Techcrunch blog!: Do you know what your WhatsApp is doing? Other people do

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

Image Credits: Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

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TechCrunch PM Top 3

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."

Image Credits: Amazon

More top reads

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.