From having no products, the Cayman-Islands registered company was able to assemble a device with off-the-shelf components (the first generation Ear 1 didn’t even have custom drivers) quickly and sell it, drawing on connections the co-founders had made while at OnePlus, another brand with similar strategy.
Nothing’s initial product had a good marriage of hardware and software, and the headphones sounded pretty solid compared to others. We liked them on review, though not enough that they’re a top pick for us.
The second generation of earbuds, the Ear (Stick) (7/10, WIRED Review) and Ear (2) (8/10, WIRED Review) brought custom drivers and a better case, although they still look, feel, and sound very similar to the vast majority of earbuds that I call “AirPods but”. You probably get the idea: Airpods but with color. AirPods but with better eartips. AirPods but with LDAC lossless audio or noise canceling. Nearly every brand has them, nearly all of them are pretty decent. LG doesn’t even make cell phones anymore and yet it has a pair of AirPod clones. The fruit hangs to the ground.
The new Nothing Ear and Nothing Ear (a) appear to once again offer incremental performance increases. I say appear to because though the company asked WIRED to announce these new products to the world, it has yet to provide us with usable images, battery life, a release date, or pricing, despite repeated inquiries. All the brand would supply was the picture you see at the top of this article.
Nothing did provide us with a bit of info about the inside of the headphones, which we have to assume will resemble the older models until proven otherwise. The brand claims a new ceramic driver will make crisper, clearer sound up high, and a new internal architecture will offer deeper bass. It also touts new adaptive noise canceling tech in the Nothing Ear (a) as being now 5db quieter overall (from 40db to 45db of reduction between generations). That’s fine, but it’s not staggering.
I’m not sure whether these incremental innovations are enough to put the brand on the top tier of consumer audio, but at least they keep it from falling behind. Apple itself has incrementally updated the AirPods and AirPods Pro for generations—but it also has the world’s best-selling product.
No Solid State for Nothing
It’s not like Nothing doesn’t have the capacity to develop new things. When it released its first headphones, it had a combined staff of 30 on audio. That staff is now up to 300, according to Evangelidis, including five dedicated acoustic engineers, and a team of 30 folks alone to debug the new active noise canceling. That’s significantly more brainpower, which is exactly the kind of stuff that might lead to noticable innovation either in these new models or down the line.
Once again: I haven’t yet heard or seen a pair, and I have no idea what they’ll cost. They are set to release later this year, with samples coming to reviewers in short order. On paper, and without the vital information of pricing (but knowing that historically Nothing’s buds have cost $100-150), they seem like they’ll be competitive buds that will likely offer many of the same features as options from JLab, Jabra, Oneplus, Samsung, and countless others.
Tech giants aren’t doing much acquiring these days, due mostly to an unfavorable regulatory environment. But they’re finding other ways to spend billions of dollars on the next big thing.
Amazon’s $2.75 billion investment in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, announced this week, was its largest venture deal and the latest example of the AI gold rush that’s prompting the biggest tech companies to fling open their wallets.
Anthropic is the developer behind the AI model Claude, which competes with GPT from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, and Google’s Gemini. Along with Meta and Apple, they’re all racing to integrate generative AI into their vast portfolios of products and features to ensure they don’t fall behind in a market that’s predicted to top $1 billion in revenue within a decade.
In 2023, investors pumped $29.1 billion combined into nearly 700 generative AI deals, an increase of more than 260% in value from the prior year, according to PitchBook.
A significant chunk of that money was strategic, in that it came from tech companies rather than venture capitalists or other institutions. Fred Havemeyer, head of U.S. AI and software research at Macquarie, said a fear of missing out is one factor driving their decisions.
“They definitely don’t want to miss out on being part of the AI ecosystem,” Havemeyer said. “I definitely think that there’s FOMO in this marketplace.”
The hefty investments are necessary because AI models are notoriously expensive to build and train, requiring thousands of specialized chips that, to date, have largely come from Nvidia. Meta, which is developing its own model called Llama, has said it’s spending billions on Nvidia’s graphics processing units, one of the many companies that’s helped the chipmaker bolster year-over-year revenue by more than 250%.
Whether going the building or investing route, there are a finite number of companies that can afford to play in the market. In addition to developing the chips, Nvidia has emerged as one of Silicon Valley’s top investors, taking stakes in a number of emerging AI companies, partly as a way to make sure its technology gets widely deployed. Similarly, Microsoft, Google and Amazon sometimes offer cloud credits as part of their investments.
In the Amazon-Anthropic deal announced on Wednesday, the two companies said they’ll work closely together in a variety of ways. Anthropic will be using Amazon Web Services for its computing needs as well as Amazon’s chips. Anthropic’s models will be distributed by Amazon to AWS customers.
Earlier this month, Anthropic launched Claude 3, its most powerful model and one that it says lets users upload photos, charts, documents and other types of unstructured data for analysis and answers.
Microsoft got into the business of generative AI investing earlier, putting $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019. The size of its investment has since swelled to about $13 billion. Microsoft heavily uses OpenAI’s model and offers open source models on its Azure cloud.
Alphabet is playing the part of builder and investor. The company has refocused much of its product development on generative AI, and its newly rebranded Gemini model, adding features into search, documents, maps and elsewhere. Last year, Google committed to invest $2 billion in Anthropic, after previously confirming it had taken a 10% stake in the startup alongside a large cloud contract between the two companies.
In this photo illustration, Gemini Ai is seen on a phone on March 18, 2024 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Havemeyer said tech giants aren’t just throwing money into the “hype cycle,” as these investments in AI startups align with their product road maps.
“I don’t think it’s frivolous,” he said.
Havemeyer said that alliances with big cloud providers not only bring much-needed cash to startups but also help them sign up customers.
The cloud companies are saying, “Come to us, work on our platform, have native access to the latest and greatest AI models, and also use our infrastructure,” Havemeyer said. “It’s also part of a much larger ecosystem play.”
“We’re seeing a lot of alliances appearing among those hyperscalers that have substantial scale, infrastructure and very deep pockets,” he added.
In recent earnings calls, tech execs reiterated their focus on generative AI, making it clear to investors that they have to spend money to make money, whether it’s on internal development or through investing in startups.
Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said last year the company was adjusting its “workforce toward the AI-first work we’re doing without adding material number of people to the workforce.” She said Microsoft will continue to prioritize investing in AI as “the thing that’s going to shape the next decade.”
Leaders of Google, Apple and Amazon have also suggested to investors that they’re willing to cut costs broadly across departments in order to redirect more funding toward their AI efforts.
Startups are among the beneficiaries.
Microsoft has taken stakes in Mistral, Figure and Humane, in addition to OpenAI. The company invested in Inflection AI before the startup essentially dissolved and joined Microsoft this month. Mistral is an open source-focused company that uses Azure’s cloud and offers its service to Azure clients.
Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.
Figure AI
Figure, a startup seeking to build a robot that walks like a human, has raised money from Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia and was valued last month at $2.6 billion.
Amazon’s biggest bet is Anthropic, pouring in a total of $4 billion so far. The company has also invested in open source AI platform developer Hugging Face.
Google’s investments include Essential AI, which is developing consumer AI programs and is backed by AMD and Nvidia. Alphabet and Nvidia are also investors in Runway ML, a generative AI company known for its video-editing and visual effects tools. Others in Nvidia’s portfolio include Mistral, Perplexity and Cohere.
Meanwhile, many of the Big Tech companies continue to spend internally on developing their own models.
Microsoft has invested in many of the techniques underpinning generative AI through its Microsoft Research division. Amazon reportedly has plans to train a bigger, more data-hungry model than even OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Apple researchers recently published details of their work on MM1, a family of small AI models that can take both text and visual input. Apple is in a different position that its peers in that it doesn’t sell a cloud service. Still, the tech giant is reportedly looking for AI partners, including potentially Google in the U.S. and Baidu in China. An Apple representative declined to comment on AI partners.
Daniel Newman, CEO of technology analysis firm Futurum Group, said tech companies are having to get clever when it comes to investing in AI.
For example, OpenAI’s investment from Microsoft included profit sharing in a nonprofit wing, as well as credits to use Microsoft’s cloud service. Microsoft’s deal for Inflection AI amounted to an expensive acquihire, with some reports putting the total outlay at $1 billion. As part of the transaction, Microsoft hired Inflection AI founder Mustafa Suleyman to lead Copilot AI initiatives.
“I think we’re starting to see some some creativity and dealmaking,” said Newman. With respect to Amazon’s agreement with Anthropic, he said an acquisition would be “a lot harder than investing.”
That’s because regulators across the globe are cracking down on Big Tech, making it more difficult to do sizable acquisitions. Even the investments are attracting scrutiny.
FTC Chair Lina Khan described the probe as a “market inquiry into the investments and partnerships being formed between AI developers and major cloud service providers.” The regulator has the authority to order companies to file specific reports or answer questions in writing about their businesses.
“We know regulators are becoming increasingly focused on the traditional path of closing an acquisition,” Newman said. “Right now, the game is having access to the most fundamental IP.”
If Apple opened this up, you could use a cross-platform digital wallet of your choice, making it easier to switch smartphones. You could also use digital car keys in your car manufacturer’s cross-platform app.
Cloud Gaming
The DOJ alleges that Apple resists cloud gaming services and apps because it perceives them as a threat to the “high-performance local compute” that sets iPhones apart from competitors. The idea is that the hardware doesn’t matter if you offload the processing to the cloud. All you need is a fast internet connection and a cheap device (such as a budget Android phone).
The suit also criticizes Apple for insisting that cloud-streaming games be submitted as stand-alone apps for its approval, and for forcing the cloud games it does allow to use its proprietary payment system.
We should see services such as Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce Now with their own iPhone apps soon, but how subscriptions and game services within those apps will work on iPhones is not yet clear.
If developers could create a single cloud app to run across platforms, it would significantly cut their costs compared with Apple’s current system, and make many more games available on iPhones.
Better Smartwatches
Apple wants you to buy an Apple Watch to go with your iPhone. To that end, the lawsuit points out that Apple only allows third-party smartwatches to access a subset of the application programming interfaces (APIs) that the Apple Watch has access to.
Only the Apple Watch can respond to messages, accept calendar invites, or stay connected to your iPhone when the battery-saving Low Power Mode is on.
Without these restrictions, using third-party smartwatches with an iPhone could be a far better experience.
Apple Watch on Android
The long-reigning champion of every Best Smartwatches guide, including ours, is the Apple Watch. This excellent wearable boasts all kinds of slick integrations with Apple’s wares and services, but you must own an iPhone to use the Apple Watch.
The suit points out that this makes it harder for folks who own both to switch away from Apple (because they’ll need a new phone and a new watch), but it also drives iPhone sales. I would love to use my Apple Watch with my Android phone, but of all the possibilities presented by this suit, this may be the unlikeliest.
Super Apps
The lawsuit talks about Apple’s alleged suppression of “super apps” a lot. Super apps provide multiple functions or mini apps all in one—so they might combine an app store, messaging functionality, and a payment system (like WeChat, for example).
The suit claims that super apps would be good for users and developers, reducing dependence on the iPhone, making it easier to switch to another smartphone, and creating a homogenous experience across platforms. The EU is already forcing Apple to allow third-party app stores in Europe, among other changes, so it might cede some ground here.
Ultimately, Apple will continue to fight this in court, and we may never see some of these proposed changes. An emailed Apple statement said, “This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart … We will vigorously defend against it.”
After its mostly victorious battle with Epic, we would not bet against an Apple win. But many of these changes would be welcome for ordinary iPhone users. Ironically, they may even make the iPhone more attractive for folks who currently use an Android phone.
Reddit power users who participated in the company’s IPO made millions of dollars as a group in profits after the stock’s big jump in its first day on the market.
While Redditors interviewed by CNBC ahead of the offering said they were skipping out on the IPO due to concerns about the business and the company’s often fraught relationship with moderators, Chief Financial Officer Drew Vollero told Axios that tens of thousands of users ended up purchasing shares.
The stock jumped 48% in its debut on Thursday, closing at $50.44, up from the $34 offer price.
Certain Redditors — along with company insiders and their friends and family members — were able to join the initial public offering through the company’s directed-shared program, or DSP. It’s a model that was used by companies like Airbnb, Rivian and Doximity to reward their loyal users and customers.
