Nope. No ownership shuffle. That is the point.

Amazon's Prime Air has been slow to take off. Now, it's getting an injection of activity, literally: it will be used to deliver medicines from Amazon Pharmacy. tip Techmeme

No comment!

Some tech PRs really know their shit. I mean really. Huge props to those of you out there.

Prove, once called Payfone, was an early player in carrier billing before pivoting to authentication tech. Under the radar, it's grown to a $1B+ valuation tip Techmeme

Two-parter from us, focusing on Israel and Palestine, on the impact of the fighting/war/terrorism on tech. Here's the other story. (Palestine linked in my previous post.)

Israel’s startup ecosystem: down but not out tcrn.ch/45uGWyH by Ingrid and Ron Miller

Two-parter from us about what's going on in the tech worlds of Israel and Palestine. Here is one:

Why does this matter? A formal investigation will give us all a better idea of how 'X' is used and abused: since Musk took Twitter private, there is a lot less transparency around it. We use it in a dark tunnel bored by Elon.

Remember EyeEm? One of the original the guard of social platforms/apps focused around smartphone images -- a space dominated + 'won' by Instagram in the 1st round at least. Now it's with Freepik, a startup outlier (profitable, quietly growing, mostly bootstrapped).

From last night. Right-sizing of a fintech overvaluation or a victim of jumpy investment climate?

Great grab the popcorn reporting from Jacquelyn Melinek and Rebecca Bellan

'Rhen pointed... at Bankman-Fried, who looked back at him. In that moment, in the back right corner of the courtroom, Barbara Fried, Bankman-Fried’s mother, was writing quickly on a yellow note pad. His father, Joseph Bankman, kept his eyes ahead...' techcrunch.com/2023/10/04/sbf…

From earlier. Interesting and talented team taking a new approach to content moderation at a time when the space feels like it’s at a crossroads.

I'd love to know how many people who are furious about the SBF treatment on 60 Minutes lost money or lost face b/c of SBF. (Note: I'm not defending anyone! And no, I want nothing to do with crypto...)

Meta's celebrity AIs are generated AI animations built from filming the 28 people they represent; Meta would not comment on how the celebrities were compensated (Ingrid / TechCrunch)

techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/met…

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It was hard to tell what this was in the demo but Meta confirms they are full-on AIs w/ audio coming next year. It's mum on what celebs are being paid, but I'm guessing revenue shares, advertising opps, and the promise of more 'authentic engagement' to help scale their brands.

In about 20 minutes I’ll be interviewing Zach Perret from Plaid! I’m so looking forward to a ‘colourful’ conversation

CrowdStrike has now confirmed the deal (and our scoop from this summer) tcrn.ch/3sSUoP8 tip Techmeme

Quite an interesting idea here. Sort of the legal, digital equivalent of A&R in the music industry. The question will be if it manages to stick to its ideals and remit/avoid abuse.