Microsoft is launching a simple graphic design app called Designer that will be available for free and as part of Office productivity software subscriptions, the company said Wednesday.
The software represents an alternative to Canva, a design app boasting more than 100 million monthly active users. Based in Sydney, Canva is one of the world’s most valuable startups, boasting a $40 billion post-money valuation as of last year. But one of the startup’s investors, Blackbird Ventures, reportedly lowered its valuation of the company to $25.6 billion earlier this year as inflation and recession fears caused software stock prices to tumble.
Microsoft has sought to demonstrate the value of Office subscriptions by adding new capabilities, and earlier this year it raised the prices of some bundles aimed at businesses. Office controls the market, and companies are constantly attempting to topple the leader in the category. The closest competitor is Google. On Tuesday Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said Workspace had more than 8 million paying subscribers, up from over 6 million as of April 2020.
Increasingly, Canva is going after core parts of Office. It introduced an alternative to the PowerPoint slide development program in 2021, and in September it brought out a tool to edit documents, challenging Word. Canva says it has 55,000 paid teams using its software including at Amazon, FedEx, PepsiCo, Pfizer and Salesforce.
With its Designer app, Microsoft is initially aiming at consumers, a spokesperson told CNBC in an email. But the application could also prove useful to workers inside of companies, government agencies and schools, where Microsoft has a larger base of users. Microsoft could expand Designer to additional markets, including enterprises, if it perceives sufficient interest, the spokesperson said.
In the current economy, some companies have sought to save money by reducing the number of software providers they count on, and adding Designer to commercial Office subscriptions at some point might help companies cut out payments to Canva, for one.
“No company is better positioned than Microsoft to help organizations deliver on their digital imperative so that they can do more with less,” as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on a conference call with analysts in July.
The launch of Designer might also make Microsoft bump up against Adobe, which fields the free Adobe Express tool that features templates and stock images. Canva is “where beginners get started before they come to Adobe,” Jonathan Vaas, Adobe’s vice president of investor relations, said at a Bank of America event in January.
But Microsoft has a close partnership with Adobe, and the two companies have more than 30 product integrations. “Adobe remains our key, at-scale strategic partner and this new consumer design application does not change our engagement with Adobe in any way,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email.
People can draw on templates to come up with social media posts in Designer, Liat Ben-Zur, a Microsoft corporate vice president, wrote in a blog post. Social media is also probably the most popular medium for which people design in Canva, said Cliff Obrecht, the startup’s co-founder and operating chief, in an interview last month. But Obrecht said Canva is “not competing against Microsoft.” Its primary competitor is Adobe, he said.
Designer can automatically come with visual designs when people enter text, thanks to an integration with DALL-E 2 artificial intelligence software from Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI. The two companies don’t want Designer to surface inappropriate content. OpenAI took out the most explicit sexual and violent content from AI training data for the system, while Microsoft recently implemented a change that helps to generate more diverse results, Ben-Zur wrote.
For now, people can join a waiting list for the free preview of Designer online. Once the app becomes generally available, Microsoft will maintain a free tier, along with a premium version for those with Microsoft 365 Personal and Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions, the spokesperson said.
A Waymo rider-only robotaxi is seen during a test ride in San Francisco, California, U.S., December 9, 2022.
Paresh Dave | Reuters
Alphabet’s Waymo unit plans on bringing its robotaxi service to Dallas next year, adding to a growing list of prospective U.S. markets for 2026, including Miami and Washington, D.C.
Rental car company Avis Budget Group will be managing the Waymo fleet in Dallas, via a new partnership the companies announced Monday.
Avis CEO Brian Choi said in a statement that the agreement marks a “milestone” for the company, which is now also working to become “a leading provider of fleet management, infrastructure and operations to the broader mobility ecosystem.”
Waymo robotaxi testing is already underway in downtown Dallas involving the company’s Jaguar I-PACE electric vehicles with the Waymo Driver system. That combines automated driving software, sensors and other hardware that power the vehicles’ “level 4,” driverless operations.
