Happy Birthday, Threads: We have some notes for you

What Threads can learn from the competition

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Bellan Friday, July 5, 2024 Welcome to TechCrunch AM! Today, we're looking at fresh VC funds for emerging and growth tech firms, EU ramping up scrutiny on big tech, a slew of hacks across companies big and small, a marketplace for Gen Z, and Japan's latest huge robot. To work! — Rebecca TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto / Getty Images 1. What Threads can learn from its competition: It's been a year since Threads launched as an alternative to X, and the company already has 175 million monthly active users. Threads has slowly added some features like a web app, multiple profiles, trending topics, and fediverse integration, but it still has lots of room to grow. Here's a look at what the service can learn from its peers. Read More 2. Necessity spurs innovation: Southern Europe, and Spain in particular, are seeing some of the worst effects of climate change, like extreme heat waves and drought. But Madrid-based VC fund Seaya is counting on that as a tailwind to help find climate change. The firm just closed a €300 million climate tech fund called, Andromeda, and will invest in companies that specialize in energy transition, decarbonization, sustainable food value chains and the circular economy. Read More 3. Amazon gets another RFI from the EC: The regulator wants Amazon to detail how well it's complying with the EU's requirements for transparency around recommender systems, ads provisions and risk assessment. Amazon could be forced to pay up to 6% of global annual turnover in fines for noncompliance. Read More SPONSORED BY BANK OF AMERICA Advice from top tech investors Read their insights for tech company growth from Bank of America's Triangle Innovation Summit. Get Insights Morning Must Reads Image Credits: Fizz FB Marketplace, but for Gen Z: Gen Z students looking to buy used items won't go to Craigslist because it's sketchy, and they say Facebook Marketplace is for old people. But the demand for a local, Gen-Z focused buying and selling platform is still there. That's why Fizz, an anonymous social media platform operating across 240 colleges and 60 high schools, has added a peer-to-peer marketplace feature. Read More Emerging tech gets a shot in the arm: Venture firm Forestay has closed its second fund at a hard cap of $220 million. The Swiss VC has risen quickly in Europe, leading rounds in enterprise startups like Scandit, Wasabi, K2view, Nexthink and most recently, Neural Concept. The new fund will invest across Europe and Israel, and aims to lead growth rounds between $10 million and $15 million. Read More Roll20 rolls a natural 1: Roll20, a popular online tabletop and role-playing game platform, has suffered a data breach. A bad actor apparently gained access to an admin account and was able to access and view all user accounts. While users' IP addresses were compromised, Roll20 said it didn't find any evidence that any data was being misused or that passwords or credit card numbers were exposed. Read More And anotha' one: Health tech services provider HealthEquity has also suffered a data breach, and hackers have apparently stolen the "protected health information" of some customers. The hack originated from a personal device "belonging to a business partner" whose account was compromised, HealthEquity said, and used to access member information. Read More Military healthtech gets a boost: It's easy to forget that the U.S. Department of Defense has long been a patron of new tech before it became popular with civilians, like telemedicine and electronic health records. VC firm J2 Ventures, mostly led by U.S. military veterans, has raised a $150 million fund to invest in companies that are building products to help maintain the well-being of the nearly 3 million people employed by the U.S. military. Think tech that lets you draw blood without needles or wearables that measure blood flow to the brain. Read More AI comes for consulting: Why pay for a human consultant to show your business how to integrate AI and automate workflows when you can just get an AI to do it? That's what Chicago-based Quantum Rise is pitching and the company just raised a $15 million seed round to grow its "Consulting 2.0" model. Quantum Rise aims to help companies that can't afford to enlist the Deloittes of this world to onboard AI processes. Read More Around the Web Mobile Suit Public Works: If you like giant robots (who doesn't?), you'll most likely have a soft spot for Japan, and here's yet another reason to go visit that country: The West Japan Railway has unveiled a 40-foot robot that will help with maintenance tasks on train lines, like trimming tree branches and painting metal frames, according to The Guardian. As Japan's aging population results in more worker shortages, the company hopes to use robots like this for a variety of maintenance operations. Read More  OpenAI got hacked last year, reports the New York Times, and the hacker reportedly gained access to internal messaging systems and stole details about the design of OpenAI's tech. While the hacker didn't get into the systems where OpenAI houses and builds its AI, OpenAI's own employees are worried: After the breach, an OpenAI program manager reportedly sent a memo to the board, arguing that the company wasn't doing enough to prevent foreign adversaries like China from stealing AI tech and endangering national security. Read More The EU has no patience for dangerous content on X: The European Commission is set to serve X with a formal warning for failing to combat dangerous content on the platform, according to Bloomberg. The warning follows X's allegedly subpar handling of content after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The regulator is threatening fines worth up to 6% of annual revenue for failure to comply with its Digital Markets Act. Read More Before You Go Image Credits: YouTube YouTube's updated eraser tool lets creators easily remove any copyrighted music from their videos without affecting any other audio like dialogues or sound effects. The tool uses a specific AI-powered algorithm to get it right, according to YouTube. Once the video is successfully edited, YouTube will remove the content ID claim. 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

Noplace hits No. 1 in the Apple App Store

Plus, Twilio locks down breach and Cloudflare battles bots

View this email online in your browser By Christine Hall Wednesday, July 3, 2024 Welcome to TechCrunch PM! Today we're looking at a social media app called noplace that will remind you of the early days of social media platforms. There's also news about Cartken's cute delivery robots, a celebration over at Threads and some venture capital news. We'll be off on Thursday to celebrate the holiday. To those living in the U.S., happy Fourth of July! TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Noplace Well, it was definitely someplace: It looks like the mid-2000s are back! A new app called noplace raced to the top of the App Store as it launched out of invite-only mode. Designed to appeal to a younger crowd — or anyone who wants to connect with friends or around shared interests — noplace is like a modern-day MySpace with its colorful, customizable profiles. People are sharing things like relationship status, what they're listening to or watching, what they're reading or doing, and more. Read more The call is coming from inside the app: Twilio confirmed that "threat actors" were able to identify the phone number of people who use Authy, a popular two-factor authentication app owned by Twilio. While Twilio said it has solved the problem, one expert says the threat is not over yet. Read more Cartken's AV vision: Cartken's sidewalk delivery robots first rolled into the world with a narrow charter: carrying everything from burritos and bento boxes to pizza and pad thai to hungry customers. Today, the company sees opportunity for its robots to navigate the outdoor environment of pedestrian-filled sidewalks and the indoor world of factories, labs, industrial buildings and even airports. Read more Afternoon must-reads Image Credits: Getty Images Cloudflare is going after bots: Some AI vendors, including Google, OpenAI and Apple, allow website owners to block the bots they use for data scraping and model training with an amendment to the site's robots.txt, which lives in the source code and tells bots which pages they can access. Not all AI scrapers respect this. Cloudflare developed a new, free tool that prevents bots from scraping websites hosted on its platform for data to train AI models. Read more Nano Dimension acquiring Desktop Metal: The finer financial details are still being worked out, with the sale price ultimately ranging anywhere from $135 million to $183 million. At the high end, the deal marks more than a 27% premium over Desktop Metal's closing price. Read more Threads turns 1: Meta's Threads will celebrate its first year with over 175 million monthly active users. Read more Amazon retires Astro for Business: It was just seven months ago that the company was debuting Astro for Business, a security robot for smaller businesses. It's being discontinued but not shelved. The next iteration will hit closer to home. Read more Granza Bio grabs $7 million: This is the tale of two Ashwins who decided to explore the idea of turning research on the immune system into a company. Their company, a YC grad, is developing a novel approach to delivering immunotherapy and other "attack particles" to various parts of the body. Read more Driving Forces shuts down: Solo general partner Sidney Scott announced on LinkedIn this week that he was shutting down his $5 million fintech and deep tech VC fund that he started in 2020, calling the past four years "a wild ride." Despite a healthy performance on the fund, Scott realized the ride would not last forever. Read more LG's latest acquisition: LG has acquired an 80% stake in Athom, a Dutch smart home company and maker of the Homey smart home hub. The home products giant plans to integrate Athom's Homey platform, which links thousands of appliances, sensors and lighting devices, with its LG ThinQ platform. Read more Popster plays a new tune: A generative AI tune, to be exact. The music video-sharing app is getting an AI image generator for cover art and a collaboration capability where artists can remix another user's songs. Read more Video call reactions, be gone!: Confetti is great and all, but seriously. We have a guide to help you turn off reactions on your iPhone and Mac so you don't get surprised during a video call. Unless you like surprises like that, in which case, carry on. Read more TechCrunch Minute Image Credits: Getty Images / MirageC YouTube makes it easier to report and take down AI deepfakes: It's so easy to make a deepfake of another person's voice or face, but not always easy to report it. YouTube has made some small changes that make it slightly easier to report a video that uses your likeness without consent. Whether this move is successful will depend on how well enforced it is. If YouTube can speed up the process of removing potentially harmful content, then we'll call it a win. Hit play and let's chat! Around the web 🌐 Elon Musk to Bill Gates: "Stop shorting Tesla!": According to a tweet by Elon Musk on X, the duo still seem to be at odds with each other two years later. Yahoo Finance reports the rivalry started in 2022, when an exchange between them was leaked that included Musk refusing to support Gates' charitable work after he found out Gates had a half-billion-dollar wager on Tesla's share price falling. Read more Artists aren't thrilled with Apple Intelligence: They are saying the consumer tech giant isn't forthcoming about how Apple Intelligence will go about gathering the data and information used to train models, Engadget reports. It's becoming an age-old story of AI. Read more Microsoft settles personal leave suit: The company is reportedly paying $14.4 million to settle the case in California that had to do with alleged retaliation against employees who took their legally protected time off, CNBC reports. Think parental and disability leave. 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