Google said today that it’s bringing its multi-search feature — which allows users to search using both images and text — to India. The company said at its Google for India event on Monday that the feature will be available in English starting today and support Hindi at a later date.

The feature will allow users to use a photo of a clothing pattern, for instance, and add text like “dress” to look up dresses with that pattern. Multisearch was first announced in April, and the company made it available to US-based users in October.

The search giant separately said that it will also allow users to search within YouTube videos. This feature, which will be available on the Google Search app, will enable users to type a phrase after tapping on the “Search in the video.” You can search for a phrase and the results will show you occurrences of it in the video.

Google also said that it is improving speech detection for people who are looking up for voiced queries in the Hinglish language. For instance, if someone asked “Sparrow ko Hindi mai kya kehte hai” (what do you call a sparrow in Hindi), the earlier model didn’t detect this properly.

What’s more, Google already allows users in India to look at search result pages in both English and Hindi at the same time. Now, the company plans to extend this to Tamil, Telegu, Marathi, and Bengali languages next year.

The company said that it will make some of these options easily available through shortcuts in the Google app on iOS and extend them to Android at a later stage.

Google brings multi-search and in-video search features to India by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

A significant number of doctors write medicine prescriptions in haste, making it nearly impossible for their patients to understand what they scribbled. This problem has been around for decades and many tech firms have attempted to solve it with little to no success.

Now Google is having a go at translating those unfathomable texts.

The search giant announced at its annual conference in India Monday that it is working with pharmacists to work out the handwriting of doctors.

The feature, which will be rolled out on Google Lens, will allow users to either take a picture of the prescription or upload one from the photo library.

Once the image is processed, the app detects the medicines mentioned in the note, a Google executive showed in a demonstation.

The company didn’t immediately share when it plans to release the new capability to the masses. Google said India has the highest number of Google Lens users in the world.

Google for India is the company’s annual event in the South Asian market, where it showcases dozens of new developments. The company also said it is working on a single, unified model to cover over 100 Indian languages for both speech and text to empower the internet journey of the next millions of individuals in the South Asian market.

India is a key market for Google, which has amassed over half a billion users in the country. But it’s also been one of the toughest years for Google in the South Asian market, where it has been slapped twice by India’s antitrust regulator in recent months.

Google can now decode doctors’ bad handwriting by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

You’ve likely heard of pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B and so on and so forth. These labels often aren’t super helpful because they aren’t clearly defined — we’ve seen very small Series A rounds and enormous pre-seed rounds. The defining characteristic of each round isn’t as much about how much money is changing hands as it is about how much risk is in the company.

On your startup’s journey, there are two dynamics at play at once. By deeply understanding them — and the connection between them — you’ll be able to make a lot more sense of your fundraising journey and how to think about each part of your startup pathway as you evolve and develop.

In general, in broad lines, the funding rounds tend to go as follows:

The 4 Fs: Founders, Friends, Family, Fools: This is the first money going into the company, usually just enough to start proving out some of the core tech or business dynamics. Here, the company is trying to build an MVP. In these rounds, you’ll often find angel investors of various degrees of sophistication.
Pre-seed: Confusingly, this is often the same as the above, except done by an institutional investor (i.e., a family office or a VC firm focusing on the earliest stages of companies). This is usually not a “priced round” — the company doesn’t have a formal valuation, but the money raised is on a convertible or SAFE note. At this stage, companies are typically not yet generating revenue.
Seed: This is usually institutional investors investing larger amounts of money into a company that has started proving some of its dynamics. The startup will have some aspect of its business up and running and may have some test customers, a beta product, a concierge MVP, etc. It won’t have a growth engine (in other words, it won’t yet have a repeatable way of attracting and retaining customers). The company is working on active product development and looking for product-market fit. Sometimes this round is priced (i.e., investors negotiate a valuation of the company), or it may be unpriced.
Series A: This is the first “growth round” a company raises. It will usually have a product in the market delivering value to customers and is on its way to having a reliable, predictable way of pouring money into customer acquisition. The company may be about to enter new markets, broaden its product offering or go after a new customer segment. A Series A round is almost always “priced,” giving the company a formal valuation.
Series B and beyond: At Series B, a company is usually off to the races in earnest. It has customers, revenue and a stable product or two. From Series B onward, you have Series C, D, E, etc. The rounds and the company get bigger. The final rounds are typically preparing a company for going into the black (being profitable), going public through an IPO or both.

For each of the rounds, a company becomes more and more valuable partially because it is getting an increasingly mature product and more revenue as it figures out its growth mechanics and business model. Along the way, the company evolves in another way, as well: The risk goes down.

That final piece is crucial in how you think about your fundraising journey. Your risk doesn’t go down as your company becomes more valuable. The company becomes more valuable as it reduces its risk. You can use this to your advantage by designing your fundraising rounds to explicitly de-risk the “scariest” things about your company.

Let’s take a closer look at where risk appears in a startup and what you can do as a founder to remove as much risk as possible at each stage of your company’s existence.

Where is the risk in your company?

Risk comes in many shapes and forms. When your company is at the idea stage, you may get together with some co-founders who have excellent founder-market fit. You have identified that there is a problem in the market. Your early potential customer interviews all agree that this is a problem worth solving and that someone is — in theory — willing to pay money to have this problem solved. The first question is: Is it even possible to solve this problem?

The fundraising stages are not about dollar values — they’re about risk by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

While people around the globe were watching a thrilling FIFA World Cup final, Twitter decided to drop a bombshell and banned links promoting other social networks. The list currently includes Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post. Plus, link-in-bio tools like Linktree and Lnk.Bio are also banned — these services are commonly used by both creators and businesses. Essentially, you can’t post links to your other social profiles or even type out your handle in a tweet.

The Elon Musk-owned company “no longer allows free promotion of certain social media platforms” on Twitter. The company said that it is removing all accounts “created solely for the purpose of promoting other social networks”. It also plans to remove links to content from above mentioned social platforms.

“We know that many of our users may be active on other social media platforms; however, going forward, Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms on Twitter,” the social platform said on its policy page.

Twitter will ask you to delete tweets if you link out your handles and multiple violations of this policy will result in a temporary account lock. The company said if you have links to any of these platforms in your bio, it will temporarily suspend your account and ask you to change your bio.

What’s interesting here is that the Musk-led company will let you post your handle if you pay for the tweet’s promotion.

On Saturday night, Twitter suspended the account of Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz. Lorenz had recently deleted all of her tweets and only had three posts on her account: two promoting her other social media accounts, and one asking Musk for comment on a story she is working on with Drew Harwell, a fellow Post writer. Harwell, along with reporters like the New York Times’ Ryan Mac and CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, was temporarily suspended after posting about how Mastodon’s Twitter was banned for linking to the Elon Jet Mastodon account. He and other journalists were reinstated after Musk posted a poll for users to vote on the journalists’ fate.

He and other journalists were reinstated after Musk posted a poll for users to vote on the journalists’ fate. When Lorenz posted her other social media handles, this policy did not yet exist. At the time of publication, her account appears to have been reinstated.

Twitter bans posting of handles and links to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and more by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

When Salesforce announced during its most recent earnings call that it wouldn’t be providing a revenue forecast for next year, it was a bit of a shock, especially coming from the most successful SaaS company in the world.

With revenue of over $7.8 billion for the quarter and a goal of reaching $50 billion by its fiscal 2026, the company hasn’t exactly been doing poorly. Still, when you combine the lack of a forecast with the recent executive exodus, it begins to paint a picture of unusual instability at the CRM giant.

First, let’s look at that forecast — or the lack of one. It seems the economy has become so uncertain that Salesforce opted out of a forecast for its fiscal 2024 altogether (the three months ending October 31, 2022, comprised the third quarter of the company’s fiscal 2023). We use the word unprecedented these days an awful lot, but it’s pretty darn unusual for a company like Salesforce to tell investors they’re punting on a forecast, and it’s the first time the CRM giant has ever done it.

Here’s what Salesforce CFO Amy Weaver told investors during the earnings call:

Before I close, I’d like to share a few thoughts on Fiscal Year ‘24. As discussed, we are experiencing a very unpredictable macro environment, as our customers are working to ensure their businesses are also healthy for the long term. Compounding that dynamic is an unprecedented foreign currency market. Therefore, at this time, we believe it would be premature to provide revenue guidance for the next fiscal year.

That would be enough to make anyone who has followed this company raise their eyebrows. But consider that Salesforce simultaneously dropped the bombshell that co-CEO Bret Taylor plans to step down.

The reason for that exit, ostensibly, was that Taylor was tired of life inside the big corporation and wanted to return to his roots as a company builder — to get back to basics, in other words. But that might not have been the whole story. The Wall Street Journal reported tension between the two leaders and that the resignation might not have come as far out of left field as we were led to believe. (You can pull your jaw off the floor; this is not the first time a company has tried to spin bad news as neutral.)

There were other shoes left to drop. The smaller of the two clogs was Mark Nelson, CEO at Tableau, announcing he was leaving. (Salesforce bought Tableau back in 2019). The more dramatic news item quickly followed: Slack co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield told his flock that he wanted to spend less time running a business and more time gardening and taking care of his child.

Slack quickly announced that Lidiane Jones, who had been GM of Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Experience Cloud (yes, that’s a lot of clouds), would replace Butterfield.

Let’s not forget that even prior to all of this, Salesforce had to deal with activist investor Starboard Value breathing down its neck, never a comfortable position. (The company stressed its cost-cutting efforts in its latest quarterly call, it’s worth noting.)

On paper, that feels like a lot of disturbing news in a short time. But what does it mean to the underlying financial stability of the company? As part of our year-end roundup at TechCrunch+, we decided to take a peek under the hood and see what’s happening. Is this a short-term glitch in a bad year for all SaaS companies or a series of moves that could be indicative of something more worrisome at Salesforce?

Inside the numbers

We have three goals: First, to look at Salesforce’s recent quarterly performance to see what we can infer about its health. Second, to wonder whether other companies are reporting similar results and forecasts. And, third, to ask if there is a lesson here for us technology watchers, especially regarding startups.

Salesforce ends 2022 in an unusually turbulent position by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

W

elcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it — and make sense of it — so you can stay in the know. — Mary Ann

As this year comes to a close, it’s an obviously fitting time to take a look back at some of the highlights (and lowlights) in the world of fintech news.

We started 2022 on a relatively high note. Mega rounds were still taking place! Decacorns were born. Venture capital was still readily available. Then sometime in the second quarter, things took a turn. And they’ve been turning ever since.

In deciding how to approach the final edition of this newsletter for the year, I was curious as to which of my stories performed the best. So I asked our incredible audience development manager, Alyssa Stringer, to pull my top 15 stories based on the number of page views. In summary, dear readers, it seems you all were most interested in coverage of companies at their peaks and in coverage of companies at their lowest. It was the best of times. And then it felt like the worst of times. And oh, many of you were curiously really curious about the concept of fractional real estate investing.

Here were my top 15 most-read stories on the TechCrunch site in 2022:

‘We probably pissed away $200 million,’ Better.com CEO told employees in layoffs meeting: A collab with the brilliant Zack Whittaker, where we got to hear for ourselves Vishal Garg address employees . . . and it wasn’t pretty.
Fast shuts doors after slow growth, high burn precluded fundraising options: A collab with my dear friend, TC+ editor and Equity podcast co-host Alex Wilhelm. Watching one-click checkout startup Fast crash and burn was certainly one of the biggest stories in fintech this year.
Ramp confirms new $8.1B valuation after ‘a nearly 10x’ YoY increase in revenue: The corporate spend startup had doubled its valuation from August 2021 to March 2022. The space in which it operates has only gotten more crowded. Meanwhile, the company has since expanded into new lines of business.
Fintech Roundup: Better.com workers leaving in ‘droves’ in wake of CEO Vishal Garg’s return: This one is particularly meaningful for me, as it was the soft launch of what would ultimately become The Interchange. Also, one of many Better.com-related scoops.
PayPal shuttering its San Francisco office: This one kinda surprised me, as it didn’t strike me as that major of news, but perhaps it was a sign of what was to come later in 2022.
Forerunner, Bezos back Arrived, a startup that lets you buy into single-family rentals for ‘as little as $100’: This nearly tied with the PayPal piece above. It got a lot of interest — perhaps it was a combination of the very compelling business model and the fact that Jeff Bezos was a backer.
Better.com employees learned of layoffs when severance checks appeared in payroll app: Another scoop that had many of us shaking our heads in wonder (and not in a good way).
Fintech Klarna reportedly raising at a $6.5B valuation, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘down round’: This perhaps marked an inflection point in 2022. When a company that was valued at $45 billion last year is raising at about 1/7 of that, people pay attention. The tide was turning in the fintech space, and this news made a lot of people very nervous, as it felt like proof that the party that was 2021 was over.
Better.com loses more senior execs as employees brace for another mass layoff: Another scoop that had many of us shaking our heads in wonder (and not in a good way).
The fintech layoffs just keep on coming: When 2022 began, the only layoffs I was covering were being conducted by Better.com. But by early November, it was sadly very apparent that layoffs were rampant across the fintech industry.
Alchemy, which aims to be the ‘de facto platform’ for developers to build on web3, is now valued at $10.2B: I wrote this back when I was still doing some crypto reporting. Alchemy grew a lot, very quickly. It might be a good time to check on them considering all that has happened in the crypto space since that raise.
Fintech Brex confirms $12.3B valuation, snaps up Meta exec to serve as its head of product: This published in January. By October, I was writing about the company’s layoffs. A lot went on in between, including the company’s controversial decision to stop serving SMBs.
Better.com plans to lay off about 4,000 people this week, sources say: You guessed it, another scoop.
Fintech startup Jeeves raises $180M, quadruples valuation to $2.1B in half a year: The velocity of Jeeves’s growth and valuation increase was impressive. A BaaS company in the corporate card and expense management space. But even as early as March, the startup’s CEO noted of the fundraising process: “The market looked very different in January and February than it did in December.”
Landa can make you a landlord with just $5: Like I said, it appears you all are really interested in fractional real estate investing, or maybe just a lot of people secretly want to become landlords.

It was an eventful, and at times nerve-racking, year that was far more than just the above. Venture dollars flowing into fintech slowed, just as with any other sector. Characters got called into question. But I remain hopeful. The companies that were doing meaningful things in 2021 and in 2022 will continue to do so. They may be spending more mindfully and working a bit more quietly — but IMHO, that’s not a bad thing. Fintech innovation remains more important than ever, especially as it pertains to inclusion and access. There are so many startups doing amazing work. We can’t let the few bad apples taint it all. I know there remains a long road ahead. We’re not done correcting the excesses of 2021. But I, for one, am excited for what fintech will bring in 2023. (Speaking of, check out the Equity team’s predictions for next year here.)

Weekly News

Banking app Copper launches a teen investing product

Visa to invest $1B in Africa over the next five years

Why Checkout.com lowered its internal valuation

Chime made two offers to buy DailyPay, topping out at $2 billion, but was spurned

Robinhood raised interest rates for Gold members — to 4% APY

Insurtech Vouch launches web3 protection policy, touts as first insurance designed specifically for web3 companies

London-based Wise says it is profitable and plans to hire over 250 new employees across three U.S. offices

Self Financial adds rent and utility reporting to its suite of credit-building products

Capchase, which provides ‘non-dilutive’ financing to SaaS companies, says revenue rose by 250% in 2022

Microsoft to acquire 4% stake in London Stock Exchange Group as part of 10-year cloud partnership

Highnote expands platform capabilities by certifying with Visa’s fleet payments solutions

India’s Paytm to spend up to $103 million to buy back shares

Funding and M&A

Poolit raises millions to turn accredited investors into LPs in VC, private equity funds

Nilus lands $8.5M led by Bessemer to automate your financial operations

Vic.ai raises $52M, shows that automating accounting processes can be profitable

London-based B2B fintech Bondaval raises $15M Series A

DataVisor raises $40M strategic growth funding

Plooto closes $20M Series B to help SMBs manage cash flow

Oyster raises $3.6M seed to launch its point-of-sale platform for personal insurance

Barcelona-based fintech Novicap raises a €200 million debt facility to fuel growth for businesses and organizations

Friendly PSA: We want you to join us in Boston on April 20 at TechCrunch Early Stage 2023, and we’ve got a great end-of-2022 discount to help you out with the rest of your holiday shopping. Register with this link by 11:59 p.m. PST on December 31 and book a Founder Pass for just $75 — regularly $149! Early Stage is TechCrunch’s one-day founder summit, where you’ll get actionable advice and takeaways from top experts, meet other entrepreneurs taking similar journeys, share your own experiences and build the confidence to take the next steps toward growing your business. Don’t wait — book your Founder Pass today for just $75 with this link!

And with that, I will sign off. This is the last newsletter I’ll publish in 2022. I don’t know where this year went, and to be honest, in many ways it was really, really hard. But there were also a lot of bright spots, including growing this newsletter audience and having the honor of sharing this content with all of you. Thank you again. Happy holidays to all of you, and Happy and Healthy New Year! May it be a better, brighter and wonderful year. xoxo, Mary Ann

A look back at the world of fintech in 2022 by Mary Ann Azevedo originally published on TechCrunch

Hello, hello! Greg here again with Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the most read TechCrunch stories from the past seven days. Been too busy to read tech news? WiR should leave you with a pretty good idea of what people were reading/talking/tweeting about.

Want it in your inbox every Saturday AM? Here’s the link.

Oh! And before we dive in, a bit of a plug: I’m told we’ve got a handful of “Founder” tickets left for the TC Early Stage event coming to Boston next year. These tickets let current/prospective founders get into the (seriously excellent) event for just $149, and they’re letting us bump that down to $75 for Week in Review readers. Get ’em herewhile supplies last.

most read

Twitter vs. ElonJet: Another wild one at Twitter this week. First came the news that @ElonJet, an account that tracked the whereabouts of Elon’s private jet, had been suspended. Then the official account of Twitter-competitor Mastodon got suspended (with links to Mastodon flagged as “potentially harmful”) shortly after posting about said jet trackers. Then a bunch of tech reporters all got suspended, at least some of whom had been tweeting about the jet tracker ordeal. And then — yes, there’s more! — Elon joined a Twitter Space that featured a handful of said suspended reporters (with Twitter Spaces seemingly not recognizing/respecting the suspensions); after a few minutes of questions, Elon left the session and the entire Twitter Spaces feature was taken offline.

SBF arrested: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange/Gordian knot that exploded oh-so-dramatically over the last few months, was arrested in the Bahamas this week. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was officially charging SBF with defrauding investors, with investigations on other charges underway.

OpenAI wants to watermark the stuff its AI writes: “Did a human write that, or ChatGPT?” Kyle Wiggers asks. “It can be hard to tell — perhaps too hard, its creator OpenAI thinks, which is why it is working on a way to ‘watermark’ AI-generated content.”

NSA warns of exploits in popular networking gear: “The U.S. National Security Agency is warning that Chinese government-backed hackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in two widely used Citrix networking products,” writes Carly Page. The flaw, which Citrix confirms is being actively exploited, allows hackers to run malicious code on devices often found in enterprise networks.

iOS 16.2: This week Apple shipped out the latest version of iOS, and Ivan Mehta took a look at some of its best features, from end-to-end encryption of more iCloud data, a karaoke mode for Apple Music, and the public rollout of the “infinite whiteboard” collaboration app, Freeform.

Instagram gets text-only posts: Ever wished you could post to Instagram without having to take a picture? No? Me neither. But Instagram added a text-centric option this week, and it’s at least proving popular enough to crack our top posts list — or, more likely, people are googling what the heck this new Instagram “Notes” thing is and landing on our site. Whatever the case, they kinda remind me of old-school AIM status messages — they’re short, ephemeral updates that live in your DMs rather than the main feed (see image below.)

audio roundup

The Equity crew may not be clairvoyant, but they are very, very smart — and this week, after a few absurdly unpredictable years, they dared to make some predictions about 2023. The Found podcast, meanwhile, chatted with Tiny Health founder Cheryl Sew Hoy about the importance of the gut microbiome — particularly in how having a good gut microbiome as an infant can help prevent chronic health issues down the road.

TechCrunch+

TC+ is the premium, members-only section of the site where we get to step away from the news cycle and go a bit deeper on some of the stuff our readers tell us they like most. Here’s what TC+ members were reading most this week:

The one slide 99% of founders get wrong: Between his time as a reporter, a VC, and a startup pitch coach, Haje has looked at more pitch decks than just about anyone I know. The most common mistake he sees? It’s all about “the ask.”

How much money should you raise for your startup?: It’s a Haje double feature this week, with his second most popular post touching on an all-too-common question: When it’s time to raise money for a startup, how much is the right amount?

Twitter battles all things ElonJet, SBF gets arrested, and OpenAI tries to figure out watermarking by Greg Kumparak originally published on TechCrunch

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to multiple year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

Apple prepares to allow alternative app stores in EU

Bloomberg reported Apple is already making efforts to open up its platforms to enable support for third-party app stores in the EU in advance of new requirements set out by the Digital Markets Act, which companies must comply with by 2024. EU regulators want to level the playing field for app developers and improve the consumer experience — and they believe forcing Apple to compete on merit with other app stores is one way to do it. Apple, of course, has long argued that allowing sideloading or third-party stores introduces too much risk to consumers, in terms of safety, security and privacy issues. Today, Apple handles payment processing for the apps downloaded from its own storefront, which includes battling fraud. And it restricts app makers from tracking users with the new App Tracking Transparency protections and protects user data.

But some of Apple’s privacy focus is a seeming front for its own aims in becoming a bigger competitor in the ads business. And as researchers recently discovered, some of Apple’s protections don’t apply to its own apps. Plus, many would argue, it seems like an imbalance to charge apps that rival Apple’s own services a commission on their businesses — the way it charges Spotify when it runs Apple Music; or how it charges streaming apps commissions, when it runs Apple TV+; and so on. Apple continues to expand into new app markets, too, with subscription services like Apple Fitness+; cloud storage packages through iCloud; news reading and magazines with News+; and others.

But app developers have long felt Apple’s 30% is too high a price for the discovery, distribution and security provided by the App Store. And for larger companies, they’re more than willing and able to market, distribute and sell their own apps themselves. Epic Games, for example, is battling Apple in courts over anti-trust issues, which are now under appeal. It wants to sell its apps like Fortnite directly to consumers and avoid Apple’s fees.

Still, even if the EU forces platforms to open up to more competition, if the laws aren’t precise, it’s possible Apple could find a way to adjust its policies to apply a commission structure to the third-party apps and app distribution systems the new regulations would allow.

It’s a wonder Apple has allowed the problem to get to this point. The company has carved back commissions for a range of apps — from smaller developers to “reader” apps and the like — in obvious attempts to hope soothe regulators and lawmakers’ concerns. But Apple may have ultimately misstepped by not just slashing commissions across the board to quell the developer backlash in the first place. As it turns out, Apple’s greed may ultimately be its downfall as it will now be up to regulators to set the terms, not Apple itself.

Lensa drives more AI art apps to top of App Store

Lensa AI’s popularity has had a notable impact on the App Store’s Top Charts this week. The photo and video editing app recentlywent viral over its new “magic avatars” feature, powered by the open sourceStable Diffusion model, allowing users to turn their selfies into styled portraits of themselves as sci-fi, anime or fantasy characters, among other artistic renderings. Consumer demand for the app, and for AI edits more broadly, then pushed numerous other “AI” apps into the U.S. App Store’s Top Charts. By Monday, the top three spots on the U.S. App Store were all held by AI photo editors, and even more AI art apps are newly ranking in the Top 100.

This week, Lensa AI held the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store, with its 12.6 million global installs in the first 11 days of December, up 600% from the 1.8 million installs it saw during a similar time frame in November (November 20 through November 30), according to data from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The U.S. accounted for 3.6 million of those new December installs, estimates indicate.

However, more AI apps have been climbing the charts. Data indicated that eight out of the top 100 apps by downloads on the U.S. App Store were AI art apps during the December 1 through December 11 time frame.

These included No. 2 and No. 3 apps, AI Art: AI Image Generator and Dawn – AI Avatars, respectively. The former saw 1.7 million global installs during December 1 through 11, up 229% from the 71,000 it saw during November 20 through 30. Dawn saw around 1.7 million installs, as well, up from the 28,000 it saw in the late November time frame.

Other apps filled the Top Charts, including No. 10 Wonder – AI Art Generator, No. 14 Prequel: Aesthetic AI Editor, No. 39 Voi – AI Avatar App by Wonder, No. 47 Meitu – Photo Editor & AI Art, and more. In select categories, like Graphics & Design, you’d also find Profile AI: Avatar Creator, Inspire – AI Art Generator and Dream by Wombo – AI Art Tool.

Clearly, developers learned to capitalize on consumer demand for AI art by keyword-stuffing their app names and descriptions with terms like “AI,” “Avatar,” “AI Art” and other search terms.

Despite the surge in consumer adoption, some are concerned about the ethics of using AI apps.

Lensa was trained on the Stable Diffusion model, which is controversial for how it used images from artists without their consent. Lensa was also able to be tricked into making NSFW images, TechCrunch found. And MIT Technology Review reported that Lensa created topless images and skimpy and sexualized avatars when tried by one female reporter, who happened to be of Asian heritage — suggesting the AI had been influenced by an overabundance of anime and video characters.

Instagram weighs taking on Twitter with text-based “Notes”

Amid backlash over the intrusion of algorithmic, recommended content into Instagram’s feed, Instagram this week introduced a number of new features to make it easier for users to keep up with their real-world friends. Among the new products is an addition called Notes — a feature Meta had considered turning into a Twitter competitor, The NYT recently reported. With Notes, users can update their friends using just text and emoji, adding a different format for social updates beyond the images and videos Instagram is best known for.

Though not a Twitter competitor in terms of the user interface, the idea of leaving text notes for others to read has some overlap with Twitter, or perhaps more specifically with a product like Twitter Circle, where you hand-pick people who can read your posts. In Instagram, however, users can leave notes by going to the top of their inbox, then selecting the followers they follow back (aka mutuals) or others from their existing “Close Friends” list. They’ll then type out the note itself using 60 characters of just text or emoji. The note will appear at the top of friends’ inboxes for 24 hours and replies will arrive as DMs.

What’s interesting is that Meta had considered making Notes a more direct Twitter competitor. The NYT said Meta weighed making Notes its own feed in the Instagram app or even making it its own app. For the time being, however, the company is launching the product — which has been in testing for several months prior — as is. Too bad.

Developer News

iOS 16 adoption has hit 69%.
The iPhone 14’s new Emergency SOS via satellite feature rolled out to the U.K., France, Germany and Ireland.
iOS 16.2 was released on Tuesday.This bigger update brings a number of new features, including improved encryption for iCloud data, Live Activities on the Home Screen, a new karaoke feature for Apple Music, new AirDrop restrictions and Apple’s new Freeform app. It also patches a zero-day flaw in WebKit.

iOS 16.2 is also bringing a mystery AirTag firmware update.No one knows what it does yet.
Apple also released the first betas for iOS 16.3, iPadOS 16.3 and macOS Ventura 13.2.
Android 13 for TV has shipped.
Compose for Wear OS 1.1 is now stable.
Android 13 QPR2 Beta 1 is now available. The Android 13 Beta is continuing with the next round of updates for its March 2023 release. These Quarterly Platform Releases are delivered to Pixel phones as Feature Drops.
Android 13 is now hitting Sony smartphones,according to user reports, including the Xperia 1 IV, the Xperia 5 IV, the Xperia 1 III, the Xperia 5 III and the Xperia Pro-I.
Google completed the rollout of the Matter smart home standard to Android and Nest. Apple and Samsung have already rolled out Matter support, and Amazon will support Matter by end of 2022.

App Updates

Flipboard is capitalizing on Twitter’s chaos. The social magazine app will now allow its magazine curators to start discussions with readers through a new Notes feature, where they can write posts, share images and links, ask questions and more.
Twitter re-launched its subscription service Twitter Blue with different price points for those who subscribe on iOS and those who subscribe on the web.The new subscription will provide the verified checkmark and reduce ads, among other things, but will now have increased protections to prevent spam and impersonation, the company claims. Blue for Business will give businesses on Twitter gold checks instead of blue. (That’s right — Blue will give out gold checks, too. Did anyone think through the branding here?!)
Twitter made its community fact-checks visible to worldwide users. (The Community Notes feature was previously called Birdwatch.)
Meanwhile, Twitter shut down its newsletter platform Revue, shortly after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey used it to write a post about the Twitter Files, warning against attacks on Twitter’s staff. He also touched on decentralization and his own effort in that space, Bluesky.
Elon Musk suspended a Twitter bot that tracked his jet’s coming and going. For, you know, reasons. After issuing his new jet-tracking-inspired anti-doxing policy, Twitter then begin banning prominent journalists without warning, including those who tweeted about Musk’s decision to also ban Mastodon’s account. Some of the suspended journalists had posted images of the tweet that got the Mastodon account banned — a post that pointed to the bot (ElonJet)’s account on Mastodon.

TikTok goes horizontal. The company confirmed it’s testing a horizontal full-screen mode which makes the app more competitive with YouTube.

Microsoft is shutting down its Authenticator app for Apple Watch users in January 2023.
A little-known phone monitoring app called Xnspy has stolen data from tens of thousands of devices, TechCrunch reported.
A nifty media organizer app, Sofa, was updated with new features like shared lists, Lock Screen widgets, support for Shortcuts and more.
Game maker Playtika has laid off 610 employees and is shutting down three titles — MergeStories, DiceLife and Ghost Detective.
Netflix launched two more games, this time with top game publisher Annapurna Interactive. One is Kentucky Route Zero, developed by Cardboard Computer and published by Annapurna Interactive. The other is Twelve Minutes, developed by 24 Bit Games. The company also said it’s developing a new game based on its historical drama “Vikings: Valhalla.”

Spotify is scaling back its live audio plans.As the Clubhouse frenzy wears off, Spotify is ending several of its live shows, including “Deux Me After Dark,” “Doughboys: Snack Pack,” “The Movie Buff” and “A Gay in the Life.”
Tinder launched “Relationship Goals,” similar to sister app Hinge, which allows daters to more specifically say what they’re looking for.
YouTube will now notify users whose abusive comments are removed for violating the rules, and will then ban the user from posting for 24 hours if they continue to leave abusive comments.
Instagram launched a new hub to help users who suspect their accounts have been hacked, or who can otherwise not log in due to more common problems like a lost password or lost access to two-factor authentication.
PayPal and MetaMask teamed up. MetaMask said it’s adding an integration in its crypto wallet that will allow users to buy cryptocurrencies using their PayPal account.

Government, Policy and Lawsuits

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill that would ban any social media company, including TikTokin — or under the influence of — China or Russia or other U.S. adversaries.
Triller responded to the Sony Music lawsuit over its unpaid licensing fees, confirming it has been unable to issue payments for a “range of reasons,” but did not disclose what they were.
An advisor to France’s privacy authority (The Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés, or CNIL) recommended fining Apple €6 million,saying iOS 14 didn’t meet EU privacy requirements. The issue at hand is that Apple didn’t extend the same tracking protections offered to users (like ATT) to its own first-party apps.
Twitter’s lead privacy regulator in the EU, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), is reviewing Twitter’s plan to force personalized ads on users unless they pay for a Twitter Blue subscription allowing them to opt-out of ads.
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, after 13 states imposed similar bans due to security concerns over use of the app.

Downloads

Trendio

TechCrunch’s Aisha Malik this week took a look at the new video shopping app Trendio, co-founded by a former Amazon Prime Video executive. The app, designed for shopping makeup and beauty products, offers personalized content and easy ways to purchase beauty products through both live and recorded videos from creators. Supported brands include Merit, Philosophy, Ursa Major, Nudestix, Kjaer Weis, Joanna Vargas, Coola and Avene.

The startup was co-founded by Alex Perez-Tenessa, the former vice president of Prime Video U.S. and head of Beauty at CVS, and startup veteran David Olmos. Also on the team are Amazon Live alum Julie Novak and former Glossier head of Make-up Category Management, Leah Grubb. You can read TechCrunch’s full review here.

This Week in Apps: AI Art apps top the charts, Instagram adds text-only ‘Notes,’ alternative app stores in EU by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

May the earnest among us rise up: Techies, it’s prediction season. It’s my favorite time of the year, not because I’m a glutton for threads or care deeply about why DTC’s worst is still ahead of us — a take that echoes loudly for the third year in a row, mind you — but because it’s nice to see us all sit down and reflect.

Before I jump into what I’m thinking, some of my favorite prediction pieces and threads have come from Ganas VC’s Lolita Taub, QED Investors’ Nigel Morrisand our very own.

OK, with that, here’s what I think will happen next year: the return to in-person, five-day work weeks for tech workers. Before you jump in with all the exceptions and asterisks, let me explain why I believe this is going to happen.

All of 2021, we spoke about the power pendulum shifting toward employees, spearheaded by the Great Resignation. Then, this year, the Great Resignation became the Great Reset, as employers fired large percentages of their staff due to changing macroeconomic conditions. As we enter 2023, many have predicted that the wave of layoffs may get worse before it gets better — a prediction already proved true by recent rounds of cuts before the holidays, including Airtable, Plaid and Komodo Health.

In a lot of cases, the power is shifting back to employers once again — which means those who have wanted to bring people in the office since the moment lockdown first began may finally be empowered to do so. I’m not saying every founder and executive is secretly colluding, but I also think the domino effect matters here. If your biggest competitor starts working from the office to boost productivity, you may feel tempted to as well; at the same time, if you’re a scrappy early-stage startup that is lucky enough to be hiring, you might still be able to get the upper edge on recruitment if you tell employees they can work from everywhere.

My perspective isn’t just a hunch; it’s what I’m hearing from founders. A number of entrepreneurs, some citing Elon Musk’s choice to bring Twitter employees back to in-person work, say that they’re planning to bring back a mandatory in-person work culture in the new year because of the issues that are arising from remote work (whether that be productivity or collaboration). It’s a bit of manifesting, a bit of reality. One founder told me over drinks and fancy snacks that they weren’t worried about losing talent — because those who leave just because there’s an in-person mandate weren’t mission-driven to begin with.

Hm.

There’s a lot there that makes that sentiment much more complicated, especially when thinking about how in-person work impacts the immunocompromised and those with families and caretaking responsibilities. While I don’t think the companies that were 100% distributed since day one will jump into buying offices, I think we’ll see more companies than you think start with a hybrid approach and more hybrid companies weigh more toward in-person work than remote.

I know all of you have thoughts on this, as you didn’t shy away from telling me that on Twitter. Let’s end with some of my favorite tweets there:

Let’s pause from all this work chatter and talk about other work chatter. As always, you can find me on Substack and Instagram, where I publish more of my words and work. In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about opinionated AI and open source — as well as staff gift guides.

AI art apps are having a moment — thanks to Lensa AI

Artificial intelligence is having (another) moment — which means scrappy innovation is getting some deserved, if not buzzy, attention. This week, TC’s Sarah Perez spotted the rise of AI art apps all over the App Store, seemingly jumping off the success of Lensa AI’s viral avatar generators.

Here’s why this is important: We’re going to see a lot of flash-in-the-pan stars, and real power, in this space in the coming months. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, helped built ChatGPT (which has been in charge of all those fun prompts and answers that you’ve been seeing all over Tech Twitter). He made a great point when describing the technology but one that I think can be scaled to all of the sector:

“ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness. it’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. it’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness,” Altman tweeted.

6 investors discuss why AI is more than just a buzzword in biotech
Companies — and VCs — continue to invest in AI despite market slowdown
The impact of hype with Clubhouse’s Paul Davison
I’ll spend more time thinking about AI in 2023, so if you have any basic reading materials, please slide into my DMs!

How open source is shaping Twitter’s future

TC’s Paul Sawers is one of the most thoughtful writers I know, and you’ll get what I’m talking about if you read his latest: “Decentralized discourse: How open source is shaping Twitter’s future.” He walks through how algorithmic transparency, encrypted DMs, and, yes, even content moderation, has been a recurring theme in Twitter’s present — and will certainly shape its next chapter.

Here’s akey excerpt:

What if Twitter decided to go all-in on open source? Not just a recommendation algorithm or a protocol, but the whole shooting match — codebase, clients ‘n all? It would certainly be a Herculean undertaking, particularly with everything else going on at Twitter right now.

It would also be an almost unprecedented move to see a $44 billion private company open its entire codebase to the world’s masses. That’s not to say that it couldn’t ever happen though, as Musk has form in making radical moves. Eight years ago Musk ripped up the patent playbook when he pledged that Tesla wouldn’t sue any company that infringed any of its patents “in good faith.” At the time, Musk said it was all about expediting electric car adoption and the infrastructure required (e.g., charging stations), an ethos that is broadly aligned with that of open source.

Anti-LGBTQ slur takes off on Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover
Twitter shuts down Revue, its newsletter platform

Gift guide corner

Here are some of the fun and imaginative gift guides that the TC staff put together this week:

9 high-tech gift ideas for the cannabis users in your life
Here are the best books that TechCrunch read this year
8 great gifts for anyone working from home
6 gifts for coffee lovers looking to up their game
Gift Guide: More than 20 STEM gift ideas to inspire kids to code
9 suitcase-friendly gifts for frequent flyers
Gift Guide: Picking out the right iPad
6 extremely online books to gift your most internet-obsessed friends
Gift Guide: On-the-go fitness tech to boost their training anywhere
7 great gifts for smart home smarties

A few notes

If you missed last week’s newsletter, read it here: “Edtech’s brightest are struggling to pass.”
We want to meet your startup at CES this year! The team is already gathering the startups they want to cover — so fill out this form so we can get some early eyes on your innovation.
I know we’re all just looking to hunker down for the rest of the winter, but WAIT I have news: TechCrunch is coming to Boston on April 20. I’ll be there with my favorite colleagues to interview top experts at a one-day founder summit. Don’t wait — book your Founder Pass today for just $75 with this link!
General shout out to my colleague, Mary Ann Azevedo, for bringing her full heart and energy to work everyday.

Seen on TechCrunch

Is ChatGPT a ‘virus that has been released into the wild’?

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas

Komodo Health, once tipped for a looming IPO, has cut staff as CFO departs

The FTC is suing to block Microsoft from buying Activision

As AI pervades biotech, what are investors looking for in 2023?

Seen on TechCrunch+

Why the SPAC route makes sense for Getaround

OK, now. Now we’re going to see more startups acquire other startups

There are a lot of reasons to be excited about Canada’s venture market

How to respond when a VC asks about your startup’s valuation

How much money should you raise for your startup?

So we’ve made it to the end of our last chat about this wild, plot twist of the year. I’m not going to lie: These past 12 months didn’t fly by. Instead, every day on the tech news beat felt important, complex — if not exhausting and confusing too — in a way that has really shaped the way I see this world. It’s still a work in progress, but I will say that 2022 was ultimately the year in which I finally landed the right sourcing, trust and networks to realize that tech is not all rainbows and butterflies.

To brag for a second, there were some career highlights for me this year, from interviewing Kevin Hart to getting in fights with many a millionaire on Twitter. I wrote about the difficulties of rebuilding a startup and gave a window into a community-based company letting down its community. I laughed about how full circle tech is — and then found my predictions aging horribly every single time. We grew Equity Wednesday into a thoughtful show that tries to answer one big question at a time, instead of all the questions at once.

Startups Weekly is now read by tens of thousands of you all — and it’s never been spicier!

I have never been more fascinated by how power and capital works in this world. That’s thanks to all of you, from the ones who read and amplify our stories, to the ones that help nudge us to rocks waiting to flip over, to even the ones that tell us what angle we missed (and how to do better next time). It’s also thanks to my amazing team here at TechCrunch, for whom I never have enough words of gratitude for.

I’m going to be out of the office until the new year, probably sipping cocoa, sneaking some Skyline chili and indulging in my mom’s chana masala. I wish you a happy and safe holiday season, and when we’re back let’s talk resolutions, okay‽

In the mean time, I would love if you follow me anywhere other than Twitter. I’m on Substack, Mastodon and Instagram as @/natashathereporter.

OK, you say bye first. No seriously. Ok fine, ok, bye,

N

Tech’s latest controversy? The return of the five-day, in-person work week by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

The world of mechanical keyboards is a very deep rabbit hole and it’s no secret that more and more people have fallen into it in recent years. So if you have somebody in your life who keeps talking about lubing switches, gasket mounts and the pros and cons of ABS vs PBT keycaps, chances are you might want to buy them something related to that for the holidays.

One weird thing about the mechanical keyboard world is that a lot of items are only available through time-limited group-buys, with shipping dates that may be year or more out from now. That’s especially true for keycaps and highly custom keyboards. For obvious reasons, we’re not going to recommend those here. This is a guide for 2022, after all, not 2023. We’re going to highlight a few keyboards, but for the most part, we’ll focus on accessories. We’re going to assume that you’ll want a keyboard that is easily customizable, so while there are some pre-builts on this list, they are all moddable.

This article contains links to affiliate partners where available. When you buy through these links, TechCrunch may earn an affiliate commission.

Keyboards

There has never been more choice in mechanical keyboards and if you are so inclined, there is no limit to how much you can spend.

At the bottom end, there’s the Tester68. You can find it for as little as $15 (Walmart), though the going price seems to be around $35 on Amazon. It’s plastic/wireless-only, but for the money, it’s an affordable way to get your feet wet and start modifying your keyboard without worrying too much about breakage.

Once you move up in price, you get to the likes of Akko’s 3068B, a 65% hotswap keyboard (so you can easily replace the switches — more about that later) that comes with Akko’s own — and very good — switches, some decent keycaps and both wireless and wired connections.

The real sweet spot for mechanical keyboards right now, though, is in the $125 to $175 range. Here you get better quality materials and boards that sound and feel really nice, with the ability to modify them to your heart’s desire.

I’m a big fan of the KBDfans KBD67 lite, now in its fourth generation. It’s made from a sturdy plastic, comes in a wide variety of colors and is even available in the European ISO layout, if that’s your thing. It’s a nice step up from the lower-end boards and if you want to upgrade later, KBDfans also sells an aluminum case ($125).

If you’re looking for a larger board, Novelkeys’ NK87 Entry Edition ($135) is also great, for example, but the company to beat right now (at least in this price range) is Keychron with its Q-series keyboards. There are wired aluminum hotswap boards that come with switches and keycaps, but can be easily modified. At this point, the company offers every imaginable layout, ranging from 60% to full-size boards, including some unusual styles like the excellent Q5 with its 1800 layout or the Q8 in the (semi-)ergonomic Alice style (that’s my personal daily driver right now).

At the higher end, the sky is the limit, but if you have the money to spend, I’m a big fan of Mode Designs. I recently reviewed the Sonnet and loved the experience, but that’s sadly not going to be available in time for the holidays. But the Mode 80 is, so if you have $400 to spend, the fit, finish and sound you can get from that board is a step up from the cheaper boards and it’s easy to see that Mode — just like similar higher-end keyboard manufacturers — really understands the market and what drives mechanical keyboard enthusiasts.

Accessories

Instead of a keyboard, maybe you’re just looking for some accessories.

If you know the kind of style the person you are buying for is into, then keycaps may be a nice option. Drop is one of the few companies that has a limited set of GMK keycaps available without having to wait until late 2023 for a group buy. GMK white-on-black is the classic here and you can’t really go wrong, though the price point at $110 may not be that easy to swallow, but it’s quite low for a set from Germany’s GMK. But Drop’s own and new DCX keycaps are also really nice and a bit more affordable at $99. Like the GMK sets, these are ABS keycaps and available in black-on-white and white-on-black. For half the price, Keychron’s Cherry-style PBT keycaps offer some additional color choices and enough keycaps to be compatible with virtually every keyboard in the market today. If you’re looking for something different, check out Cannon Key’s selection, which typically ranges from $65 to $79.

Maybe you want to buy some switches, too? It’s really hard to recommend those, since this really depends on preference and some of the best ones aren’t easy to find. But you can’t really go wrong with something like the justifiably hyped Gateron Oil King linear switch, for example. Or if you want something a bit weird, the Akko CS Sponge with its double tactile bump is a fun one, too, and very affordable (actually, all of the Akko switches punch well above their weight). Another classic is the C³Equalz X TKC Tangerine linear switch. It’s as smooth as it gets, but then you’re in the premium category.

How about some stocking stuffers? Maybe some Durock Switch Film? A cool desk mat? Or an easier to use switch opener? Or maybe a lube station — because there’s nothing quite as boring relaxing as lubing a hundred switches.

Gift Guide: a few ideas for the mechanical keyboard fans by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch