Hey party people, this is Kyle continuing to fill in for Greg to write Week in Review while he spends time with his newborn. No idea, but it’s been a week. I’m dead tired and thankful it’s over. But because the news never sleeps, I gather myself with the help of a fourth cup of coffee. Wish me luck.
I talked your ears off at this point, but I’m contractually bound (not really, but still) to mention TechCrunch’s upcoming Early Stage 2023 event on April 20th in Boston. The one-day startup summit will feature advice and takeaways from top experts, as well as opportunities to meet fellow founders and share entrepreneurial experiences. Don’t miss it.
When it comes to travel, it’s not too early to think about this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, which will take place in San Francisco at the end of September. Tickets are not available yet, but they will be available in the near future. Sign up here for updates.
With the call to action out of the way (phew), this week’s tech news!
mostly read
Strip eyes an exit: Maria Ann and Natasha write that fintech startup Stripe has given itself a 12-month deadline to go public, either through a direct listing or by following a transaction in the private market. The payments giant was founded in 2010, so the fact that it’s exploring exit routes isn’t entirely surprising. But Stripe hasn’t been immune to the global downturn, recently laying off 14% of its employees (roughly 1,120 employees) and lowering its internal rating multiple times. In a twist, Stripe is said to have recently attempted to raise at least $2 billion in capital, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Dell relies on the cloud: Ingrid reports that Dell is making an acquisition to strengthen its cloud services business – specifically its offering in DevOps. The company is buying Cloudify, an Israeli startup that has built a cloud orchestration and infrastructure automation platform, sources say, for up to $100 million. The purchase comes as DevOps startups continue to attract the attention of investors, with venture funding in the sector hitting $4 billion in Q2 2021, according to PitchBook.
Shutterstock relies on generative AI: In a partnership with OpenAI, the AI startup that recently attracted a multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft, Shutterstock this week launched a tool that allows customers to create images based on text prompts. Powered by OpenAI’s technology, specifically DALL-E 2, the tool creates images that are “ready for licensing” once created. That’s significant because one of Shutterstock’s biggest competitors, Getty Images, is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against Stability AI – makers of another generative AI service called Stable Diffusion – for using its images to train its AI without Getty’s permission or rights holders.
Bidet brand buys shower startup: Harry has scooped Brondell’s purchase of Nebia, the tech showerhead startup backed by Apple CEO Tim Cook and a host of other big names, including Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia. Nebia stood out when it launched with expensive nozzles that sprayed the user with a fine mist while saving up to 70% of the water that a typical showerhead sprays. Co-founder Philip Winter told TechCrunch this week that Nebia’s products, including those made with Moen, have reached more than 100,000 homes.
An AI Maestro, unreleased: An impressive new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description. But the company has no immediate plans to release it, fearing the risks. The system, dubbed MusicLM, was trained on a dataset of 280,000 hours of music to learn to create coherent songs for descriptions such as “enchanting jazz song with an unforgettable saxophone solo and solo vocalist” or “Berlin 90s techno with deep and powerful bass.” His songs, remarkably, sound like a human artist composing, though not necessarily as imaginative or musically cohesive.
No break for Musk’s Twitter: Twitter owner and self-proclaimed “Free speech absolutistElon Musk is facing a legal challenge in Germany over allegedly not enforcing the platform’s own rules against anti-Semitic content, including Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany — which has strict laws banning anti-Semitic hate speech — making the Berlin court a compelling arena to hear such a challenge. For his part, Musk has repeatedly asserted that Twitter will respect all laws in the countries it operates in, including European language laws, although he has yet to comment publicly on that particular lawsuit.
Text until you drop: Walmart recently introduced a new way to shop via chatbot. Sarah tried it and found that the experience left a lot to be desired. She writes, “It felt like the ordering process for a few basic items had become an ordeal and took a lot longer than the traditional method of searching the Walmart app and adding things to the cart. If conversational commerce like this is the future, I would say this is a work in progress.”
Flutter into the future: Flutter, Google’s open-source framework for building multiplatform apps for mobile, web, and desktop, is making good progress. Frederick writes that at a recent conference, the tech giant highlighted the latest version of Flutter, which brings massively improved graphics performance, the ability to more easily embed Flutter code into existing web and mobile apps, and support for new architectures such as WebAssembly and RISC-V offers.
Audio Summary
For your listening pleasure, TechCrunch has a number of compelling new podcast episodes queued up (as it does weekly, I might add). Over at Equity, the crew took the mic to talk about the deals of the week, the departure of the CEO of All Raise, what Google’s antitrust lawsuit means for startups, how the downturn has impacted the way companies are hiring and why femtech stood out in 2022. on found, darrell and becca Joined Klarna’s co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski to discuss how the company is expanding beyond the buy now, pay later space to become a neobank. And TC’s crypto-focused Chain Reaction spotlighted Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Layer 1 blockchain Aptos, which is building infrastructure for Web3 apps and products.
TechCrunch+
TC+ subscribers get access to the in-depth commentary, analysis, and polls – you know, if you already are one. If not, consider signing up. I doubt you’ll regret it. Just check out this week’s highlights:
Salesforce under siege: Salesforce is under threat from activist investor Elliott Management, who announced plans to take a multibillion-dollar position in the leading CRM company. Ron examines what could be next for Salesforce as the company seeks to cut costs and potentially sell unprofitable parts of the organization.
Energy transition goes down well with investors: Tim deals with investments in the energy transition that started last year. Businesses, financial institutions, governments and end users around the world have poured $1.11 trillion into low-carbon technologies, up just over 30% from 2021 and the second straight year the growth rate exceeded that number.
Increased Control: Rebecca writes that startups should expect VCs to take a closer look at their hiring plans. Startups went on a hiring spree in 2021 as VC cash flowed and the job market was hot. But many got too used to the talent pool and then had to make big cuts and layoffs in 2022.