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Greetings! Chime executives and bankers will spend the next week trying to convince investors that its stock will rise after its initial public offering. The company's cofounders seem to be preparing for the opposite. New stock awards granted to cofounders Christopher Britt and Ryan King as part of the offering set a low bar potentially at the expense of shareholders who buy into the IPO. Chime's cofounders would earn millions of dollars worth of additional stock if its stock price rises from the lowest average trading price during a 30-day period in Chime's first six months as a public company. That means Chime's cofounders would be rewarded even if shares fall, as long as they turn back up. A more common approach to rewarding executives is to set the stock-price targets based on the IPO price, as that is the price at which a new slate of investors will buy in. That was the case, for instance, when software firm Rubrik went public last year. The details of the share grants are listed in Chime's IPO filings, including an updated one today that indicated it would sell shares at a price valuing the banking app at about $11 billion. These kinds of Elon Musk-like compensation plans have become common to reward founders with additional stock if they help shareholders amass big gains through stock-price increases. For another angle on these awards, see here. Chime didn't disclose the potential value of the additional stock grants for its founders. It said in the filing that the grants it is awarding the two founders are "at levels that are smaller than performance-based equity awards that have been granted to similarly situated executives at comparable companies during the lead-up to their public offering." Chime has also created a way to reward its employees in the IPO, though the move could also send the share price down. The company will allow employees to sell a portion of their shares within the first three months of its IPO, a shorter lockup period than thesix months typically mandated by investment banks. That decision is great for employees, but "may depress the market price for our stock," the company warned in its securities filing. IPO investors may see Chime's cofounders as wanting to have it both ways—rewarding employees without having to sacrifice much themselves. European governments bashing American tech companies isn't exactly new—but as the Trump administration ramps up its tariff threats against the European Union, the German government has been flexing its muscle. On Monday, Germany's competition regulator said it had determined Amazon's pricing policies for outside merchants likely violate antitrust laws in the country, which is Amazon's second-largest market after the U.S. The move came just a few days after officials, including the country's chancellor and culture minister, said they were considering hiking taxes on U.S. tech firms like Meta and Google. For Germany, going after U.S. tech firms makes sense, as they're the biggest and most tantalizing American targets in any trade war, and Germany is the most important economy in Europe. But if Germany really wants to regulate big tech, it should be careful. The country's gripes about Amazon resemble arguments at the center of the antitrust suit the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed in 2023 under the Biden administration. So far, the Trump administration has kept moving ahead with the suit, which is due to go to trial next year. But Trump might change his mind if he realizes his administration is on the same side as the Germans!—Theo Wayt - Samsung is close to a deal to invest in Perplexity and put the AI startup's search tech onto its phones, Bloomberg reported, a potential blow to Google. Samsung has long been Google's most important partner in Android, giving Google distribution for its apps on Samsung devices.
- Shares of data center developer Applied Digital rose 50% after the company said it leased part of a large facility to CoreWeave, a firm that rents out Nvidia chips to artificial intelligence developers. The announcement confirmed The Information's earlier reporting that the firms were in talks about a deal.
- Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI is allowing employees to sell $300 million worth of shares to investors, in a deal that values the company at $113 billion. XAI is also raising a $5 billion debt offering, arranged by Morgan Stanley, according to Bloomberg.
- Elon Musk on Sunday announced plans for an encrypted messaging platform called XChat that will feature vanishing messages and the ability to make audio and video calls without a phone number.
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