Of the 22 million shares that Reddit and existing stakeholders sold in the offering, some 1.76 million were made available through the DSP, equal to 8% of the deal. The shares were offered based on a user’s reputation, measured through what the company calls karma.
Because Reddit’s DSP doesn’t have a lockup period, participants could immediately sell shares, unlike company insiders and early investors, who have to wait about 180 days. The stock shot up as high as $57.80 shortly after the IPO, and some users said they sold after the early rally.
One Redditor with the username LearnedButt claimed on the r/RedditIPO forum to have made a profit of $20,000 after the initial pop. The user said they sold the stock at $54 a share.
“Even if it goes to 100/share, I’m cool and feel not an ounce of FOMO,” LearnedButt wrote, using the acronym for fear of missing out. “This is 20K I didn’t have an hour ago.”
In a reply to LearnedButt, Reddit user friskevision wrote, “Although I didn’t invest as much as you, I did make a quick $1,500. Reddit finally pays me back for those years of using it. :)”
Meanwhile, the user blackberrydoughnuts expressed regret for selling too late after the shares dropped below $50.
“I sold my 1000 shares at $48 and I’m sad I didn’t sell earlier when it was at $54!” blackberrydoughnuts wrote. “I really should have!”
Redditors used E-Trade to purchase shares via the DSP, which was only available to U.S. residents.
Reddit user Reepicheepee made a small investment in the shares.
“Just sold 15 at $50,” Reepicheepee said. “I saw the price dropping and decided to cash in. Small net of $250, though! I’ll continue watching the price throughout the day to see if I made the right call …”
Though some Redditors were out to make a quick buck, others like follysurfer plan on becoming long-term Reddit shareholders.
“Got 20 shares,” follysurfer wrote. “Guess I’ll hold them for 20yrs and see what happens.”
Stock chatter on Reddit is a familiar subject and one of the reasons the site is so well known.
The Wallstreetbets subreddit also became known known for its role in helping spawn the 2021 meme stock boom and the meteoric rise of stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman acknowledged the importance of Wallstreetbets in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, brushing aside concerns that the vocal community could cause any problems on Reddit’s first day of trading.
“That’s the beautiful thing about Reddit, is that they tell it like it is,” Huffman said. “But you have to remember they’re doing that on Reddit. It’s a platform they love, it’s their home on the internet.”
Redditor erjo5055 said in the Wallstreetbets forum, “Guess using this site for nearly 10 years has finally paid off. I’m sad I didn’t buy more shares, was going to buy 2x as many.”
The Reddit user Galactic responded, “High-5, fellow DSP dumper,” adding, “Never thought this site would make me money, but here we are!”
One commenter on Wallstreetbets, PatrickBateman-AP, had a word of caution for anyone who hasn’t yet sold.
“It will absolutely plummet tomorrow,” PatrickBateman-AP wrote.
Reddit shares jumped as much as 70% in their debut on Thursday in the first initial public offering for a major social media company since Pinterest hit the market in 2019.
The 19-year-old website that hosts millions of online forums priced its IPO on Wednesday at $34 a share, the top of the expected range. Reddit and selling shareholders raised about $750 million from the offering, with the company collecting about $519 million.
The stock opened at $47 and reached a high of $57.80. At that price, the company had a market cap of about $10.9 billion. Reddit shares then dropped to $48.64 roughly a half hour after they began trading, giving the company a market cap of about $7.9 billion.
Trading under the ticker symbol “RDDT,” Reddit is testing investor appetite for new tech stocks after an extended dry spell for IPOs. Since the peak of the technology boom in late 2021, hardly any venture-backed tech companies have gone public and those that have — like Instacart and Klaviyo last year — have underwhelmed. On Wednesday, data center hardware company Astera Labs made its public market debut on Nasdaq and saw its shares soar 72%, underscoring investor excitement over businesses tied to the surge in artificial intelligence.
At its IPO price, Reddit was valued at about $6.5 billion, a haircut from the company’s private market valuation of $10 billion in 2021, which was a boom year for the tech industry. The mood changed in 2022, as rising interest rates and soaring inflation pushed investors out of high-risk assets. Startups responded by conducting layoffs, trimming their valuations and shifting their focus to profit over growth.
Reddit’s annual sales for 2023 rose 20% to $804 million from $666.7 million a year earlier, the company detailed in its prospectus. The company recorded a net loss of $90.8 million last year, narrower than its loss of $158.6 million in 2022.
Based on its revenue over the past four quarters, Reddit’s market cap at IPO gave it a price-to-sales ratio of about 8. Alphabet trades for 6.1 times revenue, Meta has a multiple of 9.7, Pinterest’s sits at 7.5 and Snap trades for 3.9 times sales, according to FactSet.
In addition to those companies, Reddit also counts X, Discord, Wikipedia and Amazon’s Twitch streaming service as competitors in its prospectus.
Reddit is betting that data licensing could become a major source of revenue, and said in its filing that it’s entered “certain data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million and terms ranging from two to three years.” This year, Reddit said it plans to recognize roughly $66.4 million in revenue as part of its data licensing deals.
Google has also entered into an expanded partnership with Reddit, allowing the search giant to obtain more access to Reddit data to train AI models and improve its products.
Reddit revealed on March 15 that the Federal Trade Commission is conducting a nonpublic inquiry “focused on our sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content with third parties to train AI models.” Reddit said it was “not surprised that the FTC has expressed interest” in the company’s data licensing practices related to AI, and that it doesn’t believe that it has “engaged in any unfair or deceptive trade practice.”
Reddit was founded in 2005 by technology entrepreneurs Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, the company’s CEO. Existing stakeholders, including Huffman, sold a combined 6.7 million shares in the IPO.
As part of the IPO, Reddit gave some of its top moderators and users, known as Redditors, a chance to buy stock through a directed-share program. Companies like Airbnb, Doximity and Rivian have used similar programs to reward their power users and customers.
“I hope they believe in Reddit and support Reddit,” Huffman told CNBC in an interview on Thursday. “But the goal is just to get them in the deal. Just like any professional investor.”
