Techcrunch blog!: 2 former Tesla employees leaked data on 75K workers to German newspaper, company says

Monday, August 21, 2023

In today's top story — and the latest episode of "Tesla Employees Being Bad," the electric vehicle maker says two former employees are behind a data breach that affected over 75,000 employees. Find out what got leaked.

Meanwhile, with the supply chain getting back to normal, retailers need a place to offload excess merchandise. B2B inventory marketplace Ghost, which bagged $30 million in new capital, enables them to do that. The company is now taking its business model outside of the U.S. Read more.

And now that streaming services are eclipsing the cost of traditional cable, how are they going to compete with customers? By giving us more channels than we know what to do with. Today, Amazon launched a Fire TV Channels app with over 400 free ad-supported TV channels. Tune in or tune out?

Image Credits: IncrediVFX / Getty Images

More top reads

Working capital: Kenyan fintech startup Zanifu raises $11.2 million to scale its inventory financing offering. Get the scoop.

Get real: Do we really need to know how friends of our friends are being real? Just in case you want to know, BeReal has a feature for that.

You might not need all that tech: "All-in-one" sales tech platform FlashIntel raises $10 million. Read more.

A-I need protection: YouTube has a plan in the works to compensate artists using AI to make music. Meet the Music AI Incubator.

It's a-me, Mario: The man behind the voice of Mario is transitioning to a new role within Nintendo. Those fireworks were for real this time.

More layoffs: Twiga lays off 33% of its staff and disbands in-house delivery while also introducing a logistics marketplace. Read more.

Images everywhere, and also nowhere: Some rather famous images were deleted after X had a glitch. Find out which ones.

Come on in, the IPO waters are fine: And just like that, everyone's talking about tech IPOs again. Be in the know so you can, too. (TC+)

Finally we get to Snap back at someone: Snapchat is expanding further into generative AI with "Dreams." Learn more about Snap's master plan.

Weekend warriors you may have missed:

Bluesky buckled following Twitter/X's announcement about the end of blocks

Cruise told by regulators to 'immediately' reduce robotaxi fleet 50% following crash

Cellebrite asks cops to keep its phone hacking tech 'hush hush'

Nailing subscriptions in India (TC+)

Image Credits: Zanifu

From today's "pod" files

Today, Equity dug into what's making headlines early in the week, from Recur’s shutdown and crypto in chaos to speed bumps for self-driving car makers, to Threads, the resurrection of the IPO market and more money for fake meat startups.

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

How any SaaS company can monetize generative AI

Generative AI often looks like a magic trick, but long and complex prompts consume a great deal of resources.

And that makes usage-based pricing a “natural fit” for SaaS companies adding AI-powered products to their roster, says Puneet Gupta, a former AWS general manager who’s now the CEO and co-founder of Amberflo.io.

“Since the back-end costs of providing service are inherently variable, the customer-facing billing should be usage-based as well.”

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