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DirecTV plans to lay off approximately 10% of its management staff, a spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. The layoffs will be in effect next Friday, January 20.

The staff reduction comes as DirecTV, among other pay-TV companies, grapple with the continuous loss of consumers moving away from linear television and shifting over to streaming. DirecTV no longer publicly reports subscriber numbers, however, credit rating agency Fitch Ratings estimated that the company lost approximately 500,000 subs in Q3 2022, bringing the total to 13.3 million. For comparison, Comcast has around 16.6 million video subscribers. In September, Bloomberg reported that Comcast plans to cut $1 billion from its traditional TV network division.

“The entire pay-TV industry is impacted by the secular decline and the increasing rates to secure and distribute programming. We’re adjusting our operations costs to align with these changes and will continue to invest in new entertainment products and service enhancements,” the DirecTV spokesperson said.

DirecTV has its satellite TV service and DirectTV Stream, its streaming business. The management staff makes up less than half of DirecTV’s overall workforce, according to CNBC, which broke the news of the layoffs.

Cable and broadcast viewership continues to decline. In July 2022, streaming represented a 34.8% share of total TV viewing in the U.S., whereas cable’s share of TV viewing was at 34.4% and broadcast was 21.6%, per Nielsen. As of October 2022, Leichtman Research Group estimated that only two-thirds (66%) of households in the U.S. have a pay-TV service, a decrease of 79% in 2017.

It’s likely DirecTV experienced a drop in subs when it lost the rights to NFL’s “Sunday Ticket.” Last year was DirecTV’s final year as the exclusive home of “Sunday Ticket,” however fans were disappointed when its website and app crashed during opening weekend.

YouTube was announced the winner of the “Sunday Ticket” last month.

DirecTV is the latest pay-TV company to lay off staff amid the ongoing shift to streaming by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Lucid Group eked out a small win in 2022.

The EV automaker said Thursday it produced 7,180 of its luxury Air sedans in 2022, exceeding its previously lowered guidance for the year. Lucid adjusted its guidance in fall, stating it would produce 6,000 to 7,000 vehicles in 2022. Shares pooped more than 6% immediately following the news before settling. Shares are now up 2.33% to $8.12.

Lucid produced 3,493 vehicles in the fourth quarter, meaning nearly half of the year’s total production numbers occurred at the end of the year.

That win comes after a year of supply chain challenges that forced Lucid to slash its annual production guidance twice last year. Lucid initially planned to produce 20,000 luxury Air sedans at a factory in Casa Grande, Arizona. In February, the company lowered that guidance to 12,000 to 14,000 vehicles.

Lucid lowered that guidance again in September — this time reducing it by half — due to what CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson described as “extraordinary supply chain and logistics challenges.”

Lucid’s delivery numbers still lag its production, suggesting the company is still working out the logistics of getting finished vehicles into the hands of customers. Lucid delivered 4,369 vehicles in 2022, about 60% of its total production. The company delivered 1,932 vehicles in the fourth quarter.

Lucid is scheduled to report its fourth quarter financial results at 2:30 pm PT on February 22.

Lucid shares pop after exceeding EV production goal by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the company better known as HPE, today announced that it acquired Pachyderm, a startup developing a data science platform for “explainable, repeatable” AI. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, nor was the purchase price. But HP said that it plans to integrate Pachyderm’s capabilities into a platform that’ll deliver a pipeline for automatically preparing, tracking and managing machine learning processes.

Pachyderm’s software will remain available to current and new customers — for now, at least. HPE says that the transaction isn’t subject to any regulatory approvals and will likely close this month.

Co-founded in 2014 by Joey Zwicker and Joe Doliner, a former Airbnb software engineer, Pachyderm delivers tools for versioning (i.e. creating and managing) “enterprise-scale” machine learning and AI projects. Using Pachyderm’s cloud-based and on-premises products, users could automate some aspects of AI system development through data transformations, data workflows and connectors.

Pachyderm also offered versioning features for machine learning data sets and a “Git-like” structure to facilitate collaboration among data scientists, as well as the ability to generate an immutable record for all activities and assets on the platform. It also hosted Pachyderm Hub, a fully-managed service with an on-demand compute cluster for AI development.

