Micromobility in limbo: Takeaways from Paris and LA

Shared electric scooters came onto the scene five years ago with a promising vision of getting people out of cars and onto greener modes of transportation. Yet despite billions in VC money and plenty of hype, the future that micromobility companies promised still hasn’t quite...

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Daily Crunch: To take the friction out of consumer messaging, more companies are entering the Matrix

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Welcome back to your daily digest of TechCrunch goodness. It is my last day with you (you’re welcome!), so Christine will be back in the Daily...

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QuickVid uses AI to generate short-form videos, complete with voiceovers

Generative AI is coming for videos. A new website, QuickVid, combines several generative AI systems into a single tool for automatically creating short-form YouTube, Instagram TikTok and Snapchat videos. Given as little as a single word, QuickVid chooses a background video...

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There’s now an open source alternative to ChatGPT, but good luck running it

The first open-source equivalent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has arrived, but good luck running it on your laptop — or at all. This week, Philip Wang, the developer responsible for reverse-engineering closed-sourced AI systems including Meta’s Make-A-Video, released PaLM + RLHF, a text-generating model that behaves similarly to ChatGPT. The system combines...

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Meta acquires Luxexcel, a smart eyewear company

As Meta faces antitrust scrutiny over its acquisition of VR fitness developers Within, the tech giant is making another acquisition. Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that it is purchasing Luxexcel, a smart eyewear company headquartered in the Netherlands. The terms of the deal, which was first reported in the Belgian paper De Tijd, have not been disclosed. Founded...

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Despite myriad flaws, US remains top spot for Black startup founders seeking VC dollars

Despite, well, everything, the U.S. is still the best place in the world for Black startup founders to raise money. The check sizes are bigger, the market more mature, the ambition oversized. There are more funds, more options, more opportunities, more, more, more. It’s quite easy to harp on the dismal funding and often discriminatory treatment that...

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How TechCrunch+ followed the venture dollars in 2022

When looking at how TechCrunch+ covered venture in 2022, we didn’t see a lot of positive news. We saw layoffs, demands for growth at all costs, VCs sitting on mountains of cash and low funding for minority groups — again. While some of these things may seem contradictory, that’s what VCs thrive on. Let’s get into our top TechCrunch+ venture stories...

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Daily Crunch: 2 weeks after extended system failure, Alibaba CEO takes over company’s cloud division

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. We’re almost there, folks. It’s the last Thursday of 2022, and today we have some news for you out of Alibaba and Spotify, as well as some crypto...

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What to expect at CES 2023

Taking a deep breath as I write these words: Next week, TechCrunch will return to our first in-person CES in three years. Phew. It felt good to finally get that off my chest. The last time our team flew to Las Vegas for the event was January 2020. An auspicious date. It wouldn’t...

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Is Instacart a forerunner of bad news?

As much as we like to end the year with some good news, what we are hearing from grocery delivery company Instacart is not exactly that. According to The Information, citing “two people familiar with the situation,” Instacart has cut its internal valuation to around $10 billion. That’s 20% lower than its October 2022 valuation — and a 75% cut compared...

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Will Twitter, PayPal and Walmart compete to launch America’s super app?

Tim Harned Contributor Share on Twitter Tim Harned is a managing director at Progress Partners. He has had an M&A and capital advisory career spanning more than 30 years making strategic transactions for Fortune 500 and early-stage enterprises. Ever since Elon Musk’s “be careful what you wish for” acquisition of Twitter, speculation about...

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