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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

Overnight, news broke that the National Ignition Facility, a U.S. government research lab, was the first to achieve net-positive nuclear fusion. When lasers hit the tiny fuel pellet, it created an explosion that released more energy than the lasers delivered.

For decades, fusion power has been just around the corner. Is this the moment we’ve all been waiting for?

Maybe.

First, the details: The Financial Times reported yesterday that the NIF had sparked a fusion reaction that generated 2.5 megajoules of energy, about 20% more than the 2.1 megajoules of laser energy that zapped the fuel pellet. If that holds up under scrutiny, it represents the first time that a controlled nuclear fusion experiment of any kind produced more power than it consumed.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which houses the facility, has so far refused to confirm the report. But three outlets — the Financial Times, The Washington Postand Bloomberg — all cited sources familiar with the experiments. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Jill Hruby, the undersecretary for nuclear security, are expected to make an official announcement tomorrow.

“If this report is true, then this is just a huge scientific achievement in the pursuit of fusion,” said Carolyn Kuranz, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who has performed experiments at the NIF.

Investors have grown bullish on fusion in recent years, plowing $2.7 billion into startups in the last year alone. Advances in high-temperature superconductors, computing power and artificial intelligence have coincided to propel the field forward at a remarkably fast pace.

High-profile names like Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital have made some significant investments in fusion power startups in recent years.

“There couldn’t be a more significant step toward fusion than what NIF has accomplished,” Sacca told TechCrunch. “So today we offer the naysayers our thoughts and prayers.”

Breakthrough fusion power announcement expected tomorrow. Here’s what it means by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch

FTX’s fallen CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, is scheduled to testify tomorrow as a witness before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services.

The committee is investigating the events that led up to FTX’s implosion, which resulted in the crypto exchange filing for bankruptcy last month. Prior to Bankman-Fried testifying, John J. Ray III, the new CEO of FTX, will speak to the House during its first panel.

The hearing, “Investigating the Collapse of FTX, Part I,” sounds like a movie title — and some parts of it probably feel like one, given how crazy this whole situation has become. But questions surrounding what really happened at FTX may remain unanswered; even though Bankman-Fried is scheduled to testify, there are still concerns he may get cold feet.

Last week, in a back-and-forth tweet exchange, California Representative Maxine Waters, the chairwoman of the House of Committee on Financial Services, invited Bankman-Fried to join the hearing on December 13. Bankman-Fried effectively declined.

That didn’t sit well with Waters, who noted that Bankman-Fried has been on a personal media tour, talking publicly to groups ranging from “Good Morning America” to the BBC.

Amid the possibility of a congressional subpoena to compel his attendance, Bankman-Fried tweeted back to Waters on December 9 that he is “willing to testify,” adding, “[T]here is a limit to what I will be able to say, and I won’t be as helpful as I’d like.” He claimed he does not have access to “much” of his data.

Although he skirted many questions from reporters, Bankman-Fried has still been rather chatty in recent weeks. Perhaps when he’s under oath before the U.S. government, it’ll be a different story.

Regardless, Bankman-Fried said in a tweet he will “try to be helpful” (after saying he won’t be as helpful as he’d like) and will talk about FTX US’ alleged solvency, resolutions to return value to users internationally, what he thinks led to the crash, and his “own failings.”

Last month, FTX bankruptcy hearings began in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

James Bromley, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and co-head of the firm’s global restructuring practice, said during the hearing FTX “laundered the world” in locations including Berkeley, California; Hong Kong; Miami; Chicago; and the Bahamas.

A few days before the initial bankruptcy hearing, in a November 17 filing with the same court, Ray, who was brought in to clean up the Enron scandal, said there was a “complete absence of trustworthy financial information.”

“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” Ray said at the time.

Tomorrow’s hearing is the first of many with the House that aim to uncover what happened internally that caused one of the largest centralized crypto exchanges in the world to fall so hard and so fast.

SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

The correct amount of money to raise for your startup is “as much as you need to hit the milestones to raise your next round of funding.” It isn’t rocket science, and yet, the vast majority of founders I talk to are very fuzzy about exactly how much money that is, and there are a lot of misconceptions about how you figure out how much you need to raise.

To be a startup on the VC treadmill is a staged de-risking of a business proposition. In other words: Right now, your company is very risky indeed because certain parts of your business are unknown. This is why you need to put together a minimum viable product (which is neither minimum, nor viable, or a product) to test out part of your business model. Once those things are tested and proven, the risk of the business goes down, and you can raise your next round of funding to take on the next part of the journey.

