Monday, December 2, 2024

Welcome to TC PM! Today we've got Pat Gelsinger leaving Intel; World Labs' first project; and further confirmation that Elon Musk's humor is not quite "high brow." Onward!

TechCrunch Top 3

CEO Pat Gelsinger touring one of Intel's new Arizona fabrication plants

Image Credits: Intel

👋 Goodbye, Gelsinger: Pat Gelsinger, who first joined Intel when he was 18, has retired from being the company's CEO. He also stepped down from the company's board of directors. Intel execs David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus will be interim co-CEOs. Read more

😳 Whoa if true: Fei-Fei Li's AI startup, World Labs, announced its first project today — an AI system that can generate interactive, modifiable, 3D scenes from a single image. Read more

😑 Elon Musk thinks farts are funny: Tesla announced new updates today, which include a new Apple Watch app and the ability to watch dashcam footage from its smartphone app. The most notable new feature, however, allows the car to make a farting noise when someone sits in the passenger seat. Read more

A Message from Radar

Radar: All-in-one geolocation platform

Geofencing and maps together in a modern, cost-effective platform. Businesses like yours are consolidating geolocation vendors and cutting costs by 50% or more with Radar.

Learn More

Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: TechCrunch/Frederic Lardinois

🥶 Cooldown time: Amazon announced today a slew of new updates regarding its data centers ahead of its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. The most important is that AWS plans to start using liquid cooling for its AI servers and other machines. We'll be on the ground in Vegas to bring you everything from the show, starting tomorrow. Read more

💳 Fintech for Africa: Ivory Coast fintech startup Hub2 wants to become the Stripe for Francophone Africa. While an ambitious goal, the company recently raised $8.5 million and already works with more than 55 customers. Read more

🙈 Russian ransomware: The Russian government has confirmed the indictment of one of its own citizens accused of creating and launching ransomware attacks. The person is rumored to be Mikhail Matveev, who is on the FBI's most wanted list. Read more

💰 That cash money: AI chipmaker Tenstorrent, which is taking on Nvidia in the chips race, raised nearly $700 million in a Series D at a $2.6 billion valuation. The round was led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners. Bezos Expeditions, Jeff Bezos' firm, also participated. Read more

🪪 Signzy cyberattack: Bengaluru, India-based ID verification company Signzy has confirmed it was hit by a cyberattack last week. The company works with more than 600 financial institutions globally, including the four largest Indian banks. Read more

Around the web

👟 Digital shoes don't work: RTFKT, the NFT platform that was acquired by Nike in 2021, announced today that it's shutting down. This isn't super surprising, but the fact that the company made more than $50 million in lifetime earnings definitely is. Read more

Before you go

Image Credits: JASON REDMOND/AFP / Getty Images

👀 OpenAD: OpenAI may be getting into the advertising game. The company said it is "toying" with the idea of a "thoughtful" ads business model despite the fact that Sam Altman really doesn't like ads. Maybe he's more like the rest of us than we thought. Read more