TechCrunch Top 3

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1. A setback for Black women founders: An appeals court has ruled that VC firm Fearless Fund cannot issue grants to Black women business owners because, irony of ironies, such grants are likely a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This lawsuit is brought to you by the old white man who helped successfully overturn affirmative action in universities, and is part of a growing movement in tech to roll back DEI initiatives. Read More

2. What to expect at Apple's WWDC: Apple has been teasing a range of AI-powered features for its new iOS 18 update, which will be announced at the tech giant's annual developer conference next week. We're expecting a much better version of Siri, a homescreen makeover, genAI emojis, and more. Best of all, you can watch it all live on TechCrunch! Read More

3. OpenAI fixed whatever caused its outage, but I think we'll see a lot more of these as more and more people use ChatGPT and the service improves. By some metrics, ChatGPT consumes over half-a-million kilowatts of electricity each day, and there are others pulling energy from the grid, as well. Just look at Bing's outage last month. Read More

A MESSAGE FROM FINANCIAL TIMES

What to expect from artificial intelligence
across sectors

Every sector, from financial services to energy to manufacturing and beyond, has been changed by the implementation of AI…and the AI revolution has just begun. How will these industries look in the near future? Find out with the Financial Times' special report, Future of AI, free to download for readers of TechCrunch.

Download Here

Morning Must Reads

Image Credits: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto / Getty Images

Now you can swipe left on annoying people on Threads, too: Swipe right for a post you like, and swipe left for one you're not interested in: That's how Threads users will be able to customize their feeds. Now that I think on it, the Tinder-inspired UX could be a useful way to train an algorithm about what interests people. Read More

Japanese billionaire cancels SpaceX project: Yusaku Maezawa said on X that he expected his Starship rocket, dearMoon, to launch by the end of 2023. That timeframe came and went, so he's now canceling the project altogether. Perhaps he's watched SpaceX's founder and CEO Elon Musk make all sorts of timeline promises he can't stick to and he's making an informed decision. Read More

Making the most of the sun: Spain gets a lot of sun most of the year, so it's no surprise that Spanish startup Samara has raised $9.8 million to help drive solar panel adoption in Southern European homes. The fast-growing company was founded in 2022 and is taking advantage of electricity price hikes and greater solar panel subsidies sparked by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Read More

Microsoft's education suite may come under scrutiny: Microsoft's education-focused platform could be facing an investigation in the EU. Privacy rights non-profit noyb has lodged two complaints with the European Commission citing concerns that Microsoft could be processing minors' data unlawfully. Read More

Why not let AI plan your road trip? Have you ever wanted to just set out on a road trip without a destination in mind? Well, AI's here to help you avoid all that spontaneity. Sékr has launched a new tool called Copilot that will plan your entire road trip for you using natural language processing and data from its community to give information on campsites, access to toilets and showers, and more. Read More

Hell yeah for nuclear fusion: Xcimer Energy, founded in 2022, just raised a $100 million Series A to build a nuclear fusion power plant so it can start producing power at commercial scale. Xcimer is pursuing something called "inertial confinement fusion," which could produce tremendous amounts of energy — a huge necessity in our increasingly digital world. Read More

There's now an AI for your CMS, too: Austrian startup Storyblok has just raised a cool $80 million to add AI to its 'headless' CMS concept, which targets non-technical users. The company has also signed a deal with OpenAI, so the goal here is to help websites improve their content production as the world changes thanks to AI. Read More

A look at WndrCo's VC strategy: The tech investment firm by Sujay Jaswa (early Dropbox employee) and Jeffrey Katzenberg (former Disney chairman) launched a venture strategy not long ago, and it has already closed over $460 million in commitments for its first fund. Here's a look at how the company is investing the new capital, spread across its new seed and venture funds. Read More

Democratizing physical therapy: Physical therapy is one of those essential yet annoyingly expensive endeavors. Sword Health wants to help democratize access to it using (what else?) AI. The virtual physical therapy startup just raised $30 million and let employees sell $100 million worth of equity to investors like Khosla Ventures. Read More

Around the Web

Google leak reveals thousands of privacy incidents: 404 Media obtained an internal Google database that tracks six years' worth of privacy and security issues, and are they big. We're talking things like collecting childrens' voice data, leaking trips and home addresses of carpool users, making YouTube recommendations based on deleted watch history, and thousands more. It's appalling. Read More

Microsoft lays off Azure, mixed reality workers: According to Business Insider, Microsoft is laying off workers in its cloud computing unit, Azure. The layoffs come even as the unit's growth is up and to the right with investments in AI. Microsoft is also letting staff go in its mixed reality subsidiary, CNBC reports. Read More

Blowing the whistle on OpenAI: A group of current and former employees are concerned that OpenAI is fostering a culture of recklessness and secrecy in its race to build the most powerful AI systems. The group is alleging that OpenAI hasn't done enough to prevent its AI systems from becoming dangerous, reports The New York Times. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: DALL-E 2 / OpenAI

AI-powered hate music: Bad actors are using genAI music tools to create homophobic, racist, and propagandic songs – because it's much harder to be hateful, witty and melodic at the same time than people think. Moreover, they're publishing guides on how to do it so that other musically inept trolls can do it, too! Read More