Thursday, January 16, 2025 | | | Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we've got Blue Origin's successful launch, Duolingo's influx of Mandarin students, and Meta's odd defense of training AI on copyrighted material. We've also got Mistral's latest partnership, China's AI competitiveness, Hindenburg's goodbye, pitching tips for startups, and more. Let's jump in! — Rebecca | | | Image Credits: Blue Origin | We have liftoff: Jeff Bezos's spaceflight company Blue Origin launched its mega-rocket, New Glenn, into orbit for the first time. A lot went right — the rocket made it to orbit, but its first stage exploded on the way back down to Earth instead of landing, as planned, on a drone ship at sea. Read More Ni hao, RedNote: Duolingo has seen a 216% spike in U.S. users learning Mandarin as the TikTok ban looms and users migrate over to Chinese social app RedNote. An interesting cultural moment, but given the short attention spans of TikTok users, I'm skeptical how long they'll go on attempting to pick up a new language. Read More Deny and deflect: In his defense of Meta's use of copyrighted content to train its AI models, Mark Zuckerberg appears to be invoking YouTube's own hosting of pirated content, which YouTube is actively trying to take down. Not sure if that argument is valid. Read More | | | Image Credits: Bertrand Guay / AFP / Getty Images | 🇫🇷 Not just a foundational model: Mistral wants to improve the accuracy of its answers in Le Chat, its chatbot, rather than be relegated to being a foundational model. So, the startup has inked a content deal with news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). Read More 🥊 AI kung fu: AI models from Chinese firms are rivaling systems developed by OpenAI and other U.S.-based companies. Take MiniMax, which debuted three new models to generate text, images and text, and audio like speech. Read More 👋 Farewell, Hindenburg: Short-seller and equity research firm Hindenburg Research has a colorful history of putting out damning reports about high profile companies, like Roblox and Nikola, that forced them to make meaningful changes. Now, after a seven-year run, Hindenburg is shutting down. Read More 👀 Getting a handle on spyware: The UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss the dangers of commercial spyware and set the gears in motion for governments to control the spread and misuse of spyware in order to maintain "international peace and security." Read More 🛍️ Extreme couponing: Dub.co is offering up an open-source URL shortener and link-tracking service that would allow creators to create their own special links with embedded discount codes. It's an answer to allegations against PayPal-owned Honey, which creators claim is swiping extra cash on the side. Read More 🔑 Time to check your firewalls: Clop, the Russia-linked ransomware gang, has named dozens of corporate victims who it claims to have hacked in recent weeks after exploiting a vulnerability in several file transfer products developed by software company Cleo. Read More | | | 🚹 Patriarchal purse strings: Wired's recent issue followed the money owned by the most powerful people in the world, and they're all men — people with "boardroom-commanding baritones" and "a centuries-long head start." Read More 💰 From layoffs to revenue boost: Startup Replit has had a rough year after relocating its headquarters out of San Francisco and slashing its headcount in half. But now, through a breakthrough AI product called "Agent", the company's CEO Amjad Masad claims to have increased revenue five-fold, writes Semafor. Read More ✍️ How to reporters' attention: Crunchbase News has some tips from a PR professional on how to get your startup noticed by media outlets, and they're mostly spot on. One tip felt off to me, though. AI is hot right now, yes, but don't force it into your pitch if that's not the main selling point. Read More | | | 🎮 It's a-Me! Nintendo is ready to launch its Switch 2 platform, and it's bringing an old face to the new tech. The gaming giant confirmed that the first game on its hybrid platform will be a new take on the classic Mario Kart. Get ready to spam that A button. 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 | | | | |
