Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we have everything you could possibly want to know regarding Tesla's earnings that were reported today; we dig into an essay from Anthropic's CEO; and we learn what MoviePass is up to. Press play!

TechCrunch Top 3

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei onstage at Disrupt

Image Credits: Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch

🙇 A contrarian take: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released an essay today that included his thoughts on the discourse surrounding DeepSeek. Unlike many in the industry, Amodei thinks that DeepSeek's success proves that the U.S. chip export rules are working. Read more

🚙 Whoa, Waymo: Robotaxi company Waymo is planning to start testing its autonomous vehicles in 10 more cities this year, with fewer than 10 vehicles in each city. The tests will start in Las Vegas and San Diego. Read more

🤑 Tesla time: EV giant Tesla reported its year-end results today. Considering Elon Musk's new government job, and recent moves against the EV industry by President Donald Trump, this could get interesting. Follow along with our live updates

A Message from Dataiku

Insights from 400 AI leaders on GenAI — Dataiku and Databricks

GenAI is no longer a future prospect — it's reshaping business strategies. "AI, Today" — the joint report from Dataiku and Databricks, based on a survey of 400 senior AI professionals — reveals critical insights on GenAI adoption, ROI, and emerging use cases. Check out the full report to see how you can stay ahead in the GenAI revolution.

Learn More

Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Daniel de la Hoz / Getty Images

🤳 Uh-oh, we've lost the teens: A Common Sense Media study shows that the teens have lost faith in Big Tech. Teens reported that they don't think they can trust big companies and reported having little to no trust that companies would make responsible AI decisions. Ouch. Read more

🎙️ Where's your Ed at? Today's episode of Equity features a conversation with Ed Zitron, the CEO of EZPR and host of the Better Offline podcast. Zitron talks about why companies should focus on "customer mode" over "founder mode," what he thinks of the state of AI, and more. Listen here

🧯 Wildfire tech: Wildfires have gotten increasingly more catastrophic due to climate change. Numerous startups have been founded in the past few years that look to both mitigate their damage and prevent them from happening in the first place. Read more

🍿 A perfect feature: Netflix said it's giving iOS users a new feature that will allow them to download an entire season of a show with one tap. This is a great feature that I honestly can't believe didn't already exist. Read more

🎰 A data gamble: Casino and hospitality giant MGM Resorts agreed to pay $45 million to settle more than a dozen class action lawsuits related to two separate cybersattacks that allowed hackers to steal data on millions of customers. What's the over-under odds on that? Read more

Around the web

🇳🇵 Neat from Nepal: It's not often you hear about startups from Nepal. Forbes has a fun story about Kathmandu-based SecurityPal, which works with U.S.-based companies to help them with the security questionnaires needed to land enterprise customers. Read more

🤔 A 180: Donald Trump is exploring additional curbs on the sale of Nvidia chips to countries like China. This is interesting because this was the crux of a Biden administration executive order that Trump quickly squashed. Read more

Before you go

Image Credits: Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images

🎥 Wait, what? MoviePass, the movie-watching service that died and was brought back to life in 2023, might be getting into crypto. The company sent an email to customers asking about their interest in web3. I'd love to read the responses. Read more