Marc Andreessen speaking at the 2017 ReCode Conference on May 30, 2017.
Asa Mathat for Vox Media
Two of Facebook’s top engineers on its blockchain and digital currency project left the company to join Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto team, the venture capital firm told CNBC on Monday.
Riyaz Faizullabhoy and Nassim Eddequiouaq spent the past two years working on Facebook’s Novi digital wallet, which was originally called Calibra. The effort has faced stiff resistance from regulators and lawmakers worldwide, and a number of its high-profile leaders have departed.
Faizullabhoy and Eddequiouaq will serve as the chief technology officer and chief information security officer, respectively, on Andreessen’s crypto team, which is called a16z Crypto. In June, the firm announced a new $2.2 billion cryptocurrency-focused fund.
“Andreessen Horowitz has shown an impressive dedication to advancing the entire crypto ecosystem over the past decade, and we jumped at the chance to join their premier team and provide technical support to their rapidly-expanding portfolio,” Faizullabhoy told CNBC in a statement.
After spending the past two years working on Facebook’s Novi digital currency wallet, Riyaz Faizullabhoy is joining Andreessen Horowitz as chief technology officer of the venture capital firm’s a16z Crypto team.
Courtesy of Andreessen Horowitz
While Andreessen has been actively investing in crypto and blockchain and made a huge windfall from an early bet on Coinbase, which went public in April, Facebook has yet to show much progress in the space.
The company announced Calibra and its Libra digital currency in 2019 with much fanfare and said it hoped to launch the products in 2020. With less than three months remaining in 2021, neither has been released, though the names have changed. Calibra became Novi, and Libra was renamed Diem last year.
Morgan Beller, one of the founders of Facebook’s crypto unit, left her position as Novi head of strategy in September 2020 to join venture capital firm NFX. Fellow co-creator Kevin Weil left in March to join satellite imagery company Planet Labs.
Marc Andreessen, who co-founded a16z in 2009, has served on Facebook’s board since a year before opening his firm. His crypto team has about 50 members, including outside advisors, said Anthony Albanese, the fund’s operating chief. The group has made three dozen investments, including in digital currencies, trading services and other crypto funds, according to its website.
After spending the past two years working on Facebook’s Novi digital currency wallet, Nassim Eddequiouaq is joining Andreessen Horowitz as chief information security officer of the venture capital firm’s a16z Crypto team.
Courtesy of Andreessen Horowitz
Albanese said the venture firm’s crypto strategy will allow Faizullabhoy and Eddequiouaq to work on a wider set of issues than what Facebook offered.
“They’re going to be advising our portfolio companies on protocols to help them make sure that they have the most secure and sophisticated systems around,” Albanese said.
“They were doing a Facebook wallet,” he said. “It was more specific. Whereas I think here, they’re really going to have an opportunity to impact the crypto ecosystem on a very broad scale.”
Prior to joining Facebook, the duo worked at Anchorage, a digital asset bank start-up. At Facebook, they established the technological infrastructure that would hold digital currency within the company’s Novi wallet.
“Crypto is a once-in-a-generation step change in technology with unlimited potential to empower everyone,” Eddequiouaq said in a statement. “It also brings a unique set of complex security challenges that every crypto project needs to recognize and address.”
Perplexity AI logo is seen in this illustration taken January 4, 2024.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Perplexity AI, the artificial-intelligence search engine startup, is in the final stages of raising $500 million in funding at a $9 billion valuation, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC.
The startup competes against the likes of Google and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. Perplexity most recent valuation was $3 billion in June. Institutional Venture Partners, a Bay Area-based firm, is leading the new round, according to the source, who requested anonymity since the funding is not yet public.
Perplexity started the year with a roughly $500 million valuation.Since then, the company has continued to attract investor interest amid the generative AI boom, raising four funding rounds so far this year.
Last week, OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positioned it to better compete with Perplexity, as well as leading search engines like Google and Microsoft‘s Bing. OpenAI’s search feature offers up-to-the-minute sports scores, stock quotes, news, weather and more, powered by real-time web search and partnerships with news and data providers, according to the company.
Despite the AI boom, Perplexity has been embroiled in controversy due to accusations of plagiarizing content from media outlets. The New York Times last month sent Perplexity a “cease and desist” notice, claiming that the startup scrapes the news outlet’s content to generate answers. Perplexity has denied the allegations.
In July, Perplexity debuted a revenue-sharing model for publishers. Any time a user asks a question and Perplexity generates ad revenue from citing an article in its answer, Perplexity will share a percentage of that revenue with the publisher, the company said.
Media outlets and content platforms including Fortune, Time, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, Der Spiegel and WordPress were among the first to join the company’s “Publishers Program.” Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s chief business officer, told CNBC in a July interview that if three articles from one publisher were used in one answer, the partner would receive “triple the revenue share.” Perplexity worked on its revenue-sharing model since January, and the company’s goal is to have 30 publishers enrolled by the end of the year, Shevelenko said.
Perplexity’s app has been downloaded more than 2 million times, and it answers more than 230 million queries a month, the company said in August. U.S. queries have increased eightfold in the past year, according to a pitch deck for potential advertisers that was viewed by CNBC.
Cryptocurrencies were slightly higher Tuesday evening as investors waited for direction on the potential outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
The price of bitcoin was last higher by 2% at $69,105.03, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose as high as $70,522.84. It is currently 5% off its all-time high, after trading near it last week.
Stocks tied to the price of the cryptocurrency got a boost in earlier trading during regular stock market hours. Exchange operator Coinbase and MicroStrategy, which often trades as a high beta play on the price of bitcoin, advanced 4% and 2%, respectively.
Investors are expecting bitcoin trading to be choppy until a clear winner is declared. A victory for Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to bring risk of downside moves to the price of bitcoin, while traders anticipate a bump in price in the event of a win by former President Donald Trump.
“The election is having a massive influence on crypto,” said Ryan Rasmussen, head of research at Bitwise Asset Management. “Expect bitcoin – and crypto more broadly – to be choppy in the days ahead … until we have definitive election results.”
“If Trump wins, I believe we’ll see new all-time highs,” Rasmussen added. “If Harris wins, I expect a decent short-term sell-off, with prices taking a month or two to recover. But eventually, either way, I think we go higher.”
Bitcoin is widely expected to rise to a new record in coming weeks. In the 2012, 2016 and 2020 elections, bitcoin saw returns of roughly 87%, 44% and 145% in the 90 days following election day, respectively. That’s in part because election years happen to fall on Bitcoin halving years, when the supply of the cryptocurrency ratchets downward. Post election returns have also tended to align with major Federal Reserve policy shifts. This year, the market is looking forward to further interest rate reductions.
Earlier Tuesday, bitcoin wavered around the $70,000 mark, after hitting that level last week for the first time since March and approaching its record of $73,797.68. At about $69,000, bitcoin has been trading at its fair value price, according to CryptoQuant. That means that if the election proves to be a positive catalyst in the coming days, bitcoin can rally and is poised to establish a new record, CryptoQuant analyst Julio Moreno said.
“For now, everyone we’ve spoken to is keeping their powder dry,” said James Davies, CEO at crypto futures and options trading platform Crypto Valley Exchange. “I’ve heard from numerous leading market makers and traders and can say with conviction that almost everyone is set up to react. They don’t even know which way markets will go based on [the] result. There’s likely to be massive short-term volatility whichever outcome.”
This year’s presidential election has been called the most important one in the crypto industry’s lifetime. Many view a Harris win as a threat to crypto, the extent to which has been debated throughout this election cycle. Trump, on the other hand, is seen by many as a force for good in the industry after he presented himself earlier this year as the pro-crypto candidate and has been courting the industry more directly than Harris has.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during the New York Times DealBook Summit in the Appel Room at the Jazz At Lincoln Center on November 30, 2022 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy denied speculation that the company’s five-day in-office mandate was made to further reduce head count or appease city officials.
“A number of people I’ve seen theorize that the reason we were doing this is a backdoor layoff or we made some sort of deal with the city, or cities, and that’s why we were having people come back and be together more often,” Jassy said at an all-hands meeting Tuesday, according to remarks obtained by CNBC. “I can tell you both of those are not true.”
Amazon announced the new mandate in September. The company’s previous return-to-work stance required corporate workers to be in the office at least three days a week. Employees have until Jan. 2 to adhere to the new policy.
The mandate has spurred backlash from some Amazon employees who say they’re just as productive working from home or in a hybrid work environment as they are in the office. Others have said the mandate is in line with Jassy’s continued cost-cutting efforts, suggesting that it’s a means of forced attrition. Amazon has laid off more than 27,000 employees since the beginning of 2022.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. Jassy’s comments were earlier reported by Reuters.
“This was not a cost play for us,” Jassy said at the meeting, which coincided with Election Day. “This is very much about our culture and strengthening our culture.”
At the time he announced the mandate, Jassy said that a return to the office full time would allow Amazon to be “better set up to invent, collaborate and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business.”
Amazon’s cloud boss Matt Garman also defended the decision last month, saying staffers who don’t agree with the company’s new policy can leave, CNBC previously reported. Garman also said he’s been speaking with staffers about the mandate and “nine out of 10 people are actually quite excited by this change.”
Garman’s comments further rankled Amazon employees.
Roughly 500 staffers who work for Amazon’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, penned a letter to Garman last week criticizing his remarks and questioning the merits of a five-day in-office mandate, according to a copy of the letter viewed by CNBC.
“We urge you to reconsider your comments and position on the proposed 5-day in-office mandate,” the letter said. “Remote and flexible work is an opportunity for Amazon to take the lead, not a threat. We want to work for a company and for leaders that recognize and seize this moment to challenge us to reinvent how we work.”
The letter included anecdotes from AWS staffers who detailed how the five-day in-office mandate will impact their “life and work.” One staffer said they were denied a disability accommodation and were being told to return to the office, and another employee said they were recently told to use paid time off to take care of a sick family member instead of being allowed to work from home. Another staffer said the RTO mandate would require them to be in an office “over 200 miles from my home.”
At least 37,000 employees have joined an internal Slack channel created last year to advocate for remote work and share grievances about the return-to-work mandate, CNBC previously reported. Staffers previously pushed back on the 3-day in-office mandate, with some staging a walkout at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters to express their dissatisfaction.
Jassy acknowledged Tuesday that the five-day in-office mandate will be an adjustment for employees.
“I understand that for a lot of people and we’re gonna be working through that adjustment together,” he said.