For a preview of the biggest and most important stories from TechCrunch delivered to your inbox every day at 3:00 PM PST, subscribe here.
We arrived on Friday! If you’re looking for a good podcast episode, I highly recommend Today’s Equity where Natasha M, Mary Ann and Beca talking about CES, NYE, SBF and FTX – oh my! Also, kudos to you Daily Crunchers for reading yesterday’s newsletter and helping it be one of today’s most read stories. It warms my heart and I hope today’s news is just as exciting. Without delay… – Christina
TechCrunch’s top 3
- Knock, knock, guaranteed tenants at the door: Landlords don’t always have peace of mind when renting out their spaces, but Doorstead believes their approach solves that problem. Mary Ann reports that the company has secured $21.5 million in new funding to not only tell you how much rent you can expect, but also to make sure you still have a tenant for your rental property.
- credit buzz: Indian fintech KreditBee’s subscription business model to help people get microloans attracted even more venture capital – $100m, in fact – to take the company’s valuation to almost $700m dollars, pot holder writing.
- Seeing is believing: haje reports on “Lumus’ offer to make AR glasses a little less squeaky”.
Tech Crunch @ CES
If you liked that article above on Lumus, you’ll love what the TechCrunch team has in store for you today as they continue to cover the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. There are still two days left!
Gadgets and gadgets galore:
Will Record Dry Powder Levels Trigger a Delayed Boom in Startup Investments?
Picture credits: Tim Robberts/Getty Images
There’s a subtext to the waves of layoffs and Craigslist ads for discount office furniture: Tech investors have amassed around $290 billion in dry powder.
“Despite the slowdown, strong cash and tailwinds for digitization spending lead some market participants to believe we are in a solid investment cycle,” say Raphael Mukomilow and Pierre Bourdon of Picus Capital.
After tracking uninvested capital by year since 2006, the pair found that “a crisis in the investment landscape has often been followed by years of systematic outperformance of returns, and history has a way of unfolding. repeat”.
Three others from the TC+ team:
Tech Crunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get a head start. You can register here. Use code “DC” to get 15% off an annual subscription!
Big Tech inc.
If you’re using Snap’s desktop camera to give you a fun filter during video calls, start saying goodbye to it now. Ivan reports that Snap is shutting down the camera app on January 25 to focus on its Camera Kit for Web feature. He also notes that there could be more behind the move, writing: “The discontinuation of the Snap Camera app – spotted first by The Verge – isn’t entirely surprising. Last year it was cut 20% of its workforce and shut down its drone product months after launch.
And we have five more for you:
- We cut prices left and right: Mast reports that Tesla has cut prices for its Model 3 and Model Y in China for the second time in three months.
- Plagiarism in the world of AI: If you were at school in the late 1990s or early 2000s, you might remember your teacher telling you not to use the internet because it was full of misinformation. Well, technology has come a long way, and even more so now that ChatGPT is a thing. Amid news that New York public schools are blocking ChatGPT, OpenAI says it’s working on “mitigations” to help spot ChatGPT-generated text, Kyle reports.
- TikTok, it’s time to go to bed: We’ve heard of alarms to wake you up, but this phone screen was meant to keep you busy when you should be sleeping. “No problem,” says TikTok, which is testing a “sleep reminder” feature that nudges you at bedtime. Aisha writing. And that’s not all — she also reports that TikTok now has video cleanup thumbnails to make it easier to find specific parts of videos.
- That’s enough to make you Twitch: Website and app crashes happen all the time, but when Amanda Seeing this happening to Twitch for the second time in a week, she decided to get to the bottom of it.
- Samsung does not sing a happy tune: kate reports Samsung’s preliminary estimates of its quarterly profit, which do not look good. The memory chip and phone maker said its quarterly profits hit their lowest level in eight years amid weak demand for its products.