iCloud News: In Canada, Netflix just removed its cheapest ad-free plan

Monday, June 26, 2023

Today, it seemed like a good day to announce the acquisition of another company. Meanwhile, Netflix decided it didn't want to be "basic" in Canada, and French VC firm Frst may have forgotten all its vowels but now has $80 million toward its new seed fund. Let's dive into your Daily Crunch for Monday.

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Several enterprise companies were feeling all M&A-y Monday and announced not just acquisitions, but also big spender-type acquisitions. First, Databricks will pay $1.3 billion to acquire MosaicML, an OpenAI competitor building a platform for organizations to train large language models and deploy generative AI tools based on them. Ingrid considers it a steal — find out why.

Next, as we see more organizations blending SaaS in private and public clouds, IBM made a big acquisition here and will acquire Apptio for $4.6 billion in cash. The company built a platform to track how and where data lives in hybrid environments and how it's being used. Read more.

And finally, ThoughtSpot is shelling out $200 million in cash and stock to acquire business intelligence startup Mode Analytics in a move that ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair says will "bolster ThoughtSpot's generative AI apps while doubling the company's customer base and growing its annual recurring revenue to more than $150 million." Read more.

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More top stories

In today's car talk, Aston Martin taps Lucid to help develop electric vehicles that it aims to get on the market by 2025. Also, we have your look at the 2024 Silverado EV WT that has an impressive 450-mile range.

AI told you there were more acquisitions: Ramp exclusively told TechCrunch about its acquisition of customer support startup Cohere.io.

Everything has a + on it nowadays: Learn more about Meta's new VR subscription "Meta Quest+" and how much you'll have to pay for it.

Duty free: Tax-free shopping while traveling is where it's at, and utu raised $35 million to help travelers do that better.

If a picture paints a thousand words: SnapCalorie raised $2 million to continue developing AI that estimates how many calories a plate of food has from photos.

Speaking of pictures: Read what Adobe's new indemnity clause says as the company tries to ease enterprise fears about AI-generated art.

Delivery by Amazon: Small shops can now become delivery partners with Amazon.

What happens if you don't have a developer?: BentoML scores $9 million in new funding to expedite an app that helps customers build AI services sans a skilled developer.

Hacking away: This Russian hacking device is on track to make $80 million worth of sales, while hacktivists were busy in Fort Worth, Texas, trying to steal government files.

GDPR you ready for this?: A civil liberties group in Ireland is giving its government the what-for over a proposed law change that would "muzzle" Big Tech critics.

Don't forget about these:

YouTube reportedly experimenting with online games

TreasurySpring raises $29M to expand its investment platform aimed at businesses with excess cash

Schwank's Portable Infrared Grill will massively elevate your cook-out game

Lynk connects Palau's off-grid islands with satellite texting

Anduril's teeing up to take larger defense market share with latest acquisition

Don't wait to identify your startup's ideal customer personas

Most early-stage startups don't have a dedicated full-time CMO, and that’s OK.

However, it’s still someone’s responsibility to capture user data, which is why growth expert Jonathan Martinez shared a guide with TC+ for developing ideal customer profiles (ICPs).

“By identifying your ideal customer personas first, you will find product-market fit faster and identify the right customers to sell to,” he writes.

Four more from the TC+ team:

Coinbase execs: As global crypto policy grows, US has urgent need for legislation

Q2 failed to bring a funding reprieve for web3 startups and unicorns

There are signs that it will be a hot secondaries summer

Designers hated Figma's collaborative design tool at first, but grew to love it

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Don't wait to identify your startup's ideal customer personas image

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