Techcrunch blog!: Nikola’s Badger sees its shadow

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Good afternoon, and welcome to TechCrunch PM. We have a lot of news for you today, so enjoy an update on Nikola's electric truck, what's new at Bluesky, more AI and funding news and an update on Sony's VR.

— Christine

Image Credits: Nikola

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TechCrunch PM Top 3

Changing lanes: Electric trucking company Nikola was supposed to build its Badger pickup truck with General Motors. Instead, it sold the truck's intellectual property to another company. One with ties to a television personality.

Gemini, the all powerful: Gemini tried to interact with me through my phone today for the first time. Perhaps Google was alerting me to the fact that Chrome got a new AI writing generator. Don't worry, it's still an experimental tool, so you have to enable it.

Bluesky opens up federation: After a public launch of federation earlier this month, X competitor Bluesky is opening up the network so that anyone can run their own server that connects to Bluesky's network. It's a move to help users have more control over their personal data.

Image Credits: Tim Mason / Getty Images

More top reads

A new-and-improved image generator: Details are few on Stable Diffusion 3, but as we've seen with OpenAI and Google announcing AI-powered image generators, you have to play to win.

Unclutter your digital life: Meet Yorba, a startup that wants to organize your digital paper trail.

Congrats, you made a payment!: Google Pay plans to roll out the SoundPod, a portable speaker, to small merchants in India as part of a pilot. The SoundPod instantly validates and announces successful payments.

Women in AI: As part of a multipart series, meet five women who have contributed to the transformation of artificial intelligence.

O, Canada: Golden Ventures, a Toronto-based venture capital firm, closed its fifth fund with $100 million in capital commitments that it is deploying into Canada's tech ecosystem.

Don't put Sony in a corner: Sony says the PlayStation VR2 is getting a makeover.

Avast gets banned: The Federal Trade Commission banned antivirus company Avast and gave a fine after consumer web browsing data was sold to third parties. Avast had claimed there was no online tracking going on.

Funding, funding and more funding: Among startups that attracted capital today, DatologyAI is curating datasets, Zūm Rails is helping businesses move money, AddGlow is taking on Reddit and Frost Giant starts a Kickstarter campaign. Oh, and Hellohive's resume and recruiting tool is helping to prevent discrimination.

Today in streaming: We learned that nearly half of adults who go on TikTok have never posted a video. Speaking of the social media giant, its "Add to Music app" feature is now more widely available. Meanwhile, Spotify joins a bunch of social media networks in offering a service to connect brands and creators.

Image Credits: Stable Diffusion

On the pods

For this week's episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Steve Kaczynski, co-author of the book "The Everything Token," and co-host of a web3 morning show “Coffee with Captain.” He also co-authored the first Harvard Business Review article about NFTs. Outside of that, he consults with agencies and brands about building their web3 strategies, including his role with Starbucks, where he is a community lead for its NFT-focused loyalty program, Starbucks Odyssey.

Jacquelyn and Steve discuss what got him interested in NFTs, how important it is to build understanding for the sector and why communities matter more than floor prices.

They also dive into: