Welcome to this week’s review. It’s TechCrunch’s regular round-up of his tech week. His GPT-4, an AI that understands text and images from OpenAI, may have dominated the headlines for the last few days. But a new drama has surfaced around the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.
In this edition, we’ll cover all that and more, so grab a cup of coffee and chill out.
In a nutshell, TechCrunch Early Stage 2023 is fast approaching. Held in Boston on April 20th, his three courses of workshops for founders, case studies, and deep dives with tech entrepreneurship experts will run simultaneously. Mark your calendars for TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, September 19-21 in San Francisco. As always, it’s jam-packed with roundtables, firesides, Q&As, and showcases from big names in the field. you won’t want to miss it.
Now let’s move on to the news.
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OpenAI Debuts GPT-4: After much anticipation, OpenAI, an AI startup with major backing from Microsoft, has released a powerful new AI model called GPT-4. GPT-4 can generate text and accept image and text input. It’s an improvement over its text-only predecessor, and performs “human-level” on various benchmarks. But GPT-4 isn’t perfect. Like most other generative text AIs, this model “hallucinates” facts and makes inference errors.
Microsoft is fully committed to AI. Leveraging the latest in OpenAI, including GPT-4, Microsoft has announced new AI-powered capabilities across its Copilot-branded suite of productivity tools. Copilot handles different tasks depending on the app being used. For example, in Word, Copilot creates, edits, summarizes, and generates text. For PowerPoint and Excel, Copilot transforms natural language commands into designed presentations and data visualizations. In Power Apps, Copilot helps refine your low-code software ideas.
SVB file for bankruptcy: A week after SVB Financial was suspended from trading and after regulators took control of Silicon Valley Bank and other subsidiary holding companies, SVB Financial has taken its next inevitable step. On Friday, the bank announced it had formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court. This means that SVB Financial can and will apply to the courts to resume its activities while finding buyers for its assets, including moving forward with plans to sell SVB Securities and SVB Capital.
YouTube TV price increases: In a move sure to frustrate cord cutters, YouTube has announced YouTube TV subscriptions will be increased to $72.99 per month, an increase of $8 from the current $64.99 per month. The Google-owned company blames the rising “content cost” of the change. (Maybe not coincidentally, YouTube TV recently announced a streaming deal with the NFL Sunday Ticket, which is reportedly worth $2 billion per season.)
Via acquires Citymapper: Transportation startup Via, which recently raised $110 million at a $3.5 billion valuation, has acquired Citymapper, a London startup that creates a popular city map app of the same name. Citymapper originally made a name for itself as an alternative to apps like Google Maps for consumers planning trips in metropolitan areas using public transit, but it’s now capitalizing on its momentum and early promise. couldn’t have done it.
Failures of Baidu’s ChatGPT rival: Other AI news this week was dominated by Chinese search giant Baidu’s response to ChatGPT, Ernie Bot. TechCrunch wasn’t able to test it, but industry observers both in China and abroad pointed to the fact that Baidu chose a lengthy presentation with pre-recorded Ernie’s answers rather than introducing Ernie through a live demo. The company’s shares fell as much as 10% in Hong Kong following Lee’s presentation.
Pornhub Meets Private Equity: MindGeek, owner of several adult entertainment sites such as Pornhub, Brazzers and Redtube, has been acquired by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners (ECP). The acquisition follows a difficult few years for the porn giant, with MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and his COO David Tassillo leaving the company in June 2022. MindGeek is currently in the middle of multiple lawsuits alleging that it knowingly profited from child sexual abuse material.
Cooking customers in the dark: Two weeks after the US satellite TV giant was hit by a ransomware attack, Dish’s customers are still looking for answers. In a public document released on February 28, Dish confirmed that ransomware was the cause of the ongoing outage, stating that hackers had “potentially” exfiltrated data, including customer personal information, from its systems. I warned you to steal it. However, Dish has not provided any substantive updates since then, despite customers continuing to experience issues and not knowing if their personal data was at risk.
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TechCrunch’s steady stream of quality podcasts is growing by the hour. (Those with long commutes, rejoice.) In this week’s equity, Alex and Natasha We covered the M&A frenzy that acquired Qualtrics, Cvent, and Mint Mobile, the demise of SVB, what happened after GPT-4, and why Y Combinator is scaling back from the late stages. On the other hand, the found Amanda and Darrell We spoke with Teddy Solomon, co-founder of Fizz.In the interview, he discusses what Gen Z wants from social media, how to moderate a platform like Fizz from the ground up, and what this kind of community building is about. We touched on ways to go far beyond college.
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TC+ subscribers have access to detailed commentary, analysis, and research. You will know this if you are already a subscriber. If not, please consider signing up. Here are this week’s highlights:
Revisiting points of failure: Natasha M. writes that in light of the SVB demise, perhaps founders should rethink relying on one person to make a business successful. She surveyed many early-stage founders who are starting companies that have raised Series A or less to understand how they think about succession. In a world where companies focus on runways, product and market fit, and growth, it’s not the top priority, or even the top priority.
Weird things going on in Unearthly Materials: Tim It reports on Unearthly Materials, a startup that claims high-profile investors are behind a technology that could lead to a breakthrough in superconductors. But as it turns out, not all of those investors were on board, especially given his Unearthly Materials’ questionable record.
Good news for software companies: Are you depressed from this week on the news? Alex Writes that not all are pessimistic. Some software companies are doing extremely well during the broader tech industry crash.
