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- Adobe Abandons Figma 🎨❌
Adobe Abandons Figma 🎨❌
What's Appening: Figma-Adobe Merger Off, Chevy AI, Temu No. 1 App, Solana Saga Phone
3Advance Team
December 19, 2023
ADOBE LEAVES FIGMA HANGING BUT THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES
👀 TLDR:
In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the collapse of Adobe and Figma’s $20B merger. The blockbuster deal is now off, and Adobe was keen to point the finger at regulators in the EU and UK. Adobe will have to pay a cool billion dollars to Figma as a way of compensation, but we think the bigger issue here might be the growing anger over European authorities regulating US tech companies. Elsewhere, we have a brilliant story on how a Chevy customer tricked an AI bot into selling a $76K car for a dollar. We’ve also news on the No.1 app of the year, DeepMind solving the unsolvable, and MidJourney getting a new home. Our Stat looks at some interesting Netflix data. And What’s dAppening explains why the Solana Saga Phone is the hottest gadget around right now - and it’s got nothing to do with the hardware.
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Takes 🎬
⛔🎨 Adobe/Figma – Merger Deal Scrapped Due to Specter of EU Regulation
The blockbuster $20 billion merger between Adobe and collaborative design tool Figma has now been scrapped. In a statement, Adobe claimed there was no foreseeable path to getting regulatory approval in the UK and European Union. Unfortunately for Adobe, it will have to pay a reverse termination fee of $1 billion to San Francisco startup Figma. While Photoshop maker Adobe and Figma will now return to focus on their separate brands, we do see a bigger picture here – UK and European regulators going hard on US tech firms over antitrust. If you remember, it was the UK’s CMA that reversed Meta’s acquisition of Giphy and almost scuppered the Microsoft Activision deal. And we can start to see real anger from the US side of perceived meddling from across the Atlantic through the EU’s Digital Markets Act. On Monday, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers wrote a letter to President Biden asking the White House to start getting tough with the EU over how it treats US tech companies. It feels like there is a fight brewing. #NoDealAdobeFigma Read more here.
🚗🤖 Chevrolet – Use of AI Bot Backfires Through “Sale” of $1 Car
Folks, there may be hope that AI is not ready to take your job just yet. A Chevrolet dealer in Watsonville, California, recently added a ChatGPT-powered AI bot to answer customer queries on its website. Sounds perfectly normal, right? Yet the dealership neglected to put the proper guardrails up, and a savvy customer (the customer was actually tech founder Chris Bakke) was able to get the bot to agree to a “legally binding” deal to sell a $76K Chevy Tahoe for a single dollar. The exchange went viral on social media, showing how Bakke used certain prompts to cause the bot to reply in the way he wanted. For now, it’s all in good humor, and it’s some great viral advertising for that Chevrolet dealer in Watsonville. But there is a serious side to this. It shows we must take precautions with AI because next time it might be something worse than selling a Chevvy for a buck. #ChevyAI Read more here.
🥇Temu Is the No.1 Downloaded App of 2023. What’s the deal with releasing all this data before the year has actually come to an end? Anyway, the most downloaded app from the Apple App Store in the US in 2023 was Temu, the Chinese eCommerce platform. You can get the details here.
🏡 MidJourney Moves to Its Very Own Website. MidJourney, the popular text-to-image AI generator, has now moved to a website, having previously been accessible via Discord. Access through the latter made it somewhat cumbersome, so having its own home is a good thing. Full story is here.
👨🔬 Google DeepMind Solves “Unsolvable” Math Problem. Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence laboratory was able to use an LLM (large language model) to provide the solution to a long-standing mathematical puzzle that was previously unproven. Find out how it did it here.
⌚ Apple Forced to Halt Sales of Apple Watch. Ouch. Just in the lead-up to the Holidays, Apple has been forced to suspend sales of two models of Watch. It’s all down to a dispute over patents. Find out more here.
🧐 Stat of the Week: 812M HOURS
📺🔢 Netflix – Slew of Data Shows What We Really Watched in 2023
One of the (many) criticisms aimed at Netflix during the Hollywood strikes is that it never releases data on how popular shows truly are. Sure, it might throw out a press release when it has a mega-hit like Squid Game, but it never gives full access to the data – until now. Viewer data for 99% of its catalog has been released, showing how The Night Agent, with 812M hours viewed, was the biggest hit for the first half of 2023. Other winners included Ginny & Georgia, The Glory, Wednesday, and Queen Charlotte, all of which had over half a billion viewing hours. #NetflixData Read more here.
🕸️ What’s dAppening?
🐶 📱Solana – Saga Phone Sales Surge as Buyers Chase “Bonk”
Solana, the L1 blockchain platform, released its flagship web3 smartphone in May. By and large, it was a flop, with disappointing sales despite getting some decent reviews. However, those phones came loaded with an airdrop of a dog-themed meme cryptocurrency called Bonk. And in the last few weeks, the price of Bonk has shot through the roof. Indeed, as it turns out, the value of the 30M Bonk airdropped to the phones has exceeded the price of the Solana Saga Phone (retailing at $599). Thus, there has been a stampede to buy smartphones that come loaded with crypto more valuable than the purchasing price. Before you rush to buy, be aware that they are currently sold out in the United States. Some are selling on the secondary market for up to $5K. It’s a bonkers story. Only in crypto, eh? #BonkersPhone Read more here.
Meanwhile at 3Advance...
'Tis the festive season, and here at 3Advance, we're spreading holiday cheer! We’re currently gearing up for a well-deserved break next week — our entire team will be out of the office, taking the time to recharge and celebrate with loved ones, but worry not —we're not leaving you hanging! In anticipation of the new year, we're diligently working on a special year-in-review edition of What's Appening. This edition will be packed with our favorite stories from 2023 and our team's final thoughts on the year's most significant tech developments. Plus it comes with a Video 😉
We're excited to share this comprehensive recap with you, offering insights, highlights, and a glimpse into the tech landscape's evolution over the past year. Look out for next week's newsletter in your inbox, as we aim to keep you informed and entertained during the holiday season. From all of us at 3Advance, we wish you a joyous and tech-filled holiday season! 🎄❄️
🎧 📺 Check out the What’s Appening Podcast and Video Episodes