Meta decimates its staff as the social media giant lays off 11,000

Whooo-weee interesting times for crypto land, as Bitcoin crashes down to under $17,000 for the first time in a while. Wild, given that the cryptocurrency was trading at $65,000 or so a year ago. That’s a 74% decrease. What kind of winter is this — are we seeing a crypto cold snap or crypto permafrost? Answers on an immutable blockchain transaction, please.

If you’re excited to make sense of the crypto world, we’ve got an event in Miami coming up in a couple of weeks — details and tickets here!  — Christine and Haje.

The TechCrunch Top 3

• More social media struggles: Though the subject matter was a downer, Paul wrote a great story about Meta’s confirmed layoffs of 11,000 employees, explaining what happened, why and what it means in the greater context of Meta’s future. More in Big Tech below.
• It was good while it lasted: For a few hours this morning, us TechCrunchers were elated to see our precious Twitter handle get the “Official Twitter Badge,” but as Amanda writes, what Twitter giveth, Twitter quickly taketh away.
• This is what really happened: It was Elon Musk, in the boardroom, with the badge code. As we just mentioned, Musk was killing spirit all over Twitter today, rolling out gray checkmarks for high-profile accounts and then deleting them. Kyle has more.

Startups and VC

Edge computing cloud and global data network Macrometa has raised $38 million led by Akamai Technologies, as the two announce a new partnership and product integrations, Catherine reports. The funding also included participation from Shasta Ventures and Sixty Degree Capital. Akamai Technologies CTO Andy Champagne will join Macrometa’s board.

Startups might be in a funding midwinter, but the ray of sun shining on some VCs speaks of a different trend, reports Ingrid. EQT Ventures, the venture fund arm of Sweden’s investment giant EQT making early-stage bets on startups primarily in Europe, has closed its latest fund and filled its coffers with €1 billion (and $1.1 billion in total commitments).

Like our headline stories, but more summarized:

• Like Excel, but more better: Equals secures $16 million investment to supercharge spreadsheets, reports Kyle.
• Like Made.com but less bankrupt: Next acquires Made.com’s brand and IP as the online furniture retailer enters administration, by Paul.
• Like app development, but more lucrative: Anna writes that Adapty is betting it can help app devs make more money after raising a round of funding.
• Like customer support, but more embeddable: Plain is a new customer support tool with a focus on API integrations, Romain reports.
• Like notifications, but more distributed: Web3 messaging infrastructure Notifi raises $10 million seed round, reports Kate.

Three tips for managing a remote engineering team

Remote work is not for every business, and it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. When Greg Soh and his co-founder decided to build a distributed engineering team for their startup, numerous questions raced through their minds: Will the team be productive? How will decisions be made? How do they keep the culture alive? Today, the startup manages a remote team of about a dozen engineers, and they’ve learned quite a bit along the way.

On TechCrunch+, he shares some of the tips and advice the company has learned — most of the advice is best applicable to earlier-stage startups.

Three more from the TC+ team:

• No wave for you: VC investors and startup founders see hope in the red wave that wasn’t, by Dominic-Madori.
• No crypto deals for you: Will the FTX debacle scupper crypto venture deal-making? by Alex.
• No headwinds for you: Why mobile subscription management platforms are enjoying tailwinds, by Anna.

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!

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Big Tech Inc.

Following today’s Meta announcement regarding the layoff of 11,000 employees, Ingrid did a deep dive into the company’s 8-K and emerged with some fresh catch, including the predictable — that slashing expenses on hiring and capex investments will help the company’s 2023 bottom line.

Meanwhile, Frederic writes about IBM’s Osprey quantum processor, which isn’t exactly the 4,000 qubits the company wants to achieve by 2025, but at 433 qubits, it’s a good start.

And we have five more for you:

• More layoffs: You didn’t think you’d get off that easy, did you? Ron reports that Salesforce has laid off hundreds of employees, while Aria reports that Astra lays off 16% of its staff after nearly tripling it in the last year.
• Brrr, it’s cold in here — there must be some crypto in the atmosphere: It’s like Anita had some sixth sense or something. Earlier today, she wrote that the proposed Binance and FTX M&A deal looked unlikely to close. Lo and behold, just before this went out, Binance decided to walk away from the deal, Jacquelyn reports.
• Collaboration station: Ready to Freeform? Not sure it’s going to be a verb yet, but Apple hopes its collaborative whiteboard is something that sticks, Ivan reports.
• Sensors and software and EV, oh my!: Volvo unveiled its first all-electric SUV today, and we are drooling. Jaclyn has more.
• We’re guessing he didn’t win the Powerball: Elon Musk sold more of his Tesla shares, Rebecca writes. The 19.5 million shares were worth almost $4 billion. Wonder what he’s using the money for…

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