In early 2018, VC Mike Moritz wrote in the FT that “Silicon Valley would be wise to follow China’s lead,” noting the pace of work at tech companies was “furious” and that China offered “investment opportunities in the best companies.”
Soon after, it all imploded. Worse, as the FT notes in a new piece, between the pandemic, the bursting of a real estate bubble, tensions between the U.S. and China and, most of all, a sweeping government crackdown on tech companies, China may never fully rebound, even as the government claims to be done with its alleged clean-up efforts. It’s just not worth it to entrepreneurs to rebuild what they’ve lost.
Entrepreneurs believe that “their money is the country’s money,” says one former mogul to the FT about the state of China today. As for the VCs and PE execs who fueled the earlier boom, another source tells the outlet: “Now they’re depressed. You don’t see them anymore.”
In early 2018, VC Mike Moritz wrote in the FT that “Silicon Valley would be wise to follow China’s lead,” noting the pace of work at tech companies was “furious”…
Fei-Fei Li, the Stanford professor many deem the “Godmother of AI,” has raised $230 million for her new startup, World Labs, from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Radical Ventures.…
Bolt says it has settled its long-standing lawsuit with its investor Activant Capital. One-click payments startup Bolt is settling the suit by buying out the investor’s stake “after which Activant…
The rise of neobanks has been fascinating to witness, as a number of companies in recent years have grown from merely challenging traditional banks to being massive players in and…
OpenAI released its new o1 models on Thursday, giving ChatGPT users their first chance to try AI models that pause to “think” before they answer. There’s been a lot of…
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Investors rebel as TuSimple pivots from self-driving trucks to AI gaming
TuSimple, once a buzzy startup considered a leader in self-driving trucks, is trying to move its assets to China to fund a new AI-generated animation and video game business. The pivot has not only puzzled and enraged several shareholders, but also threatens to pull the company back into a legal…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week…
Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator will expand the number of cohorts it runs each year from two to four starting in 2025, Bloomberg reported Thursday, and TechCrunch confirmed today.…
Telegram has had a tough few weeks. The messaging app’s founder, Pavel Durov, was arrested in late August and later released on a €5 million bail in France, charged with…
Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, will tackle one of the most pressing issues facing today’s tech world — AI regulation — only at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, taking…
Christina Cacioppo, CEO and co-founder of Vanta, will be on the SaaS Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 to reveal how Vanta is redefining security and compliance automation and driving innovation…
On Thursday, cybersecurity giant Fortinet disclosed a breach involving customer data. In a statement posted online, Fortinet said an individual intruder accessed “a limited number of files” stored on a…
Meta has confirmed that it’s restarting efforts to train its AI systems using public Facebook and Instagram posts from its U.K. userbase. The company claims it has “incorporated regulatory feedback” into a…
Following the moves of other tech giants, Spotify announced on Friday it’s introducing in-app parental controls in the form of “managed accounts” for listeners under the age of 13. The…
Uber users in Austin and Atlanta will be able to hail Waymo robotaxis through the app in early 2025 as part of a partnership between the two companies.
There are plenty of calendar and scheduling apps that take care of your professional life and help you slot in meetings with your teammates and work collaborators. Howbout is all…
Delhivery claims Ecom Express has inaccurately represented Delhivery’s business metrics when drawing comparisons in its IPO filing.
It was a matter of time, but Apple is going to allow third-party app stores on the iPad starting next week, on September 16. This change will occur with the…
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has delivered its provisional ruling in a longstanding battle to combine two of the country’s major telecommunication operators. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says that…
Late Thursday evening, Oprah Winfrey aired a special on AI, appropriately titled “AI and the Future of Us.” Guests included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, tech influencer Marques Brownlee, and current…
Antonio Moraes, the grandson of a late prominent Brazilian billionaire, was never interested in joining the family-owned conglomerate of construction companies and a bank. Shortly after graduating from college, he…
A crew of four private astronauts made history in the early hours of Thursday when they opened the hatch of their SpaceX Dragon capsule and conducted the first commercial spacewalk. …
Keith Rabois, managing director of Khosla Ventures, was having dinner with a “very successful CEO” in October 2018 when the CEO asked him a question: How many people does it…
By making the AI info label harder to find, it might be easier for users to be deceived by content that was edited with AI, especially as editing tools become…
Cohost, a would-be X rival launched to the public in June 2022, is shutting down, the company announced via the social network’s staff account earlier this week. The service had…
At the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) on Wednesday night, new technology allowed fans to shop their favorite artists’ styles as they appeared on the screen. Though the drama from…
Working away on his PhD in Munich only a few years ago, Stephan Herrmann (now a doctor) couldn’t have conceived of a time when his idea for a carbon-negative power…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code…
