Alex Heath

A new tidbit about the prediction markets startup from last week’s issue of Command Line:

Coplan recently raised, but has yet to announce, a $30 million round of funding at a $350 million valuation. And in recent conversations with investors (a surprising number of whom passed on the round, which was less than Coplan hoped to raise), I’m told he was noncommittal about whether the company would work to get the Commodity Futures Trading Commission license it needs to operate in the US.

The VP running Google News, Shailesh Prakash, has resigned, according to The Wall Street Journal, which notes his exit “comes amid a continuing rift between Google and news outlets.”

As I reported last year, Prakash’s org was one of the first inside Google to get hit by rolling layoffs. He told employees at the time that there was a “reckoning” due to the company hiring too many senior workers during the pandemic.

During his interview with Joe Rogan yesterday, Musk confirmed that X’s business is still suffering from an advertiser boycott and that he thinks “there’s no way that a Kamala regime would allow X to exist.”

“I think, if Trump wins, we’ll see most of the boycott lift,” he said. “But if Kamala wins, we’ll see that boycott get stronger.”