Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Zomato to raise $1B as quick-commerce heats up

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we have Zomato shoring up its cash reserves; a truckload of money for AI-powered banking; and a review of the new iPad Mini. We've also Meta combating scam ads and blocking users from tracking private jets; new accusations of copyright infringement against Elon Musk; Zoom's new AI medical scribe feature, and more. — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Niharika Kulkarni / NurPhoto / Getty Images

1. Zomato scrambles to stay in the race: Indian food delivery app Zomato's board has approved a plan to raise $1 billion just weeks before its rival Swiggy's IPO. The company is likely trying to shore up reserves as competition in the quick-commerce market intensifies. Read More

2. A cool eight figures for AI banking: TC first reported that Mobileye's founder Amnon Shashua is raising around $100 million for another startup called One Zero, which aims to use AI for retail banking services. Read More

3. The new iPad Mini review: The iPad has had a lean few years as Apple focused more on other hardware, but it feels like the tablet is now back in the limelight. TC's Brian Heater says the new Mini leapfrogs the base iPad in compute power, cost, and pixel density. Read More

A Message from Criteo

Electrify your retail media competitive edge.

Criteo's latest report, "The State of Consumer Electronics," is fully charged with exclusive insights to wire your retail media campaigns for success. Based on a survey of 14,000+ shoppers around the world and commerce data from hundreds of brands and retailers, this report uncovers key drivers behind consumer behavior and purchasing decisions in the category, with actionable recommendations you can implement today.

Download Here

Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Jens Büttner/picture alliance / Getty Images

🪝 It's a good idea to be critical of marketing, especially when you have celebrities endorsing products that sound too good to be true. Unfortunately, not many people can be, so Meta is testing out facial recognition tech to prevent ads that scam people by "celeb-baiting" them. Read More

👓 Meta hasn't even rolled out multimodal AI for the Ray-Ban smart glasses yet, but the glasses are already the top selling product in 60% of Ray-Ban stores throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Read More

🌆 Stop stealing stuff: Elon Musk doesn't like to be refused. So when he asked Alcon Entertainment if he could use imagery from "Blade Runner 2049" for Tesla's robotaxi reveal and they said no, he allegedly did it anyway using AI. Now the production company is suing him, Tesla and Warner Bros for copyright infringement. Read More

🩺 AI scribes for doctors: Zoom is working with Suki, an AI medical scribe provider, to offer doctors on its platform an AI note-taker that can be put to work during telehealth visits. Suki closed a $70 million round earlier this month. Read More

👀 Bolstering the supply chain: A large majority of businesses' code bases use open source tools, which increases the risk of software supply chain attacks. Enter Socket, a startup that helps detect security vulnerabilities in open source code. Read More

A Message from TechCrunch

Bring you and a +1 to Disrupt 2024 with the Expo+ 2-for-1 Pass

Disrupt 2024 is less than a week away! We're offering the Expo+ 2-for-1 Pass to ensure you and a guest can experience this highly anticipated event. Get 2 passes for half the price of 1. Connect with 10,000 startup and VC leaders, explore startups' innovations, and engage in hands-on sessions at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30. This offer ends on October 27.

Around the Web

🦅 Elon Musk's America PAC has spent thousands of dollars advertising on his own social media platform X in support of former president Donald Trump, per Wired. Read More

🍎 No cut for Apple: Disney+ and Hulu are no longer letting subscribers sign up and pay through Apple, reports MacRumors. Instead, they are directing viewers to their web pages. It's another case of companies not wanting to pay Apple for each transaction. Read More

👹 Pokemon or Big Data? Software frameworks can sometimes have very strange names. This fun website made by developer Pixelastic pokes fun at such names with a little game where you have to guess if the name displayed belongs to a Big Data framework or a Pokemon. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC / Getty Images

✈️ Leave the billionaires alone! Meta has suspended accounts that were tracking the private jets of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and other celebrities due to "risk of physical harm." Read More