Snap sales grow 5% from last year

Published

2 years ago

October 24, 2023

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Co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc. Evan Spiegel attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups, at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France June 17, 2022.

Benoit Tessier | Reuters

Snap shares initially soared as much as 20% in after-hours trading as the company beat on the top and bottom lines, then settled to a slight decline as investors digested news that some advertisers had paused spending following the onset of war in the Middle East.

Here’s how the company did:

Earnings per share: 2 cents, adjusted, vs. 4 cent loss expected by analysts, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv.
Revenue: $1.19 billion vs. $1.11 billion expected, according to LSEG.
Global Daily Active Users (DAUs): 406 million vs. 405.7 million expected, according to StreetAccount.
Average revenue per user: $2.93 vs. $2.74 expected, according to StreetAccount.

The company highlighted a return to sales growth during the quarter, as revenues rose 5% from the previous year when it logged $1.13 billion.

As part of Snap’s “internal forecast,” the company said that it expects sales in its fourth quarter to be in the range of $1.32 billion to $1.38 billion, compared with $1.33 billion expected by analysts. Snap said it is not providing official fourth quarter guidance “due to the unpredictable nature of war,” reversing course from the previous quarter when it provided official guidance.

The company said it has “observed pauses in spending from a large number of primarily brand-oriented advertising campaigns immediately following the onset of the war in the Middle East,” which is impacting its current quarter’s sales.

The company’s GAAP net loss widened 2% year-over-year to $368 million in its third quarter, or 23 cents per share.

Snapchat+, the company’s subscription service that costs $3.99 a month, reached over 5 million subscribers in its recent quarter, up from 4 million during the prior quarter.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel highlighted the company’s “positive growth in Q3” in a statement, pointing to its major cost-cutting efforts as helping improve the overall business.

Last summer, Snap said last summer that it would lay off 20% of its workforce consisting of over 6,000 employees. The cost cutting continued as recently as this September when Snap said that it shut down its augmented reality enterprise business, resulting in 170 employees exiting the company.

“We are focused on improving our advertising platform to drive higher return on investment for our advertising partners, and we have evolved our go-to-market efforts to better serve our partners and drive customer success,” Spiegel said in the statement.

Snap said that its chief operating officer, Jerry Hunter, is retiring after seven years at the company.

The company also said that has authorized a stock repurchase program of up to $500 million. It added that it has $3.6 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of September 30, 2023.

Watch: Snapchat+, a subscription-based revenue stream, has hit 4M subscribers

Snapchat+, a subscription-based revenue stream, has hit 4M subscribers, says CEO Evan Spiegel

Technology

Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’

Published

10 hours ago

November 21, 2025

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$Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup's robots could 'fracture a human skull'$

Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.

Figure AI

Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”

Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”

The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.

In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”

The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.

Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.

The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.

Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.

Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.

The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.

Read the filing here: