TheChek News Flow

Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company Waymo will file to go public, giving employees an opportunity to access liquidity and boosting its valuation after it stagnated at $30 billion in its 2021 latest funding round. The move will make Waymo the largest publicly traded autonomous vehicle company in a small field that also includes Aurora, with a $11.5 billion market capitalization, and autonomous truck developer TuSimple Holdings, worth about $8 billion.—Sarah Krouse

Snowflake will make an acquisition of at least $2 billion to fill a gap in its product lineup: software for building and managing machine-learning models. Possible candidates include DataRobot, Dataiku and H2O.ai. Such a move would strengthen Snowflake’s business: The company is already the fastest-growing provider in data warehousing, an area of the database sector designed for speedy information retrieval and analysis.—Kevin McLaughlin

Amazon will decide to spin off Amazon Web Services. For years, Wall Street analysts have called for Amazon to spin off its AWS cloud computing business, but former AWS CEO and current Amazon CEO Andy Jassy always dismissed the idea. We think that will change, partly because of growing regulatory scrutiny on Amazon. A key factor will be that AWS CEO Adam Selipsky previously took Tableau Software public and is a trusted Jassy lieutenant.—Kevin McLaughlin

Activision Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick will become chair of the embattled videogame publisher and a high-profile executive will replace him as CEO. One option for the CEO slot is Jason Kilar, CEO of WarnerMedia, who is expected to step down after Discovery completes its purchase of Warner next year.

Or the company could pick a woman for the role, in part to address accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace discrimination at the company. Sarah Bond, a corporate vice president in Microsoft’s games group, and Laura Miele, chief operating officer at Electronic Arts, are two possibilities.—Jessica Toonkel

YouTube will launch a marketplace for creators to sell non-fungible tokens. YouTube has been a pioneer in offering ways for its video creators to earn money. And as it faces more competition from other social networks, being the first to launch an NFT marketplace could give it an edge.—Kaya Yurieff

Microsoft will make a move into the creator economy by acquiring either $1 billion valuation Cameo or $4 billion valuation Patreon. Microsoft made an unsuccessful bid for TikTok in the summer of 2020 when the Trump administration attempted to force the sale of the short-form video app because of its Chinese ownership. In the year that followed, Microsoft discussed takeovers of Pinterest and of chat app Discord, according to the Financial Times and Bloomberg. Neither happened, but next year the enterprise software giant may finally get the consumer app it’s been longing for.—Laura Mandaro

Meta Platforms will buy a major videogame franchise, along with the studio responsible for it. Beyond providing a marquee game to drive sales of the Quest 2 VR headset, Meta will use the acquisition to position the Quest as an alternative to gaming consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony.—Mathew Olson

Apple will acquire an automaker. The objective will be to obtain automobile manufacturing skill and the scale to develop and make its future electric and semiautonomous vehicles.—Steve LeVine

Instagram hit pause on its plans to develop a version of its app for kids in September after receiving a firestorm of criticism about the idea, but it did not kill the idea off completely. Given that Meta needs younger users to survive—CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said serving young adults will be the company’s “North Star”—and that it insists its Messenger Kids product has been a success, I predict Instagram will revive its children’s app in some form later in 2022.—Sylvia Varnham O’Regan

Hannah Miller onCrypto

Bitcoin’s price will surpass $100,000 in 2022, beating its current all-time high of $69,000. Though the crypto market is known for its volatility, growing interest in bitcoin and broadening adoption of cryptocurrencies should boost the most widely held digital currency’s price. The Avalanche blockchain, which is supposed to be faster and cheaper to use than Ethereum, will see the price of its Avax token more than double, to $300, from the previous all-time high of $146.—Hannah Miller

JPMorgan Chase will purchase a crypto exchange like FTX US or bitFlyer. Even though Jamie Dimon thinks bitcoin is worthless, the bank has shown an interest in digital currencies, developing JPM Coin and allowing wealthy clients to invest in crypto funds.—Hannah Miller

While TikTok has over a billion monthly active users worldwide and recently became the world’s top online destination, ahead of Google, the social media sensation hasn’t yet become a digital advertising giant. That will change in 2022. As TikTok doubles down on its ad business, the app will increase its sales sharply and start posing a serious threat to Meta Platforms and Google in ads.—Juro Osawa

Tesla is likely to sign a big investment deal with a Chinese battery maker as part of the company’s efforts to build goodwill with Chinese officials and to lock up supply amid growing demand for battery cells. Expect CEO Elon Musk to visit the country, meet with top Chinese government officials and announce a joint venture, an R&D lab or a major investment, following the playbook of other tech companies such as Intel, Qualcomm and Apple.—Wayne Ma

Microsoft is conspicuously absent when conversations about big tech turn to antitrust enforcement, but the software giant will face tougher scrutiny in the coming year. Complaints against Microsoft from Slack and others are piling up in Europe. They bear striking similarity to the company’s regulatory battles more than 20 years ago over allegations it used its Windows operating system to kneecap the market position of Netscape’s competing web browser.—Josh Sisco

Congress will pass targeted antitrust legislation, forcing Apple and Google to allow competing payment providers for in-app purchases and increasing the budgets for regulators. Broader bills that make it difficult for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon to make acquisitions and compete with companies using their platforms will stall amid a high-stakes election year.—Josh Sisco

The Federal Trade Commission will open an investigation of how food-delivery companies including DoorDash and Uber Eats treat restaurants and drivers. There has been a wave of consolidation in recent years that has concentrated their market power and restaurants have complained extensively about high fees and deceptive business practices, while workers have criticized the companies over a lack of benefits and low wages.—Josh Sisco

The startup industry will witness a record number of high-profile startup implosions, stemming from venture capitalists’ accelerated and at times lackadaisical approach toward conducting due diligence on their investments.—Kate Clark

Chris Dixon, co-head of Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto VC arm, will leave the company and start his own firm. Katie Haun, Dixon’s co-lead on the crypto team, did the same recently and there’s good reason to think Dixon, too, will have an incentive to go solo. Hanging his own shingle would enable him to own all the profits from his funds. Given the leading role he played at Andreessen, Dixon would also have the brand recognition to continue landing big investments.—Berber Jin

Labor organizers will win their first Amazon employee unionization effort in the U.S., buoyed by the company’s recent nationwide settlement with the National Labor Relations Board. Seeking to overturn the results, Amazon will file a complaint with the NLRB.—Paris Martineau

Amazon will hike the price for an Amazon Prime membership (currently $119 a year) for the first time in more than three years. The company will justify the increase by pointing to the introduction of Amazon Fresh services and more movies and sports on Amazon Prime Video. It will also make that decision against the backdrop of rising inflation and the supply chain crunch in global markets.—Mark Di Stefano