Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we're still watching the bickering in WordPress Land, taking notes on M&A activity in the software realm, and tracking a big funding round at a digital transformation company. We've also got a big seed round for a physics simulation startup, Reddit bringing translation in 35 locales, Caroline Ellison's prison sentence, James Cameron's embrace of AI in film, and more. — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Ram Iyer / TechCrunch

1. No punch backs: WP Engine sent a cease and desist on Monday to Automattic asking its CEO to stop publicly trash talking it. Now, Automattic has sent its own back to WP Engine, saying the latter has infringed on several trademarks. Read More

2. Salesforce shopping spree: Salesforce snatched up Own earlier this month and now it plans to buy Zoomin, an enterprise knowledge platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the buy will augment Salesforce's Data Cloud platform. Read More

3. The 'OK, Boomer' of startups: WhatFix is one of the firms that have helped brands relying on old tech modernize their organizations through digital transformation. It just closed a $125 million Series E, which it'll use to make a strategic acquisition. Read More

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Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Getty Images

🤖 Physics sim for robots: Two Nvidia alums are leveraging their years of experience building physics simulations for the chip giant to start their own physics simulation framework for robotics training. The founders have just raised a big seed round of $21.5 million for their startup, Vsim. Read More

☎️ Filtering out spam: Indian telecom Bharti Airtel has launched an AI-powered spam detection system for all its customers. Indians are getting sick of the barrage of unwanted calls and messages, and Airtel's solution promises to warn customers of likely spam calls and messages. Read More

🤑 M&A season: Publicly traded data protection company Commvault plans to acquire data backup and recovery provider Clumio. That sounds like a match made in the heavenly cloud that will hopefully do more to protect the world's largest and most complex data sets. Read More

🔍 Privacy Sandbox, revised: Google's multi-year endeavor to migrate to an alternative ad tech stack is close to being killed off by the U.K.'s antitrust regulator, which apparently has competition concerns about the company's recent revisions to its plans. Read More

🔮 Off to jail: Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of FTX affiliate Alameda Research, was sentenced to two years in prison after she pled guilty to conspiring with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to steal $8 billion worth of customer funds. Read More

Around the Web

🧑‍⚖️ Google throws a tantrum: The Alphabet-owned tech giant has filed an antitrust complaint in Brussels against Microsoft, saying the company engages in unfair cloud computing practices, reports The Financial Times. Oh, how the turns have tabled. Read More

🧚 James Cameron embraces AI: The director of Avatar, Terminator and Titanic has joined the board of Stability AI, reports The Hollywood Reporter. Cameron said that "the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave" of storytelling. Read More

🇰🇵 Accidental spy hires: Google's Mandiant unit published a report that found dozens of Fortune 100 companies have unwittingly hired North Korean IT workers. The employees apparently hope to generate revenue for the country's dictatorship, "to evade sanctions and fund its weapons of mass destruction" programs. Big yikes. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Reddit

🦜 r/PreguntaReddit: Redditors will now have the benefit of a more globalized community. The platform is bringing ML-powered translations to more than 35 new locales in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Read More