The first mistake a lot of founders make is to try to raise enough money for a certain amount of runway, measured in months or years. That makes some sense, but investors are not interested in keeping your startup afloat for the next 18 or 24 months. They’re interested in keeping you alive for long enough to deliver certain milestones, which in turn are a proxy of risk reduction.

Let’s take a deep dive into how you can best design your startup’s journey through the various stages of funding — and detail just how much you need to raise at each stage.

Milestone-driven fundraising

The best way to think about how much you need to raise for this round is to consider what you need to accomplish to raise your next round. That means considering the specific milestones that you must hit to prove that your company is moving in the right direction. These milestones might include:

How much money should you raise for your startup? by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

After announcing the relaunch of Twitter Blue over the weekend, Twitter updated its terms to require phone number verification for users who want to purchase the subscription. The company said that if you haven’t verified your phone number, you will be prompted to do so while buying the subscription plan.

What’s more, the company may also prevent users who have changed their handle (username), display name, or profile picture within the last seven days from purchasing the Twitter Blue subscription.

“Twitter accounts that haven’t been active within the last 30 days or that have changed their profile photo, display name, or username (aka @handle) within the previous seven days may also be unable to sign up. Subscribers will also need a verified phone number,” the company’s updated terms stated.

This is in addition to the previous requirement that newly created accounts can’t sign up for Twitter Blue for 90 days. Twitter said that folks who subscribe to the Twitter Blue plan may not see the checkmark immediately as it plans to check if the account doesn’t violate its requirements for verification. Apart from the above-mentioned conditions, these requirements say that the account shouldn’t show “signs of being misleading or deceptive” and shouldn’t engage in “platform manipulation and spam”.

“All Twitter Blue features will be available immediately except the blue checkmark, which may take time to appear to ensure review of subscribed accounts meets all requirements,” Twitter said on the FAQ page for Twitter Blue.

Last month, Musk mentioned that all accounts undergoing verification will be manually verified — which was exactly the process Twitter followed with legacy verification.

All these steps are aimed at preventing impersonation and spam. When Elon Musk’s version of Twitter Blue with a verification mark first launched in November, a ton of accounts began to ape brands, celebrities, and athletes. The mayhem caused by that forced Musk to pause the program until there were steps in place to prevent that from happening again.

Twitter will require phone number verification to purchase a Twitter Blue subscription by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

TechCrunch noted a week ago that an investor in Coupa was sounding the alarm that the software company might be sold to private equity for a price below what the money manager felt was fair. The plea went unanswered, with Coupa selling for a discount to what the investor had demanded as a minimum, we reported this morning.

That the deal happened so quickly after the warning is not surprising. The investor in question wouldn’t have tried to make unseemly public noise unless something was imminent. That the deal got done at the price it did, however,is notable. How come? Because private equity has more money than god and tech is cheaper than it has been in ages.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

The combination, in light of the Coupa sale, makes us wonder if tech is about to discover itself amid a fire sale — a situation where the balance of power is not in its hands. This could apply to public tech companies and those that have yet to pull the trigger on an IPO for one reason or another. Neither cohort is in great valuations shape, making them similarly vulnerable.

Private equity could be gearing up to shop for vulnerable tech companies by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

Jeff Bezos-headed company Blue Origin is getting its own kid-friendly animated space adventure series called “Blue Origins Space Rangers,” production companies Genius Brands and SMAC Productions announced today. A premiere date hasn’t been set.

The children’s series will feature the voices of Bezos, who founded his space tourism business Blue Origin in 2000, as well as “Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan, who was a passenger in December 2021 on Blue Origin NS-19 on a 10-minute spaceflight. Bezos took his supersonic joy ride to space in July 2021.

“Blue Origins Space Rangers” will also include voice talent of other guest stars like junior astronauts, celebrities and “adult leaders,” the announcement wrote.

The upcoming series claims to be a learning opportunity for future astronauts and STEAM students as humans continue investigating this new era of space travel — a.k.a. billionaires visiting outer space for funsies. Of course, the side benefit is that it makes ultra-unrelatable Bezos a tad more human for an impressionable audience.

Blue Origin is also the center of the film “HELIOS,” which is set to premiere in 2023 and features Orbital Reef, the in-progress private space station, and the Amazon documentary “Shatner in Space,” which explores 90-year-old “Star Trek” actor William Shatner’s journey to space last year.

Jeff Bezos and GMA host Michael Strahan star in new Blue Origin kids’ space show by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch