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Fri yay Crunch!
We’re pretty excited about Disrupt 2023 getting an entire stage dedicated to fintech. Speaking of events… There are only a few hours left to save $200 on TC Early Stage tickets in Boston in a few weeks, so get your tickets while you still can!
On that note, enjoy your weekend! — Christine And Hey
The ukbusinessupdates.com Top 3
- Italy gives ChatGPT the start: The Italian government has been on a blockade lately. A few days ago we wrote about a possible ban on cultured meat, and today Italy wants to block ChatGPT due to data protection concerns. Natasha L writes that the country’s data protection authority is opening an investigation into whether OpenAI violates the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
- Groupon gets its Czech book: Ingrid reports that Groupon has lost 99.4% of its value since going public and now has a new CEO who will lead the company from the Czech Republic.
- Jio gets his game up: Manic writes that Mukesh Ambani, CEO of Indian streaming giant Jio, sees the Indian Premier League cricket tournament as “the perfect opportunity to review Jio’s service adoption strategy, even as the company acknowledges that cricket streaming will not turn a profit for years to come .”
Startups and VC
What do you do when you have a very successful and popular product (marijuana) that is legal in some places but has been federally a Schedule 1 drug since 1970? Well, you can’t rely on national institutions as your business partners, Hey reports. One of the major places to pop up is in payments and payment processing; even after recreational cannabis became legal in 21 states and decriminalized in a dozen more states, cannabis has largely become a cash business. In an increasingly cashless world, this is a problem for both consumers and businesses. Smoakland is currently beta testing a loophole that would allow customers to pay by credit card. The secret, it turns out, is crypto.
Need a little more to get you through the long bleak gap of “less tech news” otherwise known as the weekend? Don’t worry, fam, we’ve got:
Yes, of course, YC’s winter class is seeping from the AI companies
Image Credits: Getty Images
Just over a third of early-stage startups in Y Combinator’s newest class say “they are an AI company or use AI in some way,” Rebecca Szkutak reports.
“You can’t blame the YC companies for leaning into AI,” she writes. “If you saw VCs dumping dollars — in a tougher fundraising market, no less — into a technology like AI that you could implement in your own company, why not do it?”
Three more from the TC+ team:
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Big Tech Inc.
Checkout.com has a new president who recently spoke Mary Ann about being optimistic about a US expansion and how she “welcomes” comparisons to Stripe. Céline Dufétel says this year about the payments industry: “In the midst of the uncertain economic landscape, now more than ever, CFOs and heads of payments are limiting the impact of payments on revenue growth and profitability. Business leaders are increasingly recognizing the measurable impact of well-performing payment systems in maximizing acceptance rates, minimizing costly fraud issues and reducing operational costs.”
And we have five more for you:
