Facebook is cracking down on services that promise to help Instagram users buy themselves a large following on the photo app. The social network said today that it has filed a lawsuit against a New Zealand-based company that operates one such ‘follower-buying service.’

The suit is in a U.S. court and is targeting the three individuals running the company, which has not been named.

“The complaint alleges the company and individuals used different companies and websites to sell fake engagement services to Instagram users. We previously suspended accounts associated with the defendants and formally warned them in writing that they were in violation of our Terms of Use, however, their activity persisted,” Facebook wrote in a post.

We were not initially able to get a copy of the lawsuit, but have asked Facebook for further details.

This action comes months after a TechCrunch expose identified 17 follower-buyer services that were using Instagram’s own advertising network to peddle their wares to users of the service.

Instagram responded by saying it had removed all ads as well as disabled all the Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts of the services that we reported were violating its policies. However, just one day later, TechCrunch found advertising from two of the companies Instagram, while a further five were found to be paying to promote policy-violating follower-growth services.

Facebook has stepped up its efforts to crack down on “inauthentic behavior” on its platforms in recent months. That’s included removing accounts and pages from Facebook and Instagram in countries that include India, Pakistan, the Philippines, the U.K, Romania, Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo this year. Higher-profile action has included the suspension of removal of UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson from Facebook and in Myanmar, where Facebook has been much-criticized, the company banned four armed groups.

China’s biggest ecommerce company Alibaba was again on the U.S. Trade Representative’s blacklist over suspected counterfeits sold on its popular Taobao marketplace that connects small merchants to consumers.

Nestling with Alibaba on the U.S.’s annual “notorious” list that reviews trading partners’ intellectual property practice is its fast-rising competitor Pinduoduo . Just this week, Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang, a former Google engineer, wrote in his first shareholder letter since listing the company that his startup is now China’s second-biggest ecommerce player by the number of “e-way bills”, or electronic records tracking the movement of goods. That officially unseats JD.com as the runner-up to Alibaba.

This is the third year in a row that Taobao has been called out by the U.S. government over IP theft, despite measures the company claims it has taken to root out fakes, including the arrest of 1,752 suspects and closure of 1,282 manufacturing and distribution centers.

“Although Alibaba has taken some steps to curb the offer and sale of infringing products, right holders, particularly SMEs, continue to report high volumes of infringing products and problems with using takedown procedures,” noted the USTR in its report.

In a statement provided to TechCrunch, Alibaba said it does “not agree with” the USTR’s decision. “Our results and practices have been acknowledged as best-in-class by leading industry associations, brands and SMEs in the United States and around the world. In fact, zero industry associations called for our inclusion in the report this year.”

Pinduoduo is a new addition to the annual blacklist. The Shanghai-based startup has over the course of three years rose to fame among China’s emerging online shoppers in smaller cities and rural regions, thanks to the flurry of super-cheap goods on its platform. While affluent consumers may disdain Pinduodou products’ low quality, price-sensitive users are hooked to bargains even when items are subpar.

“Many of these price-conscious shoppers are reportedly aware of the proliferation of counterfeit products on pinduoduo.com but are nevertheless attracted to the low-priced goods on the platform,” the USTR pointed out, adding that Pinduoduo’s measures to up the ante in anti-piracy technologies failed to fully address the issue.

Pinduoduo, too, rebutted the USTR’s decision. “We do not fully understand why we are listed on the USTR report, and we disagree with the report,” a Pinduoduo spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We will focus our energy to upgrade the e-shopping experience for our users. We have introduced strict penalties for counterfeit merchants, collaborated closely with law enforcement and employed technologies to proactively take down suspicious products.”

The attacks on two of China’s most promising ecommerce businesses came as China and the U.S. are embroiled in on-going trade negotiations, which have seen the Trump administration repeatedly accused China of IP theft. Tmall, which is Alibaba’s online retailer that brings branded goods to shoppers, was immune from the blacklist, and so was Tmall’s direct rival JD.com.

Taobao has spent over a decade trying to revive its old image of an online bazaar teeming with fakes and “shanzhai” items, which are not outright pirated goods but whose names or designs intimate those of legitimate brands. Pinduoduo is now asked to do the same after a few years of growth frenzy. On the one hand, listing publicly in the U.S. subjects the Chinese startup to more scrutiny. On the other, small-town users may soon demand higher quality as their purchasing power improves. And when the countryside market becomes saturated, Pinduoduo will need to more aggressively upgrade its product selection to court the more sophisticated consumers from Chinese megacities.

