Friday, April 19, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! Today’s issue is a bit polarized: There’s bad news for Cybertruck fans, but good news for fans of future use of AI in healthcare. There’s also good news for a major Indian fintech, bad news for Whatsapp users in China, and medium news on how Meta is tuning its AI products to handle elections. Truly a newsletter to suit the times, eh?— Alex

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Tesla

1. Tesla recalls Cybertrucks: Tesla has recalled nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks due to a manufacturing flaw. The issue at hand is that the accelerator pedal can get stuck, which is pretty, pretty bad. Recalls happen, but the Cybertruck seems to be having a very rocky start to its commercial life. Shares of Tesla were down modestly in pre-market trading following the news. Read More

2. China bans Threads and Whatsapp: Threads, Whatsapp, and other apps that offer encrypted messaging have been yanked from China's iOS App Store following a ban. It’s not a massive shock given Chinese government policy towards foreign apps, but the move undercuts Beijing’s complaints about a possible TikTok ban in the United States. Read More

3. Meta limits AI bot's responses about elections in India: Meta has joined Google in limiting what its AI chatbots will answer about elections in India. India is heading to the polls in closely-watched general elections that will unfold over the coming weeks. Tech companies don’t want their new tech to spit out some nonsense that gets them into hot water with governments, or confuses voters. Read More

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Morning Must Reads

Image Credits: Langdock

Langdock raises $3M to build a layer between companies and LLMs: If you want to use AI tools but also want to avoid vendor lock-in, what should you do? Use several, I suppose. Langdock wants to be the best friend of companies that want to have access to a host of closed and open-source large language models. It is working to build a layer between LLMs and customers so that companies can pick and choose the best model for their work. Read More

Tesla to move ahead with semi-truck charging corridor: Despite not getting a slice of Federal money for its planned big rig charging corridor, a 1,800-mile route that would theoretically connect its two North American vehicle factories, Tesla is still pushing forward with the project. The company has a history of investing in charging infra, which has paid it many dividends over the years. Read More

Hugging Face releases health-focused LLM benchmark: The new test, called Open Medical-LLM, aims to standardize the evaluation of generative AI models’ performance on a range of medical-related tasks. Of course, the quality of the test matters, but having more domain-specific AI benchmarks makes very good sense. I wonder how many more industry-tuned AI tests of this sort we are going to need? Read More

Can AI help clean up the Internet? The UK wants to know if AI can be used to find and kill illegal content, keep kids safe, and also identify child sex abuse material. The plan comes alongside a UK agency report showing that kids are getting online earlier and earlier. Read More

CRED makes regulatory progress in payments: Indian fintech unicorn CRED has received “in-principle approval” for a payment aggregator license. It will still take some time for the company to get its full license, but the news is still a big deal for the $6.4 billion Bengaluru-headquartered startup. Read More

Around the Web

No more subscriber numbers at Netflix: Likely tired of investors judging its quarterly performance by the number of customers it has, streaming giant Netflix has decided users’ “time spent with the service,” is a better measure, Variety reports. Investors didn’t love that. Read More

Meta cuts VR prices again: The Quest 2 headset will now set you back a mere $199, $50 less than its prior listing price. Meta’s now offering a more powerful Quest 3 headset, so this is the company either clearing inventory or just going for market share. Either way, the price cut is good news for VR fans. Read More

Rising tensions in the Middle East ding stock market: As we watch two more tech companies go public this week and in the coming days, the stock market itself is on edge as “investors continue assessing the latest news out of Israel and Iran,” CNBC reports. Read More

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Before You Go

Image Credits: Siegfried Layda/ Getty Images

Three for three: With Ibotta’s strong IPO behind us, we have now seen it and two other companies – Reddit and Astera Labs – receive a warm welcome from public market investors. I now have one burning question: If this isn’t enough to get more unicorns off the sidelines and into the chute to go public, what would be? Read More