Welcome, welcome, friends, to Week in Review, TechCrunch’s regular column summarizing the past week in news. If you want to receive it in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here. I hope you are sitting comfortably with a hot drink on this wintry Saturday afternoon. Waiting for Greg’s signature? Don’t worry, you’re still on paternity leave, as I mentioned in the January 7 issue. Everything’s okay.
Before I get down to it, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note, once again, that TC Early Stage in Boston is on the horizon. With tickets starting at $99, it’ll be a worthwhile stop on the Eastern speaking circuit, packed with expert-led workshops, case studies, and deep dives with technical founders. Some members of TechCrunch’s editorial staff will be in attendance; don’t be a stranger if you see us on the show floor.
most read
ChatGPT goes professional: OpenAI this week signaled that it will soon start charging for ChatGPT, its AI-powered viral chatbot that can write essays, emails, poems and even computer code. A “pro” version of the tool called ChatGPT Professional will not throw windows of unavailability, no limitation and an unlimited number of messages with ChatGPT: “at least 2 times the normal daily limit”. The price is still up in the air.
Microsoft 365 goes basic: Microsoft will introduce a lower-cost tier of Microsoft 365, its family of cloud-based document editing services and productivity software, starting January 30, the company announced Wednesday. Called Microsoft 365 Basic and priced at $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year, the plan will initially include 100GB of storage, Outlook email, and access to support experts for help with Microsoft 365 and Windows 11.
Layoffs hit a news aggregator: SmartNews, the Tokyo-based news aggregation website and app, laid off 40% of its US and Chinese workforce, or about 120 people, my colleagues. Sarah Y kirsten report. The company was hit by the same macroeconomic factors that have led to a spate of layoffs in the tech industry in recent months, plus complications stemming from Apple’s implementation of App Tracking Transparency, or ATT.
Robotics too: Brian reports that this week, Alphabet joined the growing list of tech giants cutting staff amid ongoing economic struggles. The company’s robot software firm, Intrinsic, laid off 40 employees, a move that comes less than a year after Intrinsic acquired Vicarious and Open Robotics, the latter announced less than a month ago.
Licensed fun: Dungeons & Dragons content creators are fighting to protect their livelihoods, amanda he writes in a sobering deep dive. Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the Hasbro-owned publisher of the game, plans to update the game’s license for the first time in over 22 years, launching a new licensing system that would require any D&D content creator earning more than $ 750,000 in revenue. pay a 25% royalty to the company for every dollar over that threshold. In a bit of good newsWotC has delayed the implementation of the licensing scheme, following widespread backlash.
Colors, but electronic ink: One of the coolest gadgets to emerge from the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show is E Ink’s color displays, harry writes They can spit out 50,000 colors at 300 DPI, well, far above the last-gen model’s 4,000-color maximum. E Ink says it aims to use them to create a magazine reading experience that’s good enough to win over even the most demanding publishers.
Keys per days: My colleague (and boss!) Frederick reviewed the Keychron Q10 this week, a keyboard similar to Keychron’s other Alice-style board, but smaller. It passed the gasket mounting and silicone gaskets, which give a bit of flex while reducing ping and other noise. As for Alice’s layout (the keys aren’t in a straight line, but the left and right half are slightly angled), she said it was easy to get used to, and she appreciated that the five macro buttons below the knob could be assigned to anything you wanted. . Read the full review to learn more.
Welcome home, Welcome Homes: in a profile, maria anna pulls back the curtains on Welcome Homes, a tech startup launched by the co-founders of cloud service provider DigitalOcean. The New York City-based firm, which recently raised $29 million, offers people a way to design and build new homes online, similar to other venture-backed companies (e.g. Atmos, Homebound) trying to address the housing shortage.
I hear false voices: Microsoft’s new VALL-E AI model can replicate a voice using just three seconds of audio from the target speaker. But as my colleague Devin writes, it’s not necessarily cause for alarm, or rather, cause for more alarm than voice duplication technology already warranted. Voice replication has been the subject of intense research for years, and the results have been good enough to spur many startups, including WellSaid, Papercup, and Respeecher. VALL-E is simply the latest illustration of its potential and dangers.
Medium joins Mastodon: Online publishing startup Medium, originally created by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, is embracing the open source social platform Mastodon. Sarah reports that Medium has created its own instance: i.dm — to support authors and their publications with a reliable infrastructure, moderation, and a short domain name to make it easier for authors to share their usernames, among other things.
audio summary
As always, TechCrunch had a winning lineup of audio content this week for your listening pleasure, though might be a bit biased Start-up focused found, Neesha Tambe, TechCrunch startup battlefield editor, spoke with Sheeba Dawood, co-founder of clean energy technology provider Minerva Lithium, about the struggles she faces as a woman of color trying to innovate in the mineral manufacturing industry And what’s next for the company? TC Dedicated Crypto Show, Chain reaction, featured an interview with Polygon Labs, one of the biggest market shakers and Layer 2 blockchains in the crypto space building on top of the Ethereum ecosystem. Meanwhile in Equity, Natasha, Mary Ann and Becca discussed the incoming deals from Inflow, Deel and Fidelity; dismissals and trials in Charter; Microsoft’s much-rumored investment in ChatGPT and OpenAI; and the debut of SBF’s Substack.
TechCrunch+
This is your regular reminder to sign up for TC+ if you haven’t already. It’s where TC takes a comprehensive and exclusive look at emerging trends, industries and technologies. Here is some of the most popular content on TC+ this week:
Crypto roller coaster: While some crypto-focused venture capitalists are bullish on 2023, others see it as a dangerous time. jaquelyn reports. Internal sentiment among VCs is a “wait and see” game, according to a source cited in the article; Competition in the market is likely to intensify as investors write fewer checks and become more selective.
ChatGPT, meet VC: Some investors are (cautiously) incorporating ChatGPT into their workflows, as a result. With ChatGPT being a specifically text-based support tool, automation could work its way into rejection letters, market maps, or even due diligence parts, TC found, all to stay afloat in a changing business landscape. natasha m., christinaY I have more.
Pivot when you’re ready: Pivots are not necessarily bad news. Brian Casey writes about how he pivoted his deep-tech startup into a Software-as-a-Service company, though not without major challenges. In his words, “Moving from hardware to SaaS was the right move for our electric motor design startup, but the process wasn’t exactly linear.”