Honestbee, the online grocery delivery service in Asia, is nearly out of money and trying to offload its business.

The company has held early conversations with a number of suitors in Asia, including ride-hailing giants Grab and Go-Jek, over the potential acquisition of part, or all, of its business, according to two industry sources with knowledge of the talks.

Founded in 2015, Honestbee works with supermarkets and retailers to deliver goods to customers using its store pickers, delivery fleet and mobile apps. The company is based in Singapore and operates in eight markets across Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Japan. In some markets it has expanded to food deliveries and, in Singapore, it operates an Alibaba-style online/offline store called Habitat.

The company makes its money by taking a cut of transactions from consumer transactions, while it also monetizes delivery services separately.

Despite looking impressive from the outside, the company is currently in crisis mode due to a cash crunch — there’s a lot happening right now.

From talking to several former and current staff, TechCrunch has come to learn that Honestbee is laying off employees, it has a range of suppliers who are owed money, it has “paused” its business in the Philippines, it has closed R&D centers in Vietnam and India, it isn’t going to make payroll in some markets and a range of executives have quit the firm in recent months.

The issue is that the company is running out of money thanks to a business model with tight margins that’s largely unproven in Asia Pacific.

One source told TechCrunch that the company doesn’t currently have the funds to pay its staff this month. A source inside the company confirmed that Honestbee has told Singapore-based staff that they won’t be paid in time, but it isn’t clear about employees based in other markets. Previously, staff have been paid inconsistently — with late salary payments sent as bank transfers happening twice this year, according to the source.

One reason that the Philippines business has closed temporarily — as Tech In Asia first reported this week — is that it is out money, and waiting on Honestbee HQ in Singapore to provide further capital. Already, the saga has proven to be too much for Honestbee’s head of the Philippines — Crystal Gonzalez — who has quit the company, according to a source within Honestbee Philippines.

Gonzalez helped build Viber’s business in the Philippines, where it is a top messaging player, and she was previously with Yahoo before launching Honestbee. She is said to have grown frustrated at a lack of funds when the Philippines is the company’s best-performing market on paper.

Indeed, the situation is so dire that suppliers and partners have been paid late, or left unpaid entirely, in the Philippines and other markets. Honestbee takes payment for grocery deliveries, after which it is supposed to provide the transaction, minus its cut, to its supermarket partners. But it has been slow to pay vendors, with two in Singapore — FairPrice and U Stars — cutting ties with the startup.

Unclear financing

On the subject of financials, Honestbee looks to be toward the end of its runway.

The company has always taken a fairly secretive line on its financing. On launch, it announced a $15 million Series A investment from Formation8, a Korean firm where Honestbee CEO Joel Sng was a co-founder, but it has said nothing more since. Tech In Asia dug up filings last year that show it has raised a further $46 million from more Korean investors, but the startup declined to comment on its financing when contacted by TechCrunch.

It looks like that capital is nearly gone, at least based on what has been declared.

Internal numbers for Honestbee in December 2018, seen by TechCrunch, show that it lost nearly $6.5 million, with around $2.5 million in net revenue for the month. GMV — the total amount of transactions on its platform before deductions to partners — reached nearly $12.5 million in December, but costs — chiefly discounts to lure new customers and online marketing spend — dragged the company down. A former employee said that monthly retention is often single-digit percent in some markets because of the “outrageous” use of coupons to hit short-term revenue goals.

That internal data showed that the Philippines business accounted for around 40 percent of Honestbee’s overall GMV, which backs up Gonzalez’ apparent frustration at a lack of investment. That said, the Philippines unit remains some way from profitability, with a net loss of more than $1 million in December.

High burn rate

Three markets — Singapore, the Philippines and Taiwan — accounted for more than 80 percent of GMV and net income, making it unclear why Honestbee continues to operate in other countries, including the expensive Japanese market, when its funding level is perilously low.

More pertinently, operating at that burn rate would give Honestbee less than 10 months of runway if it used the $61 million capital float that it is known to have raised. That suggests that the company has raised more money; however, none of the sources who spoke to TechCrunch were able to verify whether there has been additional fundraising.

