Another spend management startup grabs funding

In today’s top story, Romain writes about French startup Pivot, which provides spend management software. The company is only a few months into operations and has already raised $21.6 million. Learn what the buzz is about.

Meanwhile, Google pushed some news today, the most read of which was by Frederic who reports that with AI Studio, Google launches an easy-to-use tool for developing apps and chatbots based on its Gemini model. Read more. But wait, there’s more:

Duet AI for Developers, Google’s GitHub Copilot competitor, is now generally available and will soon use the Gemini model.

Google unveils MedLM, a family of healthcare-focused generative AI models.

Google debuts Imagen 2 with text and logo generation.

Google brings Gemini Pro to Vertex AI.

And please give it up for our new reporter, Sean O’Kane, who joins the transportation desk. Sean just started and already has a top story and a radio appearance under his belt, thanks to news that Tesla is going to start restricting Autopilot’s best feature following a recall. Get the scoop.

More top reads

Coin flip: Worldcoin has a lot going on. Most importantly, adding integrations with Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify and Mercado Libre. Read more.

Take a bite: Apple will no longer give police users’ push notification data without a warrant. At the same time, Apple introduces protection to prevent thieves from getting your passwords. And Apple adds iPhone 15 and additional M2 Macs to its Self Service Repair program.

Out of stealth, into the AI: Hyperplane is a new startup that wants to bring AI to banks. Here’s how.

A good read: Amazon launches its own book discovery service, “Your Books,” in an effort to compete with Goodreads. It’s a real page-turner.

The exports have it: South African e-commerce startup TUNL gets some early funding to accelerate growth of its exports platform. Read more.

Almost broken: For a minute there, it looked like outgoing X links were broken. Everything seems to be okay now. If you want to know what else is going on at X, head over to TechCrunch+ where Alex writes that what X needs now is for Snap to post a solid Q4. Here’s why.

Cape time: Zuper closes on $32 million in Series B funding to continue developing its field service management platform for small business and enterprise customers. Read more.

Mass market appeal: Copia Global, a Kenyan e-commerce startup, gets $20 million in new funding and a new board member as it pushes toward profitability. Learn more.

This one brings me back: Like Kyle, I too remember the good old days of Circuit City. The electronics retailer is making a comeback, of sorts, and hopes to raise $25 million. Get the scoop.

More Meta: Get ready Threads lovers, Meta plans to bring its fact-checking program to Threads next year. Meanwhile, Meta started testing Threads integration with ActivityPub.

So life like: Verve Motion raises $20 million to grow its exosuit business. You get to be your own RoboCop.

Give new meaning to the friendly skies: Metafuels lands $8 million bet on greener skies ahead. Read more.

Even more for your Wednesday:

Orkes forks Conductor as Netflix abandons the open source project.

Xbox Cloud Gaming now available on Meta Quest 2, 3 and Pro.

Epic Games won its antitrust battle with Google. But what comes next?

OpenAI inks deal with Axel Springer on licensing news for model training.

Here’s where founders screw up their pitch decks most often. (TC+)

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On the pods

This week, Equity brought Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress, onto the show, along with Kishan Bagaria, the founder of Texts.com. 

Automattic bought all-in-one messaging app Texts.com for $50 million back in October, and today, we’re digging into the transaction and what it means, and also the state of the written word online. Listen here.

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