In the second quarter of 2023, Spotify saw its million monthly active users (MAU) climb to 551 million after welcoming 36 million new listeners. That represents a 27 percent increase in MAUs and is an all-time high for the streaming giant, which has just published its earnings report. While not all new users signed up for a Premium account, Spotify also had a record-breaking second quarter when it comes to Premium subscriber numbers. It welcomed 10 million paying users — 3 million larger than guidance — and grew its subscriber base by 17 percent year over year. That's not an all-time high, but it's also apparently the best Q2 Spotify has ever had in that regard. 

Despite the massive influx of new users, Spotify still lost a significant amount of money. Its total revenue for the period is $3.5 billion (€3.2 billion), 11 percent larger than last year's. However, it also posted an adjusted operating loss of $123.7 million (€112 million). Spotify blamed those losses on the shutdown of its podcast shows, as well as on excess real estate and severance for employees laid off due to company restructuring. If you'll recall, the audio streaming giant recently made big changes to its podcast strategy and axed several original productions. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, Spotify previously told investors that it would be raising prices in order to turn a profit. Indeed, the company just added $1 on top of the old subscription rate, meaning users in the US now have to pay at least $11 a month. Spotify also plans to implement price hikes across markets, including the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. The company anticipates a slowdown in premium subscription signups due to its higher prices for the third quarter of the year. From having 10 million new paying users in the second quarter, it expects to add 4 million Premium subscribers in Q3. Even so, it believes the price increases will "have a minimal impact on total revenue" and is still expecting to earn $3.65 billion (€3.3 billion) this quarter.

After 18 months of battling their way through regulatory red tape, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are closer than ever to making their merger happen. However, with some issues still to smooth out in the UK, the companies weren't able to neatly tie things up in time for their initial July 18th deadline. As such, they've agreed to extend their merger agreement by three months to get the $68.7 billion acquisition over the line.

"Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have jointly agreed to extend the merger agreement deadline from July 18th, 2023 to October 18th, 2023, to allow for additional time to resolve remaining regulatory concerns," Microsoft said in a statement. 

If they hadn't agreed on new terms and either side walked away (which they could have done as of today), Microsoft would have been on the hook for a $3 billion breakup fee. That termination fee will increase to $3.5 billion if the merger hasn't closed by August 29th and $4.5 billion if it's not a done deal by September 15th. The fee will only be paid if the acquisition doesn't close. In addition, they agreed that Activision can give its shareholders a dividend of $0.99 per share.

"Microsoft and Activision Blizzard remain optimistic that we will get our acquisition over the finish line, so we have jointly agreed to extend the merger agreement to October 18th, 2023," Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer wrote in a note to employees. "While we can technically close in the United States due to recent legal developments, this extension gives us additional time to resolve the remaining regulatory concerns in the UK."

The Competition and Markets Authority, the UK's antitrust regulator, initially blocked the deal in April based on concerns over its impact on the cloud gaming market (deals Microsoft signed with third-party cloud gaming platforms were enough of a remedy for the European Union to approve the merger). Microsoft appealed the CMA's decision but with just days to go before the deadline, the CMA said it would be willing to review a modified merger proposal.

The CMA, Microsoft and Activision submitted a joint proposal to an appeals tribunal to delay their litigation by two months in an attempt to resolve the regulator's concerns amicably. The appeals tribunal granted that request on Monday. The CMA has also given itself an extra six weeks, until the end of August, to review Microsoft's new proposal. However, it hopes to do so as quickly as possible.

It's not quite clear when this might all be wrapped up one way or the other, but the CMA and both companies are aiming to do so very soon and certainly well before October 18th. One key date to look out for is August 2nd. That's when an evidentiary hearing in the Federal Trade Commission's administrative proceeding in an attempt to block the deal is scheduled to start. The FTC was unsuccessful in its efforts to obtain an injunction to stop the merger from happening in the meantime. However, if the deal hasn't closed by August 2nd and the FTC's administrative trial begins, things could get more complicated for Microsoft and Activision.

At the Microsoft Inspire partner event today, the Windows maker announced pricing for its AI-infused Copilot for Microsoft 365. The suite of contextual artificial intelligence tools, the fruit of the company’s OpenAI partnership, will cost $30 per user for business accounts. In addition, the company is launching Bing Chat Enterprise, a privacy-focused version of the AI chatbot with greater security and peace of mind for handling sensitive business data.

Revealed in March, Microsoft 365 Copilot is the company’s vision of the future of work. The GPT-4-powered suite of tools lets you generate Office content using natural-language text prompts. For example, you can ask PowerPoint to create a presentation based on a Word document, generate a proposal from spreadsheet data or summarize emails and draft responses in Outlook — all by typing simple commands. “By grounding answers in business data like your documents, emails, calendar, chats, meetings and contacts, and combining them with your working context — the meeting you’re in now, the emails you’ve exchanged on a topic, the chats you had last week — Copilot delivers richer, more relevant and more actionable responses to your questions,” Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft’s Chief Communications Officer, wrote in an announcement today.

Microsoft began testing Copilot with a small group of select enterprise partners earlier this year but hasn’t yet announced when all business customers will gain access. However, announcing its pricing could mean that date is fast approaching. The $30 / mo. pricing will apply to Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium customers. The company still hasn’t announced Copilot consumer pricing or availability.

Meanwhile, Bing Chat Enterprise is Microsoft’s more security-minded variant of the popular AI chatbot that launched for consumers in February. “Since launching the new Bing in February, we’ve heard from many corporate customers who are excited to empower their organizations with powerful new AI tools but are concerned that their companies’ data will not be protected,” Shaw wrote. “That’s why today we’re announcing Bing Chat Enterprise, which gives organizations AI-powered chat for work with commercial data protection. What goes in — and comes out — remains protected, giving commercial customers managed access to better answers, greater efficiency and new ways to be creative.”

Bing Chat Enterprise begins rolling out today in a preview — at no additional cost — for Microsoft 365 E5, E3, Business Premium and Business Standard customers. In addition, the company says it will make the enterprise-focused chatbot available as a standalone $5 subscription “in the future.”

E-bike company VanMoof has declared bankruptcy for all its Dutch entities and aims to find a buyer in the "next few weeks." The announcement comes alongside the court of Amsterdam's withdrawal of suspension of payment proceedings and appointment of two trustees to oversee a possible third-party sale of the assets to ideally keep VanMoof functioning. The news came through a mass email to Dutch employees that was subsequently shared on Reddit.

Bankruptcy proceedings have come to VanMoof less than two years after it claimed to be the "most funded e-bike company in the world" while announcing a $128 million investment. Yet, trouble has been brewing for some time, with it allegedly costing more money to sell and service its bikes than people were paying for them. Dutch financial outlet FD reported an €11.9 million ($13.4 million) gross margin loss for VanMoof in 2021, with €8 million ($9 million) spent on repairs and replacements. The company's international entities, in places like the United States and Taiwan, aren't part of the bankruptcy proceedings.

VanMoof told employees there are "no funds to pay the salaries" long-term and gave them a six-week notice period in which they are expected to work and will receive their final payments. Part of this time will entail returning bikes currently in service back to customers. VanMoof is really leaning in on its employees to keep working hard, stating: "It is necessary to stay strong and to continue with your required work. We hope everybody keeps up their best efforts so we can secure a good future for this beautiful company and brand together."

Twitter is still spending more money than it’s making, according to Elon Musk. In the early hours of Saturday morning, the billionaire tweeted the company was suffering from an ongoing negative cash flow issue due to an approximately 50 percent drop in advertising revenue and heavy debt burden. “Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” Musk said.

The admission comes in the same week that Twitter’s ad-revenue sharing program began paying out some creators, including a handful of far-right influencers. On Friday, Musk also claimed the social network could see “all-time high device user seconds usage” sometime this week. He also previously said almost all the advertisers who had left the platform following his takeover in October had “either come back” or “said they will come back.”

According to an estimate research firm Sensor Tower shared with Bloomberg, advertising spending fell by 89 percent to $7.6 million during a two-month period earlier this year. Per Reuters, Twitter has annual interest payments of about $1.5 billion due to the debt the company took on when Musk took it private for $44 billion. This is the latest sign the aggressive cost-cutting measures Musk has undertaken in the last year have not been enough to put the company on solid financial footing. It also suggests the company’s newly appointed CEO, Linda Yaccarino, has her work cut out for her as she works to rebuild Twitter’s advertising base.

The problems keep mounting for Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky, as he’s been arrested and charged by federal authorities with fraud. Mashinsky faces seven criminal counts, including securities, commodities and wire fraud, as originally reported by CBS News. He and his company are being independent sued by three government agencies — the FTC, CFTC and SEC. The U.S. Attorney’s Office alleges that Mashinsky misled customers regarding the nature of his company, making it seem like a bank when it was actually a high-risk investment fund.

Celsius’s former chief revenue officer, Roni Cohen-Pavon, was also arrested, with both Pavon and Mashinsky being charged with manipulating the price of the company’s proprietary crypto token so they could sell their own stock at inflated prices. 

“Mashinsky misrepresented, among other things, the safety of Celsius’s yield-generating activities, Celsius’s profitability, the long-term sustainability of Celsius’ high rewards rates and the risks associated with depositing crypto assets with Celsius,'' federal prosecutors wrote in a charging document obtained by CNBC.

Additionally, the FTC reached a $4.7 billion settlement today with Celsius, which nearly matches the record fines levied against Meta in 2019 for violating the privacy of consumers. The company has agreed to these financial terms, but will only make payments once it returns what remains in customer assets as part of ongoing bankruptcy proceedings.

This all follows a New York-based lawsuit issued in January that also alleged massive fraud. That suit seeks appropriate damages after Celsius allegedly defrauded investors out of "billions of dollars" in cryptocurrency.

While details are scant on today’s arrest, the New York suit alleges that Mashinsky misled customers about the company’s worsening financial health and failed to register as a commodities and securities dealer, among many other allegations. New York State Attorney General Letitia James alleged that Mashinsky deceived hundreds of thousands of investors, with over 26,000 of them located in New York.

If convicted on all counts, Mashinsky and Pavon face decades in prison. Mashinsky resigned as CEO of Celsius last year and is no longer involved with the company.

A Congressional investigation concluded that several tax prep providers shared sensitive filing data with Meta and Google. It follows a 2022 report from The Markup highlighting the practice in which TaxSlayer, H&R Block and TaxAct used Meta’s Pixel tracking tool to harvest info like filing status, approximate adjusted gross income, refund amount, names of dependents and which text-entry fields users clicked on. Meta is already facing a lawsuit connected with the initial reporting.

The panel sent the conclusions to the IRS, FTC, DOJ and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGA), urging the agencies to investigate and prosecute if applicable. “Big Tax Prep has recklessly shared tens of millions of taxpayers’ sensitive personal and financial data with Meta for years, without appropriately disclosing this data usage or protecting the data, and without appropriate taxpayer consent,” the report reads. “The findings of this report reveal a shocking breach of taxpayer privacy by tax prep companies and by Big Tech firms that appeared to violate taxpayers’ rights and may have violated taxpayer privacy law.”

The review found the Meta Pixel tracker also gathered data about “whether taxpayers had visited pages for many revealing tax situations, such as having dependents, certain types of income (such as rental income or capital gains), and certain tax credits or deductions.” In addition, it transmitted the full names, email, country, state, city, zip codes, phone numbers and gender as hashed values. The information was also collected from taxpayers using TaxAct’s Free File service — which is through a partnership with the IRS.

Congressional investigators listed in the report include Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA).

“The tax prep firms were shockingly careless with their treatment of taxpayer data,” the investigation concluded. “They indicated that they installed the Meta and Google tools on their websites without fully understanding the extent to which they would send taxpayer data to these tech firms, without consulting with independent compliance or privacy experts, and without full knowledge of Meta’s use of and disposition of the data.” The panel also chided Meta and Google for acting “with stunning disregard for taxpayer privacy.”

The report cites laws that say, “a tax return preparer may not disclose or use a taxpayer’s tax return information prior to obtaining a written consent from the taxpayer,” while mentioning that the tax prep companies failed to do that. Although tax-filing companies can legally hand data to “auxiliary service providers in connection with the preparation of a tax return,” the panel said Meta and Google don’t meet that definition since the tracking was used for advertising. Violations can lead to fines of up to $1,000 per instance (likely pocket change for these companies) and up to a year in prison.

Yuji Naka likely won't face prison time over his insider trading. Tokyo judge Madoka Hiruta has given the Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator a suspended 2.5-year prison sentence, deferred for four years, as well as two fines worth the equivalent of $1.1 million and $14,000. Naka's actions hurt the "fairness and soundness" of the stock market while wounding investors' trust, Hirtua says.

Naka pleaded guilty in March to violating Japan's Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. While working at Square Enix, he bought shares in the game studio Aiming before its partnership with on Dragon Quest Tact became public knowledge. He made about $150,000 in profit after selling his shares. The developer also faced insider trading charges for buying shares in Ateam, the developer of the short-lived mobile battle royale game Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier.

Two other former workers, Taisuke Sasaki and Fumiaki Suzuki, were also arrested for buying Aiming shares. Square Enix previously said it was cooperating with investigators and had instituted safeguards to prevent insider trading.

This kind of activity isn't new in the technology space. It's rare in the gaming world, however. and surprising when it involves a successful developer like Naka. While this won't necessarily hurt the Sonic franchise, it certainly doesn't help his reputation.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) plans to perform an in-depth probe into Adobe’s acquisition of Figma, the agency announced today (viaThe Wall Street Journal). Citing concerns about “a substantial lessening of competition” for screen design software, it plans to move into a “phase two” investigation. However, it’s giving the companies five business days to “offer legally binding proposals” to address the concerns; if their response doesn’t satisfy the CMA, the probe will begin. Adobe announced its plans last year to buy its smaller rival for $20 billion.

“The CMA found that Figma has established a substantial share of the market for screen design software and that Adobe has been continuously investing in and competing in this segment,” the UK agency, which recently rejected Microsoft’s proposed $75 billion purchase of Activision, wrote today. “The CMA found that competition between Figma and Adobe has driven investment in updating and developing screen design software, and this important rivalry could be lost if the deal goes ahead.” It described Figma as “an emerging competitive threat” to the Photoshop maker, expressing concerns about the reduced innovation that could come from Adobe scooping up an upstart competitor. The agency said it’s concerned the acquisition could lead to higher costs and fewer / less innovative products.

Adobe’s purchase of San Francisco-based Figma, founded in 2012, would be the largest-ever acquisition for the 41-year-old design behemoth. In Sigma’s 11 years on the market, it has established itself as a popular tool for vector-based design. The cloud-based software specializes in remote collaboration and is a direct competitor to Adobe’s XD and Illustrator products. At the time of the acquisition, Adobe said it wanted to bring features from its Creative Cloud suite into the collaborative software while incorporating more of Figma’s team-focused features into its core products — predictably framing it as a win-win for customers. The company added it was “deeply committed” to keeping Figma an independent company while insisting there was “no plan” to change its pricing — including its free tier.

“We’re worried this deal could stifle innovation and lead to higher costs for companies that rely on Figma and Adobe’s digital tools — as they cease to compete to provide customers with new and better products,” said Sorcha O’Carroll, the CMA’s Senior Mergers Director. “Unless Adobe can put forward viable solutions to our concerns in the coming days, we will move to a more in-depth investigation.”

Back in 2021, Japanese investment giant SoftBank led a little-known social media app called IRL to unicorn status and an overall valuation of $1.17 billion by investing over $170 million. Well, it turned out that the app completely made up its user numbers, admitting that 95 percent of its purported 20 million user base was fake, as originally reported by The Information.

At the time, SoftBank called the app “an innovative event-based social network” that enables “people to do more together.” However, the firm didn’t know that there were no actual people doing more together. There were no people at all, just a gaping maw of bots and automated accounts.

The app marketed itself as an event-organizing alternative to Facebook, aimed toward younger generations that think Mark Zuckerburg’s social network is for squares and old people. Despite the name, IRL quickly pivoted to online events after the pandemic made meeting up in real life nearly impossible.

Problems began mounting almost immediately after nabbing those millions from SoftBank. Last year, the company laid off 25 percent of its team, with founder Abraham Shafi encouraging employees to “adapt” and “be disciplined,” adding that “most people don’t want to be Olympians. In the same way, not everyone will want to walk the path we are walking.”

After that, employees began getting suspicious of Shafi’s claim of 20 million monthly active users. That’s when the SEC stepped in, issuing a probe as to whether or not IRL misled investors. In April of this year, the company’s board of directors suspended Shafi and appointed a new acting CEO.

Thanks to the inflated numbers and half-baked concept, IRL is shutting down and taking its 19 million bots with it. The company says it’s returning capital to shareholders, but nobody knows how much money is left in the coffers. Shafi once said that the company had “more than enough cash to last well into 2024” but he also touted 20 million active users so, you know, grain of salt and all of that.

This has been a tough week for SoftBank. The firm also invested nearly $400 million in a company that manufactures robot pizza makers. The company shuttered and is liquidating its assets, again leaving a giant question mark as to how much SoftBank would recoup from its original investment. That adds up to a potential loss of $500 million in a single week. Don’t worry about SoftBank, however, as the firm owns dozens of technology companies and recently sold Boston Dynamics for a cool billion. It’s still pretty embarrassing though.