Headcount growth is slowing as startups prepare for worst-case scenarios • TechCrunch

Eddie Ackerman Contributor Eddie Ackerman is strategic finance operating partner at Thomvest Ventures, where he works closely with the company’s portfolio companies to provide valuable financial insight and guidance. Recent headlines have been dominated by announcements of large headcount reductions across the tech industry and especially at giants like Meta, Amazon and Twitter. But it’s…

2 former SBF associates plead guilty to fraud and are cooperating with US federal prosecutors • TechCrunch

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Well, the weather outside is…entirely dependent on where you are, we suppose. For the purposes of this newsletter, let’s imagine sunshine, some pristine beaches, a lovely gentle cooling breeze, and some piña…

A brief history of diffusion, the tech at the heart of modern image-generating AI • TechCrunch

Text-to-image AI exploded this year as technical advances greatly enhanced the fidelity of art that AI systems could create. Controversial as systems like Stable Diffusion and OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 are, platforms including DeviantArt and Canva have adopted them to power creative tools, personalize branding and even ideate new products. But the tech at the heart…