In an open letter, Altimeter Capital founder and CEO Brad Gerstner encourages Meta to cut capex by $5B+, cut headcount by 20%+, limit metaverse R&D to $5B/year (Brad Gerstner/@altcap)

Svea Herbst-Bayliss / Reuters:
Sources: a majority of Twitter’s shareholders have voted in favor of the $44B sale to Musk, whose $54.20 per share deal looks pricey in the current environment  —  A majority of Twitter Inc’s (TWTR.N) shareholders have voted in favor of the social media company’s $44 billion sale to Elon Musk …

Kate Clark / The Information:
SBF quietly invested $500M+ in Paradigm, Altimeter, and other VCs, including, sources say a $200M commitment to Sequoia, and $300M to K5 per PitchBook  —  FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was not only a tireless fundraiser from venture capital firms including Paradigm and Sequoia Capital …

Jon Victor / The Information:
Source: between Q1 2019 and this fall, Alphabet’s Google Cloud, hardware unit, and YouTube have roughly doubled headcount, as the total employee count grew ~80%  —  Alphabet has doubled the headcount in its Google Cloud unit since early 2019, according to data obtained by The Information, outstripping Alphabet’s overall hiring growth.

Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
Meta adviser and ex-Oculus CTO John Carmack expresses heavy skepticism at pushing for avatar fidelity, focusing on the Quest Pro to drive VR adoption, and more  —  Lonely lecture as a VR avatar is a far cry from last year’s “thousands of people” goal  —  Last year, former Oculus CTO …

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Activist investor TCI, which has a $6B+ stake in Alphabet, calls on the company to aggressively reduce headcount and cut costs in long-term bets such as Waymo  —  Hedge fund says company would be more efficient with fewer employees  —  Activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management called …

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch:
Barcelona-based Ukio, which runs a short-term apartment rental service, raised a €27M Series A led by Felix Capital, with €17M in equity and €10M in debt  —  Ukio, a short-term furnished apartment rental platform aimed at the “flexible workforce,” has raised €27 million ($28 million) in a Series A round of funding.