Passengers will be able to hail a driverless ride using the Waymo app in Dallas. In some other markets, Waymo only makes its services available through ride-hailing platform Uber.
Waymo has surged ahead in the robotaxi market while other autonomous vehicle developers, including Tesla, Amazon-owned Zoox, and venture-backed startups such as Nuro, May Mobility and Wayve, are working to make autonomous transportation a commercial reality in the U.S.
Waymo says it conducts more than 250,000 paid weekly trips in the markets where it operates commercially, including Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco.
Waymo’s steepest competition internationally comes from Baidu’s robotaxi venture Apollo Go in China, which is eyeing expansion in Europe.
On Alphabet’s second-quarter earnings call, execs boasted that, “The Waymo Driver has now autonomously driven over 100 million miles on public roads, and the team is testing across more than 10 cities this year, including New York and Philadelphia.”
The business has become significant enough that Alphabet even added a category to its Other Bets revenue description in its latest quarterly filing.
“Revenues from Other Bets are generated primarily from the sale of autonomous transportation services, healthcare-related services and internet services,” the filing said.
The Other Bets segment remains relatively small, however, with revenue coming in at $373 million in the quarter, up from $365 million a year ago. The division still reported a loss of $1.25 billion, widening from $1.13 billion in the second quarter of 2024.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses on display in the window of a Ray Ban store in London, UK, on Friday, July 19, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Revenue from sales of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses more than tripled year over year, EssilorLuxottica revealed Monday as part of the company’s most recent earnings report.
EssilorLuxottica said the success of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, built via a partnership with the Facebook parent stemming back to 2019, contributed to its first-half overall sales of 14.02 billion euro (US$16.25 billion), which represents a 7.3% year-over-year jump.
“We are leading the transformation of glasses as the next computing platform, one where AI, sensory tech and a data-rich healthcare infrastructure will converge to empower humans and unlock our full potential,” EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri and deputy CEO Paul du Saillant said in a joint-statement. “The success of Ray-Ban Meta, the launch of Oakley Meta Performance AI glasses and the positive response to Nuance Audio are major milestones for us in this new frontier.”
In the earnings report, the company said that its new Oakley Meta smart glasses, unveiled in June, represents the latest product line to come from its partnership with the social media company. CNBC reported in June that Meta and Luxottica plan to debut a Prada-branded version of its smart glasses in the future.
Luxottica owns several well-known brands including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Vogue Eyewear and Persol.
In September, Meta renewed a long-term partnership agreement with Luxottica to “collaborate into the next decade to develop multi-generational smart eyewear products,” according to the announcement.
The logos of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether outside a cryptocurrency exchange in Istanbul, Turkey, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024.
David Lombeida | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The crypto market’s bullishness may be tipping into speculative frenzy, if the latest MicroStrategy-style copycat is any indication.
On Monday, a little-known Canadian vape company saw its stock surge on plans to enter the crypto treasury game – but this time with Binance Coin (BNB), the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, excluding the dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether (USDT), according to CoinGecko.
Shares of CEA Industries, which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker VAPE, rocketed more than 800% at one point after the company announced its plans. CEA, along with investment firm 10X Capital and YZi Labs, said it would offer a $500 million private placement to raise proceeds to buy Binance Coin for its corporate treasury. Shares ended the session up nearly 550%, giving the company a market cap of about $48 million.
Given the more crypto-friendly regulatory environment this year, more public companies have adopted the MicroStrategy playbook of using debt financing and equity sales to buy bitcoin to hold on their balance sheet to try to increase shareholder returns, pushing bitcoin to new records.
Now, with the S&P 500 trading at new records, the resurgence of meme mania and a pro-crypto White House supporting the crypto industry, investors are looking further out on the risk spectrum of crypto hoping for bigger gains.
In recent months, investors have rotated out of bitcoin and into ether, which led to a burst of companies seeking a similar treasury strategy around ether. SharpLink Gaming, whose board is chaired by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, was one of the first to make the move. Other companies like DeFi Development Corp, renamed from Janover, are making similar moves around Solana.
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