xAI buys X

Plus: OpenAI rolls back content moderation

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Szkutak Friday, March 28, 2025 Welcome to TC PM! We've got lots of stuff for you today: Elon Musk's xAI is buying X; OpenAI implemented some content moderation changes; there are rumblings in M&A land; and much more. Have a great weekend! TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: SAUL LOEB / AFP / Getty Images 💰 X-ception: Elon Musk's xAI announced today that it bought Elon Musk's X platform in a deal that values X at $33 billion and the combination of the two entities at $80 billion. xAI's Grok LLM is already prominently featured on the social media platform. 🪽 I think I'll try driving Gravity: Lucid Motors plans on ramping up the deliveries of its Gravity SUV next month. The EV company started taking orders for the Gravity back in November and started sending the cars to employees, friends, and family in December.  ⛔️ Oh, good: OpenAI didn't just release a new image generator in ChatGPT this week. The company also rolled back its content moderation policies, meaning you can use that image generator to create images involving public figures, hateful symbols, and racial features. What could go wrong?    A Message from Thoma Bravo Thoma Bravo's Behind the Deal: Insights from top tech leaders 🎧 Thoma Bravo's award-winning Behind the Deal podcast takes you inside the world's largest tech buyout firm. Hear from CEOs at top tech companies—including Nasdaq, SailPoint, and Coupa—on the strategies behind building their businesses. Tune in for exclusive insights every Thursday on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 🎙️ Listen Here   Afternoon must-reads Image Credits: Elvie 😬 Watch yourself: Would you ever go see a movie about the founding of your company with the founder? Mark Zuckerberg says that he took employees to see "The Social Network" when the film came out. Cringe?  🚀 More startup M&A: Willow, a startup that builds wearable breast pumps, acquired Elvie, a startup that also makes breast pumps and other similar products. The terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but both companies have raised more than $100 million in VC funding.  🩺 Healthcare AI: There are numerous startups looking to use AI to fix workflow burdens in the healthcare space. Taxo is one of them, but it takes a slightly different approach by tapping a reasoning model, a model that shows its work, to build trust with doctors.  🎼 Status songs: WhatsApp launched a new feature today to its Status updates, which resemble Instagram stories. Now users can include brief music clips. WhatsApp can't view the songs people post due to the platform's end-to-end encryption.   🎙️ Artificial Ghibli intelligence: Today's episode of Equity breaks down OpenAI's new image generator, CoreWeave's IPO, what went down at AI sales automation startup 11x, and more! 🎥 Zelda on the big screen: Nintendo announced that the live-action Zelda film will be released in March 2027. Nintendo announced the release date through its Nintendo Today app, which the company just launched yesterday.    A Message from TechCrunch Last few days to save up to $320 on your TC All Stage ticket Final days to save up to $320 to join the ultimate founder summit: TC All Stage. Connect with founders and VCs on July 15 in Boston for a full day of expert-led Breakouts, immersive Roundtables, & powerful networking. Learn from Charles Hudson (Precursor Ventures), Chris Gardner (Underscore VC), & more. Lock in the lowest price — offer ends March 31! Register Now   Around the web 💸 Tariff troubles: When President Donald Trump announced that his 25% tariff on imported vehicles would be going into effect, it was clear that this decision positively affects Tesla. It will negatively hurt auto manufacturing markets in countries like Mexico, where 80% of its vehicle exports head to the U.S.  👀 Frank found guilty of fraud: Charlie Javice, the founder of Frank, has been found guilty of a series of fraud-related charges that stemmed from inflated numbers at the time of the company's acquisition in 2021. She faces up to 30 years in prison.  Featured jobs from CrunchBoard Head of Strategic Finance, GITAI USA (Torrance, CA) Senior Software Engineer, Source (Remote) Engineering & Support Senior Director, AAOS (Rosemont, IL) Research Systems Engineer - Computing Services, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) Machine Control Technician, Sinacola (Dallas, TX) 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 Events 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. 680 Folsom Street,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy

Trump pardons Nikola founder Trevor Milton

Also: HoneyBook may have earned its ZIRP-era valuation

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Bellan Friday, March 28, 2025 Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we've got a presidential pardon, a startup with ARR to match its valuation, and how open source devs are fighting back against AI crawlers. We've also got consolidation in the gaming industry, the growing market for certifications, yet another startup addressing medical pain points, and more. Let's go! — Rebecca TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg / Getty Images 1. Pardons for everyone: U.S. President Donald Trump has issued yet another presidential pardon – this time for Trevor Milton, the founder of bankrupt EV company Nikola who was convicted of defrauding investors. Milton had donated $920,000 to the Trump 47 Committee in 2024, plus $2 million to Republicans, and his lawyer is U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's brother. Read More 2. Leave it to the internet: Open-source software developers see AI crawlers that ignore robots.txt protocols as the cockroaches of the internet, and some have found fun ways to fight back. Enter tools that do everything from block bots from Git servers to ones that enact vengeance. Read More 3. Rolling in money: HoneyBook looks like it is one of the few startups with ZIRP-era valuations to actually come out the other side intact. The business management software startup was valued in late 2021 at $2.4 billion, and today it says it's hit $140 million in ARR. Read More   A Message from DealMaker Founders: The Capital Hack Your VCs Won't Tell You About Retail capital isn't just an alternative—it's a strategic advantage. EnergyX raised $75M through DealMaker, attracting General Motors and the Department of Energy afterward. Your best investors are already out there. DealMaker helps you access that capital without sacrificing control. VCs value retail backing. Check out the guide below.👇 Download Here   Morning must-reads Image Credits: Mozilla 🧩 Patched up: Mozilla has seen to a security bug in the Windows version of its Firefox browser that was "being exploited in the wild." People exploiting the bug could escape Firefox's sandbox and access other apps and data on a user's computer. Read More 🎮 All your share are belong to us: South Korean gaming giant Krafton has acquired a controlling stake – "north of 75%" –  in Indian gaming studio Nautilus Mobile for $14 million in cash. Nautilus develops the popular Real Cricket franchise. Read More 🤓 The struggle is real: With tech evolving as fast as it is, employees everywhere are racing to boost their skills and certifications. Enter Certiverse, a certification platform that just raised $11 million in a Series A led by Cherryrock Capital. Read More 🩺 Dozens of startups have cropped up to help reduce the administrative burden in healthcare, and the latest to the field is Taxo, an app with a "reasoning engine" that doctors and nurses can use for getting prior authorizations from insurers, patient intake, and medical billing. Read More   A Message from Google Cloud What businesses need to know about AI in 2025 Hear from 23 industry leaders including Amin Vahdat (Google Cloud), Chamath Palihapitiya (Social Capital), Harrison Chase (LangChain), Crystal Huang (GV), and more. They share their perspectives on the most critical cloud and AI trends, opportunities, investment areas, and challenges that business leaders need to be aware of in 2025 in Google Cloud's Future of AI: Perspectives for Startups report. Download Here   Around the web 🏆 Good guy AI: Wired's Steven Levy profiled Daniela and Dario Amodei, the sibling co-founders of Anthropic who defected from OpenAI to form the AI startup. They want to create AGI that will never go rogue, "a good guy, an usher of utopia." Read More ↘️ Unexpected: CoreWeave has priced shares at $40 in its IPO, raising $1.5 billion, per CNBC. It's nothing to sneeze at, but the IPO price is lower than the $47 to $55 CoreWeave had planned to sell shares for. Read More 🧑‍⚖️ No deleting: Reuters reports that a U.S. judge has ordered the Trump administration to preserve messages sent on the Signal messaging app discussing attack plans against the Houthis in Yemen that became public after leaders accidentally shared them with The Atlantic's editor Jeff Goldberg. Read More Before you go 💸 Your billing, your choice: Google is giving Google Play developers in the U.K. the ability to use third-party billing options instead of Google's own system. It's a long-awaited response to an investigation from the U.K.'s competition regulator into Google's app store monopoly. Read More Featured jobs from CrunchBoard Head of Strategic Finance, GITAI USA (Torrance, CA) Senior Software Engineer, Source (Remote) Engineering & Support Senior Director, AAOS (Rosemont, IL) Research Systems Engineer - Computing Services, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) Machine Control Technician, Sinacola (Dallas, TX) 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. 680 Folsom Street,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy