Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Halliburton confirms data breach

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! To soften the sting of summer's end, we're distracting ourselves with news of a data breach at Halliburton; Palantir's dedication to defense tech; and Clearview AI getting slammed with another fine in the EU. We've also got notes on the future of game development; Amazon's latest reverse acqui-hire; the road ahead for home robots, and more. Let's get to work! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Gerald Herbert / AP

1. Halliburton confirms data breach: The oil and fracking giant today said intruders had stolen data in a cyberattack that took some of its systems offline last week. Halliburton is still assessing the extent of the damage, but ransomware gang RansomHub appears to have taken credit for the cyberattack. Read More

2. Leading from the middle: Palantir is slowly becoming the driving force behind the next wave of defense tech startups, a sector that's seen over $129.3 billion in venture money invested since 2021. The company's CTO, Shyam Sankar, has started a program to guide defense tech startups to greatness. Read More

3. Clearview gets fined again: Clearview AI has been hit with its largest GDPR fine yet, about $34 million, by Dutch regulators for building a facial-recognition database of people's selfies without their consent. Dutch authorities are concerned, however, that the company is ignoring previous fines in the EU, and have warned they will hold Clearview's executives personally liable. Read More

Sponsored by Bank of America

Grow your tech company

Want to know what experienced investors are looking for in 2024? We asked them at Bank of America's Triangle Innovation Summit.

Get Insights

Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: a16z

🎮 AI and Discord are the future of video games, feels A16z's Joshua Lu. The investor helped launch the firm's Speedrun accelerator for gaming startups, and he thinks AI will make it infinitely easier to ship new games fast. He also thinks it's a good idea for game studios to build games on top of Discord. Read More

🤖 Home robots still suck: We all want robots to do our laundry and dishes so we can attend to our hobbies. Alas, most robots can still mostly only perform simple tasks, like cleaning floors. Brian Heater walks us through why that is. Read More

💪 The reverse acqui-hire trend is going strong: Amazon has poached hired Covariant's founders and "about a quarter" of its employees, and signed a non-exclusive license to use the startup's foundation models meant for use with robots. Read More

🧑‍⚖️ CrowdStrike is getting flooded with lawsuits: This was bound to happen after CrowdStrike's faulty software update caused millions of Microsoft devices to shut down, taking down infrastructure around the world. We've got the rundown, including Delta's suit against the company for $500 million. Read More

✍️ To sign or not to sign? California's controversial AI bill, SB 1047, is headed to the governor's desk. The bill aims to prevent AI from resulting in catastrophic damage, like large-scale cyberattacks or events that lead to loss of life, but its opponents feel it might put the brakes on the advancement of AI technology. Read More

🇮🇳 Building semiconductors for India: BigEndian Semiconductors is tapping into the government's efforts to establish India as a semiconductor producer. And the startup's setting out by developing surveillance chips for cameras. Read More

A Message from The Aerospace Corporation

Take Your Place in Space with The Aerospace Corporation

From strategy to tactics. From assurance to innovation. From Earth to orbit and beyond. We are at the leading edge of innovation for the next generation of satellites, rockets, and ground systems. The Aerospace Corporation is hiring students, recent graduates, and experienced professionals to join our teams across the space enterprise.

Learn More

Around the Web

💰Doing a 180 is hard: Ever since ChatGPT took off, OpenAI has been trying hard to turn into a profit-driven company and leave behind its non-profit roots. But the transition is proving especially tough as old executives leave and new employees flood in, sources told The New York Times. Read More

🧑‍💻 How AI snippets are changing SEO: It seems Google's AI Overviews are here to stay, and they're already changing the way people search, according to Nieman Lab. The site polled seven audience directors about how they are shifting their SEO strategy to account for this change in user behavior. Read More

🤠 Going founder mode: Brat summer is coming to an end, and being mindful and demure is out. Paul Graham questions why founders are being pushed to run large companies like managers, rather than getting in on the ground floor. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: RoJDesign / Getty Images

🔎 Branch out from Google: Google became a household name because it had the best search engine. But lately it's been a little…sponsored ad-y. So why not start exploring your options? We've got a list of promising contenders for the best search engine title. Read More

Featured jobs from Crunchboard

Senior Data Scientist, IEEE (Piscataway, NJ)

IT Director, the Quaker School at Horsham (Horsham, PA)

General Manager, airSlate (Brookline, MA)

Data Manager, Murmuration (Remote)

Director of Marketing and Communications, AidKit (Remote)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.

Check out some of our other newsletters:
Startups Weekly
TechCrunch AI
TechCrunch Mobility

Got a tip?
tips@techcrunch.com

Want to advertise on TechCrunch? advertise@techcrunch.com

Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter.

Update your preferences here at any time

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Meet the OG of AI-powered art

View this email online in your browser

By Anthony Ha

Sunday, September 1, 2024

Image Credits: NightCafe

While NightCafe doesn't get the publicity of rivals like Midjourney, it's a pioneer in AI art generation. Kyle Wiggers profiles the 5-year-old Australian startup, which has bootstrapped its way to profitability "most months" and now has more than 25 million users.

Borrowing its name from a Vincent van Gogh painting, NightCafe started out as an AI art marketplace that offered image-generation tools for free. But those tools turned out to be the company's real business.

"We're a UI and community company," said co-founder Elle Russell. "NightCafe doesn't have any internal AI or machine learning capability; we aggregate the available image models and make them fun and accessible to use."

Keep reading to see what else TechCrunch is covering this week.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: Matt Winkelmeyer / Staff / Getty Images

The Grammy Awards and AI: The music industry's Grammy Awards recently announced it would start accepting submissions created with artificial intelligence. Dominic-Madori Davis speaks with Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy (which is responsible for the Grammys), about what is and isn't allowed. Read more

It's true, many home robots still suck: Brian Heater looks at why the industry hasn't advanced much beyond the Roomba. Apparently, it isn't due to a lack of consumer demand or manufacturer interest. Instead, blame pricing, functionality and efficacy. Read more

Rounding up Africa's biggest startup exits: Africa has seen some significant exits, including InstaDeep (acquired by BioNTech for $550 million) and Paystack (acquired by Stripe for more than $200 million). Tage Kene-Okafor highlights the continent's biggest deals. Read more

What else we're reading 📖

After the outcry around the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France last weekend, The New York Times published an in-depth profile of Durov's life and career. The profile focuses on his anti-establishment streak, which seems to have put a target on his back. Read more

Also, Wired interviewed Signal president Meredith Whittaker about surveillance capitalism and what comes next for the encrypted messaging app. Read more

Before you go

Possibly the purest joy I've seen in weeks: Winona Ryder visits the Criterion Closet.