Thursday, January 23, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we bring you notes on Neko Health's latest round, the unbalanced terms of Divvy Homes's $1 billion buyout, and the latest lawsuit against Scale AI. We've also got details of fresh funds for African fintech, AI helping nonprofits fundraise, Tumblr's TikTok alternative, a space refueling startup, why Meta's lawyer quit, and more. Let's go! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Neko Health under a CC BY 2.0 license

1. No, it's not cancer: You know when you get anxious about random health symptoms and Google it and now you think you have cancer? Well, startup Neko Health is but one of several to turn that neurosis into a thriving business. It just raised $260 million at a $1.8 billion valuation. Read More

2. Womp womp: A16z-backed rent-to-own startup Divvy Homes just got acquired for $1 billion. Every shareholder's dream! Only we're hearing that some investors aren't getting their payout due to the deal's terms, which reflect the tumultuous nature of the proptech industry lately. Read More

3. TFW a job gives you psychological trauma: Scale AI is facing its third lawsuit in a month over alleged labor malpractice. This time, its workers say they have suffered trauma from reviewing disturbing content without adequate safeguards. Scale is valued at $13.8 billion and relies on contractors to rate AI model responses. Read More

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Morning must-reads

Image Credits: Moniepoint

💸 Just tap here: African fintech Moniepoint has secured Visa as a new backer. Sources say Moniepoint scored around $10 million from Visa to work on contactless payment. Read More

🕊️ AI for actual good: Nonprofits have similar problems to governments — their technology is usually outdated, expensive and limited, hindering their ability to fundraise for the cause. A Brooklyn-based fundraising platform for nonprofits, Fundraise Up, uses AI to help tailor suggestions to individual donors. Read More

🍏 The Apple doesn't fall far from Google in any country, and now the U.K.'s competition authority is investigating the mobile ecosystems of the two tech giants. Specifically, the CMA is looking into their "strategic market status." Read More

📺 Out of the woodwork: TikTok's potential ban in the U.S. is bringing out all sorts of competition. Throwing its hat in the ring is Tumbler, which is relaunching Tumblr TV. The feature started in 2015 as an experimental product for GIF discovery, but now it'll be available to all users as a standard video feature. Read More

🚀 A pitstop in the sky: Y Combinator grad Spacium has a great bootstrapped founder story that involves disembodied robotic arms and Tide pods. Now, with an oversubscribed $6.3 million round, the startup is planning a demo mission for its space refueling product. Read More

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Around the web

👏 'Neo-Nazi Madness': Wired interviewed Meta's top intellectual property lawyer Mark Lemley about why he quit. Lemley announced earlier this month that he would no longer defend the tech giant in a copyright lawsuit because of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness." Read More

🪝 Auctioneer extraordinaire: When Silicon Valley startups fall apart, they're often left dealing with all their gear, whether that's thousands of LIDAR sensors or hundreds of laptops. John Carroll is one of those under-the-radar salespeople who swoops in to hawk the remains of such tech companies, reports SF Gate. Read More

🔋 Energy is the new It Girl: As AI data centers promise to use up an ungodly amount of energy, people are searching far and deep for new sources of power. MIT Technology Review reckons underground hydrogen may be the next big thing. It still involves drilling deep underground, but hey, at least it's not for fossil fuels. Read More

Before you go

🔓 More like ClosedAI: As a prank, a software engineer bought the domain "OGOpenAI.com" for "less than a Chipotle meal" and redirected it to Chinese AI lab, DeepSeek, which releases cutting-edge open AI models. Reminds me of a lyric from the Ice T banger: 'Dazed by the game in a quest for extreme wealth.' Read More