Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! Today was a struggle, since we had much more news than we could cram into a single newsletter. From TikTok targeting Instagram and Threads targeting X, to funding rounds for cybersecurity and biotech, novel new AI uses, and a massive Google update cycle: find it all below! — Alex

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TechCrunch Top 3

1. TikTok targets Instagram: TikTok users are getting notifications about a new tool called TikTok Notes that lets you post photos. You know, like that other social media service. Much like enterprise software, in time, all social media companies start to look and feel the same… Read More

2. Cyera raises $300M at $1.4B valuation: Cyera has nearly tripled its valuation with its new, massive growth round, which is notable since growth rounds at up-valuations have become rare lately. Cyera helps companies understand where their data is coming from, where it is stored, and where it’s being used — a service called "posture management" in the cybersecurity industry… Read More

3. Google announces Axion, a new ARM-based datacenter chip: Google says instances powered by this new chip provide better performance than what you get from AWS or Azure. The company didn’t provide many details to back that up, but the news goes to show how competitive the datacenter world remains… Read More

Morning Must Reads

Targus hit by cybersecurity incident: Best known for its mobile gadgets and bags, Targus is experiencing a security breach. Its parent company, B. Riley Financial, has filed a notice to the SEC that a “threat actor” gained access to some of its system, and the company has therefore shut down most of its network to isolate the incident… Read More

The Complete Side Events Lineup At TC Early Stage 2024: TechCrunch Early Stage is just around the corner, which means that I need to book a ticket to Boston before I get in trouble. It also means that we are so very close to a host of side-events that are taking place across the city around our get-together. See you there! Read More

Threads works to expand API access: As TikTok comes after Instagram, a different Meta property, Threads, is working to boost developer access to its APIs. This means that while the short-video company goes after the picture-in-a-feed service, the sister short-messages-in-a-feed service of the picture-in-a-feed product is going after the other major short-messages-in-a-feed service. Cool... Read More

Multiverse buys Searchlight: Multiverse, which makes apprenticeship programs to teach tech skills to workers, is buying Searchlight, which builds AI-based recruitment and assessment products. Multiverse will use Searchlight’s tech to create new AI products around its own business... Read More

TransferGo raises $10M: This is a fun one. TransferGo is a UK-based fintech focused on remittances, and per its CEO and co-founder Daumantas Dvilinskas, it has been profitable lately and so hasn’t needed external capital. So, why has it gone out to raise a fraction of its last venture fundraise? Location. The new funds come from Taiwan-based investor Taiwania Capital, which makes sense, as TransferGo wants to expand its footprint in Asia… Read More

Kiki, do you love me or web3? Kiki World is betting that you can fuse web3 and beauty products. And it appears its investors are, too, since they just put $7 million into the company. According to TechCrunch’s Marina Temkin, the startup “wants consumers to co-create products and co-own the company with the help of web3 technology.” Read More

Around the Web

U.S. throws more cash at chips: The United States is not done handing out huge incentives to attract more chip-building inside its borders. Reuters has the latest on a simply massive deal with Samsung… Read More

Who could’ve guessed kids would misuse AI? Some kids are using AI tools to create fake nudes of underage classmates. That is causing much pain, is illegal, and schools are struggling to stem the fell tide. Maybe kids really shouldn’t have smartphones… Read More

Publishers turn to AI search: No, we’re not talking about Google. Instead, publishers are using AI chatbots to power search on their own websites, DigiDay reports. Given how bad site search generally tends to be, this could be a boon for readers… Read More

Google's Big Update

Google’s developer-focused cloud keynote comes later today, but the news is already flowing from the event. You can track all our coverage here, but below are a few highlights:

1. The tech giant has released new tools to support AI. Jetstream is a new engine that can run generative AI models, while MaxDiffusion is a “collection of reference implementations of various diffusion models.” Read More

2. Google also launched a new service that helps with AI-assisted video generation. Called Google Vids, the service will fit into the company’s Workspace products, which include Docs, Sheets and Slides… Read More

3. There’s also a public preview of the Gemini Pro 1.5 model. Developers can find it over on Vertex AI, the company’s enterprise-focused AI dev platform. The AI model race seemed to have slowed down in recent months, but that trend is now reversing… Read More

4. And here’s Google’s answer to GitHub Copilot: Called Gemini Code Assist, this is both an upgrade and rebrand of the now-defunct Duet AI. My takeaway here is: In the future, all developers are going to write and debug code with the help of an increasingly sophisticated AI buddy. Big tech companies are making sure they see some of that revenue by building tools for those devs today… Read More

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Before You Go

The robots will run the experiments: Danish startup Reshape has built a system that uses software and AI models to help track experiments visually so that lab workers can do other stuff. If you take a human task and automate it, you can do a lot more of it and do it faster, so when it comes to boosting the pace at which we learn about the world, Reshape sounds pretty darn cool. It just raised a big Series A to boot… Read More