RIP Twitter, Crypto is back and 4 million Yeezy shoes sold by Adidas

And Ocado's shares jump more than 40% over the space of 1 month as they get a successful outcome from a law suit with a rival

Good morning.

Here are the top 5 stories for British business leaders today:

What happened: Elon Musk has rebranded Twitter to X. This marks the end of over 10 years of Twitter under its old branding with a blue bird as its logo. (Read more)
Why it matters: Elon has long talked about his vision for a ‘super app' with features from shopping to payments, chat, food delivery and more. Super apps are very popular in Asia, with China’s WeChat estimated to have 1.29 billion users (in just China) and others such as Grab, PayTM and GoJek also having millions of users. The rebranding to X may well signal the start of the execution of that vision (and with Elon’s track record, I personally wouldn’t bet against his success in delivering it…).

What happened: Ocado’s share price has risen by more than 40% over the past month. Part of the reason is that a Norweigen rival to Ocado is set to pay Ocado £200 million following a 3 year legal battle over technology (robots) that automate parts of grocery delivery operations. They’ve agreed that after this settlement, they’ll both withdraw their legal claims and be able to continue using and marketing existing products. (Read more)
Why it matters: Ocado is one of the most shorted stocks in the UK (which in simple terms means a lot of investors believe their share price will fall). This is mostly because it is a heavily loss-making business at this moment in time. Whilst they’re most widely known for their online delivery service, they’ve been focussed on their technology business which help larger, traditional supermarkets automate parts of their business. The law suit focussed on this part of the business, so the win has boosted Ocado’s share price.

What happened: A new cryptocurrency called Worldcoin will authenticate that its holder is a real human, not an AI bot. They are guaranteeing this by making people complete in-person iris scans using they’re 'orb' (which is a silver ball approximately the size of a bowling ball). Once the orb verifies the person is a real human, it creates a World ID for that individual. To incentivise people to sign up, they are offering people a Worldcoin's cryptocurrency token (WLD). (Read more)
Why it matters: The Worldcoin team say that their project is necessary at a time where AI tools (such as ChatGPT) can mimic human language. They claim World IDs could be used to tell the difference between real people and AI bots online. Already having 2 million users from its beta period, this has the making of a significant crypto project.

What happened: The Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating 3 areas:
- Divorce settlements
- Will writing services
- Pre-paid probate plans (where individuals pay fees before they die for probate, the legal process of managing someone's estate when they die)
People have complained to the CMA about misleading claims about both the simplicity of the process and prices, including a lack of clarity about what they’d get support with or what they were paying for. They also complained about firm’s using the wrong forms, entering incorrect details and sending papers to the court late. (Read more)
Why it matters: The potential legal costs for these services can be significant, explaining the increasing popularity of low cost alternatives. However, if these services are misleading customers or providing a poor quality of service, the CMA has the power to stop them from operating (via court orders).

What happened: Adidas have received orders worth more than $5m for 4 million pairs of unsold Yeezy shoes. This is a huge relief to Adidas given the significant impact (over $400m a quarter) the fall-out with Kanye West led to. (Read more)
Why it matters: Adidas decided to halt the sale of Yeezy shoes after their high-profile fall out with Kanye West. However this left them with a massive problem - an absolutely huge amount of unsold Yeezy shoes. They’ve managed to sell a large amount of this inventory as part of their first round of sale of excess inventory. Adidas have said they will donate a proportion of the profits from Yeezy sales to charity.