Something I’ve always admired about Lenovo is the way the Chinese tech giant really lets its freak flag fly.
In fact, visiting the company’s booth nestled in the way, way back of Hall 3 has long been a highlight of MWC for me.
This year’s big scrum gatherer was Lenovo’s long-rumored transparent laptop.
Broadly speaking, it looks like a laptop, with a transparent pane where the screen should be.
Lenovo loves making weird tech for weird tech’s sake, and that’s totally fine.
A startup called Virtual Staging AI is making it possible for Realtors to virtually stage a house with the help of generative AI.
Virtual Staging AI, which is part of Harvard Innovation Labs, currently has 4,500 monthly paid subscribers and is looking to transform the real estate and staging industry.
Instead of having to share images of empty rooms in a listing, the tool gives Realtors realistic images of furnished rooms.
While Realtors could hire someone to digitally stage a room using tools like Photoshop, Virtual Staging AI promises a cheaper and faster way to do so.
Real estate has continued to evolve over the years, going from offering only in-person showings to facilitating virtual tours.
Hundreds in the artificial intelligence community have signed an open letter calling for strict regulation of AI-generated impersonations, or deepfakes.
While this is unlikely to spur real legislation (despite the House’s new task force), it does act as a bellwether for how experts lean on this controversial issue.
Criminal penalties are called for in any case where someone creates or spreads harmful deepfakes.
As you can see, there is no shortage of reasons for those in the AI community to be out here waving their arms around and saying “maybe we should, you know, do something?
!”Whether anyone will take notice of this letter is anyone’s guess — no one really paid attention to the infamous one calling for everyone to “pause” AI development, but of course this letter is a bit more practical.
Tech layoffs are accelerating, according to the data.
After quick revenue growth in 2023, midsized tech companies are cutting as well.
Brex’s latest layoffs make it plain that even some of the best-known, and most richly funded, upstart tech companies are finding their headcount to be too much.
Thankfully, that information is at our fingertips and we can report that, yes, the layoff surge that you are feeling is in fact an actual wave.
In that month, Layoffs.FYI counted just 4,707 tech layoffs across 65 total known cuts.
In this edition, I’m going to look at some hits and misses in the real estate fintech space, Carta’s missteps (again), and more!
A prominent customer accused Carta of misusing sensitive information that startups entrust to the company in pursuit of its own goals.
Meanwhile, Alex and Anna argued that Carta’s growth story is being overshadowed by its stock trading snafu.
Analysis of the weekThe real estate fintech space continues to have its ups and downs.
I also reported this week on Downpayments’ mission to help investors purchase new properties with interest-free down payments.
Historically, vacation rental companies have managed homes for homeowners.
Overmoon is a three-year-old vacation rental startup with a different model that essentially cuts out the middle man.
But Fraiman doesn’t believe that so many proptech companies are failing because of high interest rates.
“I think the inability to raise capital is the real reason and interest rates are a contributing factor,” he said.
Plus, higher interest rates means fewer buyers out there, which means less competition.
Why tokenization of assets can be a key driver of growth in cryptoStartups that find product-market fit can do well in any industry, but that’s not enough if you’re a web3 company.
No, you have to go beyond and find real use cases for the emerging technology.
There’s a lot more activity during bull markets as crypto tourists enter the industry in hopes of making it big.
Many protocols and companies have taken the time to be regulated and work on bridging the real world and the world of crypto, Warden said.
“I don’t love that expression ‘real world,’ because I think crypto is part of the real world, but I think we’re seeing more and more engagement there.”Warden thinks one of the biggest avenues for real world use cases is tokenization of assets and areas that aren’t even tradable yet.
In the face of recent economic downturns and fears of a startup bubble-burst, it may be surprising to hear that startups are faring better than you might think.
I’ve been talking to a bunch of founders who are struggling to raise funding — and that is a real problem — but there are some startups that focus on the business fundamentals that are still thriving.
Looking at the numbers, this presents as an uptick in median runway length, a decrease in operating expenses, and an encouraging rise in profitable revenue.
This is founders focusing on being more efficient,” Healy Jones, VP of financial strategy at Kruze Consulting, told me.
It now stands at an impressive 12.5 months, significantly higher than the nine to 10 months usually expected after an average funding round.
Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu is stepping down to return to his startup rootsOpendoor co-founder Eric Wu is stepping down from the real estate tech company, according to an SEC filing.
In a statement, Wu said: “After ten years, I am called to get back to my startup roots and create and build again.
Last December, Wu announced he was stepping down from his role as CEO to serve as Opendoor’s president of marketplace.
In November 2022, Opendoor announced it was letting go of about 550 people, or 18% of the company, across all functions.
Jack Altman also announced he would be stepping down from Lattice, a software startup he founded in 2015.
Instead, it’s settling into a place where its use is already commonplace, even for purposes for which it’s frankly ill-suited.
The doomerism vs. e/acc debate continues apace, with all the grounded, fact-based arguments on either side that you can expect from the famously down-to-earth Silicon Valley elites.
Witness everything always, forever, but if you’re looking for specifics, self-driving is a very handy recent one, as is VR and the metaverse.
Utopian vs. dystopian debates in tech always do what they’re actually intended to do, which is distract from having real conversations about the real, current-day impact of technology as it’s actually deployed and used.
Use of generative AI, according to most recent studies, is fairly prevalent and growing, especially among younger users.
