💼 Cash for coaching: Leland, an app that matches people with coaches to reach a specific goal like applying for college, just raised $12 million in Series A funding. The company, which was founded in 2021, has facilitated 50,000 coaching sessions in the last 12 months. Read more
🇮🇳 IPOs in India: While the IPO market still remains dormant here in the U.S., the same can't be said about India. Swiggy's recent successful IPO has Dutch investor Prosus looking to list portfolio fintech company PayU in 2025. Read more
🎙️ AI agents: AI agents appear to be everywhere, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff thinks this trend will continue. He appeared on the Equity podcast this week to talk about AI and his goal of deploying 1 billion AI agents via the company's Agentforce within one year. Listen here
👕 Hot Topic hacked: The clothing retailer was hit by a data breach that has affected 57 million customers. Someone who goes by the alias "Satanic" has claimed responsibility for the October 19 breach, which is delightfully on the nose. Read more
😓 Headcount reduction: Chipmaker AMD has laid off 4% of its workforce, or an estimated 1,000 employees. This news comes after AMD's mixed Q3 results as the company has struggled to compete with chipmakers like Nvidia. Read more
🎧 More talk: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is still talking about the company's alleged proposal to create a "super premium" tier that would give users more control and high-quality streaming. The only thing that could get me to pay more for Spotify, however, would be for it to bring back its old (good) algorithms. Read more
