The weather’s getting hotter — but not quite as hot as the generative AI space, which saw a slew of new models released this week, including Meta’s Llama 3.
In other AI news, Hyundai-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics unveiled an electric-powered humanoid follow-up to its long-running Atlas robot, which it recently retired.
And Rebecca and Sean report on layoffs at Tesla , which they say hit high performers and gutted some departments.
AnalysisGoogle Cloud bets on generative AI: Ron writes about how Google Cloud is investing heavily in generative AI, as evidenced by the string of announcements during Google’s Cloud Next conference earlier in the month.
Generative AI in health: Generative AI is coming for healthcare — but not everyone’s thrilled.
Tesla drops prices, Meta confirms Llama 3 release, and Apple allows emulators in the App StoreHeya, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the past few days in tech.
Google’s annual enterprise-focused dev conference, Google Cloud Next, dominated the headlines — and we had plenty of coverage from the event.
Lorenzo wrote about how hackers stole over ~340,000 Social Security numbers from government consulting firm Greylock McKinnon Associates (GMA).
Elsewhere, Sarah had the story on Spotify’s personalized AI playlists, which lets users create a playlist based on written prompts.
Emulators in the store: Apple updated its App Store rules to globally allow emulators for retro console games an option for downloading titles.
Heya, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the noteworthy happenings in tech over the past several days (and change).
Famed startup accelerator Y Combinator had its Demo Days, and the venture desk took it all in with an appropriately skeptical eye.
Also this week, Microsoft and Quantinuum, a quantum computing startup, made a scientific breakthrough — or so they claim.
NewsCanoo paid for its CEO’s jet: Kirsten reports that EV startup Canoo paid the rent for the CEO’s private jet — $1.7 million— in 2023.
Bonus roundNSFW on X: The social media company has confirmed that authorized users on the platform can create NSFW communities, ahead of a change that’ll see all NSFW content on X filtered by default.
And Manish wrote about the resignation of Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque late last week.
AI-powered itineraries: In an upgrade to its Search Generative Experience, Google has added the ability for users to ask Google Search to plan a travel itinerary.
Using AI, Search will draw on ideas from websites around the web along with reviews, photos and other details.
Robinhood’s new card: Nine months after acquiring credit card startup X1 for $95 million, Robinhood on Wednesday announced the launch of its new Gold Card, powered by X1’s technology, with a list of features that could make Apple Card users envious.
Bonus roundSpotify tests online learning: In its ongoing efforts to get its 600 million+ users to spend more time and money on its platform, Spotify is spinning up a new line of content: e-learning.
Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter recapping noteworthy happenings in tech over the past few days.
This week, TechCrunch viewed leaked documents out of SpaceX showing some questionable practices related to employee stock options.
X CEO Elon Musk announced that he would open source Grok, X’s AI-powered chatbot meant to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Grok — developed by Musk’s AI startup, xAI — was released last year, armed with features such as access to “real-time” information on X and views undeterred by “politically correct” norms.
On Found, Becca and Dom spoke with Rebecca Hu, the CEO and co-founder of Glacier, an AI robotics company that’s building robots to accurately sort recycling.
Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering all of — or at least the bulk of!
This week, Roku played hardball with its customers, requiring them to consent to new dispute resolution terms.
And Elon Musk, the CEO of X, sued OpenAI over allegedly “betraying” its nonprofit mission.
NewsEpic takedown: Apple has terminated Epic Games’ App Store developer account, reportedly calling it a “threat” to the iOS ecosystem.
Musk money: Four former Twitter executives, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, sued Musk on Monday, alleging that they’re owed over $128 million in severance payments.
Elsewhere, Mistral, the French AI startup, launched a new model to rival OpenAI’s GPT-4 — and its own cheekily named chatbot dubbed Le Chat.
NewsApple car canceled: Apple has scuttled its secretive, long-running effort to build an autonomous electric car.
Bumble stumbles: Bumble posted weak Q4 results showing a $32 million net loss and $273.6 million in revenue — below Wall Street expectations.
Google’s AI goes awry: Google has apologized for an embarrassing AI blunder this week: An image-generating model that injected diversity into pictures with a farcical disregard for historical context.
PodcastsOn Equity, the crew talked through startup news from Microsoft and Mistral AI, Thrasio and Glean — and also covered happenings over at COTU Ventures and Zacua Ventures.
Google releases new open LLMs, Rivian lays off staff and Signal rolls out usernamesWelcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry.
This week, Google launched two new open large language models, Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B, in its continued bid for generative AI dominance.
The company, which describes the LLMs as “inspired by Gemini,” its flagship family of GenAI models, made each available for commercial and research usage.
Change Healthcare hit: Change Healthcare, one of the largest healthcare tech companies in the U.S., confirmed that a cyberattack on its systems occurred recently.
YouTube triumphant: YouTube dominates TV streaming in the U.S., per Nielsen’s latest report.
OpenAI releases Sora, a credit score–based dating app launches and an anti-Tesla ad comes under fireWelcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry.
This week, OpenAI stunned the blogosphere with the release of Sora, a new AI model that can generate videos in impressively high fidelity.
Elsewhere, startup Score released a dating app exclusive to people with good to excellent credit scores.
Google upgrades Gemini: Google expanded the range of its Gemini AI models available to developers across its platforms.
And it’s previewed a new Gemini model capable of analyzing whole books, hours-long audio and hour-long videos.
Welcome, folks, to TechCrunch Week in Review (WiR), a digest of the past few days in tech happenings.
As I write this, snow’s gracing New York City — an increasingly rare treat thanks to our changing climate.
Notion launches a calendar app: Notion, the incredibly popular note-taking and project management service, has launched a stand-alone calendar service.
AnalysisCES chases off sex tech: Despite being an industry that caters to a universal human experience, sex tech has always had an uneasy association with CES, Haje writes.
And this year, the conference effectively managed to chase the sex tech industry off its show floors — for better or worse.
