Thursday, May 30, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch PM! This afternoon, we deliver some drone news from Amazon and get to the bottom of Sam Altman’s Y Combinator career. We also look at the continued backlash Spotify is getting over Car Thing, as well as lots of venture funding rounds and some truths about misinformation. Enjoy!

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TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Amazon

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s your package!: Amazon received approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to fly its delivery drones longer distances, meaning it can now expand its Prime Air service, which uses delivery drones to fly individual packages to more customers. Read more

Rumor has it …: That Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator. Well, YC co-founder Paul Graham has had enough and is finally clearing the air. Read more

Turn your searches into shareable pages: Perplexity AI is getting in on the action started by companies like Arc and is offering Perplexity Pages that enable users to make reports, articles or guides in a visually appealing format. Read more

Afternoon must-reads

Spotify Car Thing device mounted in a car's air vent

Image Credits: Spotify

I want my Spotify Car Thing: Gen Zers are taking to TikTok to protest Spotify’s decision to discontinue support for Car Thing, its in-car streaming device. Making matters worse for the streaming company is a new lawsuit claiming Spotify misled consumers by selling them a soon-to-be obsolete product and then not offering refunds. Read more

It’s all about the money: Former teen model Katrin Kaurov is putting her financial prowess to work. She teamed up with Aleksandra Medina to start Frich, an app where Gen Z talks and learns about money. Read more

Hacked: Cybersecurity company Check Point says attackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in its enterprise VPN products to break into the corporate networks of its customers. Read more

Forward charges into payments infrastructure: After Brandon Lloyd sold his second company, Bypass, a payments and point-of-sale software company for sports and entertainment, to Fiserv in 2020, he dove more into the payments industry and realized something: Software companies were getting a raw deal from the payments provider industry. Read more

When sharing is not caring: Two new studies show that when it comes to the spreading of misinformation, a small group of committed “supersharers,” were responsible for the vast majority of the “fake news.” Wait until you see who these people are. Read more

Hacking a satellite: Space startup Basalt Technologies may have started in a shed behind a Los Angeles dentist’s office, but soon it will try to “hack” a derelict satellite to test out a theory. Read more

South Korea getting electric air taxis: The country could see the taxis by 2026 if a partnership between Archer Aviation and Kakao Mobility can take flight. Read more

Money, money, money

Image Credits: Microbio

Valar Labs debuts AI-powered cancer care prediction tool and secures $22 million. Read more

AI manufacturing startup funding is on a tear as Switzerland’s EthonAI raises $16.5 million. Read more

TechCrunch Minute

Image Credits: Getty Images / MirageC

What Sam Altman’s firing and rehiring reveals about OpenAI: It’s the story that keeps on keeping on. But one thing that has remained pretty vague is why the board members felt they had to take such a drastic step in the first place. The only thing the board members said publicly was that Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board” and that they no longer had confidence in his ability to lead the company. Hit play and let’s chat!

Around the web

Grubhub and Amazon forge deal: Your Amazon Prime subscription is even more delicious. It now comes with a free Grubhub subscription. CNBC reports it comes with a yearlong subscription and free delivery on orders over $12. Read more

An edit button for texts: That’s one of a handful of new Google features coming to Android devices, The Verge reports. Read more