Redditors have expressed skepticism about the IPO, both because of the company’s financials and its often troubled relationship with moderators. Huffman said he recognizes that reality and acknowledged the controversial subreddit Wallstreetbets, which helped spawn the surge in meme stocks like GameStop.
“That’s the beautiful thing about Reddit, is that they tell it like it is,” Huffman said. “But you have to remember they’re doing that on Reddit. It’s a platform they love, it’s their home on the internet.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is one of Reddit’s major shareholders along with Tencent and Advance Magazine Publishers, the parent company of publishing giant Condé Nast. Altman’s stake in the company was worth over $400 million before the stock began trading. Altman led a $50 million funding round into Reddit in 2014 and was a member of its board from 2015 through 2022.
Reddit, the 19-year-old website that hosts millions of online forums, priced its IPO on Wednesday at $34 a share, the top of the expected range.
The offering brought in $519 million, according to a press release, and values the company at close to $6.5 billion. Reddit had planned to price the deal at $31 to $34 a share.
Reddit’s public market debut on Thursday, under ticker symbol “RDDT,” will be the first for a major social media company since Pinterest’s debut in 2019 and one of the very few venture-backed tech deals of the past two years. Reddit sold 15.28 million shares in the offering, while existing shareholders sold another 6.72 million.
The company is taking a haircut from its private market valuation of $10 billion in 2021 at the peak of the tech boom. Soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets in 2022, eventually forcing startups to downsize, slash their valuations and focus on profit over growth.
On Wednesday, data center hardware company Astera Labs went public, and saw its shares skyrocket 72%, as investors flock to anything involving artificial intelligence. However, the IPO market has been in an extended dry spell for more than two years, with Instacart, Klaviyo and Arm Holdings among the few tech companies to hold offerings over that stretch.
Reddit’s core business of online advertising faces competition from industry giants like Alphabet and Meta. The company also counts Snap, X, Pinterest, Discord, Wikipedia and Amazon’s Twitch streaming service as competitors, according to its prospectus.
Revenue increased 20% last year to $804 from $666.7 million in 2022. Its net loss in 2023 was $90.8 million, marking an improvement from the $158.6 million net loss it recorded the previous year.
The company has said in filings that data licensing could become a big money maker, and that it plans to recognize about $66.4 million in such deals in 2024. The company recently entered an expanded partnership with Google, allowing the search giant more access to Reddit data to train AI models and other tasks.
Last week, Reddit said the Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to the company inquiring about its data-licensing practices.
As part of the initial public offering, Redditgave some of its leading moderators and users, known as Redditors, a chance to buy stock through a directed-share program. It’s a model that was previously used by Airbnb, Doximity and Rivian to reward their power users and customers.
Honkai: Star Rail just closed out its version 2.1 livestream, teasing what’s to come in the next update, which launches the evening of March 26 EDT. Alongside new characters and events, Hoyoverse uses the stream to distribute codes that reward free Stellar Jade and other upgrade materials.
This update brings three new playable characters that Penacony enjoyers will already know from the game’s story: Acheron, Aventurine, and Gallagher. For the five-star characters, Acheron is Lightning Nihility and Aventurine is Imaginary Preservation. Gallagher, the sole four-star character making his playable debut in 2.1, is a Fire Abundance character. In addition to these playable characters, version 2.1 will have a bartending minigame event and a new world in Simulated Universe.
These codes are only active until the day ends, so you’ll want to make sure to use them quickly.
The Honkai: Star Rail reward codes from the version 2.1 livestream are:
These codes will expire on March 17 at 11:59 a.m. EDT / 8:59 a.m. PDT, so use them quickly or you’ll miss out on the free loot. For more codes that don’t expire in just a few hours, you can check out our constantly-updated list of active Honkai: Star Rail codes.
How to redeem codes in Honkai: Star Rail
You can redeem the codes in game by opening the menu and tapping on the ellipses in the top right corner. A “redemption code” option will come up that you can select.
Image: Hoyoverse via Polygon
You can also redeem them online through the Honkai: Star Rail code redeem website. You’ll need to select your correct server and login through the website in order to get rewards. You will also need to have a working UID for Honkai: Star Rail. If you’ve never logged into Honkai: Star Rail in any form using your Hoyoverse account, it will not work.
Reddit said Friday that the Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to the company about its data-licensing business related to the training of artificial intelligence systems.
“On March 14, 2024, we received a letter from the FTC advising us that the FTC’s staff is conducting a non-public inquiry focused on our sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content with third parties to train AI models,” Reddit said in an updated IPO prospectus. Reddit filed for an IPO in February, and plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “RDDT.”
Although Reddit’s core business relies on online advertising, the company is seeking to make money in other ways, and is in the “early stages” of its “data licensing efforts,” the filing said.
Reddit said “the opportunity does not conflict with our values and the rights of our Redditors,” referring to its users and forum moderators.
The 19-year-old company has filed to sell shares in its IPO at $31 to $34 each in an offering that would value the business at close to $6.5 billion. Reddit is trying to hit the public market during a historically slow period for tech IPOs. There hasn’t been a notable venture-backed tech debut since Instacart and Klaviyo in September. And before that the market had been largely shuttered since late 2021.
Reddit’s revenue rose 20% last year to $804 million. About 98% of its sales came from advertising. The remaining 2% includes data licensing.
“These programs may subject us to evolving approaches to the regulation of this data and implicates complex and developing data privacy and data protection, misappropriation, and intellectual property laws, rules, and regulations,” Reddit said in the updated filing.
An FTC spokesperson declined to comment.
Reddit said it entered into some data-licensing deals in January with a total contract value of $203 million over two to three years. It expects to recognize at least $66.4 million from these agreements in 2024.
The same week that Reddit filed for its IPO, Googleannounced an expanded partnership with the company, giving the search giant access to data to train its AI models, among other uses.
“We believe our growing platform data will be a key element in the training of leading large language models (“LLMs”) and serve as an additional monetization channel for Reddit,” the company said in its prospectus.
Reddit said it’s “not surprised that the FTC has expressed interest” in the matter, considering “the novel nature of these technologies and commercial arrangements.”
“We do not believe that we have engaged in any unfair or deceptive trade practice,” Reddit said. “The letter indicated that the FTC staff was interested in meeting with us to learn more about our plans and that the FTC intended to request information and documents from us as its inquiry continues.”
