X doesn’t want to see Bored Apes anymore

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall Wednesday, January 10, 2024

In a surprise move, X removes support for NFT profile pictures for its paid subscribers. Ivan reports that for right now, people who do have that kind of profile picture still have a hexagonal avatar, but that could go away too. Meanwhile, though Elon Musk suggested users paying for verification would help solve the bot problem, Sarah writes about a new video that shows X now has a Verified bot problem. Next, we bring you some bad news: More layoffs. Lauren writes about a plan to cut hundreds of jobs at Amazon Prime Video and MGM Studios as it figures out where it wants to focus its efforts. And Paul reports on Humane's small, yet big news on laying off 10 people as its CTO also moves into an adviser role. Meanwhile, Tesla's refreshed Model 3 is coming to the United States. Sean writes that much of the upgrades are inside the vehicle. And don't forget about CES 2024 going on in Las Vegas this week. We continue to bring you a robust list of everything announced so far and some fun extras that our team encountered while on-site. Image Credits: TechCrunch

More top reads Prompts Royale: Two Brazilian developers didn't see a good solution for prompt engineering, so they are building one with Meistrari. Read more. Micromobility marriage: Tier and Dott, two startups focused on scooters and e-bikes, plan a merger to find a path to profitability. Learn how this consolidation will ride out. All we have to do is mention OpenAI: The company has been busy lately with some new features. One is a ChatGPT subscription aimed at small teams. The other is a store for custom AI-powered chatbots. CEO changes: Match Group promotes Faye Iosotaluno to Tinder CEO. She was previously the dating app's chief operating officer. Meanwhile, what's old is new again at Mirantis, an enterprise infrastructure software startup. Its former CEO Alex Freeland is coming back to take that same role. Five charts that explain the decline in VC: The TechCrunch+ team charted data from PitchBook on venture capital investment flows across the world to show you that, yes, VC was down in 2023. However, it's not that dramatic of a fall. When interest rates go up . . . : Companies like Downpayments get creative. In its case, it wants to offer real estate investors interest-free financing. However, investors dig it. Find out more. Finally: The open source Terraform fork OpenTofu is now ready for prime time four months after its initial launch. Here's why it took that long. Popping bottles: Seedstars Africa Ventures received a $30 million capital commitment from EIB Global to become the first major institutional investment for its first Pan-African venture capital fund. Read more. Put me in coach: Shimmer, a platform for one-on-one personalized ADHD coaching, raises $2.2 million. Learn how it helps adults. Even more for your Wednesday: Fujitsu, facing heat over UK Post Office scandal, continues to rake in billions from government deals The SEC wants $45 million from bankrupt Lordstown Motors Female-founded startup Diem wants to be the go-to social search engine for women and non-binary folks EU lawmakers under pressure to fully disclose dealings with child safety tech maker, Thorn Image Credits: atdigit / Getty Images

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On the pods The new Equity Wednesday format launched today! In our newly revamped Wednesday episodes, we're going to be digging deep into critical startup and venture capital news. This week, PhotoRoom is raising more money, Treasure Financial is cutting staff, and two micromobility companies are tying the knot to try and use scale to their advantage. We’ll also look at what’s going on in the world of AI hardware, as well as why Keith Rabois is heading back to Khosla Ventures and Seedstars Africa Ventures adding $30 million to its upcoming fund. Listen here. Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard 2024–25 Technologist-in-Residence Fellow at Council on Foreign Relations (New York, NY, USA) Chief Technology Officer / Cofounder at truckmentum.com (Atlanta, GA, USA) IT Technology Analyst II at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States) IT Project Lead at Valley Water (San Jose, CA, USA) Founding Team - Senior Full Stack Developer at Mindworks (San Francisco, CA, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.

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Jio Platforms now valued at over $100B

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall Tuesday, January 09, 2024

Bank of America bestowed a new title on Jio Platforms — an over $100 billion valuation. If you're into names, that makes Mukesh Ambani's India-based telecoms and digital conglomerate a "centicorn." This comes as parent company Reliance Industries plans to eventually take Jio public, Manish writes. Here's more. Next, Natasha has your look at Indian wearable startup Ultrahuman's first foray into the smart home arena. Announced at CES 2024, this new connected hardware device called Ultrahuman Home is designed to monitor the "health" of your home. For example, it will monitor levels of natural and artificial light, air pollution, noise, humidity and smoke in the room where it's installed. Get more specs and pricing. Meanwhile, Romain reports that there isn't much unity at Unity. The maker of a video game engine is laying off another 1,800 employees as it "restructures and refocuses on its core business, and to position itself for long-term and profitable growth." This is the company's fourth round of layoffs in a year, and the public markets didn't much care for the move. Get the scoop. And speaking of CES 2024, the event is going strong today in Las Vegas. We continue to bring you a roundup of everything announced so far in case you don't have time to tune in. Some of the big stories you'll see include: Can a striking design set rabbit's r1 pocket AI apart from a gaggle of virtual assistants? Honda bets its electric future on 'thin, light' 0 series EVs at CES 2024 Amazon's Alexa gets new generative AI-powered experiences Image Credits: Dhiraj Singh / Bloomberg / Getty Images

More top reads Simpler website design is closer than you think: Developers make everything complicated, right? Well Deco.cx, a Brazilian startup, doesn't like that approach. So it created an open source, front-end development platform for growing e-commerce brands that want to create high-performance digital experiences. Read more. Whoops: Someone over at Threads got a bit too excited and executed some new features related to viewing the latest search results. It's now clawed that back. Sorry, you’ll have to wait a little longer. There's more to the story: Carta's decision yesterday to exit the secondary shares trading market got Alex and Anna wondering if Carta's growth story is now being overshadowed by its stock trading snafu. You be the judge. (TC+) More layoffs: Duolingo is blaming the effect of using AI in its business for the reason it made the decision to cut 10% of its contractor workforce. Get the scoop. Step on it: In other CES 2024 news, VinFast, a Vietnamese electric vehicle startup, unveiled the concept for an electric pickup truck. The newest addition is part of a long list of things VinFast hopes to build in the coming years. Find out more. Spies among us: Hackers around the world are using artificial intelligence to craft their cyberattacks, but that same technology is helping U.S. spies track them down. See how. A small victory for spot bitcoin ETFs?: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is close to approving spot bitcoin ETFs, and Valkyrie's co-founder already has a plan for when that happens. Learn what that is. (TC+) We can't find that location: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission banned X-Mode from selling phone location data and ordered the firm to delete whatever collected data it had. Here's why. Image Credits: Deco.cx

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On the pods On today's episode of Found, Dom and Becca talk to Markus Witte, co-founder of Babbel, a language learning app that has been operating since 2007. Babbel has become one of the most prominent language-learning apps but their first product was essentially just a vocab game, and they quickly discovered that a multimodal way of learning will always be more effective. Markus also talked about why he decided to step down as CEO and take on the role of chairman and how all four co-founders have worked together to stick to the original mission of Babbel even after nearly 20 years. Listen here. Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Chief Technology Officer / Cofounder at truckmentum.com (Atlanta, GA, USA) IT Technology Analyst II at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States) IT Project Lead at Valley Water (San Jose, CA, USA) Founding Team - Senior Full Stack Developer at Mindworks (San Francisco, CA, USA) Senior Software Engineer at Zulu Airline Systems, Inc. (Atlanta, GA, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.

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