Hello friends, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering the past week (or so) of tech industry happenings. This week marked the first OpenAI development conference, where the Microsoft-backed ai startup announced a series of new products. But that was far from the only highlight.
In this edition of WiR, we highlight Brian’s review of the 16-inch MacBook Air M3 Max and the 24-inch iMac M3; Mozilla is committed to a future of decentralized social networks; Ford shut down a company that was creating an app for plumbers, electricians and other trades; and Tim Cook’s thoughts on generative ai. Also on the agenda is WeWork officially filing for bankruptcy, Bumble getting a new CEO, and the spectacular failure of electric vehicle startup Arrival.
As always, there is a lot to overcome, so we won’t delay. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already.
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OpenAI organizes a development day: OpenAI hosted its first developer conference on Monday and the company had a lot to talk about. Some of the most notable items announced were tools for creating custom “GPTs” (i.e. domain-specific chatbots), new text-to-speech models, an API for the DALL-E 3 text-to-image model, and an improved version. Version of OpenAI’s flagship model, GPT-4, called GPT-4 Turbo.
Attack on Mac: Brian reviewed Apple’s new 16-inch M3 Max MacBook Pro and 24-inch M3 iMac. He found the iMac lacking and not necessarily worth upgrading from the 2021 model, except for the M3 chip, which brings “impressive” performance improvements over the already powerful M1. As for the M3 Max MacBook Pro, Brian reports that at $2,500 (plus some expensive add-ons), he successfully splits the difference between the Mac Studio and the MacBook Air.
Mozilla is committed to a decentralized future: Sarah spoke with Mozilla Senior Director of Content Carolyn O’Hara, who outlined Mozilla’s strategy when it comes to “fediverse”: a collection of decentralized social media apps, like Mastodon, that communicate with each other via of the ActivityPub protocol. The idea, O’Hara said, is to rethink social media from the ground up.
Ford closes SaaS app for field work: Ford has shut down VIIZR, a software-as-a-service company that, along with Salesforce, created an app to help tradespeople like plumbers, locksmiths and electricians schedule field appointments, send invoices and manage customers, Kirsten reports. VIIZR, which was announced in December 2021, was an independent company majority owned by Ford, with Salesforce as a minority investor.
Apple bets on generative ai: Apple CEO Tim Cook rejected the idea that the company was behind in ai on Apple’s fourth-quarter earnings call with investors, highlighting technological developments Apple had recently made that “would not be possible without ai.” Cook also said that Apple was working on generative artificial intelligence technologies, crediting ai-catch-up-efforts-report-.html#:~:text=Apple%20is%20on%20track%20to,Siri%2C%20Messages%20and%20Apple%20Music.” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>reports suggesting the company is on track to spend $1 billion a year developing generative ai products.
WeWork goes bankrupt: As predicted, flexible office space company WeWork filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing more than $18.6 billion in debt in a notable collapse for the once high-flying startup co-founded by Adam Neumann and funded by SoftBank, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.
Slack’s loss, Bumble’s gain: Dating app Bumble announced something extraordinary this week: It’s replacing founding CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd with Slack CEO Lidiane Jones. Jones just started as CEO at Slack last year, replacing another founding CEO, Stewart Butterfield. Ron and Sarah write that while Bumble now has a clear line of succession, the move leaves Slack in a bind.
Arrival does not deliver: Arrival set out eight years ago to make electric vehicle production “radically more efficient.” So far, its plan to forego the gigafactory for local microfactories has turned out to be just the opposite, Harri writes, thanks to missed production targets, low cash reserves, layoffs and a pivot.
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It’s winter, it’s not getting any warmer (at least here in New York) and I’d say there’s no better place to be than curled up indoors with a podcast for company. If you need stuff, TechCrunch has some that should definitely be on your radar.
this week in Equity, the team delved into the encouraging signs in the fintech startup market, starting with Klarna’s third-quarter results. From there, they analyzed buy now, pay later consumer behavior and 2021-flavored fintech fundraising results.
Meanwhile, Found featured Nasrat Khalid of Aseel, which started as an e-commerce company that allowed local artisans in Afghanistan to sell to customers around the world. He has evolved into working in humanitarian aid, delivering emergency food supplies to people in need in Afghanistan and Turkey.
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TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys, which you’ll find out if you’re already a subscriber. If not, consider registering. Here are some highlights from this week:
Another disappointment of superconductors: Tim writes that a new supposedly room-temperature superconducting material is not what the scientific community expected it to be. With the paper published in Nature detailing the material facing shrinkage, the chances of researchers discovering a room-temperature superconductor look even higher.
Clarity is approaching an IPO: Mary Ann and Alex write that Swedish fintech Klarna is taking steps toward an eventual IPO. The company has begun a legal entity restructuring process to establish a holding company in the United Kingdom as an important initial step in its plans for an initial public offering, a Klarna spokesperson told TechCrunch+.
The unicorn legacy is not over: It’s been 10 years since Cowboy Ventures founder Aileen Lee coined an incredibly catchy nickname for what were very rare startups at the time: Unicorns. TechCrunch+ spoke with Lee about how she feels about the term 10 years later, now that her venture firm is also a decade old.
