Signage for high-tech commercial bank Silicon Valley Bank, on Sand Hill Road in the Silicon Valley town of Menlo Park, California, August 25, 2016.
Smith Collection | Gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images
Silicon Valley Bank has long been considered the lifeblood for tech startups, providing traditional banking services while funding projects and companies deemed too risky for traditional lenders. Billions of dollars in venture capital flow into and out of the bank’s coffers.
But the 40-year-old firm’s intimate ties to technology leave it particularly sensitive to the industry’s boom-and-bust cycles, and on Thursday those risks became abundantly clear.
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SVB was forced into a fire sale of its securities, unloading $21 billion worth its holdings at a $1.8 billion loss, while also raising $500 million from venture firm General Atlantic, according to a financial update late Wednesday. After its stock soared 75% in the 2021 market rally, SVB lost two-thirds of its value last year and then plummeted another 60% during regular trading on Thursday.
For the Silicon Valley region, the troubles land at a particularly difficult time. Venture capital deal activity sank over 30% last year to $238 billion, according to PitchBook. While that’s still a historically high number, the dearth of IPOs and continuing drawdown in valuations among once highfliers suggests that there’s much more pain to come in 2023.
As a large regulated bank, SVB has been viewed as a stabilizing force. But its latest financial maneuvers are raising alarm bells among the firm’s client base.
“Psychologically it’s a blow because everyone realizes how fragile things can be,” said Scott Orn, operating chief at Kruze Consulting, which helps startups with tax, accounting and HR services.
Orn called SVB a “crown jewel of Silicon Valley” and a “strong franchise” that he expects to survive this difficult period and even potentially get acquired by a bigger bank. For his customers, which number in the hundreds, a pullback by SVB would likely make it more expensive to borrow money.
“Losing a major debt provider in the venture debt market could drive the cost of funds up,” Orn said.
According to SVB’s mid-quarter update, one of the primary problems the bank faces has to do with the amount of money its customers are spending. Total client funds have fallen for the last five quarters, as cash burn has continued at a rapid pace despite the slowdown in venture investing.
“Client cash burn remains ~2x higher than pre-2021 levels and has not adjusted to the slower fundraising environment,” SVB said.
In January, SVB expected average deposits for the first quarter to be $171 billion to $175 billion. That forecast is now down to $167 billion to $169 billion. SVB anticipates clients will continue to burn cash at essentially the same level as they did in the last quarter of 2022, when economic tightening was already well underway.
Analysts at DA Davidson wrote in a report on Thursday that in terms of spending, “companies have not adjusted to the slower fundraising environment.” The firm has a neutral rating on the stock and said concerns “over a slow to recover VC environment have kept us cautious on SIVB shares.”
S&P lowered its rating on SVB to BBB- from BBB, leaving it just one notch above its junk rating. On Wednesday, Moody’s reduced SVB to Baa1 from A3, reflecting “the deterioration in the bank’s funding, liquidity and profitability, which prompted SVB to announce actions to restructure its balance sheet.”
Concern has quickly turned to the potential contagion effect. Does the bank’s acknowledged misfortunes lead clients to pull their money and house it elsewhere? That question was circling among investors and tech execs on Thursday, even after CEO Greg Becker wrote in a letter to shareholders that, the bank has “ample liquidity and flexibility to manage our liquidity position.”
“More in the VC community need to speak out publicly to quell the panic about @SVB_Financial,” Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures wrote on Twitter. “I believe their CEO when he says they are solvent and not in violation of any banking ratios & goal was to raise & strengthen balance sheet.”
Suster funds the kinds of risk-taking and future-oriented ventures that rely on SVB for banking services.
In the case studies section of the firm’s website, for example, SVB highlights a loan to solar panel provider Sunrun, debt offerings to autonomous construction equipment vendor Built Robotics and financing solutions for ocean drone startup Saildrone.
SVB’s loan losses remain low, meaning that at least for now it’s not facing the kind of credit challenges the bank dealt with during the dot-com crash and financial crisis, when charge-offs soared. Rather, analysts are focused on the deposit side of the house.
“Given the pressure on their end markets, especially the elevated levels of client cash burn, SIVB is seeing continued material outflows of client funds, both on- and off-balance sheet,” wrote analysts at Wedbush, who have the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock. That recommendation is “based on SIVB’s growth normalizing after an exceptional 2020-2021 and our belief that the VC market could remain challenged for the next couple quarters.”
