Techcrunch blog!: The new age space race is here

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Good morning, and welcome to TechCrunch AM!

The space race is far from over, and it's no mere nation-state competition these days. A U.S.-based startup has just brought back pharma products made in low orbit, and India is loosening rules for foreign investment in its space industry. If you aren't tracking space-focused startups, you are really missing out on one of the most exciting – dare we say out of this world – areas in tech. See? It's not all vertical SaaS and AI!

– Alex

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TechCrunch Top 3

Space drugs touchdown dirtside: Varda Space's pharma products that it grew in space have made it back to the planet. The startup's in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, touched down in Utah yesterday afternoon, carrying "crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat HIV/AIDS," Aria Alamalhodaei reports. Low-gravity manufacturing is going to be awesome.
Demand for deepfake regulation accelerates: AI tech is advancing at a rapid clip, and so are concerns around how it's going to be used and abused. Several hundred folks involved in AI are calling for strict regulation of AI deepfakes. Since this is an election year around the world, the issue is gathering widespread attention given the potential for abuse. Elsewhere in AI, Google has paused Gemini's ability to generate images of people while it finetunes the model.
X is censoring itself in India at the government's behest: Social media service X is withholding specific accounts and posts in India following executive orders from the country's government. The company says it can't make details of the orders public because New Delhi has forbidden it from doing so, and that it is fighting back. India's technology regulatory landscape has become increasingly strict in recent years, for reference.

Image Credits: Varda Space Industries

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Antler backs 37 vertical AI startups: Founders in Southeast Asia are having luck raising capital. Singaporean venture capital firm Antler has invested $5.1 million across more than three dozen pre-seed startups developing vertical AI solutions in the region. Like elsewhere in the world, VCs in Asia seem to be betting that startups have a real shot at growing big with new machine intelligence tech.

Hohm Energy is helping expand Africa's power grid: South Africa has a real problem with producing enough power for its growing economy, but at least one company is working on the issue. Hohm, a portmanteau of "home" and the measure of electrical resistance "ohm," connects solar providers with individuals and businesses, extending the local grid and adding total capacity to strained power networks. It just raised $8 million for its work, which is a healthy seed round in any market.

Are you Blacker than ChatGPT? An ad agency has created a quiz of sorts to see if users are more knowledgeable about Black culture than ChatGPT, which is trained on a specific corpus of information. AI bias is a pressing issue due to the increasing use of LLMs by students, consumers and companies, and this seems like a cool way to highlight where and how AI training data can fall short of where it needs to be.

India wants foreign capital to fuel its space industry: New rules have cleared the roads for overseas investment in India's burgeoning space industry. The new setup will allow up to 49% foreign ownership in launch systems, 74% in satellite products, and as much as 100% external ownership in satellite component manufacturing.

Lucid to build just 9,000 cars this year: After predicting that it could build as many as 90,000 cars this year, Lucid has said it will miss its lofty goal by a staggering margin. The company expects to build only 9,000 cars this year, which is disappointing, especially since other EV companies have seen their volumes rise sharply in recent years. In the fourth quarter, Lucid reported an operating loss of $736.9 million on revenue of $151.2 million.

Another day, another hack: Change Healthcare is the latest victim of cybercrime in the States. One of the largest healthcare tech companies in the U.S., Change said it took systems offline to limit the threat, but the "specific nature of the cybersecurity incident was not disclosed," Zack Whittaker reports. I reckon there are two kinds of companies out there: Those that have been breached, and those that are hoping it won't happen to them.

Mobility moves: Autonomous driving startup Haomo.ai just raised $14 million in a new round of capital; micromobility companies are looking to join forces as the sector retreats; and Uber is working with India's Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). TechCrunch exclusively learned that the tie-up will see Uber start with "intercity bus ticketing across India and Metro Rail ticketing as a buyer application."

Social watchdog to expand purview: Meta's Oversight Board, an external group that advises the social giant, is extending its reach to include Threads, the company's Twitter competitor. The board recently criticized Meta's policies regarding faked videos, for reference.

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

Before you go

Mastodon spam wave was planned on Discord: TechCrunch reports that a recent wave of spam on the decentralized social network Mastodon was coordinated on social chat service Discord. The company "has yet to remove the server where the attacks are facilitated, and Mastodon community leaders have been unable to reach anyone at the company." Discord said it is monitoring the situation.