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Welcome back to Review Week. This week we’re coming to you on the heels of TechCrunch Disrupt! If you missed this conversation, we’re highlighting conversations by Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, and Disney star turned space company CEO Bridget Mendler. Naturally, we have news from the rest of the tech world as well. let’s do it.
Why did Waze reject $23 billion? Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport told TechCrunch Disrupt that rejecting Alphabet’s offer was “the hardest decision ever,” but they did so because they believe the cloud security space represents a $100 billion opportunity for the company. At the time Wiz rejected the offer, the startup was valued at $12 billion. The CEO admitted that they also have other offers, although not as big as Google’s.
Apple had a big week of revealsincluding the latest additions to its M series chips. The company unveiled the new M4 Pro, which debuted alongside the new compact Mac mini and M4 Max, the latter of which comes to the MacBook Pro line as an upgradeable option. Apple has also updated its desktop accessories, switching them from Lightning to USB-C. But the Magic Mouse’s charging port is strangely still on the bottom.
Dropbox lays off 20% of its workforce. In a letter to employees, CEO Drew Houston said the cloud company is going through a “period of transition” and that the goal is to make cuts in areas where Dropbox has “overinvested” while designing a “flatter, more efficient” team structure. The staff reduction will affect 528 employees.
This is TechCrunch Review Week, where we recap the week’s top stories. Want this delivered as a newsletter to your inbox every Saturday? Register here.
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What is plagiarism? At TechCrunch Disrupt, Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, was asked how the company defines “spoofing.” Srinivas didn’t say so directly, but was adamant that Perplexity “always cites its sources” and does not claim ownership of any content. Read more
OpenAI may be building its first AI chip: OpenAI is working with TSMC and Broadcom to build an in-house AI chip to power AI models, which could arrive as soon as 2026, Reuters reports. Read more
Turn your design into reality: Arcade AI is a new type of marketplace that allows customers to input their ideas into a generator that then produces a variety of design options to be displayed in the form of tangible jewelry pieces. Read more
From Disney Channel to CEO: Former Disney star Bridget Mendler joins TechCrunch Disrupt to discuss how Northwood Space was founded and why the space startup is committed to solving “unsexy problems.” Read more
AI comes to recruiters: LinkedIn is unveiling its latest AI effort: Hiring Assistant. The product is designed to handle a wide range of recruiting tasks, from ingesting snippet feedback to turn it into job descriptions, to sourcing and interacting with candidates. Read more
Matt Mullenweg makes his case: The WordPress co-founder and CEO of Automattic told TechCrunch Disrupt that he’s not worried that the recent legal drama between his company and WP Engine could lead to a fork of the WordPress open source software. In fact, he said he would welcome it. Read more
Olivia Wilde, VC: Actress and director Olivia Wilde quietly launched venture firm Proximity Ventures late last year, according to Bloomberg. The company has already signed four investments, including biotech company Pendulum Therapeutics. Read more
A segment that makes its mark in India: Fintech Slice has merged with North East Small Finance Bank, marking a rare example of a startup successfully entering the tightly regulated Indian banking sector. The merger turns Slice into a banking entity after months of regulatory scrutiny. Read more
Easier way to encrypt: Announced at the annual GitHub conference in San Francisco, Spark is an experiment launched from GitHub Next Labs that lets you quickly build a small web app using only natural language. Read more
Convert text to podcast: Meta has released an “open” implementation of Google’s viral podcast creation feature NotebookLM. The project, called NotebookLlama, can create podcast-style synopses of text files uploaded to it. Read more
Zoox calls Tesla a hoax: Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson doubts Tesla will launch a robotaxi service next year. “The fundamental problem is they don’t have the technology that works,” he said on TechCrunch Disrupt. Read more
And the winner is…: The winner of TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield 200 competition is Salva Health. The company’s Giulietta device is a portable AI-powered breast cancer detection device that removes barriers to early screening, ensuring accessibility even in remote areas. Read more
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