Current and former employees explained that Honestbee doesn’t have a CFO and that all high-level decisions, and particularly those around budgets and spending, are managed by CEO Sng and his right-hand man, Roger Koh, whose LinkedIn lists his current job as a principal with Formation 8.

Filings in Singapore indicate that Honestbee has $55.9 million in assets through two registered companies. A common shareholder across the two is Brian Koo, a member of the LG family that founded Formation Group, the parent behind the Formation 8 fund.

Layoffs and a potential sale

While the financials are hazy, it is very clear that Honestbee is up against it right now.

The company released a statement earlier this week that makes some admissions around layoffs and restructuring but still glosses over current struggles:

In 2014, honestbee started in Singapore with the mission of providing a positive social and financial impact on the lives and businesses that we touch. Today, we are a regional business with footprints in Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Philippines, Japan and Malaysia.

Over the years, we have continued to be committed to our staff, partners and consumers. We have made good progress to implement new process and ways of working to remain efficient and relevant in the ever-changing business environment. The launch of habitat by honestbee in Singapore was a valuable lesson for us where it showed the potential growth in the O2O business and *it has been voted one of the must-see retail innovations in the world this year.

Following a strategic review of our company’s business, we are temporarily suspending our food verticals in Hong Kong and Thailand to simplify what we do and how we do it to better meet what our consumers want. Some roles within the organization will no longer be available. Approximately 6% of our global headcount in the organization are affected.

The status of honestbee in the remaining markets remain unchanged as we evaluate and we will continue to operate and contribute to honestbee Pte Ltd.

Sources close to the company told TechCrunch that more job losses are likely to come beyond the six percent in this statement. Executives who saw the writing on the wall have left in recent months, including the heads of business for Japan and Indonesia, a senior member of the team behind Habitat and the company’s head of people. One executive hired to raise capital for Honestbee quit within a month; he declined to comment and doesn’t list the company on his LinkedIn bio.

Secondly, Honestbee’s temporary suspension of food services in Hong Kong and Thailand isn’t likely to have a huge impact on its overall business, as groceries are the primary focus and neither market is particularly huge for the company. While Habitat has gotten attention for its forward-thinking, a physical retail store will require significant capital and it is likely, in its early days, to only increase the burn rate. Sources in the company told TechCrunch that, already, it has switched suppliers for some items as invoices went unpaid.

Despite the chaos, the potential of a sale is real.

Fresh from a recent $1.5 billion Vision Fund investment with the promise of $2 billion more this year, Grab — which is valued at $14 billion — is on a spending spree.

The Singapore-based company has pledged to make at least half a dozen acquisitions in 2019 and a deal to boost its nascent food and grocery play in Southeast Asia has some merit. Grab has the challenge of competing with Go-Jek, its $9.5 billion-valued rival that built a strong offering in Indonesia and is expanding across Southeast Asia with an emphasis on its food delivery. Grab, meanwhile, is active in eight markets across Southeast Asia and is now actively expanding from transportation services to food and more.

Likely adding to the frustration for Honestbee, its rival HappyFresh this week announced a $20 million investment. HappyFresh has undergone tough times, too. It pulled out of markets in 2016 to make its business more sustainable and today its CEO Guillem Segarra told TechCrunch that it is now operationally profitable.

Honestbee declined to respond to a range of questions from TechCrunch on whether it has plans to sell its business, its financing history and whether it has delayed paying employees.

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The never-ending quest to kill Comcast is poised to receive some renewed investment as an ambitious startup readies to secure some new cash.

Starry, a Boston-based wireless broadband internet startup, has filed to raise up to $125 million in Series D funding according to a Delaware stock authorization filing uncovered by Pitchbook. If Starry closes the full authorized raise it will hold a post-money valuation of $870 million.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed it had already raised new capital, but disputed the numbers.

The company has already raised over $160 million from investors including FirstMark Capital and IAC. The company most recently closed a $100 million Series C this past July.

The internet startup takes a different approach from fiber-toting competitors by relying on radio tower and high rise-mounted transmitters that dispatch millimeter wavelength signals to receivers connected to a building’s existing wiring. Customers with Starry’s slick touchscreen routers can whirl through setup, contact customer service, tailor parental controls and conduct speed tests. The company claims its solution can provide up to 200 mbps up/download service for just $50 per month with no data caps or long-term contracts.

The technology is not without its skeptics, while laying fiber optic cable has proven to be an expensive task for internet companies, going over the airwaves with the company’s high-frequency radio waves has its own set of problems. Signal can be affected by harsh weather and obstacles, though Starry has indicated they are content with their performance in less-than-ideal conditions.

“We’ve built a robust network in Boston and our technology is working well,” CEO Chet Kanojia told us last year. “We’ve gone through a full year of seasonality to test various weather and foliage conditions and we’ve been very happy with our network’s performance.”

Last year marked a major period of expansion for Starry, which expanded beyond its home market of Boston and now holds a presence in Los Angeles, New York City, Denver and DC.

Kanojia previously founded Aereo, which raised $97 million in VC funding with the dream of letting consumers watch live TV over the web. The company proved a little too disruptive for its time, and was shut down as the result of a Supreme Court case brought about by major broadcasting networks.

Carbon, the poster child for 3D printing, has authorized the sale of $300 million in new shares, according to a Delaware stock filing uncovered by PitchBook. If Carbon raises the full amount, it could reach a valuation of $2.5 billion.

Using its proprietary Digital Light Synthesis technology, the business has brought 3D printing technology to manufacturing, building high-tech sports equipment, a line of custom sneakers for Adidas and more. It was valued at $1.7 billion by venture capitalists with a $200 million Series D in 2018.

Carbon declined to comment on its upcoming fundraising plans.

Redwood City-based Carbon is well-capitalized. To date, it’s raised a total of $422 million from investors like Sequoia, GV, Fidelity, General Electric, Hydra Ventures and Adidas Ventures, not including the incoming round of capital.

Amazon announced today that it has beat Wall Street’s already optimistic Q1 projections. The e-commerce giant’s revenues have slowed a bit, contributing to moderate fluctuations in after hours trading, but the company’s greatly benefit by ever-increasing profit margins.

Net income for the quarter hit $3.6 billion, a new record for the company. Much of those inflated margins can be chalked up to online services, including advertising and, most notably, cloud services through AWS.

The earnings report demonstrates just how much the site has diversified its portfolio, with earnings that now include results from Whole Foods, which Amazon absorbed last year. The grocery store chain has seen the impact of multiple rounds of price cuts since becoming a part of Amazon, though growth on that side is slow compared to the company’s cloud offerings.

Jeff Bezos took the opportunity to note the company’s increased investment in education. Amazon’s been pushing to highlight its softer side of late, as its been the target of negative publicity over working conditions in its fulfillment centers and its since shuttered plans for opening an HQ2 in Queens.

“The son of a working single mom, Leo Jean Baptiste grew up speaking Haitian Creole in a New Jersey home without internet access. He’s also one of our inaugural group of 100 high school seniors to receive a $40,000 Amazon Future Engineer scholarship and Amazon internship,” he said in a statement. “Our passion for invention led us to create Amazon Future Engineer so we could help young people like Leo from underrepresented groups and underserved communities across the country.”

It’s a rosy picture for a company that’s been killing it on earnings, though the company was less bullish when it comes to Q2 as its growth has been slowing. Amazon offered guidance of as much as $1.6 billion below Wall Street’s $4.2 billion expectations. As CNBC notes, that could well point to the company’s intentions of making additional investments going forward.

Over the past few months, Sinemia has gone from promising MoviePass competitor to the source of frustration for moviegoers across the country. After rumors surfaced earlier this week that it would be backing away from its troubled subscription based movie ticket offering, it’s posted official word tonight that it will be shutting down operations in the U.S.

“Today, with a heavy heart, we’re announcing that Sinemia is closing its doors and ending operations in the US effective immediately,” the company writes in a statement posted to its front page.

The service has also struggled with issues of monetization (not unlike MoviePass), leading on lookers to wonder ultimately how sustainable the subscription model is. Those issues have been coupled by increased competition from movie theater chains like AMC offering up their own services, even as Sinemia attempted to create a white label version for theaters.

In recent months, the company has been plagued by lawsuits from both MoviePass and moviegoers, the latter of whom took issue with app problems, hidden charges and policies of shuttering accounts.

“While we are proud to have created a best in market service, our efforts to cover the cost of unexpected legal proceedings and raise the funds required to continue operations have not been sufficient,” the company writes. “The competition in the US market and the core economics of what it costs to deliver Sinemia’s end-to-end experience ultimately lead us to the decision of discontinuing our US operations.”

The note doesn’t clarify whether the service will continue to operate abroad in places like UK, Canada, Australia and Turkey, where much of its staff is currently based.

Uber is reportedly looking to sell shares between $44 to $50, aiming to raise $8 to $10 billion in the offering. This would value the company between $80 billion to $90 billion, Bloomberg reports.

Previous reports had pegged Uber’s valuation at around $120 billion. Still, that valuation is higher than its last valuation of $76 billion following a funding round.

It’s likely this decrease in valuation is influenced by Lyft’s performance on the public market. Since its debut on the NASDAQ, Lyft’s stock has suffered after skyrocketing nearly 10 percent on day one.

While Uber has yet to officially set the terms of its IPO, the company is reportedly expected to do so as early as tomorrow. Even if Uber seeks the low-end of the expected range, it would be more than three time’s the amount of Lyft’s $2.34 billion IPO. It would also make Uber’s IPO the largest one in the U.S. since Alibaba’s in 2014.

In 2018, Uber reported 2018 revenues of $11.27 billion, net income of $997 million and adjusted EBITDA losses of $1.85 billion. Uber, which filed for its IPO two weeks ago, is expected to list on the New York Stock Exchange in May.

Third time lucky — unless you’re Facebook.

The social networking giant was hit by a trio of investigations over its privacy practices Thursday following a particularly tumultuous month of security lapses and privacy violations — the latest in a string of embarrassing and damaging breaches at the company, much of its own doing.

First came a probe by the Irish data protection authority looking into the breach of “hundreds of millions” of Facebook and Instagram user passwords were stored in plaintext on its servers. The company will be investigated under the European GDPR data protection law, which could lead to fines of up to four percent of its global annual revenue for the infringing year — already some several billions of dollars.

Then, Canadian authorities confirmed that the beleaguered social networking giant broke its strict privacy laws, reports TechCrunch’s Natasha Lomas. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said it plans to take Facebook ti federal court to force the company to correct its “serious contraventions” of Canadian privacy law. The findings came in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which vacuumed up more than 600,000 profiles of Canadian citizens.

Lastly, and slightly closer to home, Facebook was hit by its third investigation — this time by New York attorney general Letitia James. The state chief law enforcer is looking into the recent “unauthorized collection” of 1.5 million user email addresses, which Facebook used for profile verification, but inadvertently also scraped their contact lists.

“It is time Facebook is held accountable for how it handles consumers’ personal information,” said James in a statement. “Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for consumers’ information while at the same time profiting from mining that data.”

Facebook spokesperson Jay Nancarrow said the company is “in touch with the New York State attorney general’s office and are responding to their questions on this matter.”

Tesla is poised to open up orders for the Model 3 in several right-hand drive markets, starting with the UK by early May, according to a tweet from CEO Elon Musk.

The Model 3 order page will go live May 1 or 2 in the UK, followed by Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Tesla’s UK webpage says deliveries in right-hand drive markets will begin in the second half of 2019.

The first Model 3 vehicles were handed over to U.S. customers, beginning in July 2017 at a splashy event at its factory in Fremont, Calif. Those first vehicles went to Tesla employees and deliveries limped along for months due to production bottlenecks. Deliveries began in earnest in 2018.

The expansion into more right-hand drive markets follows a disappointing first quarter for Tesla.

The company reported Wednesday wider-than-expected loss of $702 million, which included $188 million of non-recurring charges.

Tesla’s Q1 revenues fell to $4.5 billion, compared to $7.2 billion in the fourth quarter, in part due to its failure to efficiently deliver Model 3 vehicles to customers overseas.

About 50 percent of Tesla deliveries in the first quarter occurred in the final 10 days of the period. “That’s insane,” Musk said Wednesday during an earnings call.

Musk said the company is changing how it delivers vehicles as a result of the challenges it faced last quarter. Instead of building cars in batches and sending that dedicated bunch to one region, Tesla plans to blend vehicle production customers throughout the quarter, said Musk, who added this strategy will put less strain on its logistics system.

“We don’t want a situation again like we had in Q1, where essentially, all the cars were arriving to customers worldwide, all at the same time.,” Musk said. “So it just makes sense to plan production, according to demand moving forward.”