TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Nvidia

1. Bite-sized AI compute: Nvidia at CES announced "Project Digits," a personal AI supercomputer designed for AI researchers, data scientists, and students. "It's a cloud computing platform that sits on your desk," CEO Jensen Huang said. Read More

2. First AI slop, and now this: Social media is in its post-factual era, and Mark Zuckerberg wants to help it along. First he said he'd bring more dedicated AI slop to his platforms, and now, on the anniversary of rioters storming the Capitol fueled by rampant calls for violence on Facebook and Instagram, Meta has dropped fact-checking and loosened its content moderation rules. Read More

3. Insert stock photo here: Getty Images and rival Shutterstock have agreed to merge in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $3.7 billion. The timing is interesting for two reasons: The first is that generative AI is here to potentially make stock images irrelevant, and the second is that we've got a new administration that might not scrutinize such a merger for antitrust violations… Read More

A Message from West Monroe

The High-Tech and Software Industry's 2025 Roadmap

An eye toward growth, reimagined data and the AI transition: What's trending

Learn More

Morning must-reads

Image Credits: Nvidia

🌍 2025 is shaping up to be the year of 'world' models, and Nvidia wants a piece. At CES, the company said it's making a family of world models that can predict and generate "physics-aware" videos. Dubbed Cosmos World Foundation Models, Nvidia's training data very likely came from copyrighted YouTube videos scraped sans permission. Read More

🇮🇳 AI native: Microsoft is doubling down on its India investments, with plans to chuck $3 billion into the market to expand its AI and cloud services. The tech giant also plans to train an additional 10 million people in the country with AI as it aims to make India "AI-first." Read More

🚗 Smart cars: Toyota's next generation of smart cars will be powered by Nvidia's Drive AGX Orin supercomputer and operating system, signaling that the Japanese automaker intends to include more automated driving features in its upcoming cars. Read More

🌐 Speaking of Toyota, the automaker's hyped Woven City is open for business at last. It's a prototype city at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, and now it's looking for startups to come and build a truly smart city. Read More

🏋️ Do you even lift, bro? German Bionic at CES unveiled the Apogee Ultra, a new robotic exoskeleton that offers up to 80 pounds of dynamic lift assistance, so that something that's 70 pounds feels more like 9 to 11 pounds. Read More

🚕 All in on AVs: Dutch semiconductor giant NXP is acquiring TTTech Auto, an Austrian company that makes safety software for AVs. The all-cash deal is valued at $625 million. Read More

🎮 More screen, more fun? With a 10.95-inch display, Acer's new gaming handheld is ridiculously large. The Nitro Blaze 11 comes with a laptop-grade CPU and built-in Radeon 780M GPU, as well as 16GB of RAM with up to 2TB of internal storage. As a 30-something who thinks the Switch is too small, I personally love this. Read More

A Message from Brex

The financial stack you can bank on

Runway is everything for startups. That's why 1 in 3 startups choose Brex for modern checking, treasury, and FDIC in one account. Move money fast worldwide. Earn yield from your first dollar — while accessing your funds anytime. And get up to $6M in FDIC coverage from program banks.

Learn More

Around the web

⚠️ Carrots and sticks: It's been five months since Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in part due to the messaging platform's unwillingness to provide user data in a child abuse investigation. Now, Telegram has handed over data on 2,253 users to U.S. authorities, reports 404 Media. Read More

🪫 Can Europe get its groove back? Europe has a plan to ban new gas-powered cars by 2035, but the lack of ability to produce EVs as cheaply as, say, China, might get in the way of that. Wired has a write up on the state of Europe's EV industry. Read More

🥸 TikTok in disguise: Lemon8, an app that is owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, has been sponsoring posts on TikTok to encourage users to migrate over amid a looming ban threat, reports Axios. Read More

Before you go

Image Credits: Anker

☂️ Making the most of the sun: At CES, Anker unveiled a solar umbrella that's designed to charge electronic devices like coolers and phones while outdoors. Neato! Now, how much does it cost? Read More