Susan Wojcicki is leaving YouTube, MSFT looks to dial back Bing, and more trouble for crypto boss Do Kwon

Susan Wojcicki is resigning from her role as CEO of YouTube, trading her role as one of the most prominent women in tech to focus on her "family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about," she told employees in a letter earlier today. Her longtime lieutenant, Neal Mohan, will replace her. Wojcicki spent 25 years at the company; she famously rented out her Silicon Valley garage to Alphabet co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, and joined the company as its 16th employee a year later. Vox has more here.

Microsoft is considering tweaks and guardrails for the new Bing in an attempt to reel in some of its more alarming and strangely humanlike response users have experienced since a new version of the search engine was introduced last week. The New York Times has more here.

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Technologist and researcher Aviv Ovadya isn’t sure that generative AI can be governed, but he thinks the most plausible means of keeping it in check might just be entrusting those who will be impacted by AI to collectively decide on the ways to curb it.

That means you; it means me. It’s the power of large networks of individuals to problem solve faster and more equitably than a small group of individuals might do alone (including, say, in Washington). It’s essentially relying on the wisdom of crowds, and it’s happening in many fields, including scientific research, business, politics, and social movements.

In Taiwan, for example, civic-minded hackers in 2015 formed a platform — “virtual Taiwan” — that “brings together representatives from the public, private and social sectors to debate policy solutions to problems primarily related to the digital economy,” as explained in 2019 by Taiwan’s digital minister, Audrey Tang in the New York Times. Since then, vTaiwan, as it’s known, has tackled dozens of issues by “relying on a mix of online debate and face-to-face discussions with stakeholders,” Tang wrote at the time.

A similar initiative is Oregon’s Citizens’ Initiative Review, which was signed into law in 2011 and informs the state’s voting population about ballot measures through a citizen-driven “deliberative process.” Roughly 20 to 25 citizens who are representative of the entire Oregon electorate are brought together to debate the merits of an initiative; they then collectively write a statement about that initiative that’s sent out to the state’s other voters so they can make better-informed decisions on election days.

So-called deliberative processes have also successfully helped address issues in Australia (water policy), Canada (electoral reform), Chile (pensions and healthcare), and Argentina (housing, land ownership), among other places.

“There are obstacles to making this work” as it relates to AI, acknowledges Ovadya, who is affiliated with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and whose work increasingly centers on the impacts of AI on society and democracy. “But empirically, this has been done on every continent around the world, at every scale” and the “faster we can get some of this stuff in place, the better,” he notes.

More here.

ChargerHelp, a three-year-old Los Angeles startup that is developing products and services needed to maintain and repair EV charging stations, raised a $17.5 million Series A round led by Blue Bear Capital, with Aligned Climate Capital, Exelon, and previous investors Energy Impact Partners and non sibi ventures also anteing up. More here.

Dance, a three-year-old Berlin startup that runs a subscription service for e-bikes and other types of "micro-EVs," raised a $12.8 million equity and debt round. Previous investors HV Capital, Eurazeo, and BlueYard were the deal leads. TechCrunch has more here.

Newswhip, a 12-year-old Dublin company that tracks the spread of news stories and narratives across the web and social networks and uses its technology to predict which stories are likely to go viral, raised a $12.9 million round from AshGrove Capital. The company has raised a total of $24.6 million. The Irish Times has more here.

Sending Labs, an Austin startup that is building a communications platform for decentralized apps, raised a $12.5 million seed round co-led by Insignia Venture Partners, MindWorks Capital, and Signum Capital, with K3 Ventures, LingFeng Innovation Fund, UpHonest Capital, and Aipollo Investment also contributing. CoinDesk has more here.

Stuf, a New York-based "tech-enabled" self-storage startup that's working with commercial landlords to repurpose some of their buildings in a post-pandemic environment, has closed an $11 million Series A round led by Altos Ventures and Allegion Ventures, with participation from existing investors, Wilshire Lane Capital and Harlem Capital. More here.

Unisers, a five-year-old Zurich startup that is building machines to detect extraneous and extremely small particles that ruin chips in production, raised a $14 million seed round led by Intel Capital, with additional capital provided by M Ventures, RSBG Ventures, and Swisscom Ventures. Reuters has more here.

Axion Ray, a San Francisco startup that says it uses AI to analyze unstructured manufacturing data and flag engineering issues, raised a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Amplo and Inspired Capital, with Boeing and Tinicum Venture Partners also contributing. More here.

CommandK, a San Francisco startup that offers a dedicated platform to manage enterprise security without requiring advanced security skills, raised a $3 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and including AllIn Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Funga, a two-year-old Austin startup that aims to restore below-ground fungal communities in order to accelerate plant growth and carbon capture, raised a $4 million round led by Azolla Ventures, with Trailhead Capital, Better Ventures, and Shared Future Fund also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.

Hippo Video, a seven-year-old startup based in Newark, De., that
claims it uses generative AI to create hyper-personalized, interactive sales videos, raised an $8 million in round led by Dallas Venture Capital and including Alpha Wave Incubation, KAE Capital, and Exfinity Venture Partners. The company has raised a total of $14 million. More here.

Kern AI, a three-year-old German startup that is building a natural language processing model to help developers and data scientists easily label training data, raised a $2.9 million seed round co-led by Seedcamp and Faber, with Xdeck and Another.vc also taking part. TechCrunch has more here.

Ledge, a Tel Aviv startup that says it provides finance teams with the treasury management capabilities they need to make strategic decisions about their companies' capital, raised a $9 million seed round. New Enterprise Associates, Vertex Ventures, FJ Labs, and previous investor Picus Capital co-led the deal. More here.

MemQ, a Chicago startup that is developing quantum memory to capture and store quantum states, raised a $2 million round from Quantonation, Exposition Ventures, and the George Schultz Innovation Fund. HPC Wire has more here.

