Wednesday, April 23, 2025 | | | Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we're looking at Tesla's earnings; why OpenAI couldn't buy Anysphere; the latest Chinese AI model encumbered by censorship; the new hope for domestic cobalt production; mass layoffs at Intel, and more. Let's go! — Rebecca | | | Image Credits: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images | 1. Profits down, stock up: We covered Tesla's Q1 earnings extensively yesterday, and we can report that Tesla's flailing sales have put the company closer to the red than it has been in years. And still, the company's stock rose as investors continue to cling to Musk's vision of the future. Read More 2. Too hot to buy: Cursor-maker Anysphere is growing so quickly that it's not on the market, TC has learned. The startup's current ARR is about $300 million, which means it got to walk away from acquisition talks with OpenAI, leading the ChatGPT maker to pursue Windsurf instead. Read More 3. Par for the course: Chinese startup Sand AI's open-source, video-generating AI model is capable of some incredible work. But when testing it out, TC's Kyle Wiggers found that the model censors images of Xi Jinping, Tiananmen Square and Tank Man, the Taiwanese flag and other political materials. Read More | | | Image Credits: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg / Getty Images | 🦅 Refined in the USA: Cobalt is essential for making batteries, yet it's mined in Congo and most of it is refined in China. But a startup called Xerion Advanced Battery thinks highly refined cobalt be produced in the U.S. itself using a new technique it has developed. Read More 🧑⚖️ A knife without an edge: Meta's Oversight Board has thoughts on the social media company's new hate speech policies, calling on Meta to provide more information about its rules and publicly assess the impact on vulnerable populations. Whether Meta will comply with the board's wishes is anyone's guess, however. Read More 🤷 Which one is it? To the glee of Tesla investors, the EV maker's CEO Elon Musk kicked off its Q1 results call yesterday by saying he'd reduce the time he spends on DOGE. But then in the next breath, he said he'd continue to help out for the remainder of Trump's term. This came as Tesla admitted that political sentiment has damaged its brand. Read More ☹️ No surprise here: Intel's new CEO Lip-Bu Tan had already flagged that he wanted to reduce staff at the chipmaker. Now we know by how much — roughly 20%, or more than 21,000 people. Read More 💸 Trade all day: Alpaca has raised $52 million to expand across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Its pitch? It offers an API to financial services firms so they can let their customers around the world buy and sell stocks, options, ETFs and more in the U.S. Read More 🛡️ Scrambling to adapt: Small and medium sized businesses are the newest targets for cyberattacks, but they're betting that tech can help them defend themselves. Enter Cynomi, a startup that just raised $37 million to meet that growing demand. Read More | | | 🏗️ Winning the AI race? Microsoft was the first to hit pause on new data center deals, and now Amazon looks like it's easing off the accelerator, too, per Business Insider. Analysts are worried that the momentum in the data center market is slowing, but there's still hope that it's just a brief recalibration. Read More 🦄 Healthy unicorn: Everyone may be on GLP-1s, but nutrition startup Nourish just raised $70 million at a $1 billion valuation to connect patients with registered dietitians for insurance-covered nutritional care, Business Insider reports. Read More 💥 Los Alamos 2.0: The Wall Street Journal has a look at how New Mexico has become home base for the U.S.' top defense research facilities, and is a growing center of quantum computing for national security. That designation could give the state a much-needed financial boost and maybe even a rebrand away from the "Breaking Bad" connotations. Read More | | | 👀 Grok can see now: XAI's Grok chatbot can now answer questions about what's in front of your phone's camera, similar to the real-time vision features on ChatGPT and Gemini. Grok has been gaining features at a rapid clip, like multilingual audio and real-time search in voice mode. 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. 680 Folsom Street,San Francisco,CA | | | | |
