Friday, May 3, 2024

Good afternoon, and welcome to TechCrunch PM. We made it to Friday, and the team was busy bringing you some fresh news to kick off your weekend. We got some scoops on what NASA is doing to prevent rockets from lining up on the launchpad, and what Fisker did to get sued. There’s also a delightful story about playing retro games on calculators, the after-effects of healthcare privacy drama and some venture rounds to dig into. See you next week!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls under a NASA/Bill Ingalls license.

NASA expands rocket launch facility: Aria got a scoop that NASA was looking to see if its facilities on Wallops Island, Virginia, could be expanded to enable the number of authorized rocket launches there to increase by almost 200%. It seems with more companies getting into rockets, spaceports are filling up. Read More

Fisker sued: Last year, the electric vehicle maker debuted two new prototypes. Then it stopped paying an engineering firm that helped develop those vehicles. Well, now that engineering firm is suing Fisker for wrongfully holding on to IP associated with those vehicles. And it’s asking for around $13 million in damages. Read More

Sprinklr realigns its customer experience team: That resulted in the layoff of more than 100 employees, or about 3% of the customer experience management company. Read More

Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: TechCrunch

When a startup is better off saying no to revenue: Gotta love this headline from Ron Miller. Of course, revenue is important when it comes to building your company. However, Alex Kayyal, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said some other things are important, too. Read More

A look at Apple’s AI plans: Tim Cook didn’t go into the company’s plans for AI, but Sarah Perez caught a few tidbits from the company’s second-quarter earnings call with investors that may shed some light on the consumer tech giant’s AI future. Read More

Did you play Pokémon on a TI-84?: Do you even remember the TI-84? I had a TI-81, so no games were played on that. However, it didn’t stop myself and Amanda Silberling from waxing a bit nostalgic when discussing her story on how video game emulator Delta’s decade-long struggle against the iOS App Store began with a school-issued calculator. Read More

Don’t expect the IPO markets to open up yet: Yes, we got excited by all of the action after a significant period of hibernation. However, experts say that it’s not quite the time to go full speed ahead just yet. Read More

It’s an alphabet soup of an acquisition: Investment giant EQT is acquiring enterprise software company WSO2 in a deal said to be valued at more than $600 million. Read More

I’ve got a secret: Okay, it’s not really a secret anymore. As part of Instagram’s new features, one called “Reveal” lets you post a hidden Story for your followers to uncover by sending you a DM. It’s like maintaining a bit of mystique on a platform where people essentially lay it all out. Read More

Why do we still let irresponsible companies have our data?: That’s one of the questions that Paul Sawers aims to answer in his story about why the United Kingdom, with its public healthcare system, should be keeping an eye on the recent ransomware attack that affected UnitedHealth. Read More

Head in the cloud revenue: Ron Miller digs into why the cloud infrastructure market is still hot. I’d give you some hints to get you started, but A-I think you can figure it out. Read More

Money, money, money

How Y Combinator’s founder-matching service helped medical records AI startup Hona land $3 million. Read More

Climate tech investment roars back with an $8.1 billion start to 2024. Read More

Allozymes puts its accelerated enzymatics to work on a data and AI play, raising $15 million.Read More

Around the web

Image Credits: Getty Images/Patra Kongsirimongkolchai / EyeEm

The future of Tesla: With the electric vehicle maker laying off its electric charging unit team, what can we expect from the company now? Well, it’s leaving some vendors wondering what will happen with deals they struck to build the charging stations, The Washington Post reports. Not to mention all those automakers that decided to outfit their future EVs with Tesla connectors. Read More

Silicon Valley Bank sells its venture arm: SVB Capital will be affiliated with Pinegrove Capital Partners, a firm formed in 2023 to focus on VC continuation vehicles and other venture liquidity solutions, Axios reports. Read More

Peloton’s uphill ride: Fox Business took a look at Peloton’s battle to remain relevant in post-pandemic times. Read More

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TechCrunch Minute

Spotify’s move to paywall lyrics is putting pressure on free users: Spotify’s slow movement to put lyrics behind its paid service wall in its music service is about as popular as you would expect. It seems that Spotify has a new feature up its sleeve to try and get free users to convert to its paid service. For those of us who already pay, it’s a non-issue. But for the budget conscious, it may seem that their prior service is getting worse for no reason that they can suss out. So long as some convert to paying users, Spotify will endure the gripes, right? Hit play and let’s chat!

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