Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we bring you an inside look at the real impact of Tesla's layoffs. We also have notes on Microsoft's latest billion-dollar AI deal, why heat pump startups are warming up, and Two Chairs' new bundle of cash for remote therapy. Let's dive in! — Alex

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TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Patrick Pleul /AFP / Getty Images

Tesla layoffs hit high performers: Tesla's logic for its recent layoffs was to supposedly eliminate redundancies and prep for growth, but a few employees told TechCrunch that some high performers were bounced from the company's ranks. Also, some teams appear to have lost more members than an internal memo had indicated. Tesla will report its quarterly results next week. Read More

Microsoft invests in G42, ties the UAE closer to the U.S.: Microsoft is putting $1.5 billion into Group 42 Holdings (G42), an Abu Dhabi-based AI company. The transaction places the UAE and its AI investments closer to the United States and distances it from China as the two superpowers spar for geopolitical dominance and technological supremacy. Read More

Done tangling with Apple, Rivos raises $250M: Chip startup Rivos has fresh capital, and with its legal dance with Apple in the rearview mirror, it can work on getting its hardware to market. Rivos is building chips for servers that handle data-intensive workloads, like AI, and will use TSMC's 3nm fabrication process for its processors. More chip competition is better for us consumers, so this is great to see. Read More

Morning Must Reads

Image Credits: Two Chairs

Two Chairs raises $72M, or $36M per chair: Therapy-focused startup Two Chairs' latest funding round is evidence that one change the pandemic brought to society – the rise of remote-therapy services – is here to stay. The startup differs from some of its rivals by hiring therapists instead of merely contracting with them. Therapy appears to have an impressive TAM, so there's probably room for Two Chairs and other, well-funded startups like Grow Therapy to succeed. Read More

Hello, distributed spirit: Ghost, the publishing and subscription platform that competes with Substack, WordPress and Beehiiv, is "considering joining the fediverse, the social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon," TechCrunch's Sarah Perez reports. Meta's Threads also recently launched integration with the fediverse, so this is some evidence of the decentralized internet's rising importance and popularity. Read More

Google may bring Wallet to India, keep Pay: I will admit that I did not know that Google Wallet and Google Pay were different products. The company on Monday accidentally revealed that Wallet is coming to India, which raised some concerns about what would happen to Google Pay, since it has been trying to merge the two financial services elsewhere in the world. However, the company yesterday told TechCrunch it intends to keep Pay live in the country for some time. Read More

Heat pumps are hot, hot, hot: And investors are not getting cold feet, as evidenced by Quilt's recent $33 million fundraise. Tim De Chant reports that heat pumps have outsold gas furnaces in the United States for the second year in a row, which underscores the market opportunity that Quilt and its rivals are chasing. Read More

Finmid raises €23M in further evidence that fintech is not dead: Berlin-based embedded banking service finmid is now worth €100 million after its latest capital raise. The startup helps other companies offer payments and capital to their own customers. Finmid handles the banking relationships, meaning that its customers can offer their SMB partners a lot more financial capability without having to build the tools themselves. The company has now raised €35 million in total. Read More

Around the Web

Space is really, really big: So big in fact, that we've only now discovered that there is a stellar black hole in our very own Milky Way. The black hole is some 33 times the size of our sun, The Guardian reports, which is absolutely immense and even more terrifying. Thankfully, we'd take some 2,000 years to reach it if we were to travel at the speed of light, so we're safe for now. Read More

What are we going to do about paywalls? As one of the members of the old TechCrunch+ team, I have a soft spot for getting readers to pay publications directly. But, as The Atlantic notes, if all the well-reported news lives behind paywalls, what will happen to our ability as a nation to make informed decisions? Read More

Open source software is in danger: Two open source software foundations warned this week that the attempt to subvert the XZ Utils code "may have been one of several attempts to subvert key pieces of digital infrastructure across the internet," Reuters reports. Read More

All Things Meta

Image Credits: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto / Getty Images

Threads tests out "recent" filter for search: If you are a Threads user and want to get a bit closer to the classic Twitter experience, the ability to search by recency is critical. It's no good looking for posts about something that happened only to get served material from years past. Threads says a new "recent" filter is in testing, but here's hoping it rolls out more broadly soon. Read More

Oversight Board looks into handling of NSFW AI posts: Meta's Oversight Board, a group that occasionally scolds the social media giant for its business choices, has announced investigations into Instagram and Facebook's handling of AI-generated images of public figures in the U.S. and India after Meta initially failed to take them down. Non-consensual fake nudes made using AI tools are going to be a recurring problem, everywhere, for a long time. Read More

Meta wants students to use VR in class: As a proponent of technology in educational environments – not smartphones, though – I am intrigued by the concept of using VR headsets in the classroom. I can imagine a use case or two, and I am sure that educators and Meta salesfolks have others in mind. But we are already struggling to get kids to read, write and add, so perhaps we should nail those things down first before trying out something so… out there? Yes, yes, I know what I sound like. Read More