Hello once more! Greg right here once more with Week in Review. WiR is the publication the place we take probably the most learn TechCrunch tales from the final seven days and wrap them up in as few phrases as potential — no fluff, no nonsense,* only a fast blast of the whole lot you in all probability wish to find out about in tech this week.
*Maybe a bit of little bit of nonsense.
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most learn
Tip your Amazon driver (on Amazon’s dime): If you’ve acquired an Alexa gadget at residence, Amazon pays your supply driver an additional $5 in the event you say, “Alexa, thank my driver” after a supply. Amazon may, in fact, simply pay drivers extra to start with…however that, depressingly, in all probability wouldn’t be a transfer that may get Amazon one of the learn headlines of the week.
Slack’s CEO to depart: Last week Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor stepped down; this week, Stewart Butterfield, CEO of (Salesforce-owned) Slack, introduced he’ll additionally step down come January. Ron Miller shares his insights on inbound Slack CEO Lidiane Jones and her a long time of product expertise.
The “Twitter Files”: “Elon Musk reminded his followers on Friday that owning Twitter now means he controls every aspect of the company — including what its employees said behind closed doors before he took over,” writes Taylor as an array of once-private inside Twitter communications is made public.
Lensa AI goes viral: Do your entire social media buddies out of the blue have avatars that make them appear to be sci-fi gods and motion heroes? It’s in all probability due to Lensa AI, a photograph modifying app that went viral this week after including help for Stable Diffusion’s AI-generated artwork instruments. Popularity didn’t come with out controversy, although — many proceed to debate the ethics of promoting one thing generated by an AI skilled on the works of actual individuals; in the meantime, others famous that the AI may very well be “tricked” into producing in any other case disallowed NSFW imagery.
More tech layoffs: This week Airtable laid off about 20% of its employees — over 250 individuals. Plaid additionally laid off 20%, which for them works out to 260 individuals. African fintech unicorn Chipper Cash let go of fifty individuals, and the U.Ok. drag-and-drop e-commerce platform Primer let go of 85 (about one-third of the corporate).
Google combines Maps/Waze groups: When Google purchased the navigation app Waze for over $1 billion again in 2013, Google mentioned they’d hold the Waze and Google Maps groups separate “for now.” Turns out “for now” meant about 9.5 years, however Google confirmed this week that the 2 groups shall be merged. Google says it expects Waze to stay a stand-alone service.
Twitter Blue may cost a little extra on iOS: Twitter’s $8 “Blue” subscription plan (which comes with a blue “verified” checkmark) remains to be on pause for now after a few false begins, however when it returns, it’ll reportedly value a couple of dollars extra in the event you subscribe via the iOS app with the intention to offset Apple’s minimize.
audio roundup
Found — our podcast about founders and the businesses they construct — has a brand new co-host! Becca Szkutak stepped into the function this week, becoming a member of Darrell Etherington in a chat with Daye CEO Valentina Milanova. Meanwhile, the Equity crew tried to make sense of 2022 in a year-end look again, and Taylor Hatmaker hopped on The TechCrunch Podcast to discover what the sudden explosion of AI-generated artwork means for precise human artists.
TechCrunch+
Here’s what subscribers have been studying most on TechCrunch+:
Investors sound the alarm about potential non-public fairness tech offers: “Who wants to sell when prices are low?” Ron Miller and Alex Willhelm ask.
Rootine’s $10M pitch deck: “If you told me that a company that’s charging $70 per month for multivitamins would be able to raise a $10 million round, I’d demand to see the receipts,” writes Haje. With that in thoughts, he dives deep into the pitch deck that helped make it occur.