The circular money problem at the heart of AI’s biggest deals

SoftBank and OpenAI have announced a new fifty-fifty joint venture this week. The venture will sell enterprise AI tools in Japan under the brand name Crystal Intelligence. On the surface, this appears to be a straightforward international expansion deal. However,…

Kaltura acquires eSelf, founded by creator of Snap’s AI, in $27M deal

Kaltura, a New York-headquartered AI video platform company, is acquiring eSelf.ai, an Israel-based startup behind conversational avatars. These avatars are AI-generated digital humans that can talk with users. The acquisition is valued at approximately 27 million dollars. Kaltura announced it…

Rad Power Bikes faces shutdown in January without new funding

Rad Power Bikes has informed its employees that it will shut down in January if it is unable to find new funding or get acquired. This information comes from an internal staff email viewed by TechCrunch. The company’s leadership is…

A better way of thinking about the AI bubble

People often think about tech bubbles in apocalyptic terms, but it doesn’t have to be that serious. In economic terms, a bubble is simply a bet that turned out to be too big, leaving you with more supply than demand.…

AI PowerPoint-killer Gamma hits $2.1B valuation, $100M ARR, founder says

Gamma, a startup that creates AI-generated presentations, websites, and social media posts, announced on Monday a sixty-eight million dollar Series B funding round. The investment was led by Andreessen Horowitz and values the company at two point one billion dollars.…

Google brings Gemini to the Google TV Streamer

Google announced on Monday that it is starting to roll out Gemini to the Google TV Streamer, replacing Google Assistant. The company states this change will enable users to interact with their voice more naturally to access content and other…

Consolidation begins to hit the carbon credit market

Carbon management startup Carbon Direct is buying another carbon credit startup, Pachama. The companies announced the acquisition today. Pachama laid off around twenty employees this summer as voluntary carbon markets softened. The company had attracted investments from a range of…