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Google lays off workers, Tesla cans its Supercharger team and UnitedHealthcare reveals security lapses | TechCrunch

May 5, 2024 1:48 AM0


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.”

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

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.

Autonomous car racing: Tim Stevens dives into the Abu Dhabi racing event that pitted a driverless car against a Formula 1 driver.


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Robotic Automations

Canoo reveals it paid for CEO's jet, AT&T leaks records and X announces NSFW plans | TechCrunch

April 16, 2024 10:49 PM0


Heya, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the noteworthy happenings in tech over the past several days (and change).

Famed startup accelerator Y Combinator had its Demo Days, and the venture desk took it all in with an appropriately skeptical eye. You can read their day one and day two coverage, along with an AI roundup from yours truly and analysis pieces from the rest of the dogged edit team.

But the world didn’t stop turning for YC. Also this week, Microsoft and Quantinuum, a quantum computing startup, made a scientific breakthrough — or so they claim. The companies say that they were able to run thousands of experiments on a quantum computer without a single error, a feat that’s long eluded the industry.

Elsewhere, Apple could be getting into home robots. Reportedly, the company — fresh off its decision to cancel its long-in-the-works autonomous EV — has put Apple Home and AI execs on some form of robotics project for households, although many of the details have yet to be finalized.

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

Canoo paid for its CEO’s jet: Kirsten reports that EV startup Canoo paid the rent for the CEO’s private jet — $1.7 million— in 2023. That’s double the amount of revenue the company generated that year.

AT&T leak: Phone giant AT&T has reset millions of account passcodes after a huge cache of data containing customer records was dumped online earlier this month, Zack reports.

No ChatGPT account required: OpenAI is making its flagship conversational AI, ChatGPT, accessible to everyone — even people who haven’t bothered making an account. But it won’t be quite the same experience. Devin has the story.

Microsoft unbundles: Microsoft has introduced new versions of its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscription services that exclude Teams, its business collaboration chat offering, following scrutiny from European Union regulators and complaints from rival Slack.

Funding

Ghost ghosts: Ghost Autonomy, a startup working on autonomous driving software for automaker partners, has shut down after raising nearly $220 million.

Analysis

Alphabet and HubSpot: Reuters reported on Thursday that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is exploring the possibility of buying Boston-based HubSpot, a CRM and marketing automation company with a market cap of over $33 billion. Ron explains why that’d make for strange bedfellows.

Podcasts

This week on Equity, Alex chatted about BlaBlaCar’s new credit facility (and how it managed to land it), and he discusses how PipeDreams could be onto a clever model of startup construction, GoStudent’s rebound and profitability, Hailo’s chip business and the two new brands that GGV calls home as it divvies up its operations on opposite sides of the Pacific.

And over on Found, Nick Green, the co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market, was the featured guest. Thrive is a membership-based online grocery store that focuses on natural and organic food and household products. Green spoke about how Thrive isn’t just focused on offering healthy options, but also wants to ensure that everyone has access to them — including those with SNAP and EBT benefits. 

Bonus round

NSFW on X: The social media company has confirmed that authorized users on the platform can create NSFW communities, ahead of a change that’ll see all NSFW content on X filtered by default.


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Robotic Automations

Tesla drops prices, Meta confirms Llama 3 release, and Apple allows emulators in the App Store | TechCrunch

April 14, 2024 1:53 AM0


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.


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Robotic Automations

Fisker loses customers' money, Robinhood launches a credit card, and Google generates travel itineraries | TechCrunch

April 13, 2024 9:01 AM0


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.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

Robotic Automations

A CES 2024 preview, 23andMe victim blaming and MIT's obesity-fighting pill | TechCrunch

January 7, 2024 3:10 AM0


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.


Software Development in Sri Lanka

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