Prior to the HPE acquisition, Pachyderm managed to attract $28.1 million in venture capital from backers including Benchmark, Microsoft’s M12, Y Combinator and HEP’s own Hewlett Packard Pathfinder. (Pathfinder invested in February 2022.) Among its customers were Shell, LogMeIn, Battelle Ecology and AgBiome.

HPE sees Pachyderm bolstering its flagship AI development product, the HPE Machine Learning Development Environment, which provides software to build and train machine learning models for applications like computer vision, natural language processing and data analytics. In a press release, HPE lays out what it sees as the major benefits Pachyderm brings to the table, including incremental data processing, visibility on the origin of data and the ability to track different versions of data to understand when it was created or changed.

“As AI projects become larger and increasingly involve complex data sets, data scientists will need reproducible AI solutions to efficiently maximize their machine learning initiatives, optimize their infrastructure cost and ensure data is reliable and safe no matter where they are in their AI journey,” HPE VP of high-performance compute (HPC) and AI Justin Hotard said in a statement. “Pachyderm’s unique reproducible AI software augments HPE’s existing AI-at-scale offerings to automate and accelerate AI and unlock greater opportunities in image, video and text analysis, generative AI and other emerging large language model needs to realize transformative outcomes.”

Pachyderm is HPE’s second AI-related acquisition since Determined AI in June 2021. Determined AI, similarly, was focused on creating a platform for building and retraining machine learning models.

HPE sees AI and HPC as a potential major profit driver, but the company’s struggled to maintain momentum in the increasingly competitive market. In its Q4 2022 earnings report, HPE’s HPC and AI revenue dipped 14% year-over-year to $862 million, bringing the operating profit margin down to 3.5% compared to 14.2% in the prior-year period.

HPE acquires Pachyderm as looks to bolster its AI dev offerings by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Although the crypto ecosystem has faced its fair share of bumps, venture capitalists are still bullish about the space and continue to look at decentralized finance (DeFi) as a promising opportunity.

TechCrunch surveyed six crypto-focused investors about the road ahead for crypto adoption, their sentiment toward DeFi and how the focus in that subsector (by both investors and founders) is growing.

The total value locked (TVL) on DeFi protocols has fallen roughly 77% from all-time highs around $180 billion in December 2021 to about $41 billion on Wednesday, according to DeFiLlama data. But that hasn’t stopped founders, developers and investors from diving into the space.

“While TVL as a metric certainly has its flaws, we think it’s still a decent measure of activity in the sector,” said Michael Anderson, co-founder of Framework Ventures. “As TVL increases, we also think it’s possible that total market cap could follow.”

Paul Veradittakit, general partner of Pantera, echoed that sentiment. “Naturally, we expect that in the next five years, as DeFi matures and begins catering to (as well as capturing share from) its TradFi counterparts, the TVL metric could easily surpass the $500 billion mark.”

Anywhere from 20% to 50% of crypto-related pitches today are DeFi-focused, five of the investors surveyed said. With all these DeFi startups launching and pitching to investors, it’s hard to determine what it takes to stand out.

“As venture investors, we’re looking to back innovators who are not afraid to experiment and create new products,” Veradittakit said.

But DeFi’s growth will depend on more than just rising use cases, according to Alex Marinier, founder and general partner at New Form Capital. “It will also be influenced by developments in infrastructure, regulation and financial innovation.”

In general, DeFi primitives like automated market makers and lending protocols are “established and crowded,” said David Gan, founder and general partner of OP Crypto. “Founders need to go back and think about the true use cases and pain points for non-crypto/nontechnical users, and then build solutions and user experiences.”

Founders should highlight unique technology and clear advantages for a specific use case, Marinier said. “Too many projects are simply positioning themselves as ‘X protocol, but on Y chain,’ without offering anything truly innovative or novel.”

Investors are also interested in projects that strategize or connect to institutional players. As DeFi grows, so does the need for its products to realistically accommodate institutions, Anderson said.

Unfortunately, institutional players might be spooked by the market-changing events in 2022, like LUNA/Terra ecosystem exploding in May and crypto exchange FTX collapsing in November. So these investors are unlikely to return for a few years, Anderson said.

“As a result, we’re focusing more on projects that are thinking about addressing new, more institutional users and markets,” Anderson added.

