The Biden administration is calling out Apple and Google’s app stores for stifling competition. A new report, issued on Wednesday by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), said it had investigated the competitive conditions in the mobile app ecosystem and found that it’s “not a level playing field, which is harmful to…
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. This week, Mary Ann interviewed Hans Tung, prolific investor and managing…
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes AI can help usher in “unbelievable abundance,” but he says he wants to ensure that such abundance is shared. Toward that end, Altman has embraced a theory of 19th century political economist Henry George, who in his own lifetime worried about wealth amassing in the hands of the few following…
Superstrata’s e-bike is a strange specimen — there’s no two ways about it. In some ways that makes sense; the bike’s concept, borne out in seamless 3D-printed carbon fiber, springs from an equally strange premise. We’ll get into that. Talking to Sonny Vu, founder of Superstrata’s parent company Arevo, the bikes were crafted not out…
Meta is starting to test closed spaces called “members-only worlds” in Horizon Worlds, its social VR experience. The company has begun a limited alpha test to give creators the ability to grow and moderate their own communities. Meta has selected a small group of creators to build and obtain feedback about members-only worlds. In a…
When you live very far away from a grocery store, we’re talking like an hour and may include catching several buses or a rideshare, it can be difficult to make the weekly trip in. Enter Diferente, which touts itself as “the largest subscription foodtech for fresh organic produce in Brazil.” Former James Delivery founder Eduardo…
Baidu, China’s top search engine provider and robotaxi developer, is apparently working on its own counterpart to ChatGPT. The news, first reported by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, sent Baidu’s stock price rising on Monday to reach its highest point since September. A spokesperson for Baidu declined to comment on the reports. But it…
Taiwanese automotive conglomerate Hotai Motor exposed reams of personal customer data from its car rental and carshare unit, iRent, until a security researcher found the data online last week. Even then, it took the company a week — and the intervention of the Taiwanese government — to act. Hotai Motor is one of the largest…
A new app called Rewind wants to make it easier for music fans to explore the top songs of decades past. Hoping to cater to consumer demand for nostalgic music experiences, Rewind allows users to “time travel” through the music charts from 1960 through 2010 to learn about how older songs have influenced today’s hits.…
Marqeta has agreed to acquire two-year-old fintech infrastructure startup Power Finance for $223 million in cash, marking the first acquisition in the publicly-traded company’s 13-year history. About one-third of the purchase price is payable over a two-year period subject to certain undisclosed conditions. And, if one undisclosed milestone in particular is met within the next…
