Indian fintech Slice seals bank merger
Indian fintech startup Slice said it has completed its merger with North East Small Finance Bank, marking a rare instance of a startup successfully entering India’s tightly regulated banking sector.
The merger, first proposed last year, transforms the Bengaluru-based startup into a banking e
Instagram is lowering video quality for unpopular videos
The popularity of an Instagram video can affect its actual video quality: According to Adam Mosseri (the Meta executive who leads Instagram and Threads), videos that are more popular get shown in higher quality, while less popular videos get shown in lower quality.
In a video (via The Verge), Moss
Founders and VCs back a Pan-European C corp, but an 'EU Inc' has a rocky road ahead
It’s become a common refrain in political discourse: Europe needs to take radical action to remain competitive. On the long list of potential reforms, one that’s gaining particular traction is a new, EU-wide corporate status for innovative companies.
Known (somewhat obscurely) as the &
Meta releases an ‘open’ version of Google’s podcast generator
Meta has released an “open” implementation of the viral generate-a-podcast feature in Google’s NotebookLM.
Called NotebookLlama, the project uses Meta’s own Llama models for much of the processing, unsurprisingly. Like NotebookLM, it can generate back-and-forth, podcast-st
Merlin Solar bets twisty panels will help it land on rooftops everywhere
Solar panels are just about everywhere. There's a good chance one of your neighbors has them on their roof, as does the big box store down the street. As you drive there, you might see a field of them posted up alongside the road. With that kind of ubiquity, you'd be forgiven if you thought
Arcade, a new AI product creation platform, designed this necklace
Mariam Naficy, the founder of cosmetics retailer Eve and design marketplace Minted, has a long history of supporting independent artists and helping them sell their products. Her latest venture, Arcade AI, is a new type of marketplace that puts creative control directly into the hands of users.
Th
Jon McNeill's insights on Tesla's robotaxi and why EV startups fail
Jon McNeill — a former Tesla and Lyft executive and current CEO at DVx Ventures — spread the word last week at the World Business Forum on what he calls the “Tesla innovation method” of radical simplification.
After his presentation, we sat down to chat about Tesla's automation g
Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman isn’t surprised we haven’t seen a resurgence in startup IPOs yet
While many venture investors, and likely their LPs, were hoping IPOs were going to come back in 2024, that hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to in the next two months.
Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman isn’t surprised.
Friedman said at Axios’s BFD event on
Apple wins $250 from Masimo in watch patent trial
A federal jury ruled Friday that Masimo smartwatches infringed Apple patents, but Apple isn't getting a big payday.
Bloomberg Law reports that the company was only seeking the statutory minimum of $250, and that's all it was awarded. Apple’s attorney John Desmarais reportedly told ju
The Hisense C2 Ultra is a well-rounded, great-looking home projector
I'll be the first to admit that I'm new to the projector game. Anker won me over at the end of last year with its Nebula series. The Capsule prioritizes ease of use and portability, above all. While not cheap at $800, it's a good starter projector in the sense that it's self-contain
Jon McNeill's lessons on innovation through subtraction
Before Jon McNeill was CEO at VC firm DVx Ventures, he was the president of Tesla and chief operating officer at Lyft. He helped Tesla grow its revenue run rate from $2 billion to $20 billion in 30 months, and he doubled Lyft's revenue ahead of its IPO. He's also on the board of GM's Cr
‘Yikes’: While gaming, Musk inadvertently broadcasts ‘scary’ near-abort of Starship booster landing
Elon Musk occasionally posts clips of his video game plays to his social media platform X — but a recent clip includes background audio of a SpaceX engineer telling Musk how the most recent Starship flight test was “one second away” from an abort. The clip, posted on Friday, was caught by Re
FTC hits Lyft with $2.1M penalty for luring drivers with false earnings claims
Lyft has agreed to a $2.1 million settlement proposed by the FTC over the car-hailing company’s “deceptive earnings claims about how much money drivers could expect to make.”
As documented in the FTC’s complaint document, Lyft systematically inflated the incomes it advertis
What is Apple Intelligence, when is it coming and who will get it?
After months of speculation, Apple Intelligence took center stage at WWDC 2024 in June. The platform was announced in the wake of a torrent of generative AI news from companies like Google and Open AI, causing concern that the famously tight-lipped tech giant had missed the boat on the latest tech