Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we’re diving into the continued ripple effects of the Evolve Bank data breach; the rough working conditions of data laborers; and a VC that acquired another VC after the former’s founder died. We’ve also got stalled growth at X, tools to optimize a marriage, a boost for African fintech, chatbots that can build apps, and an AI health coach backed by Sam Atlman and Arianna Huffington. Let’s go!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Carol Yepes / Getty Images

1. Evolve Bank says ransomware gang stole personal data of millions: The fallout from Evolve Bank & Trust’s hack continues to grow. In a filing with Maine’s AG, the bank confirmed that the personal data of at least 7.6 million people, including more than 20,000 Maine-based customers, was accessed during the incident. This latest disclosure comes after Evolve revealed that the personal data of its own employees, as well as data belonging to customers of its fintech partners, was stolen. Read more

2. Exposing the working conditions of data work: The essential labor of data work, like moderation and annotation, is systematically hidden from those who benefit from the fruits of that labor. The work can be tedious, thankless and psychologically damaging, and it’s been outsourced to poorer countries where workers are paid a pittance compared to an American or Western wage. A new series of reports from The Data Workers’ Inquiry, a collaboration between the AI ethics research group DAIR and TU Berlin, aim to document the labor conditions of data workers around the world. Read more

3. What happens when the owner of a VC dies? When Unseen Capital’s founder, Kayode Owens, died in 2021, Eli Lilly, the firm’s key LP, realized it wouldn’t survive without Owens’ leadership. So it set out to find a new home for the early-stage healthcare VC. And now it’s landed on Seae Ventures, another diversity-focused VC firm backed by the giant pharma company. Seae has acquired Unseen, bringing its total assets under management to $200 million. Read more

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Morning must-reads

Three men from Nala posing for a picture

Image Credits: Nala

African fintech gets a boost: Nala, a startup that helps people domiciled in the EU, U.K. and U.S. send money across 249 banks and 26 mobile money services throughout Africa, has raised a $40 million equity round — one of the largest Series A transactions in Africa. The company will use the funds to expand its payment capabilities, a decision that was informed by user requests, and double down on B2B payments to serve global businesses with dealings in Africa. Read more

AI to make you eat better, be less lazy: Arianna Huffington and Sam Altman are throwing their weight behind a new venture, Thrive AI Health, which seeks to build an “AI health coach” to give personalized advice on sleep, food, fitness, stress management and “connection.” They describe it as a virtual assistant on a smartphone app that learns from users’ behaviors and offers health-related nudges and suggestions. It’s not clear how much capital the startup’s backers invested. Read more

Video games vs. real money games: As the Indian government cracks down on “real money games,” video game firms in the country are taking a stand against being lumped into a bucket with fantasy sports startups. After dealing with police raids of video game parlors and confusion with investors who think video games are subject to the same new regulations as real money games, the firms are banding together to advocate for the government to enforce clearer distinction between the two. Read more

Tell the chatbot to make the app: Poe, Quora’s subscription-based aggregator for AI-powered chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT-4o, has launched a feature that lets people create interactive apps directly in chats with chatbots. The apps can be created using more than one chatbot and pull info from uploaded files and videos, and they can be shared with anyone via a link. "Hey, Poe, here’s a report. Analyze the information and turn it into a digestible and interactive presentation so I can understand it." Seems useful! Read more

Giving creators a tool to stay relevant in a world of generative AI: DreamFlare AI has emerged from stealth to help content creators make and monetize short-form AI-generated content. The company was founded by former Google employee Josh Liss and documentary filmmaker Rob Bralver. Their goal is to offer a studio where creators and professional storytellers work together to create video using third-party AI tools like Runway, Midjourney and ElevenLabs. The videos will then be distributed through a subscription-based online service. Read more

EU keeps coming for Big Tech: Microsoft-owned adtech business Xandr is the target of a complaint backed by noyb, a nonprofit that has a track record of summoning up strikes against data protection-infringing tech giants. Noyb is supporting a complaint against Xandr under GDPR rules that alleges the company has failed to be transparent and has breached the data access rights to people in the bloc whose info is processed to create profiles, which are then used for micro-targeted advertising sold through programmatic ad auctions. Read more

Etsy tries to keep its soul: Etsy was once a platform where creators could sell handcrafted goods, but lately there’s been an influx of generic junk and AI-generated products. Etsy is hoping to solve this by introducing new labels that clarify whether a seller made, designed, sourced or handpicked an item. The “designed” label is specifically geared toward AI-generated items, like AI artwork, that have been the subject of considerable backlash in recent years. Read more

Around the web 🌐

SF tech nerds are optimizing marriage: Couples are working through their issues with off-sites and performance reviews, according to The San Francisco Standard. The idea is to use similar tools for optimizing work, like mental unloading apps, to navigate the complexities of relationships and shared responsibilities in 2024. Now a range of new tech tools and product offerings (including Coupledom, a marriage retreat to help couples plan their next 5 to 10 years) are cropping up to help. Is it cringe, or is it genius? You tell me. Read more

It’s like “Succession” but in real life: One day after agreeing to acquire Paramount, billionaire son of Larry Ellison, David Ellison, told the Financial Times that the century-old company needs to move faster to adapt to technological shifts that are disrupting Hollywood, like AI and streaming. He said Paramount needs to transition to “becoming a media and technology company.” One place he’ll start is to rebuild the tech behind Paramount+ and improve the algorithm-powered recommendation engine. Read more

X growth stalled at 250 million users: Don’t believe everything Elon Musk says about how well X is doing. The social media platform’s growth has stalled as it faces new competition from Meta’s rival platform, Threads, as well as other decentralized platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon, per The Financial Times. X said its number of global daily active users in Q2 was 251 million, a rise of 1.6% from the same period a year before. When it was still Twitter, the platform experienced double-digit growth in the years leading up to its takeover. Read more

Before you go 🔦

Latest iOS 18 developer beta makes the flashlight more fun: Better UI for the flashlight function on your iPhone? Sure, why not. Apple’s latest update, which is still in beta, features new controls for the flashlight, including variable brightness and a way to adjust the width of the beam. Perfect for creating a more laser-focused light ray when you’re looking for the remote behind the couch. Read more