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Glad Friday! Be a part of us in wishing Lorenzo a really heat welcome to the crew! He’s becoming a member of our crack crew of cybersecurity reporters, working alongside Zack and Carly. He simply revealed his first article on TC, about T-Cellular reporting a hacker accessed private knowledge of 37 million clients. Welcome aboard!!

Take pleasure in your weekend! — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Prime 3

• Alphabet spells out layoffs: With all that speak about tech layoffs prior to now couple months, it was solely a matter of time earlier than we noticed one thing from Google’s guardian, Alphabet. The search engine big introduced it was reducing 6% of its workforce, which impacts 12,000 individuals. And just like the others, CEO Sundar Pichai took his flip explaining how the corporate “employed for a special financial actuality,” Paul writes.
• Sport off: With gaming being as common as it’s, this subsequent layoff story is a little bit of a shock, although not completely sudden since media corporations are being hit onerous. Leisure firm Fandom, which publishes content material below Large Bomb, GameSpot and Metacritic, laid off roughly 10% of its employees throughout these publications, Ivan stories.
• It’s all concerning the cash, cash, cash: Social media influencers in India should disclose promotional content material, aka paid promotions, to the federal government, and now the Division of Client Affairs has launched some pointers on how to do this. Jagmeet has extra.

Startups and VC

A $32 million seed spherical for Chris DeWolfe’s latest gaming firm could seem to be a throwback to frothier instances, like … 2021. However that’s how a lot PLAI Labs simply raised in a deal led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), stories Connie. She factors out that that’s numerous moolah in a unstable market, even coming because it does from two separate a16z funds: the agency’s $600 million debut video games automobile and its $4.5 billion crypto fund, each of which have been introduced final Could.

Right here’s one other handful for ya:

4 traders talk about the following large wave for different seafood startups

Picture of WildType’s sushi-grade, lab-grown salmon. Picture Credit: Arye Elfenbein/WildType

There’s numerous hype round plant-based burgers and nuggets, however different seafood merchandise are attracting extra consideration — and funding — from traders as of late.

“Greater than $178 million was pumped into different seafood within the first half of 2022, and the market’s worth is poised to succeed in $1.6 billion over the following 10 years,” she stories.

To be taught extra about this maturing area, Christine Corridor surveyed 4 traders to get their ideas on regulation, the “distinctive challenges” corporations face as they attempt to attain scale, and the way they’re approaching progress and threat:

• Kate Danaher, managing director of ocean and seafood, S2G Ventures
• Friederike Grosse-Holz, director, Blue Horizon
• Christian Lim, managing director, SWEN Capital Companions’ Blue Ocean
• Amy Novogratz, co-founder and managing companion, Aqua Spark

Three extra from the TC+ crew:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup groups get forward of the pack. You possibly can enroll right here. Use code “DC” for a 15% low cost on an annual subscription!

Large Tech Inc.

Okay, no extra layoff speak. We’re going to have some enjoyable, as a result of it’s Friday, rattling it!

Are you continue to taking part in Wordle? Or maybe you switched to its clone Quordle. Properly, Quordle was acquired by Merriam-Webster, Paul stories. For those who’ve by no means tried it, Quordle is much like the essential Wordle idea, guessing a phrase in a specific amount of tries, besides there are 4 five-letter phrases to guess directly, with simply 9 tries. It is perhaps simply the factor to heat you up on a chilly winter’s night time.

Right here’s 4 extra in your Friday enjoyment:

• Your flip: Amanda writes that after weeks of backlash and protest from content material creators and followers, Dungeons & Dragons’ writer decided to place the sport below a Artistic Commons license.
• An abrupt goodbye: After not too long ago reducing off third-party shoppers, together with Tweetbot and Twitterific, Twitter went forward and formally banned them, Kyle writes.
• ICYMI: Netflix founder Reed Hastings stepped down as co-CEO however will stay on the board, Taylor writes. In the meantime, Netflix is eyeing free streaming “FAST” channels as a chance to develop its advertisements enterprise, Lauren stories.
• Up, up, and away: As Darrell writes, Canada is getting up off the sidelines and becoming a member of the area race, saying it needs to help industrial area launches.