Plus: Linktree branches out to 50M users and spyware found on hotel computers
| Welcome to your Hump Day TechCrunch PM! If this is your first time here, you picked a good day to read. This afternoon we cover a shock over at Techstars, a lot of venture funding deals, spyware in an unlikely place and a pause in Starliner’s launch. Enjoy! |
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| Image Credits: Bloomberg / Contributor / Getty Images |
| Techstars CEO is leaving: Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet surprised us today by announcing she’s leaving the company at the end of May. Techstars co-founder and board chairman David Cohen will become CEO. Gavet cited health reasons for her departure, but she has had a rocky tenure at Techstars over the past year. Read more Linktree reaches a milestone:Now with over 50 million users, Linktree is considered one of the top link-in-bio tools on the market. To celebrate, the company launched the beta of its social commerce offering that lets creators add storefronts to their link-in-bio pages and take a 12% to 15% commission on sales. Read more Majority grabs $20 million: The banking platform targeting U.S. immigrants found its niche over the past year, seeing revenue grow three times and the number of users doubled. Investors liked that, too. Read more |
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| A MESSAGE FROM GOLUB CAPITAL |
How software companies can preserve valuation in a “down round” environment |
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| Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch |
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| Remote access isn’t always the best access: That’s what three Wyndham hotels are finding out now. A consumer-grade spyware app was found running on the check-in systems, which in turn leaked screenshots of guest information to the internet. It’s not known who planted the app or how it was planted. Read more Share to Instagram from your smart glasses: Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to their Instagram Story without needing to take out their phone. Read more The more you know: People who check out with Google Pay can now see their card benefits and perks before selecting a card, use “buy now, pay later” through partners like Affirm and Zip, and fill in their card details through biometrics or a PIN instead of having to enter their security code. Sarah Perez notes that the first feature is one of the most compelling ones because consumers who have multiple credit cards with different perks may not always remember which is the best card to use when. Read more Starliner stunner: The launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which was poised to carry two astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time on May 25, is being paused. The mission, which has already been beset by issues with both the rocket and helium tanks, is now delayed indefinitely. Read more TikTok … more like TAIkTok: TikTok is the latest tech company to incorporate generative AI into its ads business. The new “TikTok Symphony” AI suite for brands helps marketers write scripts, produce videos and enhance current assets. The suite of features includes a new AI video generator called the “Symphony Creative Studio” that can generate TikTok-ready videos with just a few inputs from an advertiser. The studio also offers brands ready-to-use videos for ad campaigns based on their TikTok Ads Manager assets or product information. Read more |
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| Connected fitness is adrift post-pandemic. Read more Space VC closes $20M Fund II to back frontier tech founders from day zero. Read more Bolster, creator of the CheckPhish phishing tracker, raises $14 million led by Microsoft’s M12. Read more Patronus AI is off to a magical start as LLM governance tool gains traction. Read more Aerodome is sending drones to the scene of the crime. Read more Hydrolix seeks to make storing log data faster and cheaper. Read more HoundDog.ai helps developers prevent personal information from leaking. Read more |
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| Image Credits: Getty Images / MirageC |
| ChatGPT’s new voice sounds eerily similar to Scarlett Johansson’s: If OpenAI’s Sam Altman was trying to play off the similarities between Sky and Scarlett as a coincidence, he didn’t do a great job. Ultimately, Johansson got her way, since the Sky voice is no longer. But it’s still a bit weird that Altman tried to re-create “Her” — did we watch the same movie? Hit play and let’s chat! |
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| What happens on Wall Street: Is now a $78 million typo. That’s how much an error made by an unnamed Citigroup trader is costing the company as it works to clean up a “flash crash” in European stocks, The Wall Street Journal reports. Read more Crypto bill poised for House vote: As you read this, the U.S. House of Representatives may have already voted on a crypto market structure bill. Here, CoinDesk takes us through the bill. Read more More on Microsoft Build 2024: We brought you all the goods this week from the conference — now read what The Register had to say about it. Spoiler, all fluff, no stuff. Read more |
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