Tech

Peloton Co-Founder and CEO John Foley speaks during the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 at Moscone Center on September 6, 2018 in San Francisco.Kimberly White | Getty ImagesThe U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Saturday said consumers should stop using the Tread+ treadmill from exercise equipment maker Peloton if small children or pets are around. The announcement came one month after Peloton itself disclosed an accident involving the treadmill that resulted in the death of a child.The warning could add to challenges for the company as it looks to expand its business by selling running systems with online content.The U.S. agency said it knew about 39 incidents, including one death, and it said there had been reports of a pet and objects getting sucked underneath the treadmill. The agency released a video of one child getting stuck under the device as it was running, although the child was able to get out.If people want to keep using the Tread+, they should only do so in a locked room and they should keep other objects away, the agency said. It advised people to unplug the treadmill while not using it and to keep the key to turn it on elsewhere and away

In this articleAMZNStill from “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.”New Line CinemaAmazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ television show is shaping up to be a costly endeavor for the tech company.On Friday, New Zealand’s minister for economic development and tourism revealed that the fantasy drama will be one of the most costly television series ever made, with its season one price tag coming in at around $465 million.”But what I can tell you is Amazon is going to spend about $650 million in season one alone,” Stuart Nash told Morning Report. The figure he provided was in local currency.The production figure is massive and likely the largest sum any studio has spent to produce a single season of television. For comparison, HBO’s “Game of Thrones” cost around $100 million per season. Season one episodes cost around $6 million each and eventually rose to around $15 million by season eight.Amazon shelled out around $250 million for the rights to the Tolkien property in 2017.”This will be the largest television series ever made,” Nash said.The figures, released as part of the New Zealand government’s Official Information Act, were first reported by the New Zealand-based outlet Stuff. Their report indicated that

In this articleAMZNPeople protest in support of the unionizing efforts of the Alabama Amazon workers, in Los Angeles, California, March 22, 2021.Lucy Nicholson | ReutersAmazon last week soundly defeated a union drive at one of its Alabama warehouses, a major win for the e-commerce giant which has long fought unionization attempts at its facilities. Workers at the Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse voted overwhelmingly in favor of rejecting unionization, with fewer than 30% of the votes tallied in favor. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which led the union drive, intends to challenge the outcome, arguing that Amazon broke the law with some of its anti-union activity before and during voting. The outcome delivers a setback to organized labor, which had hoped the Bessemer election would help establish a foothold at Amazon. But unions, worker advocates, and some employees at the Bessemer facility, known as BHM1, said they believe that the Bessemer election will fuel further organizing attempts at other warehouses across the country. Labor leaders say the Bessemer election also revealed to the general public the lengths to which employers will go to prevent unions. According to multiple workers and union representatives who described the tactics, Amazon unleashed an aggressive public relations

Anthony Casalena, founder and CEO, SquarespaceSource: SquarespaceSquarespace, which makes software for people to build websites, on Friday filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SQSP.”The company is eschewing a traditional initial public offering, where it would issue new shares to institutional investors to raise new capital, and instead using a direct listing, where it sells existing shares on the public market to let earlier investors and employees get liquidity. That mechanism has become increasingly popular, with tech companies Slack, Spotify, Palantir, Roblox and Coinbase all choosing direct listings in recent years. Last month, Squarespace raised $300 million in funding.The company reported $621.1 million in revenue in 2020, with revenue growing 28% year over year. Squarespace wants to grow its business by sign up new customers and get existing clients to use more of its services, including tools for selling products online.Squarespace had more than 3.6 million subscriptions at the end of the year, up about 23%.Rather than going after big enterprises, Squarespace focuses on self-employed people and small businesses. New York-based cloud infrastructure provider DigitalOcean also focuses on smaller entities for growth.Competition includes Automattic, Wix, Weebly, as well as domain registration companies such as

Coinbase is a popular option for buying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.Todd Haselton | CNBCWatch out social media, finance apps are becoming a more popular form of entertainment on people’s phones.Trading platforms Robinhood and Coinbase grabbed the top two spots in Apple’s App Store this week as Americans turn their attention to stock and cryptocurrency markets.Robinhood notched the no. 1 spot on Friday, followed by crypto trading platform Coinbase, according to data from Sensor Tower. TikTok was third. The surge in popularity comes as Coinbase made its debut on the Nasdaq on Wednesday, and bitcoin topped $64,000 for the first time.The surge in popularity underlines a boom in retail trading during the pandemic and “meme stock” culture around names like GameStop. The video game retailer became a household name in January after a group of traders on Reddit sparked a historic short squeeze.Typically, social media and entertainment options such as TikTok, Reddit and Instagram are the top apps. The rankings reflect the momentum in downloads of a certain app, not necessarily the total cumulative downloads.This isn’t Robinhood’s first time at the number one spot. In January, at the height of the GameStop controversy, the brokerage firm was the most popular app

In this articleABNBAirbnb will have to add millions of new hosts to accommodate guests as travel picks up again following the coronavirus pandemic, CEO Brian Chesky told CNBC.”To meet the demand over the coming years, we’re going to need millions more hosts,” Chesky said in an interview with Deirdre Bosa that aired Friday on CNBC’s “TechCheck.” The home-sharing platform now has 4 million hosts.”I think that we probably will have a high class problem where there will probably be more guests coming to Airbnb than we’ll have hosts for, because … we think there’s going to be a travel rebound coming that’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” Chesky said. “We are working our hardest to get more hosts on the platform.”The travel industry is seeing an uptick in business as more Americans get vaccinated and state restrictions ease. But for Airbnb, which relies on people to open their homes to guests, the company will need to ramp up its number of hosts instead of building out more real estate or adding flights to meet demand.It’s a problem similar to that faced by other companies in the gig economy such as Uber, which recently announced a $250 million stimulus in an

In this articleCZRDKNGLawrence Guy #93 of the New England Patriots sacks Jimmy Garoppolo #10 of the San Francisco 49ers during the first quarter of the NFL game at Gillette Stadium on October 25, 2020 in Foxborough, Massachusetts.Matt Stone | MediaNews Group | Getty ImagesThe National Football League is officially open for sports betting, announcing sportsbook partnerships with top companies Caesars, FanDuel, and DraftKings.The agreements allow the sports betting firms to use NFL intellectual property and use its trademarks for betting promotions. The betting companies will also operate in a content-sharing model with the NFL — for example, the betting sites will be able to use material such as NFL highlights and Next Gen Stats data, which will help them set betting lines. The firms may create their own promotional content to be featured on NFL properties.Financial terms were not made available, but according to a person familiar with the agreements, the five-year pacts could be worth just under $1 billion combined over the life of the deal. But the NFL has rights to opt-out after the third and fourth year of the agreements, the person added.Caesars will keep its league sponsorship as “Official Casino Sponsor” allowing it to leverage NFL

iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max.Todd Haselton | CNBCApple’s 2022 iPhones could come in four different models with significantly improved cameras, TFI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in a Wednesday note to investors.The devices could come in two sizes, a 6.7-inch phone and a 6.1-inch phone. Both sizes could come in high-end and low-end versions, according to the note.If accurate, Kuo’s prediction would suggest that Apple is backing away from its lowest-cost new device, the iPhone 12 Mini, which was released in 2020 after years of user requests for a smaller iPhone.However, reports from Apple’s Asian supply chain and analyst estimates suggest that the iPhone 12 Mini is not selling well compared with other iPhones with larger displays and bigger batteries.Kuo’s research focuses on companies in Apple’s Asian supply chain, and he’s well known for making accurate predictions about upcoming Apple products.In the Wednesday note, he said that the 2022 iPhones will feature camera upgrades using expensive parts to increase resolution and image quality and will make video shot on iPhones more appropriate for a forthcoming high-resolution augmented reality and virtual reality headset.He writes the 2022 iPhones will include a new image sensor supplied by Sony that can output

Netflix’ Sound of Metal, starring Riz Ahmed.Source: NetflixAmazon spent $11 billion on content for its streaming video and music services last year, the company disclosed Thursday in its annual report, the latest sign of the company’s willingness to invest heavily in entertaining Prime members.The $11 billion in content spend in 2020 is a sharp uptick from a year earlier, when Amazon spent $7.8 billion, according to the report. Amazon defines video and music expenses as any licensing and production costs, as well as costs associated with digital subscriptions and sold or rented content.Amazon has sought to attract consumers’ attention in a sea of rival video and music streaming offerings from Netflix, Disney, Apple, Spotify and many others. Over the past several years, it has built up a robust library of original and licensed videos, music and podcasts, including through its acquisition of podcasting start-up Wondery in December.It quickly ramped up spending on video and music content in 2020 as consumers spent more time indoors looking at screens amid the coronavirus pandemic. Amazon has also pursued more costly film projects as its profile in Hollywood has risen.The company has long been willing to make big investments on video and music content

Mobile gaming company AppLovin began trading Thursday at $70 per share. The nine-year-old company, which has a portfolio of mobile games and also sells marketing services to game companies, now has a market cap of about $24 billion. It began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker “APP.” AppLovin is just the latest in a wave of gaming IPOs, with gaming software developer Unity Software launching its own in September, Israel’s Playtika in January and kids game company Roblox in March. IronSource, which provides ad services for app-based game developers and makes games of its own, also plans to go public via a SPAC merger. AppLovin said it holds about 1% of market share of the $189 billion global mobile apps market, which has exploded during a stay-at-home year. “We’ve been seeing it since we started the business; people are using their phones four or five hours a day. Mobile apps are the most accessible and affordable forms of entertainment, the best transactional commerce access points,” founder and CEO Adam Foroughi told CNBC. Foroughi said when he started the business, it was focused on building a tech platform for mobile app developers to grow their apps by marketing using its software.”For nine years, we built