Once Musk’s purchase is complete, the NYSE will delist Twitter shares on Election Day • TechCrunch

by Arthur · October 28, 2022

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Good Friday! Shark enjoying some downtime on the east coast so I’m running solo. As you can tell from the not-so-surprising move by Elon Musk last night and the sheer number of Twitter stories from our awesome consumer technology team today, it’s been Twitter, all day. We promise to give you a bit of that, of course, and a bit of what else we’ve been working on. Let’s dive in, shall we? — Christine

Table of Contents

TechCrunch Top 3

Flying the public coop: Now that Elon Musk owns Twitter, its days as a public company are numbered. Actual, Ivan writes, Twitter will be delisted on November 8 — election day for the US midterm elections.
Cage the bird: Over to Europe, where Musk, just hours after actually owning Twitter, already found himself on the wrong end of EU officials, who corrected him after he tweeted about how free he thinks Twitter is now. Natasha L have more.
Big Tweet boss: Reports now say that Musk will take the CEO role for himself, Ivan writes, after him ousted Twitter’s top four executivesas reported by Amanda.

For more news on the blue bird, head down to the Big Tech Inc. section, where we’ve got you covered.

Startups and VCs

Unfortunately, the hits keep coming for 54gene, an African genomics startup focused on providing more African genetic material for pharmaceutical research – it’s only 3% now, Take reports. After a few months of layoffs and a CEO departure, the company confirmed that it not only made another round of layoffs — this time involving 100 people — but that it also slashed its valuation by over $100 million.

And we have three more for you:

Robot Rebellion: Galen Robotics has a new robot that will help with ear, nose and throat surgeries. Oh, and it secured $15 million in new funding, Andrew reports.
Follow the yellow cobblestone street: Game studio Hidden Door uses narrative AI to turn fiction into immersive RPG experiences, and Rebecca writes that it is testing “The Wizard of Oz”.
Does anyone else use this word?: I was happy to see that there is a company called Skidattl. The company uses augmented reality to show users what people are doing around them, in what Rebecca writing is “like a bat signal for fun.”

5 ways biotech startups can reduce risk to grow sustainably in the long run

Multicolored strings attached together; 5 ways of risk management

Image credit: jay7 (opens in new window) / Getty Images

Thanks to R&D and clinical trials, life science startups have long lead times before they can bring their capital-intensive products to market.

“But,” asks Omar Khalil, a partner at Santé Ventures, “what happens when funding suddenly dries up?”

In a guest post for TC+, he shares five strategies for biotech startups trying to stay warm through the winter ahead.

“It is still too early to know if this is a short-term correction, or if it is a new normal that will be maintained for the foreseeable future.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps entrepreneurs and start-up teams get ahead of the pack. You can register here. Use the code “DC” for 15% off an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

As promised, we have even more Twitter news for you to enjoy. As I write this, several of my colleagues jumped on Twitter Spaces to talk about all this. One of the latest news from tailor was that Elon Musk formed a content moderation “council” to make certain decisions — such as account recovery for, cough, Donald Trump. Here are two more:

Following you with more income reports:

And we have four more for you: