CodeCanyon

Snapchat announced on Wednesday that Snap Map now has more than 400 million monthly active users, a new milestone for one of the app’s core features. Launched in 2017, Snap Map was originally a way for users to see their friends’ locations and browse public snaps from around the world. Overtime, the feature has evolved and now offers ways for users to discover local hotspots and find things to do. Snap Map’s success is important for Snapchat, as it’s a crucial part of the social network and gives it a competitive edge over rivals like Instagram and TikTok, both of which don’t offer real-time social discovery in the way that Snap Map does. Instagram is aware of this, as the Meta-owned social network has been spotted working on a “Friend Map” that would allow users to see their friends’ locations in real time. “Snap Map is one of the most used mobile maps in the world, and we’re thrilled to see our community continue to grow,” said Ceci Mourkogiannis, VP of Product at Snap, in a statement to TechCrunch. “The Snap Map is helping hundreds of millions connect with friends and their favorite places and discover what’s happening around them, making the world feel more connected every day.” The news comes as Snapchat has been updating Snap Map with additional functionality over the years. Last year, the company launched a “Footsteps” feature that lets you see how much of the world you’ve explored and track where you’ve traveled to. Plus, Snapchat rolled out “Promoted Places” on Snap Map as a way for users to discover new places. For brands, Promoted Places offers the ability to advertise and showcase all of their locations on Snap Map. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW

SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, is directly benefiting from the Trump Administration’s tariff trade war, according to leaked State Department memos obtained by the Washington Post. The memos show the U.S. pushing countries to adopt Starlink. Some show that countries believe that doing so could help lubricate their U.S. trade and tariff negotiations. One memo about the tiny African nation of Lesotho, which the U.S. imposed a 50% tariff against, flat-out said so about its new 10-year deal with Starlink, the Post reported. Elon Musk is the founder CEO of SpaceX and one of the Trump administration’s closest advisors. A White House spokesperson told the Post there was no conflict of interest. The State Department described the work of pushing deals for an American satellite company as “patriotic” in light of competition from China. SpaceX did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

Lucid Motors has been working through some quality “hiccups” in the early stages of delivering its long-awaited electric SUV, according to interim CEO Marc Winterhoff. “It is true that we had some technical issues that we had to overcome around software” and the Gravity’s heads-up display, Winterhoff said on a conference call Tuesday. “There have been some hiccups. To be quite frank, I think this is absolutely normal in the beginning of launching a vehicle.” In particular, Winterhoff cited supply chain issues with Gravity’s heads-up display as a source of trouble. The company has pulled that option back for now while it works with the supplier to increase production of the part. Winterhoff said these early quality snags are the reason why Lucid has been slow to bring the Gravity to its showroom locations, including SUVs that are supposed to be used for test drives. But he said the company is “knocking those [issues] out.” “We’d rather push it out a few days or weeks, rather than putting a half-baked product in front of the customer,” he said. Lucid’s first SUV arrives at a critical juncture for the company. It has so far failed to sell its Air sedan at anywhere near the levels it once promised to Wall Street. Its total losses to date are now over $13 billion, according to a new regulatory filing. And in February, its long-running CEO abruptly stepped down, which led to the installation of Winterhoff. The Gravity was originally supposed to hit the market in 2023. The launch was pushed back a year thanks to the disruptions caused by the covid pandemic. Lucid did technically start delivering Gravity SUVs in late 2024, although only to employees and people close to the company. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW The SUV, which currently starts at $94,000 and gets 450 miles of range, started shipping to regular customers in the last few weeks. But progress has been slow thanks to some of these early production challenges. Lucid has said it doesn’t expect to grow the volume of deliveries until the back half of this year. And it is not alone in dealing with early-run quality problems. Automakers of all sizes tend to deal with issues big or small as they start building new vehicles. Elon Musk once said in a 2021 interview that he tells friends to wait until Tesla is making new cars at scale before they buy one. Partnerships as a service Selling cars makes up the overwhelming majority of Lucid’s business. The company has often said it wants to be a supplier of EV tech to other automakers. To date, it has only inked a deal with Aston Martin, but Winterhoff teased other possible partnerships on Tuesday’s call. The interim CEO said “several players” have reached out to explore “joint manufacturing” in the U.S., potentially at the former Nikola factory in Coolidge, Arizona that Lucid is now leasing. “The President and the administration want to have a strong manufacturing sector in the U.S., and we are looking at potential ways we can leverage our assets,” he said. Winterhoff also said Tuesday that Lucid is in “advanced discussions with partners who have told us the Lucid Gravity is the best-positioned AV-capable platform on the market.” He said aspects like the Gravity’s advanced sensor suite, redundant electrical and control architectures, and fast-charging capability is what makes the SUV attractive in this context. Winterhoff claimed “multiple L4-focused software and mobility companies have engaged Lucid about potential collaboration.” These potential supplemental lines of business could theoretically provide another stream of revenue for Lucid and shore up its finances as it works towards rolling out a more affordable mid-sized vehicle in late 2026. The company has said it has enough cash and vehicle revenue to make it to that point without raising more funding. The global economy has become volatile during the early months of President Donald Trump’s second administration, and that could present a risk to companies like Lucid. To wit, Winterhoff said on Tuesday’s call that Lucid is evaluating “vehicle price changes, tariff risk mitigation, and bifurcating [its] supply chain” in order to protect against the volatility.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and other Meta execs thought that TikTok was beating Meta at its own game. That’s according to a new filing in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant, published on Monday. The document, dated February 2022, includes conversations among a number of Meta execs discussing Facebook and Instagram’s strategy and market position. In one message, Zuckerberg called Facebook a “challenger” that has “lost the mindshare and momentum,” while adding that TikTok creates a “feeling of shared context” where friends see the same memes, he said. Mosseri also agreed that Facebook should be thought of as a challenger now, noting it’s no longer the default discovery engine. He proposed that the preferred discovery engine today could be YouTube, but he expected TikTok to surpass the Google-owned video platform in time, given the data Meta had on hand. “The most natural differentiated … strategy for Facebook is to be the default discovery surface. But it’s interesting that [TikTok] is 100% video and beating us badly,” Mosseri wrote. “My guess is they’re growing the social mobile market and eating into TV, long-form video, Netflix as well.” Mosseri was right. TikTok overtook YouTube for average watch time in the U.S. in 2021, one study found. Another study by the parental control software maker Qustodio discovered that kids ages 4 through 18 had spent 60% more time on TikTok than YouTube in 2023. Last year, TikTok began allowing 60-minute uploads to challenge YouTube. And just this week, Netflix introduced its own TikTok-like experience in its mobile app, offering a new vertical video feed of recommended videos, personalized to the individual user. In the trial, however, the U.S. government is attempting to prove that Meta violated competition laws by acquiring companies like Instagram and WhatsApp to create a social networking monopoly. A document like this could damage the case, given that, internally, Meta execs were discussing how badly Facebook was being beaten by TikTok. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW For instance, Zuckerberg noted that even if Facebook remained the biggest app in terms of the number of people who engage with it on a daily or weekly basis, it was no longer the biggest app by time spent. He also pointed out that TikTok has a way to provide people with a sense of shared context. That is, if you and your friends are interested in the same things, you’ll likely come across the same things in TikTok’s feed, he said. “That makes it inherently social because instead of having to send some content to a friend you can just assume they’ve seen it,” the CEO explained. “If we could get to a level like this with topics and unconnected content on FB, that would be great. “ Other execs also chimed in. Head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart pointed out that TikTok users could comment on a video in a particular niche, which would lead the algorithm to bring them and other commenters to the same videos over time. Stan Chudnovsky, then a VP and GM at Meta, added that Meta had now begun to compete in a space that had become very fragmented with a “bunch of companies eating into our growth.” “Just adding a new format (like we did with Stories) is not enough anymore. There are just so many other places for people to be,” he added, citing other social apps popular in the U.S., like TikTok, Twitter, iMessage, Snap, YouTube, Reddit, and Discord. John Hegeman, then the VP of Ads (now Chief Revenue Officer), agreed that TikTok was “clearly in the lead” in areas like short-form video content, ranking capabilities, and creation tools, but said he thought Meta could close the gap by getting creators to also post on Reels. However, he said he was less certain about how far behind Meta was on the machine learning and technical side of things, and in terms of creation tools. The document paints a picture that in Meta’s view, Facebook is the underdog in the social media market. It’s also not the only document that has surfaced during the trial to demonstrate Meta’s fear of competition. Zuckerberg himself testified last month that TikTok’s success was both a risk to Meta’s business and had slowed its growth.

