Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Good afternoon, and welcome to TechCrunch PM. All of Apple’s new things were still a major part of the news day, but we’ve got some other good things in store. BeReal, the app that tells you when to post what you’re doing at that moment, has been acquired. Meanwhile, General Motors gives Cruise a really big financial lifeline, and we look at the search for data in a data breach. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Voodoo

BeReal finds a buyer: BeReal’s future was uncertain, but now not so much. Voodoo, a French mobile apps and games publisher, has acquired the social media app for €500 million. BeReal will get a new CEO and a new lease on life that will include building and releasing new features as it works to grow users. Read more

New General Motors investment fuels Cruise, for now: GM is plunking down $850 million into Cruise amid the autonomous vehicle subsidiary’s testing of its services in Phoenix, Dallas and, as of today, Houston. General Motors told investors this year that it was going to cut spending on Cruise — and that is still planned — but it looks like it won’t be so soon. Read more

Meeting Light Phone III: After all the talk of iPhones this week, this next phone is quite refreshing. Light, the maker of the minimalist phone with an e-paper screen, has a new model called the Light Phone III. Like the models that came before it, there are no bells and whistles; it’s just a phone. Except this time it has a larger OLED display and an NFC chip. Because it does want to be useful for people. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images

TikTok comes for Google: It’s going to be a battle royale between the two companies for dominance in search. TikTok is testing the ability for users to take or upload a photo to find similar products in TikTok Shop. Bonus is that you will no longer have to rely on textual descriptions. Read more

More bytes from Apple:

🍎 It’s the little things that truly make consumers happy: Two of the long-awaited iPhone features are now here: the ability to schedule messages to send at a later date and time and support of RCS, the next-gen messaging standard and replacement for SMS that will make texting with Android folks much less painful. Read more

🍎 Check your compatibility: Meanwhile, not every device is going to operate with iOS 18, so we’ve put together this handy-dandy guide to devices that are compatible. Read more

🍎 Apple App Store improvements: Apple is giving developers more tools to increase their app revenues and promote their apps with win-back offers and the release of a new commerce API. Read more

🍎 Can’t check out Apple WWDC?: We’ve got you covered with a roundup of everything unveiled so far. Read more

It’s a mystery: A hacker claims it breached billions of records that would impact basically everyone in the United States. The stolen data appears partly legitimate, but there is some difficulty in confirming the data is actually correct. Read more

Gemini Nano AI comes to Pixel: The June Pixel drop will allow users to access the model as a developer option. Apart from that, the feature drop includes Display Port connectivity support for Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a, reverse phone number lookup for unknown numbers, fall and crash detection for Pixel Watch 2, and doorbell notifications on the Pixel tablet. Read more

Crunchbase expands its diversity-tracking feature to Europe: Hopefully this will bridge some of the gap in the data landscape and make it easier to find up-to-date information about how much venture capital funding goes to ethnic minorities. Read more

Creating cookware that won’t poison you, with Jordan Nathan: Jordan Nathan founded Caraway after he had an experience with Teflon poisoning that left him searching for a better — and healthier — cookware brand. On this week’s episode of Found, Nathan joins Dom and Becca to discuss how he built a brand around aesthetically pleasing nontoxic home goods as we continue to dive into DTC companies. Listen here

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TechCrunch Minute

Image Credits: Getty Images / MirageC

Apple unveils Apple Intelligence, its new generative AI offering: At the Apple WWDC event this week, the consumer tech giant unveiled how it was getting into artificial intelligence. There’s a lot going on, from a Siri makeover to a partnership with OpenAI. Hit play and let’s chat!

Around the web

Inside the Titan: Remember the Titan submersible and OceanGate? Wired took a deep dive (excuse the pun) into the origins of the sub and found a rather long trail of failures, lies and leaked documents. Read more

Global growth: Bloomberg reports that World Bank forecasts some global growth tied to U.S. expansion. At the same time, countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa saw their estimates cut. Read more

Yes, more about Apple: But this time, it’s really about four other tech giants. The Wall Street Journal examined the Apple-OpenAI partnership and how it will impact companies like Microsoft and Google. Mixed results are ahead. Read more