Water-as-a-service, layoffs @ Alphabet, Tesla cutting prices, and many more...
What's up Tech? #121
Welcome to our 121st newsletter. It was written with 🖤 by Edward Toulemonde, Hugo Jouan, Saish Rane, Medina Sinani and Angèle Sahraoui
Fundraisings from last week with Wayout and October
News from last week with layoffs impacting employees at Alphabet and Tesla’s price cut
Internship & Job offers of the week
Oh, and before we dive into this week’s newsletter, the whole baby vc team is beyond excited to share with you our new website and our new digital branding. We hope you won’t miss our good old black & yellow color pallet!
Now, wishing you a pleasant read 🖤
💧 Wayout raised €6M with Climentum Capital (🇸🇪)
Wayout provides water-as-a-service to communities in container-sized filtration plants, capable of filtering through industrial wastewater or saltwater into clear, enriched water to 2000+ people per container. 🚰
In doing so, they raised a €6M Series A funding round with Climentum Capital, Re:Food & Raiven Capital completing the round to further ramp up production of its container-sized water treatment facility, press forward with international expansion plans, and support a sustained recruitment drive. 📈
Keeping the plastic bottles at bay, Wayout raises €6 million
🤝 October raised €35M to ease SMBs’ access to financing (🇫🇷)
The Paris-based FinTech founded in 2014 announced last week it had raised €35M with the European Investment Fund and Invest-NL (Netherlands-based).
This new funding will bring the size of SME V — the name of October’s fund dedicated to debt funding for SMEs — to €100M and enable the team to provide more than 3,000 European SMEs with fundings. 📈
In a time of inflation and supply chain disruptions, October’s value proposition is acutely relevant as SMEs face an increased need for financing which had already started with the Covid crisis. 💵
😕 Another massive wave of layoff for the GAFAM
After Amazon and Microsoft which laid off a combined 28,000 people, Google announced in an email sent to the company’s employees that the firm will fire 12,000 people from its workforce. This is the biggest wave of layoffs the company has ever done since its creation in 1998. About 6% of employees are left without jobs in various teams across the company, such as HR, Tech and Product. 🔍
In a context of tech downturn, Alphabet’ stock has been down 31% across the past 12 months and the tech titan has already made some budget cuts: it cancelled its next Pixelbook laptop model and permanently closed its online gaming service Stadia for example. ❌
Tech companies are currently facing numerous challenges, including an increase in interest rates and high inflation over the past year which has negatively impacted technology shares, and caused advertisers to reduce their online advertising spending. And when taking into account Google’s revenue structure, with more than 80% coming from online advertising, this further explains the current dismissal process.
Although this announcement had a massive impact for Google’s employees, it was well received by the market since Alphabet share price was up by 6%. Investors are bullish regarding Google’s long term perspectives and the fact the layoff would ease the company's costs. 👀
Google parent Alphabet cuts 6% of its workforce, impacting 12,000 people
🚗 Tesla's price cut: A game changer for the EV market?
On the 13th of this month, Tesla announced a significant cut in prices (up to 20%) for its famous EVs 💸.
This decision is understood as an attempt to challenge an increasing competition from China, lower demand due to economic uncertainty, and an anticipated increase in Tesla’s capacity of production. This move has sent ripples throughout the EV market, with many speculating that it could lead to a price war among EV manufacturers and resellers. 🤺
While this price cut may seem like good news for new consumers, it has caused much frustration among Tesla owners who now see a deep decrease in the resale value of their vehicles — meaning the perception of EVs as a good investment is also impacted 💔.
On the business side, it poses an obvious threat to many startups which may not be able to compete with Tesla's lowered prices, especially when getting more runway becomes complex.
However, it's not all bad news. In the long run, this price cut could be a positive development for the EV market 🙌. Stronger competition could foster innovation and accelerate the development of new technologies in the EV ecosystem, with many EV-related products seeing more and more customers flowing in 🛣.
Additionally, Tesla's prices are dropping below government incentive thresholds (it is the case in France with the €7k bonus for an EV costing less than €45k). This is planned to increase demand and accessibility for a wider range of consumers, pushing the adoption rates up and driving future growth for startups in the EV-space! 🏁
Internships
VC Analyst - BGV (Paris)
VC Analyst - Portage Ventures (Paris)
Jobs
VC Analyst - Antler (Berlin)
👉 And if you’d like to discover more offers… you can check our job board just here!
Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at joinbabyvc@gmail.com. We’d be super happy to have you sharing job/internship offers, events or feedback with us! 🤝
You can also read about us on our website and follow what we do on LinkedIn.
Take care, and see you next week,
The whole baby vc crew 🖤