Did Elon Musk unwittingly expose his alt Twitter account, or are we being trolled again?

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TechCrunch Master Template TechCrunch Newsletter

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Oh heeeeeey. Weâre back with another crunchy edition of our Tues-daily Crunch.

With Early Stage behind us, weâre setting our sights on our Disrupt event thatâs coming up â and Alex just shared the agenda for the Builders Stage. Come check it out â and get your tickets for Disrupt sooner rather than later!

Our favorite story this morning was Rebecca admitting she actually had fun at Fatboy Slimâs metaverse rave, and now weâre regretting that we missed it.

â Christine and Haje

Image Credits: Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

This is only a test: Yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted a photo of his Twitter account, which seemed to show Musk also logged into another account that looked like @ErmnMusk with the name âElon Test.â Is this a burner account? We donât know. Amanda has more. Another car bites the dust: When other carmakers are saying âthe more the merrierâ when it comes to building electric vehicles, General Motors is âboltâing for the door on a few of its models. Kirsten reports that GM is killing off both the Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV in favor of other EVs. Fly me to the moon: Aria and Devin have been monitoring ispace, a Japanese company that attempted to land on the moon for the first time. Unfortunately, ispace lost contact with its lunar lander just moments before it was supposed to make the landing.

Startups and VC

Data is becoming as precious as water in precision agriculture, and Hydrosat aims to help provide both with a new set of Earth-observation satellites, Stefanie reports. The company has raised a $20 million Series A round, including $5 million in non-dilutive funding, which should put the first two thermal infrared satellites into orbit.

Survey a lot of industrial warehouses and youâll see a lot of cages. Itâs a safety thing â effectively a way of ensuring that robots donât accidentally hurt people. Theyâre big, fast and made of metal. Weâre small, squishy and donât always look where we should, Brian explains. Itâs not a perfect solution, but itâs the best weâve had for a long time â until robotics safety firm Veo raised $29 million, with help from Amazon, that is.

Heavy on the AI news today. Hereâs a fistful of tasty snacks for ya:

Hard on the brakes: Mary Ann reports that RapidAPI, valued at $1 billion last year, cuts staff by 50%. In summaryâ¦: News app Artifact can now summarize stories using AI, including in fun styles such as “explain it like Iâm five,” or just in emoji, Sarah reports. Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom. Well, who am I to keep you down?: AI app Petey uses ChatGPT to make Apple Music playlists for you, Sarah reports. AI takes to the big blue sea: Catherine reports that Greywingâs new SeaGPT solves email overwhelm for maritime crew managers. I bet thatâll pay off: Yahoo acquires social sports betting app Wagr, reports Paul.

How to pitch me: 5 investors discuss what theyâre looking for in April 2023

Walter Thompson asked five investors to share some frank advice for first-timers and found that most aspiring founders are probably not yet ready to pitch an investor.

If you havenât spoken to scores of customers, or created a contact spreadsheet for at least 25 investors whoâve backed companies like yours, for example, itâs too soon.

And if your team added âAIâ to the pitch deck to make it more appealing, hereâs some more bad news: FOMO is passÃ©, and due diligence is the new black.

Hereâs who participated in this monthâs investor Q&A:

Rudina Seseri, founder and managing partner, Glasswing Ventures Patrick Salyer, partner, Mayfield Fund Josh Constine, venture partner, SignalFire Alexa von Tobel, managing partner, Inspired Capital Oren Yunger, partner, GGV Capital

Three more from the TC+ team:

Erm, where are the exits?: Alex observes that for the VC/startup ecosystem to work, we need exits, and big ones. He argues that itâs beyond time we started worrying about unicorn exits. Youâre making a mess of itâ¦: Tim asks, “How much does your company pollute?” and explores how CarbonChainâs $10 million Series A is here to help answer that very question. The dominoes, they wobble: First Republicâs results are proof that the SVB meltdown was brutal for smaller banks, writes Alex.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code âDCâ for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Image Credits: MirageC / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

Mark Zuckerberg announced that WhatsApp is rolling out multi-device support, and users can log into the same WhatsApp account on up to four phones, Ivan reports. Meta has been testing this feature since 2021.

Meanwhile, Kyle writes that in pursuit of âsaferâ text-generating models, Nvidia released a toolkit called NeMo GuardrailsÂ to make AI-powered apps more âaccurate, appropriate, on topic and secure.â

And we have five more for you:

Weâre not gonna take it: Thatâs what crypto exchange Coinbase is saying. Coinbase sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission so that the SEC would respond to a months-old petition asking whether the securities regulator would allow the industry to be regulated using existing SEC frameworks. Manish has more. Join or else: India is promoting the adoption of its open e-commerce network and wants e-commerce giants to join in. It wonât take no for an answer and is prepared to put the âfull force of the governmentâ behind the efforts, Manish writes. Report or else: Nineteen platforms must report algorithmic risks under Europeâs Digital Services Act. Natasha L has more. Free fallinâ: In Spotify news, Paul reports that the streaming music giant now has more than 500 million users, but the number of paid subscribers is shrinking. Then Sarah takes a deeper dive into the companyâs first-quarter earnings. She writes that Spotifyâs CEO said AI progress is both âreally cool and scary,â and may pose a risk to the creative industry. Chat GPT everything, everywhere, all at once: Kyle wrote two stories about ChatGPT, including how OpenAI previews its business plan for ChatGPT, while Hugging Face releases its own version of ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Connie reports that so many entities want to bank off the term âGPTâ that it may be trademarked soon if OpenAI has its way.