News

• Building the tech skills of Australian workers could recoup some of the GDP lost through the pandemic.
• Those are the findings of a new report from RMIT Online and Deloitte Access Economics.
• Tech skills are “worth a lot more than how much we’re investing in training,” said Deloitte partner John O’Mahony.

A new report claims Australia lost out on nearly $150 billion in economic growth through the COVID-19 pandemic —but providing workers with digital skills could help erase that significant productivity deficit.

In a fresh report detailing Australia’s skills shortage and how the coronavirus crisis has reshaped the jobs market, RMIT Online and Deloitte Access Economics suggest the Australian economy produced some $148 billion less in GDP than it would have in a pandemic-free world.

The nation’s closed border policy had an outsized impact on its own, carving away $32 billion from the GDP Australia would have amassed otherwise, the report says.

The report does not just count the cost of COVID-19 — it suggests that without a change of course, Australia’s economy will be permanently smaller as a result of the coronavirus productivity divot.

“This means that reverting to pre-pandemic trends isn’t enough,” the authors state. “Instead, even stronger growth is needed to correct for losses incurred during the pandemic.”

Training in digital skills a necessity for growth

The report’s authors suggest re-skilling Australian employees is a viable way to make up for lost time.

John O’Mahony, partner at Deloitte Access Economics, said the research showed businesses, governments and individuals have an “extra responsibility” to “think smarter about how we can drive more growth inside workplaces”.

While ceding the report was prepared in conjunction with RMIT Online, which provides tech courses to workers looking to boost their skill set, O’Mahony said “businesses need to be investing more in re-skilling, and employees need to be putting their hand up and saying, ‘I want to be training more'”.

“And the evidence for the last two years is that while we’ve had more time in our hands during COVID, we haven’t used a lot of spare time to do more to do more training.”

Employers spend just two days a year actively bolstering the skills of their employees, O’Mahony said, meaning some workers are being left behind as digital skills infiltrate every aspect of working life.

Those skills are “worth a lot more than how much we’re investing in training,” he said.

“The research here finds that on average, picking up digital skills lift a worker’s productivity, lifts their wages, by around 9% a year.

“So if you think the return on getting these digital skills is 9% a year, it’s about $7,500 in wages.”

Combining new skills with old-fashioned migration

The report’s findings speak to the concerns of employers, who say a shortage of tech-centric skills have driven some wages into the stratosphere and constrained productivity.

While re-skilling workers with tech know-how will ease those concerns, the authors also acknowledge the role skilled migration could have in bolstering Australia’s productivity.

Policies which effectively brought international migration to a standstill mean Australia’s population is nearly 380,000 below where it would be without border closures, the report says.

In sharper terms, Australia missed out on more than 21 million hours of potential labour in September 2021 than it would have otherwise, the authors argue.

Of more than 400 business leaders surveyed for the report, more than half said it became more difficult to attract new staff through 2021.

And of the employers who said hiring the right staff was difficult, 27% said border closures had restricted access to talent — narrowly more than any other reason listed.

“For Australia to achieve its full economic potential, it will also need to reopen borders and get the most out of top international talent to help fill the skills gap,” O’Mahony said. “So it will also need to do that as well eventually.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday revealed Australia’s hard border policies will come to an end on February 21, ushering in new waves of skilled migrants previously locked out of the country and easing some of those talent bottlenecks.

However, The Australian Financial Review reports there is little appetite in Canberra to lift the cap on net international migration from 160,000 a year.

Regardless of immigration policy tweaks, if they arrive at all, the RMIT Online and Deloitte report argues employers ought to take it on themselves to maximise the talent available today.

“Simply reopening [Australia’s] borders is not going to replenish the number of migrants who did not come to Australia over the past two years, making upskilling our existing workforce critical,” the report states.

Australian businesses will find it easier to import Indian information technology professionals to ease severe skills shortages in the sector under the free trade agreement being negotiated by Canberra and New Delhi.

Australian and Indian negotiators will exchange their respective offers to reduce trade barriers on goods on Friday, after swapping proposals on services last week.

Trade Minister Dan Tehan said finalising the Comprehensive Economic Co-operation Agreement was his top priority, and he was holding weekly talks with Indian counterpart Piyush Goyal in a bid to finalise the deal by the end of the year.

