TechCrunch Industry News

Bluesky is having a moment — a moment that’s already stretched on for nearly three months. Over the summer, the social media app saw a wave of new signups in Brazil after X (formerly Twitter) was temporarily banned there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’re an hourly worker, the number of go-to options you have for finding new jobs is shrinking a little. JobGet — a Boston startup that operates an hourly job-hunting site with social features built in, a la LinkedIn — is acquiring Snagajob, one of its rivals in the U.S. market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Social networking rivals continue to benefit from the user exodus from X. Spill, the social app founded by two former Twitter employees, released a statement claiming it has also seen a jump in users after the U.S. Presidential election, following similar news by Bluesky, which gained more than 2 million users during that time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotify announced on Wednesday that it will start paying podcast hosts who make popular videos on its streaming platform, as the company looks to take on YouTube’s dominance in the video podcast space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

PayPal is launching a few features that let users in groups pool money with friends or family, to collectively pay for trips, travels, gifts, and anything else. The company is launching this feature in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Italy, and Spain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Many feared that the 2024 election would be affected, and perhaps decided, by AI-generated disinformation. While there was some to be found, it was far less than anticipated. But don’t let that fool you: the disinfo threat is real — you’re just not the target. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The future of aircraft may look very similar to today’s superficially — but under the hood (or sitting next to the tailfins) they will likely be quite different. That’s the future NASA is hoping to nurture with five research awards worth $11.5 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Red Hat, the IBM-owned open source software firm, is acquiring Neural Magic, a startup that optimizes AI algorithms to run on commodity processors. The transaction is subject to applicable regulatory reviews and other customary closing conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s an AI chip battle brewing among the major cloud vendors. Google’s Trillium, a custom chip for training and running AI models, recently entered preview, and Microsoft’s Maia is expected to follow in short order. Not to be outdone, Amazon Web Services has AI chips, too: Trainium, Inferentia, and Graviton. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the years, numerous startups have gained traction by designing, making and selling standing desks as part of a workspace innovation trend to promote better health, and a lot of executives swear by them, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, who once called sitting “the new cancer.”; Social network X has so far limited its AI chatbot Grok (built by Elon Musk’s other company xAI) to its premium, paying users. However, the platform is seemingly preparing to open up the chatbot to free users; After a chip manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company was found inside a Huawei processor, the US Department of Commerce has ordered the company to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers, according to a report in Reuters; Former Apple engineer Alex Ruber and former Twitter and Asana engineer Parth Chopra first met on Y Combinator’s founder match platform, then met in person at a thrift store for shopping. They later went on a thrift store shopping trip where they talked about solving problems with finding the right product in the online space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A founder who was an early mover in the race to build autonomous vehicles has raised $15 million for his next act: a startup that claims its AI can write enterprise software on its own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What’s the secret to success? It isn’t any of the trends that so many founders in Silicon Valley subscribe to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The PRESS Act would protect a journalist's sources, and gained unanimous bipartisan support when passed by the House in January. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic today announced that it’s teaming up with Palantir, the data-mining company, and Amazon Web Services to provide U.S. intelligence and defense agencies access to Anthropic’s Claude 3 and 3.5 family of AI models. The news comes as a growing number of AI vendors, for strategic and revenue-related reasons, look to ink deals with U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Tuesday it will be taking action against the online cash app and neobank Dave, which it says used “misleading marketing to deceive consumers.” At issue is how Dave marketed $500 cash advances to consumers that it rarely offered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By now, there’s hardly a coder in the world who isn’t using an AI copilot in some way. But using GitHub Copilot or Cursor.AI to ask technical questions and get debugging help could be just the beginning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It seems Lyft is hoping to catch up to Uber’s string of autonomous vehicle partnerships. Lyft announced Wednesday three separate partnerships — with startup May Mobility, automated driving company Mobileye and smart dashcam firm Nexar — all aimed at establishing a foothold in the emerging autonomous vehicle market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Move cautiously and red-team things” is sadly not as catchy as “move fast and break things.” But three AI safety advocates made it clear to startup founders that going too fast can lead to ethical issues in the long run. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Most AI benchmarks don’t tell us much. They ask questions that can be solved with rote memorization, or cover topics that aren’t relevant to the majority of users. So some AI enthusiasts are turning to games as a way to test AIs’ problem-solving skills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Go to TechCrunch.com for more tech stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Can the U.S. meaningfully regulate AI? It’s not at all clear yet. Policymakers have achieved progress in recent months, but they’ve also had setbacks, illustrating the challenging nature of laws imposing guardrails on the technology. In March, Tennessee became the first state to protect voice artists from unauthorized AI cloning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google Maps is getting new features powered by Gemini, Google’s generative AI model. On Thursday the company announced incoming updates that will allow Google Maps users in the U.S. to tap into AI to help them find new places to visit and answer questions about different locations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two mobile operating systems currently comprise nearly 100% of the global smartphone market. Building one is hard, and for most phone makers, there are better uses of resources, especially when Android is right there for the taking Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Space executives took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday to talk about the challenges and opportunities of building out dual-use technology, or tech that has both a defense and a commercial use case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The European Union has expanded its scrutiny of online marketplaces by opening a formal proceeding on Chinese low cost ecommerce platform, Temu, under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Commission announced Thursday. Enforcers of the online governance framework will now dial up their oversight of Temu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new startup setting out to combat the scourge of deepfakes and spoofed evidence in the age of AI is showing off its wares on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Luna, a health and well-being app for teen girls that is designed to help them navigate teenhood. The app lets teens ask questions about their health and wellness and get responses from experts. It also lets them track their periods, moods, and skin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The focus of the new $100 million fund, Crosscut’s sixth, will include energy and power, space and underwater exploration, advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, and security and defense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Buzzy calendar apps tend to make a big splash and disappear after a while. Sometimes they get acquired, sometimes the company pivots to something else. That’s not the case with Fantastical, a popular calendar app for macOS, iOS, and other Apple platforms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

McDonald’s ice cream machines have developed a lousy reputation for being broken when you visit the restaurant, largely due to strict copyright laws that only permit specially licensed technicians to legally repair them. The manufacturers have to license each technician, and they put locks on the McFlurry machines to prevent others from repairing them; A federal jury ruled Friday that Masimo smartwatches infringed Apple patents, but Apple isn’t getting a big payday. Bloomberg Law reports that the company was only seeking the statutory minimum of $250, and that’s all it was awarded; a few months after acquiring equity management company Easop, Remote, an HR platform for managing geographically distributed teams, is doubling down on its focus on managing equity compensation with a new product, Remote Equity. Remote already makes it easy for companies to work with talent all around the globe; Authorities have gained 'full access' to the servers used by the two notorious infostealers; The popularity of an Instagram video can affect its actual video quality: According to Adam Mosseri (the Meta executive who leads Instagram and Threads), videos that are more popular get shown in higher quality, while less popular videos get shown in lower quality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

World models, also known as world simulators, are being touted by some as the next big thing in AI. AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has raised $230 million to build “large world models,” and DeepMind hired one of the creators of OpenAI’s video generator, Sora, to work on “world simulators.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Scout Motors, the Volkswagen Group spinoff, unveiled Thursday two EVs it hopes will hook American customers with modern-meets-rugged styling that downplays digital and embraces the mechanical. The catch? The company will also offer variants to its all-electric Scout Traveler SUV and Scout Terra Truck that will come equipped with a built-in gas-powered generator. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The war in Ukraine has shown that warfare changes by the day. It’s also clear that the tech used to make war today is costly: While larger countries can afford legions of tanks, helicopters, and precision-strike systems, smaller nations find themselves scrambling for cheaper ways to defend themselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brands often rely on scraping the web and monitoring social media to understand what customers are saying about them and get insights for product development. Cafeteria is a startup that wants to connect brands to their most opinionated customers: teens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The co-founders who sold their last startup to Spotify are working on a new project: an AI-powered educational startup called Oboe backed by a $4 million seed investment. The new company, hailing from Nir Zicherman and Michael Mignano, aims to democratize access to learning the way that their prior startup, Anchor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

3D printing objects using metal is a well-established technique, but it tends to be too complex, expensive, or imprecise to match traditional methods at scale. Armed with $14 million from Nvidia and Boeing, Freeform aims to change that, building a new metal additive printing process that they say changes the game Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic has released an updated version of its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model with a new Computer Use feature that can interact with apps on a PC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the creator economy is growing rapidly, brand partnerships remain one of the prime ways creators can earn money. Other services like link-in-bio apps with affiliate links or Pateron-like subscriptions become secondary ways to increase creators’ income. For platforms and startup, the biggest challenge remains to match brands and creators for collaboration Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week’s cover of WSJ Magazine is extremely minimalistic. That’s not surprising given that the main story is an in-depth interview with Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple and the king of minimalistic design; Instagram and Threads accounts that track the private jets of celebrities – including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Kylie Jenner – were suspended on Monday, according to the owner of many such accounts, Florida college student, Jack Sweeney. Links to Instagram/Threads accounts tracking the flights of the former President; Zoom is partnering with Suki, an AI medical note-taking app, to let doctors use an AI scribe that will take notes of their consultations with patients; Earlier this year, Medal, a startup known for its video game clipping features, launched a cross-platform AI assistant called Highlight. Now, the company is spinning off Highlight into a new entity, which has raised $10 million in a funding round. General Catalyst led the funding round with Valor, SV Angel, and Conviction Embed Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meta is expanding tests of facial recognition as an anti-scam measure to combat celebrity scam ads and more broadly, the Facebook owner announced Monday. Monika Bickert, Meta’s VP of content policy, wrote in a blog post that some of the tests aim to bolster its existing anti-scam measures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI search engine Perplexity is in fundraising talks and hopes to raise around $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. If a deal happens with those terms, it would more than double Perplexity’s valuation from its $3 billion valuation when it raised from SoftBank over the summer; Uber and Lyft need to do more to support disabled passengers, especially those who are blind or visually impaired, according to protesters who gathered outside the companies’ headquarters on October 15; Drone-maker DJI filed a lawsuit Friday against the US Department of Defense over its inclusion on a DoD list of “Chinese military companies.” A DJI spokesperson said the company filed the suit after “attempting to engage with the DoD for more than sixteen months” and deciding “it had no alternative other than to seek relief; AI companies claim to have robust safety checks in place that ensure that models don’t say or do weird, illegal, or unsafe stuff. But what if the models were capable of evading those checks and, for some reason, trying to sabotage or mislead users? Turns out they can do this, according to Anthropic researchers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI quietly published a statement on its website pledging not to use its patents offensively. Asserting its commitment to the principles of “broad access” and “collaboration,” OpenAI said that it would only use its patents in a way that supports innovation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Worldcoin, the Sam Altman co-founded “proof of personhood” crypto startup that scans people’s eyeballs, announced on Thursday that it dropped the “coin” from its name and is now just “World.” The startup also unveiled its next generation of iris-scanning “Orb” and other tools at a live event in San Francisco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instagram is introducing a series of new safety features to protect users from sextortion scammers, the company announced on Thursday. Most notably, the company is no longer going to allow people to screenshot or screen record ephemeral images or videos sent in private messages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amy Wu, founder of the AI-based mental health app Manifest, has a bold prediction for the next wave of tech. “Separately from the AI trend, I think so many people are seeing this loneliness epidemic that’s happening with Gen Z,” she said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The United Kingdom’s NHS — the world’s largest public health service — is working on creaking IT infrastructure. In any sector, that’s a ticking time bomb. But when you consider that the NHS holds medical records for nearly 67 million people, a breach of that system could become a meltdown; Sophia Tung set up a livestream this past summer, showing self-driving Waymo cars honking from the San Francisco parking lot near her apartment at all hours of the night; Meta’s X rival Threads is rolling out a new “activity status” feature that will let you see when someone on the social network is online. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the feature on Tuesday in a Threads post, noting that it’s meant to act as “a way to help you find others to engage with; and if you like open-source, decentralized social networks that put the power in the hands of the people instead of billionaires, you can now support that cause…by buying toys. On Tuesday, Mastodon, a decentralized alternative to X, began selling its own merchandise in the form of cute, plushie mastodons – the proto-elephants with long tusks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

During Tesla’s much-hyped robotaxi reveal event last week, CEO Elon Musk said he expects Tesla to release an “unsupervised” version of FSD, the automaker’s advanced driver assistance system, in Texas and California in 2025 on certain Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

During Tesla’s “We, Robot” event last week, which TechCrunch covered late into the night,, sources on the ground sent me a handful of videos of the automaker’s Optimus humanoid robots walking around the party, dancing, mixing drinks, and talking to guests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With the deal, Google joins Microsoft and Amazon in turning to nuclear power to satiate its thirst for electricity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The telecom industry is undergoing its greatest period of disruption since the telegraph, as companies work to open up space as the next frontier for communications. French startup Constellation hopes to take part by repurposing 5G tech to provide a Starlink-like satellite broadband that uses telecoms’ existing assets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices