Despite its similarities, Instagram Threads is no X.
The traffic surge drove #earthquake to the top of X’s Trends section, followed by other areas of impact, like “East Coast,” “Long Island,” “Philly,” “Manhattan” and “Brooklyn.” Meanwhile, earthquake-related terms didn’t register on Threads’ trends section until closer to 2 p.m.
That’s not to say people weren’t discussing the earthquake on Threads — many were.
Around 1 p.m. on Friday, TechCrunch reached out to Instagram to ask why the earthquake didn’t make it into Threads’ top trends.
The phone kept buzzing, and there was, ‘earthquake, earthquake, earthquake.
The Reddit and Astera Labs IPOs last week ate up a lot of media oxygen.
And with good reason, the two tech IPOs priced well and traded with even more gusto.
After a long dearth for technology offerings, seeing two large, multi-billion dollar offerings in the same week was part of a much-needed win for private-market tech companies, and sigh of relief for the same.
But there was another offering last week that has a tech-angle to it: Trump Media and Technology Group, which is the company behind Truth Social.
More from TechCrunch here, but the gist is that after much back-and-forth, it merged with its chosen SPAC and started to trade.
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.
Use AI to sift through self-published stories on their app, pick the ones that scream potential, and then tweak them into bestsellers.
Money for photos: Photoroom, a Paris-based AI photo-editing app, has successfully closed its latest funding round, securing $43 million at a $500 million valuation.
Money for AI: Mistral AI announced a significant development in its journey with the unveiling of a new large language model named Mistral Large, aimed at competing with giants like OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Apple pours more resources into AI: Apple CEO Tim Cook is promising that Apple will “break new ground” on GenAI this year.
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.
Most interesting startup stories this weekCES 2024 was like a futuristic carnival for transportation geeks, flaunting an array of electric everything — from cars and bikes to scooters and aircraft.
Of course, AI was everywhere, and Cody wrote a round-up detailing how AI tech showed up in the good, the bad, and the weird.
Most interesting fundraises this weekIn the wake of a challenging 2023 and a significant downturn in public offerings, tech startups and high-growth companies are once again turning their sights toward initial public offerings (IPOs).
This trend is also visible in the field of artificial intelligence startups, which continue to attract attention in venture capital circles.
Honda is dunking on the ‘thick, heavy’ electric vehicle trend in an attempt to build buzz around its upcoming 0 series EVs.
Honda also didn’t say specify if it plans to use such materials when it commercially launches its first 0 series electric vehicles.
Honda has lagged in the switch to electrics, and it recently called it quits on a plan to co-develop “affordable” electric vehicles with GM.
Though Honda plans to launch an electric Prologue this year, the automaker intends to launch 30 EVs by 2030.
That’s why the 0 series launch will be a big moment for Honda.
