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.

Lordstown Motors is having an eventful day, to say the least. The Ohio-based EV startup has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in hopes of finding a buyer and is suing its investment partner, Foxconn Technology, for breach of contract and fraud. In its suit, Lordstown claims Foxconn's actions "had the intended effect of destroying the business of an American startup."

Foxconn, primarily known for assembling Apple's iPhones, bought Lordstown's Ohio factory in late 2021 (around when General Motors jumped ship) and a year later agreed to invest another $170 million through the purchase of common shares and newly created preferred shares. But, in April, Foxconn threatened to terminate the deal, claiming that Lordstown's stock dropping below $1 per share for 30 trading days in a row represented a breach in their agreement. The car manufacturer said the claims had no merit and accused Foxconn of acting in "bad faith" to get control of the factory and its workers without intending to support Endurance, its first pickup EV. 

The decision to declare Bankruptcy doesn't exactly come as a surprise — in May, Lordstown said production would likely stop "in the near future" and that the company would file if its deal with Foxconn didn't proceed. Lordstown also reported a $171.1 million loss for 2023's first quarter. 

Endurance has also faced continual problems from production to the final product. Even after Foxconn bought the factory, Lordstown failed to meet its forecasted vehicle production numbers for 2022, cutting it from 500 to 50 trucks. Then came an underperformance in miles, with the Environmental Protection Agency recently rating the pickup's range as just 174 miles versus its promised 250. Its competitors, the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Rivian R1T, can go 240 and 289 miles, respectively. 

The United States government has reaffirmed its commitment to move EV production to its shores instead of relying on foreign entities. The US Department of Energy's Loan Program Office (LPO) has announced a conditional $9.2 billion loan for BlueOval SK (BOSK) — owned by Ford and South Korean battery producer SK On — to build three battery manufacturing plants, Bloomberg reports. 

The loan is the biggest the LPO has given out yet — almost four times the size of last year's $2.5 billion loan for Ultium Cell — a joint venture between General Motors and LG. The loan's scale is thanks, in part, to last year's passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which led to the LPO's lending budget increasing to $400 billion. For context, in the previous 14 years, the LPO has dispersed about $33 billion. The extra capital will certainly be necessary to achieve the Biden-Harris administration goal for EVs to make up half of US car sales by 2030. 

There will be two plants in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, with all three producing batteries for Ford and Lincoln's upcoming EV. The car manufacturer also announced plans for a Michigan-based LFP battery plant earlier this year. The production ramp-up comes as Ford aims to roll out two million EVs by 2026, with the All-Electric Explorer, Mustang Mach-E and E-Transit already available and an EV lineup in the works for Lincoln. In comparison, Ford produced about 132,000 EVs in 2022. Ford also recently secured its EV drivers access to 12,000 Tesla's charging points across North America.

The LPO stresses that the loan will also bring career opportunities to the areas, creating 5,000 construction jobs and another 7,500 operation jobs once the plants start running. The investment also aligns with President Biden's Justice40 Initiative that 40 percent of specific federal investments (including LPO loans) go to disadvantaged communities. 

Gannett, a news publisher accused of monopolistic behavior, is suing Google for monopolistic behavior. It’s the latest in a string of lawsuits against the search giant, and it repeats many of the arguments made by the Department of Justice in its second lawsuit against Google, filed earlier this year. Gannett is the US’ largest news publisher. “Google has monopolized market trading to their advantage and at the expense of publishers, readers and everyone else,” Gannett CEO Mike Reed said toCNBC. “Digital advertising is the lifeblood of the online economy. Without free and fair competition for digital ad space, publishers cannot invest in their newsrooms.”

Gannett, which owns USA Today and various local papers, says Google has overly broad control over the online ad business, leading to diminished ad spending despite growing online readership. The crux of the complaint is that Google owns the largest ad exchange and ad server — both acquired rather than built organically — and that arrangement has led to diminished industry revenue.

