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Musk’s 10-month-old baby, xAI, is closing in on a $6 billion funding round. Social network X, née Twitter — which is also part of Elon’s tech family — is already a shareholder. Initially the deal was only going to raise $3 billion, but then everyone wanted in and the price went up. Investors include Musk’s BFFs from Sequoia Capital, Future Ventures and a few other chums who might as well join this AI party – all very mean “you can’t sit with us” girls. What really frustrates me, though, is how smug Musk probably is about it all. It’s okay, I’m just bitter that no one. mine Startups have never raised $6 million — never mind three orders of magnitude more.
Sure, it may be on the verge of being kicked out of the US entirely (although, I hasten to add, the previous administration tried that, and TikTok is still going strong here), but TikTok is a Can be sneaky in more ways than one. . Word on the street (or should we say web?) is that TikTok is playing a little hide and seek with Apple. Instead of giving Apple their 30% cut for in-app purchases, it seems they’re trying to steer users into buying their digital tipping coins from their website. But shush… it’s a secret! This feature is apparently only visible to certain users (looking at you, big spenders). Will Apple give them the boot like they did Fortnite? Only time will tell.
Your founding team is useless.: In a brutally honest conversation with me at TechCrunch Early Stage, Tom Blomfield, former founder of Monzo Bank and current Y Combinator partner, spilled the beans on venture capitalist decision-making. He says investors are looking for unicorns that can deliver 1,000x returns — anything less is an epic failure. They’re not just judging your business model or product. no.
The most interesting startup stories of the week
Hello? Is that an iPhone? Why are you so quiet today? Image credit: Vectrin/Getty Images
Oh, I’m, you smart dog! The once “InstaChallenger” Berlin-based photo-sharing app that nearly went belly-up last year has found a new way to milk its users – by training future AI owners! Yes, they are selling your photos to train machine learning models. Users were given 30 days to pack up and scram their digital photo albums or keep their peace (and hand over their photos) forever. Are you opting out? Swiping left on Tinder isn’t that easy — you need to manually delete your photos. But wait for it… the real kicker is that if you get angry and decide to delete your account completely, you won’t get paid anymore. Womp-womp, sad trombone.
It’s like “Game of Thrones” but in the tech world. Welcome to the latest season of Techstars, where CEO Maëlle Gavet is fighting battles on all fronts within her kingdom! He’s had a bank collapse, an international accelerator program shut down, and dodgy LinkedIn posts. And that’s just for starters. Throw in the intricacies of Swedish labor law and you’ve got more drama than an episode of The Real House Founders. As if that weren’t enough, she’s also dealing with a company-wide revolt against her reign, as well as her cost-cutting measures that have led to a toxic work culture, and startups like my pet goldfish. Hiring experienced people. (He died in 2007. RIP, Knee-mo.) Stay tuned for this gripping tale of power struggles, corporate drama, questionable finances and strategy — I can’t guarantee dragons or White Walkers. But it will have many fire breaths. And the icy glow!
Go out for fun.
Mark Cuban wrote a check to Truffle Shuffle. No one would comment on whether it was a good turn out for the company. Image credit: Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images
Rubrik, the cybersecurity company, decided to take a leisurely stroll on Wall Street this week and BAM! Shares rose 16 percent on their public debut. They were initially priced at $32 per share (just a fraction of their target range) and reached $37 by the end of trading. Now, that’s one way to make an entrance! This small excursion has boosted his worth from $3.5 billion in 2019 to $6.6 billion today. Not bad for a company that isn’t even making a profit yet! Their secret sauce? Subscription revenue – It went from 73% to 91% in just one year. But, hey, who needs profits when you’ve got sticky, right? While this looks like the start of the IPO party parade with Reddit and Ibotta leading the conga line, potential interest rate cuts could end the party early. No doubt Greylock is laughing all the way to the bank with madness.
ButcherBox, the meat-obsessed startup that bootstrapped its way to a juicy $600 million in revenue, just sunk its teeth into the “Shark Tank” darling Truffle Shuffle. The acquisition is less about boosting competition and more about helping ButcherBox customers stop burning their steaks. The Truffle Shuffle was born out of sheer desperation when founders Jason McKinney and Tyler Voris found themselves with $20,000 worth of truffles but no restaurants to sell them to, thanks to our dear friend COVID-19.
This week’s most interesting fundraisers
RevenueCat founders Miguel Carranza (L) and Jacob Etting (R). Image credit: Revenue Cat
- Here, kitty, cat: RevenueCat, the fairy godmother of app subscriptions, just raised $12 million to expand its magical kingdom on the web. Purr-fect. It powers 30,000 apps and is managing more than $2 billion in annual subscriptions. Noise
- Like a flip phone, but homeier: Step right up, guys! BackFlip just snapped up $15 million to help real estate investors flip houses. Because why sweat old-fashioned physical labor when you can just throw some cash at the problem and watch your property value do gymnastics?
- Of course, I think AI needs a few more dollars.: The OpenAI startup fund is at it again, quietly securing $15 million from two investors who clearly enjoy their anonymity (hmmmmmm). Ian Hathaway, the fund’s manager and sole partner – Why Share the Fun – was named in the paperwork. Remember last year when eyebrows were raised after it was revealed that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had said everything? They said it was “temporary”, but it caused some drama!
Other unforgettable stories from TechCrunch…
Bad news for healthcare privacy this week. UnitedHealthcare’s CEO says “probably a third” of Americans were affected by their recent hack, and Kaiser also snagged a bunch of customer data. Yeah, thanks, you clown.
anyway. Here are some more stories that are fun. Probably. Or at least interesting. Or maybe they got a metric krypton of traffic this week. Who knows what my selection criteria are, but … just read the stories, okay?
- The cloud is, well, raining.: Google Cloud is rolling in dough. The business unit beat Wall Street expectations with strong growth of 28%, driven by insatiable demand for AI tools that cloud infrastructure supports.
- It’s all “go” … Noooo, not like that!: Welcome to another episode of “Autopilot Antics” starring Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)! After a sensational investigation into hundreds of accidents where drivers treated Autopilot like an experienced driver rather than an assist system, NHTSA closed the case with 13 tragic, deadly plot twists.
- I am just padding this part of the newsletter.: iPadding, ie. Just when you thought Apple might have a shiny product reveal, they’ve sneakily scheduled another event. Rumor has it we’re getting a new iPad Pro and Air, an updated Apple Pencil and keyboard case combo. I’ll be there, reporting with the hardware team — stay tuned.
- The soup is terrible and the portions are small (Ahem): Meta’s new AI chatbot, Llama 3, has been unleashed on the world. It’s like a party guest who reorders the results of a random web search without ever zeroing in on something in particular. But hey, it’s free!
- I wish it had existed when I was learning English.: Google is proving once again that it’s not just for stalking your exes and settling bar trivia discussions. They’re testing a new feature called “Speaking Practice” that uses AI to help users communicate in English, not just talking about the weather or asking where the library is. Not included.
Credit : techcrunch.com
