Another star that burned brightlyduring the pandemic and dimmed just as quickly is virtual event software.
Driving the news: In the past two weeks, Hopin — once valued at $7.8 billion — sold its virtual event software to RingCentral for a mere $15 million (which could grow to $50 million if it meets certain targets).
WeWork may have "substantial doubt" about its long-term survival, but one thing appears clear: The iconic co-working company's woes don't extend into the sector at large.
Driving the news: This week, WeWork shook investors by declaring it may have to file for bankruptcy — a ignominious fall from grace for a company once valued at $47 billion.
When a company's bondstrade at 30 cents on the dollar, that's a good sign the market thinks it's toast. That's the average amount that bondholders recoverin the event of a default and/or bankruptcy.
Why it matters: Using that yardstick, WeWork was toast in March 2020. But then the bonds staged an astonishing comeback, climbing from 30 cents in March 2020 to 104 cents in June 2021.
AI will be at the center of future financial crises — and regulators are not going to be able to stay ahead of it. That's the message being sent by SEC chair Gary Gensler, arguably the most important and powerful regulator in the U.S. at the moment.
Why it matters: A paper Gensler wrote in 2020, while a professor at MIT, is an invaluable resource for understanding those risks — and how little regulators can do to try to address them.
Action and adventure movies have squeezed just about every other genre out of the box office.
By the numbers: Looking at the 100 highest-grossing movies of each year, action movies accounted for less than half of the box office in the 1990s. Now they account for 78% of those ticket sales, according to data from Box Office Mojo.
Fox Corp. on Friday said that its longtime chief legal and policy officer Viet Dinh would depart, months after Fox News lost a historic defamation suit to Dominion Voting Systems.
Why it matters: Reports suggest that Dinh pushed Fox Corp. to pursue a trial instead of settling sooner, a decision that ultimately cost the company $787 million in settlement claims and tens of millions more in legal costs.
Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, is headed to jail after his bail was revoked.
Driving the news: The judge listed a series of ways that Bankman-Fried toed the limits of his bail conditions during the hearing Friday afternoon in explaining his decision.
Politics often makes for strange bedfellows, a reality the industry seems to accept. Pacific, however, is having none of it.
What they're saying: "When you lobby Republicans or right-wing candidates who are pro-crypto and who have poor human rights stances, you're making a big tradeoff," they tell Axios, sipping an iced flat white sitting in a makeshift shed in front of a coffee shop in Brooklyn.
"While we're improving crypto, we're losing human rights, losing LGBTQIA rights, and that bothers me."
Pacific is part of digital currency's "I-don't-kn0w-how-many-crypto-group-chats-I'm-in" set — they "eat, sleep and breathe crypto."
The 27-year-old trans founder explains that "we're on the verge of a political movement, discovering something really big to change the world for the better."
What others say: "People go, 'That's so utopian' and I'm like, it's not — this isn't just a tool to make some hedge fund some money, it's also a tool to evade oppression."
Lately, folks seem more excited about bitcoin-in-a-box than the tech and the ideals underlying the advent of the world's largest digital asset, Pacific suggested.
Entropy is backed by a16z, Coinbase Ventures, Robot Ventures and Dragonfly Capital.
In the weeds: Threshold signatures are a solution that allows people to compute cryptographic signatures between a number of different computers or parties.
In a custody use case, a person might be able to split their private key into end pieces that would protect them from getting their funds stolen; if a hacker steals their phone, the person could turn off signing.
That's one of the products in development at entropy, Pacific says.
Context: "I'm an anarchist. Generally I avoid both parties like the plague because they do more harm to my community than they do any good, really."
Case in point: The argument has come up a lot lately, as SEC strong-arming and a lack of coherent regulation lead the industry to debate whether a "chokehold" is strangling crypto. In theory, that may benefit other economies.
"The free market solution to a poor regulatory environment in the U.S. is to simply move overseas. That's happening," Pacific tells Axios.
"It is natural, normal and good for companies to leave for better, more favorable jurisdictions." (Pacific nods at a parallel: Some families are leaving their home states in the U.S. for others that support gender-affirming care.)
"When people say things like 'If we had open borders, people in developing countries would flood to the United States and wherever,' [anarchists] say, 'That's the point.'"
Flashback: Pacific was first drawn into the cryptopunk world via Internet Relay Chat (IRC) as a Mormon teen with an interest in hacking.
A series of decisions led Pacific to where they are now. They dropped out of a Utah community college, moved to Berlin, lost a job, found another, taught themself cryptography and befriended a group of friends now at top crypto firms (or "the mafia," as Pacific lovingly refers to them).
The big picture: Cryptography puts power in the individual's hands. "The power asymmetry between the state and the person is naturally interesting and that's how I got into it," Pacific said.
Bankrupt trucker Yellow has "received a number of inbound" offers in the last few days from firms who want to provide it with a bankruptcy loan, as revealed during at a court hearing Friday morning.
Why it matters: A fight over which Wall Street firms will control Yellow's assets is heating up.
U.S. private equity firm KKR is cutting the Italian government in on its €23 billion preliminary bid for Telecom Italia's landline network.
Why it matters: This show of political support from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will make it much tougher for Vivendi, Telecom Italia's largest outside shareholder, to block the deal.
Sports betting is back in the spotlight following ESPN's giant deal with Penn Gaming.
Shortly before that transaction was announced, Axios spoke with DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, whose company is solidly in second place for market share (behind FanDuel) and whose share price has climbed over 150% so far this year.
Why it matters: Such information has proven useful to journalists and other researchers — but some plane owners, including Musk, have argued that it can pose a security risk.
Hydrogen-powered semi-trucks are finally coming to market, alongside new efforts to boost hydrogen fuel.
Why it matters: Zero-emissions trucks — powered by electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells — could help fight climate change and improve health outcomes for millions of people.
Good luck getting around swiftly if the Eras tour is in town.
Traffic delays increased significantly in the hours ahead of Taylor Swift's spring mega-concerts near almost all host venues compared to normal levels, per a new StreetLight Data analysis.
Not to be left out of the girl power summer, women's sports have been raking in new deals and partnerships in the U.S. and beyond.
Why it matters: If you thought the U.S. national team's early exit in the World Cup meant you wouldn't be seeing women's sports for a while, think again.
Today marks 50 years since the birth of hip-hop — a relatively short trip from its inception at a small party in the Bronx to one of the most popular and influential genres in the world.
Driving the news: In New York City and across the country this weekend, concerts and celebrations are being held to mark the milestone.
Axios is running a series of interviews with top leaders from business and beyond who discuss lessons on life and leadership.
This week I interviewed Rosalind (Roz) Brewer, 61, the CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance — corporate parent of Walgreens in the U.S. and Boots, a health and beauty retailer in the U.K., as well as majority owner of clinical network VillageMD.
Why she matters: Brewer is seeking to broaden Walgreens from its drugstore heritage into a full-fledged health care company. Brewer's leadership career spans consumer goods (Kimberly-Clark), retail (Walmart, Sam's Club) and beverage service (Starbucks).
It's been 28 years since André 3000 of Outkast proclaimed at the 1995 Source Awards that "the South got something to say," and the region's message has been heard loud and clear across the world.
Driving the news: Hip-hop celebrates 50 years this weekend, and the South's — specifically Atlanta's — role in the genre remains at the center of conversations about its history and future.
