el producto #346 🚀
How to use AI for writing, Big Tech salaries, Meta's code generator, Divergent thinking, How Nvidia's revenue soared, Purposeful communication in Product, Ramp funding & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$300M: Ramp, a startup offering corporate cards and an expense platform, raised $300M at a $5.8B valuation (down 29% from its last private valuation)
$235M: Hugging Face, a platform that features a hub for AI code repositories, confirmed raising a $235M Series D at a $4.5B valuation
$200M: Zepto, an India-based grocery delivery startup, raised a $200M Series E at a $1.4B valuation, marking India’s first new unicorn of 2023
$100M: Modular, a startup that helps customers improve the inferencing performance of AI models on CPUs (and soon GPUs), raised a $100M round
20M: BeReal said its DAUs have held steady at ~20M and announced it would replace its Discovery feed with a “Friends of Friends” feed
+843%: Nvidia reported revenue of $13.5B in the second quarter of fiscal 2024, more than double the previous year's figures, primarily driven by increased demand for its AI chips; quarterly profit surged to $6.2B, an 843% y/y increase
-7%: T-Mobile will cut 7% of its global staff (~5K jobs), mostly in corporate and tech roles; since 2021, AT&T has cut ~74K jobs, or 32% of its staff
📰 What’s going on
Meta launches a web-based version of Threads, which offers a pretty straightforward translation of the mobile experience
Meta unveiled an AI speech-to-text model that can translate and transcribe almost 100 languages; Meta said its Seamless M4T, or Massively Multilingual and Multimodal Machine Translation, is a step toward a universal language translator
Meta introduced Code Llama, a large language model with the ability to generate code and explain code in natural language; Code Llama, based on Llama 2, is available for free for research and commercial use and in three models: foundational code model, Python specialized for Python, and Instruct for understanding natural language instructions
Microsoft is exploring the addition of AI-powered features for various Windows apps, including Photos, Camera, and Paint; Microsoft has already announced Windows Copilot, its AI-powered assistant for the OS, set to launch to all users later this year
The EU's new tech giant regulations are now active; the Digital Services Act (DSA) took effect on Friday, applying to major digital platforms and search engines like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, all designed to enhance online safety:
the DSA bans data-driven targeted ads toward children and those based on protected characteristics such as sexual orientation, political affiliation, and ethnicity
it also prohibits "dark patterns," or manipulative design tactics to nudge users in certain directions
Online platforms must be more transparent about their algorithms, and offer users ways to report illegal content and to appeal content moderation decisions
Adyen, Braintree and Stripe face off; PayPal's Braintree seems to be successfully competing with European rivals Adyen and Stripe in the digital payments industry
Yahoo announced the acquisition of CommonStock, a social network for stocks and crypto, for an undisclosed amount; launched in Aug. 2020, the startup claims over $10B in connected assets
Sony announced an upcoming portable gaming device that streams PlayStation 5 games via Wi-Fi; competing against the Nintendo Switch and Valve's Steam Deck, Sony's PlayStation Portal is priced at $199.99 in the U.S. and will go on sale later this year
TikTok announced it will integrate ads into its search results; the ads will be labeled as "sponsored" and appear beside organic posts
Alibaba is refocusing on e-commerce to shore up earnings; the Chinese firm recently launched a live stream platform targeting younger consumers
📚 Good reads
How Andrew Chen uses AI when blogging and writing. The author of The Cold Start Problem (written before ChatGPT!), shares his personal workflow for writing, and how it has evolved thanks to AI. Pretty useful
Strategies for purposeful communication in Product. A great piece by Audrey Gawrych that will make you reflect on you interact with your teams. “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place“
Tools to facilitate divergent thinking, by Kyle Byrd. Divergent thinking is crucial for generating new ideas and potential solutions, since it allows us to envision different futures and explore the problem space. Factors like anchoring bias, confirmation bias, belief bias, and status quo bias hinder divergent thinking; understanding how to foster and elicit it can lead to better strategic decision-making
The 4 types of work. Luca Rossi shares an interesting framework for organizing product / engineering work and time, considering Strategic, Tactical, Operational and ASAP levels
Big Tech salaries. Curious to know what folks in tech are making at Big Tech right now? Business Insider put together a salaries database. Roles include — but aren’t limited to — engineers, analysts, developers, product managers, salespeople, scientists, and marketers
Cool tech, but no problem solved. Why Zume died: how melting cheese burnt a $2.3B pizza delivery startup run by robots. Another great case study by Jaryd Hermann, including cautionary lessons on over-indexing on technology, creating a big value gap, failing to focus, and making big disruptive pivots
That’s all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Angel