Tag: In Brief

Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs comes out of stealth with $230M in funding

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Fei-Fei Li, the Stanford professor many deem the “Godmother of AI,” has raised $230 million for her new startup, World Labs, from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Radical Ventures.

World Labs is valued at over $1 billion, and the capital was raised over two rounds spaced a couple of months apart, TechCrunch reported in August.

Li’s company, which hopes to have its first product ready in 2025, aims to build AI models that understand and interact with the 3D world. World Labs is developing what it calls “large world models” that will be used by professionals such as artists, designers, developers, and engineers. Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told Wired that World Labs’ customers could include game companies or movie studios.

Telegram reportedly ‘inundated’ with illegal and extremist activity

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A New York Times analysis of more than 3.2 million Telegram messages from 16,000 channels found that the messaging platform has been “inundated” with illegal and extremist activity.

Specifically, The Times found 1,500 channels operated by white supremacists, two dozen channels selling weapons, and at least 22 channels where MDMA, cocaine, heroin and other drugs were advertised for delivery.

The company’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France last month, with authorities alleging that Telegram’s lack of content moderation made Durov an accomplice to illegal activity on the platform.

The platform subsequently updated its website to allow abuse reports, and Durov has been posting on his Telegram channel, arguing, “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”

Top court orders ban on Elon Musk’s X in Brazil

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A top court in Brazil ordered an immediate, country-wide suspension of the X platform on Friday after a months-long legal battle with Elon Musk’s social media company over content moderation, according to Bloomberg.  

The court added that anyone using VPN to access the X platform would be subject to daily fines of 50,000 reais — $8,900 — though it’s not clear how it would enforce the decree.

Earlier this month, X closed its operations in Brazil in protest against court orders asking it to remove accounts that allegedly spread misinformation. At the time, the company said Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes “threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders.” Moraes warned X earlier this week that Brazil would ban the service if the company did not name a legal representative in the country.

“Soon, we expect Judge Alexandre de Moraes will order X to be shut down in Brazil, simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents,” said X’s global affairs team in a tweet Friday morning.

The platform says it will publish the Brazilian top court’s demands in the coming days and will not comply with its orders.

Will HP still demand $4B from Mike Lynch’s estate?

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Before entrepreneur and investor Mike Lynch died along with six others after the yacht they were on capsized in a storm last week, the party was celebrating Lynch’s victory in the U.S. criminal courts. In June, he was acquitted of all counts of fraud connected to HP’s 2011 acquisition of his company, Autonomy. But it was not the final chapter in that dispute. HP (now known as HPE) was still trying to recover $4 billion from him as a result of a civil case Lynch lost in the U.K.

Now HPE faces the question: does it forge ahead, even with Lynch deceased?

An article in Fortune notes HPE could be facing a PR disaster if it does; further, the estate is further unlikely to be able to do anything until it resolves any other litigation or appeals.

Still, $4 billion is no small sum, leading a legal expert to colorfully describe HPE’s predicament to the outlet as “on the horns of a dilemma.”

Justice Department sues RealPage over allegedly helping landlords collude to drive up rents

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RealPage, which makes property management software, was sued Friday by the U.S. Justice Department and eight attorneys general for allegedly helping apartment and building managers around the country collude to drive up unit prices.

The Richardson, Texas-based outfit is accused of contracting with rival landlords to absorb info about their rates and lease terms to train RealPage’s recommendation algorithms, and in the process discouraging competition among property owners who defer to the company’s recommendations on pricing and other terms.

It’s the DOJ’s first big algorithmic collusion case and comes as rent in the U.S. skyrockets, climbing 33% since March 2020, according to Zillow.

RealPage, which was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo in 2021 for $10.2 billion, commands 80% of the market for commercial revenue management software for conventional multi-family housing rentals in the U.S., according to the lawsuit. The company denies any wrongdoing.

Ben Horowitz Declares War on Michael Moritz

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A social media spat between billionaire tech investors is raising questions about the journalistic independence of three-year-old news outfit SF Standard, after a reporter representing the outlet reached out to sources for a story about VC Ben Horowitz and his wife Felicia.

The Standard’s sole backer is another longtime VC, Michael Moritz, and on Thursday night, in a tirade on the X platform, Horowitz called the “coming article” a “cheap hit piece” directed by Moritz and accused Moritz of “having his fake disinformation ‘newspaper’ fabricate hit pieces on his business rival, me.” Horowitz’s business partner, Marc Andreessen, later waded in to echo the accusations and lob a few more insults for good measure.

TechCrunch has reached out to both Moritz and SF Standard Executive Editor Jon Steinberg for comment. Moritz has yet to respond, but in an emailed statement to TechCrunch, Steinberg writes: “I can confirm [reporter] Emily Shugerman is working on a story about the Horowitzes for the San Francisco Standard. Beyond that, I can’t comment on the substance of our piece prior to publication.”

The Standard has previously covered news about Horowitz and Andreessen; it has also published news about Moritz. Interestingly, some of its coverage has been about thousands of acres of rural land north of San Francisco that is being acquired by tech entrepreneurs and investors, including both Moritz and Andreessen.