Thursday, July 18, 2024

Welcome back to TechCrunch PM! OpenAI wants its AI models to be used all over the world, and that means making them faster and cheaper. So that's what it did with GPT-4o mini. Also, the U.S. Postal Service apparently shared customer information without knowing, and a friendly reminder to look both ways before entering an intersection after the light turns green. You'll thank us. Let's dig in!

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Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny AI model: OpenAI unveiled the GPT-4o mini, its latest small AI model. This new product is being touted as cheaper and faster than OpenAI's current AI models. GPT-4o mini will replace GPT-3.5 Turbo as the smallest model OpenAI offers. Read more

Sharing, but maybe not caring? It turns out that the U.S. Postal Service was sharing the postal addresses of its online customers with advertising and tech giants Meta, LinkedIn and Snap. TechCrunch found it was doing this by way of hidden data-collecting code used across its website. The USPS said it addressed the issue and stopped the practice, claiming that it was "unaware" of it. Read more

Back-to-back fundraises are back? Coast, a startup that describes itself as "a financial services platform for the future of transportation," raised $40 million in Series B funding just four months after announcing a $25 million venture round and $67 million in debt financing. Back-to-back fundraises were common prior to and during the wild investment days of 2021, but we haven't seen much of them since the VC market downturn in 2022. That makes Coast's latest haul notable. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Amadou Kromah

Fusion is the solution: A nuclear fusion experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which has a really fun name, set a record for the strongest steady magnetic field confining a plasma. We report that WHAM is ushering in new hope that forthcoming demonstration reactors will deliver on their promises to produce more power than they consume. Strong magnets are essential for the type of fusion power being pursued by some organizations. Read more

Bigger is better: Ford will expand production of its Super Duty trucks to a factory in Canada that was slated for a $1.34 billion transformation into an assembly plant for its next generation of electric vehicles. The move will enable the automaker to start producing F-Series Super Duty pickups beginning in 2026. And this will delay plans again for a three-row electric vehicle. Read more

Red light, green light: A flaw found on the internet could leave some traffic light controllers open to possible hacking where lights are changed, thereby causing some major traffic jams. One expert looked at Intelight devices and found around 30 that were exposed. Read more

Light 'em up: Proponents of nuclear fusion have long promised to create nearly limitless power here on Earth by harnessing the same reaction that powers the sun. Today, fusion's biggest hurdle is ensuring that any fusion power plant produces more power than it needs to operate. The second is ensuring that it has enough fuel to run. Read more

Brazil tells Meta to stop: Meta has suspended the use of its AI assistant after Brazil's National Data Protection Authority banned the company from training its AI models on the personal data of Brazilians. The move puts a dent in Facebook's attempt to build out its AI products in Brazil, a market with more than 200 million people. Read more

Iced out: NASA has canceled a $450 million program to map water ice deposits on the moon after cost overruns and scheduling delays. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, was scheduled to fly on Astrobotic's second lunar lander mission next year. Read more

The tech take on EU president's re-election: Ursula Von der Leyen's second term looks set to focus on deepening the impact of this earlier round of digital policymaking — with a clear pledge to "ramp up and intensify" enforcement of the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act. Read more

What if scrolling through social media didn't make us miserable? It's a good question, and one that Communia's founder Olivia DeRamus has been thinking about. She launched Communia to be both a social platform and a mental health tool, but with a catch: People must verify their identity before they can fully use the app. Read more

Music to your ears: TikTok's new partnership with the music distribution service DistroKid will help fast-track the creation of artist accounts for members. Read more

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Around the web 🌐

Inside J.D. Vance's Venmo: Someone … cough, cough … forgot to mark their Venmo as private, so several Wired reporters decided to take a look. Aside from the fact that his list includes 200 friends (that's a lot of money exchanges), they found among it a bunch of so-called elites who he has often said not so nice things to in public. Read more

Netflix's new plan: The streaming service is considering some more traditional media methods to keep its subscribers tuning in. CNN has more

Why power outages will continue to plague Texas: Following power outages after Hurricane Beryl, experts tell the Texas Tribune that Texas' power grid remains unprepared for instances like that and future outages as weather changes will only get worse. Read more