Welcome back to Week in Review. This week we’ll learn about OpenAI’s $6.6 billion fundraising round, its fifth Cybertruck recall in less than a year, and a neat project that will have you listening to Shazam on the streets of San Francisco. Let’s get into it.
OpenAI has closed its largest VC round ever. This week. The startup announced that it had raised $6.6 billion in a funding round that values OpenAI at $157 billion. The new cash, led by previous investor Thrive Capital, increased OpenAI’s total value to $17.9 billion, according to Crunchbase. As part of this round, OpenAI also secured a significant credit line.
You are approaching ElevenLabs. TechCrunch has learned about the new round, which could see existing and new investors value the company at up to $3 billion. The two-year-old company specializes in creating AI tools that generate synthetic voices for audiobook narration as well as real-time video dubbing into other languages.
Elon Musk’s X is now worth less The acquisition price is worth more than a quarter of $44 billion, according to new estimates from investor Fidelity. The asset manager’s Blue Chip Growth Fund currently values its stake in X at around $4.19 million, meaning it currently values X overall at around $9.4 billion.
This is TechCrunch’s Week in Review, a recap of the week’s biggest news. Want a newsletter delivered to your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.
tidings
Another Cybertruck recall: This time, the rear camera image may be delayed by about 2 seconds after switching to reverse, and the display may appear blank for up to 8 seconds when the vehicle is in reverse. read more
Infinite Muden Generation: Meta’s latest Movie Gen model converts text messages into short, relatively realistic videos with sound. This is purely an AI research concept, and Meta wisely does not release it publicly. read more
SB 1047 was rejected: California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the controversial AI bill SB 1047. Legislation that would make companies responsible for implementing safety protocols has been opposed by many in Silicon Valley, including OpenAI. read more
Analyze this: Meta has made it clear that the images and videos captured by the Ray-Ban Meta will not be used to train the AI, but if you ask Meta AI for analysis, that media will fall under a completely different set of policies. read more
Sounds of San Francisco: Solar-powered boxes containing Android phones running Shazam 24/7 were installed on San Francisco streetlights to identify bobsledders in the wild. The songs are uploaded to the website so you can hear the sounds of the city wherever you are. read more
A safer VPN: The best encryption VPNs are those that you set up and secure yourself, rather than a paid VPN service. Here’s a great guide on how to make it in under 15 minutes. read more
Unproductive note-taking apps: Napkin is a note-taking app on iOS that wants to set itself apart from other apps by focusing on mindfulness and mental health rather than productivity and usability. read more
Backlash for Y combiner: Y Combinator is being criticized for supporting PearAI. Although the startup’s founder has publicly said that this is a cloned copy of another project, PearAI’s mistake was to apply its own private license to the project written by ChatGPT. read more
Let iOS 18 work for you: iOS 18 brings significant changes to Control Center, including the ability to use third-party apps. Here are some iOS 18-supported apps that can make Control Center more useful: read more
New ways to interact with ChatGPT: OpenAI has a new “Canvas” workspace where users can write or create code and have models suggest edits and provide feedback for a more collaborative workflow. read more
