Apple and Netflix have reportedly become the latest big-name tech companies to pull out of this year's SXSW because of coronavirus concerns.

According to Bloomberg, Apple said Wednesday it wouldn't be attending SXSW, while a Netflix representative also told the publication it'd be pulling out of the event.

Apple had been scheduled to premiere new content for its Apple TV Plus streaming service at the event in Austin, Texas. This included the original documentary, "Beastie Boys Story" and the animated musical series "Central Park."

Meanwhile, Netflix was set to screen films iincluding "L.A. Originals" and run a panel with Kenya Barris and Rashida Jones on their upcoming sitcom series "Black Excellence."

The duo joins the likes of Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter, who have all dropped out of SXSW in the past week.

In February, SXSW organizers said the event would go ahead despite "a handful" of cancellations, but the spate of big names to since withdraw has cast doubt on that claim.

At a press conference Wednesday, Austin public health officials insisted that canceling the event – which is scheduled to take place from March 13 to March 22 – wouldn't be necessary, and it would still go ahead.

SXSW – short for 'South by Southwest' – is an annual conglomeration of film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences.

If it is canceled, it would join Mobile World Congress and Google's I/O developer conference among the major annual tech events axed because of coronavirus worries.

Business Insider has approached Apple, Netflix and SXSW for comment.

Chinese surveillance companies blacklisted by the US are openly touting their technologies to the American and international market, despite criticism for human rights abuses and alleged snooping.

A new report from security researcher Samuel Woodhams at Top10VPN reveals that several Chinese companies, including two currently on the US Department of Commerce's official trade blacklist and two more with close links to Huawei, are due to exhibit at a major US trade show later in March.

American companies are forbidden from doing business with blacklisted companies unless they have a special license from the government. 

The International Security Conference & Exposition (ISC) West is due to take place on March 17 to 20 in Las Vegas and claims to be hosting over 1,000 exhibitors and brands.

Hikvision and Dahua have been implicated in Uighur oppression in China

Exhibiting at the event are the American subsidiaries of Hikvision and Dahua. The two firms are Chinese video surveillance giants which were placed on the Department of Commerce's entity list in 2019 for alleged involvement in human rights abuses in Xinjiang, China. The Chinese government has pursued a campaign of imprisonment and persecution against the predominantly Muslim Uighur minority.

Woodhams' research found that not only is Dahua scheduled to appear at the trade fair, it has hired the biggest stands available. According to a press release on ISC's website, Dahua will be touting a "Wi-Fi enabled video doorbell, floodlight camera, and mini camera."

Hikvision meanwhile will be selling a camera with "thermal imaging-based fire detection, temperature monitoring, [and] cigarette smoking detection."

The companies' presence at ISC raises questions about how effective the US ban really is, and how it applies to US subsidiaries of Chinese companies.

Woodhams told Business Insider: "That several companies with problematic human rights records will be free to promote their invasive technologies to US security professionals raises significant concerns about creeping surveillance across the US and attests to the lack of human rights safeguards in the security industry more broadly.

"Further, the number of Chinese companies and their American subsidiaries that continue to feature in US security trade fairs suggests that recent efforts to decouple the American and Chinese technology sectors have had limited success."

In the case of Dahua, the company seemed to revel in the Commerce Department's sanction. Per video surveillance researchers IPVM, Dahua's VP Zhu Jiangming told the press in the week following the blacklisting: "The fact that we are under the US control list shows that we indeed have a strong technological capability."

Neither Dahua nor Hikvision responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.

A spokesman for the Bureau of Industry and Security (the sub-section of the Commerce Department that deals with the entity list) told Business Insider that participants at a trade conference would have to comply with the export restrictions imposed on companies on the list.

The spokesman didn't give further clarification, but this suggests blacklisted companies are free to advertise their wares in the US as long as they don't strike deals with American businesses without the proper approvals.

Anthropology researcher and Uighur expert Darren Byler told Business Insider Dahua and Hikvision played a pivotal role in China's crackdown on the country's minority Uighur population.

