Monday, February 17, 2024 | | | Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we have notes on Uber's lawsuit against DoorDash, Perplexity's attempt at deep research, and a16z's plans to become a "lasting company." We've also got details of Mistral's latest model, the "Shopify for filmmakers," new benchmarks for testing reasoning models, fresh funds for cybersecurity, and an AI that can read animal emotions. Let's go! — Rebecca | | | Image Credits: Spencer Platt / Getty Images | 1. Uber is suing DoorDash, claiming the delivery company is stifling competition by intimidating restaurant owners into exclusive deals. Uber claims that DoorDash used anticompetitive practices to win contracts from more than 90% of the largest enterprise restaurants in the U.S. Read More 2. Outsourcing research: Perplexity has launched an AI research tool that's meant to compete with the Deep Research features of Google's Gemini and OpenAI. Now to wait and see which one actually provides real citations to match the output. Read More 3. Aiming to endure: A16z's Marc Andreessen spoke recently about how he wants to turn the venture firm into a company that endures through the ages. To do that, he says, the mission isn't to harvest fees but to give a16z the cash it needs to invest in growing companies. Read More | | | Image Credits: KTSDesign / Science Photo Library / Getty Images | ☪️ Salaam alaykum: Mistral is releasing a new model designed for Arabic-speaking countries. Named Mistral Saba, the model represents a strategic move for the French AI giant that's trying to compete with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. Read More 📽️ Decentralizing the film industry: Billing itself as the "Shopify for filmmakers," Olyn is taking a new approach to film and video distribution that could be a game changer for the indie film industry. The company has just secured the recent Brian Epstein biopic "Midas Man," which explores the life of the manager of The Beatles. Read More 🧩 The Alpha Go of LLMs: Researchers have begun using NPR's Sunday Puzzle questions to benchmark AI reasoning models. The idea is to test these models with problems humans can understand with only general knowledge, and the results have been interesting — some models simply "give up" and provide answers they know are wrong. Read More ✂️ Divide and conquer: Broadcom and TSMC are reportedly separately exploring deals to buy parts of Intel. Broadcom is eyeing Intel's chip-design and marketing business, while TSMC wants Intel's chip plants. Read More | | | 🫤 Missed opportunity: Wired argues that Elon Musk is squandering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform federal IT practices. Government tech experts said an aggressive approach was necessary, but their hopes for change have been shattered after Musk and DOGE "used their access and power to indiscriminately drain the federal workforce and defund programs for ideological reasons." Read More ☁️ Dream big: Bain Capital Ventures led a $100 million round raised by Dream, an AI company that offers cybersecurity services to governments and critical infrastructure operators, reports Bloomberg. The round brings Dream's valuation up to $1.1 billion. Read More 📚 Move over, Goodreads: Nadia Odunayo is taking on Goodreads, and by extension, its parent Amazon. Her startup, The StoryGraph, already has 3.8 million active users, and offers a reading tracking tool as well as AI-aided trend guides to help find your next book, reports The Guardian. Read More | | | 🐷 Understanding animals: Researchers are using AI to interpret animal emotions. The Intellipig system developed by U.K. researchers, for example, examines photos of pigs' faces to let farmers know if there are signs of emotional distress. Read More | | | Featured jobs from CrunchBoard | | | 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 | | | | |
