Tag: WiR

Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the week that was in tech. This edition’s a tad bittersweet for me — it’ll be my last (for a while, anyway). Soon, I’ll be shifting my attention to a new AI-focused newsletter, which I’m super thrilled about. Stay tuned!

Now, on with the news: This week Google laid off staff from its Flutter, Dart and Python teams weeks before its annual I/O developer conference. A total of 200 people were let go across Google’s “Core” teams, which included those working on app platforms and other engineering roles.

Elsewhere, Tesla CEO Elon Musk gutted the company’s team responsible for overseeing its Supercharger network in a new round of layoffs — despite recently winning over major automakers like Ford and General Motors. The cuts are so complete that Musk suggested in an email that they’ll force Tesla to slow the Supercharger network’s expansion.

And UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Andrew Witty, told a House subcommittee that the ransomware gang that hacked U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare — UnitedHealthcare’s subsidiary — used a set of stolen credentials to access Change Healthcare systems that weren’t protected by multifactor authentication. Last week, UnitedHealthcare said that the hackers stole health data on a “substantial proportion of people in America.”

News

Hallucinations, hallucinations: OpenAI is facing another privacy complaint in the EU. This one — filed by privacy rights nonprofit noyb on behalf of an individual complainant — targets the inability of its AI chatbot ChatGPT to correct misinformation it generates about individuals.

Just walk out … of Sam’s Club: Sam’s Club customers who pay either at a register or through the Scan & Go mobile app can now walk out of the store without having their purchases double-checked. The technology, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, has now been deployed at 20% of Sam’s Club locations.

TikTok circumvents Apple rules: TikTok is presenting some users with a link to a website for purchasing the coins used to tip digital creators on the platform. Typically, these coins must be bought via in-app purchase — which requires a 30% commission paid to Apple — suggesting TikTok might be attempting to skirt Apple’s App Store rules.

NIST’s GenAI platform: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Commerce Department agency that develops and tests tech for the U.S. government, companies and the broader public, has launched NIST GenAI, a new program to assess generative AI technologies, including text- and image-generating AI.

Getir pulls out: Getir, the quick commerce behemoth, has pulled out of the U.S., U.K. and Europe to focus on Turkey, its home country. The company — once valued close to $12 billion — said that the move would impact thousands of gig and full-time workers.

Analysis

Inside the Techstars “cold war”: Brilliant reporting by Dom peels back the curtains on a year of financial losses and employee cuts at startup accelerator Techstars, whose CEO, Maëlle Gavet, has been a controversial force for change.

AI-powered coding: Yours truly takes a look at Copilot Workspace, somewhat of an evolution of GitHub’s AI-powered coding assistant Copilot into a more general tool — building on recently introduced capabilities like Copilot Chat, which lets developers ask questions about code in natural language.

Heya, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the past few days in tech.

Google’s annual enterprise-focused dev conference, Google Cloud Next, dominated the headlines — and we had plenty of coverage from the event. But it wasn’t the only thing afoot (see: the spectacular eclipse).

Lorenzo wrote about how hackers stole over ~340,000 Social Security numbers from government consulting firm Greylock McKinnon Associates (GMA). It took GMA nine months to determine the extent of the breach and notify victims; as of yet, it’s unclear why.

Elsewhere, Sarah had the story on Spotify’s personalized AI playlists, which lets users create a playlist based on written prompts.

And Connie reported on the death of entrepreneur Mahbod Moghadam, who rose to fame as the co-founder of Genius, the online music encyclopedia. Moghadam passed away at the age of 41 owing to complications from a recurring brain tumor.

Lots else happened. We recap it all in this edition of WiR — but first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.

News

Tesla price drop: Tesla dropped prices of unsold Model Y SUVs in the U.S. by thousands of dollars in an attempt to clear out an unprecedented inventory backlog.

Snapchat turns off its solar system: Snapchat adjusted a feature in its app that visualizes how “close” you are to your friends after reporting revealed that it was adding to teens’ anxiety.

Noninvasive anxiety treatment: Neurovalens, a startup developing tech to deliver noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain and nervous system, achieved FDA clearance thanks to a 2019 agency rule change aimed at encouraging innovations targeting insomnia and anxiety.

Llama 3: At an event in London, Meta confirmed that it plans an initial release of Llama 3 — the next generation of its AI model used to power chatbots and other apps — within the month.

Emulators in the store: Apple updated its App Store rules to globally allow emulators for retro console games an option for downloading titles.

AT&T breach: AT&T began notifying U.S. state authorities and regulators of a security incident after confirming that millions of customer records posted online last month were authentic.

Funding

Web3 and beauty: Kiki World, a beauty brand that uses web3 for customer co-creation and ownership, has closed a $7 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Analysis

Magnets in keyboards: Frederic writes about an intriguing development in mechanical keyboard design: magnetic switches, which can quickly change the actuation point — the point during the keypress where the switch registers a downstroke.

WFH, here to stay: Working from home isn’t going away — even if some CEOs wish it would. Ron writes that most workers crave flexibility and work-life balance — who knew?

Podcasts

On Equity’s startup-focused Wednesday show, the crew dug into the Multiverse’s acquisition of Searchlight, the latest Guesty round, the Monad Labs transaction and a new venture capital fund targeting growth rounds in Africa.

Meanwhile, Found featured Ben Christensen, the founder and CEO of Cambium, a startup that’s reimagining the wood supply chain and reallocating previously wasted materials to be used in new building projects.

Bonus round

Microsoft passwords exposed: Security researchers discovered an open and public database hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service that was storing internal information relating to Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Microsoft says that it has resolved the lapse.

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the notable happenings in tech over the past few days.

This week, TC’s auto reporter Sean O’Kane revealed how EV startup Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started in December and took months to complete.

Elsewhere, Lorenzo reported how Facebook snooped on users’ Snapchat traffic in a secret project known internally at Meta as “Project Ghostbusters.” According to court documents, the goal was to intercept and decrypt the network traffic between people using Snapchat’s app and its servers.

And Manish wrote about the resignation of Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque late last week. Mostaque’s departure from Stability AI — the startup known for its popular image generation tool Stable Diffusion — comes amid an ongoing struggle for stability (pun intended) at the company, which was reportedly spending ~$8 million a month as of October 2023 with little revenue to show for it.

Lots else happened. We recap it all in this edition of WiR — but first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.

News

Fisker suspended: Fisker’s bad week continued with a halt in the startup’s stock trading. The New York Stock Exchange moved to take Fisker off the exchange, citing its “abnormally low” stock levels.

AI-powered itineraries: In an upgrade to its Search Generative Experience, Google has added the ability for users to ask Google Search to plan a travel itinerary. Using AI, Search will draw on ideas from websites around the web along with reviews, photos and other details.

Robinhood’s new card: Nine months after acquiring credit card startup X1 for $95 million, Robinhood on Wednesday announced the launch of its new Gold Card, powered by X1’s technology, with a list of features that could make Apple Card users envious.

At AT&T, mum’s the word: The personal information of some 73 million AT&T customers spilled online this week. But AT&T won’t say how — despite the hack responsible having happened over three years ago.

Funding

Booming Copilot: Copilot, the budgeting app, has raised $6 million in a Series A round led by Nico Wittenborn’s Adjacent. The app is benefiting partly from the death of Mint, Intuit’s financial management product.

Liquid assets: In a piece looking at the wider VC-backed beverage industry, Rebecca and Christine note canned water startup Liquid Death’s recent $67 million fundraise, which brought the company’s total raised to more than $267 million. Talk about liquidity.

HVAC venture: Dan Laufer, a former Nextdoor exec, has raised $25 million from Canvas Ventures and others for PipeDreams, a startup that acquires mom-and-pop HVAC and plumbing companies and scales them using its software that helps with scheduling and marketing.

Analysis

Is Nvidia the next AWS?: Ron writes about how there’s lots of parallels in Nvidia’s and AWS’ growth trajectories.

Podcasts

This week on Equity, the crew dug into Robinhood’s new credit card, Fisker’s latest woes and even Databricks’ new AI model that it spent $10 million to spin up. They also spotlit two companies building startups focused around kids, and, to wrap up, looked at a new $100 million fund that seeks to back innovative climate tech.

Meanwhile, on Found, Allison Wolff, the co-founder and CEO of Vibrant Planet, a cloud-based planning and monitoring tool for adaptive land management, discussed why the wildfires we’re seeing today are hotter and spreading more quickly than we can contain and how proper land management can help foster lower, slower-burning fires.

And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed Scott Dykstra, CTO and co-founder of Space and Time. Space and Time aims to be a verifiable compute layer for web3 that scales zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic action used to prove something about a piece of data without revealing the origin data itself.

Bonus round

Spotify tests online learning: In its ongoing efforts to get its 600 million+ users to spend more time and money on its platform, Spotify is spinning up a new line of content: e-learning. Beginning with a rollout in the U.K., the (traditionally audio) streaming platform is testing the waters for an online education offering of freemium video courses.

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter recapping noteworthy happenings in tech over the past few days.

This week, TechCrunch viewed leaked documents out of SpaceX showing some questionable practices related to employee stock options.

X CEO Elon Musk announced that he would open source Grok, X’s AI-powered chatbot meant to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Grok — developed by Musk’s AI startup, xAI — was released last year, armed with features such as access to “real-time” information on X and views undeterred by “politically correct” norms.

Elsewhere, Ron interviewed Denise Dresser, the CEO of Slack, on her effort to bring stability to the Salesforce business that’s seen three CEOs in a single year.

Lots else happened. We recap it all in this edition of WiR — but first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.

News

Leaked SpaceX docs: We got our hands on some leaked SpaceX documents that show some unusual terms to stock awards that employees are required to agree to. Among other things, the company gives itself the right to ban past and present employees from participating in tender offers if they are deemed to have committed “an act of dishonesty against the company” or to have violated written company policies.

Phantom, now a phantom: Phantom Auto, a remote driving startup that launched seven years ago amid the buzz of autonomous vehicle technology, is shutting down after failing to secure new funding, Kirsten exclusively reports.

Meme stock: In a new SEC filing, Reddit reveals that, following its IPO, it’ll allow its community members to sell their shares immediately instead of being subject to the usual lock-up agreements that prevent IPO investors from selling shares for six months.

Funding

Banking as a service: U.K.-based Griffin Bank, an API-driven banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform, just obtained a license to launch as a fully operational bank — and raised $24 million from investors, including MassMutual Ventures, NordicNinja and Breega.

EU breaches data rules: An investigation into the European Union’s use of Microsoft 365 has found that the European Commission, the cabinet government of the EU, breached the bloc’s data protection rules through its use of the cloud-based productivity software.

Analysis

Deepfakes go royal: Amanda writes about how a photo of Kate Middleton and her children, possibly edited with the help of AI, is an omen of what’s to come as AI deepfaking and editing tools proliferate.

Relaxation device: Haje goes hands-on with Moonbird’s relaxation device, which is designed to help customers find sleep and reduce stress through breathing exercises.

Podcasts

This week on Equity, Alex looked at data from Carta on how startup compensation is changing, raises from Empathy and Bear Robotics and developments from Bluesky, Brave and Chamath Palihapitiya’s VC firm Social Capital.

On Found, Becca and Dom spoke with Rebecca Hu, the CEO and co-founder of Glacier, an AI robotics company that’s building robots to accurately sort recycling.

And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed Melody Hildebrandt, CTO of Fox Corporation, and Mike Blank, COO at Polygon Labs. The episode is part of Chain Reaction’s monthly series diving into different topics and themes in crypto. This month’s theme is blockchain and AI integrations.

Bonus round

Metaverse royale: Readyverse Studios — co-founded by blockchain tech company Futureverse and Ernest Cline, the mind behind the sci-fi series Ready Player One — this week debuted Open, a third-person battle royale experience. Lauren has the story.

Hello, fine friends, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular recap of noteworthy happenings in tech over the past few days. Our team on the ground at CES 2024 had plenty to report from the show — and more’s on the way. (Here are thorough roundups of all the announcements.) But the world didn’t stop turning for CES.

In this edition of WiR, we cover Carta’s allegedly unethical tactics, Samsung’s Ballie home robot, Volkswagen bringing ChatGPT into its cars and Amazon embracing more generative AI. Also on the agenda is the launch of OpenAI’s GPT Store, Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo debacle, Harvard’s robot exoskeleton and a major hack at Fidelity Financial.

It’s a lot to get through, so we won’t delay. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

Most read

Carta’s ethics in question: Carta, the cap table management outfit, is being accused of unethical tactics by startup Linear’s CEO Karri Saarinen. Saarinen alleged in a LinkedIn post that Carta misused sensitive information that startups entrust to the company in pursuit of its own goals. Carta decided to exit secondary trading following the credibility hit.

Samsung’s Ballie returns: Remember Ballie, Samsung’s spherical home robot from CES 2020? Samsung brought it back at this year’s keynote with a few on-trend AI upgrades. The new and improved Ballie is around the size of a bowling ball, sporting a 1080p projector and a spatial lidar sensor to help it navigate rooms and obstacles.

Volkswagen cars get ChatGPT: Volkswagen is getting into the ChatGPT game. On Monday, the German automaker announced plans to add an AI-powered chatbot into all Volkswagen models equipped with its IDA voice assistant. Why? For drivers who want an AI-based chatbot to read researched content out loud to them, of course.

Amazon, GenAI and apparel: After recently turning to generative AI to enhance its product reviews, Amazon this week shared how it’s now using AI to help customers shop for clothing online. The company’s employing personalized size recommendations, a “fit insights” tool for sellers, AI-powered highlights from fit reviews left by other customers and reimagined size charts to enable customers to find better-fitting clothing in the Amazon marketplace.

OpenAI’s GPT Store: OpenAI has launched a store for GPTs, custom chatbot apps powered by its text- and image-generating AI models (e.g., GPT-4 and DALL-E 3). The GPT Store, as it’s called, lives in a new tab in the ChatGPT client on the web and features a range of GPTs developed both by OpenAI’s partners and the wider dev community.

CryptoZoo refunds . . . maybe: Logan Paul is offering refunds for CryptoZoo, the failed and allegedly fraudulent Pokémon-inspired NFT game that he launched in 2021. The catch? You can’t sue him if you get a refund. Morgan has the full story.

New day, new exoskeleton: A joint team from Harvard and Boston University has developed a soft robotic exoskeleton that detects movement and utilizes algorithms to estimate the walker’s gait. Cable-driven actuators kick in, assisting walking midstride. If the promising early results are any indication, this new technology could someday be commercialized, Brian writes.

Fidelity hacked: Real estate services giant Fidelity National Financial has confirmed hackers stole data on 1.3 million of its customers during a November cyberattack that knocked the company offline for a week. In a filing with federal regulators, Fidelity didn’t say which specific customer data was stolen — but, as Zack writes, all signs point to it being personal or sensitive in nature.

KYC and GenAI: KYC, or “know your customer,” is a process intended to help financial institutions, fintech startups and banks verify the identity of their customers. Not uncommonly, KYC authentication involves “ID images,” or cross-checked selfies used to confirm a person is who they say they are. But GenAI could sow doubt into these checks.

Twitch layoffs: Another round of layoffs is hitting Twitch. The Amazon-owned livestreaming platform will cut 35% of its staff, or roughly 500 employees — the latest blow for the already-beleaguered company, which cut hundreds of jobs last year amid leadership changes, rising operating costs and community discontent.

Audio

Need a podcast to listen to while you do the dishes, commute to work or otherwise go about the day’s chores? Good news — TechCrunch is churning out episodes that’ll do the trick.

On Equity‘s newly revamped Wednesday episode, the crew dug into news that PhotoRoom is raising more money, Treasure Financial is cutting staff, and two micromobility companies are tying the knot to try and use scale to their advantage. They also looked at what’s going on in the world of AI hardware, why Keith Rabois is heading back to Khosla Ventures, and Seedstars Africa Ventures adding $30 million to its upcoming fund.

Meanwhile, the folks at Found spoke with Markus Witte, co-founder of Babbel, a language learning app that had been operating since 2007. Markus talked about why he decided to step down as CEO and take on the role of chairman and how all four co-founders have worked together to stick to the original mission of Babbel even after nearly 20 years.

And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed Michael Sonnenshein, the CEO at Grayscale Investments. Grayscale is a digital asset investment firm that aims to provide products and services to institutional and individual investors; it’s well known for its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and now its new bitcoin spot ETF product.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

The Siri dilemma: Haje writes that Apple’s Siri needs to get a lot smarter, and quickly — lest it be left in the dust by competitors (assuming it hasn’t been already).

Enterprises skeptical of GenAI: Generative AI gets a lot of press, from image-generating tools like Midjourney to Runway to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But businesses aren’t convinced of the tech’s potential to positively affect their bottom lines; at least, that’s what surveys suggest.

The $1 trillion liquidity gap: Just how backed up are the venture capital markets today? The value of the most mature startups in the United States that need to find an exit neared the $1 trillion mark through Q3 2023, Alex reports — a massive (and growing) problem.

Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the week in tech that was. Hope the holidays were restful for those who observed them. We at TC, for our parts, are gearing up for an eventful next week at CES in Las Vegas — while keeping an eye on the news cycle, as ever.

In this edition of WiR, we spotlight Brian’s CES 2024 preview, 23andMe blaming victims for its data breach, GitHub making Copilot Chat generally available and Frontdesk laying off its entire staff. Also on the agenda are spiders and body butter, Fidelity marking down X’s valuation, Meta cutting the price of the Quest 2 and MIT scientists’ vibrating obesity pill.

It’s a lot to get through, so we won’t delay. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

Most read

CES 2024: Brian has a thorough roundup of what to expect at CES 2024, including — but not limited to — generative AI, robotics, TVs, cars, smartphones, and health tech. He writes that he’s optimistic about the show overall, particularly in light of the consumer electronics industry’s move to more decentralized manufacturing and the quality of startup pitches that’ve come in so far.

Your fault, not ours: Facing over 30 lawsuits from victims of a data breach implicating ~6.9 million customers, 23andMe is now deflecting blame to attempt to absolve itself of any responsibility. In a letter, the genetic testing company says that users “negligently recycled and failed to update their passwords following these past security incidents, which are unrelated to 23andMe.”

Copilot Chat launches: GitHub has rolled out Copilot Chat, a ChatGPT-like programming-centric chatbot, in general availability for all paying Copilot users and free for verified teachers, students and maintainers of certain open source projects. The chatbot’s powered by GPT-4, OpenAI’s flagship generative AI model, and fine-tuned specifically for dev scenarios.

Frontdesk implodes: Mary Ann writes that Frontdesk, a startup that managed more than 1,000 furnished apartments across the U.S., laid off its entire 200-person workforce Tuesday after attempts to raise more capital failed. Frontdesk CEO Jesse DePinto said that Frontdesk would be filing for a state receivership, an alternative to bankruptcy, according to TechCrunch’s sources.

Spiders and body butter: Sol de Janeiro’s Delícia Drench Body Butter went viral on social media after users claimed they were hunted, bitten and (unsuccessfully) courted by wolf spiders when they applied the moisturizer, thanks to the alleged inclusion of chemicals that spiders find sexually arousing. But Sol de Janeiro — and independent experts — tell TechCrunch that there’s no merit to the rumors.

X’s valuation falls . . . again: Mutual fund company Fidelity has marked down its investment in X Holdings, the parent company of X (formerly Twitter), by 71.5% from the original valuation of shares, reports Ivan. Fidelity spent $19.2 million to acquire a stake in X back in October 2022.

Quest 2 discounted: Months after Meta launched the Quest 3, the company is slashing prices for the VR headset’s predecessor, the Quest 2, by $50. The 128GB version drops from $299 to $249 and the 256GB version drops from $349 to $299 — with plenty of accessories on sale to boot.

Vibrating the fat away: Brian writes about an MIT team’s new obesity-fighting, pill-like vibrating capsule, which is designed to send signals to the brain to simulate the sensation of being full. Early tests are promising — giving animals the pill 20 minutes before eating reduced their consumption by around 40% — but the capsule is a long way from human trials.

Audio

In need of new podcasts to fill out your rotation? Don’t panic — TechCrunch has you covered.

On a throwback episode of Equity, Morgan interviewed Shruti Dwivedi — the co-founder and CEO of health tech startup Duly, which is focused on simplifying and personalizing contraception for young women in India and beyond — at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. The pair talked about the stigma around contraception, cultural roadblocks Duly faces and what’s next for the startup.

Meanwhile, Found went Down Under with Rebecca, who spoke with Alex Zaccaria, the co-founder and CEO of Australia-based Linktree. The two chatted about how the startup scaled the freemium model to grow the now-massive social media reference landing page business.

And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn dove back into the latest developments on spot bitcoin ETF applications in the U.S. as anticipation builds. Fred Thiel, the CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings, a digital asset technology company and the largest publicly traded bitcoin mining firm, joined the episode to talk crypto shop.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

Another alleged cool superconductor: Tim has the story on the latest team of scientists who claim to have discovered a near-room-temperature superconductor. He’s not convinced that the paper, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, will stand up to scientific scrutiny; time will tell.

Crypto losses decline: While malicious actors continue to hack the crypto industry for a cash grab, the dollar amount is down substantially — 51% — compared to the previous year, Jacquelyn writes.

The coming copyright challenges: When news broke last year that AI heavyweight OpenAI and Axel Springer had reached a financial agreement and partnership, it seemed to bode well for harmony between folks who write words and tech companies that use them to help create and train AI models. But perhaps it doesn’t, Alex posits.

Hey, folks, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter recapping the week that was in tech. Typically, the stretch between Christmas and New Year’s tends to be on the sleepier side — but that wasn’t the case in 2023. Fortunately, the TC crew was around to document all that happened.

This edition of WiR spotlights Brian’s review of the new Amazon Echo Frames, MrBeast’s bizarre TV-like game show, the Apple Watch U.S. ban and the expected release date of the Apple Vision Pro. We also cover Hyperloop One reportedly shutting down, Xiaomi’s first EV, The New York Times suing OpenAI and CBS’s and Paramount’s parent company getting hacked.

It’s a lot to get through, so we’ll hop to it. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

Most read

New Echo Frames: Brian test drove Amazon’s new and improved Echo Frames, which feature upgraded sound and a 14-hour battery. He found the AR shades to be lacking compared to the Ray-Ban Metas, particularly factoring in the $270 price tag (they’re currently discounted to $200).

MrBeast jumps the shark: Amanda writes about MrBeast’s bizarre new reality show, which had two contestants agree to cohabitate in a bright, asylum-like room for 100 days in exchange for $185,000 each in prize money. What’s intriguing about the experience, she says, is that it’s emblematic of the trade-off that’s become normal on social media: If you endure suffering for content, you might just be able to pay off your debt.

Apple Watch banned — then not: A recent U.S. ban on Apple Watch imports — centering on a pair of pulse oximetry sensor trademarks held by health tech company Masimo — nearly remained in place after the Biden administration declined to veto an earlier ruling by the International Trade Commission. But then, an appeals court instituted a pause, allowing Apple to resume sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 — at least temporarily.

Vision Pro, coming soon: In more Apple news, noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has narrowed down what he believes will be a late January or early February release date for the Vision Pro, Apple’s hotly anticipated AR heads-up display. Kuo says that the first wave of Vision Pros are being shipped to Apple in about a month, with total shipments numbering around 500,000 for the full year.

Hyperloop One crashes and burns: One of the longest-running hyperloop startups is reportedly shutting its doors. Hyperloop One, once backed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, will cease operations on December 31, Sean writes. It’s the latest stumble in the tech industry’s attempt to bring life to an idea Elon Musk first put forth in a white paper in 2013, and it comes after Hyperloop One raised — and spent — hundreds of millions of dollars since its founding in 2014.

Xiaomi releases a car: Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi has revealed its first electric car: a sharp-looking sedan called the SU7. Slated to roll out in China next year, it’s another entry into an increasingly crowded market for EVs — and an attempt in this software-obsessed world to match the tech people find in their phones up to what goes on inside their car.

NY Times sues OpenAI: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and its close collaborator (and investor), Microsoft, for allegedly violating copyright law by training generative AI models on Times’ content. It’s an open question whether the suit will be successful, but it highlights the growing conflict between content creators and the vendors using their work to train — and commercialize — generative AI technologies.

National Amusements hacked: National Amusements, the cinema chain and corporate parent of media giants Paramount and CBS, confirmed it experienced a data breach last December in which hackers stole the personal information of tens of thousands of people. Details of the breach only came to light a year after the fact; the company began notifying those affected just earlier this month.

Audio

In need of listening material as you prep for a killer New Year’s? TC has you covered, as always.

The Equity crew said goodbye to 2023 with its annual predictions episode. As they attempt to do every year, the hosts brought in a number of voices to speak on startup trends, media, proptech, AI and transport — and went back and vetted their predictions from last year. 

On Found, Dom and Becca broke down 2023 in startups by looking back on some of their favorite conversations — and looking forward to predict some startup trends in 2024. They talked about innovative climate tech companies, AI ethics and fundraising, building good founder relationships and what next year could look like for startups.

And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn remixed an episode from earlier in the year — one featuring an interview with Deana Burke and Natasha Hoskins, the co-founders of Boys Club. Boys Club is a social decentralized autonomous organization for the “crypto curious,” originally designed to get women and non-binary people into the web3 world but that now aims to be an open space for anyone looking to get into the industry.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

Investors share their predictions: Rebecca asked over 40 VCs when they expect the next venture bubble to pop next year, which startups they think will IPO first, if they expect to see more startups shutting down in 2024 than in the past few years — and more.

Diversity commitments: Dom checked up on the VCs that made commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. So who kept their word? Read on to find out.

Investor survey roundup: Karan put together a curated list of timely TC investor surveys from the year. They touch on topics including alternative protein, the robotics revolution, the Silicon Valley Bank collapse and the future of power. 

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the top tech — and tech-related — stories over the past several days. With the holiday around the corner, this reporter expected a quieter week. But the opposite happened — there’s been no shortage of stories to write about.

In this edition of WiR, we cover Comcast and Mr. Cooper customer data being stolen, electric scooter company Bird filing for bankruptcy, Adobe ending its Figma acquisition plans, and Apple being forced by the International Trade Commission (ITC) to halt sales of the Apple Watch. We also spotlight Nikola founder Trevor Milton’s securities fraud sentencing, Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot getting a music generation feature and Consumer Reports’ impression of Tesla’s Autopilot recall fix (spoiler: it’s not good).

It’s a lot to get through, so we’ll hop to it. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

Most read

Hackers target Comcast: Comcast has confirmed that hackers exploiting a critical-rated security vulnerability accessed the sensitive information of almost 36 million Xfinity customers. The vulnerability, known as “CitrixBleed,” is found in Citrix networking devices often used by big corporations and has been under mass exploitation by malicious actors since August, Carly reports.

Mr. Cooper under fire: In related news, hackers stole the sensitive personal information of over 14.6 million Mr. Cooper customers, Zack writes. The mortgage and loan giant confirmed that the criminals stole customer names, addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers, as well as Social Security numbers and bank account numbers.

Adobe gives up: Adobe’s $20 billion mega-bid to buy rival Figma is now officially dead after the companies said this week that regulatory pushback in Europe caused them to end their acquisition plans. First announced in September last year, the deal was always going to attract regulatory scrutiny due to the size of the transaction and the fact that it took one of Adobe’s major rivals out of the picture, notes Paul.

Apple halts Apple Watch sales: Apple has halted the sale of its Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatch following an October ruling by the ITC owing to a patent dispute with California-based med tech firm Masimo. The dispute is over the blood sensor monitor on the latest flagship Apple Watches; Apple is appealing the ITC’s ruling.

Nikola founder sentenced: Trevor Milton, the disgraced founder and former CEO of electric truck startup Nikola, was sentenced on Monday to four years in prison for securities fraud. Rebecca writes that the sentence caps off a multi-year saga that at one point sent Nikola stock soaring 83% only to come crashing down months later over accusations of fraud and canceled contracts.

Copilot gets music writing skills: Microsoft’s AI-powered chatbot, Microsoft Copilot, can now compose songs thanks to an integration with generative AI (GenAI) music app Suno. Users can enter prompts into Copilot like “Create a pop song about adventures with your family” and have Suno, via a plug-in, bring their musical ideas to life.

Tesla fix “insufficient”: Following tests, Consumer Reports says Tesla’s fix for its Autopilot recall of over 2 million vehicles is “insufficient.” While the testing isn’t comprehensive, Sean notes, it shows questions remain unanswered about Tesla’s approach to driver monitoring — the tech at the heart of the recall.

Bird files for bankruptcy: Bird has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, capping off a turbulent year for the electric scooter company. In a press release, Bird confirmed it had entered into a “financial restructuring process aimed at strengthening its balance sheet,” with the company continuing to operate as normal in pursuit of “long-term, sustainable growth.”

Audio

Need some listening material while prepping a holiday dish — or to tune out especially bothersome relatives? You’re in luck — TechCrunch’s podcasts will fit the bill.

On this week’s Equity, the second of a two-part series looking back at 2023, the crew recapped the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s long and tedious trial and OpenAI’s wild internal politicking.

Meanwhile, Found focused on Charlie Hernández and his journey of building My Pocket Lawyer, an online platform that’s meant to democratize access to legal advice and guidance for those who might not be able to afford a lawyer. Hernández talked about why he decided to put his law degree to use to tackle this problem.

And Chain Reaction featured Staci Warden, the CEO of the Algorand Foundation, the organization behind the layer-1 blockchain Algorand. Algorand is a Singapore-based blockchain that aims to be fast, secure, decentralized and “the greenest” with its carbon-negative network.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

Etsy layoffs: Etsy recently announced that it would lay off 11% of its workforce — which comes as no surprise to those closely following the e-commerce segment, Anna writes. “Junkification” and fierce competition paint a tough path ahead, she predicts.

DEI backlash: Dom writes about the discouraging backlash against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), a framework to help create more conscious workplace initiatives to help marginalized communities, in the tech sector.

Figma’s rosy outlook: Anna writes about how, even without Adobe, things don’t look all that bad for Figma. CB Insights estimates that the startup is still worth between $8.3 billion and $9 billion.

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering the major happenings in the tech-o-sphere — or most of them, anyway. As the world’s largest AI conference, NeurIPS, got underway in sunny New Orleans, Google shared more on Gemini, its flagship AI model family — and lots happened elsewhere.

In this edition of WiR, we cover Cruise slashing 24% of its driverless workforce (and, relatedly, Tesla’s autopilot recall), Twitch’s new nudity policy conundrum, Adobe’s updated app design language and Instagram launching a generative AI–powered background editor. We also spotlight Meta’s Threads app expanding, the FCC denying Starlink a subsidy, Apple’s changing policies around push notification data and Amazon competing with its own Goodreads service.

It’s a lot to recap, so we won’t dillydally. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

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Gemini comes to more apps: Google’s Gemini GenAI models — specifically Gemini Pro, a lightweight version of a more capable model, Gemini Ultra, set to arrive in the coming months — is making its way into more Google products. Duet AI, the company’s suite of dev assistance tools for code completion and generation, will soon start using Gemini. So will AI Studio (formerly MakerSuite), Google’s AI app design experience on the web, and Vertex AI, the tech giant’s managed AI dev platform for enterprises.

Cruise slashes workforce: Cruise, GM’s self-driving car subsidiary, is laying off 900 mostly field staffers as part of a plan to slash costs and revamp the company, Kirsten reports. Wall Street appeared to approve of the cutbacks, which followed an October 2 incident that left a pedestrian stuck under and then dragged by one of Cruise’s robotaxis; GM shares rose after the downsizing was announced.

Tesla issues recall: Tesla is limiting the use of its Autopilot driver-assistance software as part of a two-million-vehicle recall — one of the first results to come from an ongoing multiyear investigation by the U.S.’s top automotive safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). In documents released Wednesday, the NHTSA says that the way Tesla’s cars check to see if drivers are paying attention to the road while using Autosteer, an Autopilot feature that allows the cars to stay planted in the center of a lane even around big curves, is “insufficient.”

Nudes on Twitch: Twitch this week announced sweeping updates to its sexual content policy and content classification system, briefly allowing previously prohibited content such as illustrated nipples and “erotic dances” — but then quickly backtracked. Effective Friday, depictions of both real and fictional nudity are banned on Twitch again. Streamers will still be able to show nudity in M-rated games.

Adobe unveils Spectrum 2: Adobe has launched an update to Spectrum, the design system the company has used as the basis for all of its app and web products for the last 10 years. Called Spectrum 2 (no surprise there), the new design system backs off a bit from the austerity of the current Spectrum design and adds quite a few more splashes of color. You can already find parts of Spectrum 2 in recent Adobe web apps like the company’s Firefly generative AI service, Adobe Express and some of the new Acrobat web experiences.

Instagram intros background editor: Instagram introduced its GenAI-powered background editing tool to U.S.-based users on Wednesday. The tool lets users quickly change the background to their images; when users tap on the new background editor icon on an image, they get pre-populated prompts like “On a red carpet,” “Being chased by dinosaurs” and “Surrounded by puppies.” Users can write their own prompts to change the background as well.

Threads grows: Rumor has it that Meta’s set to launch Threads in the EU next month — possibly with a “view-only mode” to comply with the EU’s regulations around data handling and recommendation algorithms. In the meantime, the social network’s working on bringing a fact-checking program to Threads and testing support for ActivityPub, the open social networking protocol adopted by decentralized social networking platforms, including Mastodon.

FCC denies Starlink: The FCC has made a final denial of Starlink’s application for $885 million in public funds to expand its orbital communications infrastructure to cover parts of rural America, saying the company “failed to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service.” As Devin notes, the money in question was part of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, a multi-billion-dollar program to subsidize the rollout of internet service in places where private companies have previously decided it’s too expensive or distant to do so.

Apple changes its notification policy: Apple said it will no longer give over records of users’ push notifications to law enforcement unless the company receives a valid judge’s order. Previously, the company allowed police to obtain these records with a subpoena, which are issued by police departments and law enforcement agencies with no judicial oversight. The policy change lands days after U.S. senator Ron Wyden disclosed that Apple and Google can be “secretly compelled by governments” to hand over the contents of push notifications sent to customers’ phones.

On Equity, the crew welcomed Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress, along with Kishan Bagaria, the founder of Texts.com. Automattic bought all-in-one messaging app Texts.com for $50 million back in October, and on this week’s Equity episode, the hosts dug into the transaction and what it means — and the general state of the written word online.

Meanwhile, Found centered on James Wagoner, the co-founder and CEO of Joule Case, a startup that’s creating a cleaner alternative to diesel generators. Wagoner talked about his journey to kick-starting the company after the first startup he and his co-founder launched didn’t survive the 2008 financial crisis.

And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed Johann Kerbrat, the general manager of crypto at Robinhood. Johann is leading the app’s effort to expand its crypto exchange business and make digital assets more accessible to retail investors.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

Temu vs. Shein: Alex writes about fast-fashion retailer Temu’s latest lawsuit against chief rival Shein. In it, Temu alleges “dubious copyright infringement” complaints filed against it by Shein — and also alleges that Shein abuses its suppliers by leveraging a “monopoly power” and “exclusive-dealing agreements.”

COP28 recap: Tim reports on the UN climate change conference proceedings this year. COP28 was significant in a few unexpected respects, he says — and not just because the United Arab Emirates, the world’s seventh largest oil producer, hosted.

Epic fallout: Google losing the antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games concerning the Play Store will have far-reaching implications for the mobile app economy. Alex has the full story.

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the past few days in tech. AI stole the headlines once again, with tech giants from Google to X (formerly Twitter) heading off against OpenAI for chatbot supremacy. But plenty happened besides.

In this edition of WiR, we cover Google faking a demo of its new AI model (and giving out offensive notebooks to Black summit attendees), defense startup Anduril unveiling a fighter jet weapon, the continued fallout from the 23andMe hack, and the release of the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer. Also on the roster are stories about patient scans and health records spilling online, Meta’s new AI-powered image generator, Spotify cutting jobs and an autonomous truck startup leaving the U.S.

It’s a lot to get to, so we won’t delay. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

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AI, faked: Google unveiled a new flagship AI model this week called Gemini. But it didn’t release the full model, Gemini Ultra — only a “lite” version called Gemini Pro. In a press briefing and blog posts, Google touted Gemini’s coding capabilities and multimodal prowess, claiming that the model can understand images, audio and videos just as well as text. But Gemini Pro — which is strictly text-in, text-out — has proven to be mistake-prone. And in a worse look for Google, the company was caught faking a Gemini demo by tuning text prompts with still images off camera.

Offensive notebooks: In another Google PR blunder, people who attended the company’s K&I Black Summit in August were given third-party notebooks containing highly insensitive language. My colleague Dominic-Madori writes that the inside of the notebooks were printed with the phrase “I was just cotton the moment, but I came back to take your notes” (emphasis ours). It goes without saying that this wouldn’t have been well received by the mostly Black audience in attendance; Google has pledged to “avoid similar situations as [it engages] with [merchandise] vendors going forward.”

Anduril’s new weapon: Anduril, the controversial defense company co-founded by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, has developed a new product designed to take on the proliferation of low-cost, high-powered aerial threats. Dubbed Roadrunner, the modular, twin-jet-powered autonomous vertical take-off and landing air vehicle — one version of which is capable of carrying a warhead — can take off, follow and destroy targets or, if there’s no need to intercept the target, autonomously maneuver back to base for refueling and reuse.

More 23andMe victims: Last Friday, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that hackers managed to access the personal data of 0.1% of customers, or about 14,000 individuals. But the company didn’t initially say how many other users might’ve been impacted by the breach, which 23andMe first disclosed in October. A lot, as it turns out — 6.9 million people had their names, birth years, relationship labels, the percentage of DNA they share with relatives, ancestry reports and self-reported locations exposed.

Grand Theft Auto goes viral: In just 22 hours, the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI racked up 85 million views — breaking a MrBeast video’s record for most YouTube views in 24 hours. The excitement for Grand Theft Auto VI is a decade in the making; the previous entry in Rockstar Games’ long-running franchise, Grand Theft Auto V, remains the second-best-selling video game of all time, falling short only of Minecraft.

Patient records leak: Thousands of exposed servers are spilling the medical records and personal health information of millions of patients due to security weaknesses in a decades’ old industry standard designed for storing and sharing medical images. This standard, known as Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM), is the internationally recognized format for medical imaging. But as discovered by Aplite, a Germany-based cybersecurity consultancy, security shortcomings in DICOM mean many medical facilities have unintentionally made private data accessible to the open web.

Meta generates images: Not to be outdone by Google’s Gemini launch, Meta rolled out a new, stand-alone generative AI experience on the web, Imagine with Meta AI, that allows users to create images by describing them in natural language. Similar to OpenAI’s DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, Imagine with Meta AI, which is powered by Meta’s existing Emu image-generation model, creates high-resolution images from text prompts.

Spotify makes cuts: Spotify is eliminating about 1,500 jobs, or roughly 17% of its workforce, in its third round of layoffs this year as the music streaming giant looks to become “both productive and efficient.” In a note to employees Monday, Spotify founder and chief executive Daniel Ek — citing slow economic growth and rising capital costs — said right-sizing the workforce is crucial for the company to face the “challenges ahead.”

TuSimple exits: When TuSimple went public in 2021, it was flying high as the leading self-driving trucks developer in the U.S. Now — after a string of internal controversies and the loss of a critical partnership with truck manufacturer Navistar — TuSimple is exiting the U.S. altogether. TuSimple said in a regulatory filing Monday that it’s laying off the majority of its U.S. workforce and selling assets here as it exits the country for Asia.

ZestMoney shuts down: ZestMoney — a buy now, pay later startup whose ability to underwrite small-ticket loans to first-time internet customers attracted many high-profile investors, including Goldman Sachs — is shutting down following unsuccessful efforts to find a buyer. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup employed about 150 people at peak and raised more than $130 million over its eight-year journey.

Audio

TechCrunch’s roster of podcast episodes keeps growing — just in time for weekend listening.

Equity featured a throwback conversation from TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, when Alex sat down with Serhii Bohoslovskyi, the founder of a no-code app builder, Trible, that helps people construct online courses. The pair caught up on the state of the creator economy, the use of no-code tooling today (and how it’s received by nontechnical creators) and the security of startups with roots in Ukraine.

Over on Found, the crew talked to David Rogier, the CEO and founder of MasterClass, a streaming platform where you can learn from the world’s experts on a range of topics. Before Rogier launched MasterClass, he worked as a VC, and — through his connections — he received a $500,000 seed round before he even had an idea for a company.

And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed David Pakman, managing partner and head of venture investments at CoinFund. Before CoinFund, David spent 14 years at the venture capital firm Venrock. He also led the Series A and B rounds at Dollar Shave Club, which was acquired by Unilever for $1 billion. And, in 1991, David co-created Apple Music when he was part of Apple’s system software product marketing group.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:
Bitcoin surge: Jacquelyn writes about Bitcoin’s rapid-fire ascent to $44,000, which came on the back of roughly 25% gains in the last week. Her piece for TC+ explores what’s driving Bitcoin’s price ascent and similar value gains among other tokens — and whether the good vibes continue into the new year.

To swap, or not to swap: Tim reports on how consumer EV battery swapping could usher in freedom for a wide range of people, allowing them to participate in the EV transition in ways that traditional built-in batteries don’t. The challenge is making the unit economics work.

Coinbase and Robin and the future of fintech: Investors are betting that consumer trading of equity and crypto is rebounding and are consequently pushing the value of some former startups higher, Alex writes. That could spell good news for startups offering consumer trading services directly — or indirectly, for that matter.

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular recap of the past few days in tech. The headlines have been dominated — nay, overwhelmed — by the drama unfolding at AI startup OpenAI, but plenty else happened in the half-week leading up to Thanksgiving. So much for a sleepy pre-holiday!

In this edition of WiR, besides the OpenAI saga, we cover Apple finally bringing RCS to iPhones, a former Silicon Valley VC darling being convicted of investor fraud, Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt resigning and Amazon selling cars online. Also on the agenda is Elon Musk’s lawsuit over claims of hateful ads on Twitter, Google’s secret deal with Spotify, Binance’s CEO pleading guilty to federal charges, and Signal detailing the cost of keeping its private messaging service online.

It’s a lot to get to — so we shan’t delay. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

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Sam Altman returns to OpenAI: After a roller coaster of a weekend and change, Sam Altman, who was CEO of OpenAI as of Friday morning, is CEO once again. The board of directors who fired him came to realize, eventually, that terminating him perhaps wasn’t the best course of action — after immense pressure from the OpenAI rank-and-file, VCs, close partner Microsoft and one of their own. For a play-by-play of how it all went down, check out our timeline of events.

Apple (finally) embraces RCS: Apple plans to add support for the RCS standard on iOS next year, the iPhone maker said last Thursday in a reversal that’d resolve the widespread issue of text messaging compatibility between iPhones and Android smartphones. But, as Manish reports, the company stopped short of eliminating what’s known colloquially as “green bubble” dread; messages from Android phones will still be displayed as green bubbles on iOS.

Fraud conviction: Mike Rothenberg, an ex-VC known for hosting lavish parties, was convicted late last Friday on 21 counts for defrauding investors. The verdict, delivered by a jury in Northern California, bookends a 10-year journey for Rothenberg, who burst onto the Bay Area scene in 2013 at age 27 with a $5 million fund and enough charm to persuade TechCrunch that his one-man firm was special enough to merit coverage.

Vogt quits Cruise: Kyle Vogt, the serial entrepreneur who co-founded and led Cruise from a startup in a garage through its acquisition and ownership by General Motors, resigned over the past week — as did Cruise executive and co-founder Dan Kan. The shakeup comes less than a month after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s permits to operate self-driving vehicles on public roads following an accident that saw a pedestrian run over and dragged 20 feet by the AV.

Lawsuit over X ads: Media Matters last Thursday published an article with screenshots showing ads from IBM, Apple, Oracle and others appearing next to hateful content on Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter. Musk has filed a lawsuit alleging defamation by the news organization. But the suit appears to confirm the very thing it claims is defamatory, reports Devin.

Google’s secret Spotify deal: A Google executive said during testimony in the Epic versus Google trial that a deal with Spotify allows the audio company to bypass Play Store fees, as first reported by The Verge. Don Harrison, Google’s head of partnership, said that Spotify pays no fees when it processes its own payments and pays a measly 4% fee when Google processes them — and that both companies have committed to put $50 million each in a “success fund.”

Binance CEO faces federal charges: Changpeng Zhao, also known as “CZ,” the founder and CEO of Binance, is stepping down and has pleaded guilty to a number of charges brought on through the Department of Justice and other U.S. agencies. The world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance has agreed to pay about $4.3 billion to resolve the DOJ’s investigations, the agency said in a press release late on Tuesday.

The price of privacy: End-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal has put out an interesting overview of the costs required to develop and maintain its pro-privacy systems that shield user data from tracking by default. The blog post, penned by Signal president Meredith Whittaker and developer Joshua Lund, reveals that the firm currently spends around $14 million per year on infrastructure to run the private messaging service and a further $19 million per year on staff costs. That totals $33 million to keep the lights on.

Audio

With Thanksgiving happening this week, mayhaps you’re in need of podcasts to muffle the sound of inter-family kerfuffles and sportsball games. (I know I am.) Fortunately, TechCrunch has plenty in its stable to choose from.

Equity published two — count ’em, two — episodes this week. The first recaps OpenAI’s wild weekend, from the firing of Sam Altman through the latest activity (as of November 20). The second — featuring former Equity host Matthew Lynley, Alex and yours truly — considers what the latest OpenAI twists and turns may bring for startup founders.

Meanwhile, Found had Studs co-founders and good friends Lisa Bubbers and Anna Harman talk about their ear-piercing business, which aims to help Gen Zers and millennials create their “dream earscapes” with piercing studios opening across the country.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

Pay attention to what happened with OpenAI’s board: Dominic-Madori takes a critical look at the unusual structure of OpenAI’s board, which was technically part of a nonprofit with control over the for-profit division of OpenAI. In her words: “If this company structure gives you the ick, you’re not alone.”

Who would’ve guessed the powerful folk would win the AI fight? One way to think about the OpenAI shakeup of the last few days is that a nonprofit board with a specific mission felt like one of the company’s leaders was not working toward those goals. So they canned him. Another way to think about it, Alex colorfully writes, is that “a bunch of yahoos who had no idea what they were doing executed a power play against the real engine of value at their company, and were canned in response.”

OpenAI and the dangers of vendor lock-in: The companies that chose a flexible approach over depending on a single AI model vendor must be feeling pretty good after all the OpenAI drama, Ron writes. If there’s any objective lesson to be learned from all this, he says, it’s that it’s never, ever a good idea to go with a single vendor.

Hey, folks, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering the past week (or so) in tech industry happenings. This week marked OpenAI’s first-ever dev conference, where the Microsoft-backed AI startup announced a host of new products. But that was far from the only item of note.

In this edition of WiR, we spotlight Brian’s review of the 16-inch M3 Max MacBook Air and M3 iMac 24-inch; Mozilla betting on a decentralized social networking future; Ford shuttering a company that was building an app for plumbers, electricians and other trades; and Tim Cook’s thoughts on generative AI. Also on the agenda is WeWork officially filing for bankruptcy, Bumble getting a new CEO, and the spectacular failure of EV startup Arrival.

It’s a lot to get through, as always — so we won’t delay. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

Most read

OpenAI throws a dev day: OpenAI hosted its first-ever developer conference on Monday, and the company had a lot to talk about. Some of the more notable items announced were tools to create custom “GPTs” (i.e., domain-specific chatbots), new text-to-speech models, an API for the text-to-image model DALL-E 3, and an improved version of OpenAI’s flagship model, GPT-4, called GPT-4 Turbo.

Mac attack: Brian reviewed Apple’s new 16-inch M3 Max MacBook Pro and the M3 iMac 24-inch. He found the iMac to be lacking and not necessarily worth the upgrade from the 2021 model, excepting the M3 chip, which brings “impressive” performance gains over the already-powerful M1. As for the M3 Max MacBook Pro, Brian reports that, at $2,500 (plus some pricey add-ons), it successfully splits the difference between the Mac Studio and MacBook Air.

Mozilla bets on a decentralized future: Sarah spoke with Mozilla senior director of content Carolyn O’Hara, who outlined Mozilla’s strategy where it concerns the “fediverse” — a collection of decentralized social networking applications, like Mastodon, that communicate with one another over the ActivityPub protocol. The idea, O’Hara said, is to rethink social networking from the ground up.

Ford shutters SaaS app for field work: Ford has shut down VIIZR, a software-as-a-service company that, along with Salesforce, built an app to help tradespeople like plumbers, locksmiths and electricians to schedule field appointments, send invoices and manage customers, Kirsten reports. VIIZR, which was announced in December 2021, was a separate company majority owned by Ford, with Salesforce as a minority investor.

Apple bets on generative AI: Apple CEO Tim Cook pushed back against the notion that the company was behind in AI on Apple’s Q4 earnings call with investors, as he highlighted technology developments that Apple had made recently that “would not be possible without AI.” Cook also said that Apple was working on generative AI technologies, lending credence to reports suggesting the company is on track to spend $1 billion per year on developing generative AI products.

WeWork goes bust: As predicted, flexible office-space firm WeWork has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing over $18.6 billion of debt in a remarkable collapse for the once high-flying startup co-founded by Adam Neumann and bankrolled by SoftBank, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.

Slack’s loss, Bumble’s gain: Dating app Bumble announced a doozy this week: It’s replacing founder CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd with Slack CEO Lidiane Jones. Jones only started as CEO at Slack last year, stepping in for another founder CEO, Stewart Butterfield. Ron and Sarah write that — while Bumble now has a clear line of succession — the move leaves Slack in a bit of a pickle.

Arrival fails to deliver: Arrival set out eight years ago to make electric vehicle production “radically more efficient.” So far, its plan to forgo the gigafactory for local microfactories has proved anything but, writes Harri — thanks to missed production targets, low cash reserves, layoffs and a pivot.

Audio

It’s winter, it ain’t getting warmer (at least here in NYC), and I’d argue that there’s no better place to be than snuggled up indoors with a podcast for company. If you’re in need of material, TechCrunch has a few that should definitely be on your radar.

This week on Equity, the crew dove deep into the encouraging signs from the fintech startup market, starting with Klarna’s Q3 results. From there, they looked at buy now, pay later consumer behavior and fintech fundraising results with a 2021 flavor.

Meanwhile, Found featured Nasrat Khalid of Aseel, which started as an e-commerce company making it possible for local artisans in Afghanistan to sell to customers across the world. It has evolved into working in humanitarian aid, delivering emergency food supplies to people in need in Afghanistan and Turkey.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

Another superconductor disappointment: Tim writes that a new, supposedly room-temperature superconducting material isn’t what the scientific community hoped it would be. With the Nature-published paper detailing the material facing retraction, the odds of researchers discovering a room-temperature superconductor are looking even longer.

Klarna inches toward an IPO: Mary Ann and Alex write that Swedish fintech Klarna is taking steps toward an eventual IPO. The company has initiated a process for a legal entity restructuring to set up a holding company in the U.K. as an important early step in its plans for an initial public offering, a Klarna spokesperson tells TechCrunch+.

The unicorn’s legacy isn’t over: It’s been 10 years since Cowboy Ventures’ founder Aileen Lee coined an incredibly catchy nickname for what were very rare startups at the time: Unicorns. TechCrunch+ spoke with Lee about how she feels about the term 10 years later, now that her venture firm is also a decade old.

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering the past week in happenings around the tech sphere. Winter’s finally arrived, judging by the NYC weather outside my window — and a winter of a sort might be descending on the tech industry, too, as it unfortunately turns out.

This edition of WiR covers tech layoffs coming back with a vengeance, internet access in Gaza collapsing, everything announced during Apple’s Halloween event and CCleaner’s customer database getting hacked. Also on the roster is WeWork filing for bankruptcy, Anthropic raising $2 billion from Google, Costco selling surveillance equipment and X’s (i.e., Twitter’s) valuation plummeting by 56%.

It’s a lot to get through, so let’s jump to it. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

Most read

Layoffs are back: For his column this week, Haje writes that, despite signs of economic recovery and predictions of avoiding a recession, tech companies continue to lay off employees. Experts suggest that while the macroeconomics are improving, the recovery process remains slow — leading many companies to brace for what they anticipate will be a long period of sluggishness.

Gaza internet collapses: As the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, infrastructure is crumbling in Gaza. Last Friday, internet monitoring firm NetBlocks wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the Palestinian internet service and telecommunications providers NetStream and Paltel had collapsed, resulting in a “total or near-total” internet blackout in the region.

Apple event recap: In lighter news, Apple announced a slew of new products during its Halloween event this week, including an updated MacBook Pro, iMac and the M3, its latest in-house chip family. Among other items of note, Apple did away with the Touch Bar on the new 14-inch MacBook Pro and upgraded the iMac’s screen with a 4.5K retina display and a six-speaker system supporting both Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio.

CCleaner hacked: The maker of the popular desktop optimization app CCleaner has confirmed that hackers stole a trove of personal information, including names and contact information, about its paying customers following a data breach in May. In an email sent to customers, Gen Digital, the multinational software company that owns CCleaner, said that the hackers exploited a vulnerability in the widely used MOVEit file transfer tool.

WeWork bankruptcy imminent: WeWork is on the verge of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New Jersey, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal. If WeWork does indeed file, it shouldn’t come as a shock to close followers of the flexible workspace provider, Mary Ann writes — WeWork warned in August in its second-quarter earnings that “substantial doubt exists about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

Anthropic raises billions more: Google has reportedly invested $2 billion in Anthropic, the AI startup founded by ex-OpenAI execs, according to The Wall Street Journal. The deal comes shortly after Amazon committed to as much as $4 billion in Anthropic. As Devin reports, this is just the latest in a developing proxy war between rival tech giants with a limited number of AI champions to back.

Costco keeps selling spy cameras: Two U.S. lawmakers this week asked retail giant Costco why it continues to sell surveillance equipment made by Lorex — despite warnings of cybersecurity risks and links to human rights abuses. The bipartisan letter dated October 31, sent by Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ, 4th) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), said Costco’s continued sale of Lorex products is “all the more puzzling” given several of its retail rivals have long discontinued selling the technology.

X’s valuation nosedives: X, the company formerly known as Twitter, is valuing itself at $19 billion, per internal documents obtained by Fortune. When Elon Musk bought the company one year ago this week, he paid about $44 billion — or $54.20 per share — for the microblogging platform. Amanda notes that the internal valuation marks about a 56% decrease in X’s value over the last 12 months, which needless to say doesn’t look too good.

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There’s few better companions as the cold weather encroaches than a podcast — preferably one accompanied by a hot beverage. To round out your playlist, consider TechCrunch’s stable of quality programming.

Equity this week featured Marisa Warren, the co-founder and managing partner at Aliavia Ventures, which invests in startups based in the U.S. and Australia that have at least one female founder and helps their portfolio companies tackle new markets.

On Found, the crew spoke with Abhi Ramesh, the CEO and founder of Misfits Market, a grocery startup that sells surplus and unwanted produce directly to consumers who don’t mind funny-looking foods. They talked about how Ramesh started the company in his apartment, handling every aspect from personally buying the unwanted produce from the farms to storing the food to packaging and shipping — all while running the website and trying to fundraise.

And Chain Reaction recapped the end of the trial for Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of FTX, who’s facing seven charges related to fraud and money laundering.

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TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

“Unicorns” come full circle: Alex writes about how, roughly ten years ago, Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee penned a column for TechCrunch that brought the term “unicorn” into the world. Lee’s column helped the world categorize startups in a new way — but it was also a sign of the times to come.

Making wind power cheaper: Tim reports on AirLoom, a startup that aims to halve the cost of wind power with a novel turbine design that’s vertically oriented as opposed to horizontal.

A sports accelerator: Ron covers Comcast’s relatively new sports-startup-focused accelerator, the Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech Accelerator, which finds startups that might bring innovation to Comcast’s sports league partners while giving the young firms access to Comcast’s media resources — and the sports leagues themselves.

Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that highlights notable tech industry happenings over the past few days. Life moves pretty fast, as a young Matthew Broderick once said — we empathize. Fortunately, there’s WiR to get you caught up to speed.

In this edition of WiR, we cover a hacker leaking millions of 23andMe customer records, X’s crackdown on porn, Meta’s Ray-Ban sunglasses and Marc Andreessen’s tone-deaf manifesto. Also on the agenda is the IRS’ upcoming free direct tax filing service, Web Summit’s fight with Israel supporters, FTX execs blowing through billions of dollars and Disney’s Hotstar reaching new heights.

It’s a lot to get through, so let’s not dillydally. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already done so.

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Hackers leak more 23andMe records: The same hacker who leaked a trove of user data stolen from the genetic testing company 23andMe two weeks ago has now published millions of new records on the dark web, Lorenzo reports. A 23andMe spokesperson tells TechCrunch that the company was made aware of the new leak this week and is “reviewing the data to determine if it is legitimate.”

Meta’s new smart glasses: Brian reviewed Meta’s new Ray-Ban sunglasses, which maintain a slim and light design while rendering their predecessor obsolete with Facebook and Instagram livestreaming. The verdict? One can see the future of head-worn computing in the $299 sunglasses, Brian writes, which sport a mic and virtual assistant in addition to livestreaming features — but it’s going to be a while before we get there.

X cracks down on porn: When X, formerly Twitter, launched paid subscription verification, some sex workers hoped that it would help them advertise to new clients. But paying for the service didn’t protect them from X’s crackdown on explicit content, which has come as a particularly hard blow for sex workers on X — who have few options to promote themselves elsewhere — as the social network’s traffic reportedly declines, Morgan writes.

Andreessen misses the point: Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen posted a manifesto on the a16z website this week, calling for “techno-optimism” in a frenzied, 5,000-word blog post that somehow manages to re-invent Reaganomics, propose the colonization of outer space and unironically answer a question with the phrase “QED.” In this post, TechCrunch issued a rebuttal of sorts to the more tone-deaf points.

Free, gov-sponsored tax filing comes to the U.S.: The IRS will test a free tax filing service in 2024 for a subset of lucky taxpayers in as many as 13 states, the agency announced earlier this week. Direct File, as the service is called, is a shot across the bows of TurboTax, H&R Block and other paid tax prep services, whose owners have resisted free and simple tax filing for decades.

Web Summit suffers for its founder’s politics: Web Summit, the Big Tech conference brand that runs events in several cities and whose 70,000 person flagship event in Lisbon is taking place next month, is running into a wall — of outrage. Ingrid writes that founders, investors and others from the tech community in Israel have gone ballistic over comments made by the founder and figurehead of Web Summit, Paddy Cosgrave, related to the fighting underway across Israel and Gaza — specifically his criticism of Israel’s retaliatory actions.

FTX founders burned through billions: Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives spent $8 billion worth of customer funds on real estate, venture capital investments, campaign donations, endorsement deals and even a sports stadium, according to testimony from former senior FTX executive Nishad Singh. Singh’s testimony, which kicked off the third week of Bankman-Fried’s trial, provides fresh details of exactly where that money went.

Hotstar sets a global streaming record: A high-profile cricket match between neighbors India and Pakistan delivered a much-needed break for Disney’s Hotstar this past week, writes Manish, which has lost over 20 million subscribers in the past three quarters and whose executives are anticipated to soon intensify the hunt to find a buyer for its India operations. On Saturday, Hotstar drew 35 million concurrent viewers to the cricket match, surpassing the recent record of 32 million viewers set by Viacom18’s JioCinema.

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Short a podcast for the morning commute? Look no further than TechCrunch’s lineup, which has plenty on tap from which to choose.

On Equity, Gené Teare from Crunchbase and Crunchbase News joined to discuss what we should think about the Q3 2023 venture capital market as a whole and which startups are seeing the most — and the least — capital. Teare is a well-known analyst of the global venture capital market and was instrumental to Crunchbase’s early life and remains one of its more tenured staffers.

Found featured a conversation with Hilary Mason from Hidden Door, an AI-driven narrative game engine. This mini-episode, which was recorded in person at TechCrunch Disrupt, demystifies how generative AI is changing online gaming, the process of building a team of creatives and what fundraising is like in the gaming space.

And Chain Reaction hosted Katherine Dowling, the general counsel and chief compliance officer at Bitwise Asset Management, a crypto asset manager known for creating the world’s largest crypto index fund. Katherine previously worked in compliance at True Capital Management and Luminate Capital Partners and, before that, as the assistant U.S. attorney.

TechCrunch+

TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

Is now the time to raise again?: Rebecca writes about how some early-stage founders are optimistic about raising VC capital again — but not all of them, drawing on data from a January Ventures survey of pre-seed and seed-stage founders.

A fair price for Loom: Last week, when Atlassian announced its intent to acquire video messaging app Loom for $975 million, it would have been easy to think that the former unicorn was undervalued. But comparing 2021 valuations to the reality of 2023 really isn’t a fair way of looking at the recent deal, Alex and Ron write.

Plaid inches toward an IPO: News that startup Plaid hired a CFO has kicked off a round of “When will it go public?” chatter. The answer is not soon, something that we can infer from the fact that it only just hired a CFO. Still, hiring C-suite financial talent is a known step on the well-trod path from private startup to public company, reports Alex.