Friday, April 5, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we have notes on why Google's potential acquisition of Hubspot feels a bit off; a new venture fund that wants to bet on gaming; how AI regulation is heating up around the world; and the 10th anniversary of the Meta-Oculus deal. Happy Friday! — Alex

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Chance Yeh / Getty Images for HubSpot

The possible Google-Hubspot deal is hard to parse: Shares of Hubspot rose 5% yesterday after it was reported that Google may make an offer for the marketing automation and CRM company. TechCrunch's Ron Miller dug into the possible deal, examining Google's previous acquisitions and the strategic implications of the tie up. His view? The combo would be a "strange pairing." Read More

Venture still thinks gaming is sexy: Bitkraft Ventures has put together a $275 million third fund to invest in gaming studios and platforms that facilitate game development. Venture investors have traditionally considered video games to be risky bets, since revenues are quite dependent on new title launches and gamers are a bit harder to cater to than, say, software companies. Still, the gaming industry is large and lucrative, so there's ample money to be made… Read More

The EU and U.S. want to collaborate on AI safety and risk: A lot of people looked askance at the EU for churning out AI regulation quickly, but now, the United States and the EU have affirmed "a desire to increase cooperation over artificial intelligence." Expect leading AI companies on both sides of the Atlantic to push back against some regulatory efforts, but all the same, some cross-continent collaboration isn't too onerous an idea... Read More

Morning Must Reads

Image Credits: JOSH EDELSON/AFP / Getty Images

It's been 10 years since Facebook promised to change the world with Oculus: A decade after Facebook's $2 billion deal to buy the VR headset company, what has the social giant gotten for its time and investment? Some progress, but according to TechCrunch's Brian Heater, the company believes it is "playing the long game." You can consider Meta's continued spend on VR as an option on a platform revolution: If VR and AR headsets ever become a computing platform that people will use regularly, Meta will be well-positioned to take advantage... Read More

Ford needs to think more like a startup: Ford is delaying several of its planned new EVs and is instead going to launch some hybrid vehicles. Tim De Chant argues that the carmaker's focus on near-term profit may delight investors, but it will come at the cost of ceding the future. Ford, De Chant writes, "is unusual among established automakers in that it performs best when thinking like a startup." Read More

Meet the powerhouse pitch judges at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024: Edith Yeung, general partner at Race Capital; Paris Heymann, partner at Index Ventures; and Rachel Weston Rowell, senior vice president at Insight Partners, will be on hand to judge the "So You Think You Can Pitch" competition at Early Stage this year. Make sure you get there early! Read More

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Around the Web

Korean tech giant Samsung expects its profits to soar thanks to improving memory prices, the Financial Times reports. Final figures will come later this month, but the good news is welcome tidings for the chip world, which, apart from Nvidia, has not been having the best time lately... Read More

As the world's democracies start their election season, The Guardian cites a Microsoft report as saying that China's use of AI-generated material to influence the recent Taiwanese election was a dry run, but the country has other elections it wants to tweak, including the one in the United States... Read More

The Economic Times reports that India is seeking to craft a new AI law that will balance payments for content creators and news organizations while leaving room for technological innovation. This comes as the EU and U.S. are exploring a collaboration on AI regulations, so the Wild West days of artificial intelligence may be coming to an end... Read More

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Before You Go

Image Credits: Canonical

Xz-utils security issue delays release of Ubuntu, other distros: Techradar reports that the beta release of Ubuntu 24.04 is being delayed due to a backdoor that was found in xz-utils, an open-source tool for data compression that is used across nearly all installations of Linux and Unix-like operating systems. Xz-utils has been developed by one person for years, and this incident underscores just how big of a problem the open source software community faces considering how much vital software is maintained for free by solo volunteers with few resources at their disposal... Read More