Both were paid hundreds of millions of dollars by China to build video surveillance systems, he said — Hikvision has been awarded at least $293 million in government contracts, while Dahua has received over $900 million.

"Hikvision and Dahua are two of the key technology firms responsible for the surveillance systems that have been built in Xinjiang," he said. "These systems produce a web of face and voice recognition-enabled surveillance cameras, face-recognition checkpoints at jurisdictional boundaries, license plate recognition technologies, command centers, data storage centers, data interface platforms, portable data assessment tools, and rapid response capacity building."

Two firms with close connections to Huawei are exhibiting

Also present at the event will be two companies with close ties to phone and equipment maker Huawei, the most high-profile Chinese company to be placed on the entity list by the Trump administration.

The US and Huawei have been engaged in a fierce political dogfight for more than a year, and the Trump administration has been heavily lobbying allies to freeze out Huawei's 5G equipment from national networks on the grounds the company spies for the Chinese government. Huawei has consistently denied the allegations.

The first of the Huawei-linked companies is wireless tech company Quectel. Quectel has been an official partner of Huawei's since at least 2017, but more recently in February 2020 the two companies announced a partnership along with several other companies to "launch 5G industrial modules."

The second is SIP telecoms company Fanvil Technology, which announced a partnership to give its products "full interoperability" with Huawei services in 2014.

The list of Huawei-linked companies would have been higher, Woodhams reports, but the majority of Chinese companies originally slated to appear at ISC pulled out due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

Neither Quectel nor Fanvil responded to requests for comment from Business Insider. The conference organizer, Reed Exhibitions, was not immediately available for comment.

As coronavirus cases continue to rise around the world, experts predict that the economic impact of the disease — in the best-case scenario — may lead to $2.4 trillion loss of global GDP. 

The coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, has killed nearly 3,300 people and infected more than 95,000. The virus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19, has spread to at least 81 other countries.

Over 150 cases have been reported in the US, including 11 deaths across two states. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the outbreak an international public health emergency and warned that the window of opportunity to contain it is narrowing.

On Tuesday, WHO said the global death rate for the novel coronavirus based on the latest figures is 3.4% — higher than earlier figures of about 2%. The World Health Organization's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the new coronavirus "is a unique virus with unique characteristics."

While much is still unknown about the virus, a group of Australian experts have estimated that the virus may have severe consequences on the global GDP. 

Australian researchers have mapped out the potential economic impact of the virus 

New modeling from The Australian National University (ANU) looks at seven scenarios of how the current outbreak may impact the world's wealth, ranging from low-severity to high-severity. 

Four of the seven scenarios in the paper examine the impact of Covid-19 spreading to other countries outside of China, ranging from low to high severity. A seventh scenario examines a global impact where a mild pandemic occurs each year indefinitely.  

But even in the low-severity model — or best-case scenario — ANU researchers estimate a global GDP loss of $2.4 trillion, with an estimated death toll of 15 million. They modeled their estimates on the Hong Kong flu pandemic, an outbreak in 1968-1969 that is estimated to have killed about one million people. 

In the high-severity model — modeled after the Spanish flu pandemic, which killed an estimated 17 to 50 million globally from 1918 to 1920  — the global GDP loss could be as high as $9 trillion. In that model, the death toll is estimated to hit over 68 million. 

"Our scenarios show that even a contained outbreak could significantly impact the global economy in the short run," said Professor Warwick McKibbin, a professor of economics at ANU and one of the paper's authors. 

"Even in the best-case scenario of a low-severity impact, the economic fallout is going to be enormous and countries need to work together to limit the potential damage as much as possible," he added. 

The research aims to help policymakers best to respond to the economic impact of COVID-19 as the disease continues to spread. 

"There needs to be vastly more investment in public health and development, especially in the poorest countries," McKibbin said. "It is too late to attempt to close borders once the disease has taken hold in many other countries and a global pandemic has started."

The death toll is still evolving 

A patient's risk of dying from COVID-19 varies based on several factors, including where they are treated, their age, and any preexisting health conditions.

