All sorts of changes going on:
- WeWork plans to cut around 7% of its staff, according to Bloomberg’s Ellen Huet, and has paused hiring. The $16B coworking/coliving startup raised $430 million a few months ago led by Chinese investors, and plans to expand in Asia. It seems that WeWork might be responding to the advice of many investors to cut back on burn as the economy seems to be cooling.
- Tony Fadell has left Nest following months of bad press and growing friction within Alphabet/Google, which acquired the company in 2014 for $3.2 billion. Positioned as a ‘transition’, the move is more likely the case of Fadell being pushed out. The new Nest CEO is Marwan Fawaz, who was a Motorola Mobility executive vice president, and who oversaw the sell off of that company after Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Looks like Alphabet/Google is positioning Nest for a sale, since Google’s developed its own line of smart home products that don’t play nice with Nest’s technologies.
- BitTorrent has spun out Sync, its file sync and share technology, into a new firm, Resilio, and Sync will be renamed as Connect. Former BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker will be heading up the new company, after trying to repositioning BitTorrent as an enterprise software company. It now seems the existing BitTorrent company will focus on a new live streaming app.
