Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, July 01

• Zenefits halves its previous valuation to $2B to head off investor lawsuits: Zenefits is executing a change in its current ownership structure that will increase the overall ownership of the company for late-stage investors; it’s a move that revalues the company’s Series C round at $2 billion and looks to placate investor concerns over the company’s regulatory investigations. As part of accepting the new ownership changes, the investors participating will sign a release of claims against the company. It’s another move that new CEO David Sacks is doing in what’s been a massive cleanup effort of the company following report after report of the company skirting insurance regulation. Since all those regulatory issues came to light, the company has laid off more than 350 employees and parted ways with its former CEO Parker Conrad. The biggest issue stemmed from a program called “The Macro” that would aid in circumventing state licensing requirements.All this is basically a way to reset expectations for investors, as well as try to retain employees following the changes in the company’s ownership structure. Shareholders were kept in the dark in relation to the existence and use of “The Macro,” which required a reset of the relationship. Zenefits grew like a rocket ship, reaching a $4.5 billion valuation in just about two years after the company started. That, at the time, labeled the company as one of the fastest-growing SaaS startups ever — but, obviously, there was a bunch of shady stuff going on behind the scenes to pad that growth.

• Apple is in “exploratory talks” to acquire Tidal, the streaming music service run by Jay-Z, the Wall Street Journal reports. Recode has confirmed that the companies are discussing a deal. The fact that Tidal, which has been shopping itself for some time, is now talking to a buyer with incredibly deep pockets — and a streaming service — is not a surprise. One thing seems certain: This is a different situation from when Tim Cook, Eddy Cue and companypaid $3 billion for Beats two years ago. Then, it was acquiring several executives, including Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, plus the Beats Music team and a hardware business that was selling lots of expensive headphones. Tidal, on the other hand, has much less to offer: Tidal has about four million paying subscribers, according to the WSJ. (For context, Apple Music has 15 million.) Those can’t automatically be moved over to Apple Music, but Apple should be able to persuade many of them to come over. It has whatever Jay-Z brings to the table for consumer marketing and artist relationships. Perhaps most importantly, a deal would take Tidal off the market as a competitor for artist exclusives, which have created much of its buzz. This presumably means Apple wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to stream the new Beyoncé album, for example. (Though Tidal’s artist and label deals will likely expire upon acquisition, as is typical.) Apple also probably doesn’t have much competition for this deal, so it would be in a strong position. Samsung, the most logical buyer, walked away from its earlier talks with Tidal, according to a source close to the deal. Spotify can’t afford it. Google, which also owns a streaming service, could possibly also be interested for similar reasons as Apple. All this is worth something, but not a ton.

• Oracle ordered to pay HP $3 billion in Itanium case: A California jury ordered Oracle  to pay Hewlett-Packard $3 billion in damages in a case over HP's Itanium servers, an Oracle spokeswoman said on Thursday. Oracle said it would appeal the verdict. The Itaniuum processor is made by Intel. Oracle decided to stop developing software for use with HP's Itanium-based servers in 2011, saying that Intel made it clear that the chip was nearing the end of its life and was shifting its focus to its x86 microprocessor. But HP said it had an agreement with Oracle that support for Itanium would continue, without which the equipment using the chip would become obsolete."HP is gratified by the jury's verdict, which affirms what HP has always known and the evidence overwhelmingly showed," John Schultz, executive vice president and general counsel of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, said in an e-mailed statement, saying that Oracle's decision to stop the software development "was a clear breach of contract."