Gan agreed: “We’re investing in the building blocks for institutional adoption, projects that fill the gap in the completeness of DeFi and protocols geared towards non-crypto users.”

DeFi startups need to experiment with new use cases and build solutions, investors say by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Apple is finally bringing its Apple Music and Apple TV apps to Windows, as preview versions of the two apps have quietly appeared on the Microsoft Store. The roll out comes a few months after Microsoft said the apps would be coming to Windows 11 this year. The launch was first spotted by The Verifier.

The apps look similar to the versions that are available on macOS, but are slightly modified for Windows. The Apple TV app functions similarly to the app on Smart TVs, giving users access to Apple TV+ and Apple TV Channels, in addition to movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store. The Apple Music app is almost the same as the macOS version, but doesn’t have the lyrics feature.

There’s also a preview app called “Apple Devices” that lets users manage Apple devices from their Window PC. The app replaces iTunes for sync and backup, and also allows users to restore firmware without the need for iTunes.

All three of the new Apple apps require Windows 11 version 22621.0 or higher. Apple notes that installing any of these apps will prevent iTunes for Windows from opening. Users will have to uninstall the apps to continue using iTunes.

In October, Microsoft announced that was integrating Apple’s iCloud storage service with the Photos app in Windows 11. After installing the iCloud for Windows app from the Microsoft Store and choosing to sync iCloud, iPhone users with Windows devices will be able to see their iPhone photos and videos within Photos.

Apple TV and Apple Music apps for Windows quietly appear on the Microsoft Store by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

A document recently filed with the SEC provides a detailed timeline of the negotiations between Adobe and Figma that paints a picture of how the two companies came together on a $20 billion deal last year.

One point previously unknown is that Adobe approached Figma as early as 2020, and Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field met with Adobe representatives several times during those years before finally coming to an agreement in September.

According to the document, preliminary discussions about a possible partnership or acquisition first began in early 2020 when Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer and executive vice president for Creative Cloud met with Field, but he eventually cut off the discussions, and the startup announced a $50 million Series D in April that year led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Reports pegged the value of the company at that point at $2 billion.

The discussion didn’t end there, however. In early 2021, Field met with Adobe again, this time with CEO Shantanu Narayen, to discuss a possible acquisition, but once again Field ended the discussions without a deal.

By June, Figma secured a $200 million Series E, which valued the company at a whopping $10 billion, per Crunchbase data.

And that’s how it remained until April last year when Belsky and David Wadhwani, president of Adobe’s Digital Media business once again approached Field, and this time the discussions started to heat up.

It would take months for the deal to come together with Field at one point trying to negotiate a higher price of $23 billion, which the company rejected. He even invited another company to bid, known as Party A in the document, and identified by CNBC as Microsoft.

Microsoft had already agreed to buy Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in January last year, which could account for its reticence to join the bidding. Whatever the reason, the company never put in a bid, according to the report.

Eventually, after lots of additional discussions between legal representatives on both sides of the table, the companies would agree to the $20 billion price tag, which the parties announced on September 15, 2022.

In an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt in October, Field talked about the process, and indicated that in spite of the company’s anti-Adobe rhetoric over the years, he had undertaken regular discussions with Adobe executives going back to as early as 2012, something the SEC timeline supports.

“It’s actually kind of interesting because as part of the acquisition process, you have to make a timeline of events. And I looked back at all the interactions we’ve had with Adobe over the years. The first interaction with Adobe was days after we announced Figma in August 2012,” he said. Field characterized that first meeting as an attempt to recruit them, and while nothing really came of it, they continued to have conversations over the years, which culminated with a $20 billion acquisition offer last year.

At Disrupt, he emphasized that his company was in a good position financially, and this was a choice to team up with Adobe.

“We’re definitely in a great place in terms of choosing our own destiny. We are doubling year over year in terms of our revenue. We’re free cash flow positive. So it wasn’t like, ‘oh, gosh, we need to sell this company.’ That was never the consideration here. Instead, it was what’s the best opportunity to achieve our vision,” Field said at Disrupt.

Regardless, the deal is still subject to regulatory approval, and is facing scrutiny with the U.S Justice Department taking a close look. U.K regulators are also looking into the deal. The EU is expected to as well. If all goes well, Adobe expects the deal to close some time later this year.

SEC filing shows Adobe had interest in buying Figma as early as 2020 by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

Once a game on the periphery for the nerdiest of nerds, Dungeons & Dragons has exploded into the mainstream. Much of this success is owed to the podcasters, Twitch streamers and writers who have embraced the fantasy framework to tell collaborative stories at the whims of their dice rolls, inspiring massive renewed interest in the game.

“I think we’re in a really interesting moment in D&D,” Catie Osborn, a Dungeons & Dragons content creator with over 1.6 million TikTok followers, told TechCrunch. “You have [a new edition of the game] that’s about to come out, and you have also at the same time, all of these third party writers, and people writing modules, and all of the different stuff that they’re adding into the community.”

Though Dungeons & Dragons was first published in 1974, a new generation of fans has found an entry point through independent “actual play” shows like Dropout’s “Dimension 20” or the McElroy brothers’ “The Adventure Zone.” In 2021, a Twitch leak revealed that the platform’s highest paid channel was “Critical Role,” a highly-produced stream in which a crew of professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons live. The show made over $9.6 million that year.

These hugely popular shows are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Dungeons & Dragons fan community. Thanks to the longstanding Open Gaming License (OGL), which has been in effect since 2000, a slew of internet creators are making a modest living off of the game, whether they’re performing on livestreams, writing original spell books, or coding online platforms for remote gameplay.

Now, proposed changes to the OGL threaten an entire cohort of Dungeons & Dragons content creators.

Wizards of the Coast (WoTC), the Hasbro-owned publisher of the game, plans to update the OGL for the first time in over twenty-two years, releasing a new licensing system that the company is calling OGL 1.1. Some creators who received copies of OGL 1.1 have leaked it across the internet, sparking an outcry of resistance from fans and content creators alike.

More than 54,000 people have signed an open letter against these changes as part of a movement called #OpenDND, organized by Mage Hand Press editor-in-chief Mike Holik.

“If this new license gains wide adoption, the tabletop landscape will fracture and lose its biggest onboarding mechanisms, shuttering the small businesses that populate your local cons and putting a stop to their creations,” the open letter says. “Innovation in the gaming industry will evaporate; your favorite games will be trapped in the past, instead of being allowed to migrate to your phone, virtual reality, and beyond. Diversity in the industry will shrink away, as projects from marginalized creators are effectively written out of the future.”

As a franchise, Dungeons & Dragons is not really one canonical story. Each time a new group plays the game, they create their own characters and plot lines that guide their improvisational roleplaying experience. Though WoTC will publish its own books of lore that players can choose to incorporate, the core of the game is pretty malleable and unspecific.

To play the game, players sculpt original fantasy characters from classes like sorcerers, druids and fighters, and the rules of Dungeons & Dragons provide skills, spells and ability stats that make up the game system. But as actual play shows and fan-made companion publications become more popular, Hasbro and WoTC executives have said that they want to turn the “undermonetized” Dungeons & Dragons property into a full-blown media franchise.

“The D&D strategy is a broad four-quadrant strategy, where we have this powerful brand that has similar awareness, say like ‘Lord of the Rings’ or ‘Harry Potter,’” said Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks on a December investor call. “And we’re going to imbue it with blockbuster entertainment.” The company is producing a Dungeons & Dragons TV show and movie, which is slated for release in March.

The problem, though, is that Dungeons & Dragons is merely a framework through which people create their own fantasy-inspired stories and games — there are no core characters or plot that unifies the interest of the whole community. The game’s play books feature some fan-favorite characters like Drizzt Do’Urden, a drow hero who resists his dark nature, or Count Strahd von Zarovich, an evil vampire villain. But it’s very possible for fans to dive deep into Dungeons & Dragons without ever even encountering these characters, since they are not essential to the game. It’s impossible to imagine a “Star Wars” fan who has never heard of Yoda, but you can play Dungeons & Dragons for years without ever knowing that Drizzt or Strahd exist.

“There is no main character of D&D, or I think another way of saying it is, you are the main character of D&D,” said Osborn, who is known online as Catieosaurus. “I think it could be fun to watch a movie about these adventures or whatever, but the appeal of D&D is that it’s about us — it’s about the stories that we tell together at a table.”

