🗑️ Good riddance: Ransomware gang Hunters International announced on its dark web page that it will be shutting down. Why exactly is unclear. The post said the shutdown was "in light of recent developments" but didn't provide details on what exactly that referred to.
🎙️ Pay up: On this week's episode of Equity, which dropped a day early due to tomorrow's holiday, the hosts talked about Cloudflare's interesting new ploy to get AI to pay for scraping publishers' content. They also talked about Figma's S-1, the acquisition of Superhuman, and more.
⌚ KidGPT: Kid tech company Pinwheel launched the Pinwheel Watch, a smart watch that includes GPS tracking, a camera, and a kid-friendly AI chatbot. I'm curious how big the market is for parents who don't want their kid to have a smartphone but are fine with them having access to AI.
🤑 Cash for Castelion: Castelion is a startup building hypersonic weapons. The company has allegedly raised a sizable $350 million Series B round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Altimeter Capital that values it in the billions. The company just raised a $100 million Series A in January.
🏦 Honey, I bought a bank: Darragh Buckley, the founder of fintech startup Increase, has apparently always wanted to buy a bank. Now it sounds like Buckley has succeeded in that mission — kinda. Owning a bank would sure help his banking API startup.
