Morning Must-Reads Did the U.S. forget to read the EUâs homework? Back in 2022, the EU contended that Apple âabused a dominant positionâ around mobile wallets by preventing rival services from accessing the iPhoneâs contactless NFC payment functionality. Apple wound up planning changes afterwards, and that effort seems to have made its way into the DoJâs case against Appleâs smartphone business. Oddly enough, the DoJâs case has few mentions of the EUâs other work to curtail allegedly anti-competitive practices by tech companies. Speaking of the Apple case, donât expect it to have massive impacts in the short term â despite the deluge of headlines. World Fund closes â¬300M first fund: In some good news for European climate tech founders, a new firm in town has wrapped up its first fund. The less-good news is that World Fund fell short of its initial target for the fund by â¬50 million. Still, itâs a handsome chunk of change that will go towards tech that we needed, like, yesterday. Edge & Node wants to use blockchain to fight big techâs data dominance: If the blockchain can do this, then I will forever stop worrying that the only use case for crypto is speculative trading. Edge & Nodeâs project, The Graph, aims to organize and make available data on the blockchain in a manner that is both inexpensive and has rock-solid uptime. Organizing blockchain data is a good challenge. Perhaps the next one is getting more information onto the blockchain? Intuitive Machines is heading back to the Moon: Intuitive Machines was the subject of much banter after its first lunar lander wound up upside down on the Moon. However, detractors are not slowing down the company: Its âsecond moon mission is still on track to launch before the end of this year,â TechCrunchâs Aria Alamalhodaei reports. Wing Ventureâs Sara Choi on how to pitch VCs at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024: Our early stage event is just weeks away, and the killer lineup of speakers just keeps growing. See you in Boston in April! Nsave gets $4M to bring offshore banking to the world: When you think Swiss banking, you probably donât think of startups. But nsave is a particularly interesting Swiss banking company: It wants to help people from around the world use offshore banking to get their capital out of markets where currency fluctuations are eating away at the value of their savings. UK notches up probe of Three and Vodafoneâs $19B merger: The U.K.âs Competition and Markets Authority is taking its investigation into a proposed merger between Three and Vodafone to the next stage. The country is concerned that the combination would result in higher prices for consumers, and less investment. Yeah, more revenue and fewer expenses is probably the corporate goal here, so maybe the CMA has a case. |