X CEO Linda Yaccarino is publicly backing Elon Musk after he explicitly said “go fuck yourself” to advertisers leaving X during an onstage interview yesterday at the New York Times DealBook Summit. Musk, who in recent days has endorsed antisemitic content on the platform alongside other conspiracy theories, like the debunked Pizzagate, has threatened lawsuits
Month: November 2023
Everyone talks a good game, but fewer than 1% of founders mention ‘sustainability’ in their fundraising docs Haje Jan Kamps 10 hours When I talked to hundreds of founders at TechCrunch Disrupt this year, everybody seemed to be in a broad consensus that climate change is a bad thing. But still it seems like it
Wombo, the makers of viral AI-generated art app Dream by Wombo, is back with another new AI-powered app called Wombo Me. The new AI avatar app from the Canadian startup lets you turn a single selfie into multiple lifelike avatars. Although there are several popular AI avatar apps already on the market, like Lensa AI, Wombo
It’s officially been one year since ChatGPT launched, taking the world by storm as the research preview turned into an everyday tool that brought AI chatbot technology to mainstream users. A large part of that effort was driven by the release of the ChatGPT mobile app, whose May 2023 launch on iOS put the chatbot
Your move, Linda. Elon Musk said “go fuck yourself” to advertisers who recently paused spending on X after he endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory on the platform. Onstage at the DealBook conference, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked the X owner about these pauses in advertising. Musk replied, “Don’t advertise.” “You don’t want them to advertise?” Sorkin
Tesla is moving forward with the long-awaited launch of its Cybertruck electric pickup. The boxy vehicle is Tesla’s first new model since 2020, when it started delivering the Model Y. Yet, Cybertruck’s initial debut predates that moment; Tesla CEO Elon Musk showed off an early version of the pickup at a memorable 2019 event, when
Businesses will never not (forgive the double negative) push to improve efficiency. It’s their commercial imperative. Sometimes, that takes the form of budget cuts. Other times, it’s more drastic — e.g. layoffs or hiring freezes. But Binny Gill, the co-founder of Kognitos, makes the case that companies can have their cake and eat it too
Days after a privacy complaint was lodged against Meta in the European Union over its latest controversial shift of legal basis claimed for processing people’s data for ads, consumer groups across the region are filing their own complaints about what the tracking giant is up to. A coalition of almost 20 consumer protection organizations is united
Both Apple and Google today announced their best apps and games of the year, with the hiking and biking companion AllTrails winning as Apple’s iPhone App of the Year in 2023, while the educational app Imprint: Learn Visually won as Google Play’s best app. Meanwhile, Apple and Google agreed on their Game of the Year,
If you weren’t already buying the Reddit IPO rumors, the internet’s beating heart of deeply niche microcultures just introduced a rebrand, refreshing its iconic logo and rolling out some new visual vibes. Reddit’s most obvious visual update is a new design for Snoo, the anthropomorphic red and white robot mascot synonymous with Reddit since its
For more than 25 years, ecologists have been desperately trying to prove the economic worth of the world’s ecosystems, hoping that a markets-based approach would slow the destruction of the natural world. Forests, the world’s largest terrestrial ecosystem, have played a central role in that. People have long valued them for their lumber and the
There’s been a debate of sorts in AI circles about which database is more important in finding truthful information in generative AI applications: graph or vector databases. AWS decided to leave the debate to others by combining the best of both capabilities in a new service announced today at AWS re:Invent called Neptune Analytics. Swami
Tumblr’s ill-fated Post+ subscription service is shutting down, the company announced late on Monday. The service, which allowed creators to paywall select content for subscribers only, will no longer be an option Tumblr users can enable as of December 1st and will fully shut down in early 2024, when existing Post+ content will be set
GoMetro, a South African tech company that operates in the fleet management space, has raised £9 million (~$11.4 million) in a Series A funding round led by Zenobē Energy, a strategic investor renowned for financing and operating electric buses. Zenobē Energy also engages in large-scale battery projects for wind farms, with the U.K.’s National Grid
Many companies are trying to use AI chatbots (beyond ChatGPT) in different industries — especially in the consumer sector. UK-based startup Layla is banking on this trend to build an eponymous chatbot (along with an app) that suggests new travel destinations. It can also help them when it comes to bookings. The company was started
What will come first: the heat death of the universe or Reddit’s IPO? It appears the self-professed “front page of the internet” is once again gearing up for a public offering, Bloomberg reports. Back in 2017, the company aimed to go public by 2020, then wound up filing privately to do that in late 2021,
“When is a bot a person?,” my colleague Kirsten asked after I learned that Polestar’s climate bot is more human than machine. Polestar launched its “Truth Bot” on X (formerly Twitter) ahead of COP28, the UN climate conference overseen by an oil executive. The Truth Bot replies to misleading tweets about the climate crisis and
In one of the largest studies ever on mental health and internet use, the Oxford Internet Institute has declared that there is no “smoking gun” linking the internet with psychological harm. Professors Andrew Przybylski and Matti Vuorre studied data from two million people aged 15 to 89 in 168 countries, finding that in the last
Adalytics’ report contains a long list of the advertisers whose Google search ads it reports being able to observe displayed on US Treasury OFAC SDN sanctioned, Iranian, and/or pornographic websites — including the following public bodies, companies, organizations and politicians: The United States Treasury; the European Commission; political fundraising search ad campaigns for Senator Ted
The rise of generative AI opens up a massive new market for the large cloud providers, but it’s also a bit of a reset. Unlike the rise of containers, for example, generative AI is an entirely new market. Some players who have long lagged behind in the overall cloud market — like Google — are
Meta’s shiny new bid to circumvent European Union privacy rules — by offering users a false choice between paying it a hefty monthly subscription for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram or agreeing to give up their privacy rights in exchange for free access to its social networks, meaning they will be tracked and profiled
Many legal tech startups streamline manual workflow for lawyers, and some legal tech companies provide tech solutions centered around intellectual property (IP). Among them is a startup called Solve Intelligence, which builds AI software specialized for patent attorneys to write drafts for IP analysis and generation. Solve Intelligence, a Delaware-based legal tech startup, has raised
Social media giant Reddit is once again reportedly testing the IPO waters. Bloomberg reported on Monday that Reddit “is holding talks with potential investors for an initial public offering.” The San Francisco-based company, co-founded by Steve Huffman, Aaron Swartz and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, is considering going public as early as the first quarter, sources
Biotech and AI startup Cradle is finding success with its generative approach to protein design, landing big customers and a hefty $24 million of new investment. The company exited stealth a little over a year ago, just as the hype around large language models was really heating up. Many AI companies in biotech train models
A newly unredacted version of the multi-state lawsuit against Meta alleges a troubling pattern of deception and minimization in how the company handles kids under 13 on its platforms. Internal documents appear to show that the company’s approach to this ostensibly forbidden demographic is far more laissez-faire than it has publicly claimed. The lawsuit, filed
Dbrand, a company that makes gadget skins, sued competitor Casetify last week in a Canadian court over a set of stolen skin designs. The brand is seeking multi-million dollars in damages as part of the lawsuit. In a series of posts on X, Dbrand described how Casetify allegedly copied elements from a series of accessory
Google today introduced new tools for website owners, including those running social media sites and discussion forums, who want to better elevate their content in Google’s search results. The feature follows Google’s reprioritization of user-generated web content over SEO-optimized junk, which has increasingly become a problem on today’s modern web. In May, Google first rolled
A lot of the buzz these days in artificial intelligence is around generative AI and how AI is being used to accelerate software and products for consumers. Today, a AI startup called PhysicsX, co-founded by two theoretical physicists — including a Formula One engineering superstar — is emerging from stealth with a very specific focus
Now that the OpenAI leadership saga has died down, startup founders building with AI can get back to work building the future. If that’s you, TechCrunch+ has a pile of notes, opinion pieces and forward-looking stories with your name on them. Sure, TechCrunch+ is a lot more than AI-related coverage, but we are also going
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
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