Also: Ashton Kutcher is investing in Fei Fei Li's World Labs
Wednesday, October 30, 2024 | | | Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we've got details on the layoffs at Dropbox, Ashton Kutcher's thoughts on AI, and Tony Fadell's opinion of Silicon Valley. We've also got notes on OpenAI's bid to build its own chips, a new "Shazam for clothes" app, a novel way to produce antibodies, a massive phishing campaign targeting government officials, and more. Also: Day 2 of TechCrunch Disrupt was full of great talks from investors and impressive pitches from startups like Salva Health, ForceField and Gecko. Check out the agenda for Day 3 here. Let's dive in! — Rebecca | | | Image Credits: TechCrunch | 1. Dropbox is letting go 20% of its staff as it realizes it might have over-hired in certain areas and needs to design a "flatter, more efficient" team structure. The CEO says he takes "full responsibility." Read More 2. Everyone gets a gold star: Ashton Kutcher, actor, co-founder of Sound Ventures, and Kelso from "That 70s Show", thinks every company will be an AI company eventually. But he doesn't think there will be a winner in the space. That said, his firm is backing Fei-Fei Li's World Labs. Read More 3. Tony Fadell throws hands: We love a spicy interview, and Tony Fadell delivered at TC Disrupt. The iPod creator talked about the "mission-driven assholes" building deeptech, entitlement in Silicon Valley, why LLMs are "know-it-alls," and even took a shot at Sam Altman. Read More | | | Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch | 🐿️ Chip shop open for business: OpenAI is reportedly working with TSMC and Broadcom to build its first in-house AI chip, slated for 2026. The AI company is also apparently going to use AMD chips alongside Nvidia's for training its AI. Read More 👗 Fit check: Aesthetic has launched what it says is "Shazam for clothes," and never have I been so excited for an app. Pinterest has a similar feature for sourcing apparel and other items, but it never quite finds the exact brand. I'm curious how well Aesthetic's app works. Read More ⏸️ Hold up: Google says it's not planning to ship AI agents from its Project Astra effort until next year. These agents will purportedly be able to understand and answer questions about things — like apps that can recognize the world around them and answer questions. Read More 🥊 Fighting the good fight: Deepfakes aren't going away, but it's heartening to know there are people fighting the good fight. ForceField, one of the companies competing on TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield stage, is building a set of APIs designed to authenticate content. Read More 🪲 Cage the antibodies: Biotech startup Archon has come out of stealth with $20 million in seed funding and a new way to use AI to design novel biomolecules. The startup's goal? To supercharge antibody treatments by caging them to multiply their effects. Read More | | | 📧 Don't get phished: Bloomberg has the details of a Microsoft report about Russian hackers targeting U.S. government officials and defense workers in a new email phishing campaign. Thousands of people in over 100 organizations have been targeted since last week. Read More 🔫 We live in a society: Meta appears to have given up on managing misinformation and potentially harmful content on its platform, according to Wired. The company is not only allowing anti-government militia groups to use Facebook to recruit, but the site is auto-generating pages. Read More 💥 AI goes nuclear: And I'm not talking about energy. The U.S. Air Force General said the government is developing AI tools to help leaders respond to "time-sensitive scenarios," 404 Media reports. The general said that AI brings "unique deterrence effects" to the table. Read More | | | Image Credits: Kimberly White / Getty Images | 🏆 And the finalists are… The judges at TC Disrupt have come up with the five finalists for Startup Battlefield. The startups competing follow in the footsteps of a set of Startup Battlefield alumni (including Dropbox, Discord, and Mint) who have collectively raised over $29 billion. Read More | | | Featured jobs from Crunchboard | | | Senior Data Warehouse SQL Developer, Washington Dept. of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA) Pharmacy Epic Application Analyst, OFFSITE (Toppenish, WA) Chief Technology Officer, Mary McDowell Friends School (Brooklyn, NY) Senior Software Engineer, Dyna Robotics (San Francisco, CA) IT Technology Analyst, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA) | | | 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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