It's been a black year for the tech industry.

A long flight of fancy, which had gained additional momentum in the midst of the corona pandemic, came to an abrupt end.

Companies spoiled for growth suddenly found themselves on a downturn.

Facebook's parent company Meta reported declining sales for the first time in its history, and Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in a long time.

A series of layoffs were announced, in the case of Meta 11,000 employees were affected, at Amazon it was even 18,000.

The software giant and SAP rival Salesforce also announced that it would lay off ten percent of the workforce and close some locations as part of a savings program.

Maximilian Sachsen

Editor in Business

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Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

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Share prices have plummeted, with the index on the tech-heavy stock exchange Nasdaq falling by a third, faring much worse than the broader market.

The five most valuable companies in the industry to date -- Apple , Microsoft , Alphabet , Amazon , and Meta -- have lost nearly $4 trillion in combined market cap.

In the start-up scene, too, the gold rush mood has given way to disillusionment.

Young companies found it increasingly difficult to collect money from investors, only a few dared to go public.

In the German start-up metropolis of Berlin, 2022 was a year to tick off.

Those who somehow managed to survive pushed the next round of financing as far back as possible; the valuations were usually too low for investors to be willing to invest.

Others could be taken over at significantly lower conditions, such as the Gorillas fast delivery service.

The glorious year 2021, when every reasonably promising start-up could swim in investor funds, was followed by a rude awakening.

Between January and November, the total value of investments in German start-ups fell by 46 percent year-on-year to $11.9 billion, and the number of financing deals fell by 29 percent to 1,137. This is shown by evaluations by the Berlin-based venture capital company Morphais.

Mixed predictions

The view of the new year is correspondingly apprehensive.

There are optimists like Dan Ives, an analyst at investment firm Wedbush Securities, who has traditionally been one of the industry's most confident observers.

He expects share prices to rise again across the board by 20 percent.

He sees a recovery for the tech giants, and more generally for software vendors and specialists in areas like cybersecurity.

But there are also plenty of cautious voices, and forecasts are mixed across segments and companies.

For example, Nikhil Lai from the market research group Forrester believes that Meta is also struggling with structural challenges beyond the generally difficult economic environment.

In the near future, he believes the company will at best have “tepid growth”.

The European perspective is also divided.

Fears of a recession are particularly high here, and Tom Wehmeier, partner at venture capitalist Atomico, points out that 2022 was already a "divided year".

According to data from his company, 4 percent more flowed into the tech industry across Europe in the first half of the year than in the previous year, so the slump in the second half of the year was all the harder.