Tag Archives: Finance

Block, the parent of Square and Cash App, is laying off over 4,000 people

Posted on by

Block is the latest business to announce layoffs, with the operator of payment platforms Square and Cash App opting to cut jobs in favor of using more AI tools. The financial tech company, helmed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, is slashing its current staff of 10,000 to "just under 6,000." CNBC highlighted a letter Block sent to shareholders announcing the decision to nearly halve its workforce. According to the message from Dorsey: 

"The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. We're already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we're building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week."

We learned last year that Block had developed an AI agent called "codename goose" for interacting with LLMs. Leadership is clearly putting high expectations on that project and any other in-house tools to fill the shoes of thousands. "intelligence will be at the core of how the entire company works. How we make decisions, how we build trust and manage risk, how we build products, and how we serve customers," the shareholder letter states.

Block also reported its latest financial results today. It finished the 2025 financial year with operating income (profit after expenses) of $1.71 billion.

This isn't the first time the fintech company has made deep cuts in its employee count. Layoffs numbering about 1,000 were rumored both in 2024 and 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/block-the-parent-of-square-and-cash-app-is-laying-off-over-4000-people-223343068.html?src=rss

Gaming accessory maker and publisher Nacon files for insolvency

Posted on by

French AA gaming developer and accessory manufacturer Nacon has filed for insolvency after its majority shareholder Bigben failed to make a loan repayment, the company said in a press release. "To date, the company reports available assets do not allow it to meet its liabilities," Nacon wrote. The objective with insolvency, it said, was to allow "continued operation, protect employees and maintain jobs while renegotiating with its creditors." 

Nacon is behind the games Styx: Blades of Greed and was set to publish Terminator: Survivors before that title was delayed. It published Hell is Us last year to some praise, but Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was buggy on release and failed to find much of an audience. The company will stream its next Nacon Connect presentation on March 4, and will supposedly show off some new games and footage for previously revealed games like Endurance Motorsport Series and Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. 

The company also makes hardware like controllers and headsets and racing sim accessories via its Revosim brand. Those products never really caught on with mainstream gamers but did have some success with the pro gaming crowd. 

With Nacon's insolvency, the future of those games and accessories is now in question. A court will decide on the company's insolvency request at a hearing in early March, but in the meantime, trading of its shares is suspended. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/gaming-accessory-maker-and-publisher-nacon-files-for-insolvency-104832702.html?src=rss

Kalshi fined a MrBeast editor for insider trading

Posted on by

Kalshi, one of several online prediction markets that have exploded in popularity in the last few years, has suspended one of YouTube MrBeast's video editors for insider trading, NPR reports. Besides being suspended from the platform for two years, Kalshi says the editor will also be required to pay a financial penalty that's five times his initial trade size.

The editor, Artem Kaptur, traded in markets related to YouTube and specifically, MrBeast. Kalshi says his transactions were initially flagged because of his "near-perfect trading success on markets with low odds, which were statistically anomalous." Because trades are public on Kalshi, multiple users also flagged the trades as suspicious. Kalshi learned Kaptur was an employee of MrBeast during its investigation and determined he "likely had access to material non-public information connected to his trading." Perhaps unsurprisingly, trading with insider information violates Kalshi's rules.

Kalshi says that it reported the insider trading to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and plans to donate the over $20,000 Kaptur has been fined to "a non-profit that provides consumer education on derivatives markets." In a statement provided to NPR, Beast Industries, MrBeast's production company, said it has a zero-tolerance policy for insider trading. "We have a longstanding policy in place against employees using proprietary company information in order to safeguard the highest standards and ethics throughout our organization," Beast Industries said. 

Separately, Kalshi has also suspended and fined a politician who was running to be Governor of California. "In May, our Surveillance Department saw an online video by a candidate for Governor of California that appeared to show him trading on his own candidacy," Kalshi says. "We immediately froze his account and opened an investigation. The candidate was initially cooperative and acknowledged that this violated the exchange rules. As a candidate in a race, you can (and probably should) follow and use Kalshi’s market forecast, but you should not trade on it."

Like other prediction markets, Kalshi lets users make trades based on a variety of different subjects and events. For example, you could participate in a market focused on the results of a basketball game, or something more unusual, like who'll win the current season of Survivor. Despite resembling gambling, online predictive markets aren't currently regulated by state gambling laws, and instead classify bets as a type of futures contract, placing them under the purview of the CFTC. That hasn't stopped states from trying to regulate prediction markets anyway. For example, Nevada sued Kalshi for operating a sports gambling market without a permit earlier in February.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/kalshi-fined-a-mrbeast-editor-for-insider-trading-191027814.html?src=rss

Spotify now has more than 750 million monthly users

Posted on by

Spotify announced Tuesday that it hit 751 million total monthly active users (MAUs) for quarter-four of 2025. That record-high is an 11 percent jump from the year before and a significant bump from the third quarter's 713 million MAUs. 

The quarterly earnings report also showed a 10 percent jump year-over-year in Premium subscribers, from 263 million to 290 million. Europe makes up the greatest number of the Swedish company's premium subscribers (36 percent), with North America coming second at 25 percent. 

Spotify contributes a few factors to its growth, including AI. "We consider ourselves the R&D department for the music industry. Our job is to understand new technologies quickly and capture their potential, which we’ve done time and again," Gustav Söderström, Co-CEO of Spotify, said in a statement. The entire industry stands to benefit from this [AI] paradigm shift but we believe those who embrace this change and move fast, will benefit the most.” In late 2025, Spotify announced it would get rid of some of the AI "slop" on its platform and have "artist-first AI music products" — though the specifics were very vague. 

The company also claims that December's Spotify Wrapped was bigger than ever, with over 300 million engaged users and 630 million shares across 56 languages. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotify-now-has-more-than-750-million-monthly-users-124103630.html?src=rss

OnlyFans is reportedly in talks to sell a 60 percent stake to a San Francisco investment firm

Posted on by

OnlyFans is looking to cash out once again, but this time in a deal that would value it at several billion dollars less than a potential sale that previously fell through. As reported by TechCrunch, the online platform known for subscription-based pornographic content is in talks to sell a majority stake to Architect Capital, an investment firm based in San Francisco.

According to the report, the proposed deal includes $3.5 billion in equity and $2 billion in debt, which values OnlyFans at $5.5 billion. TechCrunch also reported that Architect Capital and OnlyFans are currently in exclusive talks, where the website's owner can't negotiate with other potential buyers for a certain amount of time.

With no set timeline yet for the deal, the deal is far from an official closing. Last year, OnlyFans' owner Leonid Radvinsky was also negotiating with another investment firm, Forest Road Company, to sell the platform. Although that deal never went through, the talks leading up to the sale valued OnlyFans at a much higher $8 billion. The London-based website, which still doesn't want to be known as just a porn site, is still growing and reported a nine percent increase in gross revenue for its 2024 fiscal year, earning more than $7.2 billion.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/onlyfans-is-reportedly-in-talks-to-sell-a-60-percent-stake-to-a-san-francisco-investment-firm-191842666.html?src=rss

Apple just reported its best-ever quarter for iPhone sales

Posted on by

Apple shared its latest quarterly financial results today and the news is once again very, very good for the Cupertino company. The quarter ending December 27, 2025 marked "the best-ever quarter" for iPhones, which generated a record high revenue of nearly $85.27 billion for the business. Apple doesn't disclose the number of devices sold any more, but even with the prices for many of its latest generation of smartphones surpassing $1,000 a pop, that's still got to be a heck of a lot of iPhones. 

"The demand for iPhone was simply staggering," CEO Tim Cook said on the conference call to discuss the results. "This is the strongest iPhone lineup we've ever had and by far the most popular."

That wasn't the only massive number in the earnings report. Services revenue also logged its biggest quarter yet, growing 14 percent over the same period last year to reach just over $30 billion. It was also Apple's biggest quarter to date for total revenue, which was nearly $143.76 billion for the already fabulously wealthy company.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/apple-just-reported-its-best-ever-quarter-for-iphone-sales-234135513.html?src=rss

Apple acquires Q.ai for a reported $2 billion

Posted on by

Apple has acquired Israel-based startup Q.ai, a move that could provide a much-needed boost to the tech giant's capabilities in artificial intelligence. Although Apple has not disclosed terms of the deal, sources told Financial Times that the arrangement is reportedly valued at nearly $2 billion. If that figure is accurate, the Q.ai acquisition marks Apple's second largest acquisition to date, followed by its purchase of Beats for $3 billion back in 2014.

Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, said in a statement that Q.ai "is a remarkable company that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning." Apple hasn't shared any specifics about how it plans to leverage the startup, but its past work indicates the possibility of Apple moving deeper into AI-powered wearables. "Patents filed by Q.ai show its technology being used in headphones or glasses, using 'facial skin micro movements' to communicate without talking," the Times reported. 

The startup's founding team, including CEO Aviad Maizels, will join Apple as part of the deal. This acquisition marks Maizels' second sale to Apple; he previously founded a three-dimensional hearing business called PrimeSense that Apple bought back in 2013.

For several months, many tech insiders have speculated that an acquisition might be Apple's best path forward to catching up in the AI race. In the company's Q3 earnings call in July 2025, CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that "We’re open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap." A deal like this one could eventually lead to Apple developing its own fully in-house AI chatbot rather than relying on a competitor like Google to power artificial intelligence in its Siri assistant.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-acquires-qai-for-a-reported-2-billion-190017949.html?src=rss

Vimeo lays off most of its staff just months after being bought by private equity firm

Posted on by

Vimeo just got hit by a brutal round of layoffs, according to a report by Business Insider. Staffers are posting on various social media sites that the layoffs have impacted most of the company, including the entire video team. Vimeo is a video-hosting platform, so that sounds bad.

“Yesterday, following Vimeo’s recent acquisition by a private equity firm, I learned that I, along with a large portion of the company, was impacted by layoffs,” wrote the company’s former vice president of Global Brand & Creative, Dave Brown. He is referring to a firm called Bending Spoons that bought Vimeo for $1.38 billion in the latter half of 2025.

We don't know why parent company Bending Spoons conducted such a massive round of layoffs, but the equity firm is known for purchasing tech companies and aggressively cutting costs via layoffs. It did the same thing to Evernote back in 2023 and WeTransfer in 2024. Engadget has reached out to Vimeo to inquire about the exact number of employees that were laid off and will update this post when we hear back.

"I can confirm that a layoff was announced at Vimeo on January 20, 2026. To respect the privacy of those departing, we cannot provide additional details at this time,” a Bending Spoons spokesperson told Gizmodo in an emailed statement. "Going forward, Bending Spoons remains committed to growing Vimeo to meet the needs of its diverse user base."

It's good to know the company "remains committed to growing Vimeo" after firing just about everyone that works there. One former employee said on X that it "sucks to see something I built killed by private equity in a technology company skin suit."

Vimeo has been around a long time. The platform was founded a full year before YouTube and has positioned itself as being a premium alternative for hosting creative and business-adjacent videos. We have no idea what it'll look like with a minimal staff and no video team.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/vimeo-lays-off-most-of-its-staff-just-months-after-being-bought-by-private-equity-firm-184556023.html?src=rss

TikTok finalizes deal for its US entity

Posted on by

After years of uncertainty over TikTok's future in the United States, a deal for the app's US business has been finalized. The new US entity is called TikTok USDS Joint Venture. ByteDance has retained a 19.9 percent percent stake in the new business, with the rest controlled by a group of non-Chinese investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, an Emirati-state owned investment firm, all of which have a 15 percent stake. Dell CEO Michael Dell and other investors have smaller stakes in the new company. 

