TGIF, my businessroundups.org friends. It’s that time of the week again – the time for Week in Review, where we recap the past five days in tech news. As always, a lot has happened, so let’s dig in without delay.
Well, maybe with a little delay. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that businessroundups.org Early Stage, businessroundups.org’s annual founder summit, is coming up – April 20, to be exact. Set in Boston this year, Early Stage will host sessions with advice and tips from top experts and provide opportunities to meet entrepreneurs who are on incredible journeys. Trust me, it will be worth the trip.
Disrupt, businessroundups.org’s flagship conference, will be too Good worth the trip. (And I’m not just saying that, because yours truly will be participating – I swear!) This year, Disrupt will feature six new stages featuring industry-specific programming tracks inspired by our popular TC Sessions series. Experts in climate, mobility, fintech, AI and machine learning, enterprise, privacy and security, and hardware and robotics will be on hand to share fascinating insights.
So, signed up for both events? Awesome. Now, here’s the Weekly Review!
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ChatGPT in API form: OpenAI has introduced an API that allows any company to build ChatGPT technology into their apps, websites, products and services. (For a refresher, ChatGPT is the free text-generating AI that can write human-like code, emails, essays, and more.) Snap, Quizlet, Instacart, and Shopify are among the early adopters.
become human: a startup, Figure, emerged from stealth this week promising a bipedal general-purpose humanoid robot. (Brian broke the news of the startup’s existence back in September, in case you missed it.) The alpha build of the Figure robot, which the company completed in December, is currently undergoing testing in Sunnyvale’s offices. It is aimed at a wide variety of manual tasks for now.
Supervision without guarantee: Bag reports that ICE’s Secret Service and Homeland Security Investigations unit have repeatedly failed to obtain proper legal paperwork when conducting invasive cell phone surveillance. The findings have been published last week by the Homeland Security Inspector General, charged with overseeing the U.S. Federal Department and its many law enforcement units, who said the agencies often used mobile simulators without obtaining proper search warrants.
Salesforce is all about: Salesforce reported its fiscal profit for the fourth quarter, including revenue that exceeded expectations and guidance that came before the street estimates. It was a much-needed victory for the company, which has come under increasing pressure from activist investors, including Elliott Management.
Hydrogen Powered: Startup Universal Hydrogen took to the air this week with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to fly. The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but — if Marking writes — it showed that hydrogen could be viable as a fuel for short-haul passenger jets. (However, there are many technical and regulatory hurdles in the way.)
Pause your streak: Ivan reports that Snapchat will allow users to pause their Snap streaks — where you send a snap to your friend once every 24 hours — so they don’t have to worry about breaking it if they decide not to use the app for a while .
New non-profit organization for AI: A community-driven AI research group, EleutherAIis forms a non-profit foundation. Funded by donations and grants from backers including AI startups Hugging Face and Stability AI, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Lambda Labs and Canva, the nonprofit plans to research issues surrounding large language models along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Termination of “Succession”: The official trailer for the final season of “Succession” premiered this week, and it looks like the series will end with an epic mic drop. Like Lauren writesNot only was the HBO series hugely successful, with its 13 Emmy wins and five Golden Globe awards, but it was also an interesting commentary on the media industry. Creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong has allowed to take inspiration from numerous places, including Rupert Murdoch’s playbook.
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Like Elon Musk’s meddling with Twitter, the businessroundups.org podcast machine never stops. Continue this week Equity, Mary Ann, Bekka And Alex gathered to run through the week’s biggest startup and venture news, including what’s happening in the land of NFTs, AI vs. crypto in venture hype cycles, and Amazon’s unlikely partnership. And further The businessroundups.org Live PodcastMatt Burns spoke with Sagi Eliyahu, CEO and co-founder of Tonkean, and Foundation Capital partner Joanne Chen, all about addressing leadership blind spots and the best ways founders can collaborate with their board of directors.
