Only Products and Other Stuff

Four years after partnering with Apple on the launch of the Apple Card , Goldman Sachs may be eyeing the exits. The Wall Street Journal reports that Goldman is “looking for a way out” of its high-profile deal with Apple, which recently expanded to include savings accounts for Apple Card holders.  The investment banking firm is apparently in talks to offload the partnership to American Express, the WSJ report added, but so far nothing seems to be set in stone, nor is it clear if Apple would support the handoff. However, it wouldn’t be surprising if such an arrangement comes to pass. Earlier this year, Goldman CEO David Solomon said he was “ considering strategic alternatives ” for the investment firm’s consumer arm. Beyond its deal with Apple, Goldman’s consumer-facing business includes a credit card partnership with General Motors as well as GreenSky, the lending company Goldman bought for $2.2 billion in 2021 . For their part, Apple and Goldman did not immediately respond ...

Travis VanderZanden’s slow-motion departure from Bird is now complete. The scooter rental company announced in a late-Friday news dump that the executive has stepped down from his role as chairperson of Bird’s board, “ effective immediately .” Replacing VanderZanden is John Bitove, who played a role in saving Bird’s bacon this past December via its merger with Bird Canada. VanderZanden had led the micromobility company from its inception as its president and founding CEO, but that all changed last year when Bird’s declining stock price culminated in a delisting warning from the New York Stock Exchange. Soon after, VanderZanden stepped down from his role as president , handing over the title to Bird’s then-chief operating officer Shane Torchiana. Torchiana went on to assume the CEO post as well several months later. At the time, VanderZanden called the reorg a “long-planned transition.” According to Bird,  VanderZanden “decided to step down [from the board] to pursue other ve...

Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. This week, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how some of the biggest companies in the world have as much — if not more — power than entire countries. Most countries, at least, have some level of democratic oversight, but that isn’t true in the same way for companies. My question, then: In a world where the policies of, say, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter become de facto standards all around the world, should we have a greater degree of say (TC+) in what those policies are? The other thing that’s kept me busy this week is fundraising. Alex talked with 11 VCs (TC+) about how hard it was for their companies to raise so far this year. Meanwhile, I talked with a number of founders who were really struggling to raise money. The truth is, the founders struggling the most have three things in common (TC+). Now let’s take a look at what happened in the world of startups this week. Notes from the securi...

Everyone knows that raising venture capital has been harder for startups lately — unless you are building an AI startup , of course. But instead of only talking to founders, we’re flipping the script today. We wanted to hear from investors how their portcos are handling a cash-light environment. To that end, TechCrunch+ recently asked 11 VCs how the first half of 2023 bore out for their investments. From their answers, it appears a startup’s ability to fundraise in today’s climate is based on several key factors, including capital efficiency, the market and its needs. Q2 failed to bring a funding reprieve for web3 startups and unicorns How bad was H1 2023? Menlo Ventures’ Matt Murphy was succinct when we asked how 2023 was shaping up for his firm’s portfolio companies: “Fundraising is challenging, full stop.” “Challenging” is a good descriptor. So is “quiet,” which is how Jason Lemkin of SaaStr Fund put it. For Kaitlyn Doyle of TechNexus Venture Collaborative, the year has...

Fund of funds (FoF) were created to serve as a bridge for LPs to get access to managers they couldn’t back otherwise. But in an environment where funds are not seeing consistent support from their existing LPs, and there are more venture funds than ever, is their role still relevant? Fund of funds fundraising — say that five times fast! — has declined for years. To compare, traditional U.S. venture firm fundraising set a record in 2022 with $162 billion. U.S.-based VC FoF raised just $400 million in the first quarter of 2023, according to PitchBook, and $3 billion in 2022. This compares to $24.4 billion in 2021 and $33.7 billion — the fundraising peak — in 2017. It’s not surprising why many LPs have soured on the strategy, said Kyle Stanford, a senior venture analyst at PitchBook. For one, backers of these funds pay a mix of fees to both the FoF and the underlying commitments the FoF manager makes. “LPs have that double layer of fees. And that extra time it takes after [an ...

In our tech-driven world, the right to privacy — once the cornerstone of democracy — is disappearing at an alarming rate. But not everyone is keen on having Big Tech companies and nation-states surveilling every digital communication. This may be one reason why Signal, the end-to-end encrypted messaging app, has been downloaded more than 100 million times to date. Signal Foundation, the app’s nonprofit developer, is a staunch defender of privacy and security. Indeed, it said it would leave the United Kingdom rather than weaken its encryption. The organization’s principles — based on retaining as little user data as possible — are a real rarity in security. This is why we’re thrilled that Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, will join us for a session called “Signal and the Future of Encrypted Messaging.” You’ll find it on the Security Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 , which takes place on September 19–21 in San Francisco. We can’t wait to talk with Whittaker a...

David Lazovsky and Preet Virk, technologists with backgrounds in semiconductor engineering and photonics, came to the joint realization several years ago that AI and machine learning workloads would quickly encounter a “data movement” problem. Increasingly, they predicted, it would become challenging to move data to and from compute hardware as AI models scaled past what could be kept on the die of any one memory chip. Their solution — architected by Phil Winterbottom, previously a researcher at the distinguished Bell Labs — was an optical interconnect technology for compute-to-compute, compute-to-memory and on-chip data transmission. Along with Winterbottom, Lazovsky and Virk founded a startup, Celestial AI , to commercialize the tech. And now, that startup is attracting big backers. Celestial AI today announced that it raised $100 million in a Series B round led by by IAG Capital Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies and Temasek’s Xora Innovation fund. The tranche, which brings C...

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot , has taken the world by storm. Capable of writing emails, essays and more given a few short prompts, ChatGPT has become one of the fastest-growing apps in history. Beyond that, it’s begun to find a place in the enterprise, particularly with the launch of plugins that connect the chatbot to third-party apps, websites and services. Most recently, ChatGPT Plus subscribers now have access to a new feature called Browsing, which allows ChatGPT to search Bing for answers to prompts and questions. But ChatGPT isn’t always the most cooperative assistant . Getting it to output something specific requires careful fine-tuning of the prompts. A number of resources and guides for ChatGPT prompt writing have sprung up since the tool’s launch. But not all of them are especially easy to follow — or intuitive. To help folks both new to ChatGPT and looking to learn new tricks, we’ve compiled a list of the best ChatGPT prompts for different types of workflows —...

Startup accelerator Techstars is raising $150 million for its new fund, SEC filings show. The accelerator is seeking new capital ahead of the end of the deployment period of its third institutionally-backed fund, Techstars Accelerator 2021 , later this year. Techstars declined to offer details on how it intends to use or deploy the funding, citing regulatory restrictions. However, like its predecessors, the new fund, Techstars Accelerator 2024, is expected to be used for accelerator-stage and/or post-accelerator investments. Notably, the Boulder-based early-stage investor has used its current fund only for accelerator-stage investments. Its previous funds backed startups both during the accelerator stage and with follow-on investments after the program. Fund 3 aimed to back over 800 pre-seed and seed startups that are part of its global accelerator programs by the end of 2023. Through its accelerator groups, Techstars has so far backed over 3,500 early-stage startups in various sec...

OpenAI is expanding overseas. To London, specifically. Today, the Microsoft-backed AI startup announced that it plans to open an office in London, its first international outpost. When OpenAI’s London location opens its doors, it’ll focus on advancing “research and engineering capabilities” while balancing collaborating with “local communities and policymakers,” according to CEO Sam Altman. “We see this expansion as an opportunity to attract world-class talent and drive innovation in AGI development and policy,” Altman, who reportedly had floated Poland and France as alternatives for the office, said in a canned statement. “We’re excited about what the future holds and to see the contributions our London office will make towards building and deploying safe AI.” London is a conspicuous choice for OpenAI, which hasn’t expanded beyond its San Francisco headquarters since its founding in 2015. The city is the longtime home base of DeepMind, Google’s largest AI research division, and a...

Among Us, the popular multiplayer game where one crewmate is a murderous imposter, is getting an animated series. Innersloth, the independent game studio behind the game, announced Tuesday that it has partnered with CBS Studios to develop the show. As reported by Variety , the premise of the series is based on the game; members of a spaceship — in brightly-colored spacesuits — discover that an alien shapeshifter is sabotaging the ship and slaughtering crewmates, resulting in a cat-and-mouse chase where players have to suss out the imposter before everyone dies. A release date for the Among Us series has yet to be announced. However, CBS is in talks with TV networks and streaming services, per Variety. Titmouse, the studio behind “Big Mouth” and “The Legend of Vox Machina,” will serve as the animation studio for the Among Us series. Innersloth launched Among Us in 2018, however, the game didn’t become popular until 2020. In fact, it saw such a huge spike in popularity that even Rep....

