News Headline: Inside Reddit’s IPO filing

Friday, February 23, 2024

Reddit is going public at long last. We have first notes on the company's S-1 filing, including details on how much money the social media service is making from AI deals. Elsewhere, Apple is scrapping with Spotify and the EU; a private company has landed its hardware on the Moon; and investors want to fire a very high-profile founder. There's a lot to get to, so let's dig in!

– Alex

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Reddit files to go public: At long last, social giant Reddit has filed its Form S-1 to list its shares on the NYSE under the ticker "RDDT." The company scaled its revenues to more than $800 million last year, but remains unprofitable. The question before Reddit now is what valuation the market will bear for its equity. Reddit expects its new AI deals to provide a major revenue uplift in 2024, which could help it during its roadshow.
Apple's India bet is paying off: Apple's sales in the South Asian country reached $8.7 billion last year, TechCrunch reports. That's more than any single country in the EU, for reference, and is a massive improvement on recent years. Apple is also working to build more phones in India, which makes the country important to the Cupertino-based iPhone maker for more than one reason.
"Houston, Odysseus has found its new home." That's what Steve Altemus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines, said when his private company landed its Odysseus hardware on the Moon. Intuitive Machines went public via a SPAC in early 2023, and its shares are up 44% in pre-market trading this morning. Well done!

Image Credits: Shutterstock

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Byju's backers vote to fire founder: The ongoing mess at Indian edtech giant Byju's took a new turn on Friday when investors that own around 60% of the company voted unanimously to remove founder and CEO, Byju Raveendran, from the company. Raveendran has said previously that the investor group doesn't have the right to fire him, but the move makes it clear that the relationships between the builders and backers of the former unicorn are broken.

Moderation is hard, messy: Owning social media services is either the most lucrative idea of all time (Meta), or a massive pain in the neck for moderating large, engaged audiences while trying to recoup costs from the crumbs of online advertising (X, Tumblr, etc). Tumblr is back in the news after Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg waded into the moderation conversation this week with one user. (Mullenweg was recently a guest on Equity to discuss his recent purchase of Texts.com.)

Nigeria temporarily bans crypto exchanges: Nigerian crypto users temporarily lost access to major crypto exchanges after the Nigerian Communications Commission, the country's telecom regulator, blocked access to those services. At play is the value of the Nigerian Naira, which has lost much of its value in recent years. Many crypto users around the world convert local currency to tokens in an attempt to avoid local inflationary pressures, which becomes more difficult when their government tries to stop them from selling the local fiat currency.

Everyone hates Apple ('s App Store rules): The EU is set to rule on Spotify's complaint on "competition in the streaming music market," TechCrunch's Sarah Perez reports. The ruling is not expected to be in Apple's favor, if the U.S.-based technology giant’s apparent displeasure is something to go by. The iPhone maker argues that "Spotify pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped them build, update, and share their app with Apple users in 160 countries," which really says it all. Apple contends that users of its smartphones are its property, and that everyone else should bend the knee to access them. Again, I wonder what the world would be like if desktop operating systems had taken a similar posture.

Blue Origin's reusable rocket gets closer to launch: Jeff Bezos' space startup Blue Origin put up its reusable rocket New Glenn on a launchpad for tests this week in a big step forward for the company and the vehicle itself. New Glenn is intended to reach low-Earth orbit, and features a reusable element similar to SpaceX's own rockets. "The vehicle has already been tapped by multiple customers," TechCrunch's Aria Alamalhodaei reports, so we're seeing the fruits of competitive labor in the space industry. Ad astra.

AI + WordPress: Using generative AI to build websites is well-trod territory at this point. But Armenian startup 10web is bringing genAI website creation to WordPress, the popular CMS that many sites (TechCrunch included!) use to host their online content. 10web seems to be on to something big — it has reached $5 million in ARR, and expects to reach $25 million by next March. Founded in 2017, 10web is cash-flow positive, and appears to have caught a wave.

Hackers never sleep: One great thing about having a crack team of cybersecurity reporters on staff is that TechCrunch breaks a lot of security news, and I get to read it all. One terrible thing about having a crack team of cybersecurity reporters on staff is that I am now viscerally aware of how at-risk so much of the Internet and Internet-connected devices and services are.

The aforementioned team reports a pair of "high-risk flaws in a popular remote access tool are being exploited by hackers to deploy LockBit ransomware." This is happening despite the fact that the ransomware gang was recently tackled by a posse of EU and U.S. officials. And, it appears the recent hack of Change Healthcare may have a nation-state behind it, which doesn't sound good.

Image Credits: Christopher Pike / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Before you go

Two years into the Russian invasion, Ukrainian startups are hanging on: TechCrunch's Mike Butcher reports that of the 511 startups that were operating out of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv before the country was invaded, some 500 are still going strong. That's more than impressive. Google is putting $10 million into the country's startups, which is welcome, but probably not enough. It's time for other tech startups to step up.

(In a small personal note, there's a solo developer based in Kharkiv named Yevhen who is building a city-building video game called Ostriv that I really enjoy. Seeing this team continue to update the early-access title even in wartime conditions has been nothing short of inspiring.)