Morphoceuticals, a three-year-old Boston startup that aims to use AI-guided electroceuticals to regenerate limbs, repair tissues, and regenerate organs, raised a $8 million "seed-2" round co-led by Prime Movers Lab and previous investor Juvenescence. More here.

Nanite, a Boston startup that is developing programmable polymer nanoparticles for a range of modalities and indications, raised a $6 million round led by Zetta Ventures, with Arkitekt Ventures also pitching in. More here.

Procyon, a two-year-old startup based in Santa Clara, Ca., that provides secure access management for multi-cloud enterprise infrastructure, raised a $6.5 million in round led by Lobby Capital; additional investors included GTM Capital and First Rays Venture Partners. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Pydantic, a five-year-old, popular Python library and open source data-validation framework used by some of the world’s biggest companies, has formed a London-based commercial entity that just raised $4.7 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital. Other backers in the round include ParTech, Irregular Expressions and a host of angel investors, including Zapier co-founder Bryan Helmig, dbt Labs founder Tristan Handy and Sentry co-founder David Cramer. TechCrunch has more here.

QiO Technologies, an eight-year-old UK startup whose software helps its industrial customers increase their energy efficiency, raised a $10 million Series B round led by Wave Equity Partners. The company has raised a total of $27.2 million. More here.

SendOwl, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that provides the infrastructure to transfer, manage, protect and collect payment for digital products (its founder was a previously the head of growth at Stripe), has raised $9 million in seed funding led by TheGP, with participation from returning investors defy.vc and Alumni Ventures, and new backer Authentic Ventures. Business Insider has more here.

Telltale, an 18-year-old company based in San Rafael, Ca., that creates narrative-based video games like The Wolf Among Us 2 and The Expanse, raised an $8 million Series A round led by Hiro Capital and joined by Skybound Entertainment. The company has raised a total of $62.4 million. VentureBeat has more here.

Thatch, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that aims to simplify health benefits for startups and their employees, raised a $5.6 million seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and GV, with additional participation from Lux Capital, Quiet Capital, Not Boring Capital, and BrightEdge. TechCrunch has more here.

Viva, an eight-year-old startup that deploys sensors in order to monitor traffic for municipalities such as New York City, raised an $8.5 million round. Investors included EnBW New Ventures, Foresight Group, and Gresham House Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

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Camber Creek, a venture firm in Washington, D.C. that focuses on real estate tech, says it has raised more than $100 million in capital commitments for an opportunity fund. The outfit closed its fourth flagship fund with $325 million last year. Commercial Observer has more here.

GGV Capital, the now 23-year-old, cross-border venture firm, has filed paperwork with the SEC to raise four funds totaling $2.5 billion. The firm focuses on the U.S., China, and Southeast Asia. DealStreetAsia has more here.

The SEC today charged Singapore-based Terraform Labs and its founder, Do Kwon, with orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud involving an algorithmic stablecoin and other crypto asset securities. As Cointelegraph notes, Kwon, a South-Korean national, is "currently at large and believed to be in Serbia after leaving his residence in Singapore sometime in September following a Seoul court issuing an arrest warrant for him. Interpol reportedly issued a Red Notice for Kwon to law enforcement worldwide later in September."

Marc Stoll, former president and COO of Nextiva and, earlier, a VP at Apple, has joined the Palo Alto-based early-stage venture firm Eclipse as a partner. More here.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the hedge fund investor turned biotech entrepreneur turned politician, has received a gushing endorsement from hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who yesterday tweeted he was going to "make a bold and early call" by predicting that Ramaswamy will run for U.S. president and win. Ackman has a financial interest in Ramaswamy; he, along with Peter Thiel, are investors in Ramaswamy's roughly year-old hedge fund Strive Asset Management.

Lily Willess joined the Boston-based VC and PE outfit Silversmith Capital Partners as a vice president focused on SaaS and information services deals. She previously led corporate devopment at the software development company Validity. More here.

S3 Ventures, an Austin-based venture firm focused on Texas entrepreneurs, has promoted Aaron Perman to partner and Joe Curry to VP. Perman joined the firm back in 2013; Curry joined in 2020, two years after a software company where he's spent six years was acquired by Vista Equity Partners and rebranded. More here.

The global quantum-computing industry is projected to grow from $412 million in 2020 to $8.6 billion in 2027, according to an International Data Corp. analysis.

Google execs know its AI search tool Bard isn’t always accurate, and it's asking for employees' help in fixing wrong answers. CNBC has more here.

Major news outlets have begun criticizing OpenAI and its ChatGPT software, saying the lab is using their articles to train its artificial intelligence tool without paying them. “Anyone who wants to use the work of Wall Street Journal journalists to train artificial intelligence should be properly licensing the rights to do so from Dow Jones,” Jason Conti, general counsel for News Corp.’s Dow Jones unit, said in a statement provided to Bloomberg News. “Dow Jones does not have such a deal with OpenAI.” More here.

A new online shopping platform linked to one of China’s top retailers has quickly become the most downloaded app in the United States, surpassing Amazon and Walmart. CNN Business has more here.

Tesla has issued a recall of its Full Self-Driving software, an advanced driver assistance system that federal safety regulators say could allow vehicles to act unsafe around intersections and cause crashes. According to a notice on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website, the FSD Beta system may allow the vehicle to travel straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, enter a stop sign-controlled intersection without coming to a complete stop, or proceed into an intersection during a steady yellow traffic signal without due caution. As many as 362,758 vehicles are affected. TechCrunch has more here.

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How much the "Succession" cast made for each episode of Season 3.

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A Greenwich estate that sold for $120 million in 2014 is back on the market. This time its owners want $150 million for the 50-acre property.

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