To get an overview of the biggest and most important TechCrunch stories delivered in your inbox every day at 15:00 PDT, subscribe here.
Hey, people, welcome to Friday’s edition of the Daily Crunch. As you may have seen, the Supreme Court issued an important ruling on abortion today, effectively annulling Rowe v. Wade, declaring that the Constitution does not guarantee the right to abortion. Although the result was expected – a draft of the decision expired months ago – the implications for the technology industry are just beginning to become clearer. Stay tuned while my colleagues and I analyze developments.
In other news, TechCrunch’s summer party was a great success yesterday – thanks to everyone who showed up! Not to sound like a broken record, but in terms of events, don’t forget about the upcoming TC Sessions: Robotics in July. And on the far horizon, TechCrunch Disrupt will return to San Francisco on October 18. I can’t wait to see your smiling faces there.
In the meantime, do you need to read or listen? Consider browsing the TechCrunch podcast and newsletter library. I bet there’s enough lag to keep you busy – and, more importantly, informed! – Kyle
Top 3 on TechCrunch
- Move, there’s a new co-pilot in town: Proving that GitHub isn’t the only platform with the ability to launch an AI-powered pair programmer, Amazon debuted CodeWhisperer this week, a tool that can automatically complete entire functions based on comment or a few clicks of code. According to Frederick, Amazon has trained the system – which currently supports Java, JavaScript and Python – on billions of lines of publicly available open source and its own code base, as well as publicly available documentation and code in public forums.
- Please wait while your company is acquired: Zendesk has been dealing with this rudely lately, when investor activists are stalking the customer service software provider for changes and erroneous attempts to raise its rating. Still, the news of Zendesk’s acquisition today came as a surprise, if only because of its suddenness. Ron notes that the $ 10.2 billion transaction – led by Permira and Hellman & Friedman – gave investors a way to get some return on their investment, albeit below the $ 17 billion offer they received in February.
- Who needs megapixels when you have Benjamin? Leica makes great digital cameras. But for the special edition, the limited edition Leica MA Titan, the German imaging company decided to go the analog route. The titanium-clad MA Titan makes a film and – if that wasn’t unattainable enough – costs a staggering $ 20,000. Haje reports this, noting that Leica sells only about 100,000 cameras a year. You may be forgiven for charging a premium.
Startup and VC
In drug-related news, a startup called Wondermed raised $ 4.6 million to offer patients ketamine treatment at home. Now, you may ask, is this safe? Wondermed claims that this is the case, as are competitors Mindbloom and Fieldtrip Health. But of course they would. Haje is a little skeptical about how easy it is to be approved for ketamine treatment, but cites clinical trials that prove the drug’s efficacy as a therapeutic option for anxiety and depression.
Elsewhere in technology:
- Delivery of goods – for a price: Offering proof that the instant delivery market is not yet toasted, Zomato this week acquired Blinkit, a hard-to-start 10-minute grocery delivery, in a $ 568.1 million deal. Manish reports that investors have questioned Zomato’s expansion into the space, given its terribly high costs and low margins.
- Hold my battery: Drones for transporting packages are cool. What’s not cool is having to replace the batteries and payload once they land. Fortunately, there is a startup for this. Airrow makes a device that works like a CNC machine or 3D printer, Brian said, with a portal that moves along the X and Y axes to bring the battery from the charger to the drone and back. How cool is that?
- The struggle is real: it never looks good when a start-up lays off a significant part of its staff after raising capital. This happened this week with Ro, who cut 18% of her full-time workforce to “manage costs, increase the efficiency of [its] organization and better direct our resources to [its] Natasha notes that former and current employees have previously spoken about the health technology company’s inability to make significant revenue from newer products.
- Looking for a long-term partner: Communication is important in any relationship, but it doesn’t always happen right away. That’s why this week Hinge unveiled Dating Intentions, a new account feature designed to encourage users to be ahead of their expectations. According to Aisha, the choices chosen include “life partner”, “long-term”, “long-term, open to short-term”, “short-term, open to long-term”, “short-term” and “to understand my dating goals.”
- When life gives you lemons, turn to cryptocurrency: Solana, a startup founded by former Essential engineers and designers, is shifting its focus to embrace cryptocurrency. CEO Anatoly Yakovenko announced this week that his first product, Osom OV1, will be an Android smartphone that supports decentralized applications that rely on the Solana blockchain. The reactions are mixed, Jacqueline said.
- Don’t eat lentils: Daily Harvest blames the lens for the health problems some of its customers experience – especially leeks and lentils. Following an article in the Wall Street Journal, the company recalled its product with French lentils and leeks, which reportedly caused some people to undergo surgery to remove their gallbladder and may have contributed to liver damage and fever. Daily Harvest is valued at over $ 1 billion and is supported by a number of celebrities, notes Aisha, including Bobby Flay, Gwyneth Paltrow and Serena Williams.
Twitter Space: M13 managing partner Carl Alomar discusses fundraising during downturn
Image Credits: Getty Images / dblight
On Monday, June 27 at 11:30 a.m. PT / 2:30 p.m. ET, M13 managing partner Carl Alomar joins editor-in-chief Walter Thompson on Twitter Space to share tactics and strategies for founders planning to recruit funds during this decline.
Alomar led startups through the collapse of dotcom companies in 2000 and the Great Recession of 2008 and will talk about whether investors still prioritize growth over profits and how to identify the points of proof that founders need to set before their next increase.
We will be answering questions, so please follow @techcrunch on Twitter and set a reminder for Monday’s chat.
(TechCrunch + is our membership program that helps founders and startups move forward. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
The future has come. Something like. Residents of San Francisco can now pay for autonomous taxi travel, courtesy of Cruise’s service. Darrell writes that Cruise’s offer will initially only work between 10pm and 6am on certain city streets, but that these restrictions may change in the future. Depends on how smooth the service runs.
In India, meanwhile, the central bank is fighting start-up fintech companies, Manish reports. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has informed dozens of providers that it prohibits the practice of charging “non-bank prepaid payment instruments” – such as prepaid cards – using credit lines. Some affected founders have argued that the incumbent banks lobbied the RBI to make a decision that was favorable to them.
In other news:
- Fresh coat of paint: As part of a broader Chrome update, Google has announced several new features coming in the latest version of Chrome for iOS. Among the key additions, the Chrome app gets access to Google’s enhanced safe browsing feature, which proactively warns you about dangerous web pages, Lauren writes. Other updates include changes to the user interface and the ability to set Google Password Manager as the autofill provider.
- Slow pace of electricity: what do you dislike about electric cars? The wait. According to Jaclyn, the growing demand for the most anticipated electric cars this year is shattering order books and extending waiting lists. Rising supply chain costs mean that customers of Lyriq and other EVs can pay hundreds or thousands of dollars more for a vehicle that arrives months later than expected. Unhappy.
- Streaming is still struggling: Ivan reports that Netflix has laid off 300 people this week, the company’s second layoff in two months. Among the headwinds facing the company are the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the COVID pandemic and the sharing of passwords. Netflix lost more than 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter and expects to lose 2 million in the second quarter.
- Almost as good as the real thing: Frederick writes that at his re: MARS conference, Amazon announced synthetics in SageMaker Ground Truth, a new feature for creating virtually unlimited images of an object in different positions and under different lighting conditions. It is designed to help create synthetic training data for AI models in situations where real data is not abundant.
- Spyware Reaches Android: Outlook security researchers recently linked Android’s mobile spyware, called Hermit, to Italy’s RCS Lab, Zack reported. Google’s threat researchers have now confirmed much of Lookout’s findings and notified Android users whose devices have been compromised by spyware.
Add Comment