OpenAI unleashes GPT-4, SVB files for bankruptcy, PE firm acquires Pornhub
Welcome to this week’s review. It’s TechCrunch’s regular round-up of his tech week. His GPT-4, an AI that understands text and images from OpenAI, may have dominated the headlines for the last few days. But a new drama has surfaced around the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.
In this edition, we’ll cover all that and more, so grab a cup of coffee and chill out.
a quick note, TechCrunch 2023 Early Stage is approaching. Held in Boston on April 20th, his three courses of workshops for founders, case studies, and deep dives with tech entrepreneurship experts will run simultaneously.Further down, mark your calendar TechCrunch Disrupt 2023takes place September 19-21 in San Francisco. As usual, it’s jam-packed with roundtable discussions, hearths, Q&As, and showcases of notables in their fields. you won’t want to miss it.
Now let’s move on to the news.
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OpenAI Debuts GPT-4: After much anticipation, OpenAI, an AI startup with major backing from Microsoft, release A powerful new AI model called GPT-4. GPT-4 can generate text and accept image and text input. It’s an improvement over its text-only predecessor, and performs “human-level” on various benchmarks. But GPT-4 isn’t perfect. Like most other generative text AIs, this model “hallucinates” facts and makes inference errors.
Microsoft is fully committed to AI. Leveraging the latest in OpenAI, including GPT-4, Microsoft has announced new AI-powered capabilities across its Copilot-branded suite of productivity tools. Copilot handles different tasks depending on the app being used. For example, in Word, Copilot creates, edits, summarizes, and generates text. For PowerPoint and Excel, Copilot transforms natural language commands into designed presentations and data visualizations. In Power Apps, Copilot helps refine your low-code software ideas.
SVB file for bankruptcy: After a week trading suspended For SVB Financial and later Regulators have taken the lead SVB Financial, the holding company of Silicon Valley Bank and other subsidiaries, has taken the next logical step.bank on friday announced Formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. This means that SVB Financial can and will apply to the courts to resume its activities while finding buyers for its assets, including moving forward with plans to sell SVB Securities and SVB Capital.
YouTube TV price increases: In a move sure to frustrate cord cutters, YouTube has announced YouTube TV subscriptions will be increased to $72.99 per month, an increase of $8 from the current $64.99 per month. The Google-owned company blames the rising “content costs” of the change. (Not coincidentally, the recent YouTube TV announced a streaming deal and NFL Sunday Ticket, which is reportedly worth $2 billion per season. )
Via acquires Citymapper: transportation startup viarecently raised $110 million on $3.5 billion evaluation, robbed city mapperis a London startup behind the popular city map app of the same name. Originally, Alternatives to apps like Google Maps For consumers planning to travel in metropolitan areas using public transit, Citymapper probably couldn’t really capitalize on its momentum and early promise.
Failures of Baidu’s ChatGPT rival: Other AI news this week was dominated by Chinese search giant Baidu’s response to ChatGPT, Ernie Bot. TechCrunch wasn’t able to test it, but industry observers both in China and abroad pointed to the fact that rather than introducing Ernie through a live demo, Baidu chose a lengthy presentation with pre-recorded Ernie’s answers. The company’s shares fell as much as 10% in Hong Kong following Lee’s presentation.
Pornhub Meets Private Equity: MindGeek — owner of several adult entertainment sites such as Pornhub, Brazzers and Redtube — Acquisition Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners (ECP). The acquisition follows a difficult few years for the porn giant. MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo left the company in June 2022. multiple lawsuit It claims to have knowingly profited from child sexual abuse material.
Cooking customers in the dark: Two weeks after the US satellite TV giant was hit by a ransomware attack, Dish’s customers are still looking for answers. In a public document released on February 28, Dish confirmed that ransomware was the cause of the ongoing outage, stating that hackers had “potentially” exfiltrated data, including customer personal information, from its systems. I warned you to steal it. However, Dish has not provided any substantive updates since then, despite customers continuing to experience issues and not knowing if their personal data has been compromised.
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TechCrunch’s steady stream of quality podcasts is growing by the hour. (People with long commutes will be pleased.) This week stock, Alex and Natasha We covered the M&A frenzy that acquired Qualtrics, Cvent, and Mint Mobile, the demise of SVB, what happened after GPT-4, and why Y Combinator is scaling back from the late stages.and foundin the meantime, Amanda and Darrell We spoke with Teddy Solomon, co-founder of Fizz.In the interview, he discusses what Gen Z wants from social media, how to moderate a platform like Fizz from the ground up, and what this kind of community building is about. We touched on possibilities far beyond college.
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TC+ subscribers have access to detailed commentary, analysis, and research. You will know this if you are already a subscriber. If not, Consider signing upHere are this week’s highlights:
Revisiting points of failure: Natasha M. writes that in light of the SVB demise, perhaps founders should rethink relying on one person to make a business successful. She surveyed many early-stage founders who are starting companies with Series A funding or less to understand how they think about succession. The consensus is that in a world where founders focus on runways, product and market fit, and growth, it’s not, or even is, a top priority.
Weird things going on in Unearthly Materials: Tim We report on Unearthly Materials, a startup that claims a high-profile investor behind a technology that could lead to a breakthrough in superconductors. But as it turns out, not all of those investors were on board, especially given his Unearthly Materials’ questionable record.
Good news for software companies: Are you depressed by the news from this week? Alex It writes that it is not all doom and gloom. Some software companies are doing extremely well during the broader tech industry crash.