Friday, June 14, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! We're still reeling from the whiplash of Tesla shareholders suing Elon Musk for allowing him to start xAI, and then voting in favor of his exorbitant pay package. But in other news, we have an AI chatbot that's trying to be better than the rest, notes on how space tourism affects the human body, and why one company is using AI to tap nature for new medicines. Let's dive in! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Brave

1. Brave integrates search results into chatbot: Privacy-focused search engine and web browser company Brave Software is integrating search results into its Leo chatbot. People can now talk to Leo to get the latest game scores or search for relevant topics. And best of all, you don't have to log in — Brave doesn't store your conversations with its bot on its servers, and it doesn't use your responses to train its model. Read More

2. What will space tourism do to the human body? I'm talking about the normal human body, not the body of an astronaut who's trained for years to be in space. Now that space tourism is apparently back, we'll soon be able to learn what it does to us normal folk. Researchers have collected some data from the tourists who went up with SpaceX in 2021. Read More

3. Former NSA head joins OpenAI board: Retired Gen. Paul Nakasone will sit on the company's "security and safety" committee, a clear attempt by OpenAI to sate critics who think it is moving too fast and will break all the things in its pursuit of developing AI. Read More

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Morning Must Reads

Image Credits: Viswa Colluru / Enveda

Using AI to understand ancient remedies: Did you know that 40% of modern pharma products have roots in remedies used by our ancestors? In fact, scientists think we've only scratched the surface so far. Enveda wants to accelerate that age-old process of distilling new medicines from nature, and has raised $55 million to use AI to do so. Read More

Tesla shareholders sue Musk over xAI: Elon Musk has repeatedly said that Tesla is an "AI company" and that's where its real value lies. So why did he go ahead and start a competing AI company? And why did Tesla's board let him? Those questions have inspired the latest shareholder lawsuit against the CEO and Tesla's board, alleging that they acted against their fiduciary duties. Read More

ICYMI, Elon got his pay package: Tesla shareholders approved Elon Musk's exorbitant pay package yesterday, as well as Tesla's reincorporation to Texas from Delaware. It's not yet a done deal yet, and I imagine many legal battles will ensue. But I wonder if anyone really believes this payout will make Musk focus more fully on Tesla, especially when he's got a shiny new startup to take to the moon? Read More

GenAI could alter SaaS pricing models: This week on Equity, Mary Ann Azevedo interviewed Vanessa Larco, a partner at New Enterprise Associates, about the impact of generative AI on customer pricing for SaaS, how tech firms' AI strategies could affect startups, the road ahead for fintech and more. Read More

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Around the Web

Just in time for this year's election, the Stanford Internet Observatory, which pioneered research into abuse of social media platforms, is winding down, reports Platformer. The shutdown comes as Republicans intensify their lobbying to discredit research institutions that investigate political speech and campaign influence. Read More

Clearview AI wants to give you shares for using your face: The facial-recognition startup, which scraped billions of photos from social media to build its app used by enforcement agencies, has agreed to settle a class-action privacy lawsuit. But it doesn't have the cash to settle, so it's proposing to give a 23% stake in the company to U.S. citizens whose faces were used in its database, reports the New York Times. Read More

Paradigm's new crypto fund: Bloomberg reports that VC firm Paradigm has raised another early-stage crypto fund. Now, $850 million is still a sizeable amount for early-stage crypto startups, but it's nothing compared to Paradigm's last $2.5 billion fund. Is crypto losing some of its shine now that AI's getting all the hype? Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Jake O'Limb / PhotoMosh / Getty Images

The irony of using stalkerware apps: Jealous partners often use spyware apps like pcTattletale to monitor and surveil loved ones, which often leads to real harm and violence. But did you know that hackers repeatedly target these companies? Apparently they're an easy target, too, since they clearly don't set up enough protections for their customers. So, PSA: Don't download stalkerware apps. Maybe download Headspace instead. Read More