Douyin has become China’s fourth biggest e-commerce company by GMV, as short videos prove ideal as bait for long ads by giving higher purchase conversion rates (Bryce Elder/Financial Times)

Bryce Elder / Financial Times:
Adobe’s Figma deal raises big questions about its M&A whack-a-mole strategy in response to free alternatives; the deal is 50x Figma’s reported 2022 ARR of $400M  —  The defining technology merger of 1998 was Microsoft’s purchase of Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net, Homer Simpson’s internet start-up, for an undisclosed price.

Bryce Elder / Financial Times:
As FTX faces bankruptcy, an attempt to untangle its extremely complex corporate structure, which could pose a problem for liquidators and law enforcement  —  Relationship status: it’s complicated  —  With crypto exchange FTX short $8bn and hurtling towards bankruptcy …

Alex Barinka / Bloomberg:
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signs EO banning TikTok for state agencies, employees, and contractors using state devices over “security threat” posed by China  —  TikTok is now banned on government employee devices in South Dakota because the governor believes the social media app’s ownership …

Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Dell agrees to pay $1B to settle a shareholder lawsuit over a $23.9B stock conversion in 2018; investors alleged the transaction was billions below market value  —  Dell Technologies Inc. agreed to pay $1 billion to settle a shareholder lawsuit relating to a controversial 2018 stock conversion transaction.

TechCrunch:
A look at Dance Diffusion, an AI music generator aiming to overcome the limitations of other open-source audio tools, and legal issues with AI-generated music  —  Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, is tackling music  —  It was only five years ago that electronic punk band YACHT entered …

Bloomberg:
A look at the mounting challenges for Lingang, a Shanghai suburb meant to be China’s next Silicon Valley, amid an economic slowdown and geopolitical tensions  —  This article is the fourth in an occasional series about the New Geography of Technology.  You can read the first installment on Milan here …