Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Do you know what your WhatsApp is doing? Other people do

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By Christine Hall

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Good afternoon and welcome to TechCrunch PM. Today, we'll discuss something new on WhatsApp that has me a bit spooked. We'll also look at an app that helps couples combine their finances but also remain independent, as well as another calendar app, Samsung Galaxy S24, what's happening with payments in Latin America, and who's driving away from the U.S.A. Let's go!

Christine

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Somebody's watching me: As it turns out, anyone who knows your WhatsApp number can figure out if you're only using the mobile app or its companion web or desktop apps. We know it works because a security researcher demonstrated and proved the findings in tests performed with WhatsApp numbers controlled by TechCrunch. Now, this can mean nothing or it could give hackers some additional firepower.

An AI-generated picture says a thousand words: Amazon is bringing you a feature for Fire TV that you didn't even know you wanted — the ability to generate AI images. Just tell Alexa (via the remote) what kind of image you want to create — for example, a fairy-tale landscape — and four images will be created. You can save one for your TV background if you like it enough.

I have a Notion to get organized: Notion, the popular note-taking and project management service, now has a fully stand-alone calendar app called Notion Calendar. Currently it is just for iOS (don't worry, an Android version is coming). As Frederic writes, Notion acquired calendar app Cron in 2022, so this new feature is "a free next-gen version of Cron with a built-in, Calendly-like scheduling tool and a deep but optional Notion integration."

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Tandem gives 'modern couples' app to manage finances together and separately: Sometimes you want to be together, and sometimes you want to be apart. Tandem, started by Michelle Winterfield and Daniel Couvreur, sees you. The fintech app offers planning, saving and spending features for what they call the "modern couple," two people who live together but aren’t married yet. Now you can have the best of both worlds: separate accounts and the ability to share only what you want your partner to see.

DeepMind's latest AI can solve geometry problems: AlphaGeometry is a system that DeepMind's Google AI R&D lab claims can solve as many geometry problems as the average International Mathematical Olympiad gold medalist. That's 25 Olympiad geometry problems within the standard time limit for those of you who don't want to Google.

Pomelo stacks $40M to scale its payments infra business in LatAm: The Argentinian payments infrastructure startup raised a Series B round of funding. Pomelo started in 2021 with the goal of giving fintechs and embedded finance players a way to launch virtual accounts and issue prepaid cards and credit cards via compliant onboarding processes. Today, it is a SaaS tool to manage a customer's end-to-end credit card business.

TuSimple is leaving the Nasdaq as it exits the US: Chinese autonomous trucking startup TuSimple plans to delist itself from the Nasdaq stock exchange after three years of being on it. The company has struggled since pushing out co-founder Xiaodi Hou in late 2022 and being under investigation by several U.S. regulatory agencies. Last year, TuSimple made the decision to exit the U.S.

Goldman Sachs-backed ZestMoney, once valued at $450M, sold to DMI in fire sale: A little over a month ago, India fintech startup ZestMoney made the decision to shut down. Today, we learned that ZestMoney, the lender once valued at $450 million, sold itself to financial services firm DMI Group in a fire sale.

Samsung's Galaxy S24 line arrives with camera improvements and generative AI tricks: Samsung is not playing around with its camera capabilities. Today, the Galaxy S24 dropped with camera improvements and generative AI tricks. Galaxy S24 Ultra's Quad Tele System has a new 5x optical zoom lens and the ability to zoom to 10x magnification. The new line includes the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24 Ultra, starting at $800, $1,000, and $1,300, respectively.

Call on capital: When it comes to venture capital, there is always good news and bad news. Good — there is additional capital poised to enter certain markets by way of Top Tier Capital, which now has $1.05 billion in capital commitments for investments in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Web3 investors have a new fund to go after with Inception Capital, which closed $30 million for its inaugural fund of funds. And now for the bad — funding to Black founders was down in 2023 for the third year in a row.

For founders: A startup pitch is not a presentation and founders must understand the differences.

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Apple details new App Store payment rules, still demands a 27% cut

TechCrunch Newsletter
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By Alex Wilhelm

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Good morning and welcome to TechCrunch AM for January 17, 2024. This morning, we're talking about Apple’s changes to its app store rules; how one startup wants to use AI to help other companies reduce their software spend; what's going on with fintech; and even fake beef! Let's have some fun!

Alex

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  • India doesn't like deepfakes: New Delhi has issued a warning that digital platforms could get banned from the country if they don't take steps to monitor for and quickly take down unauthorized deepfaked videos. The precipitating factor in this case was a deepfaked video of a cricket player that was used to endorse a gambling app. India has sharpened its regulation of its technology industry and market in recent years as it continues to grow.
  • Apple is willing to bend a tiny amount: Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal of Epic's case against Apple over allowing developers to link out from its App Store and use alternative payment methods, the iPhone maker will require companies that do link out to still pay a 27% fee. Down from 30%. And apps that do link out still have to allow for normal Apple payments and fees. Call it a corporate middle finger.
  • AI vs. SaaS: Vertice, a startup that wants to use AI to help its customers save on their overall software spend, just raised $25 million. It's growing very quickly, scaling to revenues in the double-digit millions, with ARR growing seven-fold in 2023, writes Ingrid Lunden. Using new technology to save money on older tech? Very meta, very cool.
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Fullcast raises $34M to track revenue teams: Do you have a bunch of products, revenue lines and sales teams? Tracking the milieu can be a big, complicated, messy task. That's something the founders of Fullcast learned at Microsoft and Salesforce. So they came up with software that allows companies to manage and track the performance of each of their revenue-generating teams by connecting to existing software. Fullcast currently has revenue of $6.5 million, meaning that revenue operations (RevOps?) is a category with legs.

Build a Rocket Boy snags $110M: Founded by a former developer of the Grand Theft Auto games, Build a Rocket Boy has raised a massive round to help fund the development and launch of several titles, one of which could compete with Roblox. Given the layoffs we've seen this year in the gaming industry, this round stood out to me for being nearly counter to the wider narrative. Also, who doesn't love seeing some capital flow towards art?

N26 says 'hallo' to stock trading: Berlin-based neobank N26 is getting into the equities and ETF game. The move is not surprising, as adding new investing features could help the company expand its revenue per user, which all fintech startups seek to do as they scale.

Samsung is coming with new hardware: Today at 1 p.m. E.S.T., Samsung will unveil its newest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S24. We expect new hardware, but also some AI elements that may be worth paying some attention to.

Sierra Space lands part of a big satellite deal: Space-focused startups are having a good start to the year. Sierra Space has been picked, along with Lockheed Martin and L3Harris, to build 54 satellites in deals collectively worth $2.5 billion. The development comes in the wake of Rocket Lab snagging a similar contract worth $515 million last week. Space is a massive market, and it's good to see startups getting a piece of the action.

Fake beef: No, I am not discussing synthetic arguments; I'm talking about artificial beef, the kind you can eat. Aleph Farms has gotten the green light in Israel to produce and sell its cultivated beef product in the country. This is not a plant-based replacement; it's actual meat grown in a lab. Perhaps it will prove tasty. Anything to improve our factory farming food chain is good by me.

And in the United States, regulators are turning up the pressure on companies that experienced data breaches. "It might seem like it's never been a riskier time to work in cybersecurity," writes Zack Whittaker.

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How much would you pay to shop?

If retail therapy is the kind of mental health management you prefer, how would you feel about a service that you have to apply to join and then costs $1,000 per month before you actually get to buy anything? That's the bet behind Long Story Short.

I am completely uncertain how popular the product will be, but it certainly has a bold business model. I just hope Amazon isn't taking notes.

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