It's DeepSeek day

Monday, January 27, 2025 Posted by bloggerdaddy

Monday, January 27, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we have all the latest on Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, from its new models to what it means for AI's energy demand; we also dig into a new Meta AI update; and we meet a startup making cleaner jet fuel. Let's do it!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Getty Images

😇 DeepSeek does more: Viral AI company DeepSeek released a new set of image models today that are in its Janus-Pro model family. The company claims these models can outperform OpenAI's DALL-E 3. These DeepSeek models can both analyze and create images. Read more

☢️ A nuclear 180: The dire need for power to operate AI data centers has almost completely revitalized the nuclear energy industry. But now that DeepSeek's R1 model was released after using significantly fewer GPUs than its U.S. counterparts, it begs the question, Does AI really need that much hardware? Read more

🫤 Looking back: On Friday we learned that more than 190 million people in America were affected by a data breach at Change Healthcare in 2024. Here's how we got here. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg / Getty Images

🔐 Too personal? Meta is rolling out "improvements" to its Meta AI chatbots that will allow them to remember things users have said so it can make better recommendations. The AI will also tap users' account details to gather some of this data, which sounds like a security nightmare waiting to happen. Read more

🪨 Pebble persists: Pebble, arguably the first fitness watch, shut down and filed for insolvency in 2016 before being purchased by Fitbit. Now, nearly a decade later, Pebble founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky is looking to build another fitness watch. Read more

🚨 Oh, great: DeepSeek's app has exploded in recent days, but surges in popularity don't just attract positive attention. The app paused new user registrations on Monday morning amid a "malicious" cyberattack. Read more

✈️ Cleaner jet fuel: There are a handful of startups trying to make more sustainable jet fuel. Lydian is one of them that is making the necessary equipment cheaper and more flexible to operate so that it can make fuel wherever there is CO2 and electricity. Read more

🎤 Test, test, is this thing on? It seems we are close to the release of xAI's newest AI model. Over the weekend, several X users reported gaining access to Grok 3, the successor to xAI's current model, Grok 2. Grok 3 was originally supposed to launch last year. Read more

🎥 More video: Last week Bluesky released a TikTok-like short-form video feed on its platform. Now Bluesky is doubling down on video, adding a video tab to its users' profiles. Read more

Around the web

🏀 Sports sighting: Apple updated its iOS Sports app today. One new feature allows users to easily swipe through sports teams and find out where to stream their next game. This may sound like low-hanging fruit, but as someone who does look this up every single time my teams play, I promise it is actually very useful. Read more

😉 The secret sauce: In the lead-up to the TikTok ban last week, it seemed that users were more likely to turn to other Chinese apps, like RedNote and Lemon8, instead of Meta's Reels. Rest of World argues that there is a reason people are drawn to Chinese social media apps. Read more