With the shift to working and learning at home brought about by the pandemic, Australia is already grappling with a shortage of IT professionals. The Tech Council estimates that by 2025, that gap will grow to 260,000 workers.

Mr Tehan said India, a tech sector powerhouse, could help fill the void, with the final free trade deal to help Australian firms “get access to the best human IT capabilities”.

“This will be a key part of the agreement,” he said.

“India also has a strong interest in their international students and around the area of post-study work rights, so that’s another area we are looking at.”

‘Tough’ negotiations

As with all FTAs, Mr Tehan conceded agriculture remained a stumbling block.

“The negotiations are tough as you would expect. There are sensitivities on both sides. We’re very determined not to see them get in the way,” he said.

“Obviously wheat, beef and dairy are very sensitive for India. We’re very committed to explore from an Australian perspective other opportunities in India.

“There are other opportunities for us in legumes, grains, sheep meat, wine.”

Tech Council chief executive Kate Pounder said skilled migration would only ever be a supplement to the local workforce, which would require 1 million people in tech jobs by 2025.

“Skilled migration is an important component of tech workforces globally,” she said.

“Accessing skilled migrants is especially important for Australia because our industry is still relatively young and smaller than some other markets.

“Australia obviously also trains a lot of Indian students, so we already have close ties via our education system in tech. However, more than 50 per cent of international students leave Australia within two years of completing their degree. There is an opportunity to build more permanent relationships between people working and studying between the two countries.”

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Peter Dutton said he hoped China’s new ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, was “sincere” in wanting to improve bilateral relations, but the Morrison government would not shy away from raising human rights abuses and other issues.

“We want a good, strong friendly relationship with China but at the moment China is in conflict,” Mr Dutton told 2GB.

“Not just with us where they’re cutting off markets and the cyberattacks that are going on, but with the Philippines, they’re at loggerheads with the Indians, the Vietnamese, with many, many other countries – and it’s a belligerent approach and it’s unacceptable.

“If we remain silent, we remain weak. [If] we block our ears and pretend it’s going to go away, the problem will only just compound.”

Liberal backbench MP Dave Sharma, a former Australian ambassador to Israel, said the prospect of resumed dialogue between ministers was welcome, but Australians should not be “naive or delusional”.

“China might be changing its tactics but its ultimate goals and objectives I think have not shifted here,” he told Sky News.

Apple is overcoming the costly global shortage in computer chips, posting record sales over the Christmas holiday quarter, beating profit estimates and forecasting that its shortfall is narrowing.

The iPhone maker, the world’s largest company by market capitalisation, has handled supply-chain challenges such as factory shutdowns and shipping delays brought on by the pandemic better than any of its rivals, analysts said.

Apple shares rose about 5 per cent in after-hours trading on Thursday (Friday AEDT), erasing half their losses on the year.

More people wanted iPhones, iPads and other gadgets over the holiday quarter than Apple had to sell, costing the company over $US6 billion ($8.5 billion) in sales, in-line with what it feared.

Yet, Apple, which is the biggest customer of many parts suppliers, used its buying power to squeeze those vendors to ship enough gadgets to power record sales in its iPhones, Mac and wearables and accessories segments. Apple executives said chip shortages mostly affected older models of its products and particularly slowed iPad sales.

• Atlassian shares rose as much as 10% in late Nasdaq Trading on Thursday in the US on the release of the company’s second quarter results.
• The company posted second quarter revenue of $US688.5 million, up 37% on the same quarter last year.
• Atlassian co-CEOs said the jump is a new record that illustrates the company’s progress and commitment to “innovation in the cloud”.

Shares in Atlassian rose as much as 10% in late Nasdaq trading on Thursday in the US after the software-as-a-service giant delivered healthy second quarter results that came in ahead of even the most optimistic of analyst expectations. 

Atlassian shares rallied after the company posted second quarter revenue of $US688.5 million, up 37% on the same quarter last year, while total customers rose to 194,000, an increase of more than 11,600 users through the quarter. 

Atlassian co-founders and CEOs Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes said the jump is a new record that illustrates the company’s progress and commitment to “innovation in the cloud”. 

“Through the strength of our cloud platform, we’re delivering customers powerful new products like Jira Service Management, which unleashes the potential of technical teams in the ITSM market,” Cannon-Brookes said. 

“This is one example of the value we deliver to organisations large and small across the Fortune 500,000 to power their most mission-critical workflows,” he said. “We’re excited to continue that momentum in the second half of fiscal year 2021.”

At the close of the quarter, Atlassian’s operating income was $US27.7 million, with a 6% margin, down from the $US41.8 million for the second quarter of 2020. Net loss per diluted share came in at $US2.49 for the quarter, up on the $US0.49 tallied in the second quarter of 2020.

For the full fiscal year, Atlassian expects subscription revenue — which accounts for about 86% of the firm’s total revenue — will jump by about 50%, up from earlier forecasts that pegged the increase to sit in the mid-40s. 

In a letter to shareholders, Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar steered focus toward enterprise subscription growth, and the increasing uptake of its partner program and app marketplace. 

“Partners are critical to our long-term success. What’s more, they see Atlassian Cloud as being critical to their success and are embracing the new opportunities around migrations, sales, and app development it provides,” the co-CEOs wrote. 

“And the numbers bear this out: Cloud sales from our Channel Partners in Q2 were up 131% year-over-year.”

The pair say that customers add roughly 28,000 apps to their Atlassian products every week, and that adoption of the company’s cloud apps is tracking faster than adoption of the company’s actual cloud products. 

“Cloud apps now account for nearly 50% of Atlassian Marketplace listings overall, with over 70% of Jira and Confluence Cloud customers having at least one app installed,” they wrote. 

“Apps are tightly correlated with customer loyalty because of the additional value they help customers realise. We’ll continue to make the right moves to grow our offerings and invest in the success of our 1,250+ Marketplace Partners.”

As part of the earnings call, Atlassian announced that it had also moved to acquire the virtual agent start-up “Percept.ai” in a bid to bolster its “investments in automation and machine learning”.

“As part of Jira Service Management, Percept.ai’s virtual agent technology will automate day-to-day support interactions,” the co-CEOs said. 

“Its AI engine analyses intent, sentiment, and context to personalize interactions, and when necessary, seamlessly transitions conversations to human agents. With the robots taking the rote aspects of their job support staff can focus on process improvements and other forward-looking work.”

The Atlassian co-founders also took the opportunity to tout their approach to the future of work, with a recruitment call centred around the popularity of their newly-implemented “TEAM Anywhere” program, which has seen more than a quarter of the company’s Sydney-based workforce abandon the metropolis in favour of the regions. 

“We believe this has helped shield Atlassian from the massive employee attrition many other companies are experiencing,” Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar wrote. 

“It also means Atlassian is recruiting the most talented people to support our goals, even if they don’t turn up to an office every day. Over 40% of the new Atlassians hired in calendar 2021 live more than two hours away from the nearest Atlassian office,” they wrote. 

“That number will keep growing as we ramp up the pace of hiring over the next several quarters.”

Jobs marketplace Airtasker copped a whack in last year’s COVID-19 lockdowns, but has recovered its growth trajectory and reported an underlying lift in average price per task.

On Monday, the Sydney-based company reported gross marketplace volume jumped 39 per cent quarter-on-quarter to $48.6 million, translating to a 37.5 per cent jump in second-quarter revenue to $8.1 million.

While the mix of jobs on the platform was skewed heavily towards domestic tasks around the home, chief executive and founder Tim Fung said growth in the average price task had jumped about 24 per cent to $255 from the year-earlier period.

“Growth in wages for Australian workers is a really positive sign,” Mr Fung said.

“And because individuals are setting the prices with other individuals, it shows the difference between a platform like ours and ride-sharing or food delivery. This model is very adaptive and resilient to changes in the marketplace.”

Shares in Airtasker jumped over 12 per cent to 72¢ in late trade on Monday, trading marginally higher than its 65¢ listing price last in March.

A tough year with lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne locally, and the UK and the US abroad, meant Airtasker was unable to meet its initial guidance.

During the first quarter, major cities were locked down for about 188 days, which slugged Airtasker with a $12 million impact on the company’s gross marketplace volume.

But in the second quarter, major cities were locked down for about 32 days, which only hit the company’s marketplace volume by around $2 million.

“We see a big depression in marketplace activity during lockdowns because a lot of the jobs are in-person jobs,” Mr Fung said.

“But as we’ve seen year to year, the bounce back to normal growth is quite strong and the lockdowns tend to have a very temporary impact.”

As such, the tech company has upgraded its outlook for the second half of the year, pointing to continued growth and a lift in marketing investment.

Guidance for gross marketplace volume has bumped up to between $107 million to $110 million, representing full-year volumes of $191 million to $194 million, and a lockdown-adjusted volume of $205 million to $208 million.

Before the 2021 lockdowns, Airtasker had expected to hit gross marketplace volumes of $200 million.

Last May, Airtasker raised $20.7 million from investors to buy US local services marketplace Zaarly for just $3.4 million, leaving it with a hefty amount of cash on the balance sheet.

Following the acquisition, Airtasker has focused on building its presence in Atlanta, Kansas City, Dallas and Miami. It reported a 71 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth in posted tasks in the US, a focus for the business as it moves through the “zero to one” stage of developing the new marketplaces.

“It’s really early days there, but we’re seeing it gaining some traction,” Mr Fung said.

Airtasker also has a presence in Britain and is seeing both sides of the marketplaces balancing out. In the second quarter, posted tasks in the UK rose 106 per cent, with engagement (people offering to complete tasks) climbing 102 per cent over the prior corresponding period.

Following a key marketing hire in Noelle Kim from Facebook last year, Airtasker will crank up its marketing spend in the next six months to increase its customer acquisition funnel.

Mr Fung said Airtasker spent about $1.6 million marketing in the year ended June 30 and plans to sharply increase that over the next half.

Australia may be forced into banning the popular Chinese social media application WeChat after Prime Minister Scott Morrison was blocked from accessing his account, cyber experts say.

WeChat’s owner, Tencent, on Monday night issued a statement saying it was investigating the apparent “hijacking” of Mr Morrison’s account.

“Based on our information, this appears to be a dispute over account ownership — the account in question was originally registered by a PRC [People’s Republic of China] individual and was subsequently transferred to its current operator, a technology services company — and it will be handled in accordance with our platform rules,” the company said in a statement.

“Tencent is committed to upholding the integrity of our platform and the security of all users accounts, and we will continue to look into this matter.”

Mr Morrison’s media team, like many other people and organisations based outside of China, used a Chinese agency to register the account.

The cyber squatters have effectively gained access to the 76,000 subscribers Mr Morrison had accrued and renamed the account “Australian Chinese new life”.

Amid tensions between Canberra and Beijing, Mr Morrison lost control of his account in July and his staff have tried fruitlessly, as recent as January 10, to regain control. The issue was first reported by Sydney’s Daily Telegraphnewspaper.

Mr Morrison had used the account to communicate in Mandarin directly to Chinese Australian voters, a crucial political constituency in several swing seats.

He most notably used it in 2020 to respond to China’s Foreign Ministry “slurring” of Australian troops over war crimes allegations, although Chinese censors blocked the message at that time.

Chair of Parliament’s intelligence committee, Senator James Paterson, said no Australian politician should be on WeChat if it censored the PM, including Opposition leader Anthony Albanese.

“So what the Chinese government has done by shutting down the Prime Minister’s account is effectively foreign interference in our democracy and in an election year,” Senator Paterson told 2GB.

Liberal MP Gladys Liu announced she would shut down her account in response.

Ms Liu said: “It is a matter of record that the platform has stopped the Prime Minister’s access, while Anthony Albanese’s account is still active featuring posts criticising the government.”

Mr Albanese said it was concerning Mr Morrison had lost control of his account and he was happy to discuss the matter with the PM and national security agencies, although stressed it should not be treated as a “political football”.

“If they were serious about it, then someone would have picked up the phone,” Mr Albanese said.

Internet 2.0 chief executive Robert Potter, a top cyber security expert, said no other politician had suffered a similar fate as Mr Morrison as having their account taken over, with Chinese tech giants simply banning voices they disagreed with.

He said if WeChat did not relent, he predicted Australia could ban the company and remove the app from the Google and Apple stores.

“It would be very straightforward for the government to make the distribution of WeChat in Australia impossible,” he said.

“If we can’t find a way to engage with Chinese controlled platforms without accepting their controls around censorship, we are probably heading for a break.”

Mr Potter said the “Australian Chinese new life” account had not posted original content and had simply reposted links back to Chinese news websites, making it simply a propaganda account.

He described WeChat’s owner TenCent as “incredibly sinister” and said the matter appeared state sanctioned given how strict China’s ruling Communist Party controlled tech companies.

“The Chinese government has greater control over media in Chinese than any institution has in the English language, be it the Murdoch press or public broadcasters,” he said.

• Tech stocks took a beating Wednesday, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 has struggled to regain ground since then.
• Rising interest rates and expectations of strong economic growth and inflation are all key factors in the sell-off.
• Investors are looking for companies that can ride out 2022, and leaving speculative tech stocks behind.

Tech stocks have taken an almighty beating this week, with the Nasdaq 100 falling 3.12% Wednesday in its worst day since March.

The index slipped slightly Thursday, and futures are pointing lower Friday. Ark Invest’s Innovation ETF – seen by analysts as a proxy for unprofitable tech companies – has slumped 12% this year so far.

But why are tech stocks falling so hard? Is it rising bond yields, expectations for strong growth, hot inflation, or all of the above? We’ll try to explain.

Central banks juiced the market in 2020 and 2021

First, it’s important to understand why tech rocketed to begin with. When coronavirus hit in 2020, central banks slashed interest rates and pumped trillions of dollars into economies.

Bond yields cratered, so investors started looking elsewhere for returns. Banks, energy companies and the like were in the doldrums, so investors turned to the so-called stay-at-home stocks like Amazon, Apple and Google.

But borrowing was cheaper than ever. So, investors thought, why not take a bet on flashy – if unprofitable – tech companies that might be the next Netflix or Tesla?

Fast forward a year and almost all of those calculations have changed.

Bond yields are rising – and that’s bad news for tech

The Fed signaled last year that it’s going to raise interest rates in 2022, and has already started slowing bond purchases, as it tackles the strongest inflation since the 1980s.

But the trigger for Wednesday’s sell-off was the release of minutes from the last Fed meeting in December. They revealed officials are weighing up moving faster than previously expected, sending investors into a panic.

Rising interest rates – and the resulting higher bond yields – hurt tech stocks for a few reasons.

The key one is that many technology companies are currently unprofitable or make little money. If bond yields are higher, then investors are losing out on returns in the here and now by holding tech companies that will only start earning properly in the distant future. That makes those firms look a lot less appealing.

Higher interest rates are also good for the financial sector. Banks have fared particularly well over the last few months, drawing investors away from tech.

Growth is expected to stay strong

Another key factor at play is that investors expect the US and global economy to be strong in 2022.

US jobs data from private company ADP came in much stronger than expected Wednesday. On top of this, the Omicron coronavirus variant tearing across the US seems to be considerably milder than previous iterations.

The prospect of a strong economy is sending investors back to the very kinds of companies – airlines, restaurants, hotels – that they dumped during the worst of the pandemic in favor of stay-at-home and speculative tech stocks.

Inflation is also sticking around

Yet inflation is also red hot, and is expected to remain strong in 2022. Not only does that make it more likely that the Fed will raise rates, but it also sends buyers searching for companies that can ride out the storm.

Instead of flashy tech names, investors are snooping around for firms that can successfully raise their prices, such as luxury consumer brands. And they’re buying sectors that traditionally fare well during times of inflation, like real estate and energy.

But not all tech companies are equal. Analysts expect stocks such as Apple, Amazon and Google to fare much better in 2022 than unprofitable tech companies, because, simply put, they make tons of money.

Working for a new company educates employees on the overall uncertainty of a workforce in flux. 

During the ​2008 ​economic downturn, I quit an incredible job to become an online news media and digital publishing entrepreneur.

While I have worked with big enterprises in the past, it was only when I was exposed to the world of startups that is an excellent breeding ground for skills that I was able to survive recurring economic slowdowns. Here are four reasons why you should do the same...

New companies are ​b​etter at ​m​anaging ​u​ncertain​ty ​​

Unlike employees of large corporations that enjoy the stability of working for an established company, startup employees face chaos, ambiguity, doubts and contingencies more frequently than employees at a large organization. This leads to flexibility and ingenuity in decision-making. If you can predict better, you can control the outcome to adeptly survive the unknown, the unsure and the hard knocks that accompany times of ​adversity. 

Finding security in insecurity

Startups teach you how to live with stress and pressure and how to hustle or come up with creative or clever solutions. It teaches you to become bold, take risks, fail,  set your own directions and move fast. This will make you self-reliant, persistent, resilient, quick, nimble and execution-driven. It will serve as the most effective conduit to keep the reins of your life in your hands and provide a fertile ground for a first foray into entrepreneurship when you are forced to do so and can't find a job. 

Working closely with your company's leaders

I worked for a credit card and consumer finance consulting company that was founded by a veteran banker and worked closely with the owner, which gave me an in-depth understanding of what it takes to scale a business, enhance its brand equity and learn how to effectively manage prominent clients. 

The consulting company allowed me to pick up problem-solving techniques that I might not have been exposed to in a more segmented role at a larger company. I also learned how to manage a website, write a press release, article, report and above all, understand why caring provides a competitive advantage. This held me in good stead when I became an entrepreneur during the economic decline of 2007-09. 

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Because startups have leaner hierarchies (your opinion matters) and you are expected to wear multiple hats that means the impact of your work is readily apparent than if you were in a big company. This instills​ ​a deep pride in your work​ and a credo, that ​if you​'​re truly imaginative you will overcome obstacles​. ​​​​

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• Apple crossed the $3 trillion market capitalization level for the first time ever on Monday.
• Apple’s stock price surged 3% to a high of $182.88 in Monday trades, 2 cents above the amount needed to hit the milestone.
• Shares of Apple returned 35% in 2021, outpacing the S&P 500’s return of about 27%.

Apple crossed the $3 trillion market capitalization milestone on Monday for the first time ever, just 16 months after it crossed the $2 trillion level. On both occasions, it was the first company ever to reach the milestone. 

Shares climbed 3% to a high of $182.88 in Monday’s trading session, just two cents above the $182.86 level needed to cross the valuation threshold.

At its peak on Monday, Apple gained about $90 billion in market capitalization since Friday’s close, making its one-day gain bigger than the bottom 400 stocks in the S&P 500 index. Shares of Apple returned 35% in 2021, outpacing the S&P 500’s return of about 27%.

The gains came one day after Wedbush analyst Dan Ives forecasted a strong 2022 for the company, in part driven by the potential launch of a new AR headset product later in the year. 

Apple became the first US company to reach a $1 trillion and $2 trillion market capitalization in August 2018 and August 2020, respectively. 

Over the past two years, strong demand for Apple’s iPhone 12 and 13 models has driven record revenue and profits. Trailing 12-month revenues hit $365 million as of September 30, for year-over-year growth of 33%.

Ives expects the gains for Apple to continue, having set a bull-case scenario price target of $225, representing potential upside of 27% from Friday’s close. Potential drivers of those gains include a growing Services business and easing supply chain pressures heading into 2022, he said

• Nike stock is Guggenheim’s “best idea” for 2022 amid its push into the metaverse.
• Guggenheim’s Robert Drbul said he’s closely watching Nike’s digital strategy.
• The analyst also raised his EPS estimates for the company and said it’s the leader in athletic apparel.

Nike stock is headed for new highs this year, thanks in part to its push into the metaverse, according to a Wall Street analyst.

Guggenheim’s Robert Drbul dubbed the athletic-apparel retailer his “best idea” for 2022 in a December 31 note, saying Nike “is rapidly embarking on the next era of its company history,” which he expects to be “digitally led.”

“The brand commands dominant market share, which we expect will grow materially from here as digital scales further, new product innovation remains robust, and heavy investment behind key growth drivers continues,” he wrote

Drbul maintained a buy rating and a price target of $195 on Nike stock, which was down 1.8% Monday after gaining 18% in 2021.

He said the company is “the leader in the athletic apparel industry,” and raised his earnings per share estimates for 2023 to $4.85 from $4.50 and for 2024 to $5.70 from $5.27. 

Drbul said he’s closely watching Nike’s evolving digital strategy and its engagement in the metaverse, a digital world where people interact. “What would any outlook for 2022 be without mention of the Metaverse?” he said. 

Insider reported previously that Nike has been pushing into the future internet, called both Web 3.0 and the metaverse. Its push has included video games, the creation of a metaverse studio, and even a promised line of digital sneakers called CryptoKicks.

In December, the Beaverton, Oregon-based company announced its acquisition of influential digital sneaker-maker RTFKT, which had previously received a $33 million valuation in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

The metaverse shot into the mainstream in 2021 when the company formerly known as Facebook rebranded to Meta. The concept has struggled to land on a single definition, and prominent people, such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, have snubbed the idea altogether.

Even so, many see non-fungible tokens, aka NFTs, as the key to unlocking this digital world where avatars of individuals can shop, play video games, build worlds, buy land, and more.