Reddit noted that any dealings with regulators could be “lengthy and unpredictable” and could result in “substantial costs” and other probes and product changes that could “require us to change our policies or practices, divert management and other resources from our business, or otherwise adversely impact our business, results of operations, financial condition, and prospects.”
Reddit’s data-licensing business was at the center of a widespread protest from Reddit moderators, who were upset over the summer when the company announced a pricing change impacting some third-party developers using its application programming interface, or API, to build apps.
The company said at the time that the API price hike was necessary to ensure that it was adequately compensated by tech companies like Google and OpenAI, which siphon massive amounts of Reddit data to help train and improve the capabilities of their AI models. But several developers complained that the API update proved too costly for them to continue operating their Reddit apps, which some Redditors used to help them moderate discussions.
Unity Software shares plummeted 17% in extended trading on Monday after the gaming software company issued weaker-than-expected guidance for the current quarter.
Here’s how the company did:
Earnings: Loss of 66 cents per share. The results may not be comparable to the 46-cent loss predicted by analysts, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv.
Revenue: $609 million vs. $596 million as expected by analysts, according to LSEG.
Unity said it expects first-quarter adjusted earnings of $45 million to $50 million, below the $113 million that analysts were expecting.
The company said that going forward it would only provide revenue guidance for its “strategic portfolio,” which includes its engine, cloud and monetization business units. Unity said in January that it would cut 1,800 jobs as part of a corporate restructuring plan that included ending efforts deemed to be “non-strategic,” like professional services and the Luna marketing business.
The company said that first-quarter guidance for its strategic portfolio would come in between $415 million to $420 million. Analysts were expecting total first-quarter revenue of $534 million.
“We are right sizing our cost structure to grow from a healthy financial position,” Unity said in a shareholder letter. “This includes the previously announced reduction of approximately 25% of our workforce, in addition to cloud hosting cost savings, office footprint consolidation, and software license optimization.”
Unity said fourth-quarter revenue jumped 35% from $451 million a year earlier, while its net loss narrowed to $254 million from close to $288 million a year ago.
In October, John Riccitiello retired as Unity’s CEO and was replaced by former Red Hat chief James Whitehurst as interim CEO. Riccitiello’s departure came shortly after Unity announced a pricing change that upset several video game developers.
“We are committed to increasing shareholder value through revenue growth, margin expansion, and free cash flow generation and we believe that the steps we have taken in the past few months position us for success in 2024 and beyond,” Unity said in its shareholder letter.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a media roundtable meeting in Singapore on Dec. 6, 2023.
Edgar Su | Reuters
Nvidia reported fourth fiscal quarter earnings that beat Wall Street’s forecast for earnings and sales, and said that revenue during the current quarter would be better than expected, even against elevated expectations for massive growth.
Nvidia shares rose about 6% in extended trading.
Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting for the quarter ending in January, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:
Earnings: $5.15 per share, adjusted, versus $4.64 per share expected.
Revenue: $22.10 billion, versus $20.62 billion expected.
Nvidia said it expected $24.0 billion in sales in the current quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for $5.00 per share on $22.17 billion in sales.Â
Nvidia reported $12.29 billion in net income during the quarter, or $4.93 per share, up 769% versus last yearâs $1.41 billion or 57 cents per share.Â
Nvidia has been the primary beneficiary of the recent technology industry obsession with large artificial intelligence models, which are developed on the company’s pricey graphics processors for servers.
Nvidia’s total revenue rose 265% from a year ago, based on strong sales for AI chips for servers, particularly the company’s “Hopper” chips like the H100, it said.
“Strong demand was driven by enterprise software and consumer internet applications, and multiple industry verticals including automotive, financial services, and healthcare,” the company said in commentary provided to investors.
Those sales are reported in the company’s Data Center business, which now comprises the majority of Nvidia’s revenue. Data center sales were up 409% to $18.40 billion. Over half of the company’s data center sales went to large cloud providers.
Nvidia said its data center revenue was hurt by recent U.S. restrictions on exporting advanced AI semiconductors to China.
The company’s gaming business, which includes graphics cards for laptops and PCs, was merely up 56% year-over-year to $2.87 billion. Graphics cards for gaming used to be Nvidia’s primary business before its AI chips started taking off, and some of Nvidia’s graphics cards can be used for AI.
Nvidia’s smaller businesses did not show the same meteoric growth. Its automotive business declined 4% to $281 million in sales, and its OEM and other business, which includes crypto chips, rose 7% to $90 million. Nvidia’s business making graphics hardware for professional applications rose 105% to $463 million.
The European Parliament is on high alert for cyberattacks and foreign interference in the run-up to the EU election in June.
POLITICO reported in December that an internal review showed that the institution’s cybersecurity “has not yet met industry standards” and is “not fully in-line with the threat level” posed by state-sponsored hackers and other threat groups.
One member of the security and defense subcommittee went in for a routine check on Tuesday, which resulted in a discovery of traces of spyware on their phone. The member told POLITICO it wasn’t immediately clear why they were targeted with hacking software.
Parliament’s Deputy Spokesperson Delphine Colard said in a statement that “traces found in two devices” prompted the email calling on members to have their phones checked.
“In the given geopolitical context and given the nature of the files followed by the subcommittee on security and defence, a special attention is dedicated to the devices of the members of this subcommittee and the staff supporting its work,” the statement said.
The new revelations follow previous incidents with other European Parliament members targeted with spyware. Researchers revealed in 2022 that the phones of members of the Catalan independence movement, including EU politicians, were infected with Pegasus and Candiru, two types of hacking tools. That same year, Greek member of the EU Parliament and opposition leader Nikos Androulakis was among a list of Greek political and public figures found to have been targeted with Predator, another spyware tool. Parliament’s President Roberta Metsola previously also faced an attempted hacking using spyware.
Parliament’s IT service launched a system to check members’ phones for spyware in April last year. It had run “hundreds of operations” since the program started, the statement said.
A display for image sharing and social media service Pinterest is seen at the Collision conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada June 23, 2022.
Chris Helgren | Reuters
Pinterest shares plummeted in extended trading on Thursday after the company issued a weaker-than-expected forecast and missed on revenue.