A study conducted last month from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the virus most seriously affected older people with preexisting health problems. The data suggests a person's chances of dying from the disease increase with age.

Notably, the research showed that patients ages 10 to 19 had the same chance of dying from COVID-19 as patients in their 20s and 30s, but the disease appeared to be much more fatal in people ages 50 and over. 

About 80% of COVID-19 cases are mild, the research showed, and experts think many mild cases haven't been reported because some people aren't going to the doctor or hospitals for treatment. 

Aria Bendix contributed reporting. 

Tesla owners in China noticed a surreptitious change to their Model 3 vehicles last week.

The electric carmaker quietly started selling Model 3s with an old version of its control chips due to supply chain problems caused by the coronavirus outbreak, Nikkei Asian Review reports.

Tesla didn't alert new buyers to the chip downgrade, and it only came to light after owners spotted the part number printed on stickers attached to the control unit inside the car didn't match up with the Model 3's information sheet. The new chip is meant to be 21 times faster than the old one, according to a Tesla WeChat post unearthed by Nikkei.

"We are deeply sorry for the confusion we have caused to some Tesla owners," the company said in a statement on Chinese social media platform Weibo. It said it hadn't meant to mislead customers, and that the chip swap made "almost no difference" to driver experience or safety. Tesla also said it would provide free hardware upgrades to customers once production picks back up.

Tesla was forced to temporarily shut down its new Shanghai factory on January 29 for ten days.

After the Nikkei article went live, Elon Musk tweeted saying the customers who had complained hadn't ordered Full Self-Driving (FSD). "Perhaps they weren't aware that the computer is upgraded for free if the FSD option is ordered even after delivery," he added.

Tesla's FSD feature generally adds $8,000 to the cost of a Model 3. As Nikkei noted, this statement seems to contradict Tesla's statement that it will upgrade the chip for any customers affected for free — not just the ones who have ordered their cars with FSD. Business Insider has asked Tesla for clarification.

Amazon told employees in Seattle to avoid coming into their offices for the rest of the month, as Washington state emerged as the area of the US hit hardest by the coronavirus.

It came the same day the company confirmed that an Amazon employee in the area had tested positive for the virus.

Amazon issued the work-from-home guidance in an internal email on Wednesday, seen by The Seattle Times and GeekWire.

It said that any employee based in Seattle or nearby Bellevue who can work from home should do so until the end of March — a period of almost four weeks.

The email acknowledged that not everyone can easily work from home, and advised employees to talk to their managers to work out if it was practical for them to do so.

The message said: "every team is different and not all work may be conducive to working from home, so please talk with your manager and your team to establish expectations on working remotely."

The Guardian obtained a company internal memo earlier Wednesday that confirmed an employee had tested positive and said that any employees who worked physically near to that person had been notified.

That memo said that the employee went home sick on February 25, and had not returned to the company's offices since.

It also said that the employee worked in an Amazon location called the Brazil Building, one of the more than 40 buildings that makes up the company's Seattle headquarters.

It is separate from the building made up of three glass spheres that is the company's most distinctive presence in the city.

Amazon's guidance cited guidance from health officials in Washington state, the state hit hardest by the coronavirus.

The virus has killed 11 people in the US so far, 10 of which were in Washington. The state also has 39 cases, according to the Washington State Department of Health.

Washington has declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus, as has California, which has recorded one death.

This means the states can receive emergency federal funding to battle the coronavirus.

Worldwide it has killed almost 3,300 people, the vast majority in China.

Facebook and Microsoft have given similar guidance to their employees in the city.

Newman’s Y Combinator team photo

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Frontline Ventures, a London and Dublin-based VC fund has launched FrontlineX, an $80 million fund that will be used to invest in growth-stage US B2B SaaS startups. 

The goal is to help US software startups expanding into Europe, with Frontline finding that American firms expanding onto the continent often repeat the same errors.

The VC firm, founded in 2012, has crunched the data from hundreds of US startups expanding into Europe to identify the common mistakes. Among the four key issues that Frontline has identified are timing, hiring mistakes, country choice, and amnesia about what made a company successful in the US. 

Frontline Ventures partner Stephen McIntyre helped Google and Twitter scale their European operations over a 10-year career before moving into VC and says that US software startups often underestimate expansion. 

"This is novel, nobody else is doing this and getting into the detail," McIntyre told Business Insider in an interview. "Specialization is one of the few weapons that VCs have in a world of plenty of capital."

The fund isn't aiming to lead the rounds of buzzy US software startups but will instead partner with larger firms to help provide expertise. 

McIntyre says that some software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies try to expand to Europe at Series A stage when their teams are threadbare and expansion doesn't make sense, while others will move too late and be forced to fight copycat competitors in foreign markets. 

Similarly, Frontline found that some SaaS startups tended to assume that getting boots on the ground in Europe in any capacity would be enough to build a successful revenue base. "The machine will be working well in the US and then in Europe they assume machine will work well from third gear but that's not how it works, there's usually no brand awareness, no hardcore community of product advocates, so you can't leapfrog product development," he said.

Another issue US startups face is where to base their expansion.

For obvious linguistic reasons, London and Dublin are popular choices, with the former possessing the majority of the best engineers and sales talent, according to McIntyre. However, many companies struggle in Germany and France, the continent's other largest economies, despite the massive revenue opportunities available to them.

"If you want short term success you can operate out of the UK but you need to crack Germany and France," McIntyre added. Germany is reputedly harder given a divide in SaaS adoption between the north and south of the country.

Finally, a bugbear for all startups is hiring. For US companies expanding into Europe, hiring mistakes can be harder to rectify. Hiring too junior or too senior early on is an issue but equally the multiple time zones and predominant email contact makes it harder for US-based management to realize a hiring issue or correct poor habits in situ. 

McIntyre says the first six months of a startup's expansion are crucial, with his team working on timing, hiring, marketing, pricing, alongside office location and organizational design for the companies they work with. As part of the fundraise, FrontlineX has hired a partner in San Francisco, Brennan O'Donnell.

"Our plan is substance over marketing, there's of plenty of talk about value add but less actual work being done sometimes," he added.

FrontlineX has already made several investments from its fund including participating in the Series B of TripActions, a company that has gone on to raise from Andreessen Horowitz at a $4 billion valuation; People.ai's $100 million Series C together with Lightspeed, Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ; and Clearbanc's $50 million Series B with Emergence and Highland.

Facebook confirmed on Wednesday that a contractor at its Seattle location tested positive for COVID-19, a respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. 

"A contractor based in our Stadium East office has been diagnosed with the COVID-19," Anthony Harrison, Facebook company spokesperson, told Business Insider's Rob Price. "We've notified our employees and are following the advice of public health officials to prioritize everyone's health and safety." 

No further details were provided on when the contractor tested positive for the disease and if other employees came into contact with the individual. 

The Seattle office is closed until Monday, March 9, and employees are being encouraged to work from home until March 31. 

The announcement comes a day after Amazon confirmed that one of its employees in Seattle tested positive for coronavirus. 

In an email to employees in Seattle and Bellevue, Amazon's health and safety office confirmed that an employee of the company's Brazil office building, which is part of the South Lake Union Campus in Seattle, had contracted the virus. 

"The employee went home feeling unwell on Tuesday, February 25 and has not entered Amazon offices since then," the email said.

The employee remains in quarantine, the email wrote, and employees who were in close contact with the person were notified.

Two Amazon employees in Milan, Italy, also tested positive for the virus.

Several US tech companies are enforcing strict travel laws in order to prevent the spread of disease. Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have put restrictions on its employees flying to and from China. 

The US has reported more than 150 COVID-19 cases, including 39 cases of the virus and 10 deaths in Washington state. Globally, the virus has killed more than 3,250 people and infected more than 95,000.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency last month after the first coronavirus death was confirmed.

"Washingtonians can be assured we've taken this threat seriously and have been working in collaboration with our health care partners to develop plans and procedures to prepare for what could likely be a worldwide pandemic," Inslee said. 

