Thursday, February 8, 2024

PayPal works on offline payments as the Digital Markets Act looms

TechCrunch Newsletter
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By Christine Hall

Thursday, February 08, 2024

Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to TechCrunch PM. It's been a busy day, so I won't delay. Today, PayPal has a plan for offline payments, and Google will make you regret anything you've typed into Gemini. Then say "good-bye" to those annoying AI-voiced robocalls and "hello" to Plaid's new president.

Christine

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Image Credits: Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek / Getty Images (Image has been modified)

TechCrunch PM Top 3

PayPal wants to be a true pay pal: PayPal says it will be "ready" to take advantage of the new European Union's newest regulation, the Digital Markets Act, when it goes into effect next month. This includes a plan for offline payments, or those taking place in physical retail stores. Sarah Perez writes this is an area PayPal has unsuccessfully tried to expand into for years.

Write it, regret it: That's the message Google is sending in a new support document where it reveals that it saves conversations with its AI-powered Gemini apps for years.

"I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!": A fake app made to look like the password manager LastPass was removed from the Apple App Store. Apple isn't commenting yet, so we aren't sure who removed it. Learn what we do know.

TechCrunch PM Top 3 image

Image Credits: Artur Widak/NurPhoto / Getty Images

More top reads

FCC hangs up on some robocallers: The Federal Communications Commission declared AI-voiced robocallers illegal. This comes a few days after New Hampshire residents received calls from someone who sounded like President Joe Biden. It might not be a permanent fix, but it's a step in the right direction.

Speaking of fake: The European Union is looking at draft election security mitigations with a goal to cut down on the amount of generative AI and deepfakes that are increasingly being posted on social media, imposing risks to democratic processes.

More on Ivanti: Here we go again — researchers say hackers have begun mass exploiting a third vulnerability affecting Ivanti's widely used enterprise VPN appliance.

Seeing is believing: Brilliant Labs is carving out a niche for itself in the augmented reality space with its glass that features multimodal AI. Investors love it, too, and gave them more money.

Closinglock wants to make sure you don't lose your house downpayment: The Austin-based startup grabbed another $12 million to continue developing its secure portal for wiring real estate transactions.

New hires: It was a day for brand-new roles. Over at General Motors, Kurt Kelty, a battery expert and ex-Tesla executive, is the automaker's new vice president of batteries. Meanwhile, Plaid snagged former Cloudflare chief product officer Jennifer Taylor, who steps into the role of the fintech startup's president.

Even more AI: It's everywhere, including all over this newsletter. Crux snagged $2.6 million to develop a generative AI platform to power business intelligence tools. Next, serverless data platform Upstash also has a new stack of cash and hit annual recurring revenue of $1 million just two years after its seed funding. And Glass is tapping into AI to supercharge smartphone cameras. Meanwhile, over on TechCrunch+, Alex says AI-powered software will be the stuff company dreams are made of.

Helmet head: Apparently Livall's smart ski and bike helmet had a security flaw that allowed silent location tracking.

More top reads image

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

On the pods

On today’s episode of Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed Devin Finzer, the CEO of NFT marketplace OpenSea. Despite the NFT market's trading volume falling from all-time highs in late 2021 and early 2022, OpenSea is still pushing forward even though other NFT marketplaces have popped up and challenged their dominance.

You can now watch full-length episodes of Chain Reaction on YouTube.

Or keep it old school and listen here.

On the pods image

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

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When does a startup-focused newsletter become an AI roundup?

TechCrunch Newsletter
TechCrunch AM logo

By Alex Wilhelm

Thursday, February 08, 2024

Good morning, and welcome to TechCrunch AM for February 8, 2024. Today, we're talking about Google's new AI model, a French unicorn, a startup building software for fusion power tech, the impact of X's drama on its smaller competitors, and Disney buying a big chunk of Epic Games. I have a varied, and honestly fascinating grip of stories for you this morning. Let's get reading!

Alex

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TechCrunch Top 3

  1. Google launches new, powerful AI model: Say hello to Gemini Ultra, everyone. Also say goodbye to Bard, a brand that Google had in the market for about a year. Now it's all Gemini, got it? If you want to snag the Ultra version of Google's most powerful AI model, you'll need the top-tier of its Google One plans, which will run you $20 per month. Google is also bringing its new AI models to its Assistant product. Now it's time for Microsoft et al. to fire back and keep the AI race going.
  2. Pennylane is France's latest unicorn: Flush with €40 million in new capital, Pennylane's accounting software business is now worth at least $1 billion. The startup is another standout from France, where startups have seemed very busy in recent quarters.
  3. Disney + Fortnite: The U.S. entertainment giant is acquiring a $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games, which runs Fortnite, develops the Unreal Engine, and the Epic games store (which is tussling with Apple) as part of a partnership deal. The deal makes good sense, since Disney has lots of IP that it wants to lever as widely as possible, and Epic Games has lots of customers in the Mouse Kingdom's target demographic. Shares of Disney are up 8% this morning following the news and the company's quarterly report.
TechCrunch Top 3 image

Image Credits: Google

Don't miss these

CodeSignal wants to teach you coding: CodeSignal started life as a competitive coding platform, and later rebranded to a technical assessment service. Now, the company is building CodeSignal Learn, which features an AI bot called Cosmo that will help teach users topics like introduction to programming, coding languages, data analytics and machine learning. There's a free tier, but CodeSignal Learn will run users $24.99 per month if they want to ask Cosmo as many questions as they want.

AI pricing is the interesting concept here. OpenAI's more powerful ChatGPT service costs $20 per month, while access to Google's new Gemini model costs $20 per month. Microsoft is charging a lot for its AI-infused Office tools, and CodeSignal is targeting a price point above the $20 mark. In short, AI tools are going to cost users, and a price floor is being established by the market. Put another way, AI is going to bolster total software TAM. That's good news for tech companies big and small.

Daedalus wants to bring AI to manufacturing: With a new $21 million Series A under its belt, Daedalus plans to tackle precision part fabrication. Such work doesn't mesh with the high-volume manufacturing lines that we see in the automotive industry, but perhaps the German startup can shake up a large, fragmented piece of the "building stuff" world with its AI-infused processes.

Thea Energy raises $20M for its software to advance fusion power: There are two main ways to approach magnetic confinement for fusion power: You can build a simple, donut-shaped plasma container (tokamak), or a more complicated layout that superheated plasma likes more (stellarator). Thea wants to use software-controlled, high-temperature superconducting magnets inside a tokamak-like container to get stellarator-like ease of plasma control and achieve the best of both worlds. Very cool, very complex, and hopefully very effective.

Rally is building a micro climate fund: Rally Cap VC is known for its investments in fintech, but the venture firm has now reached the 'first close' of a new, climate-focused fund it's calling Rally Cap Climate. The firm said "many of the most exciting calls [it was] having with founders were on the climate side," which meshed with its goals to move beyond just fintech dealmaking.

Attentive is bringing AI to manual labor: Now with $7 million more under its belt, Attentive.ai's business of helping automate landscaping and construction services is bringing the vertical SaaS model outdoors (AI is very useful for estimating, it turns out). Attentive is not the only startup with the idea. TechCrunch covered SingleOps' $6 million round back in 2020, for example.

Big Tech Roundup: Apple has rebuilt its iCloud app for Windows; Meta doesn't want to help finance the EU's oversight of its business; and a collision with a cyclist has Alphabet's Waymo under regulatory scrutiny.

X's drama is social media rocket fuel: Sarah Perez writes that recent product and business changes at the social media service formerly known as Twitter is helping "further growth of numerous social networks that prioritize brief posts." In short, if you like to tweet, you have more options than X.

Indian central bank not sorry it's wrangling with Paytm: The Reserve Bank of India's actions have not only undercut Paytm's banking arm, they've also dramatically curtailed its market cap. In response, the RBI says that its actions only follow a long period of non-compliance and lots of mutual engagement. Don't blame the regulators, RBI is saying, blame the company.

Don't miss these image

Image Credits: CodeSignal

Before you go

I don't fully understand it, but the United States has lately seen a boom in trendy water bottles. Stanley water bottles are today's symbolic item of coolness, though how long they will hold on to that moniker is beyond me. No matter, some businesses want a piece of the action: Brita, known for its water filter tech, is buying smart water bottle-maker Larq.

What's a smart water bottle? Larq vessels use "a UV light built into the cap to reduce the bacteria that accumulates inside."

You can also just drink from the tap, but hey, that's not cool enough.

Before you go image

Image Credits: Larq

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