Friday, August 16, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch PM! Today we look at the latest Twitter spat between famed VCs Ben Horowitz and Michael Moritz; we discuss the recent changes to the proposed California AI bill that many people in Silicon Valley do not like; and we look at a new electric hypercar. Let's do it!

TechCrunch Top 3

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🥊 Billionaire brawl: a16z's Ben Horowitz took aim at fellow VC Michael Moritz on X last night. The reason? The San Francisco Standard, a publication that Moritz is the sole backer of, reached out to sources regarding a story the media outlet was working on about Horowitz and his wife. Horowitz is calling the potential article a hit piece. Read more

😶 Under pressure: When California announced a potential bill meant to prevent "AI disasters," many people in the industry weren't happy. In fact, they were so unhappy that California has now altered the bill and implemented some suggestions from folks at AI companies like Anthropic. What could possibly go wrong? Read more

⚡️ It's electric: Today, electric sports car company Rimac revealed its latest model: the Nevera R. This car can go from 0 to 60 mph in 1.74 seconds and reach a top speed of around 217 mph. The car may start at a cool $2.5 million, but the bragging rights of owning one of these bad boys could be priceless! Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

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🎙️ Equity update: TechCrunch's Devin Coldewey joins Kirsten Korosec and Mary Ann Azevedo on the mic this week to talk through some recent updates at xAI and to break down that California AI bill causing quite the kerfuffle. The trio also dove into some recent startup shutdowns and looked at a Chinese autonomous vehicle company — that's currently weighing an IPO — and an interesting AI company that recently raised funding. Read more

🏛️ SF takes action: AI-generated nonconsensual porn presents a big issue. Thankfully, folks are working to crack down on it. San Francisco city attorney general David Chiu announced yesterday that he is filing suit against 16 companies that allow users to upload photos of someone and use AI to undress them. Read more

💰 Baby Bezos brings in the bucks: Mark Bezos, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' younger brother, is getting into the venture game. Yesterday, HighPost Capital, the private equity firm Mark Bezos co-founded, announced that it had launched a venture arm. The entity raised $100 million, which for a first-time fund is not too shabby. Read more

🏷️ Successful sale: Jumia, an African e-commerce platform, announced today that it had successfully completed a secondary sale. The company sold a little more than 20 million American depositary shares for $4.92 a pop. The sale brought $99.6 million of gross proceeds to the company. Read more

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Public Auction on August 20

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Around the web

🗞️ Playing defense: Today, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI removed a network of Iranian accounts that had been using the company's ChatGPT platform to generate articles and content meant to meddle in the upcoming U.S. election. Read more

🤖 Bots head to the ballot: In other election news, before Rwanda's election in July, researchers at Clemson University noticed a slew of identical messages popping up in support of Rwanda's incumbent president, and they appeared to be AI generated. They reported the findings to X, which has claimed it's working to remove bots, but nothing happened and the messages continued. Rest of World has more