Six bullets of updates

1. 💬 Europe's early-stage founders are struggling to raise funds despite the overall growth in the tech ecosystem.

2. 🔍 EasyTranslate enhances LLMs with human input for better translation services, aiming to outperform pure AI.

3. 📅 Get ready! The Fintech Stage agenda is out for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, featuring 43 speakers and 20 sessions.

4. 📸 Swipewipe, a photo management app with over 5 million downloads, was acquired by MWM, marking its biggest deal yet.

5. 🌍 JobRight uses AI to help foreign workers land US jobs, assisting over 10,000 workers in navigating the complex market.

6. 💰Nubank acquires Hyperplane, an AI startup helping banks with risk, collections, and marketing tools.

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AI's day in court: will music giants mute generative tech?

This week, the AI industry faces significant legal challenges as music labels have accused two startups, Udio and Suno, of copyright infringement. The RIAA, representing major labels such as Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records, filed lawsuits against these companies. The labels claim that the startups used their music to train generative AI models without proper compensation, demanding $150,000 per infringed work. This lawsuit adds to a growing list of legal actions against generative AI vendors, including industry leaders like OpenAI, arguing that these companies must compensate or credit rightsholders whose works are used in training their models.

The outcome of these legal battles is uncertain and will significantly impact the future of generative AI. Courts may rule in favor of copyright holders, especially with evidence showing that AI models can reproduce copyrighted works nearly verbatim. However, there's a possibility that AI vendors might be protected under fair use, similar to Google's precedent with Google Books, where the court found a "highly convincing transformative purpose." Keep Reading!

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. How to close a Funding Round (it’s not just the pitch deck) | July 2 | Webinar

2. Crash Course in Financial Modeling | July 10 | Webinar

3. Financial Modeling Bootcamp | July 22 | Bootcamp  

4. SaaStock: Dublin | August 14 | Conference

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These companies just raised money

1. 🚀 Rivian shares soar 50% after a $5B investment from Volkswagen to co-develop next-gen EV software platforms.

2. 🕸 Formation Bio raises $372M to accelerate drug development using AI-powered technology.

3. 📊 CData secures $350M to help organizations leverage data across apps and build advanced AI models.

4. 🔬 Samsara Eco's enzymatic recycling tech secures a $65M funding boost from Temasek and Main Sequence.

5. 🌴 Startup Rainforest secures $20M in Series A funding to challenge Stripe with embedded payments for SaaS.

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Dappier's $2M bet on fair pay for AI-used content

Dappier, an early-stage startup, aims to revolutionize content monetization for publishers by creating a marketplace where they can sell their content to large language model (LLM) builders. Announcing a $2 million seed round, co-founder and CEO Dan Goikhman explained that Dappier provides a platform for publishers to set prices for the use of their content in AI model training. This initiative addresses the growing issue of companies scraping content without permission, similar to how Napster disrupted the music industry in the late 1990s. By offering a transactional marketplace, Dappier seeks to ensure that media companies and information providers get compensated for their content as it's used by emerging AI platforms.

Dappier's approach involves connecting customers to a content store via an RSS feed, enabling them to build models using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Publishers can then monetize their content either on a per-query basis or through ad-supported models. Read more!

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How to predict your startup’s future