Twitch streamer’s PS5 giveaway sparks riot in Union Square
Twitch streamers Kai Cenat and Fanum invited fans to Union Square on Friday for a real-life stream and giveaway. They promised to hand out gift cards, gaming PC equipment and PlayStation 5s. But the IRL stream descended into chaos as frenzied fans rioted over the giveaway, shutting down lower Manhattan
Read morePony, investor Toyota partner to ‘mass produce’ robotaxis in China
Autonomous-driving company Pony.ai and Toyota say they’re teaming up with the goal of one day cranking out a bunch of “fully driverless robotaxis.” The two companies intend to kick off their partnership sometime this year with around $139 million in capital from GAC Toyota Motor Co. — a joint venture
Read moreSoftBank sues IRL over ‘elaborate scheme’ that swallowed $150M
SoftBank once invested in social app IRL at a $1.1 billion valuation. Now, the Japanese investment firm is suing the defunct company for fraud, alleging $150 million in damages. IRL was supposedly poised to become an event organizing alternative for Gen Z, who are using Facebook less and less. Its
Read moreHate your commute? Googlers can sleep on campus at a discount
The pandemic disrupted the office in a fundamental way. Remote work turned from a nice perk to a way of life for many. It’s an abrupt change for a tech industry that has a long history of rolling out perks to keep employees in the office for as long as
Read moreAI is going 4-dimensional
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday morning. State-sponsored bad actors have long been able to make “deepfake” videos that are good enough to trick unsophisticated viewers — and probably some more clued-in folks, too. That sort of work takes significant processing
Read moreAI chip startup Tenstorrent lands $100M investment from Hyundai and Samsung
The appetite for hardware to train AI models is voracious. AI chips are forecast to account for up to 20% of the $450 billion total semiconductor market by 2025, according to McKinsey. And Insight Partners, the VC firm, projects that sales of AI chips will climb to $83.3 billion in
Read moreAmazon Music teams up with Bandsintown to let fans shop merch from popular artists
Amazon Music announced a new merch integration with concert discovery platform Bandsintown to allow more than 590,000 artists to promote their merchandise on the Bandsintown website and app. Previously, artists could only link their Shopify store. The new merchandise featured on Bandsintown is from the Amazon Music Artist Merch Shop
Read moreTechCrunch+ Roundup: How pitch decks fail, inside the AI hype cycle, budgeting for a downturn
When I’m dining out in unfamiliar territory, I’ll usually find a restaurant on the beaten path — if a place has no customers, it makes me leery. Tech investors have similar appetites when it comes to follow-on investment, writes Champ Suthipongchai, co-founder and general partner at deep tech VC firm
Read moreSoftware and the Allee effect
The Allee effect is named after Warder Clyde Allee who added a term to the famous logistic equation. His added term is highlighted in blue. Here N is the population of a species over time, r is the intrinsic rate of increase, K is the carrying capacity, and A is
Read moreNikola CEO steps down, replaced by chairman
EV truck maker Nikola Corp. said Friday that president/CEO Michael Lohscheller is leaving the top executive positions due to a family health issue. He will be replaced by board chairman Steve Girsky, a former GM board member and the CEO of the special purpose acquisition company that merged with Nikola
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