OpenAI has already spent $800k on lobbying this year

AI companies are busy lobbying to make sure laws end up in their favor...

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Bellan Thursday, August 1, 2024 Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we're looking at yet another case of startup fraud, more lobbying from AI companies, and a round of layoffs that caught employees by surprise. We're also looking at AI regulation, Reddit calling out AI companies for scraping data, Indian startups tempering IPO expectations, and more. — Rebecca TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: TechCrunch 1. AI companies are scrambling: This is the election year that could influence future AI regulation, and AI companies are busy lobbying to make sure laws end up in their favor. OpenAI, for example, has already spent $800,000 on lobbying in the first half of this year, compared with $260,000 in all of 2023. Read More 2. The SEC flexes the long arm of the law: After charging the founder of BitClout with fraud, the agency is now coming after the founder and CEO of social media startup, IRL. The regulator says Abraham Shafi made false and misleading statements about the company's growth and used company credit cards to pay for personal expenses. Read More 3. Bungie lets go of 17% of staff: Employees of the game studio that created massive hits like Halo and Destiny say they were caught off guard by the layoffs, which hit 220 staffers. Many apparently found out about the layoffs through social media posts. Not a good look, Bungie. Read More Morning Must-Reads Image Credits: DrAfter123 / Getty Images 🔍 The Copyright Office has some thoughts on AI: The U.S. Copyright Office has issued a report on how AI may affect its domain. Its first recommendation? Pass a new law right away to define and combat AI-powered impersonation. "The speed, precision, and scale of AI-created digital replicas calls for prompt federal action," the agency wrote. Read More 🦾 EU's AI Act comes into force: The EU's law to regulate AI comes into force from today, starting the clock on a series of staggered compliance deadlines that will apply to AI companies. While most provisions will be fully applicable by mid-2026, some rules like restrictions of law enforcement using remote biometrics in public places, will apply in six months' time. Read More 🪫 Meta's facing a big problem: Mark Zuckerberg feels Meta will need 10x more computing power to train Llama 4 compared to Llama 3, and it's going to start building up the capacity. Meta's capex in Q2 2024 rose 33% to $8.5 billion YoY, driven by investments in servers, data centers and network infrastructure. AI's a costly business indeed. Read More 📉 Indian startups are tempering their IPO expectations: Two large Indian startups, Ola Electric and FirstCry, are ready to head to the public markets, but their IPO price targets indicate lower valuations than the price tags they enjoyed when private. The more conservative stance reflects a shift in startup valuations, as companies try to cover their butts before subjecting themselves to public scrutiny. Read More 🤝 Are we in M&A Land now? Open-source compliance and security platform FOSSA has acquired developer community platform StackShare, which is used by 1.5 million developers to discuss, track and share the tools they used to build apps. The acquisition started, as many do, with a simple partnership. Read More 🧻 Google plays nice with fledgling startups: Google Cloud is giving Y Combinator startups access to a stockpile of Nvidia GPUs and Google tensor processing units so they can build AI models. Google's obviously cozying up to promising early-stage AI startups, probably so it can devour them when they grow big enough. Read More Around the Web 🤑 Reddit wants AI companies to pay for content: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has said that AI operators like Microsoft, Anthropic and Perplexity need to pay up if they want to keep scraping the site's data without permission, according to The Verge. "It's been a real pain in the ass to block these companies." Read More 🎱 Telegram launches Mini App Store: The messaging platform is adding mini apps that live within its app, like games, AI generators and other tools. The new Mini App Store will make it easier to access Telegram's in-app browser, according to 9to5Google. Read More 🛬 Delta complains about CrowdStrike outage: The airline's CEO said CrowdStrike's blunder, which knocked out Microsoft devices around the world, is costing Delta $500 million after it had to cancel more than 5,000 flights. The figure includes not only lost revenue, but also the millions per day the airline had to spend on compensation and hotels for passengers, reports CNBC. Read More Before You Go Image Credits: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images 🗺️ Give the people what they want: Google Maps has announced a ton of new features, but somehow none of them were 'Pause Navigation.' It's a little thing, but how nice would it be to not have to exit the navigation and start it back up after stopping for food or fuel? Anyway, the features Maps did introduce seem to make it more like Waze, which is cool, too. Read More   Check out some of our other newsletters: Startups Weekly TechCrunch AI TechCrunch Mobility Got a tip? tips@techcrunch.com Want to advertise on TechCrunch? advertise@techcrunch.com Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Update your preferences here at any time Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 110 5th St,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy

Silicon Valley VCs for Kamala Harris

Plus, how to get Apple Intelligence on your iPhone

View this email online in your browser By Christine Hall Wednesday, July 31, 2024 Welcome to TechCrunch PM! This afternoon, we bring you news about another group of venture capitalists who are making public which presidential candidate they support, a few funding rounds to advance AI tools, layoffs, and a robot that will move boxes for you. Happy Wednesday! TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Drew Hallowell / Getty Images, Maggie Stamets / Cody Corrall / TechCrunch 💰 Now we see which VCs stump for Kamala Harris: Just as we saw investors Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and David Sacks throw their support for Donald Trump, investors including Reid Hoffman and Vinod Khosla are doing the same for Kamala Harris. Read more 🤝 Bending Spoons acquires WeTransfer: Bending Spoons already owns apps, including Evernote and Meetup, and is now adding the file transfer service. Not much is known yet about the fate of WeTransfer in the hands of Bending Spoon. We do know that it typically transforms the business models of companies it acquires. It also lays off staff from those companies. Stay tuned. Read more 🎧 AI for sales: Sybill, now with $11 million in new funding, built an AI assistant specifically for sales representatives. The company claims its ability to track and analyze many call transcripts and emails is what sets it apart. It does that by providing context-driven insights and summaries instead of only providing meeting notes and transcripts of one or two calls. Read more   A Message from Airtable Build an app in moments with Airtable Cobuilder Imagine a team of developers working on your behalf. Just tell Cobuilder what you want to build, for who, and the AI will do it for you. The possibilities are endless – use Cobuilder to create your next product roadmap, content calendar or OKR tracker. No coding required. Just ideas. You imagine it. AI builds it. The magic is in making it yours. Learn More   Afternoon must-reads Image Credits: fatido / Getty Images 🍎 How to enable Apple Intelligence on your iPhone: Apple is finally releasing some of the Apple Intelligence features. However, if you don't want to deal with early-stage buggy software, wait for the stable release later this year. Read more 🔎 A helping hiring hand: AI agents are everywhere, so why not as a hiring manager. Tezi, which raised $9 million, is building an AI agent for hiring managers to automate the recruitment process. Read more 🤖 A robot that irons: Neura is one of a baker's dozen of firms that were given early access to Nvidia's humanoid development and deployment tools. This week, the German robotics manufacturer released a video of its humanoid robot, called 4NE-1, performing a variety of activities, like ironing and moving boxes. Read more 📱 Layoffs: You might be able to blame this one on generative AI. Match Group discontinued livestreaming services in its dating apps, resulting in a 6% reduction in its workforce. Match is shutting down the Hakuna app, acquired through its purchase of social networking company Hyperconnect in 2021. Read more   A Message from EQUALS TRUE You may Want to ditch your IT Service Partner Nearshore agile team augmentation and acceleration by EQUALS TRUE. The impact of an IT Service without the hassles or absurd costs. Learn More   Around the web 🚂 The seed train has slowed: New figures from Crunchbase News show the number of seed-round deals in the first half of 2024 slowed down. It's also taking longer for a seed-stage company to get to Series A, as it often does; however, now VCs say seed rounds are larger to accommodate. Read more ✈️ Meet Boeing's new CEO: Robert "Kelly" Ortberg, a former CEO at aerospace manufacturer Rockwell Collins, will succeed David Calhoun as CEO and president beginning August 8, ABC News reports. Read more 🧳 Delta says CrowdStrike outage will cost it $500M: The airline says it had to cancel over 5,000 flights as a result of the outage. Delta CEO Ed Bastian also said the company had no choice but to seek damages against CrowdStrike. CNBC has more   Check out some of our other newsletters: Startups Weekly TechCrunch AI TechCrunch Mobility Got a tip? tips@techcrunch.com Want to advertise on TechCrunch? advertise@techcrunch.com Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Update your preferences here at any time Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 110 5th St,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy