el producto #333 🚀
WhatsApp payments and message editing, Google's Search Generative Experience, The supplier feature trap of marketplaces, Apple WWDC's preview, Meta layoffs & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$1.3B: EU regulators fined Meta a record $1.3B for sending user data to the US, surpassing its prior high of ~$806M against Amazon in 2021
$850M: PhonePe, the Indian payments giant, added another $100M to its now-$850M fundraise
$250M: Builder.ai, an AI platform to speed up app development, raised a $250M Series D
$175M: OpenAI closed a $175.3M fund to invest in other startups, surpassing its initial goal by 75%; the fund has 14 LPs, and OpenAI has already invested in >12 companies, with plans for a second fund underway
$150M: Tipalti, an accounting software firm, raised $150M
$115M: Tools for Humanity, the startup behind the iris-scanning crypto project Worldcoin, raised a $115M Series C to scale globally
$105M: Insider, an Istanbul-based AI-powered marketing platform, raised $105M at a ~$2B valuation; the company serves 1200+ customers globally and has raised $274M so far
$72M: Go, a Tokyo-based taxi-hailing service, raised a $72M funding round at a ~$1B valuation; after launching in 2020, Go currently has ~70% of Japan’s ride-share market
$53M: Shutterstock will acquire Giphy from Meta for $53M in cash after regulatory pressure forced Meta to divest; Meta paid ~$400M for Giphy in 2020; the deal is expected to close next month
500K: OpenAI's new ChatGPT app for iOS topped 500,000 downloads within its first 6 days of its release, making it one of the best new mobile app debuts of 2022 and 2023
$100K: OpenAI is offering ten $100K grants to fund experiments for developing democratic AI regulation processes, with applications open until June 24; this follows the company's call for an international regulatory body for AI
6K: Meta Platforms began its final round of recent layoffs this week, impacting an estimated 6,000 employees as part of its "Year of Efficiency" initiative; the Facebook parent company announced plans to cut 10,000 positions in April and May, alongside its increased investment in generative AI
📰 What’s going on
Google started rolling out access to its new Search Generative Experience (SGE); the goal of SGE is to answer multi-step searches with a "snapshot" of info that can include links, images, and other media
Google released its "Product Studio" on Tuesday; the tool leverages generative AI to help businesses develop and alter product images
YouTube is shutting down its Snapchat-like feature, called "YouTube Stories," as it shifts its focus to Shorts, live videos, and Community Posts
Apple announced the schedule for its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), running from June 5-9; the keynote on June 5 at 10 a.m. PT is expected to reveal an AR/VR headset, iOS 17, macOS 14, a 15-inch MacBook Air, and more
Apple's upcoming iOS 17 update is rumored to bring a new smart display feature to iPhones, allowing users to view calendar appointments, weather, and notifications on their locked screens; the feature would turn on when the phone is locked and tilted on its side
Microsoft announced that Bing would be integrated as the default search engine in ChatGPT, initially available for ChatGPT Plus users and later for free users via a plugin
Adobe announced its Generative Fill tool in Photoshop, powered by its Firefly generative AI engine; users will be able to input natural language prompts to add, extend, or remove content in images, maintaining the original scene's perspective, lighting, and style
Spotify is working on tools to generate ads with AI versions of hosts’ voices, according to Bill Simmons, founder of The Ringer, a Spotify-owned propertyÂ
Meta announced new open-source AI models that can produce speech for 1K+ languages and identify 4K+ languages
WhatsApp announced plans to roll out a long-awaited message editing feature
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew confirmed that Oracle has started reviewing the company’s source code to host and manage all US user data, aiming to resolve concerns over national security and data privacy
Blizzard Entertainment is training an image-generating AI tool, called Blizzard Diffusion, on its own titles like World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch to expedite the game design process via AI-generated concept artÂ
📚 Good reads
The Supply features trap of marketplaces, by Gilad Horev. Marketplace operators are constantly trying to figure out how they can make their value proposition to suppliers more attractive and more competitive. The only approach that actually matters though, is demand - both owning it, and having a lot of it. Time and time again, product teams in marketplaces end up investing too much time into features that ultimately won’t be the differentiating factor for a supplier staying in the marketplace. And at the opportunity cost of investing time and resources into the core marketplace value proposition. Why do marketplaces build features for the supply side in the first place?
The new problems every marketplace faces after product market fit. Dan Hockenmaier shares his insights on how the constraint/problem landscape changes for marketplace startups once they get over the 0 to 1 hump
WhatsApp says hello to the banking & payments world in emerging markets. In this Whitesight article, Risav Chakraborty and Sanjeev Kumar decode how WhatsApp is championing digital commerce and financial inclusion in emerging markets
Strategy = Insights^Conviction. John Cutler argues that a strategy doesn't always need to be unexpected and novel to be effective. Sometimes the simple and obvious strategies are the best, but that's not the whole story. Underpinning how we execute is likely a strategy as well
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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