Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 1

A new exclusive multi-year agreement between ABEC and GOOD Meat has just been struck, paving the way for a new bioreactor.

An architectural rendering of the facility.

The new deal between GOOD Meat and ABEC will bring ten 250,000-liter bioreactors to GOOD Meat's large meat facility that, when construction is completed, is expected to produce 15,000 tons of meat per year without killing a single animal. The new facility will be designed to produce chicken and beef while also having the capabilities of distributing its products to millions of Americans across the country.

Notably, the press release states that the final location for the facility has yet to be set and is expected to be decided within the next three months. Furthermore, GOOD Meat writes that it's still going through the regulatory process for such a facility with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and that the ABEC is also building bioreactors for GOOD Meat's Alameda, Calif. headquarters, which is scheduled to be operational in Q4 2022, and for a Singapore facility slated to open in Q1 2023.

A new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has revealed that Elon Musk has switched up his plan to purchase Twitter.

While the deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion seems to be still going ahead despite Musk's claims that it was put on hold until Twitter proved that spam bots account for less than 5% of the platform's total users. According to a financial filing made public on Wednesday, May 25, Musk has switched his personal funding for the purchase from $27.3 billion to $33.5 billion while also locking down an additional $6.25 billion in equity financing, which has, in turn, reduced Musk's total amount of debt he would take on after completing the purchase.

Notably, Musk originally took out a $12.5 billion margin loan against his Tesla shares, which has now been reduced to the previously mentioned $6.25 billion after Musk found more funding. Furthermore, Musk is still in talks with potential investors, with publications reporting the Tesla CEO is talking to former Twitter CEO and founder Jack Dorsey.

Yet another cryptocurrency scam has surfaced, this time utilizing deep-fakes and Elon Musk's likeness to do the trick.

The deep faked video shows Elon Musk on the set of a TED talk originally from April 15, 2022 where he discusses Twitter, Tesla, and more. The video, titled "I Have Made $8K in 1 month via a new Trading Bot | BitVex Release", has Musk supposedly announcing a new cryptocurrency trading platform named BitVex, promising 30% returns.

Newly created YouTube channels and hacked existing ones have recently uploaded deep-faked videos of other notable people in the cryptocurrency space apparently endorsing BitVex. These include the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Ark Invest, Cathie Wood, and others.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken a step outside of the $200 billion net worth range, according to recent reports.

Bloomberg's Billionaire's Index indicates that Musk saw his net worth plummet by approximately 5.4% on Tuesday, following an almost 7% in Tesla's share trading price. Notably, after Tuesday, Musk's net worth is expected to be the lowest its been since August 26 at approximately $192.7 billion. Coming in second place on Bloomberg's Billionaire's Index is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who is estimated to have about $127.8 billion.

Furthermore, the last time that Musk's net worth dropped below the $200 billion mark was in March this year, but that drop quickly recovered, with Musk seeing his net worth skyrocket to a staggering $288 billion on April 4, which also happened to be the same day the Tesla CEO revealed he owned a 9% stake in Twitter and only days before he began initiating his strategy to purchase the platform.

A new exclusive report has detailed the money trail left behind by many of the organizations that have threatened to boycott Twitter over Elon Musk's coming decisions to change the platform's policies.

Breitbart News has learned through research and analysis conducted by the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) that traced the funding of many of the organizations that signed the open letter, which threatened to pull advertising from Twitter if Musk rolled back established Twitter policies and implemented his version of "free speech" on the platform.

The FFO found that out of the 26 organizations that signed the open letter opposing Musk's new vision for the platform, 11 of them were funded by a Gates-backed entity that received large contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For instance, in 2020, the New Venture Fund received the largest one-year donation the Gates Foundation has given out in the last ten years. Notably, New Venture funds four of the signatories on the open letter.

Swedish "buy now, pay later" company Klarna is laying off 10% of its workforce, but did it in a rather robotic way: with a prerecorded video message.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski informed its near-7000 employees that 10% of them would be out of a job, leaving around 700 people unemployed. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in the prerecorded video message: "When we set our business plans for 2022 in the autumn of last year, it was a very different world than the one we are in today".

Siemiatkowski continued: "Since then, we have seen a tragic and unnecessary war in Ukraine unfold, a shift in consumer sentiment, a steep increase in inflation, a highly volatile stock market and a likely recession. All of which have marked the beginning of a very tumultuous year". He did note that workers based in Europe would get an "associated compensation", while severance packages for US staffers would "look different" depending on the location.

Snap shares have fallen through the ground, dropping by a hefty 40% and dragging other tech stocks like Apple, Twitter, and Meta (the parent company of Facebook) at the same time.

The huge 40% sea of red for Snap shares means we're looking at $13.42 at the time of writing, down from ~$30 or so back on April 25. Snap's market cap has dropped, down to $21.9 billion. A recent SEC filing seems to have dragged down the share price of Snap, but there are other moving parts.

The SEC filing reads: "Since we issued guidance on April 21, 2022, the macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated. As a result, we believe it is likely that we will report revenue and adjusted EBITDA below the low-end of our Q2 2022 guidance range".

Meta has taken to its website to announce that it will be bringing more transparency to social issue, electoral and political ads.

In a new update posted to its website, Meta states that it will soon be sharing data on the aforementioned advertisement categories and how those ads are targeted to individuals. Meta writes that researchers who are involved in the company's Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) program will be given access to data that will include "interest categories chosen by advertisers" for each individual ad.

Notably, this isn't the first time Meta has let select members of the public look under the hood of its advertising, as the company made political ad data available to FORT researchers for a three-month period just before the 2020 election. As pointed out by Engadget, some researchers may not be happy with the data provided to them by Meta ahead of the 2022 midterms, where it's likely that there will be some attention brought to how pollical advertisements impact elections, especially through platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Airbnb is planning on shutting down business throughout mainland China after facing scrutiny from regulators and overwhelming competition.

Two sources familiar with the coming disconnect from China by Airbnb have spoken to CNBC, which reported that as early as Tuesday morning Beijing time Airbnb will be informing all employees throughout the country that business will be coming to an end. The sources close to the matter told the publication that Airbnb in China accounted for approximately 1% of the company's total revenue over the last few years, and had expensive running costs.

The sources said that the shutdown can be attributed to growing domestic competition in the space, as well as regulatory factors. Furthermore, the sources mentioned that the COVID-19 pandemic made the situation in China a whole lot worse due to the Chinese government's extreme lockdown with outbreaks and an overall large reduction in general tourism. Notably, Airbnb's share price has slunk a grim 30% in 2022 and is currently trading at an approximate price of $113, which is far higher than its 2020 IPO price of $68.

Authorities have arrested a woman who pretended to be the daughter of an elderly cancer patient who she then stole more than $400,000 from.

The Florida woman named Ana Nunez impersonated the 70-year-old cancer patient while they were in the hospital. Authorities have accused Nunez of manipulating the elderly individual into giving Nunez her "power of attorney" by signing several documents that also included her possessions and bank accounts that contained approximately $437,000, per Local 10 News.

Furthermore, the scammer is now facing a slew of serious charges after being arrested on May 20, with additional charges being placed on Nunez' son, Pablo Figueroa, who was arrested in early May under suspicion of being an accomplice.