On Wednesday, social network X (formerly Twitter) updated its Privacy Policy to indicate that it would allow third-party “collaborators” to train their AI models on X data, unless users opt out. While X owner Elon Musk trained xAI’s Grok AI chatbot on X user data, leading to an investigation by the EU’s lead privacy regulator, […]

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In the final days leading up to the U.S. presidential election, Elon Musk’s X suspended the official account of a progressive-donor-backed ballot initiative called SwapYourVote. The volunteer-run website tries to get third-party voters in swing states to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris, matching them with Democrats in solidly blue states who agree to vote […]

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TechCrunch found that X's AI chatbot produced incorrect results about the U.S. presidential election, even as votes were still being cast.

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Even cybersecurity companies aren’t safe from deepfake attacks. Speaking onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Wiz’s CEO and co-founder Assaf Rappaport, who recently turned down a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google, noted that his employees had been targeted by a deepfake attack just two weeks ago. “Dozens of my employees got a voice […]

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Ashton Kutcher’s VC firm, Sound Ventures, co-led by general partners Guy Oseary and Effie Epstein, is betting on AI — including with an investment in Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, the investors confirmed onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Tuesday. The startup, founded by Li, the Stanford professor dubbed the “Godmother of AI,” has already raised […]

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Publishing platform Substack is now pushing users to install its mobile app by offering gifted subscriptions. While Substack itself is available across platforms, including the web, those who want to take advantage of the free subscription offer can only do so after downloading the mobile app to their device. The free subscription offer is being […]

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Google says it has addressed an issue with its search engine that saw it displaying a “where to vote” panel, which includes a map of polling places, for some specific voting-related searches but not for others. The tech giant even used the word “fixed” to respond to the matter, despite the fact that Google Search […]

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Boasting a technology that can dramatically increase the capacity of existing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing used to identify people infected with COVID-19 and other illnesses, ChromaCode has attracted new funding from Bill Gates-backed Adjuvant Capital.  “We want a good solution for a resource-limited environment,” says ChromaCode founder and executive chairman Alex Dickinson, a serial entrepreneur […]

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Private equity firm Apollo Global Management this morning announced that it has completed its acquisition of Yahoo (formerly known as Verizon Media Group, itself formerly known as Oath) from Verizon. The deal is worth $5 billion, with $4.25 billion in cash, plus preferred interests of $750 million. Verizon will be retaining 10% of the newly […]

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Tofino Capital, a venture capital firm targeting early-stage startups in emerging markets, has launched its $10 million fund. It is announcing the first close of this fund at $5 million and hopes to achieve a final close nine months from now.   The firm, founded by Eliot Pence and Aubrey Hruby, wants to back startups in Africa, […]

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What determines the trajectory of your company? Is it the quality of your idea, perfect product market fit, your bold plan to TAM? One thing trumps these other important factors. The pitch — it’s the single most important step you’ll take to get your startup where you want it to go. The challenge is saying […]

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Folks dedicated to the world of NFTs have access to loads of analytics and browsing tools, but none of them really work together. At least, that’s how new startup Curio sees things. Curio taps into several different sources of data to provide a powerful analytics tool for both browsing and tracking the value of NFTs. […]

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Call of Duty is one of the biggest franchises in the world of gaming, and we’re just a few short weeks from the debut of the next title. Welcome to the era of Modern Warfare II. Today at CoD Next, Activision is giving us our first look at live gameplay from MWII courtesy of more […]

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The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has several sets of data on the domestic production of crude oil and natural gas. Depending on your interests, the resources below can help you find the crude oil and natural gas data you need.

In our latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast that electricity generation from U.S. hydropower plants in 2024 will be 13% less than the 10-year average, the least amount of electricity generated from hydropower since 2001. Extreme and exceptional drought conditions have been affecting different parts of the United States, especially the Pacific Northwest, which is home to most U.S. hydropower capacity.

Huge consolidation is afoot in the world of gaming. Today Take-Two Interactive announced a plan to acquire mobile games giant Zynga, in a deal valued at $9.86 per share — $3.50 in cash and the remaining $6.36 in shares of Take-Two common stock. Zynga’s enterprise value in the deal works out to $12.7 billion. The […]

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Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

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Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

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Online language learning continues to be a huge opportunity for startups, with the most engaging experiences meeting a surge of interest from consumers looking for more productivity out of the hours that they spend on their smartphones. In one of the more recent developments, a language learning app called EWA — which has built a […]

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Dating app giant Match is getting a new CEO. Just over two years after assuming the top exec position, Match CEO and 16-year employee Shar Dubey is stepping down. The company announced today, alongside its first-quarter earnings, Shar Dubey will resign as an officer of Match Group but will remain on the company’s board and […]

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TikTok is already one of the world’s fastest-growing social media platforms, where it’s even overtaken YouTube on watch time in select markets and sports over 1 billion monthly active users. Now, the company is looking to expand the range of activities its users can do when they tire of flipping through short videos. A report […]

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Take-Two has completed its $12.7 billion acquisition of mobile games giant Zynga, the company announced on Monday. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Zynga shareholders received $3.50 in cash and 0.0406 shares of Take-Two common stock per share of Zynga common stock. The deal, which was first announced in January, will bring Zynga’s popular […]

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Hey all. Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we recap some of the top stories to cross TC’s front page over the last 7 days. The most read story on our site this week was about Flowcarbon — a new company and “blockchain-based redemption story” (as Anita put it) launched by WeWork […]

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The hackers who reportedly hit more than 130 organizations last year and stole the credentials of almost 10,000 employees are still targeting several tech and video game companies, according to a report obtained by TechCrunch. The report, prepared by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, calls the hackers “Scattered Spider.” In a previous publicly available report, the company […]

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One of the most attention-grabbing aspects of “Roadrunner,” the Morgan Neville-directed documentary about Anthony Bourdain, was Neville’s use of generative AI to replicate Bourdain’s voice. Looking back now, Neville told Wired that he saw this as a “fun” way to “keep [Bourdain’s] voice going in the film.” But his approach drew intense criticism — while […]

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As founders plan for an increasingly AI-centric future, Gusto co-founder and head of technology Edward Kim said that cutting existing teams and hiring a bunch of specially trained AI engineers is “the wrong way to go.” Instead, he argued that nontechnical team members can “actually have a much deeper understanding than an average engineer on […]

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The Mac mini will be getting an upgrade this week, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The mini is Apple’s desktop computer (really just a small gray box) positioned between the consumer iMac and the company’s professional-grade desktops. The new mini is reportedly getting smaller — nearly the size of an Apple TV set-top box. It […]

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Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! Last week, we took a break from contextualization for some guides to consumption. This week, we’re looking at what’s happening in the mind of one Jack Dorsey. You can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny. the big thing While […]

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A plan which would see a corporate entity trademark the term “Web5” has been put to rest after much backlash. Late Tuesday night, TBD, the Bitcoin-focused division of Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block (formerly Square), announced an ill-thought-out plan to trademark the term, which refers to its vision for a decentralized, privacy-focused iteration of the […]

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It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up… The scandal-hit company formerly known as Facebook has fought for over four years to keep a lid on the gory details of a third party app audit that its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally pledged would be carried out, back in 2018, as he sought to […]

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Yahoo today announced that it has acquired Wagr, a three-year-old social sports betting startup based out of Nashville. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. TechCrunch, whose parent company happens to be the now Apollo-owned Yahoo, covered Wagr way back at its inception in 2020 at one of its early investor’s demo days. We noted […]

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Yahoo is acquiring Artifact, the AI-powered news app from Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the company announced on Tuesday. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Artifact will no longer operate as a stand-alone app, and its AI-powered personalization technology will be integrated across Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app in […]

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News that Yahoo is buying Artifact stirred the technology watercooler yesterday. Artifact was an interesting app, employing AI to help its users find and consume more, and more targeted news. It had some devoted fans, but never reached the sort of scale that would have made it an attractive long-term project. So, the Instagram founders […]

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It’s no secret that a massive digital transformation is happening within financial services companies and amid the growing number of non-financial outfits that are also adding financial products to their offerings. Still, Sheel Mohnot, who was formerly a general partner at the fintech fund of 500 Startups, and Jake Gibson, co-founder of personal finance startup […]

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E-commerce roll-up companies are big in the United States, and Wonder Brands wants to be that for Latin America.

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Chicago-based Groupon today laid off more than 500 of its employees — 15% of its 3,416-person headcount — according to posts from former employees on social media. The reduction impacted workers in teams including merchant development, sales, recruiting, engineering, product and marketing. Groupon confirmed the layoffs to TechCrunch after the publication of the story. “Our […]

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Governments must apply renewed focus to achieve fiscal balance and sustainably reduce the cost of delivery.

PwC has acquired infrastructure advisory firm Appian Group, bolstering the firm’s focus on health and social infrastructure, PwC Managing Partner, Deals Sean Gregory announced today.

The needs of all Australians - affordable housing, a secure job, a decent education for their children, a good health system and a comfortable retirement - will not be met if we don't achieve major tax reform.

PwC Australia has appointed David Smorgon OAM as the Executive Chairman of its Family, Business & Wealth practice in Private Clients.

Unique granular modelling of over 2,000 locations across Australia uncover how fragmented and concentrated our economy is.

Two young Australian innovators are ready to take their ventures to the next level after sharing in $20,000 in seed funding from PwC during a live pitching event held by the Foundation for Young Australians.

PwC’s asset management leader, Ken Woo, said Japan’s commitment to creating a regional market for managed funds represents a ‘tipping point’ in terms of momentum for the initiative.

Regulation, compliance, and price pressure are slowing access to potentially life-saving new medicines, and undermining industry confidence in the current listing process.

The overwhelming majority of global banks and traditional financial services firms believe part of their business is at risk of being lost to standalone Fintech challengers, according to a PwC report released today.

Arne Schepker, the CEO of the popular Berlin-based language learning platform Babbel, is stepping down, and the company’s co-founder and former CEO Markus Witte is stepping back in to lead the company “into a new phase while searching for Arne’s successor with patience,” the company said. This new phase, unsurprisingly, will involve AI. Witte will not […]

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Stacklok, the open source software supply chain company founded by Kubernetes co-creator Craig McLuckie and Sigstore creator Luke Hinds, is donating Minder, one of its key projects, to the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). Minder helps development teams set up a system of proactive checks and policies to minimize supply chain risks by enforcing best […]

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About a year and a half ago, quantum control startup Quantum Machines and Nvidia announced a deep partnership that would bring together Nvidia’s DGX Quantum computing platform and Quantum Machine’s advanced quantum control hardware. We didn’t hear much about the results of this partnership for a while, but it’s now starting to bear fruit and […]

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When it comes to privacy nightmares, Pinterest is unlikely to be the first social app that springs to mind. But the visual discovery engine’s use of tracking ads is the target of the latest complaint from European privacy rights nonprofit noyb, which accuses it of breaching the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by failing […]

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Bad news for LinkedIn in Europe, where the Microsoft-owned social network has been reprimanded and fined €310 million for privacy violations related to its tracking ads business. The administrative penalties, which are worth around $335 million at current exchange rates, have been issued by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) under the European Union’s General Data […]

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