Google & Microsoft earnings, Replit valued at $1.2B, UK blocks Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal

Google Q1 earnings: total revenue: $69.8B (+3% y/y), search revenue: $40.4B (+2% y/y), YouTube ads revenue: $6.7B (-2.5% y/y), Cloud revenue: $7.5B (+28% y/y), net income: $15B (-9% y/y); shares were up slightly Wednesday AM - Link

Microsoft Q3 earnings: total revenue: $52.9B (+7% y/y), Intelligent Cloud revenue: $22.1B (+16% y/y), Productivity and Business Processes revenue: $17.5B (+11% y/y), net income: $18.3B (+9% y/y); shares were up ~7% Wednesday AM - Link

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked Microsoft’s ~$69B Activision Blizzard acquisition due to concerns the deal would lead to less innovation and choice in the cloud gaming market - Link

Replit, a startup offering collaborative coding tools with AI integrations, raised $97.4M at a $1.2B valuation; the company has ~22.5M users and 85 employees - Link

Great ideas can change the world, and Crowdbotics is the fastest way to turn those ideas into code. Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com/twist.

Jason starts the show by breaking down Spotify’s latest earnings report before discussing pop star Grimes taking to Twitter to announce a new business model for her AI-generated music (1:44). Then, Cafe X CEO Henry Hu joins Jason to discuss their latest equity crowdfund and being resilient, surviving a downturn, and more (18:22). - Link

Bloomberg sources: Binance.US, Binance’s US operation, has ~100 contract workers in Shanghai, mostly in engineering and product roles - Link

Artifact, the news-sharing app created by former Instagram founders, added an AI tool to summarize articles in different styles, including “explain like I’m five” and “high-level points” - Link

OpenAI is instituting a new data safeguard, enabling users to exclude their ChatGPT conversations from training OpenAI’s LLMs; the company also plans to roll out a business plan subscription in the coming months - Link

Bloomberg sources: Apple is developing a new AI-powered emotions tracker and health coaching service, codenamed Quartz; the goal is to tailor programs to individual users using health data from wearables like the Apple Watch - Link

This Week in Startups

E1728: Spotify earnings, Grimes takes AI-based music approach + Cafe X CEO Henry Hu

E1727: Building generative AI for pitch decks with Tome CEO Keith Peiris

E1726: SpaceX's Starship launch, Tiger Global's 20% markdown + Ask Jason!

E1725: Startup pitch competition: Jason invests 25K

E1724: Building the future of VFX and video editing with Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela

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