Friday, October 18, 2024

Byju’s founder says his edtech startup is now worth ‘zero’

Friday, October 18, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we have Byju's founder talking about the company's failure, Tesla's FSD being investigated, more turmoil at Automattic, and Yandex's re-entry into the Nasdaq under a new moniker. We've also got details X selling users' tweets for AI training, new offerings from Perplexity, climate tech's embrace of defense funds, and more. Let's go! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Paul Yeung / Bloomberg / Getty Images

1. From hero to zero: Indian edtech Byju's was once valued at $22 billion. Now, the startup's founder says it's effectively worth "zero." How did the company get here? The founder explains. Read More

2. Tesla FSD is under federal investigation after reports of four crashes in low-visibility situations, in one of which a pedestrian was killed. This comes a week after Elon Musk unveiled Tesla's robotaxi prototype and said unsupervised FSD was coming next year. Read More

3. Is Automattic okay? Days after 159 employees accepted CEO Matt Mullenweg's offer of a six-month severance package, the company floated a nine-month deal to anyone on staff who disagreed with the company's fight with WP Engine and wanted to quit. Read More

Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Nebius / CEO Arkady Volozh

☁️ From Russia with stock: Nebius, formerly known as Yandex, is trading once again on the Nasdaq after a hiatus following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Now it aims to become one of Europe's leading GPU-as-a-service players. Read More

👀 Your tweets are on sale: X has updated its privacy policy so now third-party "collaborators" will be able to train their AI models on your posts, unless you opt out. Read More

🌎 Worldcoin steps away from crypto: Sam Altman's "proof of personhood" crypto project that scans people's eyeballs has a new name: World. It used to be Worldcoin. Tools for Humanity, the startup behind the project, also announced its next-gen iris-scanning "Orbs." Read More

🇸🇦 General Catalyst hits the Middle East: General Catalyst reportedly plans to invest in Saudi Arabian fintech startup Lean Technology despite the country being blamed for human rights abuses. The door swings both ways, though: Many U.S. firms have been taking money from Saudi's Public Investment Fund. Read More

Around the Web

🖥️ Perplexity looks to the enterprise: Perplexity is leaning towards enterprises with its new Internal Knowledge Search, which lets users search for information across both the web and their companies' internal database, per VentureBeat. Read More

🪑 Google sees some reshuffling: Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's top exec overseeing search and ad products, is leaving the role amid antitrust investigations into both revenue verticals, reports The Wall Street Journal. He'll be succeeded by Nick Fox, a Google search exec. Read More

🚀 Defense has entered the chat: Axios reports that climate startups are increasingly turning to the military for funding, and shifting from sustainability to national security. Honestly, what company isn't tapping the DoD for those sweet government contracts these days? Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Al Drago/Bloomberg / Getty Images

🙇 In or out: Amazon employees are not happy about the company's return-to-office mandate, but it feels like that's the outcome AWS CEO Matt Garman expected. He reportedly told employees to either come in or quit – no doubt a less expensive way of trimming a workforce than doing layoffs. Read More