Rob Price contributed to this reporting.

Online marketplace Etsy has removed all items that mention coronavirus or the disease it causes, COVID-19, from it site, Buzzfeed News first reported on Wednesday.

Etsy, which focuses primarily on homemade and vintage goods, said it had taken down thousands of items that made claims about protecting against coronavirus — as well as hundreds of items attempting to exploit the outbreak, according to Buzzfeed.

Some of the items included coronavirus-themed apparel and novelty items poking fun at the rapidly spreading epidemic as well as products making various medical claims, while others were meant to serve an educational purpose.

However, Etsy told Buzzfeed it decided to take down products making any reference at all to the outbreak, though it would be prioritizing those making medical claims.

Late Wednesday, an Etsy spokesperson emailed the following statement to Business Insider: "In order to keep our marketplace safe, our team is prioritizing taking down any listings that claim to protect against coronavirus. In the past few days alone, we have removed thousands of items that make such medical claims. We have also taken down hundreds of items that attempt to exploit the developing coronavirus situation. Our teams continue to automatically and manually review and remove items that violate our policies."

Etsy is not the only e-commerce site that has been scrambling to deal with the wave of exploitative and misleading products as well as the spike in demand for legitimate products like face masks. Amazon has recently taken similar steps, removing more than one million listings that make false medical claims as well as cracking down on sellers who engage in price gouging.

The coronavirus has already killed more than 3,200 people, mostly in China, and infected more than 95,000 around the world. It has spread to every province and region in China as well as at least 80 other countries. The outbreak has already had a major impact on the stock market as companies' global supply chains and operations face disruptions.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said that he expects the coronavirus outbreak to change the landscape for videoconferencing tools, as more companies start to have employees work remotely in a bid to stem the spread of the virus.

"Video is the future of communication...given the coronavirus, I think overnight, almost everybody really understands they needed a tool like this," Yuan said on a call with analysts after releasing fourth quarter earnings results. "This will dramatically change the landscape." 

As the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, spreads, more and more companies are asking employees to work from home. Schools in affected areas like Hong Kong and Vietnam have been closed to try and prevent the spread of the virus. Even in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Zoom is based, some companies like Twitter have expanded their work-from-home policies.

Under those circumstances, companies are increasingly relying on tools like Zoom to help employees stay connected.

However, Yuan said that even before coronavirus started driving more remote work, it was a trend that was already gaining popularity, especially in Silicon Valley. Companies like Zapier and GitLab have all-remote workforces, something many see as one way work will change in the future.

Coronavirus shown that that future many come sooner than some thought. It has forced larger companies to see that they needed to make it possible for employees to work remotely in order to keep the business running when crises like coronavirus hit, Yuan added. 

Yuan said that if he were to start Zoom over from scratch today, he wouldn't have a single physical office and would make it an  all-remote company.

Zoom said it has seen an big increase in users for the free version of its product due to coronavirus. However, the earnings results reported Wednesday didn't show much of that increased usage because much of the increase has been for the free version of its product, CFO Kelly Steckelberg said on the call. 

"We have definitely seen an uptick in usage, but a lot of that is on the free side, so it's very early to tell whether or not that's going to convert long term into paying customers," Steckelberg said.

When asked if Zoom has a strategy to convert those new free users to paid users in the future, Yuan said at the moment he is just focused on providing the best product to customers and making sure people impacted by coronavirus are able to benefit. 

"I would say, empathy, humanity and support for each other is more important, not revenue," Yuan said, adding that if Zoom focuses on giving its customers the best product it can, money and profits will eventually follow.

Zoom recently lifted the 40-minute time limit per video meeting for its free product in China in an effort to help those affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Yuan also said that Zoom is scaling its servers to be able to handle the increased usage. 

Yuan, who grew up in China's Shandong province, said in a blog post last week that he wanted to do something to help those affected as the virus continues to disrupt daily affairs, business operations, and school classes. 

