Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Good afternoon, and welcome to TechCrunch PM! Today I bring you news from far and wide. We learned that entrepreneurs can't just turn off the startup spigot, Artifact isn't going away, Tesla wants you to test something out and Apple WWDC has a date. Also check out a really big pre-seed round and the latest in AI.

— Christine

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Getty Images / erhui1979

An aggregator for HVAC companies: Former Nextdoor executive Dan Laufer was called back into entrepreneurism after seeing mom-and-pop HVAC and plumbing companies have no exit plans. Read more.

Artifact isn't shutting down after all: Instagram's co-founders have decided to keep the news app going for a little longer. And they tease that perhaps there may be an exit in sight. Read more.

Tesla and Full Self-Driving beta: If you live in the U.S. and your car has the compatible hardware, Tesla is about to start giving you a one-month trial of its $12,000 driver-assistance system. Read more.

Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Brooks Kraft/Apple Inc.

Apple WWDC 2024: Mark your calendars for June 10–14, which is when Apple's World Wide Developer Conference will take place. Executive Greg "Joz" Joswiak promises the event will be "Absolutely Incredible." Read more.

Setting off Fireworks.ai: Co-founder and CEO Lin Qiao says her company isn't training foundation models from scratch, but rather helping fine-tune other models to the particular needs of a business. Read more.

Canva acquiring Affinity: Canva has typically targeted those who want to create something fast and easy, but company co-founder Cliff Obrecht sees the acquisition of creative tools company Affinity as opening the door to more advanced users. Read more.

GenAI for marketers, made by Adobe: GenStudio is a new application that helps brands create content and measure its performance, with generative AI — and the promise of brand safety — at its center. Read more.

Money, money, money

Image Credits: Getty Images / Andrey Suslov

Crypto is hot again, and with it comes an impressive $35 million pre-seed investment into web3 infrastructure firm 0G Labs. Read More

Meanwhile, Evari secures $7.5 million and turns to rocket science to solve problems with heat pumps. Read More

And Confetti is celebrating $16 million in additional capital for its team-building platform. Read More

Around the web

Apparently, OpenAI's Sam Altman isn't every venture capitalist's cup of tea. Business Insider has more.

Trump Media debuted on the Nasdaq today and displayed some unusual behavior for a company that's gone public via SPAC: Trading was briefly halted due to volatility, CNBC reports.

Now that Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun is stepping down, one analyst tells Axios that Boeing needs a "drastic cultural overhaul."

TechCrunch Minute

Image Credits: Getty Images / David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

What Stability AI's CEO departure means for other AI startups: What do you call an AI company that is suffering from very public gyrations regarding its business health, place in the market and leadership structure? Well, you might call it Stability AI. We dig into all that and more in today's TechCrunch Minute.

On the pods

On today's Found, Becca and Dom are joined by Allison Wolff, the co-founder and CEO of Vibrant Planet, a cloud-based planning and monitoring tool for adaptive land management. You know how every wildfire season seems to be getting more intense than the last? Well, Wolff tells us that wildfires actually have a good side and why we're seeing more hotter and quickly spreading wildfires today.

Listen here.