Also: VC investment is skewing towards the elites
Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we're looking at the aftermath of SpaceX's rocket explosion, where all that VC money went last year, and Apple's AI news summary faux pas. We've also got notes on GM selling drivers' data, a new AI startup from the founders of Nord, Insight Partners' big fundraise, and much more. Happy Friday! — Rebecca | | | 1. Starlight, starbright: SpaceX's Starship rocket broke apart in space minutes after launching from Texas, causing debris to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere over Turks and Caicos. The Federal Aviation Administration had to divert a number of aircraft near the area as a result. Read More 2. The VC wealth gap: VCs poured $74.6 billion into U.S. startups in Q4 last year, a huge increase compared to previous quarters. But don't let that big number fool you. Most of that was megadeals raised by a handful of startups, widening the funding gap in the wider startup ecosystem. Read More 3. Whoopsie: Apple will pause AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps in iOS 18.3 because the feature tended to be inaccurate. The BBC had called Apple out after one of its articles was misrepresented to state that Luigi Mangione, the man charged with the murder of UnitedHealth's CEO, had shot himself. Read More | | | 🚗 Wondering why your car insurance premiums were skyrocketing? If you drive a GM vehicle with Onstar installed, the reason might be that the automaker has been allegedly selling personal information like location data and driving behaviors to insurance companies and other third parties. The FTC has now banned GM from pulling this kind of nonsense. Read More 🧑💻 The founders of Nord Security, the company behind NordVPN, are back with a new startup. Nexos.ai has come out of stealth with $8 million in funding to help enterprises put their AI projects into production. Read More 🍏 NYC's very own venture giant: TC's Julie Bort wrote that Insight Partners is to the New York venture ecosystem what a16z and Sequoia are to Silicon Valley. Now Insight, which logged over $8 billion on exits in 2024, has become even more of a powerhouse after scoring another $12.5 billion in new capital. Read More 📉 Risky business: Accounting startup Bench has filed for bankruptcy after imploding over the holidays. Filings show that Bench had racked up $65 million in debts, most of which is from the National Bank of Canada, and the majority of that is unsecured. Read More 🌊 Drill, baby, drill: The Trump administration might give a boost to deep-sea mining for critical minerals, a controversial move that environmentalists say could leave scars on the ocean floor and threaten deep-sea life. The ocean is the world's largest carbon sink, and disturbing the ocean floor could release stored carbon, exacerbating climate change. Read More | | | 🐝 Queen Bee: Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd stepped aside as CEO last year to become executive chair of the company's board, but now she's returning to her post in March, reports Bloomberg. The current CEO, Lidiane Jones, is departing for "personal reasons." Read More 🤓 More competition for OpenAI: Former OpenAI executive Mira Murati is running a stealthy AI research lab, and she's made her first hires. Per Wired, Murati has brought on engineers and researchers from a number of other prominent AI firms, including Jonathan Lachman, her former colleague at OpenAI. Read More ⛽ Heat pumps are having a moment in Europe, reports Sifted, as the EU moves towards its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. While funding to the sector has seen a slight dip, there are still plenty of startups leading the heat pump revolution, from Sweden's Aira Home to Germany's Enpal. Read More | | | 🔍 X under the lens again: The European Commission has ordered Elon Musk's X to submit documents related to the algorithms driving the content it recommends to users. The regulator wants to investigate if that code is compliant with the Digital Services Act. Read More | | | Featured jobs from CrunchBoard | | | Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. | | | Update your preferences here at any time | | Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 110 5th St,San Francisco,CA | | | | |
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