The terms of the deal were first leaked last month, after TikTok CEO Shou Chew reportedly told employees in a memo that TikTok and ByteDance had agreed to a group of investors. This ends a lengthy saga and months of slow progress as the agreement was being worked out, ensuring that the app will remain available in the US after years of being on the verge of a ban in the country.

President Donald Trump, who had tried to ban the app during his first term in office, praised the deal in a post on Truth Social. "It will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World, and will be an important Voice," he wrote."I only hope that long into the future I will be remembered by those who use and love TikTok."

According to TikTok’s announcement, the joint venture will protect American users’ data with Oracle's secure US cloud environment. It will also retrain TikTok’s algorithm on US users’ data and will be in charge of content moderation in the US. The entity promises interoperability, as well, promising that users will still get international content and, if they’re a creator, viewers. “The safeguards provided by the Joint Venture will also cover CapCut, and Lemon8 and a portfolio of other apps and websites in the US,” TikTok said.

The new entity will be overseen by a seven-member board of directors, most of whom are Americans. It includes, Shou Chew, the Chief Executive Officer of TikTok, Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban, Oracle Executive Vice President Kenneth Glueck and MGX Chief Strategy and Safety Officer David Scott. Adam Presser, who had previously been head of operations and trust and safety at TikTok, is the CEO of TikTok USDS Joint Venture.

Exactly what the new joint venture means for US users of TikTok is unclear. Shortly after the deal was announced, TikTok introduced new terms of service for US users. As the BBC notes, the new terms include provisions relating to use of the app by kids under 13 (they are limited to the "Under 13 Experience") and that the "TikTok USDS Joint Venture does not endorse any content" in the app. The company hasn’t announced specific changes to the app’s algorithm or other core features.

Update, January 23, 2026, 10:58AM PT: This post was updated to add a statement from President Trump, and with additional information about TikTok’s new terms of service.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/tiktok-finalizes-deal-for-its-us-entity-010543484.html?src=rss

David Ellison extends deadline for Warner Bros. Discovery takeover offer

Posted on by

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is apparently still hopeful that investors will approve his $108.4 billion hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount Skydance announced Thursday that it's extending its all-cash offer to acquire the storied studio, and giving investors until February 20, 2026 to accept. The company's previous offer expired on January 21, but with a lawsuit in the works and a revised Netflix deal to compete with, Paramount Skydance wants to stay in the conversation.

Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery originally announced their $82.7 billion acquisition agreement in December 2025. Netflix's deal is for a significant portion, but notably not all, of Warner Bros. Discovery as it exists today. If approved, the streaming service would acquire Warner Bros. film studios, New Line Cinema, HBO, HBO Max, the company's theme parks, game studios and select linear channels like TNT, but not the collection of reality TV and news programming that Warner Bros. Discovery calls “Global Networks.”

Paramount Skydance made its competing offer of $108.4 billion for all of Warner Bros. Discovery a few days later in December, with the recommendation that shareholders reject the Netflix deal. To add pressure, Paramount Skydance also sued Warner Bros. Discovery in January alleging that the company had not provided adequate information about why it favored Netflix over Paramount. Beyond offering more money, Paramount contends its deal is more likely to be approved by regulators because owning Warner Bros. doesn't "entrench Netflix's market dominance." Warner Bros. Discovery claims that funding for Paramount's deal "remains inadequate" and that the company is uncertain Paramount Skydance will actually be able to complete the deal.

David Ellison was previously able to merge Skydance with Paramount using the financial backing of his billionaire father Larry Ellison, and the Ellison family's friendly relationship with the Trump administration. Promising to make sure that CBS News represents "a diversity of viewpoints” via a newly appointed ombudsman, and that the merged Paramount Skydance won't create any diversity, equity and inclusion programs was enough to get the FCC to approve the merger. Ellison might have thought acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery would be equally easy, but at least so far that hasn't worked out as planned.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/david-ellison-extends-deadline-for-warner-bros-discovery-takeover-offer-204752313.html?src=rss