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Snyk hasn’t been afraid to take money over the years, scoring an ever larger investment haul with each passing round, and with each one has come a correspondingly large valuation increase. This time, that particular streak ended, but Snyk snagged another $196.5 million investment with its valuation down about 12% to $7.4 billiion since its previous round in September 2021.

That previous round was $585 million with $300 million in primary funding and the remaining $230 million in secondary funding to pay off early investors and employees, anxious to see some return on their equity. The primary money came on an $8.5 billion valuation, $1.1 billion higher than today’s round.

It’s worth noting, however, that even with that down round, the previous round was up $3.8 billion over the March round. You can see the company’s ascent up until this round in the chart below:

Snyk CEO Peter McKay says getting the right terms was more essential than increasing the valuation, especially in the current market. “So, it was more important that we get the right terms than that I absolutely have to get to $8.6 billion. If the market is saying you’re at 7.4, then we’re at 7.4,” he said.

Part of it is that even though the company is growing, the market has changed since the last round. “Despite the headwinds that I think everybody sees in the market, we were able to still grow over 100% in new logos and in revenue, so we’re very pleased,” he said.

The company still has most of the money from last year’s round in the bank, but they saw an opportunity to get more cash, which could help them as they try to grow the platform, both organically and via acquisitions.

“What you do with a market like this is you focus on efficiency in your business, you focus on getting to free cash flow faster. You make sure your balance sheet is as strong as it can be. And you be opportunistic,” he said.

He sees that Snyk’s market around developer security remains fragmented, and he sees an opportunity to consolidate the market by buying companies when it makes sense and taking advantage of what he sees as a very large TAM. McKay says that the company has tripled in size since its last round of funding from 400 employees to 1200, but he sees ways for the company to be more efficient for investors in other ways, shooting to get to cash flow break even by 2024 as a prime example.

Most security startups either grow into a platform or they get absorbed by one, and Snyk apparently wants to be a platform player at this point. This cash should help the company as it waits out the stock market for a more friendly IPO environment.

“We really haven’t set any time. We think that there’ll be a wave in the first half of 2023. We’ll watch and see how they do and based on that, maybe we’ll make a decision on what we do…I don’t even want to speculate on a time because who knows when that is? Nobody has that answer,” he said.

Today’s investment was funded by new investors Evolution Equity Partners, G Squared, Irving Investors and Qatar Investment Authority. Existing investors Boldstart Ventures, Sands Capital and Tiger Global also participated. The company has now raised $1.075 billion.

Snyk scores another $196M as valuation drops 12% to $7.4B by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

You don’t need to be a genius to see that we are in a period of great economic uncertainty. For startups, however, a key predictor of future results is the direction of IT spending, something that we can track. When companies are spending money on tech, the reasoning goes, both established and younger companies should benefit. And if they’re not, both should suffer.

The good news is that, for the most part, signs point to an increase in IT spend in 2023, and that’s true whether you talk to CIOs, enterprise companies or analysts. It bodes well for the entire technology industry.

Consider what Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said during last week’s earnings call: “We have been talking to multiple CIOs from among our largest enterprise customers we have out there. We have not seen them talk about a reduction in their IT spending,” he said. While some mentioned flat spending, few were talking about cuts, and that’s an encouraging trend heading into the new year.

That perspective fits with what IDC analyst Rick Villars is seeing. “Spending on core IT infrastructure, business software, professional services to implement and operate the systems – even if the economy stays flat, we expect to see continued healthy growth in the 5% to 6% range in aggregate for those spaces. It would take a more severe economic downturn from what we’re seeing for that to change,” Villars told TechCrunch.

That’s right where Gartner’s prediction comes in as well: an increase of 5.1% in global IT spend in 2023. That’s up from 0.8% growth in 2022, but well down from the 10.2% increase the previous year.

Where are they spending?

All signs point to IT spending rising in 2023 by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

Meta has quietly re-absorbed the resources of its “Connectivity” division, the company confirmed. For nearly 10 years this was the home of the former Facebook’s experimental internet and telecoms efforts, from satellites (exploded) to drones (crashed) to apps (disputed) and other more traditional infrastructure (appreciated and ongoing).

As first noted by Light Reading, Meta Connectivity’s staff and projects, or what remain of them after the imminent cuts, will be divided between its Infrastructure and Central Products divisions. Exactly which resources and people will stay is no doubt a matter of some discussion even now, but the complete reduction of Connectivity suggests the more out-there approaches to providing internet are probably gone for good.

The beginning of this division can probably be traced to attempts about ten years ago to subsidize internet connections in developing countries and regions. The Internet.org and Free Basics efforts would essentially provide Facebook and some bundled services free of charge to places where connectivity was expensive.

This provoked a great deal of controversy at the time, from people incensed that a U.S. company thought it should step in to solve another’s problems, to the notion that the same company would essentially control access and content in violation of net neutrality policies, and to others who saw the ostensibly charitable endeavor as Facebook buying global market share.

In 2015 the company revealed plans for a completely unexpected high-altitude drone named Aquila, which would use lasers to connect people below it. This ambitious effort had a rough couple years, experiencing a rough landing in 2016 and eventually being permanently grounded in 2018.

Meanwhile, they were going even higher than that with an early attempt at a low-Earth orbit satellite connectivity system, which was scheduled for launch in September of 2016. Unfortunately…

Facebook didn’t give up, but it is worth noting that its next venture into satellite internet, a subsidiary called PointView Tech, has filed experimental FCC licensing documents in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021… but not this year. I reached out to check in but haven’t heard back.

But not everything the Connectivity division did flew in the air. As they probably had reiterated to them every time they talked about drones and lasers, what’s really needed is fiber backhaul and solid traditional wireless infrastructure so that neglected areas can connect just like everyone else in the world does.

To that end Meta has been working with the Telecom Infra Project to build new software, hardware and standards that make telecommunications networks more accessible and maintainable. Legacy industry dominates this space so new entrants have a potentially large opportunity to make a change. Meta and Google, for instance, have invested in undersea cables and fiber that serve both their own purposes and public transport.

That said, now that Connectivity is being broken up for parts, it’s impossible to say which efforts will continue to be pursued, funded, and so on. We’ll keep an eye out when the layoffs and consolidation conclude and see what’s left standing.

Meta unplugs Connectivity division, home of satellite and drone internet experiments by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

Benefits and payroll management company Sequoia says hackers accessed sensitive customer information, including their Social Security numbers and COVID-19 test results.

According to Wired, which first broke the news of Sequoia’s breach last week, the incident impacted customers of Sequoia One, a professional employer organization (or PEO) that provides outsourced human resources and payroll services. The service is popular with U.S.-based startups, and says it works with more than 500 venture-backed companies.

Now, in a data breach notice filed with the California attorney general’s office, Sequoia said it became aware that an “unauthorized party may have accessed a cloud storage system that contained personal information” over a two-week period between September 22 and October 6. This breached cloud system stored an array of sensitive personal data, including names, home addresses, dates of birth, gender, marital status, and employment status. It also included Social Security numbers, their salary wage related to benefits, government identity cards, and COVID-19 test results and vaccine cards.

Sequoia added that the review also found no evidence of malware, a data extortion attempt, or any evidence of ongoing unauthorized access to company systems. Because the hacker’s access was “read-only,” the company said no client data had been changed.

Sequoia said it hired Dell Secureworks to conduct a forensic investigation, which found “no evidence that the unauthorized party misused or distributed data.” It’s not clear if Sequoia has the technical means, such as logs, to determine what information was accessed or what data was siphoned, if any.

When asked by TechCrunch, Sequoia declined to say how the customer data became exposed and would not say how many individuals had their personal data compromised.

Read more on security:

Xnspy stalkerware spied on thousands of iPhones and Android devices
CommonSpirit Health says patient data was stolen during ransomware attack
Apple launches end-to-end encryption for iCloud data
Rackspace blames ransomware attack for ongoing Exchange outage

HR platform Sequoia says hackers accessed customer SSNs and COVID-19 data by Carly Page originally published on TechCrunch

Lensa’s AI popularity has had a notable impact on the App Store’s Top Charts. The popular photo and video editing app recently went viral over its new “magic avatars” feature, powered by the open source Stable Diffusion model, allowing users to turn their selfies into styled portraits of themselves as sci-fi, anime, or fantasy characters, among other artistic renderings. Consumer demand for the app, and for AI edits more broadly, has now pushed numerous other “AI” apps into the U.S. App Store’s Top Charts. As of Monday, the top three spots on the U.S. App Store are now all held by AI photo editors, and even more AI art apps are newly ranking in the Top 100.

The No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store, however, continues to be held by Lensa AI, which has seen 12.6 million global installs in the first 11 days of December, up 600% from the 1.8 million installs it saw during a similar time frame in November (Nov. 20 through Nov. 30), according to new data from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The U.S. accounted for 3.6 million of those new December installs, estimates indicate.

In fact, 8 out of the top 100 apps by downloads on the U.S. App Store were AI art apps during the time Dec. 1 through Dec. 11 time frame, the firm’s analysis found.

Following Lensa AI, the generic-sounding app AI Art: AI Image Generator had keyword-stuffed its app’s name to rank in second place, promising AI avatars and AI art from text. Dawn – AI Avatars is in the No. 3 position, offering AI avatars that can be changed with a text prompt. (As of the time of writing on Dec. 12, the two apps appear to now have swapped places.)

AI Art has seen around 1.7 million global installs during Dec. 1-11, up 229% from the 71,000 it saw during Nov. 20-30. Meanwhile, Dawn also saw around 1.7 million installs, Sensor Tower said, up from the 28,000 it saw in the late November time frame.

These are shortly followed by Wonder – AI Art Generator at No. 10, which also offers AI avatars and AI art from text prompts.

Although Wonder ranks lower in the U.S., it has seen around 4 million global installs so far in December, up from the prior period of Nov. 20-30, when it saw 469,000 installs.

Not too much farther down the Top Charts, you’ll also find Prequel: Aesthetic AI Editor at slot No. 14. The app has seen 907,000 global installs this month so far, up from the 319,000 seen November 20 through 30.

The Top 50 also includes the newer app Voi – AI Avatar App by Wonder at No. 39. This happens to be from the same developer behind the No. 10 app Wonder but has an awful 1.6-star rating over its price subscription model and broken features, according to angry customer reviews. Launched only on Dec. 7, Voi has already gained 785,000 installs, of which 241,000 were U.S.-based. Clearly benefitting from the trend, the app’s developer actually now has three apps that reference “AI” in their titles, including the lesser-ranked Pixelup – AI Photo Enhancer.

Another AI app, Meitu – Photo Editor & AI Art has moved into No. 47 on the U.S. App Store after gaining 6.4 million installs in December so far, up from the 1.1 million seen during Nov. 20-30.

In addition to highly ranking overall among iPhone apps, the U.S. App Store’s Graphics & Design category is also now filled with AI art apps within its own Top Charts.

Here, Dawn is the No. 1 Top Free app, followed by AI Art and Wonder to round out the top 3. Profile AI: AI Avatar Creator, Inspire – AI Art Generator, and Dream by Wombo – AI Art Tool are ranked 8, 9, and 10, respectively. Lesser known apps pop up as you scroll down the category’s Top 50 as well, filing slots No. 14, 19, 21, 25, 27, 31, 36, 44, and 47 — too many to list. All use the keyword “AI” in their app’s name along and reference activities like “AI art” or “AI avatars.”

And of course, the U.S. Photo & Video category’s Top Charts have several AI apps as well, including No. 1 Lensa, No. 5 Prequel, No. 7 Voi, No. 8 Meitu, and No. 26 FacePlay.

AI app demand is not limited to the App Store, however. Many of the same apps are trending on Google Play, too. When both app stores’ rankings are combined, Lensa AI remains No. 1, AI Art is No. 2, Wonder is No. 8, Meitu is No. 10, Prequel is No. 68, Dawn is No. 72, Dream is No. 77 and FacePlay is No. 90.

Dream gained 782,000 new global installs in December so far, while FacePlay gained 2.8 million, Sensor Tower found.

While it’s common for app makers to congregate around a trend by updating their app’s name and description, or by bidding on keywords in Apple’s App Store Search ads, it’s remarkable just how many “AI” apps have now made it to the Top Charts in the wake of Lensa’s success. This signals something more than a flash-in-the-pan trend, as the general conversation these days is around how much AI has been improving — in other areas, people are marveling at the leap of the AI tech ChatGPT.

That said, we should note that just because an app is marketing itself as AI-powered, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s using the same Stable Diffusion model Lensa is. Not that consumers seem to care– they seem happy to try almost any app labeling itself AI for the time being, as long as it delivers interesting and creative results.

Of course, there are concerns over this specific AI use case. Already, Stable Diffusion has become controversial for the way its model was trained by using images from artists without their consent. Lensa was also able to be tricked into making NSFW images, TechCrunch found. And today, MIT Technology Review reported that Lensa created topless images and skimpy and sexualized avatars when tried by one female reporter, who happened to be of Asian heritage — suggesting the AI had been influenced by an overabundance of anime and video characters.

It’s clear the tech has a long way to go to be ethical and responsible. But those concerns, for the time being, aren’t dampening consumer interest in this growing category.

AI art apps are cluttering the App Store’s Top Charts following Lensa AI’s success by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Nominations for the 2023 Golden Globe Awards were announced this morning, with HBO, HBO Max and Netflix tied for the lead in the TV category, getting 14 noms each. Major contenders include HBO’s “The White Lotus,” “House of the Dragon” and “Hacks” as well as Netflix’s “Wednesday,” “Ozark” and “The Crown.”

While the two streaming giants are neck and neck overall, HBO Max had one more TV show on the list. Seven HBO series had a total of 14 nominations, whereas just six Netflix shows made the cut.

HBO/HBO Max shows include “The White Lotus” with four noms, “Hacks” with three, “House of the Dragon” with two, as well as “Euphoria,” “The Staircase” and “The Flight Attendant” with one nomination each. “Barry” also made the nominee list with two.

Netflix, on the other hand, received four Golden Globe nominations each for “The Crown” and “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” three for “Ozark,” two for its latest hit “Wednesday” as well as “Better Call Saul.” Plus, “Inventing Anna” actress Julia Garner was nominated for best performance by an actress in a limited series.

On the film side, Netflix had nine nominations, including movies “Blonde,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio,” “Where the Crawdads Sing,” “The Good Nurse,” “White Noise” and German film “All Quiet on the Western Front.” HBO Max’s parent-company Warner Bros. nabbed three Golden Globe noms for its biographical film “Elvis.”

Last year, Netflix had the most Golden Globes nominations out of any streamer, with 17 total. The company received its first-ever Best Motion Picture (Drama) Golden Globe for “The Power of the Dog.”

HBO and HBO Max earned 10 nominations in the TV category of the 2022 Golden Globes. Earlier this year, the company earned the most Emmy wins overall for shows like “Succession,” “Euphoria,” and “Hacks.”

Hulu’s TV shows performed well this year with 10 Golden Globe nominations. Hulu series that were nominated include “Pam & Tommy,” “The Bear,” “The Dropout,” “The Patient” and “Only Murders in the Building.”

Selena Gomez, who stars in the hit Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building,” picked up her first-ever Golden Globe nomination for acting. Her co-stars, Steve Martin and Martin Short, are also nominated for best performance. In total, “Only Murders in the Building” has four noms.

Earlier this year, Hulu broke its own record by getting 58 Emmy nominations, which was mainly thanks to its series “Only Murder in the Building” and “Dopesick.

The FX series “Abbott Elementary” was by far the most nominated TV show with five noms in total. The workplace comedy has its streaming rights shared between HBO Max and Hulu.

Apple TV+ pulled six TV noms, including Best Drama Series for “Severance” and Best Limited Series for “Black Bird.” The two shows got three nominations respectively.

Disney had 3 films nominated, including “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and “Turning Red.” Disney+ show “Andor” was nominated for Best TV Actor with Diego Luna, who plays the lead role as Cassian Andor. The company had six total nominations across four titles.

Both Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures pulled seven films on the Golden Globes nominees list, which will all likely premiere on their respective streaming services, Paramount+ and Peacock. Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick” was nominated for Best Picture (Drama) and Best Song and is set to make its streaming debut on Paramount+ on December 22.

“Yellowstone,” a Paramount Network series that streams on Peacock, was nominated for Best TV Actor (Kevin Costner, who plays John Dutton).

