🕶️ FTC cracks down on AI surveillance

Six bullets of updates

1. 📰 Europe hit hard by IT outage: CrowdStrike update crashes systems, exposing tech giants' dominance and need for local innovation.

2. 📈 Cyabra, a startup combating disinformation, will go public via SPAC, valuing the company at $70M.

3. 🎨 Mark Zuckerberg envisions content creators making AI clones of themselves, potentially revolutionizing the creator economy.

4. 🤖 Elon Musk's Tesla will reveal its robotaxi prototype on October 10, delaying the initial August 8 plan.

5. 🚀 17-year-old Eric Zhu's startup, built in a high school bathroom, raises $2.3M and emerges from stealth mode.

6. 🌱 Micropep uses tiny proteins to make pesticides safer, offering a promising alternative to chemical solutions.

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FTC cracks down on AI's shady pricing tricks

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into eight companies that offer AI-powered "surveillance service pricing" to assess the impact of these products on privacy, competition, and consumer protection. The targeted companies, including Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co., utilize AI to adjust pricing based on consumer behavior, location, and personal data. This practice, known as surveillance pricing, allows businesses to charge different prices to different customers based on their data profiles.

FTC Chair Lina M. Khan emphasized that the inquiry aims to uncover how firms might exploit personal data to impose higher prices on consumers, potentially compromising privacy. This effort highlights growing concerns over the use of detailed consumer data in pricing strategies, a practice that extends beyond targeted advertising to potentially manipulative pricing models.

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. Crash Course in Financial Modeling | August 7 | Webinar

2. SaaStock: Dublin | August 14 | Conference

3. How to close a Funding Round (it’s not just the pitch deck) | August 14 | Webinar

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These companies just raised money

1. 📈 Vanta secures $150M Series C, boosting its valuation to $2.45B as trust management demand surges.

2. ✈️ Spanish startup Exoticca raises €60M Series D, enhancing its tour packages platform with connected services.

3. 🦷 Pearl raises $58M to help dentists enhance diagnostic accuracy with AI, tackling over-treatment and misdiagnosis.

4. 🔒 Dazz raises $50M to enhance cloud security with AI-based automated remediation, hitting a $400M valuation.

5. 🚀 CityRock Venture Partners launches $150M second fund to back early-stage startups and diverse founders.

6. 🛡️ Lakera raises $20M to shield enterprises from LLM vulnerabilities, tackling threats in generative AI applications.

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Tesla’s Optimus takes on the humanoid competition

Elon Musk has announced that the company will begin selling its Optimus humanoid robot in 2026, with low production starting next year for internal use and high production for other companies by 2026. The Optimus robot, already performing tasks autonomously at Tesla facilities, represents a significant focus for the company, which has heavily invested in its development. Despite Musk's ambitious projection of a 20 billion unit demand for general-purpose humanoid robots, past delays suggest these timelines should be viewed cautiously.

The humanoid robot market has evolved substantially since Tesla's initial announcement in 2021, spurred by the pandemic and a surge in interest in generative AI. Competitors like 1X, Agility Robotics, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, Figure, and Sanctuary AI have made significant strides. Companies like 1X, supported by major investors including OpenAI, are showcasing robots capable of household tasks, while Agility's Digit is already in commercial use. Read more!

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