Friday, November 8, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! It's Dom, and I'll be guest-writing the newsletter once again. Today, we have details of Yelp's big acquisition, how AI might come to disrupt parenting, Rivian's supply chain problems, shifting priorities at Block, and why Flipboard wants to build a new home for news. Let's dive in! — Dom

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg / Getty Images

1. Yelp wants to branch out, and it just splashed out $80 million to acquire RepairPal, which provides car repair estimates. Yelp has been looking into offering more home services, and it's hoping this will help it expand into the ad market for auto services. Read More

2. This AI stuff is getting scary good: Have you ever wanted to look like you speak fluently in several languages? Panjaya's new product, called BodyTalk, can help you do that — upload a video of you speaking in one language, and then BodyTalk will automatically translate the audio and then deepfake the video to make it seem like you were talking in one of 29 supported languages. Wow. Read More

3. Rivian takes a hit: The electric car maker's investors had been expecting a decline in revenue, but the company ended up posting a bigger dip than anticipated. The EV startup has been struggling in the face of component shortages that disrupted much of its production recently. Read More

A Message from Grammarly

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Morning must-reads

Image Credits: Nanit

A16z wants you to not think about the children: At least, the firm wants you to outsource some of that process to AI: A16z partner Justine Moore yesterday announced a new thesis around AI-powered parenting. She noted companies like Cradlewise and Nanit, both of which use AI to keep track of what babies are doing in their cribs. Read More

Amazon really wants people to use its cloud servers: The Information reports that Amazon is considering investing billions more into AI startup Anthropic, but this time, there is a catch. Amazon apparently wants the AI company to use Amazon-created silicon hosted on AWS servers to train its AI models. Read More

Shifting priorities: Jack Dorsey's Block said it is scaling back its investment into music streaming service Tidal, and winding down TBD, the subsidiary that was building a decentralized internet. The freed-up resources will now go towards mining Bitcoin. Read More

Crypto Land be wild: Dean Skurka, the CEO of crypto company WonderFi, was reportedly kidnapped in Toronto, held for ransom, and released after paying $1 million. He's the latest crypto name to get robbed. Read More

A Message from Carta

Event: Year-end predictions from Carta's Peter Walker

Join Peter Walker, Carta Head of Insights, with Ashley Neville, as they analyze private market data from Q3. The trend: AI continues to generate excitement from VCs, while other sectors have been left out in the cold. They'll dig into differences by stage, location, and sector—and answer your pre-submitted questions. Virtual. Nov. 7. 10 am PT.

Learn More

Around the web

Catch that lawsuit: Nintendo and the Pokemon Co. are suing game studio Pocketpair for infringing their patent with the game Palworld, which grew famous earlier this year for its "Pokemon with guns" design. They're each seeking around $65,700 in damages, per Bloomberg. Read More

Will restricting access solve our problems? Australia is seriously looking at banning most social media platforms for children younger than 16. The Associated Press reported that the nation's states and territories all backed a plan that will hold X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook responsible for ensuring no one under 16 can use their platforms. Read More

More MR glasses on the way: Meta's mixed-reality Ray-Bans are about to have some competition. Bloomberg reports that Baidu is set to reveal a set of glasses that will have its own AI assistant. Read More

Before you go

Image Credits: Flipboard

A news ecosystem outside X: Sarah Perez has a deep dive into Flipboard's efforts to build a news ecosystem. The latest is that mirrored news publishing app Press.coop just struck a deal to move nearly 100 of its media accounts to Flipboard. Read More