Dark comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” was the most nominated film for this year’s Golden Globes, with eight nominations. It will stream on HBO Max starting tomorrow, December 13. Other major films in contention for awards are “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” “Babylon” and “Triangle of Sadness.”

NBC and Peacock will stream the 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards on January 10, 2023. This year marks the ceremony’s return to television after it was criticized for lacking diversity. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) noted in today’s announcement that this year is the first time there were 103 international voters, making the total Golden Globe Awards voting body “51.8% racially and ethnically diverse,” HFPA wrote.

HBO/HBO Max and Netflix are top streamers among Golden Globe nominees by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Financial institutions are waiting for the SEC and other regulators to pass rules about how to disclose emissions from their portfolio companies. Until then, many are following the standard set by the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF). Pathzero helps them with a platform to exchange carbon information securely and analyze it. The Sydney, Australia-based startup announced today it has raised $8.6 million AUD (about $5.3 million USD) for its Series A+ round, which brings its total Series A funding to $15.6 million AUD.

The funding was led by Carthona Capital (which is also a customer of Pathzero), with participation from Clyde Bank Holdings, Antler, individual investors and Pathzero employees.

Pathzero currently has 142 million tons of emissions under management through its reporting platform, with the target of increasing that amount to 1 billion tons. Its users include companies like private markets firm StepStone, superannuation fund HESTA and Carthona Capital.

Pathzero founder and CEO Carl Prins told TechCrunch that climate action started out as an interest, before growing into a passion. “When I initially started looking deeper into the climate change issue at hand, I came to the realization that just working out what the size of the issue is and accounting for it is the first step in order to make progress,” he said. “When it came to helping financial institutions track emissions, there was already a global protocol on how to do this. From here, this presented us with the opportunity to launch a business internationally.”

Financed emissions are total greenhouse gas emissions from an investor’s portfolio or a bank’s lending book, based on what proportion of each portfolio company’s activity is financed by the institution. More regulators around the world are beginning to hold financial institutions responsible for their indirect impact on the climate, making it important for them to start reporting their financed emissions based on standards like PCAF.

“Such issues were once considered non-financial issues, offering the flexibility to ignore them or gloss over them,” Prins said. “Yet, in the past decade, there has been a considerable shift in the legal recognition of investors’ fiduciary duty to consider climate risk in their decision making.”

Financed emissions tracking is traditionally done on spreadsheets, with the help of consultants. But this approach doesn’t scale, which is where Pathzero comes in. The platform tracks all three carbon emissions scopes based on global standards like the GHG Protocol and PCAF. It allows financial institutions to exchange carbon information with their portfolio companies and limited partners securely, and collaborate to identify carbon hotspots. Then they can use Pathzero to set carbon emissions targets and perform scenario analysis to make sure their activities and goals are in accordance with the Paris Agreement.

Pathzero’s clients include one of the largest superannuation funds in Australia, which used Pathzero to share PCAF-compliant financed emissions calculations with its private equity managers. This enabled them to meet reporting requirements, and it also helped identify emissions hotspots so they could talk to their investment managers about decarbonization.

Another of Pathzero’s clients is ROC Partners. The private equity manager uses Pathzero to manage and measure the emissions in their investment portfolios, and share that information with stakeholders. This allows ROC Partners to use a risk-based approach to ask questions of their portfolio companies. Then their answers are fed back into Pathzero’s platform to create more detailed measurements.

Prins said that in financed emissions, Pathzero competes with ratings agencies like S&P and MSCI, but differentiates by focusing on private markets, where emissions data is usually harder to obtain. For corporate emissions, it’s up against boutique consultants, but Pathzero’s advantage is that it lets clients do more work on their own, using auditable methodology.

In a statement about the investment, Carthona Capital partner Dean Dorrell said, “After first investing in Pathzero over a year ago, we’ve seen the company go from strength to strength. We have every confidence in what their tech offering brings to the wider financial industry and are proud to be early adopters of their services ourselves. As regulation intensifies across sectors, we are looking forward to the years ahead as monitoring and reducing financed emissions becomes second nature to financial institutions.”

Sydney-based Pathzero helps investors track their portfolios’ carbon emissions by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

The world’s most popular YouTuber is taking over a corner of Fortnite and somebody will walk away with $1 million.

