Meta backtracks on politics

Plus: Coffee lovers, rejoice!

View this email online in your browser By Dominic-Madori Davis Tuesday, January 7, 2025 Hello, and welcome to TechCrunch PM! Today we're diving into Meta's moderation policy update; the U.K.'s plans to criminalize some deepfake content; and, of course, more exciting announcements from CES 2025. Let's get started! TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images 👀 Meta ramps politics back up: The social giant announced that its moderation policies would include having political content once again phased into users' feeds. Meta previously limited the amount of political content on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Read more  🚪 Rooms with a view: Google has invested $1 million into the design app Rooms, a company that allows people to build interactive 3D rooms. The startup previously raised $10 million from a16z and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger. Read more  🎲 CES 2025 is still on a roll: We cover the new announcements, new products, and the latest happenings with Nvidia and X. We're on the ground in Vegas to help you stay up-to-date on everything from the show. Read more   A Message from HumanX Attend the No. 1 AI event of 2025 — Everyone else is! HumanX brings together 300 of the world's most important AI speakers, 3,500 of the world's preeminent business leaders, and global vendors who can connect the dots between theory and execution. If you are involved in AI and not at HumanX, you will be left behind — it's that simple. Use TC250 for $250 off a GA ticket! Register Now   Afternoon must-reads Image Credits: Wildpixel / Getty Images 👏 Tougher stance: The United Kingdom is moving ahead with plans to make sexually explicit deepfake content a criminal offense. The U.K. already made sharing of such images a crime. Read more 💰 Greenhouse green: Fermata announced a $10 million raise from Raw Ventures. The company uses computer vision and AI to monitor diseases in greenhouse crops. Read more 💵 Money, money, money: Speaking of fundraises, Alta Resource Technologies locked in a $5.1 million seed round led by DCVC and Voyager Ventures. The company says it has discovered a new way to extract rare earth elements, doing so in a much more sustainable way than how it's done now. Read more 🤑 And even more money: Serve Robotics, a company that creates robots that do restaurant deliveries, has raised $80 million. The company expects the cash to help it extend its runway and expand its fleet on the streets. Read more  ⚡️ Power play: Nuclear startup Deep Fission signed a deal with Endeavour, a data center developer, to build 2 gigawatts' worth of subterranean nuclear power. Endeavour also invested in the startup, though the company declined to say how much. Read more Around the web 📈 That's "billion" with a B: Anthropic is close to raising a $2 billion round, valuing the company at $60 billion. The news comes only two months after the company raised $4 billion from Amazon. Read more 🇮🇹 Benvenuto, Starlink! Though the EU is looking to build its own competitor to Starlink, one EU country might be going in a different direction. Italy is in talks to strike a $1.6 billion deal with SpaceX to bring Starlink to the nation. Bloomberg has more Before you go Image Credits: Meticulous ☕️ Calling all coffee lovers: Meticulous says it created the first robotic lever espresso machine, unveiled at CES this year. The prototype raised $5 million from a Kickstarter campaign, and its first product batch is expected to ship out in two months. Read more  Featured jobs from CrunchBoard Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations, Parsons Corporation (Remote) Systems Integrator & DBA, Air Line Pilots Association (Tysons, VA) Startup Backend Engineer, Athlete To Athlete (Santa Monica, CA) Senior Network Operations Engineer, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) Manager of Unified Technology Solutions, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.   Check out some of our other newsletters: Startups Weekly TechCrunch AI TechCrunch Mobility Got a tip? Get in touch securely. 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

As Trump heads to office, Meta drops fact-checking

Also: Nvidia's personal AI supercomputer and world models

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Bellan Tuesday, January 7, 2025 Welcome to TechCrunch AM! CES 2025 is raging on, so check out all the weird and wonderful tech news that we're covering live. In other news, Meta has given up on fact-checking, Nvidia isn't giving up its top spot as an AI leader, and mergers abound. We've also got Microsoft pouring money into India, Toyota's Woven City coming to life, solar-powered umbrellas, powerful exoskeletons, and more. Let's go! — Rebecca TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Nvidia 1. Bite-sized AI compute: Nvidia at CES announced "Project Digits," a personal AI supercomputer designed for AI researchers, data scientists, and students. "It's a cloud computing platform that sits on your desk," CEO Jensen Huang said. Read More 2. First AI slop, and now this: Social media is in its post-factual era, and Mark Zuckerberg wants to help it along. First he said he'd bring more dedicated AI slop to his platforms, and now, on the anniversary of rioters storming the Capitol fueled by rampant calls for violence on Facebook and Instagram, Meta has dropped fact-checking and loosened its content moderation rules. Read More 3. Insert stock photo here: Getty Images and rival Shutterstock have agreed to merge in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $3.7 billion. The timing is interesting for two reasons: The first is that generative AI is here to potentially make stock images irrelevant, and the second is that we've got a new administration that might not scrutinize such a merger for antitrust violations… Read More   A Message from West Monroe The High-Tech and Software Industry's 2025 Roadmap An eye toward growth, reimagined data and the AI transition: What's trending Learn More   Morning must-reads Image Credits: Nvidia 🌍 2025 is shaping up to be the year of 'world' models, and Nvidia wants a piece. At CES, the company said it's making a family of world models that can predict and generate "physics-aware" videos. Dubbed Cosmos World Foundation Models, Nvidia's training data very likely came from copyrighted YouTube videos scraped sans permission. Read More 🇮🇳 AI native: Microsoft is doubling down on its India investments, with plans to chuck $3 billion into the market to expand its AI and cloud services. The tech giant also plans to train an additional 10 million people in the country with AI as it aims to make India "AI-first." Read More 🚗 Smart cars: Toyota's next generation of smart cars will be powered by Nvidia's Drive AGX Orin supercomputer and operating system, signaling that the Japanese automaker intends to include more automated driving features in its upcoming cars. Read More 🌐 Speaking of Toyota, the automaker's hyped Woven City is open for business at last. It's a prototype city at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, and now it's looking for startups to come and build a truly smart city. Read More 🏋️ Do you even lift, bro? German Bionic at CES unveiled the Apogee Ultra, a new robotic exoskeleton that offers up to 80 pounds of dynamic lift assistance, so that something that's 70 pounds feels more like 9 to 11 pounds. Read More 🚕 All in on AVs: Dutch semiconductor giant NXP is acquiring TTTech Auto, an Austrian company that makes safety software for AVs. The all-cash deal is valued at $625 million. Read More 🎮 More screen, more fun? With a 10.95-inch display, Acer's new gaming handheld is ridiculously large. The Nitro Blaze 11 comes with a laptop-grade CPU and built-in Radeon 780M GPU, as well as 16GB of RAM with up to 2TB of internal storage. As a 30-something who thinks the Switch is too small, I personally love this. Read More   A Message from Brex The financial stack you can bank on Runway is everything for startups. That's why 1 in 3 startups choose Brex for modern checking, treasury, and FDIC in one account. Move money fast worldwide. Earn yield from your first dollar — while accessing your funds anytime. And get up to $6M in FDIC coverage from program banks. Learn More   Around the web ⚠️ Carrots and sticks: It's been five months since Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in part due to the messaging platform's unwillingness to provide user data in a child abuse investigation. Now, Telegram has handed over data on 2,253 users to U.S. authorities, reports 404 Media. Read More 🪫 Can Europe get its groove back? Europe has a plan to ban new gas-powered cars by 2035, but the lack of ability to produce EVs as cheaply as, say, China, might get in the way of that. Wired has a write up on the state of Europe's EV industry. Read More 🥸 TikTok in disguise: Lemon8, an app that is owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, has been sponsoring posts on TikTok to encourage users to migrate over amid a looming ban threat, reports Axios. Read More Before you go Image Credits: Anker ☂️ Making the most of the sun: At CES, Anker unveiled a solar umbrella that's designed to charge electronic devices like coolers and phones while outdoors. Neato! Now, how much does it cost? Read More Featured jobs from CrunchBoard Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations, Parsons Corporation (Remote) Systems Integrator & DBA, Air Line Pilots Association (Tysons, VA) Startup Backend Engineer, Athlete To Athlete (Santa Monica, CA) Senior Network Operations Engineer, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) Manager of Unified Technology Solutions, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.   Check out some of our other newsletters: Startups Weekly TechCrunch AI TechCrunch Mobility Got a tip? Get in touch securely. 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