Apple has uploaded the entire first episode of its sci-fi dystopian TV show “ Silo” on Twitter , allowing anyone on the platform to view it for free. The move comes three days before the streaming service is set to air the show’s season finale. Silo, which was recently renewed for a second season, is about a toxic future where a community lives in an underground silo. The show is based on the science fiction novel “Wool” written by American author Hugh Howey. 3 days until the #Silo finale. Here’s the entire first episode. pic.twitter.com/lIcTXCQ9D6 — Apple TV (@AppleTV) June 27, 2023 The move is a way for Apple to garner excitement for one of its popular shows by letting people watch it for free in the hopes that they get hooked on it and end up signing up for an Apple TV+ subscription. The concept isn’t new, as networks have done the same in the past by uploading pilot episodes on YouTube. Since Twitter recently started allowing longer video uploads for subscribers , Ap...

Apple Arcade is a getting a trio of notable indie games in July, including Stardew Valley, Slay the Spire and Ridiculous Fishing. Launched in 2016, Stardew Valley is an open-ended country-life RPG that gained popularity for its gentle art style and calm vibes. Apple Arcade’s version of the game will include recent updates, including new town upgrades, dating events, crops, fishing ponds, hats, clothing and pets. The game will launch on Apple Arcade on July 21. As for Ridiculous Fishing, the tech giant says the Apple Arcade version is a full and expanded remaster of the original game and is now in 3D. The remastered version of the game, called Ridiculous Fishing EX, includes a competitive mode and game plus mode. The idea behind the game is to catch as many fish as possible, then flick them up into the sky and shoot them with your shotgun. Ridiculous Fishing EX will launch on Apple Arcade on July 14. Image Credits: Vlambeer Slay the Spire, which is a roguelike deck-building game, ...

Damus, a decentralized social networking app backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, will be removed from the App Store due to Apple’s strict payment rules. Apple had threatened to remove Damus earlier this month over the app’s tips feature, claiming that it could be used by content creators to sell digital content on the platform. The tech giant has a long history of prohibiting developers from selling additional in-app content unless the transactions go through Apple, which takes a 30% cut. To avoid a ban, the team behind Damus had to tweak the app’s tipping feature, which is made possible by way of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. The company previously explained in a tweet that it had to remove the tips button from posts and was only allowed to permit tips on profiles. Looks like we are getting removed from the appstore even after updating our app to make it clear that no digital content is getting unlocked when users are tipped. Users are only ever tipped after posts are made,...

ChatGPT might’ve captured the world’s attention. But DeepMind claims that its next large language model will rival — or even best — OpenAI’s. According to a piece in Wired, DeepMind, the Google-owned research lab, is using techniques from AlphaGo , DeepMind’s AI system that was the first to defeat a professional human player at the board game Go, to make a ChatGPT-rivaling chatbot called Gemini. If all goes according to plan, Gemini will have the ability to plan or solve problems as well as analyze text, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told Wired’s Will Knight. “At a high level you can think of Gemini as combining some of the strengths of AlphaGo-type systems with the amazing language capabilities of the large models,” Hassabis said. “We also have some new innovations that are going to be pretty interesting.” Knight speculates that Gemini, which was briefly teased at Google’s I/O developer conference in May, will leverage innovations in reinforcement learning to accomplish tasks with ...

While working at Google, Wade Norris wanted to create a project that could positively impact people’s lives. He co-founded Google Lens, Google’s computer vision-powered app that brings up information related to the objects it identifies. But it didn’t quite scratch the itch. So several years ago, Norris teamed up with Scott Baron, a systems engineer in the aerospace industry, to launch a health-focused startup called SnapCalorie . SnapCalorie, powered by AI, attempts to get an accurate calorie count and macronutrient breakdown of a meal from a single photo taken with a smartphone. This month, SnapCalorie raised $2 million in funding from investors including Accel, Index Ventures, former CrossFit CEO Eric Roza and Y Combinator. The company previously raised $125,000 from unidentified investors in a pre-seed round. “Human beings are terrible at visually estimating the portion size of a plate of food,” Norris said. “ SnapCalorie improves on the status quo by combining a variety of new...

When it comes to artworks created by generative AI, enterprise users have specific legal concerns around permissions – and Adobe has recognized those worries. That’s why the company has written an indemnity clause that states that Adobe will pay any copyright claims related to works generated in Adobe Firefly, the company’s generative AI art creation tool. In a statement about the clause, the company specifically refers to these enterprise customers: With Firefly, Adobe will also be offering enterprise customers an IP indemnity, which means that Adobe would protect customers from third party IP claims about Firefly-generated outputs. That means the company is prepared to pay out any claims should a customer lose a lawsuit over the use of Firefly-generated content. The company knows that enterprise customers are worried about creating artwork in this way. Speaking at the Upfront Summit earlier this year, prior to the release of Firefly,  Adobe chief strategy officer Scott Belsk...

Lucid Group , the U.S. automaker that produces the luxury all-electric Air sedan, will supply Aston Martin with powertrain components for future electric vehicle models, the companies said Monday. The iconic British luxury automaker aims to launch an EV in 2025. The agreement marks a first for Lucid — a chance to act as supplier and diversify its revenue streams. Lucid has been struggling to meet delivery expectations and drum up enough demand for its luxury EVs, and has consistently missed the beat on revenue . In March, Lucid cut its workforce by 18% . Earlier this year, the startup unveiled a derivative of its electric drive unit specially designed for use in motorsports. The startup Under the terms of the agreement, Aston Martin will make phased cash payments to Lucid and give the startup a 3.7% stake, or about 28,352,273 ordinary shares. The value of shares and cash payments should reach about $232 million. Lucid will give Aston Martin technical support as the latt...

Frst , the Paris-based VC firm with no vowel in its name, is in the process of raising its second fund. The firm has already reached a first closing of €72 million (nearly $80 million at today’s exchange rate). And if there’s one thing to say about this new fund is that it’s business as usual for Frst. As the name suggests, Frst aims to be the first VC firm to invest in a tech startup. Frst even tells me that around half of the VC firm’s term sheets are sent before the startups are incorporated. The firm has decided to keep the exact same formula with some fresh capital to invest over the next few years. The team led by Pierre Entremont and Bruno Raillard originally met when they were working for Otium Venture as part of Pierre-Edouard Stérin’s family office. In 2019, the team created its own VC firm and raised the initial Frst fund (called Frst 2). At the time, Frst raised €90 million (nearly $100 million at today’s exchange rate). With today’s new fund called Frst 3, the investm...

Utu , a travel tech company that helps flyers get more out of their tax-free shopping, announced today it has raised a $35 million Series B led by SC Ventures. Part of the funding was used to acquire CardsPal, a Singapore-based fintech that offers deals and promotions nearby to users. During the pandemic-induced travel hiatus, utu worked to establish partnerships with travel, hotel chain and retail brands. The company notes that even though travel has rebounded, only about 1% of venture funding over the past 15 years has gone to travel, primarily short-term rental hospitality. Utu’s goal is to create innovation in the tax-free shopping sector, which allows tourists to reclaim VAT on their purchases. Utu offers customers a Tax Free Card, which has two main offerings. First, tax-free shoppers can opt for frequent flyer miles or hotel points instead of VAT refunds. Or they can select an immediate store voucher that is equal to 120% of the VAT or GST they paid while shopping overseas. U...

Of the many issues highlighted by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, one big one was the liability of having too much cash sitting in too few bank accounts. Today a London startup called TreasurySpring — which has built a platform for businesses to put some of their cash reserves to work, in investments — is announcing $29 million in funding to expand its products on the back of a surge of interest in its services. The funding, a Series B, is being led by Balderton Capital, with new backer Mubadala Capital and previous backers ETFS Capital, MMC Ventures and Anthemis Group also participating. Previously the company had raised some $13 million, and partial details of this latest round (£15 million to be exact) leaked out last week . We now understand that the full round of $29 million includes both primary and secondary funding and values the startup at close to $100 million. Prior to founding TreasurySpring, the three co-founders Kevin Cook (CEO), James Skillen (CTO) and Matthew Lon...