Monday, May 6, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! It's Monday morning, and the news is already heating up. Today we have notes on Jack Dorsey once again quitting a social media company; why the Rabbit R1 isn't all that bad; the inside deets on Quora's AI push; and the reason a 36-pixel camera is actually useful in 2024. Let's dive in! — Alex

TechCrunch Top 3

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1. Jack Dorsey, who left Twitter, leaves Bluesky: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, the current CEO of Block, has left Bluesky's board. Bluesky competes with X, formerly Twitter, but adds a decentralized twist to moderation. Dorsey disclosed his exit from Bluesky's board on X, of course. The company is looking for a new board member. Read More

2. In defense of the rabbit r1: TechCrunch's Devin Coldeway finally received his rabbit r1, a small plastic cube with a screen and access to an AI service. He argues that devices like the r1 that are "weird, relatively cheap, and obviously an experiment" are something that we should rally behind, not dunk on for being what they are. Read More

3. Federal money for digital twins: Digital twins are virtual models of real-world stuff, useful for all sorts of things. You can use them to make a virtual copy of complex stuff like factories, allowing you to tinker with them without stopping production. They are also useful for helping design semiconductors, so the U.S. government is investing up to $285 million into them. Read More

Morning Must Reads

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Jess Lee explains how to figure out product-market fit: Sequoia's Jess Lee came to our Early Stage event recently to present on product-market fit, and answer founder questions. Her venture firm has a framework for three different archetypes that startups fall into and can help founders figure out their PMF. Read More

Inside Quora's AI push: TechCrunch caught up with OpenAI board member, former Facebook CTO, and current Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo about his company's work in AI. Recall that Quora, perhaps best known for its online Q&A service, is building Poe, a service that allows users to create and monetize their own chatbots. Read More

Alt-clouds are booming: The genAI rush is helping create a raft of new cloud computing providers. Smaller cloud companies like Coreweave that offer GPU access to customers have found a wedge into the cloud infra market. The question is if they can keep the growth coming long enough to truly challenge the cloud platform incumbents. Read More

Turning corpses into dirt is big business apparently: We all have different ways of dealing with our mortality. When I die, I hope that my remains are shot from a cannon straight into space. That said, one way to dispose of the organic matter we leave behind when the lights go off is to compost our remains, and Construct Capital is investing in a startup that does just that. Read More

Around the Web

China's tech industry sheds jobs: Much like in the United States, large Chinese tech companies are learning to do more with less. The SCMP reports that China's three largest tech companies are now 25,000 workers lighter than they were at the end of 2023. Tech companies around the world are shedding staff, so this phenomenon is not localized. Read More

Chinese self-driving firm seeks to list in the U.S.: GM-backed Momenta has filed to go public in the United States, Bloomberg reports. That is good news for fans of IPOs and anyone who wants to better understand how far along — or not — self-driving tech has progressed towards commercial viability. Read More

Canned air on a commercial scale: Wind and solar are great sources of energy since they are free and don't mess up the planet much. But they are also episodic, which is less good. What we need is a cheap way to store the energy that they generate. Enter "compressed air energy storage," per Wired, an idea that I utterly love. Read More

A MESSAGE FROM INCOGNI

Stop Robocalls, Spam Emails, Stalkers, Frauds, and More

Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info—phone number, DOB, SSN—selling it to the highest bidder. And who's buying it? Best case: companies target you with ads. Worst case: scammers and identity thieves. Try Incogni—not only does it delete your personal data from the web, but it also removes your info from sites used for stalking.

Before You Go

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Crappy cameras can be actually useful: If I tried to sell you a 36-pixel camera, would you buy it? Probably not. But what if I told you that we have a 36-pixel camera being used in space today? Yes, that got me interested, too. It turns out that the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) uses a 36-pixel image sensor in its hardware. It's not terrible, however; just specialized to take "the temperature of each X-ray that strikes it," per NASA. Super cool! Read More