Welcome back to TechCrunch PM! The editorial team spent a chunk of the day discussing Sam Bankman-Fried’s sentencing. We also have much venture news to go through, as well as Google’s new generative AI accelerator program, a plea from the U.S. government and Ibotta’s IPO. Let’s go!
— Christine
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Image Credits: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency
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Sam Bankman-Fried is sentenced: Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder and former CEO of crypto exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Five months ago, he was found guilty on all seven counts related to fraud and money laundering during his trial. Considering that Bankman-Fried was looking at a maximum of 110 years, it’s up for debate on whether this was too short, too long or just right. Read More
More funding for startups: Google’s charitable wing, Google.org, launched a new program to help fund nonprofits developing tech that leverages generative AI. It is pouring $20 million into the program, which will be offered as grants to an initial group of 21 nonprofits. Read More
Even more funding for startups: Two former Kleiner Perkins investors went out on their own to start Matter Venture Partners and just closed on $300 million in capital commitments to fund startups in the “hard tech” space. Read More
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ChowNow snaps up Cuboh: Over in restaurant tech, ChowNow, the online ordering platform for local restaurants, acquired point-of-sale platform Cuboh. On the one hand, this marks ChowNow’s first acquisition and will help strengthen its POS integration solution and help restaurants tackle orders across multiple services. On the other hand, it laid off about 30 employees. Read More
Help solve a hack: The U.S. government is extending a reward for information about key leaders of the ALPHV/BlackCat cybercrime gang to its affiliate members, one of which last month took credit for a massive ransomware attack on a U.S. health tech giant. Read More
Ibotta files for an IPO: Reporters Rebecca Szkutak and Alex Wilhelm take you inside cash-back startup Ibotta’s S-1 filing. Read More
UMG doubles down on deal with Spotify: This comes in the wake of Universal Music Group’s public spat with TikTok, which saw the label pulling its full catalog from the video app earlier this year. Read More
Microsoft tries to unlock LinkedIn’s latent potential: Caught between TikTok and X? LinkedIn feels you. To help, the social network is experimenting with short-form videos. “It’s as if LinkedIn is targeting a whole new ‘type’ of user — one caught in limbo somewhere between two other well-known social networks,” writes reporter Paul Sawers. Read More
Checkout in the palm of your hand: Amazon launched its new app for the contactless palm recognition service Amazon One. It allows customers to hover their palm over a device in order to purchase from select places, including Whole Foods Market stores, Amazon stores and more. Read More
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Image Credits: Kwarkot / Getty Images
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Today was a great day for venture capital news. Take a look:
Skyflow raised a $30 million Series B extension led by Khosla Ventures. “The deal is interesting on a number of fronts, including the round’s structure and how Skyflow has been impacted by the growth of AI,” reporter Alex Wilhem writes. Read More
E-commerce startup Kidsy, providing access to discounted baby and kids products, closed on an “oversubscribed” $1 million in pre-seed funding. Read More
Startup studio super{set} adds another $90 million as it doubles down on its strategy of building enterprise startups. Read More
Pelago, a Y Combinator–backed virtual clinic for addiction treatment, raised $58 million in Series C capital. Read More
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Image Credits: Getty Images / akindo
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MarketWatch reports on what’s happening to Palantir after an analyst downgraded the tech stock’s shares.
Meanwhile, Microsoft customers say Copilot isn’t as great as it seems, Business Insider reports.
And over on The Atlantic, take a look at how Donald Trump gets into the meme stock business.
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You’re likely seeing less news and politics on Instagram. Here’s why: Alex Wilhelm writes that as the election cycle heats up, Instagram and Threads will be cooling down the amount of political content entering many users’ feeds. These changes, which limit the reach of political content from accounts users don’t already follow, are enacted by default. Read More
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Image Credits: TechCrunch
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On today’s Equity, Alex Wilhelm discusses some M&A in the edtech space of Wonderschool acquiring EarlyDay. EarlyDay’s co-CEOs Emma Harris and Melissa Tran described the transaction as “opportunistic,” saying it was not driven by fundraising needs. Tune in!
Over on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn Melinek interviewed Scott Dykstra, CTO and co-founder of Space and Time, about how the company aims to be a verifiable compute layer for web3 that scales zero-knowledge proofs, or ZK proofs, on a decentralized data warehouse. Listen here!
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