Jimmy Donaldson, better known by the handle MrBeast, is partnering with Epic Games on something we haven’t seen the Fortnite-maker do before. The battle royale game will host something it’s calling “MrBeast’s Extreme Survival Challenge,” a virtual gauntlet of timed challenges with a big prize for one winner.

The Fortnite player who racks up the best score in the MrBeast challenge mode will earn $1 million — inspired the massive cash giveaways that propelled Donaldson to fame. The challenge kicks off on December 17 and can be found in the “Fortnite competitive” section of the game.

Apparently you can replay the survival challenge as many times as you want between 12PM ET and 3PM ET on that day to push for a high score. The challenge island will actually go live on Tuesday, December 13 to give players plenty of practice time prior to the contest. To be eligible, players must have enabled two-factor authentication on their accounts and reached level 15.

There are a few consolation prizes for the masses who will not in fact win a million bucks, including a MrBeast-themed umbrella (remember when umbrellas were a status symbol?), a skin, emote and some custom in-game items.

Is it gimmicky? Absolutely. But it’s also interesting. Through Fortnite, Epic Games regularly highlights famous creators and streamers with custom in-game skins, but the big cash giveaway shows that Epic is willing to get creative with its influencer partnerships.

The special contest will also draw attention to Fortnite’s game modes beyond battle royale. Fortnite maker Epic Games is betting big on user-generated content. The game, which is really more of a gaming platform, actually hosts an endless portal of special modes, challenges and virtual hang out spaces, most of them made by individual amateur game designers.

Though we certainly won’t be walking away with the bag, the MrBeast event promises to be a big one. It’s also well-timed with the start of Fortnite’s latest chapter, which introduced major visual improvements and a total map overhaul.

Fortnite and MrBeast will give away $1 million in a pop-up game challenge by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

Alongside of the relaunch of Twitter Blue, Twitter’s controversial subscription service, Twitter has begun rolling out a new offering called Blue for Business that adds a gold checkmark to company accounts. On a support page, Twitter says Blue for Business, which is currently in testing, is intended to designate that a given Twitter account is a “corporate entity.”

Blue for Business doesn’t come as a complete surprise. In November, reporter Casey Newton obtained internal Twitter documents showing that the social network planned to introduce a business tier of its subscription plan that’d let companies buy verification badges for their workers and put new badges on their profiles. In mockups, tweets from workers included additional badges next to their names so that their status was immediately noticeable in the timeline.

Shortly afterward, app engineer Jane Manchun Wong found evidence that Twitter profiles subscribed to Blue for Business might get square profile photos.

There’s no sign of any worker-badge-buying feature or uniquely-shaped profile photos, but TechCrunch spotted several corporate and media publisher accounts with gold-colored checkmarks this afternoon — not to be confused with the forthcoming gray marks for government and “multilateral accounts.” Esther Crawford, director of product management at Twitter, said over the weekend to expect it; businesses “who previously had relationships with Twitter” would receive gold checkmarks before Blue for Business opens up to more companies “via a new process,” she explained.

The pricing structure for Blue for Business — assuming there is one — isn’t yet clear, as it’s not detailed on the support page. We’ll update this post once we learn more.

With the various flavors of Blue, Musk seeks to bring Twitter to profitability as the company faces an estimated $1 billion a year in interest payments on $13 billion in debt. It’s likely to be an uphill battle. Data from analytics firm Sensor Tower suggests that Twitter’s app has generated only$6.4 million in in-app purchases to date, with Blue being the top purchase.

Blue has evolved chaotically since Musk’s takeover this fall, rolling out this week with a new review step aimed at combating the sorts of account impersonations that have plagued Twitter over the past few months. Available in five countries as of this week, including the U.S., Blue now costs $8 per month or $11 per month for iOS sign-ups. (The higher cost for iOS sign-ups is likely a move by Twitter to offset the cost of Apple’s 30% commission for in-app purchased subscriptions).

Twitter Blue subscribers gain the ability to edit their tweets, upload 1080p videos and access to a “reader mode,” plus see reduced ads and have their tweets “rocketed” to the top of replies, mentions and search.

Twitter launches Blue for Business, grants gold checkmarks to ‘corporate entities’ by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch