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Welcome to Startup Weekly. Register here to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
Something really scary is happening. It’s an internet-fueled horror story that unfolds before us in three intertwined acts: (1) AI technology is improving fast enough that I recently had a bit of an existential crisis, wondering if i was an AI too. (2) People have no idea what is real and what is not on the Internet. (3) With the upcoming 2024 presidential election, we have a recipe for disaster.
We may be copulating so exhaustively right now that digging our way out is impossible. Prepare a cup of coffee and breathe; I’m exploring the full depth of my fears in “On the Internet, no one knows that you are a bot.”
Fintech keeps printing dollars, pounds, dinars and rupees
Earlier this year, Mary Ann reported that even well-funded fintech companies were going through rounds of layoffs, but it seems that optimism has returned to the sector. This week it transpired that Celebrity investors (including Paris Hilton) flocked to consumer savings startup Checkmateand Kyle reported that Nymbus secured a round of financing of 70 million dollars to help move banks away from legacy technology and into the new digital age.
Pay attention though: You would be wrong to believe that all this innovation is happening only in the major and obvious financial centers of the world. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen major innovations around the world, including a major Brazilian player that plans to serve 11 African marketsa startup that helps Indonesians take control about your credit scores, a bank raised $78 million to expand operations in South Africa, Singapore and the Philippines, and the stories that emerge from India, Kenya, Latin America, France, etc. This is great news for startups looking to grow through international expansion. The playbook is there, as are the investment dollars.
Insert the “credit card house” joke here to make this image make even less sense. Image Credits: Kuzma (Opens in a new window) / Fake Images
- PhonePe keeps increasing: Manish reports that PhonePe gets an additional $100 million from General Atlanticafter the investor already invested $100 million last month.
- “Probably a job for the big banks”: Mary Ann reports that LGBTQ+-focused neobank Daylight stops him.
- Like Mint, but for startups: Federico reports that Firmbase raises $12 million to modernize financial planning for startups.
Doing it for the LOLs
The social media landscape continues to evolve at breakneck speeds, with stories quickly reaching TechCrunch’s news desk. The surgeon general this week stuck in an oar, suggesting that social networks “may carry a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents”. As an adult who often finds that social media harms my mental health and well-being, color me a deep shade of no surprise.
Some organizations are fighting back, including the state of Montana, which has decided to try to ban TikTok altogether, citing that it is taking steps to “protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being collected by the Chinese Communist Party.” “. TikTok sued in return, claiming that the ban violates the First Amendment.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decided to skip the announcement rally and announce his candidacy for the presidency on Twitterwhich stopped the entire social media platform. I wonder if we’re starting to see why Elon Musk was interested in buying Twitter: being front and center seems to be something he enjoys. I’m not going to lie though: I’m so deeply bored with the whole “Elon buys Twitter” saga, but I just can’t look away. I am super grateful to Amanda and Alyssa for putting together a What you need to know about Elon Musk’s Twitter general description.
Misinformation continues to proliferate on social media, illustrated in a particularly illustrious way by the incident that took place this week when a hoax of the attack on the Pentagon was posted by a Twitter Blue verified Twitter user named @BloombergFeed, who is confusingly not affiliated with Bloomberg.
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
- ChatGPT comes to iOS: Sarah reported that OpenAI released an official ChatGPT app for iOSwhich quickly became available in a dozen countrieshit 500,000 downloads in less than a week and has an android app coming soon. If you don’t already know what ChatGPT is, Kyle and Alyssa together a primer of ChatGPT for you.
- InstaTweet: amanda summarizes everything we know about the instagram twitter clone, which will be released later this summer.
- The first cut is the deepest (baby I know): In November, Meta had 87,000 employees. In the months since, Amanda reports that she has thrown over 21,000, and this week saw another round of layoffs; this time affecting 6,000 people.
TechCrunch (virtually) in Atlanta
On June 7, TechCrunch will present City Spotlight: Atlanta. We have an incredible lineup of programming planned, including a fireside chat with Ryan Glover, co-founder of fintech Greenwood, as well as a panel examining the ecosystem of companies within the Atlanta region and identifying the best ways to nurture and meet with local venture capitalists. But that is not all. If you are an early-stage founder based in Atlanta, please apply to be on our panel of investors/guest judges for our live presentation competition; the winner gets a free booth at TechCrunch Disrupt this year to showcase their company in our startup alley. Register here.
The ups and downs of hardware
Humanoid robots are advancing literally by leaps and bounds, and indeed by leaps and bounds. Brian has been on a roll, covering The first steps of Figure’s humanoid robot and the company’s $70 million fundraising. Meanwhile, Apptronik is causing its robot-to-be-revealed-this-summerand Sanctuary AI showed off its ‘slightly creepy looking bot last week, also. It seems that the current enthusiasm for robots that look a little like humans got an inhumane tailwind when Elon Musk showed Tesla’s bipedal partner in September last year.
We rarely cover startups running crowdfunding campaigns here at TechCrunch these days, and with quite good reason. The Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns are awesome, but, as I covered last month, there are many pitfalls when it comes to getting a product to marketand even well-intentioned hardware campaigns fail from time to time. Our very own Mark Harris was hired to do an in-depth report on a high-profile failed drone project a few years ago and found, in a nutshell, that the the founders of the campaign were very optimistic and incompetent. There are many failure modes; even being extremely successful and offering well-performing products is no guarantee that the resulting company will be successful. Namely, even Pebble (the makers of the first commercially viable smartwatch) had to close their doors eventually.
The reason I bring it up is that the Nuwa Pen team (whom I met at CES in January of this year) just launched their Kickstarter. I wasn’t going to cover it until I saw the crowdfunding video and noticed something weird: The pen the company showed me was not capable of doing what the pen shown in the video did..
These things terrify me. Image Credits: Figure
- robots in the sky: Aria reports that Gitai wants to build a robotic workforce for the moon and Mars.
- For lovers of fresh air: Brian reports that Dyson updates its vacuum cleaners and air purifiers.
- Some reporters have no sense of self-preservation: Brian reports that contrary to my first impression of Shift Moonwalker Electric Skate Shoesso far it has resulted in zero injuries.
The best reads of everyone at TechCrunch this week
- You can’t share that! Sarah reports that Netflix is rolling out global crackdown on password sharing in an attempt to protect your bottom line.
- Wait, you want us to get hacked? Alex asks the excellent question, Why aren’t venture capitalists flocking to fund cybersecurity startups? (TC+)
- Better late than never? Devin reports that 28 years later, Windows finally supports RAR files.
- Forcing humans to do human work: Ivan reports that Apple reportedly limits internal use of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot.
- There’s that P-word again: Kate explores “return on growth,” as 5 investors explain their mantra for startups. (TC+)
- The GIF that keeps on giving: Paul reports that following UK antitrust order, Meta sells Giphy to Shutterstock for $53M after buying it for $400M.
Calling all early stage startups! Apply to join the Startup Battlefield 200 cohort at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. All finalists get expert training, venture capital networking, a booth at Disrupt, and the chance to compete for $100,000 in non-equity funding. Applications close on May 31. apply today.
AI scares the hell out of me by Haje Jan Kamps originally posted on TechCrunch
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