Don't miss these Antler backs 37 vertical AI startups: Founders in Southeast Asia are having luck raising capital. Singaporean venture capital firm Antler has invested $5.1 million across more than three dozen pre-seed startups developing vertical AI solutions in the region. Like elsewhere in the world, VCs in Asia seem to be betting that startups have a real shot at growing big with new machine intelligence tech. Hohm Energy is helping expand Africa's power grid: South Africa has a real problem with producing enough power for its growing economy, but at least one company is working on the issue. Hohm, a portmanteau of "home" and the measure of electrical resistance "ohm," connects solar providers with individuals and businesses, extending the local grid and adding total capacity to strained power networks. It just raised $8 million for its work, which is a healthy seed round in any market. Are you Blacker than ChatGPT? An ad agency has created a quiz of sorts to see if users are more knowledgeable about Black culture than ChatGPT, which is trained on a specific corpus of information. AI bias is a pressing issue due to the increasing use of LLMs by students, consumers and companies, and this seems like a cool way to highlight where and how AI training data can fall short of where it needs to be. India wants foreign capital to fuel its space industry: New rules have cleared the roads for overseas investment in India's burgeoning space industry. The new setup will allow up to 49% foreign ownership in launch systems, 74% in satellite products, and as much as 100% external ownership in satellite component manufacturing. Lucid to build just 9,000 cars this year: After predicting that it could build as many as 90,000 cars this year, Lucid has said it will miss its lofty goal by a staggering margin. The company expects to build only 9,000 cars this year, which is disappointing, especially since other EV companies have seen their volumes rise sharply in recent years. In the fourth quarter, Lucid reported an operating loss of $736.9 million on revenue of $151.2 million. Another day, another hack: Change Healthcare is the latest victim of cybercrime in the States. One of the largest healthcare tech companies in the U.S., Change said it took systems offline to limit the threat, but the "specific nature of the cybersecurity incident was not disclosed," Zack Whittaker reports. I reckon there are two kinds of companies out there: Those that have been breached, and those that are hoping it won't happen to them. Mobility moves: Autonomous driving startup Haomo.ai just raised $14 million in a new round of capital; micromobility companies are looking to join forces as the sector retreats; and Uber is working with India's Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). TechCrunch exclusively learned that the tie-up will see Uber start with "intercity bus ticketing across India and Metro Rail ticketing as a buyer application." Social watchdog to expand purview: Meta's Oversight Board, an external group that advises the social giant, is extending its reach to include Threads, the company's Twitter competitor. The board recently criticized Meta's policies regarding faked videos, for reference. | 
