about one SaaS company, in this case, ServiceNow, whose stock soared this week while some of big tech’s earnings took a dive.
Speaking of diving: Dominic-Madori took a look at third-quarter venture capital funding into Latin American companies, which was down. She speaks with some folks on what needs to happen next.
Grab on to that bear market: Jacquelyn spoke with some cryptocurrency executives who said that, despite appearances, bear markets are a “great time” to launch crypto startups.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

As promised, we have even more Twitter news for you to enjoy. As I write this, several of my colleagues hopped on Twitter Spaces to talk about all this. One of the latest bits of news from Taylor was that Elon Musk was forming a content moderation “council” to make certain decisions — for example, about account reinstatements for, cough, Donald Trump. Here’s two more:

Darrell pulled together the story so far on Elon Musk owning Twitter.
We moved a TC+ story down here, because Twitter! Alex breaks down what the new value of social media companies might be thanks to Twitter’s $44 billion price tag.

Catching you up on more earnings reports:

Meta shares took a tumble yesterday following third-quarter earnings that were less than impressive, Taylor and Amanda report, respectively.
Even Apple’s earnings fell short, Brian reports. And that was with iPhone revenues up.
And over to Amazon, which also saw its Q3 income dip, Kyle writes. The company said “the economy took its toll.”

And we have four more for you:

Not on cloud 9: AWS reports a slowdown as overall cloud infrastructure market growth dips to 24%, Ron reports.
Second hack: Carly writes about yet another Twilio hack following an investigation that revealed the number of affected customers is growing.
On the down low: Three years after building up a payment and lending app in India, Xiaomi quietly winds it down, Manish and Ivan report.
When the chips are down…: The Biden administration imposed chip sanctions on China, and now reports say that those sanctions could extend to biotech. Rita has more.