It’s that time of year again, folks. Welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular tech digest of the past week. Are you new here? Not to worry – sign up here WiR arrives in your inbox every Saturday, so read on for that week’s recap.
This week we cover Netflix be quiet Basic Plan In Canada, Ends IRL Social App shut down After it turns out that most of the users are fake, Blockbuster product A flipper hacking device.Also in store, TC reports on his Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i dual screen laptopDeepMind’s next chatbot is rival ChatGPT and Robinhood get Credit card startup. Phew.
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Netflix Centers on Basic Plan — in Canada: Netflix has quietly discontinued its $9.99 monthly basic plan for new subscribers in Canada. While this simplifies the streaming company’s offerings, Ivan wrote, it leaves a big gap between ad-supported and standard plans.
Unicorn social apps shut down. Ironically, social apps are in real lifeusers do not exist in reality. An internal investigation by the IRL board found that 95% of the app’s reported 20 million users were due to automation or bots. So after raising over $200 million in venture capital, IRL is shutting down.
Laptop but double: Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i made its official debut at CES earlier this year, drawing both grateful and skeptical eyes. With two 13-inch OLED screens attached by a central hinge, he’s one of the most unusual laptop designs ever to actually go into production. And according to Darrell, it’s the first proof that the dual-screen paradigm works and actually works for many people.
Flippers sell like hot cakes. may have found it by chance Flipper Zero Hacking Device This includes RFID card systems, remote keyless systems, key fobs, entry barriers, and many other ways to manipulate the world around you. The company claims it plans to sell $80 million worth of products this year after the sale. Worth about $5 million in Kickstarter pre-orders — and claims to have sold $25 million worth of devices last year.
Robinhood acquires X1: Robinhood announced on Thursday that it would acquire a fee-free credit card startup X1 in $95 million in cash. Since its inception in 2020, X1, which offers income-based credit cards with benefits, has raised a total of $62 million in venture-backed funding from investors including Soma Capital, FPV, Craft Ventures and Spark Capital.
Shane’s stunt backfired. With Shayne eyeing an IPO, the company’s image needs to change significantly. From stealing the work of indie designers to violating local labor laws, Shein has shunned his social media craze. So the company invited a group of influencers to tour one of its factories in Guangzhou, China. Critics say it was a highly curated branded trip that offered free travel opportunities and gifts to influencers and encouraged them to promote a positive image for the company.
Databricks Acquires MosaicML: databricks of the week announced MosaicML, an open-source startup with neural network expertise that has built a platform for organizations to train large-scale language models and deploy generative AI tools based on them, will pay $1.3 billion to acquire It is planned. Prior to that, MosaicML had raised just under $64 million for him from investors including Atlas, Playground Global and Samsung Next.
ChatGPT gets Bing. Chat GPT You can now surf the web on mobile too. But only via Bing, for better or worse. OpenAI this week announced Subscribers to ChatGPT Plus, the premium version of the company’s AI-powered chatbot, can use a new feature called ChatGPT app browsing. This allows users to use her ChatGPT to search for answers to their questions on her Bing.
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Looking for podcasts to pass the time? You’ve come to the right place. Supported by TCs.
upon capital, the crew kicked things off with the recent funding of Honey Homes and Gusto partnering with Remote. He then went deep into his latest wave of M&A, from Visa’s acquisition of Pismo to his deal with Databricks and MosaicML.
in the meantime, found featured the founder of Spout, a start-up that makes a device that pumps fresh drinking water out of the air.
that’s all Chain reactionOn this week’s episode, we welcome Jack Lu, co-founder and CEO of NFT marketplace Magic Eden, to discuss the current state of the cryptocurrency market.
and TechCrunch Podcast We covered that Shein is inviting several fashion influencers to its facility in China. The internet didn’t take the stunt very seriously.
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TC+ subscribers have access to detailed commentary, analysis and surveys. If you’re already a subscriber, you know these things. If not, Please consider registering. Here are some highlights from the week.
M&A is back: It’s been a quiet year for tech M&A. But suddenly this week, it looks like the M&A floodgates have finally opened and we’re starting to see some movement.
Big tech embraces generative AI. As the race to develop generative AI tools for enterprises escalates into a battle royale, big tech companies are busy wielding their most powerful weapon: the checkbook. Will this trend continue? That’s an open question.
If a company has more influence than a country: according to CIA World Factbook, if Apple were a country, its revenue would be 50th in the list of countries ranked by GDP. While lagging behind the likes of the United States, France and Egypt, as a country Apple will generate more wealth than Norway, Portugal and Greece, and only slightly less than Hong Kong, Peru and Israel. Should I leave it as is? Haje explores.
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