Amazon says that it has developed a new warehouse robot, Vulcan, that can “feel” some of the items it touches. The two-armed Vulcan, which can maneuver goods inside the storage compartments Amazon has in its warehouses, uses force sensors to help it know when it makes contact with an object. One arm rearranges items in a compartment, while the second arm — which is equipped with a camera and suction cup — grabs items. Amazon says that Vulcan was trained on physical data including force and touch feedback to pick around 75% of Amazon’s stock, and that it’s capable of self-improving over time. The robot has been deployed in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany, where it has processed half a million orders to date. Vulcan is only the latest addition to Amazon’s fleet of warehouse robots. It uses hundreds of thousands to fulfill customer orders across its global storage facilities. While critics allege that Amazon’s robotics investments are an effort to replace human workers, Amazon asserts that this isn’t the case, arguing robots like Vulcan simply make its warehouses safer.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and other Meta execs thought that TikTok was beating Meta at its own game. That’s according to a new filing in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant, published on Monday. The document, dated February 2022, includes conversations among a number of Meta execs discussing Facebook and Instagram’s strategy and market position. In one message, Zuckerberg called Facebook a “challenger” that has “lost the mindshare and momentum,” while adding that TikTok creates a “feeling of shared context” where friends see the same memes, he said. Mosseri also agreed that Facebook should be thought of as a challenger now, noting it’s no longer the default discovery engine. He proposed that the preferred discovery engine today could be YouTube, but he expected TikTok to surpass the Google-owned video platform in time, given the data Meta had on hand. “The most natural differentiated … strategy for Facebook is to be the default discovery surface. But it’s interesting that [TikTok] is 100% video and beating us badly,” Mosseri wrote. “My guess is they’re growing the social mobile market and eating into TV, long-form video, Netflix as well.” Mosseri was right. TikTok overtook YouTube for average watch time in the U.S. in 2021, one study found. Another study by the parental control software maker Qustodio discovered that kids ages 4 through 18 had spent 60% more time on TikTok than YouTube in 2023. Last year, TikTok began allowing 60-minute uploads to challenge YouTube. And just this week, Netflix introduced its own TikTok-like experience in its mobile app, offering a new vertical video feed of recommended videos, personalized to the individual user. In the trial, however, the U.S. government is attempting to prove that Meta violated competition laws by acquiring companies like Instagram and WhatsApp to create a social networking monopoly. A document like this could damage the case, given that, internally, Meta execs were discussing how badly Facebook was being beaten by TikTok. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW For instance, Zuckerberg noted that even if Facebook remained the biggest app in terms of the number of people who engage with it on a daily or weekly basis, it was no longer the biggest app by time spent. He also pointed out that TikTok has a way to provide people with a sense of shared context. That is, if you and your friends are interested in the same things, you’ll likely come across the same things in TikTok’s feed, he said. “That makes it inherently social because instead of having to send some content to a friend you can just assume they’ve seen it,” the CEO explained. “If we could get to a level like this with topics and unconnected content on FB, that would be great. “ Other execs also chimed in. Head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart pointed out that TikTok users could comment on a video in a particular niche, which would lead the algorithm to bring them and other commenters to the same videos over time. Stan Chudnovsky, then a VP and GM at Meta, added that Meta had now begun to compete in a space that had become very fragmented with a “bunch of companies eating into our growth.” “Just adding a new format (like we did with Stories) is not enough anymore. There are just so many other places for people to be,” he added, citing other social apps popular in the U.S., like TikTok, Twitter, iMessage, Snap, YouTube, Reddit, and Discord. John Hegeman, then the VP of Ads (now Chief Revenue Officer), agreed that TikTok was “clearly in the lead” in areas like short-form video content, ranking capabilities, and creation tools, but said he thought Meta could close the gap by getting creators to also post on Reels. However, he said he was less certain about how far behind Meta was on the machine learning and technical side of things, and in terms of creation tools. The document paints a picture that in Meta’s view, Facebook is the underdog in the social media market. It’s also not the only document that has surfaced during the trial to demonstrate Meta’s fear of competition. Zuckerberg himself testified last month that TikTok’s success was both a risk to Meta’s business and had slowed its growth.

A group of investors are considering a plan to inject another $30 million into BluSmart in a bid to revive the Indian cab-hailing startup that abruptly halted operations last month, TechCrunch has learned. The proposal from these existing investors has a catch: its contingent on BluSmart co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi agreeing to resign. The proposed investment will be treated in the form of unsecured debt and will be aimed at fixing the startup’s operational liabilities, including pending dues and employee salaries, two sources told TechCrunch. BluSmart’s investors with pro-rata rights, including BP Ventures and Switzerland-based ResponsAbility, started discussing the resolution last week. BP Ventures and ResponsAbility declined to comment when reached out on Monday. While Jaggi has not signed the resignation from BluSmart, sources told TechCrunch he has verbally agreed to resign from its board, subject to assurance he will not face any future legal action from BluSmart’s investors. Jaggi and BluSmart’s other co-founder, Punit K. Goyal, did not respond to messages sent earlier this week. BluSmart halted operations last month after a probe was launched into Gensol Engineering, its primary EV lessor and the company that shares Jaggi as its co-founder. The move affected riders looking for EVs, its investors, and its 600 employees, who did not receive their salaries at least until March. The Gurugram-based startup had around 2.5 billion Indian rupees (~$30 million) in pending dues, which include 500 to 600 million Indian rupees of overdue payments to employees, TechCrunch has learned. About 8,700 EVs on BluSmart’s fleet have also been abandoned due to the suspension of its service. This could affect the health of batteries and other components on the vehicles if the startup does not restart its service soon. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW The suspension has also impacted BluSmart’s drivers, some of whom have gone on strike in New Delhi to protest the move. Some of those out-of-work drivers may see some relief as Delhi-based EV cab-hailing service Evera Cabs recently announced the addition of 500 cabs leased to it by BluSmart lenders. The startup is also looking to add 1,000 EV cabs currently associated with BluSmart and some of its drivers. Existing BluSmart investors do not want the startup to lose its branding by letting other cab-hailing companies, including Evera and even Uber, use its fleet on their services. Sources told TechCrunch the investors are keen to restart the service in the next three weeks. Still, BluSmart’s comeback has some challenges. One of them is the purported corporate governance issues, in addition to those in Gensol impacting the startup indirectly. The Indian corporate affairs ministry recently launched a probe into Gensol and BluSmart for that. Jaggi’s resignation from BluSmart is also not as certain as it appears. The Indian stock exchange regulator ordered Jaggi and his brother to resign from the publicly-listed Gensol while launching the probe. However, the regulator’s direction does not apply to BluSmart, which is a private entity. Climate investment fund Eversource Capital, which is backed by Britain’s BP, shared an interest in buying BluSmart in a slump sale last month, as first reported by Indian outlet Inc42. The fund proposed to merge the startup with its B2B fleet operator, Lithium Urban. However, the BluSmart board has not agreed to the offer as it priced the startup at a 60% cut from its earlier $300 million valuation. Lithium Urban is struggling as a company with mounting losses and most of its vehicles are reaching their end of life, TechCrunch learned last month. Lithium Urban’s original founder Sanjay Krishnan also abandoned the business, a person familiar with the matter said. Eversource Capital and Lithium Urban did not respond to requests for comment at the time. Indian conglomerate Adani Group also showed interest in buying the EV cab-hailing startup to use its fleet at its airports, TechCrunch learned last month. The company had early talks with the BluSmart board. It already has Uber as a fleet partner. Adani Group did not respond to a request for comment. Nevertheless, BluSmart investors hope the startup could be better positioned to attract investments from strategics like Eversource Capital, Uber, or Adani after restarting its operations.

A group of investors are considering a plan to inject another $30 million into BluSmart in a bid to revive the Indian cab-hailing startup that abruptly halted operations last month, TechCrunch has learned. The proposal from these existing investors has a catch: its contingent on BluSmart co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi agreeing to resign. The proposed investment will be treated in the form of unsecured debt and will be aimed at fixing the startup’s operational liabilities, including pending dues and employee salaries, two sources told TechCrunch. BluSmart’s investors with pro-rata rights, including BP Ventures and Switzerland-based ResponsAbility, started discussing the resolution last week. BP Ventures and ResponsAbility declined to comment when reached out on Monday. While Jaggi has not signed the resignation from BluSmart, sources told TechCrunch he has verbally agreed to resign from its board, subject to assurance he will not face any future legal action from BluSmart’s investors. Jaggi and BluSmart’s other co-founder, Punit K. Goyal, did not respond to messages sent earlier this week. BluSmart halted operations last month after a probe was launched into Gensol Engineering, its primary EV lessor and the company that shares Jaggi as its co-founder. The move affected riders looking for EVs, its investors, and its 600 employees, who did not receive their salaries at least until March. The Gurugram-based startup had around 2.5 billion Indian rupees (~$30 million) in pending dues, which include 500 to 600 million Indian rupees of overdue payments to employees, TechCrunch has learned. About 8,700 EVs on BluSmart’s fleet have also been abandoned due to the suspension of its service. This could affect the health of batteries and other components on the vehicles if the startup does not restart its service soon. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW The suspension has also impacted BluSmart’s drivers, some of whom have gone on strike in New Delhi to protest the move. Some of those out-of-work drivers may see some relief as Delhi-based EV cab-hailing service Evera Cabs recently announced the addition of 500 cabs leased to it by BluSmart lenders. The startup is also looking to add 1,000 EV cabs currently associated with BluSmart and some of its drivers. Existing BluSmart investors do not want the startup to lose its branding by letting other cab-hailing companies, including Evera and even Uber, use its fleet on their services. Sources told TechCrunch the investors are keen to restart the service in the next three weeks. Still, BluSmart’s comeback has some challenges. One of them is the purported corporate governance issues, in addition to those in Gensol impacting the startup indirectly. The Indian corporate affairs ministry recently launched a probe into Gensol and BluSmart for that. Jaggi’s resignation from BluSmart is also not as certain as it appears. The Indian stock exchange regulator ordered Jaggi and his brother to resign from the publicly-listed Gensol while launching the probe. However, the regulator’s direction does not apply to BluSmart, which is a private entity. Climate investment fund Eversource Capital, which is backed by Britain’s BP, shared an interest in buying BluSmart in a slump sale last month, as first reported by Indian outlet Inc42. The fund proposed to merge the startup with its B2B fleet operator, Lithium Urban. However, the BluSmart board has not agreed to the offer as it priced the startup at a 60% cut from its earlier $300 million valuation. Lithium Urban is struggling as a company with mounting losses and most of its vehicles are reaching their end of life, TechCrunch learned last month. Lithium Urban’s original founder Sanjay Krishnan also abandoned the business, a person familiar with the matter said. Eversource Capital and Lithium Urban did not respond to requests for comment at the time. Indian conglomerate Adani Group also showed interest in buying the EV cab-hailing startup to use its fleet at its airports, TechCrunch learned last month. The company had early talks with the BluSmart board. It already has Uber as a fleet partner. Adani Group did not respond to a request for comment. Nevertheless, BluSmart investors hope the startup could be better positioned to attract investments from strategics like Eversource Capital, Uber, or Adani after restarting its operations.

OpenAI is launching a program, OpenAI for Countries, that the company says will enable it to build out the local infrastructure needed to better serve international AI customers. As a part of the new program, OpenAI will partner with governments to assist with efforts like building out data center capacity and customizing OpenAI’s products, including ChatGPT, for specific languages and local needs. Funding for the program will come from OpenAI as well as from governments in each country, according to the startup. The goal is to pursue 10 international projects to start, but OpenAI hasn’t said where they’ll be located yet. OpenAI said that it hopes to “spread democratic AI.” That essentially means it wants to convince other countries to use Western AI models — OpenAI in particular — instead of Chinese competitors. According to Bloomberg, OpenAI for Countries is meant to complement the company’s AI data center push, Project Stargate, which is reportedly set to expand beyond the U.S. OpenAI for Countries may lean on Stargate infrastructure, for example, or perhaps even funding from Stargate investors.

Enterprise workflow management platform ServiceNow on Wednesday announced its second AI-related acquisition this year. ServiceNow said that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Data.World, a cloud-native data catalog and data governance platform. Austin, Texas-based Data.World was founded in 2015, and previously raised more than $130 million in venture financing from firms such as Alumni Ventures, Prologis Ventures, and Shasta Ventures, according to Crunchbase. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Data.World was most recently valued at $350 million in the company’s 2022 $50 million Series C round, per PitchBook. Gaurav Rewari, an SVP and GM of data analytics at ServiceNow, told TechCrunch that ServiceNow was looking for companies they could partner with that would help customers deploy AI at scale. Specifically, ServiceNow was looking to give businesses better resources to make their data “AI-ready.” “As I like to say, this path to agentic ‘AI heaven’ goes through some form of data hell, and that’s the grim reality,” Rewari said. He added that Data.World was the right choice to help ServiceNow customers with this problem because Data.World helps enterprises organize and easily search through their data. The addition of Data.World’s data governance tools will help customers get the most out of their AI agents and other forms of AI automation, Rewari said. “We looked at a bunch of companies and came away so impressed with what they had built,” he added. “We felt that the whole journey that they were on, with respect to metadata management [and] knowledge-based infrastructure, to provide cataloging of data across the vast enterprise and the governance of that data itself — that could be an extremely important addition to our product portfolio.” Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Rewari said that once the deal closes, Data.World will begin integrating into ServiceNow, with Data.World’s platform being offered as a product to ServiceNow customers in the near future. It’s ServiceNow’s second acquisition in recent months. ServiceNow announced in March that it agreed to acquire Moveworks, which develops enterprise-focused automation and AI tools, for $2.85 billion. These acquisitions all fit nicely into ServiceNow’s plan to embrace agentic AI and the tools required to build it. In March 2024, ServiceNow SVP of corporate business development, Philip Kirk, told TechCrunch that ServiceNow was going to approach the transition to agentic AI through a mix of building and buying capabilities. “It is kind of three-dimensional chess right now to figure out whether to build, buy, or partner,” Kirk said at the time. “I think the biggest thing that we try to prioritize is how we can make decisions that are in the long-term best interest of our customers, and that differentiate us from what we know we’re world-class at, which is enterprise automation in our platform.” Updated 10:09 a.m. Pacific: An earlier version of this article referred to Data.World as “Declan.” ServiceNow provided TechCrunch with a blog post that used this name, which a spokesperson later said is internal product nomenclature and shouldn’t have been published. We regret the error.

Apple is looking at adding AI search engines from OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic into Safari, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, made the statement during his testimony in the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit against Alphabet. Cue’s disclosure was part of his testimony regarding Apple and Google’s estimated $20 billion-a-year deal that makes Google the default search engine on Safari. He noted that searches on Safari declined for the first time last month, a change that he attributes to the increased use of AI. Cue also stated that he believes AI search providers will end up replacing traditional search engines like Google, which is why Apple actively looking at adding these services into its browser. However, Cue noted that these services probably won’t be the default, as he believes that they still need to improve. Apple has already had some discussions with Perplexity, Cue said.

Design company Figma today announced multiple features, including AI-powered site and web app creation, a way for marketers to create assets in bulk, and a new drawing tool. With this launch, the company is taking on other creative solutions such as Canva and Adobe, along with AI-powered website and prototype creators such as WordPress, Wix, Hostinger, and Replit. The company’s website creation tool is called Figma Sites. The startup said that often designers build prototypes of what a site should look like within Figma. With the new AI-powered tool, they can easily create websites and even publish them. Once the site is generated, collaborators can easily change elements of the site through an editor without prompting. Users can also add transitions, animations, and scroll effects while making the site responsive. Figma is adding the ability to directly generate blog posts from its site. That means the Sites will have a content management system (CMS), which is an upcoming feature, baked in that lets users edit posts within the design of a blog and also manage other assets such as thumbnails and slugs. For interactive elements like stock tickers, you can add custom code or use AI to generate code for you. Figma Make, on the other hand, is a similar AI-powered tool, which is geared more towards ideation and prototyping. Users can input a prompt to create a web application. The prototype app is collaborative, and users can prompt the assistant to change or add certain elements. Plus, if there is a developer on the team, they can directly modify the code to make necessary changes. Users can also generate small interactive elements, such as a clock, and embed them in the pages published through Figma Sites later. Yuki Yamashita, chief product officer at Figma, said that both products share a lot of features and underlying technology. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW “We want to enable high-fidelity prototyping with Figma, especially with Figma Make. You can add more data to it and try to see how viable an idea is in terms of final implementation. Whereas Figma Site is useful for a marketing and design team when they exactly know how a site should look and take full control of that,” Yamashita told TechCrunch while describing the differentiation between these products. Image Credits: FigmaMultiple companies in different sectors are looking for a way to create interactive experiences using AI. Website hosting providers such as Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, and Hostinger have released tools to let users easily create websites through AI. On the other hand, tools like Replit and Lovable are pushing users to create apps or prototypes without coding knowledge. Last month, even Canva released a way to create interactive experiences within its designs with Canva Code. This isn’t the first foray for Figma into prototyping, though. Last year, it released a Make Design feature, which had to be pulled after users accused the company of heavily training the tool on existing apps. What’s more, Figma is releasing a new tool for marketers called Figma Buzz. With these tools, marketers can easily use templates created by designers with brand-specific designs to make new creatives. They can also use a tool to insert AI-generated images or change the background of certain assets. Marketers can also create assets in bulk using data from sources like spreadsheets. The startup is also launching a tool called Figma Draw for vector editing and illustrations. Yamashita said that designers often had to export their vector designs outside Figma to make edits. The company is now adding features like text on a path, pattern fill, brushes, multi-vector edit, adding noise and texture, and a lasso selection to its Draw product. Image Credits: FigmaFigma launched its Slides tool for creating presentations last year. With the new asset creation and drawing tool, the company is directly competing with creative suites such as Adobe and Canva. Yamashita denied that the company is directly competing with these creative tools. He said that Figma is in the business of building digital products, and a third of the company’s users are developers, thanks to tools like Dev Mode. The company is announcing a new plan called a content seat starting at $8 per month, which will give users access to Figma Buzz, Slides, FigJam, and Sites CMS.

Marathon Venture Capital, a venture firm in Athens that prides itself on being “day one partners to Greek tech partners,” just closed its newest fund with €75 million in capital commitments, according to partner Panos Papadopoulos. The vehicle brings the firm’s total assets under management to €175 million — a meaningful amount for an 8-year-old, seed-stage investor in Greece and a reflection, too, of some sizable exits. Among them was the sale last year of Marathon’s portfolio company Augmenta to CNH, a maker of farm machinery and construction equipment in a cash deal that valued Augmenta at $110 million. Marathon also sold some of its shares in Hack the Box, a cybersecurity upskilling and talent assessment platform, to the investment firm Carlyle in a secondary transaction. We chatted with Papadopoulos ahead of an in-person sit-down with him as part of TechCrunch’s first StrictlyVC evening in Athens on Thursday, May 8, a night that will also include a deep dive with Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. What we wanted to know — and what the central questions will be Thursday night — is why Greece, and why now? Greece has historically seen less venture investment than other European countries. What, if anything, has changed locally that enabled you to raise a €75 million fund when global fundraising has become more challenging? For starters, Marathon I is a top percentile performer globally in [realized returns]; we built a portfolio that captured the current zeitgeist well before, for example, AI-assisted scientific research, robotics, or defense became the norm. What is your firm’s thesis and how does this newest fund’s thesis differ given the extended timeline we’re seeing for exits globally? Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW We are backing founders who do something hard in important markets. It can be hard because it requires unique knowledge, like a research PhD, or high agency, meaning understanding of a regulated or overlooked industry like power grid management. And we’re going to continue doubling down on our fast-growing community, which has been accumulating experience and expertise, along with ambition. Greek startups have traditionally faced challenges scaling beyond the domestic market. How are you evaluating a company’s international growth potential in this environment where capital efficiency matters more than rapid expansion? I beg to differ. Greek startups leverage local talent to serve leading global customers and markets from day one. Across our portfolio there is virtually no revenue coming from the domestic market. But they are serving the best part of Fortune 500. At the same time, capital efficiency and team grit are second nature to our community. We’re seeing fewer IPOs globally and extended holding periods for venture-backed companies. How did this affect your conversations with your limited partners about expected timelines and returns? We don’t need decacorns for our fund economics to work. We invest early on, maintain substantial equity positions, and keep our fund sizes small. These provide for various opportunities for meaningful returns, including secondaries and strategic M&A, well before an IPO. We did secondaries back in 2021 when most of the market was promising infinite holding times. In our culture, cash is king. It seems that many others forgot it. Many European VCs are emphasizing deep tech and AI. Is Marathon taking a similar approach, or do you see different opportunities specific to the Greek ecosystem? Of course we all are, but the definition of deep tech is stretched and means many different things to different people. We are not focusing on any specific sector per se — instead, we are focusing on people changing their sectors. We were perhaps the first generalist VC to invest in defense before the Ukraine war. Greek founders have historically received less funding than counterparts in Berlin, Paris, or Stockholm. Are you seeing valuations for Greek startups that reflect this discount, and does this create opportunities for better returns? In our experience, this is not about geography or price. We are backing founders in nonconsensus opportunities that most VCs would ignore. We move fast with conviction and we don’t ask who else is investing. These might sound like table stakes; they still are not. Given the challenging global exit environment, how are you advising your portfolio companies about strategic alternatives like secondary sales or acqui-hires? We work with our portfolio companies toward default alive scenarios. Starting from there, all options are on the table. We see founders truly want to run their companies for the long term. We believe a secondary sale can actually help towards that, and most often we are supportive of such scenarios. The EU has emphasized supporting startups through various funding mechanisms. How important is nondilutive capital from these sources to your portfolio companies compared to five years ago? We welcome any such initiative. We advise, however, our portfolio founders not to waste time on non-market-related activities. How has Greece’s improved macroeconomic situation affected both your fundraising process and the quality of startups you’re seeing? It’s always good when you are not making the press headlines, but what we do is less relevant to local macro. When it comes to the talent front, I would say truly based on naive empiricism that, if there is any correlation, that is inverse. Adversity is the mother of all invention. Many American VCs have pulled back from European investments. Has this created more opportunities for local funds like Marathon, or has it made syndicating deals more challenging? It is definitely a different market but also creates increased opportunity for European investors. I do not think the flood of capital in 2021 truly changed the opportunity for European companies. We must always count on ourselves and be aligned with founders for the long term.

Design company Figma today announced multiple features, including AI-powered site and web app creation, a way for marketers to create assets in bulk, and a new drawing tool. With this launch, the company is taking on other creative solutions such as Canva and Adobe, along with AI-powered website and prototype creators such as WordPress, Wix, Hostinger, and Replit. The company’s website creation tool is called Figma Sites. The startup said that often designers build prototypes of what a site should look like within Figma. With the new AI-powered tool, they can easily create websites and even publish them. Once the site is generated, collaborators can easily change elements of the site through an editor without prompting. Users can also add transitions, animations, and scroll effects while making the site responsive. Figma is adding the ability to directly generate blog posts from its site. That means the Sites will have a content management system (CMS), which is an upcoming feature, baked in that lets users edit posts within the design of a blog and also manage other assets such as thumbnails and slugs. For interactive elements like stock tickers, you can add custom code or use AI to generate code for you. Figma Make, on the other hand, is a similar AI-powered tool, which is geared more towards ideation and prototyping. Users can input a prompt to create a web application. The prototype app is collaborative, and users can prompt the assistant to change or add certain elements. Plus, if there is a developer on the team, they can directly modify the code to make necessary changes. Users can also generate small interactive elements, such as a clock, and embed them in the pages published through Figma Sites later. Yuki Yamashita, chief product officer at Figma, said that both products share a lot of features and underlying technology. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW “We want to enable high-fidelity prototyping with Figma, especially with Figma Make. You can add more data to it and try to see how viable an idea is in terms of final implementation. Whereas Figma Site is useful for a marketing and design team when they exactly know how a site should look and take full control of that,” Yamashita told TechCrunch while describing the differentiation between these products. Image Credits: FigmaMultiple companies in different sectors are looking for a way to create interactive experiences using AI. Website hosting providers such as Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, and Hostinger have released tools to let users easily create websites through AI. On the other hand, tools like Replit and Lovable are pushing users to create apps or prototypes without coding knowledge. Last month, even Canva released a way to create interactive experiences within its designs with Canva Code. This isn’t the first foray for Figma into prototyping, though. Last year, it released a Make Design feature, which had to be pulled after users accused the company of heavily training the tool on existing apps. What’s more, Figma is releasing a new tool for marketers called Figma Buzz. With these tools, marketers can easily use templates created by designers with brand-specific designs to make new creatives. They can also use a tool to insert AI-generated images or change the background of certain assets. Marketers can also create assets in bulk using data from sources like spreadsheets. The startup is also launching a tool called Figma Draw for vector editing and illustrations. Yamashita said that designers often had to export their vector designs outside Figma to make edits. The company is now adding features like text on a path, pattern fill, brushes, multi-vector edit, adding noise and texture, and a lasso selection to its Draw product. Image Credits: FigmaFigma launched its Slides tool for creating presentations last year. With the new asset creation and drawing tool, the company is directly competing with creative suites such as Adobe and Canva. Yamashita denied that the company is directly competing with these creative tools. He said that Figma is in the business of building digital products, and a third of the company’s users are developers, thanks to tools like Dev Mode. The company is announcing a new plan called a content seat starting at $8 per month, which will give users access to Figma Buzz, Slides, FigJam, and Sites CMS.

Microsoft says that it’s embracing Google’s recently launched open protocol for allowing AI “agents” to communicate with each other. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it would bring support for Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) spec to two of its AI development platforms, Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. Microsoft has also joined the A2A working group on GitHub to contribute to the protocol and tooling. “By supporting A2A and building on our open orchestration platform, we’re laying the foundation for the next generation of software — collaborative, observable, and adaptive by design,” wrote the company in a blog post. “The best agents won’t live in one app or cloud; they’ll operate in the flow of work, spanning models, domains, and ecosystems.” A2A, which Google unveiled in early April, allows agents — AI-powered semi-autonomous programs — to work together across different clouds, apps, and services. Using the protocol, agents can exchange goals and invoke actions. Developers get a set of interoperable components they can use to make sure agent collaboration occurs securely. Once A2A support arrives for Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio, agents built using the platforms will be able to tap external agents for tasks, including agents created with other tools or hosted outside Microsoft. For example, a Microsoft agent could schedule a meeting while a Google agent drafts the email invites. “[C]ustomers can build complex, multi-agent workflows that span internal [agents], partner tools, and production infrastructure — while maintaining governance and service-level agreements,” the company explained in its blog post. “We’re aligning with the broader industry push for shared agent protocols.” While it’s far from perfect, agentic technology is attracting increasing investment as enterprises look to adopt it to boost productivity. According to a recent KPMG survey, 65% of companies are experimenting with AI agents. Markets and Markets projects that the AI agent segment will grow from $7.84 billion in 2025 to $52.62 billion by 2030. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Microsoft’s decision to throw its weight behind A2A comes after the company introduced support for MCP, Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI to the systems where data resides, in Copilot Studio. Other major AI model providers, including Google and OpenAI, announced that they would adopt MCP earlier this year.

In February of 2024, equity management startup Carta revealed that it was getting into the startup winddown business with a new offering called Carta Conclusions. By December, the company had decided to “retire” that offering, according to a blog post. And now, SimpleClosure, a startup that has described itself as “the Turbo Tax of shutting down,” has announced that Carta is a new investor in its $15 million Series A round. Carta’s decision to shift gears was driven by the realization that it “made more sense to invest and partner with a team laser-focused on solving this problem rather than building in-house,” said Carta spokesperson Amanda Taggart. (It’s also offering its customers a free consultation and a 10% discount on SimpleClosure’s services.) Dori Yona came up with the idea for SimpleClosure when building his last company after being tasked by a board member to create a “shutdown analysis.” The process was so complex, Yona felt compelled to build a software technology platform to help automate and streamline the shutdown process. Demand initially was so great that the young startup had already crossed seven figures in annualized revenue by February of 2024, according to Yona. At that time, SimpleClosure announced that it had raised $4 million less than six months after it raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding. In total, it has raised $20.5 million. TTV Capital led SimpleClosure’s $15 million Series A, which also included participation from existing investors Infinity Ventures, Anthemis, and Vera Equity. Besides Carta, new backers included The LegalTech Fund and a group of unnamed angel investors. “The reality is that 90% of startups don’t make it, and shutting down remains the unspoken but necessary part of entrepreneurship,” Yona said. “We hope companies never need us, but if they do, we’re here to help them do it the right way.” In 2024, SimpleClosure saw its revenue grow by 12x compared to the year prior, according to Yona. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW

For years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star program has helped consumers save a collective $40 billion in annual energy costs. Now, the Trump administration wants to wind it down, according to a report from CNN. The Energy Star program, which has a budget of $32 million, is a public-private partnership that works with appliance and electronics manufacturers to certify energy-efficient products while also helping consumers find rebates to lower the purchase cost. “Eliminating the Energy Star program would directly contradict this administration’s promise to reduce household energy costs,” Paula Glover, president of the nonprofit coalition Alliance to Save Energy, said in a statement. The program delivers a 350-to-one return on investment, she added. Energy Star was created in 1992 under President George H. W. Bush, and it was reauthorized in 2005 under President George W. Bush, placing oversight for the program under the EPA and the Department of Energy. The program’s signature yellow labels appear on appliances and electronics for sale throughout the U.S., informing consumers of how much they’ll spend on electricity or natural gas throughout a year of typical use. Energy Star saves the average U.S. household about $450 on their energy bills each year.

Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide plan to expand a commercial robotaxi partnership and bring the service to another 15 cities over the next five years. The expansion comes five months after the two companies launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi. As part of that expansion, Uber will increase its investment into WeRide by $100 million, according to a Wednesday regulatory filing. WeRide said it expects the cash to come through by the second half of 2025. The companies said the expansion will include cities in Europe. Under the partnership, WeRide’s robotaxi services are available through the Uber app. The relationship is similar to Uber’s deal with Waymo, in which the ride-hailing company handles the network routing and fleet operations, while the autonomous vehicle company remains responsible for the AV tech. Uber and WeRide, which went public on the Nasdaq in late October, operate together in Abu Dhabi and announced plans to add Dubai. In Abu Dhabi, they work with local Tawasul Transport to handle fleet operations. The additional 15 cities will focus on cities outside of China and the United States. Uber has locked up more than 15 partnerships with a wide-range of autonomous vehicle technology companies over the past two years across ride-hailing, delivery, and trucking. In the past two months, Uber has announced deals with Ann Arbor, Michigan-based May Mobility Volkswagen, and Chinese self-driving firm Momenta. It’s most high-profile partnership in the U.S. — and one that is commercially operating today — is with Waymo. The companies offer a Waymo on Uber service in Austin and are about to do the same in Atlanta. This story was originally published May 5. It has been refreshed with Uber’s capital commitment to WeRide. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW

Amazon is making a sizable investment to support new and existing Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers in Chile. The tech conglomerate announced on Wednesday that it will pour more than $4 billion into building an AWS infrastructure region of data centers in Chile by the end of 2026. The investment will go toward establishing three availability zones, or groups of isolated data centers, in the new AWS region. Amazon said it also plans to hire and develop local talent to operate and support its region in Chile. “The AWS South America (Chile) Region will help serve the fast-growing demand for cloud services across Latin America and in Chile with secure, reliable, and efficient cloud infrastructure,” Prasad Kalyanaraman, VP of infrastructure services at AWS, said in a statement. “With the new AWS Region, organizations will have the ability to build with advanced AWS technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, to help accelerate growth, productivity, and innovation.” AWS already has numerous customers in Chile, including LATAM Airlines, AgroSuper, and Andrés Bello National University. This isn’t the first time Amazon has invested in AWS infrastructure and services in Chile. In 2021, Amazon launched AWS Outposts in Chile, which helped extend on-premises access to AWS in the country. In 2023, the company gave customers the ability to leverage private connectivity between AWS and their data centers or offices. That same year, Amazon rolled out AWS Local Zones to help customers connect to very-low-latency AWS offerings. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW TechCrunch has reached out to AWS for more information. Several Amazon cloud competitors have a Chilean footprint. Google Cloud launched its first cloud region in Chile in 2021, after unveiling its plans five years ago. Microsoft’s Azure announced its first data center region in Chile in 2020.

Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide plan to expand a commercial robotaxi partnership and bring the service to another 15 cities over the next five years. The expansion comes five months after the two companies launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi. As part of that expansion, Uber will increase its investment into WeRide by $100 million, according to a Wednesday regulatory filing. WeRide said it expects the cash to come through by the second half of 2025. The companies said the expansion will include cities in Europe. Under the partnership, WeRide’s robotaxi services are available through the Uber app. The relationship is similar to Uber’s deal with Waymo, in which the ride-hailing company handles the network routing and fleet operations, while the autonomous vehicle company remains responsible for the AV tech. Uber and WeRide, which went public on the Nasdaq in late October, operate together in Abu Dhabi and announced plans to add Dubai. In Abu Dhabi, they work with local Tawasul Transport to handle fleet operations. The additional 15 cities will focus on cities outside of China and the United States. Uber has locked up more than 15 partnerships with a wide-range of autonomous vehicle technology companies over the past two years across ride-hailing, delivery, and trucking. In the past two months, Uber has announced deals with Ann Arbor, Michigan-based May Mobility Volkswagen, and Chinese self-driving firm Momenta. It’s most high-profile partnership in the U.S. — and one that is commercially operating today — is with Waymo. The companies offer a Waymo on Uber service in Austin and are about to do the same in Atlanta. This story was originally published May 5. It has been refreshed with Uber’s capital commitment to WeRide. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW

“Day 25 of starting over my whole entire life,” Raegan Lynch narrates over a short video. “Right now, I’m wandering around the city I just moved to, in a country I’d never seen, all by myself after my relationship ended, and I had to leave my old life behind.” It’s a pretty enticing hook, which is why Lynch starts every video this way. She pulls us along as she navigates British grocery aisles – which are evidently quite different from those in the States – and bravely compliments a stranger’s outfit in a feeble attempt to make a new friend. Within a few months of posting her first video, Lynch has grown her accounts to over 588,000 followers on Instagram and 432,000 on TikTok. But what made Lynch’s story go viral has more to do with her crisp storytelling and attention to cinematography than her catastrophic breakup. These episodic, web series-esque videos are bringing a new spin to short-form content, pushing TikTok from raw “get ready with me” routines into more ambitious territory. As recently as last year, TikTok thrived off the idea that anyone could be a star – like Reesa Teesa from the “Who TF did I marry?” series, you could go viral just by telling your craziest stories while you drive to and from work. Viewers seemed to gravitate toward this off-the-cuff, casual style, where the videos feel like a friend is telling you a story on FaceTime. Even brands had shifted their marketing style, exchanging studio shoots for simple footage of someone talking into the camera. In the past, holding a clip-on microphone in front of your mouth would seem unprofessional, but in that moment, a more carefree nature was the point. Now, a year after Reesa Teesa blew up, short-form video viewers are starting to crave something different and more cinematic than these more casual clips. As viewers tune in to see if Lynch is settling into her new life, a scripted microdrama called “The Group Chat” has made its way from TikTok to the Today Show. The creator behind The Group Chat, Sydney Jo Robinson, plays each character in a group of friends as they navigate a tenuous text conversation. The mundanity of this drama is what makes it so fun. The Group Chat is about a group of friends who planned a girls’ night, but one friend asked to bring her boyfriend, and chaos ensues. The series has now entered its second season after the first season racked up nearly 100 million views across five TikTok videos. The serialized show garnered so much attention that, now, instead of making their ads blend in with casual content, brands like Alo Yoga and Little Caesar’s are producing higher-budget micro dramas to capitalize on the trend. Like Robinson, Nicholas Flannery, who has 5.5 million TikTok followers, plays each character in his serialized TikTok dramas. He takes inspiration from cliché plots in popular movies, like a series playing off the prompt, “every movie where the high-powered CEO has an affair with a younger man.” But while Flannery and Robinson tell complete stories across several videos, each clip can stand alone on its own. That way, if a video from the middle of the series surfaces on people’s For You Pages, they’ll still be drawn in. Before the rise of vertical video, scripted web series on YouTube were successful enough to spin out into cult-favorite TV shows like “Broad City,” “Insecure,” and “Letterkenny.” When YouTube tried to mimic this success on its own, however, its original content initiatives didn’t catch on. But trends ebb and flow, and now, creators like Lynch, Robinson, and Flannery are reviving the concept of the web series for a new generation. They’re not without direct competition from streamers themselves. Streaming platforms like Rakuten Viki have cemented themselves in Asian markets with short, serialized video series with timed comments. More recently, microdrama apps like DramaBox and ReelShort have boomed in the U.S. According to app store data provider Appfigures, DramaBox and ReelShort have made $99 million and $152 million from in-app purchases in the U.S. each, respectively, reflecting a 203% and a 233% year-over-year growth from the same time frame in 2024. Since the start of 2025, each app has earned at least 1 million downloads a month in the U.S. As Americans’ viewing habits trend more towards social video or bite-sized entertainment, rather than traditional television shows, there could be more demand for this scripted, crisply-edited content. TikTok is also rumored to be looking into scripted video, and the streaming network Peacock trained four TikTokers through a creator accelerator to make four new TV shows. American viewers seem to be enjoying this kind of social-first, scripted comedy, even when they have rejected this kind of media before. (Remember Quibi?). TikTok’s audience will never fully turn its back on “get ready with me” style videos, which are broadly accessible and duplicable for novice creators, but short-form video could pave the way for a renaissance of the web series.

Cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike said on Wednesday that it would lay off 5% of its global workforce, which amounts to about 500 workers. In an 8-K filing, CrowdStrike said the layoffs were part of a “a strategic plan (the ‘Plan’) to evolve its operations to yield greater efficiencies as the Company continues to scale its business with focus and discipline to meet its goal of $10 billion in ending [Annual Recurring Revenue].” The company also said it was planning to “to hire in key strategic areas throughout its fiscal year ending January 31, 2026.” “These changes position us to move faster, operate more efficiently, and continue our cybersecurity leadership,” company CEO George Kurtz said in a letter to employees, according to The Wall Street Journal. CrowdStrike became a household name in 2016 when it investigated the Democratic National Committee hack and attributed it to the Russian government. Last summer, the company made headlines for the wrong reasons — a faulty update to its software impacted 8.5 million Windows devices around the world, caused a massive outage all over the world, forcing airports to shut down, and hindering airlines, banks, hotels, and other kinds of businesses.

French AI startup Mistral is releasing a new AI model, Mistral Medium 3, that’s focused on efficiency without compromising performance. Available in Mistral’s API priced at $0.40 per million input tokens and $20.80 per million output tokens, Mistral Medium 3 performs “at or above” 90% of Anthropic’s costlier Claude Sonnet 3.7 model on “benchmarks across the board,” claims Mistral. It also surpasses recent open models including Meta’s Llama 4 Maverick and Cohere’s Command A on popular AI performance evaluations. Tokens are the raw bits of data models work with, with a million tokens equivalent to about 750,000 words (roughly 163,000 words longer than “War and Peace”). “Mistral Medium 3 can […] be deployed on any cloud, including self-hosted environments of four GPUs and above,” explained Mistral in a blog post sent to TechCrunch. “On pricing, the model beats cost leaders such as DeepSeek v3, both in API and self-deployed systems.” Mistral Medium 3’s performance on AI benchmarks.Image Credits:MistralMistral, founded in 2023, is a frontier model lab, aiming to build a range of AI-powered services including a chatbot platform, Le Chat, and mobile apps. It’s backed by VCs including General Catalyst, and has raised over €1.1 billion (roughly $1.24 billion) to date. Mistral’s customers include BNP Paribas, AXA, and Mirakl. According to Mistral, Mistral Medium 3 is best for coding and STEM tasks, and excels at multimodal understanding. The company says that clients in financial services, energy, and healthcare have been beta testing the model for use cases like customer service, workflow automation, and analyzing complex data sets. In addition to Mistral’s API, where enterprise customers can work with Mistral to fine-tune it, Mistral Medium 3 is available on Amazon’s Sagemaker platform starting Wednesday. It’ll soon come to other hosts, including Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry and Google’s Vertex AI platforms, the company added. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW The launch of Mistral Medium 3 follows on the heels of Mistral’s Mistral Small 3.1 in March. In its blog post, the company teased the release of a much larger model in the coming weeks.

Spotify on Wednesday announced an update to its app designed to give users more control over their listening experience and recommendations. The refreshed experience introduces a handful of new features that will roll out gradually to Spotify users and Premium subscribers, including those to help you manage your Queue, your current listening experience, aid with playlist creation, and more. The changes help to balance out an app that often leans heavily on algorithmic recommendations to suggest and play music by instead giving users the power to shape what’s played, when, and how often. For Premium users, Spotify’s Queue has been revamped. The new design provides easier access to controls like Shuffle, Smart Shuffle, Repeat, and Sleep Timer, the company says. Smart Shuffle and Autoplay can also be switched fully off from Spotify’s Settings, if preferred. Plus, Premium subscribers will start seeing the tracks that Spotify is recommending to play after their queued-up tracks, so they can choose in advance what gets to stay in their Queue. As you listen to music, you can tap a refreshed Hide button that’s now more intuitively located, Spotify claims, when you come across a song you’re not in the mood for within your playlist. The button will hide the track in the playlist across all devices. However, the company will soon introduce an even stronger version of the “hide” with the launch of a new 30-day Snooze feature that will temporarily remove a track from your recommendations. The company is also introducing features to improve the management of playlists on mobile. At the top of your playlists, you’ll now find Add, Sort, and Edit buttons that allow you to add tracks, change the playlist’s title or cover art, and organize the sequence of songs. Listeners in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S. will be able to use their Liked songs to create a playlist after first filtering it by genre, then tapping the new option to “turn into a playlist.” Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Other music curation tools have also been relocated. Now, users can tap the Create button at the bottom-right of the mobile app to access tools to create playlists, collaborate on playlists with friends, and join a Blend (a playlist that combines two people’s musical tastes by featuring songs they’ll both enjoy). Premium subscribers, meanwhile, can tap the Create button to access the newer AI Playlist feature and Jam, a real-time listening session where multiple people can contribute to a shared Queue. As a result of the changes, Spotify has relocated the Your Library tab to be the third option at the bottom of its mobile app.

Ford is raising the price of the all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUV and popular entry-level Maverick pickup by as much as $2,000 due to the import taxes President Donald Trump is placing on vehicles made in Mexico, according to Reuters. Higher prices could make it harder for traditional automakers like Ford to sell their EVs. Ford was already losing billions of dollars on scaling up its EV program. It may only get more difficult if the $7,500 federal EV tax credit goes away, which is something both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have hinted is coming. The price hikes come just a few days after Ford said the tariffs will add $2.5 billion to the company’s costs across the remainder of 2025. General Motors said the impact could be as high as $5 billion. The new pricing applies to vehicles built after May 2, Reuters reports. Ford did not immediately respond to a request for comment.