Moody’s downgrade specifically pointed to concerns about the bank’s risk profile, pointing out that the “balance of shareholder and creditor interests posed higher than average governance challenges.”
SVB still managed to find reasons for optimism. In a section of its report titled “Continued underlying momentum,” the bank noted that private equity and venture capital dry powder hit a record high in January to the tune of $2.6 trillion, an indication that there’s plenty of cash out there for startups.
SVB can only hope that it remains a trusted financial source for companies as they look to eventually store a good chunk of that money.
An employee walks past a quilt displaying Etsy Inc. signage at the company’s headquarters in the Brooklyn.
Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Etsy is trying to make it easier for shoppers to purchase products from local merchants and avoid the extra cost of imports as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs raise concerns about soaring prices.
In a post to Etsy’s website on Thursday, CEO Josh Silverman said the company is “surfacing new ways for buyers to discover businesses in their countries” via shopping pages and by featuring local sellers on its website and app.
“While we continue to nurture and enable cross-border trade on Etsy, we understand that people are increasingly interested in shopping domestically,” Silverman said.
Etsy operates an online marketplace that connects buyers and sellers with mostly artisanal and handcrafted goods. The site, which had 5.6 million active sellers as of the end of December, competes with e-commerce juggernaut Amazon, as well as newer entrants that have ties to China like Temu, Shein and TikTok Shop.
By highlighting local sellers, Etsy could relieve some shoppers from having to pay higher prices induced by President Trump’s widespread tariffs on trade partners. Trump has imposed tariffs on most foreign countries, with China facing a rate of 145%, and other nations facing 10% rates after he instituted a 90-day pause to allow for negotiations. Trump also signed an executive order that will end the de minimis provision, a loophole for low-value shipments often used by online businesses, on May 2.
Temu and Shein have already announced they plan to raise prices late next week in response to the tariffs. Sellers on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, many of whom source their products from China, have said they’re considering raising prices.
Silverman said Etsy has provided guidance for its sellers to help them “run their businesses with as little disruption as possible” in the wake of tariffs and changes to the de minimis exemption.
Before Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs took effect, Silverman said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in late February that he expects Etsy to benefit from the tariffs and de minimis restrictions because it “has much less dependence on products coming in from China.”
“We’re doing whatever work we can do to anticipate and prepare for come what may,” Silverman said at the time. “In general, though, I think Etsy will be more resilient than many of our competitors in these situations.”
Still, American shoppers may face higher prices on Etsy as U.S. businesses that source their products or components from China pass some of those costs on to consumers.
Etsy shares are down 17% this year, slightly more than the Nasdaq.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies before the House Judiciary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on December 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty Images
Google’s antitrust woes are continuing to mount, just as the company tries to brace for a future dominated by artificial intelligence.
On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that Google held illegal monopolies in online advertising markets due to its position between ad buyers and sellers.
The ruling, which followed a September trial in Alexandria, Virginia, represents a second major antitrust blow for Google in under a year. In August, a judge determined the company has held a monopoly in its core market of internet search, the most-significant antitrust ruling in the tech industry since the case against Microsoftmore than 20 years ago.
Google is in a particularly precarious spot as it tries to simultaneously defend its primary business in court while fending off an onslaught of new competition due to the emergence of generative AI, most notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which offers users alternative ways to search for information. Revenue growth has cooled in recent years, and Google also now faces the added potential of a slowdown in ad spending due to economic concerns from President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs.
Parent company Alphabet reports first-quarter results next week. Alphabet’s stock price dipped more than 1% on Thursday and is now down 20% this year.
In Thursday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said Google’s anticompetitive practices “substantially harmed” publishers and users on the web. The trial featured 39 live witnesses, depositions from an additional 20 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits.
Judge Brinkema ruled that Google unlawfully controls two of the three parts of the advertising technology market: the publisher ad server market and ad exchange market. Brinkema dismissed the third part of the case, determining that tools used for general display advertising can’t clearly be defined as Google’s own market. In particular, the judge cited the purchases of DoubleClick and Admeld and said the government failed to show those “acquisitions were anticompetitive.”
“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president or regulatory affairs, said in an emailed statement. “We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press release from the DOJ that the ruling represents a “landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square.”
Potential ad disruption
If regulators force the company to divest parts of the ad-tech business, as the Justice Department has requested, it could open up opportunities for smaller players and other competitors to fill the void and snap up valuable market share. Amazon has been growing its ad business in recent years.
Meanwhile, Google is still defending itself against claims that its search has acted as a monopoly by creating strong barriers to entry and a feedback loop that sustained its dominance. Google said in August, immediately after the search case ruling, that it would appeal, meaning the matter can play out in court for years even after the remedies are determined.
The remedies trial, which will lay out the consequences, begins next week. The Justice Department is aiming for a break up of Google’s Chrome browser and eliminating exclusive agreements, like its deal with Apple for search on iPhones. The judge is expected to make the ruling by August.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai (L) and Apple CEO Tim Cook (R) listen as U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a roundtable with American and Indian business leaders in the East Room of the White House on June 23, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
After the ad market ruling on Thursday, Gartner’s Andrew Frank said Google’s “conflicts of interest” are apparent by how the market runs.
“The structure has been decades in the making,” Frank said, adding that “untangling that would be a significant challenge, particularly since lawyers don’t tend to be system architects.”
However, the uncertainty that comes with a potentially years-long appeals process means many publishers and advertisers will be waiting to see how things shake out before making any big decisions given how much they rely on Google’s technology.
“Google will have incentives to encourage more competition possibly by loosening certain restrictions on certain media it controls, YouTube being one of them,” Frank said. “Those kind of incentives may create opportunities for other publishers or ad tech players.”
A date for the remedies trial hasn’t been set.
Damian Rollison, senior director of market insights for marketing platform Soci, said the revenue hit from the ad market case could be more dramatic than the impact from the search case.
“The company stands to lose a lot more in material terms if its ad business, long its main source of revenue, is broken up,” Rollison said in an email. “Whereas divisions like Chrome are more strategically important.”
Jason Citron, CEO of Discord in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2024.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
The New Jersey attorney general sued Discord on Thursday, alleging that the company misled consumers about child safety features on the gaming-centric social messaging app.
The lawsuit, filed in the New Jersey Superior Court by Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the state’s division of consumer affairs, alleges that Discord violated the state’s consumer fraud laws.
Discord did so, the complaint said, by allegedly “misleading children and parents from New Jersey” about safety features, “obscuring” the risks children face on the platform and failing to enforce its minimum age requirement.
“Discord’s strategy of employing difficult to navigate and ambiguous safety settings to lull parents and children into a false sense of safety, when Discord knew well that children on the Application were being targeted and exploited, are unconscionable and/or abusive commercial acts or practices,” lawyers wrote in the legal filing.
They alleged that Discord’s acts and practices were “offensive to public policy.”
A Discord spokesperson said in a statement that the company disputes the allegations and that it is “proud of our continuous efforts and investments in features and tools that help make Discord safer.”
“Given our engagement with the Attorney General’s office, we are surprised by the announcement that New Jersey has filed an action against Discord today,” the spokesperson said.
One of the lawsuit’s allegations centers around Discord’s age-verification process, which the plaintiffs believe is flawed, writing that children under thirteen can easily lie about their age to bypass the app’s minimum age requirement.
The lawsuit also alleges that Discord misled parents to believe that its so-called Safe Direct Messaging feature “was designed to automatically scan and delete all private messages containing explicit media content.” The lawyers claim that Discord misrepresented the efficacy of that safety tool.
“By default, direct messages between ‘friends’ were not scanned at all,” the complaint stated. “But even when Safe Direct Messaging filters were enabled, children were still exposed to child sexual abuse material, videos depicting violence or terror, and other harmful content.”
The New Jersey attorney general is seeking unspecified civil penalties against Discord, according to the complaint.
The filing marks the latest lawsuit brought by various state attorneys general around the country against social media companies.
In 2023, a bipartisan coalition of over 40 state attorneys general sued Meta over allegations that the company knowingly implemented addictive features across apps like Facebook and Instagram that harm the mental well being of children and young adults.
The New Mexico attorney general sued Snap in Sep. 2024 over allegations that Snapchat’s design features have made it easy for predators to easily target children through sextortion schemes.
The following month, a bipartisan group of over a dozen state attorneys general filed lawsuits against TikTok over allegations that the app misleads consumers that its safe for children. In one particular lawsuit filed by the District of Columbia’s attorney general, lawyers allege that the ByteDance-owned app maintains a virtual currency that “substantially harms children” and a livestreaming feature that “exploits them financially.”
In January 2024, executives from Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X were grilled by lawmakers during a senate hearing over allegations that the companies failed to protect children on their respective social media platforms.