Microsoft was the big winner from the quarterly earnings reports bonanza yesterday with shares shooting up by 9% in after-hours trading – execs denied its $10bn relationship with our new robotic overlord OpenAI was a driving factor. Amazon and Alphabet defied expectations too last quarter which has pushed up shares and given rival tech companies a boost in the process. Although great news for investors it will come as little comfort to the tens of thousands of staff the companies let go earlier this year.

The lowdown

• 📈 Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet held up better than expected in Q1. ($)

• 🇺🇸 Joe Biden announces presidential run – again.

• 🗂️ Post-it giants 3M to cut 6,000 jobs globally.

Featured stories

First Republic – the latest banking domino

It had already been a week to forget for First Republic, after Monday’s announcement that the California-based lender had lost a net total of $72bn in deposits during Q1. Tuesday wasn’t much better as a sharp sell-off caused its share value to plunge and regulators to panic.

As of yesterday, First Republic’s stock price was down a whopping 93% year-on-year. Like many others, the SVB aftershocks rocked FR customers into withdrawing $100bn of deposits. In turn, 11 of the US’s largest banks stepped in and deposited $30bn to tide it over.

But this has set off its own panic, heaping further misery on First Republic. For context, Credit Suisse’s outflows in the first quarter of 2023 were approximately $69bn, and SVB’s outflow were $42bn on the day that it failed. Yikes.

Who steps in this time? The two options seem to be a rescue from some of the aforementioned 11 banks or a government guarantee on deposits from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), a la SVB.

The content we're consuming today

• a16z Podcast: Beyond Avatars – How AI is reshaping online identity

• Business Insider: Big Tech employees are so unnerved by mass layoffs that they're now easier to poach, according to the CEO of software giant Intuit ($)

• Vice: Is this Elon Musk’s burner Twitter account?

Off-balance sheet items

• Millennial Potterheads were forced to feel old yesterday when it was announced former child star and now fully fledged 33-year-old man Daniel Radcliffe and his partner Erin Darke have announced the birth of their son. Rumours the boy has been shipped off to live with his aunty and uncle are yet to be confirmed.

The bottom line

Incredible if true.