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Welcome to the Friday edition of DailyCrunch. The Supreme Court decided today that the constitution doesn't guarantee the right to abortion. The implications for the tech industry are starting to become clearer after the outcome was expected. I will keep you updated as I read the developments.
Thanks to everyone who showed up, the Summer Party was a huge success. Not to sound like a broken record, but on the events front, don't forget about the upcomingtc sessions: robotics in July The event will return to San Francisco on October 18th. I can't wait to see your face there.
Do you need to read or listen to something in the meantime? If you want to look at the library, consider giving it a look. I bet there is a lot of work to be done to keep you occupied.
The TechCrunch Top 3
Move over, there’s a new copilot in town: Proving that GitHub isn’t the only platform with the chops to launch an AI-powered pair programmer, Amazon this week debuted CodeWhisperer, a tool that can autocomplete entire functions based on only a comment or a few keystrokes of code. As Frederic writes, Amazon trained the system — which currently supports Java, JavaScript and Python — on billions of lines of publicly available open source code and its own codebase, as well as publicly available documentation and code on public forums.
Please hold while your company is being acquired: Zendesk has had a rough go of it lately, what with activist investors hounding the customer service software vendor for changes and misguided attempts to boost its valuation. Still, the news of Zendesk’s acquisition today came as something of a surprise, if only because of its suddenness. Ron notes that the $10.2 billion transaction — led by Permira and Hellman & Friedman — gave investors a way to get some return on their investment, albeit below the $17 billion offer they got in February.
Who needs megapixels when you have Benjamins? Leica makes great digital cameras. But for the special edition, limited-run Leica M-A Titan, the German imaging firm decided to go the analog route. The Titanium-clad M-A Titan takes film, and — if that weren’t unobtainable enough — costs an eye-watering $20,000. Haje reports on the thing, noting that Leica only sells about 100,000 cameras per year. Perhaps it can be forgiven for charging a premium.
Startups and VC
Wondermed raised $4.7 million to offer treatments at home. You might wonder if this is safe. Wondermed and rivals Mindbloom and Fieldtrip Health all claim that it is. Yes, they would. It is easy for a drug to be approved for treatment if it is proven to be effective in treating anxiety and depression.
Elsewhere in technology.
Delivering the goods — for a price: Offering evidence that the instant delivery market isn’t toast just yet, Zomato this week acquired Blinkit, a struggling 10-minute grocery delivery startup, in a $568.1 million deal. Manish reports that investors have questioned Zomato’s expansion into the space, given its punishingly high costs and low margins.
Hold my battery: Package-transporting drones are cool. What’s not cool is having to swap their batteries and payloads once they’ve landed. Fortunately, there’s a startup for that. Airrow makes a device that operates similarly to a CNC machine or 3D printer, Brian reports, with a gantry that moves along X- and Y-axes to get the battery from the charger to the drone and back again. How nifty is that?
The struggle is real: It’s never a good look when, fresh from raising capital, a startup cuts a substantial portion of its staff. That’s what happened this week with Ro, which laid off 18% of its full-time workforce to “manage expenses, increase the efficiency of [its] organization, and better map our resources to [its] current strategy.” Natasha notes that former and current employees have previously spoken about the health tech company’s inability to gain meaningful revenue from newer products.
Looking for a long-term partner: Communication is important in any relationship, but it doesn’t always happen right off the bat. That’s why Hinge this week introduced “Dating Intentions,” a new profile feature that’s designed to encourage users to be up front about their expectations. As per Aisha, the curated choices include “life partner,” “long-term,” “long-term, open to short-term,” “short-term, open to long-term,” “short-term'” and “figuring out my dating goals.”
When life gives you lemons, pivot to crypto: Solana, a startup founded by former engineers and designers from Essential, is shifting focus to embrace cryptocurrency. CEO Anatoly Yakovenko announced this week that its first product, the Osom OV1, will be an Android smartphone that supports decentralized apps reliant on the Solana blockchain. Reactions have been mixed, Jacquelyn reports.
Don’t eat the lentils: Daily Harvest is blaming the health problems a portion of its customers have been experiencing on lentils — specifically leeks and lentils. Following a Wall Street Journal article, the company recalled its French Lentil and Leek Crumbles product, which reportedly caused some people to have to undergo surgery to remove their gallbladders and might’ve contributed to liver damage and fevers. Daily Harvest is valued at over $1 billion and has been backed by a number of celebrities, Aisha notes, including Bobby Flay, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Serena Williams.
Twitter Space: M13 managing partner Karl Alomar discusses fundraising during a downturn
The images are from the same source.
At 11:30 a.m. on Monday, June 27th, there will be a public event. There is a time limit of 2:30 a.m. Karl Alomar, managing partner of M13, and senior editor Walter Thompson are sharing strategies and tactics for founders who plan to raise money during the downturn on a social media platform.
During the dot-com bust of 2000 and the Great Recession of 2008 Alomar will talk about whether investors still prioritize growth over profits and how to identify the proof points founding teams must define.
Please set a reminder for Monday's chat so that we can take questions.
Techcrunch+ is a membership program that helps startup teams. You can join here.
Big Tech Inc.
The future is upon us. It's sort of. San Francisco residents can now pay for a ride in an autonomously piloted taxi. Darrell writes that Cruise will only be able to operate between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. on designated city streets. If the service goes smoothly, it will be worth it.
The central bank in India is cracking down on fintechs. The Reserve Bank of India has told many vendors that they can't use credit lines to load non-bank payment instruments. Some affected founders believe that incumbent banks tried to sway the decision to their advantage.
Also, in other news.
Fresh coat of paint: As part of a broader update to Chrome, Google announced a handful of new features coming to the latest build of Chrome on iOS. Among the key additions, the Chrome app is gaining access to Google’s Enhanced Safe Browsing feature that proactively warns you about dangerous web pages, Lauren writes. Other updates include user interface changes and the ability to set Google’s password manager as the autofill provider.
The slow pace of electric: What’s not to like about EVs? The wait. As per Jaclyn, surging demand for this year’s most hotly anticipated EVs is smashing order books and lengthening waitlists. Rising supply chain costs mean that customers of the Lyriq and other EVs may pay hundreds or thousands of dollars more for a vehicle that arrives months later than expected. Bummer.
Streaming still struggling: Ivan reports that Netflix this week laid off 300 people, the firm’s second layoff spree in 2 months. Among the headwinds the company is facing are the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the COVID pandemic and password sharing. Netflix lost more than 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter and expects to lose 2 million in Q2.
Almost as good as the real thing: Frederic writes that at its re:MARS conference, Amazon announced synthetics in SageMaker Ground Truth, a new feature for creating a virtually unlimited number of images of a given object in different positions and under different lighting conditions. It’s intended to help create synthetic data for training AI models in situations where real-world data isn’t plentiful.
Spyware reaches Android: Security researchers at Outlook recently tied a previously unattributed Android mobile spyware, dubbed Hermit, to Italian software house RCS Lab, Zack reports. Now Google threat researchers have confirmed much of Lookout’s findings and are notifying Android users whose devices were compromised by the spyware.
The testing campaign for NASA’s super big, super expensive Space Launch System is now complete, the agency declared on Friday. All that’s left now for the rocket is launch the Artemis I...As a veteran startup worker who has been laid off during economic downturns, it’s dissonant to hear investors say this is a good time to launch a software startup. They’re not wrong, ho...Scooter and micromobility company Bird has to fly at a slightly higher altitude — at least if it wants to keep its New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) listing. The company issued a press release on Frid...“Clapping from the sidelines only goes so far.”
Though it may seem counterintuitive, a lowered valuation could reap benefits for your employees and your company’s recruitment efforts.
While the experience wildly varies from woman to woman, and there is no “correct” path to take, I want to share what worked for me while I was a pregnant founder and CEO.
Twitter announced this week that it’s introducing a few new features for users. Most notably, the social media giant is rolling out its closed caption toggle to all users on iOS and Android. ...If you’re still thinking of a four-year degree as a requirement for your revenue teams, you’re missing out on a huge talent base.
It’s nearly been two months since we started this accidental weekly column about layoffs happening within startups. Workforce reductions have impacted startup employees in every massive sector, fro...TechCrunch is more than just a site with words. We’re also building a growing stable of podcasts focused on the most critical topics relating to the startup and venture capital worlds. Embedded bel...As Google works on reconfiguring its adtech stack to move away from cookie-based ad targeting to something else that’s not yet fixed but which it claims will be better for individual web user...Zendesk agreed to sell itself to an investor collective for $10.2 billion. An 11-figure sale of any company is notable, but in the case of Zendesk, it’s not for the reasons you might initiall...Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today Natasha and Alex were on the mics, kicking back and riffing t...The U.S. Supreme Court issued a major decision on abortion today, overturning Roe v. Wade and declaring that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee the right to abortion. While the outcome w...Apple Music has quietly increased the price of its student plan in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. In the United States and Canada, the price for the plan has increased from $4.99...A hacker has exploited a vulnerability to steal $100 million from Harmony’s Horizon Bridge, which allows users to transfer their crypto assets from one blockchain to another. Harmony, the U.S. cryp...Deon Nicholas is the CEO and co-founder of Forethought, the AI company whose mission is to transform customer experiences with human-centered AI. Forethought has raised over $100 million in venture...
