Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet stepping down

Wednesday, May 22, 2024 Posted by bloggerdaddy

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Welcome to your Hump Day TechCrunch PM! If this is your first time here, you picked a good day to read. This afternoon we cover a shock over at Techstars, a lot of venture funding deals, spyware in an unlikely place and a pause in Starliner's launch. Enjoy!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Bloomberg / Contributor / Getty Images

Techstars CEO is leaving: Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet surprised us today by announcing she's leaving the company at the end of May. Techstars co-founder and board chairman David Cohen will become CEO. Gavet cited health reasons for her departure, but she has had a rocky tenure at Techstars over the past year. Read more

Linktree reaches a milestone: Now with over 50 million users, Linktree is considered one of the top link-in-bio tools on the market. To celebrate, the company launched the beta of its social commerce offering that lets creators add storefronts to their link-in-bio pages and take a 12% to 15% commission on sales. Read more

Majority grabs $20 million: The banking platform targeting U.S. immigrants found its niche over the past year, seeing revenue grow three times and the number of users doubled. Investors liked that, too. Read more

A MESSAGE FROM GOLUB CAPITAL

How software companies can preserve valuation in a "down round" environment

Golub Growth provides an array of flexible debt and equity solutions to fuel software companies' growth and M&A plans—without impairing their current valuation. Explore our growth capital solutions for SaaS companies.

Learn More

Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

Remote access isn't always the best access: That's what three Wyndham hotels are finding out now. A consumer-grade spyware app was found running on the check-in systems, which in turn leaked screenshots of guest information to the internet. It's not known who planted the app or how it was planted. Read more

Share to Instagram from your smart glasses: Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to their Instagram Story without needing to take out their phone. Read more

The more you know: People who check out with Google Pay can now see their card benefits and perks before selecting a card, use "buy now, pay later" through partners like Affirm and Zip, and fill in their card details through biometrics or a PIN instead of having to enter their security code. Sarah Perez notes that the first feature is one of the most compelling ones because consumers who have multiple credit cards with different perks may not always remember which is the best card to use when. Read more

Starliner stunner: The launch of Boeing's Starliner capsule, which was poised to carry two astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time on May 25, is being paused. The mission, which has already been beset by issues with both the rocket and helium tanks, is now delayed indefinitely. Read more

TikTok … more like TAIkTok: TikTok is the latest tech company to incorporate generative AI into its ads business. The new "TikTok Symphony" AI suite for brands helps marketers write scripts, produce videos and enhance current assets. The suite of features includes a new AI video generator called the "Symphony Creative Studio" that can generate TikTok-ready videos with just a few inputs from an advertiser. The studio also offers brands ready-to-use videos for ad campaigns based on their TikTok Ads Manager assets or product information. Read more

Money, money, money

Image Credits: Peloton

Connected fitness is adrift post-pandemic. Read more

Space VC closes $20M Fund II to back frontier tech founders from day zero. Read more

Bolster, creator of the CheckPhish phishing tracker, raises $14 million led by Microsoft's M12. Read more

Patronus AI is off to a magical start as LLM governance tool gains traction. Read more

Aerodome is sending drones to the scene of the crime. Read more

Hydrolix seeks to make storing log data faster and cheaper. Read more

HoundDog.ai helps developers prevent personal information from leaking. Read more

TechCrunch Minute

Image Credits: Getty Images / MirageC

ChatGPT's new voice sounds eerily similar to Scarlett Johansson's: If OpenAI's Sam Altman was trying to play off the similarities between Sky and Scarlett as a coincidence, he didn't do a great job. Ultimately, Johansson got her way, since the Sky voice is no longer. But it's still a bit weird that Altman tried to re-create "Her" — did we watch the same movie? Hit play and let's chat!

Around the web

What happens on Wall Street: Is now a $78 million typo. That's how much an error made by an unnamed Citigroup trader is costing the company as it works to clean up a "flash crash" in European stocks, The Wall Street Journal reports. Read more

Crypto bill poised for House vote: As you read this, the U.S. House of Representatives may have already voted on a crypto market structure bill. Here, CoinDesk takes us through the bill. Read more

More on Microsoft Build 2024: We brought you all the goods this week from the conference — now read what The Register had to say about it. Spoiler, all fluff, no stuff. Read more