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  • Stablecoin issuer Circle takes another stab at a public listing
    techcrunch.com
    Circle, the issuer of USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, filed to go public on Tuesday.The company, which makes money from interest earned on its reserve assets, reported that its 2024 revenue and reserve income was $1.68 billion, up from $1.45 billion the year prior. Circles 2024 net income was $156 million, down from $268 million in 2023.This is Circles second attempt at listing on the stock exchange. The company previously tried to go public by combining with a SPAC in 2022 but scrapped its plans when the SEC didnt approve the merger within an expected timeframe. Before failing, the SPAC deal valued Circle at $9 billion.While it is not clear what value the company will fetch in its IPO, Renaissance Capital estimates that the company will attempt to raise $750 million in its offering.According to the regulatory filing, investors with more than 5% ownership in the company include Accel, General Catalyst, Breyer, IDG Capital, and Oak Investment Partners.Circle USDC in circulation are valued at $60 billion, according to the filing.The company is planning its IPO amid the Trump administrations supportive stance on crypto assets.
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  • Space solar startup Aetherflux raises $50M to launch first space demo in 2026
    techcrunch.com
    Aetherflux, the space solar startup founded by Baiju Bhatt, the billionaire co-founder of Robinhood, has raised $50 million in a Series A round as it works to launch its first low Earth orbit demonstration in 2026.The San Carlos, California-based startup, which came out of stealth last October, aims to eventually launch a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites that can collect and transmit solar energy directly to ground stations on Earth. Its an idea that was initially triggered by Isaac Asimovs 1941 short story Reason. Bhatt is focused on turning this science fiction-inspired concept into reality.But first, Aetherflux needs to get a satellite to orbit to prove out the tech, to demonstrate that we have made this transformative progress of going from humans not having power from space to, for the very first time, there being power from space for humans, Bhatt, the startups founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.At least, thats the goal with next years launch, which will be supported by the fresh capital Aetherflux has raised. The round brings Aetherfluxs total funding to $60 million after Bhatt invested $10 million of his own funds into the company. The Series A round was led by Index Ventures and Interlagos, with participation from Bill Gatess Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and NEA, as well as some other interesting names like Jared Leto rounding it out.Bhatt, who joined us on the TechCrunch Equity podcast earlier this year, told TechCrunch that Aetherflux will use the funds to hire more engineers and invest in the technology and infrastructure needed for its first several missions.Our team is primarily focused right now on building the payload that sits on top of the bus that takes all the power that the satellite bus generates and turns it into laser power, Bhatt said.Aetherflux is using Apex Spaces Aries satellite bus. A satellite bus is the core structure and system of a satellite that provides essential functions for its operation, like power, propulsion, and communications. Most buses generate power through solar panels, and Bhatt says that power as much as a kilowatt of energy will be sent back to Earth via lasers.On the receiving end will be Aetherfluxs ground stations, made up of photovoltaic arrays that convert sunlight to energy that is stored in batteries for later use. Bhatt said his team, which is made up of engineers and researchers from NASA, SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, Anduril, and the U.S. Navy, is also working on building out Aetherfluxs first ground station. The startup doesnt have a location for the station yet, but its evaluating military sites where theres more controlled air space.In the future, Bhatt says the goal is to build small, portable ground stations anywhere from 5 to 10 meters in diameter to bring electricity to even the most remote locations.The thing we want to demonstrate [with the first mission] is the end-to-end power linking, Bhatt said. We want to be able to demonstrate that we actually have electricity on the ground and use that to light up a light installation or do some electronic stuff on the ground.Few have accomplished the feat of sending solar power from space to Earth. One of the only successful missions was in 2023 when researchers at Caltechs Space Solar Power Project demonstrated wireless power transfer from low Earth orbit using microwave beaming. That proved the concept but falls short of Aetherfluxs pitch for a scalable, commercial system.Aetherfluxs raise comes off the back of an award from the Department of Defenses Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund to develop space solar power for the U.S. military.
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  • Epic Games CEO calls Apple and Google gangster-style businesses in need of competition
    techcrunch.com
    Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose company makes Fortnite and tools for other developers, including Unreal Engine, called out Apple and Google as gangster-style businesses engaged in illegal practices while speaking at a Y Combinator event on Wednesday. The executive also emphasized how the big tech companies practices directly affected his own business by scaring away users from installing Epics Games Store software and preventing Epic from attracting developers to its offerings.Notably, Epic Games has played a big role in the fight against big tech monopolies over the past several years. The company sued both Apple and Google for monopolistic practices over their respective app stores. Epic won its case with Google but not with Apple. However, the court did require Apple to open up to more competition by forcing a change to its App Store rules. The court said app developers should now be able to link to other purchasing mechanisms besides Apples own. (Unfortunately for app developers, Epic is still battling with Apple in the courts over this change, as it alleges that Apple violated the court order by allowing developers to process their own payments, but only with a small, 3% reduction in commission, which doesnt make it worth their while.)On stage, Sweeney again called out the big tech companies for their practices and their malicious compliance with the courts decisions. The sad truth is that Apple and Google are no longer good faith, law-abiding companies, Sweeney said. Theyre run, in many ways, as gangster-style businesses that will do anything they think they can get away with. If they think that the fine is going to be cheaper than the lost revenue from an illegal practice, they always continue the illegal practice and pay the fine. The gaming executive pointed to how the tech companies practices hurt his business. For instance, when users on Android try to install the Epic Games Store on their smartphone, Google warns them that the software is from an unknown source and might harm their device. This scare screen, as Sweeney calls it, is meant to warn users about the dangers of installing non-Play Store apps. But he says the screen results in 50-60% of users abandoning their attempt to install the software. A similar drop-off rate is found on iOS. In Europe, the Epic Games Store is allowed thanks to new regulations, but Apple displays a warning to users who try to install it. Again, this leads to drop-off rates of 50-60%, Sweeney said.He calls the use of these screens textbook self-preferencing, noting that the companies are getting away with it. Crime pays for big tech companies, he said. Obviously, we shouldnt expect that to change until enforcement becomes much, much more vigorous, he told the audience. In addition, the Fortnite exec said that because of the friction and the associated fees with third-party app stores on iOS, no major game developers has been willing to distribute games through the Epic Game Store. Instead of its usual 30% fee, Apple reduces the fee but collects a core technology fee of 50 cents per install per year for any app with more than 1 million downloads.Unless your app is enormously high grossing per user, any free-to-play game is largely dissuaded from that, Sweeney explained. Its too expensive for them. Apple would bankrupt them if they did that. He did note that the Epic Games Store on iOS has managed to attract some back-catalog games. Meanwhile, the Android version will open up to developer submissions later this year, which Sweeney hopes will boost the catalog further.
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  • OpenAIs o3 model might be costlier to run than originally estimated
    techcrunch.com
    When OpenAI unveiled its o3 reasoning AI model in December, the company partnered with the creators of ARC-AGI, a benchmark designed to test highly capable AI, to showcase o3s capabilities. Months later, the results have been revised, and they now look slightly less impressive than they did initially.Last week, the Arc Prize Foundation, which maintains and administers ARC-AGI, updated its approximate computing costs for o3. The organization originally estimated that the best-performing configuration of o3 it tested, o3 high, cost around $3,000 to solve a single ARC-AGI problem. Now, the Arc Prize Foundation thinks that the cost is much higher possibly around $30,000 per task.The revision is notable because it illustrates just how expensive todays most sophisticated AI models may end up being for certain tasks, at least early on. OpenAI has yet to price o3 or release it, even. But the Arc Prize Foundation believes OpenAIs o1-pro model pricing is a reasonable proxy. For context, o1-pro is OpenAIs most expensive model to date.We believe o1-pro is a closer comparison of true o3 cost [] due to amount of test-time compute used, Mike Knoop, one of the co-founders of The Arc Prize Foundation, told TechCrunch. But this is still a proxy, and weve kept o3 labeled as preview on our leaderboard to reflect the uncertainty until official pricing is announced.A high price for o3 high wouldnt be out of the question, given the amount of computing resources the model reportedly uses. According to the Arc Prize Foundation, o3 high used 172x more computing than o3 low, the lowest-computing configuration of o3, to tackle ARC-AGI.Moreover, rumors have been flying for quite some time about pricey plans OpenAI is considering introducing for enterprise customers. In early March, The Information reported that the company may be planning to charge up to $20,000 per month for specialized AI agents, like a software developer agent. Some might argue that even OpenAIs priciest models will cost well under what a typical human contractor or staffer would command. But as AI researcher Toby Ord pointed out in a post on X, the models may not be as efficient. For example, o3 high needed 1,024 attempts at each task in ARC-AGI to achieve its best score.
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  • What to know about TikToks uncertain future in the US and the people who want to buy it
    techcrunch.com
    TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for four years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. Earlier this year, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before it was quickly restored.TikTok returned to the App Store and Google Play Store in February.Nonetheless, TikToks future remains uncertain, and a potential second ban on April 5 is looming. A number of investors are competing for the opportunity to purchase the app, and if a deal were to go through, the platforms U.S. business could have its valuation soar to upward of $60 billion, as estimated by CFRA Researchs senior vice president, Angelo Zino.TikTok ban: Whats happened so farTo fully understand this high-stakes drama, well first revisit the timeline of TikToks tumultuous relationship with the U.S. government, which resulted in various legal battles and negotiations.The drama first began in August 2020, when Trump signed an executive order to ban transactions with parent company ByteDance.A month later, Trumps administration sought to force a sale of TikToks U.S. operations to a U.S.-based company. The leading contenders included Microsoft, Oracle, and Walmart. However, a U.S. judge temporarily blocked Trumps executive order, allowing TikTok to continue operating while the legal battle unfolded.Things began to progress even more last year following the transition to the Biden administration. The U.S. House of Representatives, in an overwhelming 360-58 vote, passed the legislation against TikTok. On April 23, 2024, the Senate passed the bill.Shortly after, President Joe Biden signed the bill requiring TikTok to be sold or banned. In response, TikTok sued the U.S. government, challenging the constitutionality of the ban and arguing the app and its American users were having their First Amendment rights violated. The company has consistently denied that it poses a security threat, asserting that its data stored in the U.S. complies with all local laws.Trump has a change of heartImage Credits:Mandel Ngan (opens in a new window) / Getty ImagesOn December 27, 2024, Trump opposed the potential ban of TikTok in a court filing, stating he could find a way to keep the app in the U.S. This stance was a stark contrast to his approach during his first presidency and presented a surprising turn of events for TikTok.In January, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), commonly referred to as the TikTok ban. TikTok made a formal announcement that it would likely have to go dark on January 19.TikTok shuts down then comes back onlineAlthough TikTok indeed shut itself down in the U.S. when the act came into effect, it didnt last long. The app came back online less than 12 hours later. The platform noted, As a result of President Trumps efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.Where we are todayOn January 20, Trump signed an executive order that postponed the TikTok ban for 75 days. This extension provides the app with additional time to either sell a stake in the platform or reach an agreement with Trump. His goal is to achieve a 50-50 ownership arrangement between ByteDance and a U.S. company.More recently, in early March, Trump told reporters that his administration was in talks with four different groups that are interested in buying the platform, per Reuters.No definitive deal has been reached yet for the sale of the platform, but we could find out very soon. Below is a list of the investor groups and companies rumored to be potential buyers of TikToks U.S. operations. (Surprisingly, Elon Musk is not among them.)U.S. real estate billionaire Frank McCourtImage Credits:COLE BURSTON / Contributor (opens in a new window) / Getty ImagesThe Peoples Bid for TikTokThe Peoples Bid for TikTok is a consortium organized by Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt, who is also the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Investment firm Guggenheim Securities and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis are helping to assemble the bid. The main mission of The Peoples Bid to acquire TikTok is to prioritize privacy and data control, taking an open source approach.Supporters involved include: Alexis Ohanian: The Reddit co-founder is the most recent tech entrepreneur to join The Peoples Bid, taking on the role of strategic advisor. He joined on March 3. Kevin OLeary: A well-known investor and television personality who previously told Fox he was willing to buy TikTok for $20 billion. OLeary joined The Peoples Bid on January 6.Tim Berners-Lee: The inventor of the World Wide Web supports the proposal because users should have an ability to control their own data, Berners-Lee said in a statement.David Clark: A senior research scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Clark has also been named a participant.Image Credits:Dave Kotinsky / Getty ImagesAmerican Investor ConsortiumJesse Tinsley, the CEO and founder of Employer.com, is leading a consortium of American investors. Last month, Tinsley announced a $30 billion all-cash offer to acquire TikToks U.S. operations.David Baszucki: Tinsley told Bloomberg that the Roblox co-founder and CEO is a participant.Nathan McCauley: The co-founder and CEO of crypto platform Anchorage Digital has been confirmed to be participating in the consortium, Bloomberg reported.Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast): The popular YouTube creator is also a reported member of the investor group.The Oracle headquartersImage Credits:Paul Sakuma / APOther interested partiesAmazon: The e-commerce giant is the most recent company reported to throw its hat into the ring. Bobby Kotick: The former CEO of Activision is reportedly interested in buying TikTok. With his experience managing a major gaming company, his interest in the app could be driven by the potential to integrate gaming and social media.Steven Mnuchin: The former U.S. Treasury Secretary, who served during President Trumps first term, has reentered discussions about the potential purchase of TikTok.Oracle: The company previously made a bid for TikTok back in 2020. In front of the White House in January, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said to Trump that 50% ownership seemed like a good deal.The Information reported in March that Oracle is the top choice to serve as the cloud technology partner for helping TikTok run in the U.S.Walmart: The retail giant could also be eyeing TikTok to enhance its reach in e-commerce, especially considering the platforms influence on consumer shopping behavior. Walmart first expressed interest back in 2020.Microsoft: The tech giant has previously shown interest in acquiring TikTok, and Trump mentioned that the company has recently reentered the bidding to buy the app.Rumble: The YouTube alternative announced on X that it wants to acquire TikTok and serve as its cloud technology partner.Perplexity AI: The AI search engine startup submitted a bid last month, according to CNBC.The story has been updated after publication to include new interested parties.
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  • WordPress maker Automattic lays off 16% of staff
    techcrunch.com
    Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a range of other online services, is reducing its workforce. The layoffs will impact 16% of staff across divisions, an Automattic blog post published Wednesday reveals. Ahead of the layoffs, Automattics website listed 1,744 employees, which means north of 270 people may have lost their jobs. (Automattic was asked to confirm this number but has not responded as of the time of publication.)The post, which was also shared with company employees via Slack earlier on Wednesday, explains that this restructuring was necessary due to the competitive nature of the market and the speed with which technology is evolving. However, the move comes after a tumultuous year for Automattic, which has engaged in a controversial legal battle with hosting company WP Engine. The ongoing drama already led to the departure of some Automattic employees last fall. In Automattic CEO Matt Mullenwegs opinion, the hosting provider WP Engine did not sufficiently contribute to the open source project WordPress.org, and its use of the WP brand was confusing consumers about its affiliation with WordPress itself. Today, Mullenweg explained that the newly annoucned layoffs will allow Automattic to become more agile and responsive, break down silos that have created inefficiencies, focus on product quality, and ensure a viable financial model for long-term success.To support our customers and products, we must improve our productivity, profitability, and capacity to invest, read the post, authored by Mullenweg.The layoffs will impact employees across 90 countries, who will receive a severance package and job placement assistance, among other things. Automattic has multiple products with world-touching potential in WordPress and beyond. Im confident we will come out of this situation in a better position, poised to create a vibrant, profitable, well-designed company that will continue our mission to democratize the internet, Mullenweg wrote. This story is developing.The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained
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  • DeepMinds 145-page paper on AGI safety may not convince skeptics
    techcrunch.com
    Google DeepMind on Wednesday published an exhaustive paper on its safety approach to AGI, roughly defined as AI that can accomplish any task a human can.AGI is a bit of a controversial subject in the AI field, with naysayers suggesting that its little more than a pipe dream. Others, including major AI labs like Anthropic, warn that its around the corner, and could result in catastrophic harms if steps arent taken to implement appropriate safeguards. DeepMinds 145-page document, which was co-authored by DeepMind co-founder Shane Legg, predicts that AGI could arrive by 2030, and that it may result in what the authors call severe harm. The paper doesnt concretely define this, but gives the alarmist example of existential risks that permanently destroy humanity.[We anticipate] the development of an Exceptional AGI before the end of the current decade, the authors wrote. An Exceptional AGI is a system that has a capability matching at least 99th percentile of skilled adults on a wide range of non-physical tasks, including metacognitive tasks like learning new skills.Off the bat, the paper contrasts DeepMinds treatment of AGI risk mitigation with Anthropics and OpenAIs. Anthropic, it says, places less emphasis on robust training, monitoring, and security, while OpenAI is overly bullish on automating a form of AI safety research known as alignment research. The paper also casts doubt on the viability of superintelligent AI AI that can perform jobs better than any human. (OpenAI recently claimed that its turning its aim from AGI to superintelligence.) Absent significant architectural innovation, the DeepMind authors arent convinced that superintelligent systems will emerge soon if ever. The paper does find it plausible, though, that current paradigms will enable recursive AI improvement: a positive feedback loop where AI conducts its own AI research to create more sophisticated AI systems. And this could be incredibly dangerous, assert the authors.At a high level, the paper proposes and advocates for the development of techniques to block bad actors access to hypothetical AGI, improve the understanding of AI systems actions, and harden the environments in which AI can act. It acknowledges that many of the techniques are nascent and have open research problems, but cautions against ignoring the safety challenges possibly on the horizon. The transformative nature of AGI has the potential for both incredible benefits as well as severe harms, the authors write. As a result, to build AGI responsibly, it is critical for frontier AI developers to proactively plan to mitigate severe harms.Some experts disagree with the papers premises, however. HeidyKhlaaf, chief AI scientist at the nonprofit AI Now Institute, told TechCrunch that she thinks the concept of AGI is too ill-defined to be rigorously evaluated scientifically. Another AI researcher, Matthew Guzdial, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta, said that he doesnt believe recursive AI improvement is realistic at present. [Recursive improvement] is the basis for the intelligence singularity arguments, Guzdial told TechCrunch, but weve never seen any evidence for it working.Sandra Wachter, a researcher studying tech and regulation at Oxford, argues that a more realistic concern is AI reinforcing itself with inaccurate outputs. With the proliferation of generative AI outputs on the internet and the gradual replacement of authentic data, models are now learning from their own outputs that are riddled with mistruths, or hallucinations, she told TechCrunch. At this point, chatbots are predominantly used for search and truth-finding purposes. That means we are constantly at risk of being fed mistruths and believing them because they are presented in very convincing ways.Comprehensive as it may be, DeepMinds paper seems unlikely to settle the debates over just how realistic AGI is and the areas of AI safety in most urgent need of attention.
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  • Redwood Materials preps for expansion spree with new R&D center in San Francisco
    techcrunch.com
    Redwood Materials has been on an expansion tear in recent years growth that has extended the lithium-ion battery recycling and materials startups footprint well beyond its Carson City, Nevada headquarters as it locked up deals with Toyota, Panasonic, and, GM, started construction on a South Carolina factory, and made an acquisition in Europe. And yet, Redwood Materials CTO Colin Campbell saw a gap in the companys 1,100-person workforce. San Francisco was the answer, Campbell told TechCrunch, a longtime Tesla veteran who took the top tech spot in August 2023.The company, which was founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, is filling that gap with a new research and development center in San Francisco. The 15,000-square-foot facility located in the citys Design District is equipped with lab space to support engineers who will eventually work on every point of the battery ecosystem from chemical engineering and cathode science to software and electrical engineering. That work could help improve cathode production, an important component of Redwoods business, which generated $200 million in revenue in 2024. The center, which Redwood moved into about a week ago, only has a handful of engineers on site. But Campbell expects it will eventually employ about 50 or more people.We had a really good year, and we had great revenue, Campbell said, adding that the company has been limited by its ability to expand. And whats limiting our ability to expand the engineering team is hiring. We just need to expand the aperture of where we can hire from. And San Francisco was sort of to a logical place for a bunch of different reasons. High on the list is deep talent pool of hardware and software engineers who are in the Bay Area, he added. Lithium-ion batteries contain three critical building blocks. There are two electrodes, an anode (negative) on one side and a cathode (positive) on the other. Typically, an electrolyte sits in the middle and acts as the courier to move ions between the electrodes when charging and discharging. Cathode foils, which account for more than half the cost of a battery cell, contain lithium, nickel, and cobalt. Redwood is able to capture all of those materials through its battery recycling and processing.But Redwood aims to do more than recycle. The startup, which has raised more than $2 billion in private funds, is building an end-to-end battery ecosystem that touches the full life cycle of lithium-ion batteries at every stage, including recycling, refining, remanufacturing as well as assessing the health and extending the life of the battery. Campbell is particularly keen for engineers to work on equipment development for Redwoods factories. A major part of why theyre (factories) are hard to build in the U.S, is that the U.S. doesnt have the industrial base to make a bunch of this machinery, and in particular, to make novel and cost effective machinery, he said. So novel process equipment engineering is a piece big piece of it.Engineers at the lab will also work on battery diagnostic methods that to help understand the health of a battery pack, which Campbell believes could benefit another piece of the business.I think its important to start with the foundation of the business, which is battery materials, and we rest all of these other projects on top of them, Campbell said adding the diagnostic tools could boost the bottom line. So if were receiving packs, and we diagnose it, and it actually is bad, thats a great advantage to us to just recycle it directly I think it could be significant.Campbell added that he didnt think diagnosis would be majority business for Redwood, but that it fits into the companys overall ethos.We have this constitutional distaste for retiring things before they need to be retired, he said So even if its not a major part of the business, its the right thing to do for this ecosystem. And we would, we would do it anyway.
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  • Parasail says its fleet of on-demand GPUs is larger than Oracles entire cloud
    techcrunch.com
    Cloud infrastructure is dominated by several large industry players: AWS, Microsofts Azure, and Google Cloud. While to some it may look like AI is headed in a similar direction, the founders of Parasail think AI infrastructure will look very different and are betting their companys fate on it.Parasail works with dozens of providers to deliver on-demand GPUs for companies and enterprises looking to build AI models and applications. Parasail gives customers access to hardware, including Nvidias H100, H200, A100, and 4090 GPUs, at a fraction of the cost that incumbents charge, according to the company.Theres basically three cloud vendors who run the internet, and that isnt exactly how the internet is being rebuilt when you look at AI, Tim Harris, one of Parasails co-founders and the CEO of Swift Navigation, told TechCrunch. Its much more fragmented. The compute is much more fungible and fluid, so you can actually inherently run it in a more horizontal nature, and thats really what we were trying to do.Harris added, We didnt want a world where AI was controlled from soup to nuts by the hyperscalers.Harris and Parasail CEO Mike Henry had the idea for the startup a few years back. Henry, the former CPO of Groq, told TechCrunch that he had spent a long time thinking about what it would take to build AI infrastructure that could compete with Nvidia. He said that when he realized AI infrastructure was being rapidly built up by numerous players, he saw an opportunity for a horizontal move.According to Henry, the rapid clip of innovation happening in AI hardware was making it difficult for companies to keep up.We had to really focus on, how do we make [this] as simple as possible for the customer? Henry said. Theyre barely keeping up with the open-source model releases alone.Harris and Henry got started on the company back in 2023, hired an engineering team, and began building in early 2024. Today, theres no shortage of vendors looking to help enterprises and other companies build and scale their AI products. From hyperscalers like Nvidia and Microsoft to startups such as Together AI and Lepton AI, customers have plenty of options.The Parasail founders dont think theyre all one and the same. Sure, all these vendors provide GPUs and AI infrastructure, Henry said, but he thinks the proprietary technology Parasail has running under the hood helps it stand out. This tech is what connects Parasails GPUs from various sources together.Wednesday marks the official launch of its platform, but Parasail is already working with dozens of customers including Elicit, Weights & Biases, and Rasa. The company has also raised $10 million from a seed round in 2024 that had participation from Basis Set Ventures, Threshold Ventures, Buckley Ventures, and Black Opal Ventures.To gain meaningful market share, Parasail will have to go head-to-head with hyperscalers and bet on the demand for GPUs continuing to grow. There is reason to believe that it will, but there are also signs like Microsoft canceling some of its data center contracts that the predictions around needed AI infrastructure may be a bit overblown.We see literally no end [to] the demand, Harris said. Its really that customers have a hard time doing it have a hard time scaling AI. The models now are getting to a place where [companies] can just grab open-source models and pretty much run them, but then being able to get access to GPUs, access to data centers, all the optimizations we can do that with a click of a button.
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  • Actively AI raises $22.5M to offer sales superintelligence, says AI SDRs failed
    techcrunch.com
    AI sales rep startups are a very crowded market these days. If youre driving into San Francisco from the airport, youll probably spot billboards promising that you can Stop Hiring Humans (Artisan) or urging you to Hire Piper, the AI SDR (Qualified). While some of these startups are certainly growing fast, the field has its challenges and some VCs are wary.Anshul Gupta, co-founder of Actively AI, admits the early versions of these AI sales tools dont live up to their own hype. Gupta claims classic AI sales reps arent the right approach, telling TechCrunch theyve failed by focusing too much pure volume that means contacting as many potential customers as possible.Founded in 2022, Actively AI argues it has a different approach. The startup builds custom reasoning models for companies to sift through their data and find the highest-value prospects to sell to, mirroring the work that top human sales reps do.Its a new way of leveraging reasoning tech, a technique thats taken the AI world by storm by forcing AI models to flesh out their logic and double-check their work.Actively claims this method is working, touting that it has helped clients like fintech Ramp get tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue.The New York-based startup has now raised $17.5 million in Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures, it exclusively told TechCrunch. That follows a previously unannounced $5 million seed round from First Round Capital, bringing total funding to $22.5 million.We call it GTM Superintelligencea reasoning-driven approach that doesnt just automate or assist, but actively makes the best possible decisions to drive growth, Activelys CEO (and other co-founder) Mihir Garimella said in a statement.The startup says it uses a combination of in-house models and popular reasoning models from OpenAI and Anthropic to power its tech. Both founders previously studied AI at Stanford, with Garimella focusing on a field closely related to reasoning called active learning, giving Actively its name.Activelys fundraise is the latest evidence that the boom in reasoning models could be spreading beyond foundational AI companies like OpenAI or DeepSeek to startups.Just last week, for example, a YC-backed startup raised $5 million claiming it had built a reasoning engine for slashing paperwork in healthcare. That startup, Taxo, said it had passed $1 million ARR in six months. (Actively declined to share its exact ARR, but said it has grown tenfold in 9 months.)Its still a bit early to tell whether Activelys reasoning-powered approach will work as advertised, or if this will become just a new spin on AI sales tools. After all, reasoning only really took off late last year with the rise of DeepSeek. For now, though, some investors are certainly buying the pitch.
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  • Fourier is making hydrogen electrolyzers inspired by data centers
    techcrunch.com
    Despite being the most abundant element in the universe, making cheap, clean hydrogen here on Earth has been a surprisingly tough nut to crack.Hydrogen has always been plagued with a couple problems, One is, how do you make it efficiently? Another one is, how do you distribute it efficiently? Siva Yellamraju, co-founder and CEO of Fourier, told TechCrunch.Most recent hydrogen startups have been focused on making modular electrolyzers, allowing them to be mass produced and squeezed into shipping containers. Yellamrajus company has taken that trendy tactic to the extreme. Fourier is targeting something no bigger than two standard server racks standing side-by-side.Investors have taken note, with General Catalyst and Paramark Ventures leading an $18.5 million Series A round, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Other participating investors include Airbus Ventures, Borusan Ventures, GSBackers, MCJ Collective, and Positive Ventures.Fouriers server analogy extends inside the module, too. There, the company installs multiple small electrolyzers about20 in the current design that it calls blades. Each blade is fed water from a pump shared among them, and electricity comes from lightly modified power supplies borrowed from the data center world.We reprogram them, retrofit them to run electrolysis, Yellamraju said. It also allows us to use these components that are already sold in the billions.Within each hydrogen production module, software manages the blades to optimize their operation. Here, Yellamraju said the company was inspired by another bit of commoditized technology, the lithium-ion battery.If you look at companies like Tesla, they started with small cells, an array of them, so that allowed them to do off the shelf components, but push the complexity into a compute layer, he said.Teslas battery packs string together thousands of smaller batteries, all of which are overseen by a combination of hardware and software that is known as a battery management system. The BMS handles charging and discharging of each individual cell, and it will also watch for anything that suggests a battery is degrading, reducing its use or flagging it for repair.Fouriers system similarly monitors the performance of each electrolyzer blade, tweaking output and watching for signs of degradation. The goal, Yellamraju said, is to push the overall efficiency problem and production problem into a data optimization problem.The startup has operated two lab-scale pilots, which make about a kilogram of hydrogen per hour, with a pharmaceutical manufacturer and a solar energy company. Up next are two commercial-scale pilot plants, one at a petrochemical plant in Ohio and another at a company in Fremont, California, that makes airline parts. Both should be operating by June. Ultimately, Fourier is targeting customers that need six to 20 kilograms per hour, which would require around 300 kilowatts to 1 megawatt of electrolyzer capacity.Fouriers potential commercial customers, which include pharmaceutical, petrochemical, and ceramics manufacturers, pay around $13 to $14 per kilogram today. Yellamraju said that his company can deliver hydrogen for $6 to $7 per kilogram, not including any government incentives. With our margin, theyre still saving half the price of hydrogen, he said.
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  • TikTok is shutting down its Instagram competitor TikTok Notes
    techcrunch.com
    TikTok is shutting down its Instagram competitor, TikTok Notes, on May 8. The photo-sharing app launched in testing in Canada, Australia, and Vietnam last year. The company is notifying TikTok Notes users of its decision to retire the app and is directing them to ByteDance-owned Lemon8, which isnt surprising given that the apps are quite similar and offer the same sort of functionality.Were excited to bring the feedback from TikTok Notes to Lemon8 as we continue building a dedicated space for our community to share and experience photo content, designed to complement and enhance the TikTok experience, a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.While TikTok didnt provide a specific reason for shutting down the app, its likely that the company didnt see much adoption for TikTok Notes and is deciding to instead push Lemon8, which had around 12.5 million global monthly active users as of December 2024. In a notice to TikTok Notes users, TikTok says the decision to shut down the app was not made lightly. The notice encourages users to download and save their TikTok Notes data and continue sharing your creativity on Lemon8. TikTok says that Lemon8 is a lifestyle app that offers a similar experience to TikTok Notes but with even more features.Lemon8 launched in Japan in 2020 and later expanded to markets across the U.S. and Southeast Asia. The app is similar to Instagram and Pinterest, as it lets users share slideshows and photo collections and browse content through Following and For You feeds. Lemon8 offers users access to creative tools, filters, effects, stickers, text templates, and more.While TikTok is pushing Lemon8 as an alternative to TikTok Notes, ByteDance has also tried to position the app as an alternative to TikTok itself in the face of a potential U.S. ban. Last November, the company made it possible for users to directly access Lemon8 with their TikTok accounts and rolled out the ability for users to cross-share photo content between the apps. The move was seen as a way for ByteDance to move creators onto the new platform without having to get them to sign up for it separately in case TikTok were to go away.Fast-forward to today, and TikTok continues to promote Lemon8 in its app as it faces a new ban deadline of April 5.
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  • Metas head of AI research plans to leave the company
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:10:23 AM PDT April 1, 2025Image Credits:Paul Morigi/Haddad Media / Getty ImagesMetas head of AI research plans to leave the companyMetas VP of AI research, Joelle Pineau, is planning to leave the company, she announced in a post on Facebook Tuesday. Pineau said shes leaving in May after more than two years overseeing FAIR, Metas internal AI research lab led by Yann LeCun.Pineaus exit comes as Meta ramps up its AI efforts, with the company planning to spend $65 billion on AI infrastructure in 2025.In a statement to Bloomberg News, a Meta spokesperson said the company does not have an immediate replacement for Pineau but is conducting a search for her successor. Last year, Meta reportedly reorganized the company to have its AI research unit report to the companys chief product officer, Chris Cox.As for Pineau, the executive said shell take some time off before jumping into an unnamed new adventure.Topics
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  • Who are climate-conscious consumers? Not who youd expect, says Northwind Climate
    techcrunch.com
    Sometimes, surprises are lurking in everyday data.Take a category of consumers that Doug Rubins startup, Northwind Climate, calls climate doers. Theyre concerned about climate change and tend to prioritize climate-friendly purchases, the sort of identifiers who might be stereotypically associated with things like buying organic foods or prioritizing local businesses.Turns out that the climate doers category actually are the consumers who most frequent fast-food restaurants, Rubin told TechCrunch. Whats more, some 30% of climate doers are Republicans, he added.Northwind Climate evolved from Rubins work in the political world, where surveys are vital to understanding shifts in public sentiment and identifying likely voters. The startup has raised a $1.05 million pre-seed round, it exclusively told TechCrunch, with participation from angel investors, including Tom Steyer, former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, and Alexander Hoffmann of Susty Ventures.Rather than divide people into demographic buckets that might segment along political, generational, or regional lines, Northwind Climate analyzes survey responses for behavioral clues that can be used to classify consumers.In addition to climate doers, who comprise about 15% of all U.S. consumers, Northwind Climate has identified four other behavioral groups, ranging from climate distressed, or people who are slightly less concerned about climate change and arent as financially secure as the climate doers, to the climate deniers, who tend to be retirees who think the media is exaggerating the problem.But, Rubin adds, even in that [climate deniers] bucket, there are messages and ways that work with them.Northwind Climate has found five discrete segments that describe consumers views on climate change.Image Credits:Northwind ClimateTake some analysis Northwind did on electric vehicles. For climate doers and climate distressed, two categories of consumers who are most likely to buy an EV, the startup suggests that automakers frame the cars as matter of choice. Were providing choices for those who care about reducing pollution, saving money on gas, and helping address climate change, reads one of Northwinds suggested pitches.But for climate doubters and deniers, who are less likely to buy one, the focus of the pitch shifts from choice to freedom: Americans should have the freedom to drive what they want. We want to make electric vehicles clean, affordable, and practical for the millions of Americans who want one.The startup has built a database that consists of 20,000 survey respondents across eight surveys, and Rubin says its growing by 2,500 respondents per month. Every three months, Northwind also runs an industry-specific survey to capture deeper insights for different customers.Companies that subscribe to the service, which costs $10,000 per quarter or $40,000 per year for a typical customer, can add up to four of their own questions every quarter, which Rubin said is less than what theyd shell out for one annual survey.Within the platform, customers get access to the data Northwind has collected, questions it has asked, and some basic analyses like cross tabulations. The startup is building a chatbot to allow users to ask for more specific analyses using plain language queries.Concerned consumers might cast a wary eye on such a platform, worried that it might help companies greenwash their businesses. But Rubin isnt concerned, saying surveys have shown that consumers are pretty savvy. Our data shows there is a clear risk to brands and their reputations from making claims that are exaggerated or otherwise untrue, Rubin said.Rubin said that Northwind is also developing what he calls a virtual focus group. Its essentially an AI model, trained on survey responses, that can analyze a companys marketing materials like TV spots or social media ads and provide feedback, just like a human focus group would. The startup hopes to have it available in the next four to five months, Rubin said, though it will use new data to continually refine the model.Rubin is convinced that companies have been missing opportunities to connect with climate-conscious consumers. If you look at the data and where consumers are and its across the board, its not just Democrats or Independents they really want this, and they will reward companies who are willing to be smart about it, he said.
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  • Andreessen Horowitz is trying to nab a piece of TikTok with Oracle, report says
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:1:00 PM PDT April 1, 2025Image Credits:Getty ImagesAndreessen Horowitz is trying to nab a piece of TikTok with Oracle, report saysThe venture capital firm is reportedly in talks to invest in TikTok as part of a bid led by Oracle and other American investors looking to buy out TikTok from ByteDance, according to the Financial Times.TikTok is once again slated to be banned in the U.S. on April 5 unless its Chinese-based owner sells its U.S. branch to a non-Chinese owner. The Oracle deal is said to be one of the frontrunners, according to the FT.Andreessen Horowitz has a long history of investing in social media: It was an early investor in Facebook and Instagram and invested $400 million to help Elon Musk acquire Twitter. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Topics
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  • An accounting startup has turned tax preparations into a Pokmon Showdown game
    techcrunch.com
    Accounting software company Open Ledger has launched a new product in time for tax day.Meet PokTax, a game that helps make tax filing quite fun. Instead of tax forms, users take on Tax Trainers gym leaders representing different parts of a tax form, such as income, deductions, and credits. Each leader asks questions that help players complete their tax forms.Image Credits:Open LedgerOnce you finish your PokTax run, we guide you to the IRS Direct File site to officially submit, Open Ledger co-founder Pryce Adade-Yebesi told TechCrunch. The game is an adaptation of the open source Pokmon game called Pokmon Showdown, and he promised this was not an April Fools joke.This is real; it works. Tax fraud isnt funny and neither is the IRS, he said.Adade-Yebesi and Ashtyn Bell launched Open Ledger earlier this year and raised a $3 million round led by Kindred Ventures and Black Ventures. Adade-Yebesi said his team first built this product, which is open source, as a joke. Could we actually pull this off? he and his team pondered. The answer was clearly yes.The game has an AI assistant that helps organize users responses, and players can win badges discover new deductions as they take on the Tax Trainers.Image Credits:Open LedgerTaxes are such an unloved part of being a good citizen that few founders think of turning the process into a game. Notably, in 2023, there was the dating-style game Tax Heaven 3000, where users went on a date with an avatar named Iris who asked questions to help complete a tax form. But that was only for the 2022 tax filing year.Adade-Yebesi hopes that by adding fun to such financial processes, they will be more engaging and way less soul-sucking.Taxes are due April 15.
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  • CaaStle board confirms financial distress, furloughing employees
    techcrunch.com
    CaaStle, a startup that launched in 2011 as a plus-sized clothing subscription service and later became an inventory monetization platform for clothing retailers, is facing financial difficulties, the company confirmed to TechCrunch following a report by Axios.Citing a letter from the board, Axios reported that the company is almost out of money, CEO Christine Hunsicker resigned from her CEO role and the board, and the company has involved law enforcement to investigate alleged financial misconduct.The company also confirmed to TechCrunch that it furloughed all of its employees.The Board is deeply disappointed by the conduct that has led to this moment. Our immediate focus is on addressing the companys challenges, supporting our employees, and preserving the value of our technology and business operations. We regret having to temporarily furlough our employees, but we believe this will best position the company to successfully recover from our current situation, the company said in an emailed statement after TechCrunch inquired about the companys status.CaaStle raised over $530 million total, with its last round raised in 2019 at $43 million, Pitchbook estimates.In that letter, also cited by Puck, the board is alleging that Hunsicker misled at least some of the companys investors about financial performance, and about the companys capital and outstanding shares, including two falsified audit opinions.Both Axios and Puck have reported that days before Hunsicker exited the company, she was out fundraising, and making claims about the companys healthy finances.Axios has noted that if the boards allegations lead to a case of fraud made against the founder, this would be one of the largest such cases ever.Last week, Charlie Javice, the founder of student loan application startup Frank, which was purchased by JPMorgan for $175 million, was found guilty of defrauding the bank. The bank claimed Javice inflated the customer count. But the investment numbers for CaaStle are three times as large.While this might not be a typical startup shutdown experience, experts have told TechCrunch that 2025 is on track to be another brutal year for failed startups.
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  • Researchers suggest OpenAI trained AI models on paywalled OReilly books
    techcrunch.com
    OpenAI has been accused by many parties of training its AI on copyrighted content sans permission. Now a new paper by an AI watchdog organization makes the serious accusation that the company increasingly relied on non-public books it didnt license to train more sophisticated AI models.AI models are essentially complex prediction engines. Trained on a lot of data books, movies, TV shows, and so on they learn patterns and novel ways to extrapolate from a simple prompt. When a model writes an essay on a Greek tragedy or draws Ghibli-style images, its simply pulling from its vast knowledge to approximate. It isnt arriving at anything new.While a number of AI labs including OpenAI have begun embracing AI-generated data to train AI as they exhaust real-world sources (mainly the public web), few have eschewed real-world data entirely. Thats likely because training on purely synthetic data comes with risks, like worsening a models performance.The new paper, out of the AI Disclosures Project, a nonprofit co-founded in 2024 by media mogul Tim OReilly and economist Ilan Strauss, draws the conclusion that OpenAI likely trained its GPT-4o model on paywalled books from OReilly Media. (OReilly is the CEO of OReilly Media.)In ChatGPT, GPT-4o is the default model. OReilly doesnt have a licensing agreement with OpenAI, the paper says.GPT-4o, OpenAIs more recent and capable model, demonstrates strong recognition of paywalled OReilly book content [] compared to OpenAIs earlier model GPT-3.5 Turbo, wrote the co-authors of the paper. In contrast, GPT-3.5 Turbo shows greater relative recognition of publicly accessible OReilly book samples.The paper used a method called DE-COP, first introduced in an academic paper in 2024, designed to detect copyrighted content in language models training data. Also known as a membership inference attack, the method tests whether a model can reliably distinguish human-authored texts from paraphrased, AI-generated versions of the same text. If it can, it suggests that the model might have prior knowledge of the text from its training data.The co-authors of the paper OReilly, Strauss, and AI researcher Sruly Rosenblat say that they probed GPT-4o, GPT-3.5 Turbo, and other OpenAI models knowledge of OReilly Media books published before and after their training cutoff dates. They used 13,962 paragraph excerpts from 34 OReilly books to estimate the probability that a particular excerpt had been included in a models training dataset.According to the results of the paper, GPT-4o recognized far more paywalled OReilly book content than OpenAIs older models, including GPT-3.5 Turbo. Thats even after accounting for potential confounding factors, the authors said, like improvements in newer models ability to figure out whether text was human-authored.GPT-4o [likely] recognizes, and so has prior knowledge of, many non-public OReilly books published prior to its training cutoff date, wrote the co-authors. It isnt a smoking gun, the co-authors are careful to note. They acknowledge that their experimental method isnt foolproof, and that OpenAI mightve collected the paywalled book excerpts from users copying and pasting it into ChatGPT.Muddying the waters further, the co-authors didnt evaluate OpenAIs most recent collection of models, which includes GPT-4.5 and reasoning models such as o3-mini and o1. Its possible that these models werent trained on paywalled OReilly book data, or were trained on a lesser amount than GPT-4o.That being said, its no secret that OpenAI, which has advocated for looser restrictions around developing models using copyrighted data, has been seeking higher-quality training data for some time. The company has gone so far as to hire journalists to help fine-tune its models outputs. Thats a trend across the broader industry: AI companies recruiting experts in domains like science and physics to effectively have these experts feed their knowledge into AI systems.It should be noted that OpenAI pays for at least some of its training data. The company has licensing deals in place with news publishers, social networks, stock media libraries, and others. OpenAI also offers opt-out mechanisms albeit imperfect ones that allow copyright owners to flag content theyd prefer the company not use for training purposes.Still, as OpenAI battles several suits over its training data practices and treatment of copyright law in U.S. courts, the OReilly paper isnt the most flattering look.OpenAI didnt respond to a request for comment.
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  • Mark Cuban backs Skylight, a TikTok alternative built on Blueskys underlying technology
    techcrunch.com
    Skylight, a startup taking on TikTok with a more open alternative, is launching its mobile app to the public on Tuesday after just 10 weeks of active development. The app, which is backed by Mark Cuban and others, is now one of many to build on top of the AT Protocol the same technology that underpins the social network Bluesky and a growing number of other apps.Developed by co-founders Tori White (CEO) and Reed Hermeyer (CTO), Skylight offers a short-form video app experience with many familiar features, including an in-app video editor; the ability to comment, like, and share videos; set up your own user profile; and follow others. Because its also built on the AT Protocol (or ATProto for short), users will immediately be tapped into Blueskys network of over 33.8 million users. That means videos posted on Skylight can be seen and engaged with by users on Bluesky and other ATProto-based apps, like the more photo-centric app Flashes, for example.Image Credits:Skylight SocialThe company is funded by a pre-seed round from Cuban, who said earlier this year that he wanted to fund a TikTok alternative built on the AT Protocol. Leslie Feinzaigs Graham & Walker Venture Fund also invested.White, who used to be a travel influencer and is now a self-taught software developer living in Seattle, says she and co-founder Hermeyer were inspired to create Skylight when they first heard that TikTok was getting banned in the U.S.In preparation for the ban, which is currently on pause, White had backed up her TikTok videos. But she still worried about losing access to her community and comments. She and Hermeyer had already been playing around with ATProto and saw the potential.Image Credits:Skylight SocialThe first thing that interested us about ATProto was that Bluesky was not failing, Hermeyer told TechCrunch at the ATmosphere Conference in Seattle in March. We didnt see the fail whale, he said, a reference to the graphic that appeared in Twitters early days when the app was constantly crashing. That made us feel comfortable about the underlying technology.Hermeyer and White soon realized this was an ideal time to build a new social app on the protocol that could be ban-proof.Tapping into her influencer background, White began documenting Skylights development on TikTok, which helped bring exposure to the product and build a following of potentially interested users. Image Credits:Skylight SocialWe started with distribution, White explained. I actually made a video before we ever wrote a line of code for this [so] everyone can follow our journey as we build, she told TechCrunch at the conference. We were like, oh my gosh, we are building this thing that we think is so cool, but no one cares yet. So we have to build a way to tell people about it so that they would care, because we know people need it, she said.Today, Whites @buildwithtori TikTok profile has nearly 50,000 followers, many of which turned into early testers.Like Bluesky, Skylight supports video uploads of up to three minutes in length, a recent increase from the one-minute-long videos supported previously. But White sees Skylight becoming more than just a decentralized TikTok clone.Image Credits:Skylight SocialShe hints that Skylight in the future will allow users to customize their feed, including by utilizing new gestures beyond swiping and scrolling.Other features in the works include support for sounds, duets, stitching, bookmarks, and playlists. The app is in beta on the Google Play Store and is now available publicly on Apples App Store after initial testing.
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  • Zelle is shutting down its app, but you probably dont need to worry
    techcrunch.com
    Zelle is shutting down its stand-alone app on Tuesday, according to a company blog post.This news might be alarming if youre one of the over 150 million customers in the U.S. who use Zelle for person-to-person payments. But only about 2% of transactions take place via Zelles app, which is why the company is discontinuing its stand-alone app.Most consumers access Zelle via their bank, which then allows them to send money to their phone contacts. Zelle users who relied on the stand-alone app will have to re-enroll in the service through another financial institution.Given the small user base of the Zelle app, it makes sense why the company would decide to get rid of it maintaining an app takes time and money, especially one where peoples financial information is involved. Zelle launched in 2017 with backing from 30 banks to be a more efficient alternative to Venmo. On Venmo, users can receive payments into their own Venmo wallet, which they can then deposit into their actual bank account but if you dont want to wait a few days for the deposit to process, youll have to pay a fee for an instant transfer. Because of Zelles connections with banks, its able to offer instant transfers without charging additional fees.Zelle said that in 2024, users sent $1 trillion in payments, breaking the record of any other payment app. This might be the case because consumers tend to use Zelle for larger payments like rent. Venmo, on the other hand, is designed for more social use, like reimbursing a friend for dinner.
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  • Sam Altman says that OpenAIs capacity issues will cause product delays
    techcrunch.com
    In a series of posts on X on Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the popularity of the companys new image-generation tool in ChatGPT will cause unspecified product delays. We are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges, Altman wrote. Working as fast we can to really get stuff humming.OpenAIs new image generation capability arrived with much fanfare and controversy for its impressive ability torecreate styles like Studio Ghiblishand-drawn animation. Over the weekend, Altman said inpostson Xthat the company hasnt been able to catch up since launch and that staff have worked late nights and through the weekend to keep the service up.In a single hour on Monday, ChatGPT added a million new users, Altman claimed in a post. ChatGPT now has 500 million weekly users and 20 million paying subscribers, up from 300 million users and 15.5 million subscribers at the end of 2024.In an effort to ease its capacity issues, OpenAI delayed the release of the image generation tool for free ChatGPT users and temporarily disabled video generation for new users ofSora, the companyssuite of generative AI media tools.
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  • Someone is trying to recruit security researchers in bizarre hacking campaign
    techcrunch.com
    Are you willing to hack and take control of Chinese websites for a random person for up to $100,000 a month?Someone is making precisely that tantalizing, bizarre, and clearly sketchy job offer. The person is using what look like a series of fake accounts with avatars displaying photos of attractive women, and sliding into the direct messages of several cybersecurity professionals and researchers on X in the last couple of weeks.We are recruiting webshell engineers and teams to penetrate Chinese websites worldwide, with a monthly salary of up to $100,000. If you are interested, you can join our channel first, read the message, which included a link to a Telegram channel.For some reason, I also received this message from an X account named Look at my homepage, which had a username, @JerelLayce88010, that looked like it was randomly generated.When I followed the link, I was able to see the admin of the channel, someone who goes by the name Jack and has an AI-generated avatar of a pirate.Are you proficient in penetration technology? Jack asked me.I am not, but I asked Jack to tell me more about their goals.Get webshells from Chinese registered domains. There is no specific target. As long as the domain is registered in China, it is our target range, said Jack, referring to web shells, programs or scripts that hackers can use to control hacked web servers. You need to understand Chinas CMS referring to content management systems, the software that runs the backends of websites find loopholes, and be able to obtain webshells in batches. There is no upper limit to the number we need. The more the better. This is a long-term job. We can establish long-term cooperation.Yes, but crucially, why?What I need is Chinas traffic, Jack said, perhaps losing patience with my questions.OK, but, for what?At this point, Jack definitely got tired of my questions and gave me an assignment: Get me three web shells on any domain registered in China so I know you have the skills. Generously, Jack offered me $100 for each hacked domain.Alas, I still dont have the skills to do that, nor the willingness to break the law. Instead I kept asking questions, including who Jack was working for. Indian government, Jack responded, although in a subsequent chat Jack contradicted that, blaming automatic translation, which they said they were using because Chinese is their first language.I spoke to some of the researchers who got Jacks strange job offer, and they were also puzzled. Nobody said they have gotten a malicious link, for example, or suspicious questions that would indicate some sort of doxing or scam campaign.I am guessing its a troll [rather] than some serious threat actor, said s1r1us, a security researcher who received a DM from one of Jacks sockpuppet accounts on X. If they want to hire top talent this is not definitely the way.The Grugq, a well-known cybersecurity expert, told TechCrunch that he has never seen anything like this recruiting campaign. I have seen [people] asking dumb questions and spamming for various cyber security related things, he said. But never anything like the persistent, widespread, bizarre shit from this guy.According to The Grugq, perhaps the goal is to infect people inside China with malware, as it doesnt make sense to use Chinese domains to launch DDoS attacks or spam, because that wouldnt justify the high payment.I really cant think of wtf theyre doing, The Grugq concluded. It makes no sense.And neither can anyone else, apparently. Godspeed, Jack, in whatever adventure you are embarking on.
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  • ChatGPT isnt the only chatbot thats gaining users
    techcrunch.com
    OpenAIs ChatGPT may be the worlds most popular chatbot app. But rival services are gaining, according to data from analytics firms Similarweb and Sensor Tower.SimilarWeb, which estimates traffic to websites including chatbot web apps, has recorded healthy recent upticks in usage across bots like Googles Gemini and Microsofts OpenAI-powered Copilot. Geminis web traffic grew to 10.9 million average daily visits worldwide in March, up 7.4% month-over-month, while daily visits to Copilot increased to 2.4 million up 2.1% from February.Similarweb reports that Anthropics Claude reached 3.3 million average daily visits in March, and Chinese AI lab DeepSeeks chatbot eclipsed 16.5 million visits that same month. Meanwhile, xAIs Grok, which only gained a web app several months ago, averaged the same number of daily web visits as DeepSeeks chatbot: 16.5 million.The numbers pale in comparison to ChatGPT, which surged past 500 million weekly active users in late March. Yet David Carr, editor at Similarweb, noted that theres fierce competition for the No. 2 chatbot spot.[F]or March, DeepSeek is in second place, despite seeing traffic drop 25% from where it was in February, based on daily visits, Carr told TechCrunch. Chinas DeepSeek came out of nowhere in January, but the AI platform with the greatest momentum at the moment is Grok from Elon Musks xAI, with traffic up nearly 800% month-over-month.AI companies mobile chatbot apps have been growing their user bases, too, perhaps fueled by recent AI model releases.According to metrics from app data analysis company Sensor Tower, the Claude app saw a 21% week-over-week increase in weekly active users during the week of February 24, when Anthropic released its latest flagship AI model Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Two weeks prior, shortly after Google made its Gemini 2.0 Flash model generally available, the number of Gemini app weekly active users grew by 42%. Abraham Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, attributed the rising tides not only to new models, but new capabilities, as well. Just this past month, Google brought a canvas feature to Gemini that lets users preview the output of coding projects, and Anthropic has steadily added tools to its Claude client.The rollout of popular new AI models, heightened consumer interest in the space, the introduction of various new features and functions, and the growing number of unique use cases has propelled user growth for AI chatbot apps, Yousef told TechCrunch. But OpenAI probably isnt panicking yet. Yousef pointed out that ChatGPT had 10x mobile app weekly active users compared to Gemini and Claude combined as of March.
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  • Tinders new AI-powered game assesses your flirting skills
    techcrunch.com
    You know the online dating scene is bad when dating giants like Tinder are now introducing AI personas for users to flirt with.On Tuesday, the company announced a new game powered by OpenAI, allowing users to interact with an AI bot to practice flirting, reenact meet-cute scenarios, and receive scores with suggestions for improving their dating skills.To play Tinders The Game Game, tap the Tinder logo in the top left corner of the app. The game gives users a deck of cards, with each one featuring a different AI persona and scenario. Users must use their voices to respond and try to flirt their way into getting a date with the bot.After the interaction, users are scored on a three-point scale using flame emojis. The AI provides real-time feedback throughout the experience. If users are rude, for instance, the AI offers suggestions to improve the conversation.Image Credits:TinderAccording to the company, the new game is intended to provide a fun and lighthearted experience, not to be taken too seriously. Its only available for U.S. users on iOS for a limited time.However, the trend of people flirting with AI bots is becoming scarily popular, and Tinder seems to be banking on this as a way to attract more users amid its struggles for growth. There are already existing apps in this space, such as Replikas AI dating sim Blush, Teaser, and Rizz.Tinder has announced other AI features, such as an AI photo selector tool that launched last year and upcoming features for discovery and matching.
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  • Ente wants to take on Google Photos with its privacy-first photo storage service
    techcrunch.com
    Despite Googles intentions for its default image viewing and editing app for Android, the Photos app has, over the years, become one of the most popular photo backup services around. In fact, it was one of the most attractive offerings for years until it stopped offering unlimited storage in 2020.That change in the tech giants strategy has left some space for other photo backup services to grow and showcase their offerings to people. Especially for people who dont want to hand over pictures of their entire life to big tech companies, photo backup services that focus on privacy have become really attractive. Thats where Ente comes in.An open-source project by Vishnu Mohandas, a former Google employee, Ente (which means Mine in Malayalam) offers end-to-end encrypted photo storage across various platforms meaning the service cannot access its users photos at all. The startup says it stores photos at three different locations for better reliability and access, and the open-source nature of the project means anyone can inspect the code or even spin up their own server to store their pictures securely.The company says all its user-facing features are processed on-device the processing for features like identifying faces and locations, creating themes and curating memories is done locally and the processed information is synced with other devices using end-to-end encryption. You can also use natural language to search for photos, such as beach sunsets in India.The service offers a web client as well as Android, iOS and desktop apps, and comes with 5GB of free storage. Users can pay for plans starting from $9.99 per month for 1TB of storage, and can share one account with five people.Image Credits: EnteIn an interview with TechCrunch, Mohandas said that while he uses a lot of Google products, including Photos, the companys privacy practices made him uncomfortable.Google takes security seriously, but not user privacy. They dont really care about customer data or what implications can come from being careless about it. In hindsight, this is not surprising because they are an advertisement company, Mohandas said. He eventually tried out Apple and Dropbox but wasnt satisfied with their interfaces or how difficult it was to access pictures across different platforms and devices.Image Credits: EnteEnte, which is bootstrapped, claims it has over 150,000 registered customers who have collectively stored over 165 million photos on the app. Despite the traction, Mohandas says the company doesnt yet have any ambitions to seek out venture capital.The cost of a company like us shutting down is really high, as all our customers would need to take off their data. We dont want to take venture money at the moment and try and get growth in a manner that could lead us to shut down, Mohandas said.He said the open-source community around Ente is strong, and all its 12 employees were previously part of the community. The company also offers dedicated support for folks who want to self-host the app.Mohandas realizes that privacy features arent going to be enough to sell a service like this and says thats why Ente has tried to maintain feature parity with services like Google Photos. The startup is also considering releasing an Android app that doesnt require users to log in and offers photo categorization features locally.
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  • OpenAIs new image generator is now available to all users
    techcrunch.com
    OpenAIs new image generator, powered by its GPT-4o model, is now available to all users, CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X. The feature was until now available only to paying users of ChatGPT.While it is not clear how many images users on the free tier can generate, Altman last week had mentioned a limit of three images per day.OpenAIs image generation tool took off instantly after launch, with Altman saying the demand was so high, the companys GPUs were melting. The tool quickly also gained notoriety for being used to convert pictures into the style of Japanese animation firm Studio Ghibli, raising concerns around copyright and training data used by the company as well, given the similarity in style.Some people also used it to generate fake receipts, such as restaurant bills. An OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch that all these images have metadata indicating that ChatGPT generated them, and that the company takes actions if the images violate the companys guidelines.Meanwhile, OpenAI today said it raised $40 billion in funding led by SoftBank at a $300 billion valuation. The company also said ChatGPT has hit 500 million weekly active users and 700 million monthly active users.
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  • Fashion startup CaaStle appears to be in trouble
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:3:30 PM PDT March 31, 2025Image Credits:Gwynnie BeeFashion startup CaaStle appears to be in troubleCaaStle, a startup that launched in 2011 as a plus-sized clothing subscription service and in 2018 became an inventory monetization platform for clothing retailers, is facing financial difficulties, reports Axios.The company is almost out of money, CEO Christine Hunsicker has resigned, and law enforcement is investigating alleged financial misconduct, Axios reported, citing a leaked letter from the board. CaaStle did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TechCrunch noticed CaaStles job board says it currently has no open roles, often a negative sign for a startup.The startup raised more than $530 million total, though it last raised $43 million in 2019, PitchBook estimates. While this could be a more involved explosion than most startups ever endure, experts told TechCrunch that 2025 is on track to be another brutal year for failed startups.Topics
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  • Construct Capital raises $300M fund for defense and manufacturing tech
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:5:26 PM PDT March 31, 2025Image Credits:whitebalance.space / Getty ImagesConstruct Capital raises $300M fund for defense and manufacturing techConstruct Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in startups applying technology to sectors like manufacturing, transportation, and defense, has closed its third fund with $300 million in capital commitments.The Washington D.C.-based firm previously raised a $225 million second fund and a $75 million capital pool for later-stage companies in 2022.While many emerging managers are struggling to raise fresh funds, Constructs capital haul underscores institutional investors interest in backing VCs focused on the growing field of defense tech amid rising geopolitical tensions, along with the Trump administrations push to increase domestic manufacturing.The firm was founded in 2020 by former NEA partner Dayna Grayson and Rachel Holt, who was previously an executive at Uber. Construct has invested in startups like Hadrian, which uses software to manufacture parts for the defense and aerospace industries, and Veho, a company specializing in last-mile e-commerce delivery from distribution centers to customers.Topics
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  • ChatGPTs new image generator is really good at faking receipts
    techcrunch.com
    This month, ChatGPT unveiled a new image generator as part of its 4o model that is a lot better at generating text inside images.People are already using it to generate fake restaurant receipts, potentially adding another tool to the already-extensive toolkit of AI deepfakes used by fraudsters.Prolific social media poster and VC Deedy Das posted on X a photo of a fake receipt for a (real) San Francisco steakhouse that he says was created with 4o.Others were able to replicate similar results, including one with food or drink stains to make it look even more authentic:The most real-looking example TechCrunch found was actually from France, where a LinkedIn user posted a crinkled-up AI-generated receipt for a local restaurant chain:TechCrunch tested 4o and was also able to generate a fake receipt for an Applebees in San Francisco:Image Credits:chagpt / charles rolletBut our attempt had a couple of dead giveaways that it was faked. For one, the total uses a comma instead of a period. For another, the math doesnt add up. LLMs still struggle to do basic math, so this isnt particularly surprising.But it wouldnt be hard for a fraudster to quickly fix a few of the numbers with either photo editing software or, possibly, more precise prompts.Its clear that making it really easy to generate fake receipts presents huge opportunities for fraud. It wouldnt be hard to imagine this kind of tech being used by bad actors to get reimbursed for entirely fake expenses.OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson told TechCrunch that all of its images include metadata indicating they were made by ChatGPT. Christianson added that OpenAI takes action when users violate its usage policies and that its always learning from real-world use and feedback.TechCrunch then asked why ChatGPT allows people to generate fake receipts in the first place, and whether this is in line with OpenAIs usage policies (which ban fraud.)Christianson replied that OpenAIs goal is to give users as much creative freedom as possible and that fake AI receipts could be used in non-fraud situations like teaching people about financial literacy along with creating original art and product ads.
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  • OpenAI raises $40B at $300B post-money valuation
    techcrunch.com
    In BriefPosted:3:09 PM PDT March 31, 2025Image Credits:Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty ImagesOpenAI raises $40B at $300B post-money valuationOpenAI on Monday announced that it closed one of the largest private funding rounds in history. According to a blog post on the companys website, OpenAI raised $40 billion in a round that values the company at $300 billion post-money. SoftBank led the financing, CNBC reported. Other participants included Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive, all of which are earlier backers in the outfit.[This new capital] enables us to push the frontiers of AI research even further, scale our compute infrastructure, and deliver increasingly powerful tools for the 500 million people who use ChatGPT every week, OpenAI wrote in the blog post. Were excited to be working in partnership with SoftBank Group few companies understand how to scale transformative technology like they do.CNBC, citing a source familiar with the matter, says that around $18 billion of the funding will go toward OpenAIs ambitious Stargate infrastructure project, which aims to establish a network of AI data centers around the U.S. Topics
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