Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we've got notes on people worried about building on top of Chinese open-source AI models; Spotify Wrapped copycats; and DeepMind's latest generative offering. We've also got a hot secondary market story, weird AI ads, deepfakes being used to push erectile dysfunction products, Airbnb's plans for the future, and more. Let's go! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: LewisTsePuiLung / Getty Images

1. Tell me about Tiananmen Square: Hugging Face's CEO Clement Delangue is among many concerned about using open-source AI models made in China. The models are performing well in coding and reasoning, but Delangue is worried about China winning the AI race and "spreading certain cultural aspects" that don't align with the Western world. Read More

2. Your Digital Life, Wrapped: Everyone looks forward to Spotify's annual Wrapped feature so they can show off their eclectic, algorithmically fueled music tastes. The trend has caught on, with others like Reddit, Netflix, Tinder and TikTok providing similar "wrapped" features. Read More

3. Watch your six: Security firm iVerify says a leader of a well-known, large company was among several individuals whose iPhones were targeted by Pegasus spyware. Journalists, human rights defenders and lawmakers are the ones usually spied on, but this is a reminder that no one is immune to being hacked. Read More

A Message from Silicon Valley Bank

Series A Insights: 4 Tips for Managing Cash Flow

Get strategies to maximize ROI, manage burn rate, and fuel sustainable startup growth, drawing from SVB's 40+ years of working with innovative technology, life science and healthcare startups.

Image Credits: Google DeepMind

🧞 DeepMind has unveiled a new model, Genie 2, that can generate an "endless" variety of interactive, real-time scenes from a single image and text description. The 3D worlds look like video games, and some of them let users do things like jumping and swimming using their computer. Read More

💰 Investors are asking for seconds: Data resilience firm Veeam has raised a whopping $2 billion in a secondary share sale that was aimed at boosting the company's cap table before it IPOs. And what a boost it turned out to be: The sale values the company at $15 billion. Read More

🎂 Another startup named Cake has emerged from stealth today, with backing from Google's AI-focused venture fund, Gradient. The startup helps businesses compile their open-source AI infrastructure and reduce engineering overheads. Read More

👽 AI ads are weird and impersonal: TC's Max Zeff writes that in their attempts to promote AI, "tech companies can't help but show how it removes us from the very activities that make us human." Case in point: The Browser Company's ad for its AI features shows a guy asking an AI to send his wife a weirdly impersonal email to get her opinion on potential holiday gifts for his sisters. Read More

🤑 Speaking of weird: Get a load of ServiceTitan's IPO filing. The company said it plans to use a big chunk of its money, roughly $311 million, to buy back all the shares of its nonconvertible preferred stock at $1,000 per share. Instead of, you know, putting that money into the business. Read More

Around the web

🍆 Hard at work: 404 Media reports that YouTube was running hundreds of ads featuring deepfakes of celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Tyson and Sylvester Stallone that are selling supplements to help men with erectile dysfunction. You really can't make this stuff up. Read More

👀 Ummm, okay? U.S. officials are recommending that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to keep their communications hidden from foreign attackers amid a wave of cyberattacks on telcos like AT&T and Verizon, reports NBC News. Read More

🏠 Airbnb 2.0: Wired spoke to Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, who is promising that 2025 will see "one of the biggest reinventions of a company in recent memory." And what, pray, does he see as the medium for such an evolution? AI. What else. Read More

Before you go

Image Credits: Growl

🥊 Let out your inner Rocky: Surely everyone who's watched a boxing sequence — like the one with Jinx in Arcane — has wanted to throw hands, right? Well, now you can, kind of, thanks to a company called Growl that's building the Peloton for boxing. Read More