Hasbro did not respond to multiple requests for comment on its plans for OGL 1.1. A creator who received a copy of the updated license told TechCrunch that the new terms give WoTC ownership of any fanmade IP — so, if a creator writes an adventure for players to incorporate into their own Dungeons & Dragons campaign, WoTC has the right to reprint the creator’s work as their own without payment. It also endangers the existence of virtual tabletop software, which make remote play possible.

Under the new license, as proposed, any creator who makes over $50,000 will have to report their income to WoTC, and those who make over $750,000 will have to pay a 25% royalty to the company on every dollar above that threshold. Though these dollar values may seem high, this applies to gross revenue, not profit.

“When you are creating content, you’re working on small margins. You’re hiring your own ecosystem of creators, designers, artists, everything,” said Noah Downs, a partner at Premack Rogers and Dungeons & Dragons livestreamer who has seen the OGL 1.1 document. “And a 25% royalty, even if it’s above a certain threshold, can absolutely destroy your margin, and in many cases, it can make it untenable to continue to produce.”

At Mage Hand Press, one of Holik’s Kickstarter campaigns for a Dungeons & Dragons expansion earned $704,467 from 7,710 backers. But he sees the royalty clause as a way for WoTC to make it harder for independent publishers to compete.

“A Kickstarter involves many small products, so your profit margins actually go down, because really, you’re going to offer people some dice, and some adventures, and a box set, and all of those individual things end up cutting into your profit margins pretty significantly,” Holik said. “Kickstarters don’t walk away with 80% of their money and profit. None of that is legitimate. I don’t know where they’re getting that 25% number beyond… they’re trying to squish competition completely.”

Not only would OGL 1.1 make it more difficult for Holik to turn a profit, but Downs says it would also grant WoTC the ability to publish independent creators’ work as its own.

“If you accept OGL 1.1, you’re granting Wizards of the Coast a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free sublicense,” Downs told TechCrunch. “That means they have the forever right, that you cannot revoke, to use your work without additional royalty… That section of the license is more detrimental to creators than the monetary part of the license.”

For those making actual play videos or podcasts, the new OGL has less of a direct effect.

“The OGL affects third-party creators of game materials. Podcasters are covered by the fan content policy,” said Eric Silver, game master of the TTRPG podcast “Join the Party.” But he is still concerned about how changes at WoTC could trickle down. “The fan policy contain a clause that says Wizards can shut down individual projects or creators that they deem harmful to Wizards’ brand. That makes me wonder if criticism of the company counts in their eyes as harmful, and if they’re counting on that fear to stifle pushback to policy changes. And they have demonstrated that they can and will change policies whenever it serves them with little warning.”

Currently, the fan content policy allows creators to use WoTC’s IP so long as it’s free. Creators are allowed to earn income through sponsorships, ad revenue and donations, but they cannot paywall any content.

WoTC has remained eerily silent in light of the backlash against the leak of OGL 1.1. It’s not clear how, when, or if this change will go into effect, but the company said last year that it would make these changes in the beginning of 2023.

“The OGL literally changed my life,” said Osborn. “It’s why I’m able to do what I do. It’s how I make my income. And so it’s just kind of scary.”

Holik says that if OGL 1.1 goes into effect, he will have to restructure his entire business.

“I’d have to cancel two Kickstarters and take my Patreon down overnight,” said Holik. Through Patreon alone, Holik’s company makes almost $2,000 per month.

According to Osborn, the silver lining is that there are more games out there like Dungeons & Dragons. Though it’s inarguably the most popular TTRPG, fans have also gravitated to game systems like Monster of the Week, Fate, Blades in the Dark and Kids on Bikes. On websites like itch.io, an indie games marketplace, TTRPG players can find anything from a game about cheeky, party-crashing goats to a “Friday Night Lights”-inspired story about high school football.

“I don’t want to say it’s a good thing, but I think it has put the community in an incredible position. Like, if you look on Twitter, right now there’s so many conversations starting about what are other options? What are other games I can play?” Osborn said. “I think people are going to start seeing the wide variety of incredible games that have been made by small indie creators.”

Dungeons & Dragons content creators are fighting to protect their livelihoods by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried launched his own Substack newsletter today, in a very unusual move for someone who was recently arrested and is facing eight counts of U.S. criminal charges.

In a post titled “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview,” Bankman-Fried maintains his innocence surrounding the collapse and bankruptcy of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange he founded in 2019 that went on to raise $2 billion in funding and achieve a valuation of a staggering $32 billion.

He wrote:

I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away. Nearly all of my assets were and still are utilizable to backstop FTX customers. I have, for instance, offered to contribute nearly all of my personal shares in Robinhood to customers–or 100%, if the Chapter 11 team would honor my D&O legal expense indemnification.

When Bankman-Fried stepped down from FTX in November, Enron turnaround veteran John J. Ray III was appointed as the new CEO.

The 30-year-old former billionaire continues to insist that if he were not “forced” to declare bankruptcy that the company would have been able to repay all its customers. He wrote: “There were numerous potential funding offers–including signed LOIs post chapter 11 filing totaling over $4b. I believe that, had FTX International been given a few weeks, it could likely have utilized its illiquid assets and equity to raise enough financing to make customers substantially whole.”

On January 3, Bankman-Fried pled not guilty to all eight counts of criminal charges, which included wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to misuse customer funds, among others. Bankman-Fried could face up to 115 years in jail if convicted on all charges. His trial date has been set for October 2, 2023.

Last month, a U.S. judge released Bankman-Fried on a $250 million bail bond after he was extradited to America from the Bahamas. The bail package allowed Bankman-Fried to remain under house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.

In the Substack, Bankman-Fried went on to share what he described as “a record of FTX US’s balance sheet as of when I handed it off.”

He went on to say:

If FTX had been given a few weeks to raise the necessary liquidity, I believe it would have been able to make customers substantially whole. I didn’t realize at the time that Sullivan & Cromwell—via pressure to instate Mr. Ray and file Chapter 11, including for solvent companies like FTX US–would potentially quash those efforts. I still think that, if FTX International were to reboot today, there would be a real possibility of making customers substantially whole. And even without that, there are significant assets available for customers.

I’ve been, regrettably, slow to respond to public misperceptions and material misstatements. It took me some time to piece together what I could–I don’t have access to much of the relevant data, much of which is for a company (Alameda) I wasn’t running at the time.

This is not the first time the disgraced founder has taken to airing his thoughts publicly. In November, he said in a series of tweets that FTX International was looking to raise liquidity and was in talks with a “number of players.” Then in December, he talked from an undisclosed location in the Bahamas with reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin for a DealBook event, a discussion that his legal team “very much” did not approve of, he told Sorkin with a boyish grin. He also

Sam Bankman-Fried launches Substack: ‘I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away’ by Mary Ann Azevedo originally published on TechCrunch

Emerging markets tend to go in and out of vogue. First, Austin was the next biggest thing, then Atlanta and, more recently, Miami. Pittsburgh has yet to have its moment, but all the signs are there that it could be next. Having local expertise in the category every VC wants to invest in right now doesn’t hurt, either.

The Steel City has all the ingredients to be a hub for startups: a good university system, a cheaper cost of living — definitely when compared to places like New York and the Bay Area — and a proliferation of seed firms and startup accelerators. Plus, it has seen a homegrown success story in language learning app Duolingo, which went public at a nearly $4 billion valuation in 2021.

Startups in the city raised more than $534 million through December 12, 2022, according to PitchBook, which, while not a lot of capital, is better than 2021, when they raised $336 million. And while the data is not consistently trending up and to the right — there was a huge outlier deal (Uber Advanced Technologies) in 2019 that spiked the yearly investment total to $1.3 billion — venture investors on the ground can feel the city’s potential. (I talked about Pittsburgh’s startup ecosystem on the City Cast Pittsburgh podcast recently in the context of two high-profile startup failures there, Ford- and VW-backed Argo AI and robotic vertical farming outfit Fifth Season. You can give it a listen here.)

Ven Raju, the president and CEO of Innovation Works, a local startup accelerator and seed fund, said he’s seen the market grow 10x in the last decade and 6x in the last three years.

“The ecosystem is on a tremendous upward trajectory,” he added.

Pittsburgh’s AI expertise may give rise to an already growing startup market by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

Fashion rentals marketplace Rent the Runway was hit hard by the pandemic, as its subscribers were largely renting outfits to wear to in-person events. The company survived, however, by slashing costs, renegotiating supplier contracts, and entering the clothing resale market. Today, the company is expanding that side of its business once again by bringing some of its pre-worn items and other exclusives to Amazon in a new partnership with Amazon Fashion.

On Thursday, Amazon announced the launch of a Rent the Runway Amazon Fashion storefront which will feature a selection of pre-worn fashion merchandise from over 35 brands across numerous styles. These pre-worn items have been inspected, cleaned, and restored but may have minor defects — though nothing that would impact the physical integrity of the garment. Customers will be able to shop items for “weekend wear, workwear, date night apparel and seasonal essentials like sweaters, tops, coats, and denim,” Amazon said.

This isn’t the first time Rent the Runway has partnered with another retailer to help unload its pre-worn items.

The fashion subscription service survived 2020 by partneringwith resale marketplace thredUP on a collection of previously rented designer clothing called “Revive by Rent the Runway” as well as with Nordstorm Rack. Last year, Rent the Runway also began working with Saks Off 5th, which agreed to sell pre-worn Rent the Runway clothes on its site, as well. Plus, Rent the Runway itself sells pre-worn clothes on its own website to customers who don’t have a subscription.

In addition to bringing pre-worn clothes to Amazon, Rent the Runway will also offer a selection of merchandise from its “Design Collective” through Amazon Fashion. These limited-edition fashion collections are created by design talent, including names like Thakoon and Peter Som, using Rent the Runway’s proprietary data and insights from its customer base. Other designers include Adam Lippes, Marina Moscone, and more, and will offer 1,000 styles in sizes 00-22 (though actual sizing may vary by availability.)

With this launch, Amazon Fashion will be the first retailer to carry the new, unworn Design Collective merchandise, aside from Rent the Runway itself.

Some of the Design Collective items will also become available through Amazon Prime’s “Try Before you Buy” offering, which allows for home try-on and returns.

The move is another way Rent the Runway is seeking growth in a post-pandemic market. Covid could have easily destroyed Rent the Runway’s business entirely — and, for a time, things looked dire. In 2020, the company’s active subscribers declined from 133,000 to 55,000, its losses grew and its stock tanked. It was only a year after Rent the Runway’s IPO.

To its credit, the business survived Covid and, in its most recent earnings, saw a return to growth. In Q3 2022, Rent the Runway beat Wall Street expectations on quarterly revenue of $77.4 million compared with the $72.9 million analysts expected. It grew its active subscribers 15% from the year-ago quarter to 134,240 and raised its financial outlook for the year to $293-295 million. (The company says the Amazon partnership was already baked into these projections).

​​”Collaborating with Amazon Fashion brings Rent the Runway incredible brand awareness,” said Jenn Hyman, Rent the Runway co-founder and CEO, in a statement. “We believe strategic relationships like this can ignite a new engine of growth for our business. They also showcase demand for our products beyond our community and allow more customers to experience exclusive data-driven fashion from our top design partners.”​

For Amazon, meanwhile, the partnership allows the retail giant to dabble in another area — fashion resale — without having to invest in spinning up a resale marketplace of its own. To date, Amazon has offered a way for consumers to browse select pre-owned merchandise through its Amazon Renewed site, but this doesn’t include women’s fashion. Instead, it’s a way to shop for pre-owned consumer electronics, like phones and smartwatches, plus tools, cameras, gaming equipment, and other home, kitchen, and entertainment items.

It only has smaller investments in fashion resale through partners, including Shopbop’s “pre-loved” edit and What Goes Around Comes Around’s brand store with Luxury Stores at Amazon, focused on pre-loved handbags, jewelry and accessories, and some designer apparel.

“At Amazon Fashion, we continually expand our assortment through strategic relationships with brands to inspire and delight our customers,” said Muge Erdirik Dogan, President of Amazon Fashion, in a release. “Rent the Runway’s collection continues to grow our offering in pre-loved and designer fashion.”

Starting today, customers will be able to browse and shop from Rent the Runway’s brand store​ via amazon.com/stores/renttherunway. Products are eligible for free shipping with Prime and will allow for returns through Amazon, not Rent the Runway’s stores.

Rent the Runway’s fashion comes to Amazon, including pre-worn items and design exclusives by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch