Monday, May 5, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we learn that OpenAI has done a 180 on its plans to become a for-profit entity; we dig into some new feature upgrades at Pinterest; and we have the details on Datadog's continued shopping spree. Charge it!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Thomas Fuller / SOPA Images / LightRocket / Getty Images

🙂‍↔️ Talk about whiplash: OpenAI has reversed course. The AI company announced today that it will no longer convert into a for-profit organization. Instead, the company's business arm will convert into a public benefit corporation. So, what happens to that VC money?

👋 Sukkar shake-up: Hasan Sukkar has stepped down as the CEO of 11x, an AI company that came under fire a few months ago for claiming certain companies were customers when they were not. Sukkar is replaced by Prabhav Jain, the company's CTO.

🎆 Improved image search: Pinterest announced today that it is rolling out a slew of new upgrades to its image search feature, which allows users to search by photo instead of text. These upgrades allow for better precision and refinement in image search and make it more accessible on the Pinterest website.

Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Rork

💰 VCs love virality: Rork is a vibe coding startup that nearly went broke earlier this year. The startup was saved by a viral tweet that said its product was better than a well-known competitor. That tweet led to a $2.8 million seed round.

📉 Odd one out: Tesla's sales continue to slump in Europe despite EV sales continuing to rise in the region. In Spain, Tesla new car sales dropped 35% year-over-year in April. This drop may be due to Elon Musk's meddling in European elections.

🧪 Science AI: Anthropic is launching AI for Science, which is meant to support researchers working on "high-impact" science projects. This program involves giving up to $20,000 in Anthropic AI credits for a six-month period to qualified recipients.

🛍️ And another one: Datadog has been on a shopping spree. The cloud-monitoring startup announced it acquired Eppo, a feature-flagging and experimentation platform. Datadog just acquired Metaplane a few weeks ago.

🍎 Not surprising: As predicted, Apple appealed last week's court decision that requires the company to open its App Store to external payment options. Apple immediately complied with last week's ruling, despite clearly not agreeing with it.

👏 Better giving: Bono is a new startup looking to make the process of donating to charities easier. It just raised $1.6 million in pre-seed funding. While the company says it isn't named after the front man of U2, the name recognition probably doesn't hurt, considering Bono's extensive charitable efforts.

Around the web

😕 Sloppy social media: Meta announced the launch of its stand-alone AI app, Meta AI, just last week. The Verge took the new product for a spin and didn't like what it saw, reporting that the app's feature that allows users to post their AI searches creates a "nightmarish" social feed.

☁️ Cloud competition: U.S. cloud companies are starting to face big competition in the Middle East as Chinese companies move in at full force. Rest of World argues that this increased prominence could be partially due to Chinese companies aligning with local government priorities.