To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.
Happy Friday! For those of you excited to see us in your inbox for your daily dose of tech news, unfortunately, you will have to wait until Tuesday to hear from us again because Monday is Labor Day in the U.S. We will be out grilling, wearing white for the last time this year and snoozing in hammocks. We wish you a safe and enjoyable weekend wherever you are. — Christine and Haje
The TechCrunch Top 3
- No chips for you: Nvidia is caught up in the new sanctions the U.S. is imposing on China. Rita reports the company said it will not be able to export two of its AI chips to China, its second-largest market. That will likely cost Nvidia some $400 million in lost sales for this third quarter and interrupt some production that happens in China.
- Just got paid: Google is expanding its alternative payment systems, like third-party, for in-app purchases to more countries, Ivan writes. This includes some of Android’s largest markets, including India and Indonesia.
- More cuts: Tage wrote about Nigerian digital bank Kuda, which is the latest African startup to lay off some employees. He notes that Kuda’s 5% reduction affected about two dozen people as the company decided to remove redundant positions and low-performing staff in efforts to cut costs.
Startups and VC
“A red-headed woman stands on the moon, her face obscured. Her naked body looks like it belongs on a poster you’d find on a hormonal teenager’s bedroom wall — that is, until you reach her torso, where three arms spit out of her shoulders,” Kyle and Amanda write in a story that has more twists and turns than a mountain pass. AI is getting better at generating porn. We might not be prepared for the consequences, they ponder.
The rest of our top stories have less nudity, but also less arms growing where they shouldn’t. We’ll call it a draw, shall we:
Stop sensationalizing the ‘collapse’ of VC: Look at the data
Image Credits: perrygerenday (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
For founders who are looking to raise, this is a terrible time: It’s taking much longer than it used to, and valuations are so much lower than just a few months ago.
For investors, however, things are settling back to earth, says Brian Walsh of WIND Ventures.
“The reality is that there was an unprecedented hype cycle in 2021, and what we have seen since the beginning of 2022, objectively, is a ‘reversion to the mean’ in line with long-term trends.”
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
To start your weekend off right, Zack has the 411 on a data breach over at Samsung, which apparently is the second such incident this year. The company told Zack the breach happened in late July and that customer data was compromised in early August, though would not get specific on how many customers were affected or why customers are now just being told.
