NASA comes to the rescue of crowded rocket launch sites

Plus: Fisker's legal woes and Sprinklr lays off 100

View this email online in your browser By Christine Hall Friday, May 3, 2024 Good afternoon, and welcome to TechCrunch PM. We made it to Friday, and the team was busy bringing you some fresh news to kick off your weekend. We got some scoops on what NASA is doing to prevent rockets from lining up on the launchpad, and what Fisker did to get sued. There's also a delightful story about playing retro games on calculators, the after-effects of healthcare privacy drama and some venture rounds to dig into. See you next week! TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls under a NASA/Bill Ingalls license. NASA expands rocket launch facility: Aria got a scoop that NASA was looking to see if its facilities on Wallops Island, Virginia, could be expanded to enable the number of authorized rocket launches there to increase by almost 200%. It seems with more companies getting into rockets, spaceports are filling up. Read More Fisker sued: Last year, the electric vehicle maker debuted two new prototypes. Then it stopped paying an engineering firm that helped develop those vehicles. Well, now that engineering firm is suing Fisker for wrongfully holding on to IP associated with those vehicles. And it's asking for around $13 million in damages. Read More Sprinklr realigns its customer experience team: That resulted in the layoff of more than 100 employees, or about 3% of the customer experience management company. Read More Afternoon must-reads Image Credits: TechCrunch When a startup is better off saying no to revenue: Gotta love this headline from Ron Miller. Of course, revenue is important when it comes to building your company. However, Alex Kayyal, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said some other things are important, too. Read More A look at Apple's AI plans: Tim Cook didn't go into the company's plans for AI, but Sarah Perez caught a few tidbits from the company's second-quarter earnings call with investors that may shed some light on the consumer tech giant's AI future. Read More Did you play Pokémon on a TI-84?: Do you even remember the TI-84? I had a TI-81, so no games were played on that. However, it didn't stop myself and Amanda Silberling from waxing a bit nostalgic when discussing her story on how video game emulator Delta's decade-long struggle against the iOS App Store began with a school-issued calculator. Read More Don't expect the IPO markets to open up yet: Yes, we got excited by all of the action after a significant period of hibernation. However, experts say that it's not quite the time to go full speed ahead just yet. Read More It's an alphabet soup of an acquisition: Investment giant EQT is acquiring enterprise software company WSO2 in a deal said to be valued at more than $600 million. Read More I've got a secret: Okay, it's not really a secret anymore. As part of Instagram's new features, one called "Reveal" lets you post a hidden Story for your followers to uncover by sending you a DM. It's like maintaining a bit of mystique on a platform where people essentially lay it all out. Read More Why do we still let irresponsible companies have our data?: That's one of the questions that Paul Sawers aims to answer in his story about why the United Kingdom, with its public healthcare system, should be keeping an eye on the recent ransomware attack that affected UnitedHealth. Read More Head in the cloud revenue: Ron Miller digs into why the cloud infrastructure market is still hot. I'd give you some hints to get you started, but A-I think you can figure it out. Read More Money, money, money How Y Combinator's founder-matching service helped medical records AI startup Hona land $3 million. Read More Climate tech investment roars back with an $8.1 billion start to 2024. Read More Allozymes puts its accelerated enzymatics to work on a data and AI play, raising $15 million. Read More Around the web Image Credits: Getty Images/Patra Kongsirimongkolchai / EyeEm The future of Tesla: With the electric vehicle maker laying off its electric charging unit team, what can we expect from the company now? Well, it's leaving some vendors wondering what will happen with deals they struck to build the charging stations, The Washington Post reports. Not to mention all those automakers that decided to outfit their future EVs with Tesla connectors. Read More Silicon Valley Bank sells its venture arm: SVB Capital will be affiliated with Pinegrove Capital Partners, a firm formed in 2023 to focus on VC continuation vehicles and other venture liquidity solutions, Axios reports. Read More Peloton's uphill ride: Fox Business took a look at Peloton's battle to remain relevant in post-pandemic times. Read More A MESSAGE FROM INCOGNI Stop Robocalls, Spam Emails, Stalkers, Frauds, and More Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info—phone number, DOB, SSN—selling it to the highest bidder. And who's buying it? Best case: companies target you with ads. Worst case: scammers and identity thieves. Try Incogni—not only does it delete your personal data from the web, but it also removes your info from sites used for stalking. Sign Up Now TechCrunch Minute Spotify's move to paywall lyrics is putting pressure on free users: Spotify's slow movement to put lyrics behind its paid service wall in its music service is about as popular as you would expect. It seems that Spotify has a new feature up its sleeve to try and get free users to convert to its paid service. For those of us who already pay, it's a non-issue. But for the budget conscious, it may seem that their prior service is getting worse for no reason that they can suss out. So long as some convert to paying users, Spotify will endure the gripes, right? Hit play and let's chat! Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. 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Microsoft thinks generative AI and faces shouldn’t mix

The company has banned its AI from being used for face recognition

View this email online in your browser By Alex Wilhelm Friday, May 3, 2024 Welcome to TechCrunch AM! Today, we have notes on Apple's quarterly results, Microsoft posing limits on how its AI tech is used, the increasing geographic diversity of crypto founders, and even Bluetooth in space. Let's have some fun on this fine Friday morning! — Alex TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Apple 1. Apple is a value stock now: Apple is selling fewer iPhones than it used to. Revenue from its smartphone line fell 10% in its first fiscal quarter, fueled in part by a decline in sales in China. Were investors worried? Nope. Apple announced a massive buyback and Wall Street was sated. Read More 2. Microsoft doesn't want genAI to be used for facial recognition: Microsoft has put a very clear ban in place to forbid people — police departments in the U.S., in particular — from using its Azure OpenAI Service for recognizing faces. The new language added to its terms of use also forbids integrations with OpenAI's current — and possibly future — image-analyzing models. Read More 3. Google thinks Epic doth request too much: After losing a suit to Epic and failing to wrangle a review by the Supreme Court, Google is fighting with the Fortnite developer over remedies. Epic wants a lot; Google does not want to give that much. Shocking. Read More A MESSAGE FROM INCOGNI Stop Robocalls, Spam Emails, Stalkers, Frauds, and More Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info—phone number, DOB, SSN—selling it to the highest bidder. And who's buying it? Best case: companies target you with ads. Worst case: scammers and identity thieves. Try Incogni—not only does it delete your personal data from the web, but it also removes your info from sites used for stalking. Sign Up Now Morning Must Reads Image Credits: NKTN / Getty Images Crypto founders are increasingly an international affair: According to data from Alliance DAO, founders in the web3 space are getting thin on the ground in the United States. The crypto accelerator says the U.S. only accounted for 26% of applicants toits recent batch, a stark departure from the 45% U.S. applicants the accelerator received in H2 2021. Read More Great, Bluetooth in space: Look, I do not want to diminish Hubble Network's success in getting Bluetooth signals from satellites it sent up. It is a critical technology validation for the company, potentially opening the door to connecting millions more devices anywhere in the world. But can I just say, dear heavens, Bluetooth? The same technology that struggles to pair earphones a few feet away? Read More What to expect from the upcoming iPad event: The timing of Apple's upcoming event focused on iPads is surprising, since it's going to be closely followed by the company's developer event, WWDC. The tech giant must have enough up its sleeve to warrant two major events, right? All eyes are on a potential release of the M4 chipset, and some juicy AI features. TechCrunch has all the details right here. Around the Web AI devs are tired: AI tech is advancing by leaps and bounds, and companies around the world are sparing little to get ahead in the race. It's no surprise then, as CNBC reports, that the people building the tech are working insane hours to get the work done. Let's hope they can get some quality R&R and avoid burning out. Read More Bill Gates is not good at staying retired: Despite all this, Microsoft founder and tech legend, Bill Gates, is still super active at the company. Insider reports that his inputs include a lot of work on the AI front, which is helping the company navigate a new, and fast-moving trend. Read More Long bitcoin: Block, the fintech company previously known as Square, is investing some of its profits from selling bitcoin into buying bitcoin, Bloomberg reports. Given its co-founder Jack Dorsey's belief in the decentralized asset, the move is not a shock. It also shows how some corporations are moving beyond the traditional financial system. Read More Before You Go Image Credits: grinvalds / Getty Images Apple bets on emerging markets: As its revenues in China decline, Apple is pitching emerging markets as the future of its growth. Citing "places like India, like Saudi, like Mexico, Turkey, Brazil…and Indonesia, the numbers are getting large," Apple's CFO, Luca Maestri, is trying to convince its investors that the company can be more than a wealthy corporation that can afford to buy its shares back. Read More Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Got a tip? tips@techcrunch.com Question about our events? events@techcrunch.com Want to advertise on TechCrunch.com? advertise@techcrunch.com Interested in sponsoring live events? sponsors@techcrunch.com Update your preferences here at any time Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 110 5th St,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy