Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.
Despite this general downturn, certain segments like generative AI continue to attract significant funding, indicating a selective yet substantial interest in specific AI applications.
AI investment is slowing down for a few reasons, like the crowded market and the steep costs of building big AI models.
Investors are getting pickier and want to see real, solid returns instead of just throwing money at hopeful growth.
(That isn’t stopping them from raising billion-dollar funds focusing on AI, of course.)
That’s a different strategy from just about every other market, where Google has been merging Wallet and Pay experiences together under a single Wallet app.
We’re continuing to invest in the Google Pay app to give people easy, secure access to digital payments,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.
Then, it tried to replace the Wallet and its Android Pay app with Google Pay.
In 2022, Google relaunched the Wallet app as its digital wallet platform for Android, Wear OS and Fitbit OS.
However, in February this year, the search giant announced it would replace Google Pay with the Wallet app in the U.S.
This week in Las Vegas, 30,000 folks came together to hear the latest and greatest from Google Cloud.
What they heard was all generative AI, all the time.
Google Cloud is first and foremost a cloud infrastructure and platform vendor.
From Google’s perspective, the company has built generative AI tools to more easily help data engineers build data pipelines to connect to data sources inside and outside of the Google ecosystem.
Executives, IT pros, developers and others who went to GCN this week might have gone looking for what’s coming next from Google Cloud.
Former president Donald Trump’s digital media company is losing money, and lots of it.
But why is that any different from other “startups,” which often struggle to post a profit for years, if they ever do?
Truth Social, the main business of TMTG, has failed to attract more than a few million users.
Truth Social, the main business of TMTG, has failed to attract more than a few million users.
By the time Trump is able to sell his shares, it’s likely this company will be worth anything like what it supposedly is today.
Aneja’s current research focuses on the societal impact of algorithmic decision-making systems in India, where she’s based, and platform governance.
Aneja recently authored a study on the current uses of AI in India, reviewing use cases across sectors including policing and agriculture.
At the same time, India had launched its Digital India mission and National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence.
What are some issues AI users should be aware of?
Investors need to consider the entire life cycle of AI production — not just the outputs or outcomes of AI applications.
Borderless Capital, an investment firm that specializes in web3, announced Tuesday that it is acquiring CTF Capital, a quantitative trading and asset management firm headquartered in Miami, with technology and operation teams in Latin America.
With this acquisition, Borderless Capital will add AI-infused quant trading expertise to its own business.
After combining with CTF Capital, Borderless will have over $500 million in assets under management (AUM).
All the existing funds managed by CTF Capital will be merged into Borderless’s Multi-Strategy Fund V LP., launched last year with $100 million under management today.
“Borderless already has significant exposure through several portfolio companies from this geography [Latin America].
Miami-based Onyx Private, a Y Combinator-backed digital bank that provided banking and investment services for high-earning Millennials and Gen Zers, is terminating its bank operations.
Y Combinator has listed the company as “inactive” on its on its website, something Santos could not explain.
Santos claimed that Onyx had been exploring the idea over the past year and had made developments with some partners.
Santos today declined to disclose how many banking customers Onyx had.
Although a source told TechCrunch that regulatory issues may have played a part in this decision, Santos dismissed that, telling us that no regulatory issues caused the startup to shut down its direct-to-consumer banking operations.
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.
Pornhub has been playing a game of chicken with a bunch of state legislatures for a while now.
That’s right, Texans are now officially barred from the sacred halls of Pornhub, unless they’re crafty enough with a VPN to sneak past the digital bouncers.
In a twist that surprises exactly no one, Pornhub isn’t thrilled about asking its patrons to flash their digital IDs at the door.
Pornhub is not exactly a startup, so why are we featuring this front and center in the Startups Weekly newsletter?
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.
Meanwhile, you wait for months for a good acquisition story, and then a ton of them come along all at once!
The company just bagged a cool $430 million, hitting a lofty $5 billion valuation and making the financial world do a double take.
A bit rich, if you ask yours truly, given everything else we know about Musk, but there you go.
The underachievers — the bottom 10% — get their own badge of shame, a digital dunce cap signaling to travelers to swipe left.
The guy who founded that – Jim Jannard – became a billionaire after selling a lot of sunnies, then went on to found RED digital cinema, one of the first major digital cinema camera brands.
Today, Nikon announced that Nikon Corporation has announced its agreement to acquire the camera manufacturer, and turning into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nikon Corporation.
This sensor’s physical size was comparable to analog film, bridging the gap between digital and traditional film production.
This short film convinced director Steven Soderbergh to shoot his film “Che” with Red technology, marking a significant milestone in digital cinema.
The company’s cameras were used to film over 25% of the top 100 grossing films filmed on digital video in the US shot on digital video by 2016.
