Good afternoon, and welcome to TechCrunch PM! For your reading pleasure, we have quite a few funding rounds and new venture funds, some acquisitions, a really big fine, an even bigger fine, and a data breach. Lots of news this afternoon, so buckle up! | | | 😀 Positive reinforcement: Fortunately, there is a Friend for that. Avi Schiffmann, a Harvard dropout who built a Webby Award-winning website that tracks COVID-19, is working on an AI device, worn around the neck, that is designed to be treated as a companion. Read more 🩻 HealthEquity notifies of data breach: The Utah-based healthcare benefits administrator said that although the compromised data varies by person, it largely consists of sign-up information for accounts and information about benefits that the company administers. Read more 🏠 ClickHouse acquires PeerDB: For the majority of PeerDB customers, Postgres was the main source of data for their data warehouse. Clearly ClickHouse saw a growing market for a tool like this, too. Read more | | | Image Credits: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg / Getty Images | | | 💰 Why Wiz walked away: Why would any company walk away from Google? Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport said he and his co-founders believe it can be even bigger, and they were willing to place a big bet on themselves. Read more 🦜 What did you say? OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode today, giving users their first access to GPT-4o's hyper-realistic audio responses. Read more ⭐ Meta owes Texas $1.4B: The state sued the social media platform over its use of facial-recognition technology, saying it violated the state's privacy protections. And it won. Read more 🖐️ U.S. Senate passes KOSA: The Kids Online Safety Act, proposed in 2022, requires that online platforms take reasonable steps to protect users from harm. Read more 🧳 Booking.com, Booking.reallybigfine: Spain's competition authority, the CNMC, handed down a €413.24 million ($447 million) fine to the online travel agency for allegedly abusing a dominant market position over the past five years. Read more 🤝 Airtable acquires Dopt: Dopt's new features that helped users add AI-based assistance tools to their respective services caught Airtable's eye. Read more 🗞️ When news goes nuclear: We say something "goes viral" because we tend to think of rumors and disinformation spreading the way that an infection spreads. Today, "goes nuclear" may be more accurate. Read more | | | Image Credits: the_burtons / Getty Images | 🌳 Branching out: FranShares, a Chicago-based startup, wants to offer investors another form of passive income — the chance to invest in franchises for as little as $500. Read more 💵 Moxxie Ventures closes third fund: Moxxie, which invests in pre-seed and seed startups, announced today that it closed a $95 million third fund, surpassing its target of $85 million. Read more 🙌 Kennet raises largest fund to date: Growth equity investor Kennet said that it's raised €266 million for its largest fund to date, Kennet VI, which is already being deployed into B2B SaaS companies across Europe. Read more 💡 Intelmatix raises $20M: The deep tech B2B startup targeting businesses in the Middle East and North Africa region wants help to tap into the power of AI for decision-making. Read more 🥞 Now, that's something to chew on: Siddhi Capital closed on $135 million for its second fund that will invest in consumer packaged goods startups. Read more | | | Image Credits: hocus-focus / Getty Images | 🎧 Spotify expands lyrics access for free users. Read more 🧑⚖️ EU calls for help with shaping rules for general-purpose AIs. Read more 🎉 Perplexity details plan to share ad revenue with outlets cited by its AI chatbot. Read more | | | 🔻 Pershing Square scales back IPO: The closed-end fund, led by Bill Ackman, is now pricing its planned IPO at $2 billion instead of $25 billion, Bloomberg reports. Read more 📦 Amazon on the hook: CNBC reports that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission agreed that Amazon can be made responsible for the recall of faulty products. Read more 🚶 XYZ Venture Capital forges a new path: The venture capital firm found success in backing former Palantir employees who went out on their own, Forbes reports. Now it is looking for other founders who got their start in a similar way, just at another company. Read more | | | 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 | | | | |
