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🎰 The week in figures

$18B: in February 2023, $18B of venture funding was deployed in global startups, marking the first time since February 2020 when the totals dipped below the $20B mark

$2B: Shein is raising $2B in preparation for an IPO; the Chinese online fashion giant is aiming for a listing in the U.S.

$675M: AI startup Inflection, founded by DeepMind's co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, is planning to raise between $500M and $675M in fresh funding; the firm is building an AI-powered personal chatbot for the web

$591M: Abound, a UK-based personal lending fintech startup, which uses AI and Open Banking to assess a borrower's risk, has raised £500 million ($591 million) in the firm's largest funding round to date

$300M: Anthropic, an AI startup and OpenAI competitor that's known for its chatbot Claude, has raised another $300M in funding at a pre-investment valuation of $4.1B

$175M: New York-based Amelia has raised $175M to offer conversational AI features for enterprises; the platform currently has over 9M users

$110M: startup Consensus raised $110M series C; the platform helps sales teams create automated interactive video demos to share with prospective customers

$100M: Humane, a stealth startup founded by two former Apple execs that plans to launch a consumer wearable device this spring, raised $100M led by Kindred Ventures and announced partnerships with Microsoft and OpenAI

100M DAUs: Bolstered by new AI offerings, Microsoft's Bing search engine has surpassed 100M daily active users for the first time; Bing still trails the more than 1B daily active users that use Google's search engine

1M: Meta warned 1M Facebook users that 400+ apps may have stolen their account information after using a "Login with Facebook" button on App Store and Google Play; many of the apps that Meta identified were barely functional after users logged in

📰 What’s going on

Spotify launched a new video feed feature that helps users discover new music, podcasts, and audiobooks; the feature, called “Previews,” prompts users to swipe through to browse new content recommendations; the short videos are similar to TikTok or YouTube Shorts

Uber is adding airport navigation to its app; the company said it's launching walking instructions within its app that will guide riders from airport landing gates to their ride pick-up locations

Amazon is scaling back Scout, its delivery robot program, but has not yet announced layoffs; the Scout team has ~400 people working on it, and the company will keep a “skeleton crew” working on an autonomous delivery robot

Amazon is gearing up to launch its NFT marketplace as soon as April; the marketplace will allow customers to acquire nonfungible tokens (NFTs) linked to physical products delivered to their doors

Apple is expected to release a third-generation HomePod with a 7-inch screen in the first half of 2024, predicts Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo; it would be the first HomePod smart speaker to feature a full display, potentially appearing as a dual speaker and iPad

Apple is launching a new music app dedicated to classical music called Apple Music Classical; the app will be available to existing Apple Music subscribers starting March 28 at no additional cost

Wing, the drone delivery unit of Google parent Alphabet, unveiled plans to offer decentralized networks of drones that would distribute packages across metro areas

Google announced that its I/O 2023 software and hardware event will take place starting on May 10; Sundar Pichai's live-streamed address is expected to include the typical announcements for new Google hardware and new product features; after that is a developer keynote and more than 100 "on-demand technical sessions," which can be accessed for free by registering on Google's I/O site

Meta reportedly plans to lay off thousands of employees in the coming weeks as the tech giant restructures to focus on artificial intelligence; the layoffs will primarily affect teams working on non-core initiatives, including VR hardware and other experimental projects

Meta will be halting their Reels Bonus Program, which compensated creators if their content achieved certain metrics; creators could earn as much as $35K per month using the program

TikTok said it's adding a new feature for creators to charge for access to premium video collections; called Series, the program lets select creators post collections of up to 80 videos behind a paywall; the videos are allowed to be up to 20 minutes long each, higher than the 10-minute limit allowed for most other videos

TikTok started blocking links to outside app stores within creator bios; the move also extends to third-party link-in-bio services, like Linktree

ChatGPT4, the latest version of OpenAI's text generative service, will launch next week and may include multimodal functions like video

Salesforce is bringing ChatGPT to Slack, its workplace messaging and productivity platform; the AI chatbot app will be able to summarize conversation threads and respond to questions

Salesforce also announced Einstein GPT, an offering that incorporates generative AI tools to assist marketers, customer service agents, and salespeople; the technology, which integrates with Salesforce's customer relationship management (CRM), uses AI to automatically generate personalized emails, marketing copy, responses to customer questions, and computer code for developers

Microsoft is making ChatGPT available in its own Azure OpenAI service; the tech giant said that Azure customers can start accessing the service for as little as 1000 tokens for $0.002

Microsoft has made its email product Outlook free for Mac users without needing a Microsoft 365 subscription or Office license to access the client

Discord is adding more experimental AI features to its platform; the community messaging platform is upgrading its existing Clyde bot with OpenAI ChatGPT technology, allowing the bot to answer questions and hold conversations

DuckDuckGo’s ChatGPT-powered search bot, called DuckAssist, is now available for free in beta; the search bot gathers information from sources like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica

Grammar and spell checker Grammarly is the latest to launch a generative AI tool; called GrammarlyGo, the tool generates text and messages based on a user's unique writing style; it's expected to open up to most Grammarly users in April

Osaka University scientists used AI models to turn human brain scans into images that resemble what the person viewed; the researchers used the Stable Diffusion image generator from startup Stability AI to help reconstruct the images; the AI method could re-create what test subjects saw by reading their brain scans

Regulators from the government of California have shut down Silicon Valley Bank; SVB had a total of $209B in assets and $175.4B in total deposits; the FDIC has stated that insured depositors will have access to their funds by Monday, and uninsured depositors will be paid an advanced dividend within the next week; in a suspicious move, Silicon Valley Bank's CEO, CFO, and CMO sold +$4.4MM in stock over the last 2 weeks

UK fintech company Railsr, which operated in the world of embedded finance, has filed for bankruptcy; the once unicorn had raised a total of $185M, including a down round in October 2022, valuing it at $250M

Coinbase has launched a wallet-as-a-service (WaaS) solution for businesses to allow them to offer Web3 wallets to their clients

📚 Good reads

How Duolingo reignited user growth. A great write-up by Jorge Mazal (former CPO of Duolingo) for Lenny’s newsletter in which he explains Duolingo’s growth engine. Complement with How Duolingo drives subscription conversion - a review of Duo’s post-purchase UX, by Rosie Hoggmascall.

Aligning Product and GTM efforts with better segmentation. Interesting thoughts on a16z' blog on enhancing collaboration between product and GTM teams with regards to prioritizing feature development tactically, to ensure you’re going to get a new happy customer

How Atlassian grows, by Jaryd Hermann. A great in-depth analysis, including lessons on kickstarting and scaling a B2B/enterprise business from one of the greatest go-to-market machines of all time. A great success story, but unfortunately Atlassian laid off 5% of their workforce this week

🔮 Emerging trends

Decentralized social media

Meta Platforms announced that it's working on a decentralized social media platform where users will be able to share text updates. The standalone network, codenamed P92, would compete with Twitter and Mastodon

P92 would use Instagram's branding. Users would log in using their Instagram credentials
The separate app would support the decentralized social networking protocol known as ActivityPub, which also powers Mastodon
It would enable users to set up or join different servers, though a feature would let users “broadcast posts to people on other servers,” according to Moneycontrol
A Meta spokesperson said the company sees "an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests"
Meta hasn't announced a launch date yet

That’s all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack

Angel

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