Tech Meme

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Hopin, the struggling virtual events startup valued at nearly $7.7B in June 2021, sells its Events and Session units to RingCentral for an undisclosed sum  —  Hopin, the virtual events startup that saw its star (and valuation) rise quickly during the Covid-19 pandemic, is most definitely coming down to earth. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Rest of World: Interviews with people at Worldcoin booths in Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong find many scanned their eyes to receive the sign-up bonuses, an “easy $50”  —  In Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong, our reporters found lots of people were eager to take the deal. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Charlie Fink / Forbes: Inworld, which uses AI to help developers create game characters, raised $30M led by Lightspeed at a $500M+ valuation, following a $50M Series A in August 2022  —  Inworld, which makes AI-driven non-player characters (NPCs) for games and other applications has raised approximately $30 in new funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Brody Ford / Bloomberg: Slack launches Slack Sales Elevate, offering deeper integration with Salesforce’s Sales Cloud for $60 per month on top of existing Slack and Salesforce fees  —  – More Slack editions coming for customer service, marketing  — New Slack CEO Lidiane Jones focuses on product updates Lees verder op Tech Meme

Emilia David / The Verge: Meta releases AudioCraft, a new open-source AI model that lets users create music and sounds via prompts, consisting of MusicGen, AudioGen, and EnCodec models  —  It consists of three AI models, all tackling different areas of sound generation.  MusicGen takes text inputs to generate music. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Fortune: A look at Katie Haun’s $1.5B crypto fund, launched in spring 2022 just before the crypto crash, which has now deployed ~30% of its cash to ~24 startups  —  On a sunny morning in April, Katie Haun trudged up a winding path around the Stanford Dish in the hills over Palo Alto. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: X now lets X Blue subscribers hide their verified checkmarks, although “the checkmark may still appear in some places” and some features “may not be available”  —  Social media company X, formerly Twitter, now lets paid users hide their verification checkmarks. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google: Google delists its AI Test Kitchen app, which let users test AI-powered tools, on Android and iOS, moving the service to the web to receive faster updates  —  Once a miniature playground for the public to test Google’s blossoming AI-powered tools, the AI Test Kitchen app has been delisted … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Alex Ross / New Yorker: After iTunes failed to save classical music, Apple Music Classical seems an oddly clumsy point of entry, offering some good features but falling short of rivals  —  As classical listeners shift to streaming, Apple’s bespoke app falls short of its smaller-scale competitors. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Joseph Menn / Washington Post: Hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow plans to detail P2P protocol Veilid, to encrypt social media and apps, at Def Con next week, its biggest release in 10 years  —  Cult of the Dead Cow is a hacker collective whose members at one time included Texas politician Beto O’Rourke Lees verder op Tech Meme