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We made it to Friday! If you’re looking for a good podcast episode, I highly recommend Today’s Equity Where Natasha M, Mary Ann and Bekka talk about CES, NYE, SBF and FTX – oh my! Also, kudos to you Daily Crunchers out there for reading yesterday’s newsletter and helping it become one of the most read stories today. It warms my heart and I hope today’s news is just as exciting. Without further adieu… — Christine
The ukbusinessupdates.com Top 3
- Knock, knock, tenants are guaranteed to be at the door: Property owners don’t always have peace of mind when renting out their spaces, but Doorstead believes the approach fixes that. Mary Ann reports on the company having secured $21.5 million in new financing to not only tell you how much rent to expect, but also make sure you always have a tenant for your rental property.
- Credit buzz: Indian fintech KreditBee’s business model of underwriting to help people get microloans attracted even more venture capital — $100 million even — to boost the company’s valuation to nearly $700 million, Manic writes.
- Seeing is believing: Hey reports on “Lumus’ attempt to make AR glasses a little less cringe-inducing.”
ukbusinessupdates.com @ CES
If you liked that entry above on Lumus, then you’ll love what else the ukbusinessupdates.com team has in store for you today as they cover the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. There are still two days to go!
Gadgets and gadgets galore:
Will record levels of dry powder lead to a delayed explosion of startup investment?
Image Credits: Tim Robberts/Getty Images
There’s subtext to the waves of layoffs and Craigslist ads for discounted office furniture: tech investors have amassed about $290 billion in dry powder.
“Despite the recession, strong cash flow and tailwinds for digitization spending lead some market participants to believe we are in a strong investment cycle,” said Raphael Mukomilow and Pierre Bourdon of Picus Capital.
After tracking uninvested capital by year, going back to 2006, the pair found that “a crisis in the investment landscape was often followed by years of systematic outperformance, and history tends to repeat itself.”
Three more from the TC+ team:
ukbusinessupdates.com+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams lead the way. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!
Big Tech Inc.
If you use Snap’s desktop camera to give yourself a nice filter during video calls, start saying goodbye to it now. Ivan reports that Snap is shutting down the camera app on January 25 to focus on the Camera Kit for Web feature. He also notes that there may be more to the move, writing: “The discontinuation of the Snap Camera app – first noticed by The edge – is not entirely surprising. Last year it cut 20% of its staff and discontinued its drone product months after its initial launch.”
And we have five more for you:
- We are lowering prices left and right: Mat reports that Tesla has cut prices for its Model 3 and Model Y in China for the second time in three months.
- Plagiarism in the world of AI: If you were in school in the late 1990s or early 2000s, you may remember your teacher telling you not to use the internet because it was full of misinformation. Well, technology has come a long way, and even longer now that ChatGPT is a thing. Amid news that New York City public schools are blocking ChatGPT, OpenAI says it is working on “restrictions” to help recognize ChatGPT-generated text, Kyle reports.
- TikTok, it’s time to go to bed: We’ve heard of alarms to wake you up, but that phone screen was meant to keep you busy when you should be sleeping. “No problem,” says TikTok, which is testing a “sleep reminder” feature that nudges you when it’s bedtime, Aisha writes. And that’s not all — she also reports that TikTok now has video scrubbing thumbnails to make it easier to find specific parts of videos.
- It’s enough to make your Twitch: Website and app glitches happen all the time, but when Amanda saw it happen to Twitch for the second time in a week, she decided to get to the bottom of it.
- Samsung doesn’t sing a happy tune: Kate reports on Samsung’s preliminary quarterly earnings estimates, which don’t look good. The maker of memory chips and phones says quarterly profit hit an eight-year low amid weak demand for its products.