Zoom itself has part of its research and development team based in China, but Yuan said they were not impacted by the coronavirus in China. Employees already know how to work remotely so they were able to continue working without disruption. 

Given a number of cases in Zoom's home state of California, Zoom is now asking all employees based at its headquarters in San Jose, CA to work from home as well. 

"Given the recent emergence and growing number of coronavirus cases in the US, we have directed our HQ employees to work from home, unless there is a business-critical need for them to be in the office," Yuan said on the call. 

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Microsoft has asked employees in the Seattle area and San Francisco Bay Area to work from home until March 25, according to an email reviewed by Business Insider.

Microsoft Executive Vice President Kurt DelBene sent an email to asking "all employees who are in a job that can be done from home" to work from home after King County — where Microsoft is based — advised employers on Wednesday to allow remote work.

"Consistent with King County guidance, we are recommending all employees who are in a job that can be done from home should do so through March 25th. Taking these measures will ensure your safety and also make the workplace safer for those that need to be onsite," the email said. Please let your manager know that you will be working from home, so all our teams remain well coordinated."

It's unclear how many employees DelBene's guidance impacts. Microsoft declined to say, but posted DelBene's email on the company's blog.

The news comes after Business Insider on Monday reported that some employees were concerned Microsoft's internal response to the outbreak was insufficient. 

Ten of the 11 U.S. deaths related to the illness caused by coronavirus have happened in Microsoft's home state of Washington, nine of them in King County.

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As the coronavirus continues to spread around the globe, IBM is canceling its biggest developer conference, limiting employee travel, and restricting employees from participating in events with more than 1,000 attendees.

IBM's client and developer conference IBM Think, which brought 30,000 attendees last year, was supposed to take place May 5-7 in San Francisco. Instead, IBM announced Wednesday that it will now hold a digital event with "live streamed content, interactive sessions and certifications and locally hosted events, which will highlight IBM's technology and industry expertise for developers and clients without the risk of travel."

IBM is also placing new travel restrictions on employees through the end of March. IBM plans to suspend all domestic travel for internal meetings, and it plans to cut back on international travel to only "business-critical situations when virtual methods are insufficient."

IBM is still allowing domestic travel for work with clients, although employees are encouraged to hold meetings virtually.

In addition, if IBM employees have traveled recently to any restricted locations, they must inform their manager and self-quarantine for 14 days after their trip.

"The health of IBM's clients, employees and partners is our primary concern," IBM said in a blog post. "In light of global precautions for the COVID-19 Coronavirus, and building upon recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO), IBM is taking a new approach to its signature events and adopting new travel policies."

IBM is also withdrawing its attendance in the HIMSS health care conference in Orlando next week.

Recently, there has been a false rumor spreading around about an IBM employee in Austin who has coronavirus, and IBM has been working to assure employees that it's not true. IBM's cancellation and new rules highlights how COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has been causing widespread disruption and uncertainty for major tech companies. The outbreak has infected more than 95,000 people and killed more than 3,250, mostly in China. 

Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon have taken measures in response to the spread of coronavirus, such as canceling conferences, encouraging employees to work remotely, and conducting interviews virtually.

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Apple has warned its retail store employees that it is facing a shortage of replacement iPhones, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

Retail staffers received an email notifying them that the devices, which are used to replace customers' phones when they're too badly damaged to fix easily, will be in limited supply for several weeks, according to Bloomberg. Employees at several stores also told Bloomberg they were running low on some individual replacement parts.

Workers were instructed instead to offer customers loaner devices or mail out replacement devices when they become available, Bloomberg reported.

Apple's internal note is the latest sign that the coronavirus outbreak is having a material impact on its business, and one of the first times Apple customers will be directly affected by the situation.

Apple closed all 42 of its retail store locations in China in early February as the number of cases of the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, skyrocketed within the region. The company's supply chain, which is heavily dependent on factories in mainland China, has also been strained as many of those factories were forced to close temporarily.

Following the closures, Apple reported that it did not expect to meet its revenue goals for the quarter, which it attributed to slowed iPhone production and reduced Chinese demand resulting from the outbreak.

