deepens

A prolonged slump in venture-capital deal making deepened over the first quarter, setting the stage for a tough year ahead for startups, particularly mature private companies seeking exit opportunities such as an initial public offering or a large corporate acquirer. The broad slowdown, which carried over from the second half of 2022, was driven by high interest rates, stock-market turbulence and the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. That left startups grappling with fewer funding deals, lower prices for…

South Korea's SK Hynix has raised $1.7 billion in its first convertible bond sale in a decade, as the world's second-largest memory chipmaker braces for deepening quarterly losses, hit by a sharp downturn in global semiconductor demand. The financing, the first such deal by the firm since it was acquired by energy to telecoms conglomerate SK Group in 2012, follows a rare $15.2 billion financing deal by cash-rich Samsung Electronics in February. SK Hynix said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that the proceeds of the bond…

Later this month, Image Comics will release Indigo Children #2. The second issue of the series comes from the creative team of co-writers Curt Pires & Rockwell White, artist Alex Diotto, colorist Dee Cunniffe, and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. Today, on its preorder cutoff date, The Beat is pleased to present an exclusive preview of the issue, which continues the exploration of who and what the Indigo Children are. Here’s how Image Comics describes Indigo Children #2: CHAPTER TWO OF THE COMIC OF THE YEAR STARTS…

The decision follows a near-endless drumbeat of layoff news in the technology sector that has seen some of the world's most valuable corporations sever ties with staggering numbers of employees they once courted in droves. The latest slashing focuses on Amazon's highly-profitable cloud and advertising divisions,…

When the Hydro-Québec power grid collapsed on March 13, 1989, the outage plunged the entirety of Quebec—more than six million people—into darkness for several hours. The event was triggered by a ferocious storm, but the tempest wasn’t of Earth’s making. Instead the source was the sun: our nearest star had unleashed a swarm of high-energy particles and radiation that wreaked havoc on our technological infrastructure. Yet that event wasn’t a fluke, scientists now know. Nor was it particularly powerful. Careful analysis of…

Shares of cryptocurrency-related companies fell in premarket trading on Monday after Silvergate Capital Corp pulled the plug on its crypto payments network, following its doubts about keeping its business viable. The digital assets-focused bank said late on Friday that effective immediately it had made a "risk-based decision" to discontinue the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN). Shares of the La Jolla, California-based bank were down more than 4% in premarket trading, while crypto lending peer Signature Bank fell 3%.…

The memory chip industry is going through a historic decline in demand, with two of the worst quarterly drops on record at the end of last year.The average price for DRAM, the memory used to power phones and PCs, plummeted by 34.4% in the fourth quarter, exacerbating a 31.4% fall in the quarter before it, according to the latest figures from TrendForce. Storage memory (NAND), which is the main product sold to data centers and enterprise customers, fared only slightly better — and the two periods rank among the worst…

Amazon.com Inc said it is offering a $5 monthly subscription plan for US Prime members that will cover a range of generic drugs and their doorstep delivery, furthering the ecommerce giant's push into healthcare. The program, named RxPass, includes more than 50 medications addressing over 80 chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, anxiety, diabetes and male pattern baldness, Vin Gupta, Amazon Pharmacy's chief medical officer, told Reuters. However, customers enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid or any other government…

Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., two of the world’s biggest companies, began cutting a total of 28,000 jobs on Wednesday in a post-pandemic reckoning that has left almost no tech name unscathed. Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., two of the world's biggest companies, began cutting a total of 28,000 jobs on Wednesday in a post-pandemic reckoning that has left almost no tech name unscathed. The software giant began notifying some of the 10,000 workers that will lose their jobs this quarter, while its…

Crypto.com said on Friday it would be reducing about 20% of its workforce, as cryptocurrency exchanges face industry-wide challenges brought on by the collapse of FTX last year.The Singapore-based company's announcement comes amid concerns about reserves and solvency across the sector, and only a few days after rival exchanges Coinbase Global Inc and Huobi announced their plans to lay off about 20% of their staff. A source told Reuters last week that Genesis, too, had cut jobs, equating to 30% of its workforce.The layoffs…