Hi party people, this is Kyle. I will continue to intervene in Greg’s writing. review of the week He spends time with newborns. I don’t know about you one weekI am exhausted and grateful that it is over. But the news doesn’t sleep, so I’m having her fourth cup of coffee to rejuvenate. I wish you good luck.
At this point, I told you not to listen, but I’m contractually obligated (not really, but still) to mention what’s going on at TechCrunch. . Early stage 2023 Event in Boston on April 20th. His one-day summit on startups will include advice and points from leading experts, as well as the opportunity to meet fellow founders and share his own entrepreneurial experience. Do not miss it.
When it comes to travel, it’s never too early to start thinking about this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 in late September in San Francisco. Tickets are not yet available, but will be available soon.Sign up here for updates.
With the call to action out of the way (whoops), here’s this week’s tech news!
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Stripes look to the exit: Mary Ann When Natasha Fintech startup Stripe has taken a 12-month deadline to go public by pursuing a direct listing or a private market deal, it wrote. The fact that the payments giant is seeking an exit route is not at all surprising since he was founded in 2010. However, Stripe has not been affected by the recent global recession. dismissal Reduced staff by 14% (approximately 1,120 people) and significantly reduced internal assessments many timesIn a twist, Stripe recently reportedly tried to raise at least $2 billion in funding. according to To The Wall Street Journal.
Dell is betting on the cloud. Ingrid reports that Dell is making acquisitions to bolster its offerings in its cloud services business, especially DevOps.company is buying fog upis an Israeli startup that built a platform for cloud orchestration and infrastructure automation that sources say will cost as much as $100 million. The acquisition comes at a time when DevOps startups continue to attract investor attention, with venture funding in the sector reaching his $4 billion in Q2 2021. according to to pitchbook.
Shutterstock embraces generative AI. As part of a partnership with OpenAI, recently Attracted Following a multi-billion dollar investment from Microsoft, Shutterstock this week unveiled a tool that allows customers to create images based on text prompts.Especially using OpenAI technology Darui 2, the tool creates a “license ready” image after creation. One of Shutterstock’s biggest competitors, Getty Images, is now embroiled in lawsuits Against Stability AI — the makers of another generative AI service called Stable Diffusion — over using images to train AI without permission from Getty or the rights holders.
Bidet brand acquires shower startup: needle There’s a scoop on Blondel’s acquisition of Nebia, which stood out when it launched with an expensive nozzle that sprays users with a fine mist while saving up to 70% of the water sprayed by a typical showerhead. I was. Co-founder Philip Winter told TechCrunch this week that his Nebia products, including those made with Moen, have reached more than 100,000 of his homes.
AI Maestro, Undisclosed: Google’s impressive new AI system can generate any genre of music given a text description.But the company fears that risk, there are no immediate plans to release it.called MusicLMthe system was trained on a dataset of 280,000 hours of music, such as “captivating jazz songs with impressive saxophone solos and solo singers” or “90s techno from Berlin with low bass and strong kicks”. The song surprisingly sounded like it was composed by a human artist, though not necessarily original or musically cohesive. increase.
Musk’s Twitter never rests. Twitter owner and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutistElon Musk faces legal challenges in Germany over the platform’s failure to enforce its own rules against anti-Semitic content, including Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany, and Germany has strict laws against anti-Semitic hate speech, making the Berlin court an attractive venue for hearing such challenges. Musk has repeatedly insisted that Twitter respects all laws of the countries in which it operates. Including European Speech Lawhe has yet to make any public comment on this particular lawsuit.
Text until drop: Walmart recently introduced a new way of shopping via chatbots. Sara After trying it out, I found the experience to leave a lot to be desired. she wrote: If conversational commerce like this is the future, it’s still a work in progress. “
Flying into the future: flutterGoogle’s open source framework for building multi-platform apps for mobile, web, and desktop is making good progress. Frederick wrote at a recent conference that highlighted the latest version of Flutter. This provides a significant graphics performance boost, allows easy embedding of Flutter code into his existing web and mobile apps, and supports new architectures such as WebAssembly and RISC-V.
Audio summary
TechCrunch has some great new podcast episodes queuing up for you to listen to (and maybe add more every week).so stockthe crew took the mic to discuss deals this week, All Raise’s CEO stepping down, what Google’s antitrust lawsuit means for startups, how the recession has affected how companies hire, and 2022. We talked about why femtech stood out in 2016. found, Darrell When Becca Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna, joined us to talk about how the company will expand beyond “buy now, pay for space later” and become a neobank.and focused on TC crypto Chain reaction Spotlight on Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Layer 1 blockchain Aptos, which builds infrastructure for web3 apps and products.
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TC+ subscribers have access to in-depth commentary, analysis and research. If not, please consider signing up. I don’t think you will regret it. Check out this week’s highlights.
Salesforce under siege: Salesforce is under threat from activist investor Elliott Management. announced It held a multi-billion dollar position in the CRM leader. Ron As the company cuts costs and potentially sells unprofitable parts of the organization, it’s looking at what’s next for Salesforce.
The energy transition is a winner for investors. Tim focuses on investments in the energy transition that started last year. Companies, financial institutions, governments and end users around the world have invested $1.11 trillion in low-carbon technologies. This is just over 30% more than in 2021 and the second year in a row that growth has exceeded this number.
Increased scrutiny: Rebecca Startups should expect more scrutiny from VCs on their hiring plans, he writes. Ventures saw a surge in hiring in his 2021 as VC money poured in and the job market overheated. However, many have become so caught up in the talent pool that they have been forced to make significant cuts and layoffs in 2022.