Apple has also, like many companies, restricted employee travel and has implemented additional measures to keep its retail stores clean, as companies take more aggressive steps to protect workers and customers.

So far, the coronavirus has killed more than 3,200 people, mostly in China, and infected more than 95,000 around the world. It has spread to every province and region in China as well as at least 80 other countries. The outbreak has already had a major impact on the stock market as companies' global supply chains and operations face disruptions.

Apple did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment.

Video-conferencing company Zoom is asking its employees at its headquarters in San Jose, CA to work from home due to concerns over the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, which has spread to the company's home state of California.

This comes as Zoom reported fourth quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates but still saw the stock falling over 10 percent before recovering some of the losses — a drop that apparently comes from investors expecting a higher rate of growth.

"I am happy to report that all of our employees in the affected areas are healthy," CEO Eric Yuan said on a call with analysts after the earnings were released. "Given the recent emergence and growing number of coronavirus cases in the US, we have directed our HQ employees to work from home, unless there is a business-critical need for them to be in the office."

Employees based at offices in China, Japan, London, Amsterdam and Paris are also working from home. 

Zoom has seen its stock has skyrocket since the coronavirus outbreak started, with investors betting that more people will use video-conferencing tools, thus sending user numbers up. Zoom stock is up about 70 percent year-to-date. 

Zoom lifted the 40-minute time limit per video meeting for its free product in China last week, in an effort to help those affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who grew up in China's Shandong province, said he wanted to do something to help those affected as the virus disrupts daily affairs, business operations, and school classes.

Wall Street firm Bernstein Research estimates that Zoom has already brought in more new active users this year than last year due to coronavirus, according to CNBC.

In its earnings released Wednesday, Zoom said revenue increased 78 percent from a year prior, to $188.3 million. The number of customers paying over $100,000 annually was 641 for the quarter, up 86 percent from a year prior. 

Here is what Zoom reported:

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Who were the people behind Facebook when it was just a startup? And where are they now?

Only two of Facebook's first 20 employees still work at the company — and you can probably guess one of them.

Most left during the social network's early days to work at other tech companies or start their own. Several have become successful investors at large VC firms; many are now absurdly rich following Facebook's IPO in 2012.

Here's where Facebook's first 20 employees are now.

Alex Heath contributed to an earlier version of this article.

When Robinhood faced outages Monday and Tuesday, users were locked out of the biggest market rally in 12 years. Now, some users are calling on federal regulators to investigate the commission-free trading app.

Robinhood cited problems with its infrastructure as the reason the app went offline amid a high volume of trading requests. In a letter to users Tuesday night, Robinhood offered to address concerns of lost money "on a case by case basis" and said some users would be offered three months of its premium "gold" service for free.

As rage mounted over the app's downtime, many users said they would file complaints with the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency. Others threatened to join a class-action lawsuit against the app, and a Twitter account named "Robinhood Class Action" racked up more than 6,600 followers this week.

But federal guidelines indicate that pooling complaints against the company in arbitration is unlikely. A FINRA spokesperson told Business Insider that, in general, investors can't bundle complaints and file a joint class-action complaint during arbitration (FINRA doesn't comment on existing or potential cases). 

FINRA rules set forth narrow circumstances for joint complaints stemming from shared transactions, meaning complainants against Robinhood would likely have to go it alone.

The Robinhood Class Action Twitter account seemed to acknowledge as much Wednesday afternoon, telling its followers that individual cases were the most likely path forward. The person running the Twitter account did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

James Koncar, a Robinhood user from Tampa, told Business Insider that he's upset at missing out on trades because of being locked out of the rally. Koncar said he reported Robinhood to the Securities and Exchange Commission and is considering filing a complaint with FINRA — and added that he won't be using Robinhood in the future.

"Sure, I lost money, but there's no guarantee that I would've sold at open Monday. The point was I was completely unable to until it was too late," he said. "They opened the door for other brokers to offer commission free trading and I will be taking advantage of that with another broker."