Revenue: $981 million vs. $991 million expected, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv.
Earnings: 53 cents per share, adjusted, vs. 51 cents per share expected, according to LSEG.
Revenue rose 12% year-over-year from $877.2 million a year earlier, while net income was $201 million, or 29 cents a share, up from the $17.49 million, or 3 cents a share, it brought in the previous year.
Monthly active users in the fourth quarter rose 11% to 498 million, topping analyst estimates of 487 million. The company said its global average revenue per user was $2, lower than analyst estimates of $2.05.
Pinterest said first-quarter revenue will be between $690 million and $705 million, which equates to year-over-year growth of 15% to 17%. The middle of that range, $697.5 million, is below the average analyst estimate of $703 million.
The stock initially sank as much as 28% to an after-hours low of $29.40. It then pared some of its losses, climbing back to $35.19, representing a 14% decline.
The company’s report comes as the broader digital advertising market is showing recovery, with Meta, Alphabet and Amazon all picking up steam and growing their ad business by double digits in the fourth quarter. The data suggests that businesses are boosting spending on online promotions after cutting back in 2022 and part of 2023 over concerns about the Ukraine-Russian war and high interest rates.
But not all online ad companies are seeing the benefits. Snap shares cratered 35% on Wednesday after the company reported fourth-quarter sales growth of 5%, trailing expectations, and the company also issued weak guidance.
Prior to Thursday’s report, Pinterest shares were up 9.5% this year after surging 53% in 2023.
Costs dropped about 10% from a year ago to $785 million, largely due to a decline in sales and marketing expenses. A year ago Pinterest slashed about 5% of its workforce, part of an industrywide downsizing.
Snap Inc. co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups, at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, June 17, 2022.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
Snap on Tuesday reported revenue that trailed analysts’ estimates and issued a forecast that came in a bit below Wall Street expectations. The stock plunged 30% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did:
Earnings per share: 8 cents adjusted vs. 6 cents expected by analysts, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv
Revenue: $1.36 billion vs. $1.38 billion expected, according to LSEG
Global daily active users: 414 million vs. 412 million expected, according to StreetAccount
Average revenue per user: $3.29 vs. $3.33 expected, according to StreetAccount
Snap has struggled to rebound from the downturn in the digital ad market and has now reported six straight quarters of single-digit growth or sales declines. For the fourth quarter, revenue rose about 5% year over year to $1.36 billion from $1.3 billion a year earlier.
The company attributed some of the weakness to the war in the Middle East, which erupted in October, beginning with Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“While we are encouraged by the progress we are making with our ad platform and the improved results we are delivering for many of our advertising partners, we estimate that the onset of the conflict in the Middle East was a headwind to year-over-year growth of approximately 2 percentage points in Q4,” Snap said in a letter to investors.
Growth is expected to accelerate in the first quarter, but not quite as fast as analysts were expecting. Snap forecast sales for the quarter of $1.095 billion to $1.135 billion, representing about 11% growth at the midpoint of the range, which was $1.115 billion. Analysts were looking for revenue of $1.117 billion.
Daily active users for the first quarter will be 420 million, Snap said, slightly topping analyst estimates of 419.3 million.
Snap shares sank below $12 after Tuesday’s report. They closed at $17.45 and were up 3% for the year prior to the earnings announcement after soaring 89% in 2023.
Earlier this week, Snap said it would cut 10% of its global workforce, which equates to about 500 employees. A company spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that the cuts were intended to reorganize staff and “reduce hierarchy and promote in-person collaboration.” In mid-2022, Snap eliminated about 1,000 employees, or 20% of its full-time workforce.
Snap’s net loss for the quarter narrowed to $248.2 million, or 15 cents a share, which represents a 14% year-over-year decrease from $288.5 million, or 18 cents a share.
The company said it expects an adjusted EBITDA loss between $55 million and $95 million in the first quarter, higher than analyst projections of $21.9 million. Last quarter, Snap issued an “internal forecast” for the fourth quarter instead of providing official guidance because of “the unpredictable nature of war,” it said, referring to the Israel-Hamas war.
Snap on Tuesday disclosed sales in its Snapchat+ subscription service for the first time and said it had an annualized revenue run rate of $249 million in 2023. The service now has 7 million subscribers, up from 5 million in the previous quarter. Snap introduced the product in 2022, pitching it as a way for users to access early features. It debuted that summer for $3.99 a month.
Snap and Pinterest are “much smaller companies that have struggled to build substantial ad businesses,” Debra Aho Williamson, an industry analyst, told CNBC. “In this environment, the big are getting bigger.”
Last week, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel attended a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child safety and technology alongside Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, X CEO Linda Yaccarino, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and Discord CEO Jason Citron. Lawmakers grilled the executives, accusing them of failing to properly safeguard their respective social media platforms from child predators, among other concerns.
Pinterest will report fourth-quarter earnings Thursday.
Penacony is the third area you’ll visit in Honkai: Star Rail, and with it comes new treasure and puzzles to complete on the new planet. With over 100 new things to find, it can be a lot to scour out all at once.
A lot of the places in Penacony will only unlock once you’ve completed a certain part of the main Trailblaze Missions or have completed certain puzzles. Because of that, we recommend hunting all the treasure once you finish the story.
Most maps have loot hidden around and this loot expands beyond just treasure chests. When you open the map, you’ll notice a chest icon in the top left corner with numbers next to it. This indicates how many of the different types of loot you’ve found. However, this counter only lists treasure that isn’t locked behind puzzles or formidable foes (the powerful monsters that guard chests) and Warp Trotters.
Note that our maps are based off of beta content, so things may be different in the live version. We’re also missing a handful of chests that may be locked behind content that we didn’t get to in the beta. We’ll update this guide as soon as we can if there are any specific changes.
How Penacony treasure chests work
Opening chests and solving puzzles around Penacony will reward you with Clock Credits, which you can turn in to level up the Clockie statue in the center of Golden Hour. Leveling up the statue nets you rewards like Stellar Jade and other goodies.
There are lots of new puzzle types to Penacony, including block-sliding mirror puzzles and literal puzzles (with pieces you have to fit in to make an image). Most notably, there’s a new type of collectable found under the treasure chest drop down when you look at maps: “Lordly Trashcans.” These garbage pails will ask you a question, and if you answer correctly, they’ll give you a reward. If you answer wrong, they’ll engage you in battle — and you’ll still get the same reward after, so don’t worry about answering wrong.
Penacony also has quite a few maps where you’ll be walking on walls and the map there is 3D. While it’s obviously tough for us to convey information on where to find each chest, Warp Trotter, or Lordly Trashcan in these spaces, we did our best to indicate where the chests are located using circles to indicate which platform the object is on.
The Reverie (Reality) treasure chest locations
The Reverie (Reality) F1
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
The Reverie (Reality) F2
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
The Reverie (Reality) F3
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
The first door from the left opens when you do the quest “Cosmic Star.” The second door from the left requires you to do the quest “The Trees as Peace” to open.
Golden Hour treasure chest locations
Golden Hour F1
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
Golden Hour F2
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
Golden Hour F3
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
Dream’s Edge treasure chest locations
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
A Child’s Dream treasure chest locations
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
The Reverie (Dreamscape) treasure chest locations
We were only able to find 24 out of 29 treasure chests, even with Topaz and Numby sniffing them out. It’s possible that we missed some or that a room is locked by a quest or future content, but we’ll update this guide when we find the rest of them.
The Reverie (Dreamscape) F1
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
The Reverie (Dreamscape) F2
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
The Reverie (Dreamscape) F3
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Hoyoverse
If you’re looking for more chests and loot in Honkai: Star Rail, you can check out our complete maps of the Herta Space Station, the Xianzhou Luofu, and Jarilo-VI, too.
Pokémon Go is having a Chansey Community Day event on Feb. 4 from 2-5 p.m. in your local time.
As expected with a Community Day event, Chansey will spawn in huge numbers with a high chance for it to appear shiny. There are also several other bonuses and perks, which we’ve list out below.
How do I catch a shiny Chansey?
As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), Shiny rates on Community Days are about 1 in 24, which means that if you keep playing throughout the three-hour window, you should find quite a few shiny Pokémon.
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
Notably, grabbing eggs from PokéStops during this event will net you 2 km eggs that will frequently have Happiny inside. These Happiny have a higher chance of being shiny, so if you want a shiny Happiny, this is your chance.
If you’re short on time or Poké Balls, you can pop an Incense, then quickly tap each Chansey to check for shiny ones, running from any that aren’t shiny. Notably, any Chansey you’ve already tapped will face where your player is standing, so that should help identify which ones you may have already checked.
What Community Day move does Chansey’s evolution learn?
If you evolve Chansey into Blissey from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. in your local time, it will learn the charged move Wild Charge.
If you miss out on evolving it during this period, you will likely be able to evolve it during a Community Day weekend event in December to get Wild Charge. If you don’t want to wait, you can use an Elite TM to get the move.
How does Blissey do in the meta?
Blissey doesn’t see any use in PvP or PvE battles. It is, however, a fantastic gym defender. Blissey is bulky and a really sturdy tank, meaning that maxing out one and plunking it in a gym does a good job deferring some people from bothering.
How do I make the most of Chansey Community Day?
The following bonuses will be active during Chansey Community Day:
1⁄4 hatch distance for eggs placed into Incubators during the event
Doubled candy for catching Pokémon
Doubled chance for level 31+ trainers to get XL candy from catching Pokémon
Incense lasts three hours
Lure Modules lasts three hours
Chansey special photobombs when taking snapshots
One additional special trade
Stardust cost halved for trading
That said, you should definitely put all your eggs in incubators and pop an Incense and try to nab some powerful Chansey.
If you can Mega Evolve Pidgeot, Kangaskhan,or Lopunny, you’ll score additional Chansey Candy per catch.
In addition to all this, Niantic is still running special four-star raids from 5-10 p.m., where if you clear the Chansey raid, they will spawn in a 300-meter radius around the gym for 30 minutes. These raids cannot be done remotely. If the usual 2-5 p.m. spawn increase doesn’t get you the Chansey you wanted, you can try raiding for another chance.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta Platforms, in July 2021.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Meta beat on earnings and revenue in its fourth-quarter report on Thursday and announced its first-ever dividend payment. The stock jumped more than 10% in extended trading.
Earnings: $5.33 per share. That may not compare with the $4.96 per share expected by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv.
Revenue: $40.1 billion. That may not compare with the $39.18 billion expected by LSEG
Wall Street will also be looking at these key user numbers:
Daily active users (DAUs): $2.11 billion vs. 2.08 billion expected, according to StreetAccount
Monthly active users (MAUs): $3.07 billion vs. 3.06 billion expected, according to StreetAccount
Average revenue per user (ARPU): $13.12 vs. $12.81 expected, according to StreetAccount
Meta said it has declared its first dividend, which is pegged at 50 cents. The company also announced a $50 billion share buyback.
Revenue jumped 25% in the quarter from $32.2 billion a year earlier, the fastest rate of growth for any period since mid-2021. Meanwhile, the company’s cost and expenses decreased 8% year-over-year to $23.73 billion.
The company’s operating margin more than doubled from a year earlier to 41%, a clear sign that the company’s cost-cutting measures are bolstering profitability.
Net income more than tripled to $14 billion, or $5.33 per share, from $4.65 billion, or $1.76 per share, a year earlier.
The company said that sales in its Reality Labs unit passed $1 billion in the first quarter, and recorded $4.65 billion in losses.
“We had a good quarter as our community and business continue to grow,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We’ve made a lot of progress on our vision for advancing AI and the metaverse.”
Meta said it expects first-quarter sales to be in the range of $34.5 billion to $37 billion. The company said that its expects its 2024 expenses to be in the range of of $94 billion to $99 billion.
(L-R) Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty Images
“We could regulate you out of business if we wanted to,” a frustrated Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, X CEO Linda Yaccarino and other top social media company leaders Wednesday during a Senate hearing.
Tillis and other lawmakers accused the tech executives of failing to protect children from sexual exploitation on their respective social media platforms. The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was tense and frequently emotional, held in a committee room filled to capacity with guests, many of them the parents of children targeted by online predators.
In one memorable exchange, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., compelled Zuckerberg to stand up and apologize directly to parents who believed that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps had contributed to the death of their children.
“No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered,” Zuckerberg told the parents.
Yet overall, the hearing featured more raw emotion than it did imminent regulation. This reality was visible in the fact that both Meta and Snap shares were relatively flat in after-hours trading on Wednesday, at $391 and $15.94, respectively.
It appears Wall Street doesn’t expect the tech firms to take any significant financial hits to their businesses from Congress, at least not yet.
To be sure, both Republican and Democratic senators were united in their conviction that social media firms are failing the American public and directly harming young people.
Still, it takes time for bills to get passed, and all of these social media firms are still getting slammed for child-safety related issues, which could keep the topic fresh in the minds of politicians.
Child-safety and anti-big tech advocates are optimistic that the senate hearing will help kickstart efforts to regulate social media firms via proposed bills like the Stop CSAM Act and the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA.
But lawmakers have grilled tech CEOs in the past over issues related to antitrust and data privacy blunders, and they haven’t been able to pass legislation that would change the way the companies operate.
“I think we have to understand that there should be an inherent motivation for you to get this right,” Tillis said. “Or Congress will make a decision that could potentially put you out of business.”
But shortly after Tillis mentioned the idea of tough regulation, he pivoted to a commonly held belief by the pro-business community that over regulation will benefit foreign companies.
“If we ultimately destroy your ability to create value, and drive you out of business, that evil people will find another way to get to these children,” Tillis said.
Lawmakers largely focused on Meta during the hearing, given the company’s enormous user base, high-profile data privacy blunders, and recent lawsuits, including the one recently filed by New Mexico’s attorney general that alleged the profitable company isn’t adequately safeguarding its young users from sexual predators.
The penalties for these lawsuits could be high for the company, depending on their outcome. Indeed, the social networking giant paid $725 million in 2022 to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from its Cambridge Analytica scandal. That same year, its shares were in free-fall, due in part to a weak economy and the effects of the Apple iOS privacy update that made it more difficult for companies to track users across the web.
For now, Meta’s business continues to rebound after its disastrous 2022, with its advertising business partially lifted by what the company’s finance chief has previously said are unnamed “Chinese retailers.”
Advertising experts and analysts believe these retailers include the fast-rising startups Temu and Shein, two companies that U.S. lawmakers have previously complained are unfairly benefiting from certain trade rules because of their connections to China.
Lawmakers have increasingly sounded alarms over Chinese companies, and during this hearing, peppered TikTok’s Chew with questions about the social network’s Chinese owner, ByteDance.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., in particular, interrogated Chew about China, even asking the executive whether he has “ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Pokémon Go is refreshing the Team Rocket encounters in the latest event, “Taken Treasure,” which runs from Jan. 27 until Feb. 1.
The event has the usual Team Go Rocket event bonuses that we’re used to seeing: Team Go Rocket balloons will appear once every three hours and you can use Charged TMs to remove the move Frustration from shadow Pokémon.
For the non-shadow Pokémon lovers, this event also adds Varoom, which can be hatched out of 12 km eggs.
Below, we list all the event perks and Timed Research for Pokémon Go’s “Taken Treasures” event.
Pokémon Go ‘Taken Treasure’ event Timed Research
This research is ticketed only. You’ll need to pay $4.99 for the research in the shop. We don’t really think this research is worth it due to the timed nature of it. It’s only worth buying if you really want the special pose you get for completing it.
Note that you need to finish this research before Feb. 1 at 11:59 p.m. in your local time or else you will lose out on the rewards.
Step 1 of 4
Spin 10 PokéStops (25 Poké Balls)
Defeat 5 Team Go Rocket grunts (Bruxish encounter)
Make 20 curveball throws (15 Great Balls)
Rewards: 1,000 Stardust, 1 Egg Incubator, 1,000 XP
Step 2 of 4
Catch 20 Pokémon (5 Hyper Potions)
Transfer 25 Pokémon (Scraggy encounter)
Defeat 5 Team Go Rocket grunts (5 Revives)
Rewards: 2,000 Stardust, 3 Silver Pinap Berries, 2,000 XP
Step 3 of 4
Make 30 curveball throws (5 Max Revives)
Defeat 10 Team Go Rocket grunts (Weezing encounter)
Catch 5 shadow Pokémon (5 Max Potions)
Rewards: 3,000 Stardust, 1 Incense, 3,000 XP
Step 4 of 4
Transfer 30 Pokémon (3 Fast TMs)
Defeat 10 Team Go Rocket grunts (Vullaby encounter)
Purify 10 shadow Pokémon (3 Charged TMs)
Rewards: 4,000 Stardust, 1 Boss Pose, 4,000 XP
Pokémon Go ‘Taken Treasure’ event Field Research Tasks
Spinning PokéStops and gyms during the event period may yield one of these tasks:
Catch a shadow Pokémon (1 Mystery Component)
Defeat 1 Team Go Rocket grunt (Ekans, Koffing, Poochyena, or Croagunk encounter)
Defeat 2 Team Go Rocket grunts (Paldean Wooper, Scraggy, Mareanie, Bruxish, or Nymble encounter)
Defeat 3 Team Go Rocket grunts (Hisuian Qwilfish or Sableye encounter)
Purify 3 shadow Pokémon (1 Fast or Charged TM)
Pokémon Go ‘Taken Treasure’ event raid targets
These Pokémon will appear in raids during the event period:
Barboach, the whiskers Pokémon from Hoenn, can be found in the wild in Pokémon Go. Yes, Barboach can be shiny in Pokémon Go!
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
Whiscash sees some use in Great League PvP, but outside of that, Barboach and its evolution don’t have much meta use.
What is the shiny rate for Barboach in Pokémon Go?
As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), the shiny rate for Pokémon on a regular day is approximately one in 500. Barboach is not a confirmed Pokémon that gets a “permaboost” (meaning that it’s a rare spawn and thus gets a boosted shiny rate).
What can I do to attract more shiny Pokémon?
Not much, unfortunately. It appears to be random chance. Shiny Pokémon catch rates are set by developer Niantic, and they are typically only boosted during special events like Community Days or Safari Zones, or in Legendary Raids. There are no consumable items that boost shiny Pokémon rates.
Where can I find a list of available shiny Pokémon?
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