“Content providers, including hundreds of our local news outlets, create enormous value but see none of the financial upside because Google, as middleman, has monopolized the markets for important software and technology products that publishers and advertisers use to buy and sell ad space,” Gannett CEO Mike Reed wrote today. “Google trades on that conflict of interest to its advantage and at the expense of publishers, readers and everyone else. Our lawsuit details more than a dozen significantly anticompetitive and deceptive acts by Google, starting as early as 2009 and persisting to present day.”

In a statement to Engadget, Google insisted that its services are popular because they’re the best — not due to a lack of competition. “These claims are simply wrong. Publishers have many options to choose from when it comes to using advertising technology to monetize — in fact, Gannett uses dozens of competing ad services, including Google Ad Manager,” VP of Google Ads Dan Taylor said. “And when publishers choose to use Google tools, they keep the vast majority of revenue. We’ll show the court how our advertising products benefit publishers and help them fund their content online.” Google says the average large publisher will use six different platforms to sell ads on its websites, while advertisers and media agencies will use over three platforms to buy ads. The search giant describes its ad tech fees as transparent and consistent with industry rates.

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However, Gannett’s complaints are similar to those of the DOJ, which filed a suit in January (alongside eight states) to break up Google’s advertising business. “Google’s anticompetitive behavior has raised barriers to entry to artificially high levels, forced key competitors to abandon the market for ad tech tools, dissuaded potential competitors from joining the market, and left Google’s few remaining competitors marginalized and unfairly disadvantaged,” the Justice Department alleged at the time. It was the DOJ’s second lawsuit against Google, following one filed in 2020 under former Attorney General Bill Barr, accusing the company of having a monopoly over search and search-related advertising.

Gannett’s and the DOJ’s most recent lawsuits claim Google has stifled competition in the space through acquisitions. “Whenever Google’s customers and competitors responded with innovation that threatened Google’s stranglehold over any one of these ad tech tools, Google’s anticompetitive response has been swift and effective,” the DOJ said.

Gannett is no stranger to monopolistic accusations. Although the company is over 116 years old, it was acquired by New Media Investment Group and merged with GateHouse Media (taking on the Gannett brand) in 2019. Since the merger, Gannett has laid off over half its workforce and shut down numerous local news outlets. In the period immediately following the acquisition, Gannett “owned 261 daily and 302 weekly newspapers,” according toNieman Lab. “By the end of 2022, those totals were 217 daily and 175 weekly newspapers,” although some were due to selling papers to local buyers. In addition, the company went from about 25,000 employees at the time of the acquisition to 11,200 in its most recent filing report.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Binance have come to an agreement that will allow the cryptocurrency exchange to continue operating in the US until a lawsuit filed by the SEC earlier this month is resolved. The regulator sued Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, on June 5th, alleging the company had artificially inflated trading volumes, mixed and diverted customer assets and failed to restrict US investors from trading on Binance.com when they were supposed to stay on a separate US system.

After announcing the charges, the SEC sought to freeze Binance’s US assets. The regulator said the move was necessary to protect customer funds and prevent the company from potentially moving money abroad. Binance, meanwhile, argued an asset freeze would put it out of business in the US. On Tuesday, the judge overseeing the litigation ordered the two sides to come to a compromise that would safeguard customer assets. 

In a court filing seen by The New York Times, the SEC said Friday that Binance had agreed to move all assets belonging to US customers stateside. Additionally, the company’s US operation is prohibited from providing access or control of domestic assets or funds to Binance’s international operation or Zhao. Until the ligation is resolved, Binance.US is "solely" allowed to transfer assets “to make payments for expenses or to satisfy obligations incurred in the ordinary course of business.” Additionally, the exchange is required to create new customer wallets which its international employees can’t access. The deal still needs approval from Judge Amy Berman – and won’t resolve the SEC lawsuit even if it’s put in place.

“Given that Changpeng Zhao and Binance have control of the platforms’ customers’ assets and have been able to commingle customer assets or divert customer assets as they please, as we have alleged, these prohibitions are essential to protecting investor assets,” the SEC said Saturday. “Further, we ensured that US customers will be able to withdraw their assets from the platform while we work to resolve the alleged underlying misconduct and hold Zhao and the Binance entities accountable for their alleged securities law violations.”

Zhao took to Twitter on Saturday morning to comment on the deal. “Although we maintain that the SEC's request for emergency relief was entirely unwarranted, we are pleased that the disagreement over this request was resolved on mutually acceptable terms,” he posted. “User funds have been and always will be safe and secure on all Binance-affiliated platforms.”

The SEC’s lawsuit against Binance is part of a broader crackdown by the watchdog against the crypto industry. At the end of last year, the agency accused FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried of carrying out an alleged multi-year scheme to defraud investors. One day after suing Binance, the SEC filed a complaint against Coinbase, the largest crypto trading platform in the US, alleging the company had failed to register as a broker, national securities exchange or clearing agency.

Vodafone has announced its intentions to merge with Three, pulling together the UK’s two remaining standalone mobile networks. The move comes in a market that has seen major consolidations in recent years between Virgin Media's merger with O2 and BT Group's purchase of EE. If regulators approve the deal, Vodafone and Three's new company will become the largest mobile phone operator in the UK, with an estimated 27 million customers. 

"Three UK and Vodafone UK currently lack the necessary scale on their own to earn their cost of capital. This has long been a challenge for Three UK's ability to invest and compete," (Three Owner) CK Hutchinson Group Co-Managing Director Canning Fok said in a statement. "Together, we will have the scale needed to deliver a best-in-class 5G network for the UK, transforming mobile services for our customers and opening up new opportunities for businesses across the length and breadth of the UK." Vodafone will own 51 percent of the company, while CK Hutchinson controls the rest. 

The merger with Vodafone isn't the first time Three has tried to couple up with a competitor. In 2015, its parent company announced plans to buy O2 for £10.25 billion ($12.96 billion), but the European Commission and Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked the purchase over concerns of "reduced competition" and "higher prices." However, O2 was able to merge with Virgin Media in 2021 after the CMA determined that similar concerns were unfounded. Vodafone and Three are attempting to sweeten the latest deal with a promise to invest £11 billion ($13.9 billion) across ten years in the UK's 5G infrastructure, in line with the government's targets.

The Instant Pot has been one of the most important kitchen gadgets of the past decade, but that hasn't prevented financial turmoil at its parent company. Instant Brands has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US citing worldwide "macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges" that include higher interest rates and tighter credit. While the company says it endured the pandemic and the ensuing supply chain problems, these latest problems proved to be too much.

Instant Brands still expects to put products on shelves, including Instant Pot as well as sibling brands like Corelle, CorningWare and Pyrex. It also received a promise of $132.5 million in financing to pay creditors while it works through the bankruptcy process. The court still has to approve the financing.

The Instant Pot range first launched in 2010 with a simple strategy: it combined a pressure cooker with many other functions (such as sauté and a steamer) in one device. It's particularly appealing if you want a quick meal that doesn't involve a microwave. Despite a lack of advertising, it developed a cult-like fan base and became synonymous with modern kitchens. That translated to surging demand — the lineup dominated Amazon's Prime Day sales for years starting in 2016.

This isn't the end for Instant Brands. As with other companies' Chapter 11 filings, it's a chance for the firm to get its financial affairs in order and (ideally) ensure its long-term health. However, this is a reminder that success in tech doesn't last forever, even for kitchen hardware.

Embracer Group has announced a major restructuring of its business — which includes game cancellations, layoffs and selling or closing studios — in an attempt to reduce costs and make the business more efficient. The news comes in the wake of the company revealing that a deal that would have been worth $2 billion in revenue over six years fell apart, despite Embracer having a verbal agreement from its unnamed proposed partner.

It will take until March next year to complete the restructuring process. It's "too early to give an exact forecast" on how many of Embracer's nearly 17,000 workers will be impacted, CEO Lars Wingefors wrote in an open letter. 

"The actions will include, but not be limited to, closing or divestments of some studios and the termination or pausing of some ongoing game development projects," Wingefors wrote. "It will also include decreased spending on non-development costs such as overhead and other operating expenses. We will reduce third party publishing and put greater focus on internal [intellectual property] and increase external funding of large-budget games."

It is not yet clear which studios the company plans to close or sell. Embracer says the game cancellations are "almost entirely" for projects that haven't been announced and for which it projects low returns. "All announced significant releases will still be released as planned," Wingefors said. For instance, Crystal Dynamics, which is working on a new Tomb Raider game and helping The Initiative with Perfect Dark, says those projects won't be impacted by the changes.

Over the last several years, Embracer has vacuumed up a wide array of notable gaming companies and intellectual property rights. It bought Gearbox for $1.3 billion in 2021. Last year, Embracer acquired Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montreal and Square Enix Montreal (a studio that Embracer renamed shortly before closing it) in a $300 million deal that included the rights to the likes of Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief and Legacy of Kain. 

Embracer last year secured the rights to The Lord of the Rings, which it plans to turn into “one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world.” According to IGN, the company's interim chief operations officer Matthew Karch told investors on Tuesday that "we know we need to be exploiting Lord of the Rings in a very significant fashion." Multiple LOTR games are in the works, including another attempt by Amazon at an MMO based in JRR Tolkien's universe.

Going forward, Embracer plans to establish a more comprehensive review process for investments in ongoing projects as well as potential new ones. Wingefors noted there will also be more accountability across the company to make sure "performance is in line with or exceeding current targets."

Wingefors ended the letter by noting some of the decisions Embracer makes as part of the restructuring will be "difficult" ones. However, he wrote, "we are doing this because we are confident that we will emerge a stronger, more efficient company setting out on a stable future to build even greater value across our many studios and fantastic portfolio of IPs."

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is acting on concerns crypto giant Binance may have broken the law with its US operations. The regulator has filed 13 charges against Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao accusing the two of violating securities laws. Most notably, officials claim Binance knowingly undermined its own international compliance controls to help US investors keep trading on Binance.com when they were only supposed to rely on the separate Binance.US system. Zhao and his company also controlled Binance.US "behind the scenes," the SEC alleges.

The Commission also maintains that Binance and Zhao mixed and diverted customers' assets at will, including with the Zhao-owned Sigma Chain. The company and its US affiliate are further accused of running unregistered exchanges, broker-dealers and clearing agencies, with Zhao serving as the control. They also allegedly sold unregistered crypto assets, the SEC adds.

The SEC aims to not only force Binance to comply with the law, but to bar Zhao from helming any domestic securities issuers. It also wants the company to disgorge its financial gains from the alleged violations, and to pay additional penalties.

We've asked Binance for comment. Reuters investigators reported that Binance commingled $20 million from a corporate account with $15 million for a customer-oriented example. The company denied the allegation, saying that the relevant accounts were only used to "facilitate" cryptocurrency purchases and that the funds were exclusively corporate.

The SEC allegations come a few months after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed its own charges against Binance and Zhao. It too accused the crypto firm of skirting US regulations and offering unregistered crypto assets. Unlike the SEC, the CFTC charged former compliance officer Samuel Lim.

The action against Binance is the latest phase in a broader crackdown against the crypto industry. FTX and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried are facing numerous charges over alleged fraud and bribery. New York State has sued former Celsius chief Alex Mashinsky over purported fraud, while the SEC has charged Terraform Labs with running a "multi-billion dollar" fradulent operation. Combine this with Congress' efforts to shape crypto policy and there's intense pressure on crypto exchanges to alter their practices.