TGIF, my TechCrunch homies. It’s that time of the week again – time for the week in review, where we recap the last five days of tech news. As usual, a lot has happened, so let’s dig in sans delay.
Well, maybe a little late. I’d be remiss not to mention that TechCrunch Early Stage, TechCrunch’s annual founding conference, is right around the corner, on April 20th. Set this year in Boston, Early Stage will host sessions featuring mentoring and adoption from top experts and opportunities to meet entrepreneurs on amazing journeys. Trust me, it will be worth the trip.
Disruption, TechCrunch’s flagship conference, will be as well. all right Worth the trip. (I’m not just saying that because yours truly will be involved — I swear!) This year, Riot will feature six new stages of industry-specific programming tracks, inspired by the popular TC Sessions series. Experts in climate, mobility, fintech, AI and machine learning, enterprise, privacy and security, and hardware and robotics will attend and have fascinating insights to share.
So are you registered for both events? great. Now here’s the review week!
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Chat in API form: OpenAI has introduced an API that allows any business to build ChatGPT technology into their apps, websites, products and services. (As a refresher, ChatGPT is a free text-generating AI that can write human-like code, emails, essays, and more.) Snap, Quizlet, Instacart, and Shopify are among the early adopters.
Being human: One startup, Image, came out of hiding this week with the promise of a general-purpose bi-humanoid robot. (Brian (In case you missed it, it broke news of the startup’s existence back in September.) The company completed an alpha build of its painting robot in December, which is currently being tested at its Sunnyvale offices. Currently, it specializes in a wide range of handicrafts.
warrantless surveillance; Zach The Secret Service and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations Division have reported that they repeatedly failed to obtain the correct legal documents during invasive cell phone surveillance. The findings were published last week by the Homeland Security Inspector General, the agency tasked with overseeing U.S. federal departments and several law enforcement agencies, saying the agencies use cell site simulators without proper search warrants.
Salesforce changes: This week, Salesforce reported its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings, including expectations and guidance that came in ahead of Street estimates. It was a much-needed victory for the company, which has been facing intense pressure from activist investors, including Elliott Management.
Hydrogen powered; Startup Universal Hydrogen this week took its largest hydrogen fuel cell to flight ever. The modified Dash-8 plane’s 15-minute test flight was short, but – as Make a mark He wrote – He showed that hydrogen can be used as a fuel for short-hop passenger planes. (Many technical and regulatory hurdles stand in the way, however.)
Pause the length. Ivan Snapchat allows users to pause their Snap streak — where you send a photo to a friend once every 24 hours — so they don’t have to worry about breaking them if they decide not to access the app for a while.
A new charity for AI: A community-driven AI research group, EleutherAI, is creating a non-profit foundation. AI startups Hugging Face and Stability AI, a charity backed by grants and sponsors including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Lambda Labs, and Canva, plan to explore issues around large language models through OpenAI’s ChatGPT pipeline.
Stop “Success”: The official trailer for the final season of “Success” was released this week, and it looks like the series will end with a dramatic mic drop. Like Lauren He wrote, the HBO series was not only highly successful, with 13 Emmy wins and five Golden Globe awards, but it was an interesting comment on the media industry. Creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong admits to drawing inspiration from many places, including Rupert Murdoch’s playbook.
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As Elon Musk interrupts on Twitter, the TechCrunch podcast machine never stops. This week on fairness, Mary Ann, Becca And Alex We gathered to break the biggest startup and venture news of the week, including what’s happening in the land of NFTs, AI and crypto in venture capital rounds and Amazon’s unlikely partnership. And on the TechCrunch Live Podcast, Matt Burns spoke with Sagi Eliyahu, CEO and co-founder of Tonken, and Joanne Chen, a partner at Foundation Capital, about addressing blind spots in leadership and the best ways founders can work with boards of directors.
