Tech

Meta plans to take a nearly 50% cut on virtual asset sales in its metaverse

The 47.5% figure includes a hardware platform fee of 30% for sales made through the Meta Quest Store, where it sells apps and games for its virtual reality headsets.

On top of that, Horizon Worlds, will charge a 17.5% fee.

Meta’s fees for the sale of virtual assets on Horizon Worlds are significantly more than the 30% Apple charges developers on its App Store.

Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav has charmed the Hollywood elite — now he’ll have to show he can manage them, too

David Zaslav officially takes over as the new CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery as the company begins trading on the Nasdaq on Monday.

Zaslav is known for his gregarious personality and has been on a monthslong “listening tour” of Hollywood.

Friends say he has a chance to be Hollywood’s next leader with high emotional intelligence, but he’ll have to be careful not to disenfranchise current leadership or get bogged down in minutia.

“It may be the right time for a new man because the industry is changing so rapidly,” longtime Zaslav associate Lloyd Blankfein

Google employees bombard execs with questions about pay at recent all-hands meeting

Following an employee survey that showed Google staffers are increasingly unhappy about pay, executives were hit with a barrage of questions on the topic.
“It’s a very competitive market,” said Bret Hill, Google’s compensation and rewards head.
CEO Sundar Pichai told employees that executives are discussing changes to their long-held pay assessments.

Chinese EV maker XPeng leads investment in $200 million fund focused on ‘frontier technology’

XPeng said Thursday it led an investment into a new $200 million fund along with high-profile venture capital players like Sequoia China and GGV Capital.
Rockets Capital will focus on “venture and growth stage investments in Smart EV industry value chain, clean energy, and frontier technology areas.”
The fund has already “entered into agreements” to invest in companies, XPeng said without disclosing any names.

Rocket builder Firefly aiming for second launch attempt in May, raises $75 million

Firefly Aerospace aims to make its second attempt to reach orbit with its Alpha rocket in the coming weeks, having received government approval to resume launch operations.
Private equity firm AE Industrial Partners last month acquired stake in Firefly from a fund run by Ukrainian entrepreneur Max Polyakov, who came under scrutiny for national security concerns.
Firefly also closed a $75 million fundraise led by AE Industrial Partners, which Markusic says means the company’s broader growth plan is “fully funded.”

The massive SolarWinds hack and the future of cyber espionage

“The SolarWinds hack was and really is and continues to be one of the biggest espionage campaigns recently discovered,” said Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Microsoft, Google and several U.S. government agencies were among those compromised by the intrusion.

Signal and Telegram downloads surge after WhatsApp says it will share data with Facebook

Downloads of privacy-focused messaging apps Signal and Telegram got a boost as users looked for alternatives to Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
The surge comes after WhatsApp updated its terms of service agreement that appears to give users little choice to opt out of sharing data with parent company Facebook.
Signal claims to have “state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption” as part of its service, which prevents messages from being read by those who are not the intended recipient.