Business

Medialab, started by Whisper co-founders Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks, has left a trail of lawsuits following its acquisitions. Apparently it loaded up on cheap debt — and the Genius lawsuit alleges that it’s slow-rolling its acquisition payments to service that debt.

The CNN media reporter announced today that he’s starting his own news outlet called Status — a nightly briefing covering the media industry, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley.

Darcy is the latest journalist to move from a big outlet to an independent enterprise. Status will be subscription-based, and will launch with an initial (as of yet unnamed) sponsor.

That’s what WBD CEO David Zaslav said during an earnings call on Wednesday, referencing the company’s $9.1 billion goodwill impairment charge linked to the value of its legacy TV networks and “uncertainty” about sports rights now that the NBA is headed to streaming:

It’s fair to say that even two years ago, market valuations and prevailing conditions for legacy media companies were quite different than they are today, and this impairment acknowledges this and better aligns our carrying values with our future outlook.

After Disney agreed to buy Comcast’s 33 percent stake in Hulu with an initial payment of $8.6 billion, the two companies entered arbitration to determine Hulu’s fair value. Now, Disney says in an SEC filing that it could end up paying up to $5 billion depending on the outcome of arbitration.

The service — which allows users to book non-accomodation activities like tours and outings — was paused last year to focus on “core offerings,” but now a “more affordable” version of it will be reintroduced next year according to the holiday rental company’s Q2 earnings call.

This follows some anti-tourism backlash against the company, and Airbnb warning that it was seeing “signs of slowing demand from US guests.”

The Japanese entertainment giant is reporting an operating profit of 279.11 billion yen ($1.9 billion) for Q1 2024, up 10 percent year-over-year.

Most of that growth comes from its music and gaming software segments, the latter of which was driven by first-party games and PlayStation Plus subscriptions. Meanwhile, Sony sold just 2.4 million PS5 console units compared to the 3 million it previously estimated.

The Financial Times reported last month that WBD execs considered splitting its streaming and studio business from its struggling TV networks. But now, execs have determined this may not be “the best option at this time,” according to the FT.

Instead, WBD reportedly plans on selling smaller assets, such as the Polish broadcaster TVN or a stake in its game’s business.

Elliott Management, famous for targeting underperforming companies such as Twitter, says Nvidia is in a bubble, in a new letter to investors.

Many of AI’s supposed uses are “never going to be cost-efficient, are never going to actually work right, will take up too much energy, or will prove to be untrustworthy”, it said.

The sell-off at least in part is about Wall Street losing confidence in AI. (I did warn you it was going to be a year of reckoning back in February!) There are a couple of other things going on, with potentially long-term effects on tech, too.

Crypto, a proxy for investors’ appetite for brainless risk, started a plunge that continued to worsen into Monday morning. The cause of all this came from three surprising pieces of economic data that came out last week, causing traders to rethink how they make, or at least don’t lose, money.

Scroll through the pictures below and try to match each desk chair with the platform it’s for sale on: Amazon, AliExpress, or Shein.

The correct answer doesn’t really matter — as John Herrman writes, this is the state of online shopping, where products that look the same are for sale everywhere, often at different prices or by different sellers. Everywhere you look, products are cheap, fast, and anonymous.

With no big movies or The Legend of Zelda games this quarter, Nintendo’s gross profits have fallen by 45 percent compared to the same period last year.

Sales of Nintendo Switch hardware, now in its eighth year since launch, have also “decreased significantly year-on-year” — and we may not see a notable improvement until the company announces its highly anticipated next-gen console sometime in 2025.

The Italian software company, which notably acquired — and limited free access to — Evernote, has added WeTransfer to its growing portfolio. WeTransfer CEO Alexandar Vassilev says the company will “continue to serve your creative tooling needs” following the acquisition.

As David Pierce wrote about the Friend AI gadget and company CEO Avi Schiffman:

He wants Friend.com to eventually become a social network for real-life and AI friends, and he wants to build more kinds of devices and try everything.

Apparently, he’s serious. 404 Media reports he spent $1.8 million on the domain after raising about $2.5 million. Schiffman said, “People just don’t get consumer, I view this as saving money. Much less money needs to be spent on marketing, it’s a one time thing.”

Bullying works: after TikTok users complained about Chipotle’s inconsistent portion sizes, the company announced this week it is “doubling down” on training to ensure customers get “correct and generous portions.” It will cost the company $50 million, executives told analysts.

Researcher Alex Hanna, of Distributed AI Research Institute and previously of Google, reflects on what might come next:

After the dust settles and NVIDIA has stopped churning out shovels (e.g. H100s) for the gold rush, what will be left behind? Will data centers go the way of shopping malls? Likely not—they’ll be repurposed for other massive computing projects. But what about those climate pledges?

T-Mobile is creating a joint venture with the investment firm KKR to acquire Metronet, a service that provides fiber internet to over 2 million homes and businesses in 17 states.

As part of the deal, T-Mobile will invest $4.9 billion for a 50 percent stake in the joint venture and all of Metronet’s residential customers. In April, T-Mobile announced plans to acquire the fiber optic company Lumos as well.

Comcast’s earnings report today revealed that Peacock lost 500,000 subscribers in the months leading up to the Olympics — and Peacock’s planned price hike. Despite this, Peacock is pushing toward profitability with $1 billion in revenue and losses narrowing to $348 million.

Monthly active users increased by 14 percent year-over-year to 626 million, but 5 million short of Spotify’s expectations for the quarter. Subscribers also increased by 12 percent to 246 million, with Spotify reporting a record-high operating income of €266 million (about $288.8 million).

The growth timeline “exceeded even our own expectations,” said CEO Daniel Ek. “This all bodes very well for the future.”