🕶️ Traditional Media vs. Tech Titans

Six bullets of updates

1. 🗳️ 78% of US adults agree - social media companies wield too much political influence, says a Pew survey.

2. 💸 Big Four telecom companies fined a total of $200M for illegally selling customers' real-time location data without consent.

3. 🎶 Spotify turbocharges its developer toolkit with Backstage, an out-the-box developer portal used by 3,000+ organizations.

4. 📚 Trade schools see a 16% rise in enrollment as 75% of Gen Z eyes entrepreneurship over four-year college degrees.

5. 🐟 Shinkei's humane fish harvesting tech could revolutionize the seafood industry, with a recent $6M funding round.

6. 🤖 European disability tech startups see potential as they leverage AI to serve a broader market, with $4bn in early-stage investments in 2022.

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Newspapers VS. Tech Giants

In an unexpected turn of events, eight major newspapers led by Alden Global Capital have slapped a lawsuit against tech giants OpenAI and Microsoft. The newspapers, including The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, and The San Jose Mercury News, accuse the companies of copyright infringement.

The claim is that the tech firms have been using copyrighted articles, without obtaining legal permission, to train their artificial intelligence (AI) products, specifically the generative AI products like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.

The lawsuit intensifies the longstanding friction between traditional publishers and tech companies. It also brings to light the ethical questions surrounding the use of digital content in AI training, a largely unregulated domain. This legal battle opens up the necessity for clearer regulations in the field of AI and machine learning, particularly concerning content copyright and permissions.

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. 🚨 Special Benefit for Startup Club Subscribers | SaaStock: USA | Conference | May 13-15 | Austin, TX

2. How to close a Funding Round (it’s not just the pitch deck) | May 7 | Webinar

3. Beloved Tech Brands: San Francisco | May 15 | San Francisco

4. Crash Course in Financial Modeling | May 13 | Webinar

5. Propel24 | May 21 | Conference

6. Financial Modeling Course | May 20 - 24 | Bootcamp

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These companies just raised money

1. 🌐 Enterprise browser company, Island, lands a whopping $175M in Series D, hitting a $3B valuation while redefining secure browsing.

2. 💼 Midwest's Hyde Park Venture Partners reels in $98M for its Fund IV, boosting its total assets to ~$320M.

3. 📧 Email newsletter platform, beehiiv, buzzes with $33M Series B funding to expand its operations after sending out a whopping 1 billion emails per month (Congrats! 💌)

4. 🔒 API security startup Traceable secures $30M, boosting its value to $500M, amidst a surge in API attacks on companies.

5. 💰 Wallet-as-a-service startup Ansa bags $14M in Series A round, 95.6% of which was contributed by female investors.

6. 🚚 Chilean startup Movener lands a $2M Series A, led by SQM Lithium Ventures, for transforming trucks into hybrid-electrics.

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Intuition Ventures against the tide: consumer tech investments

In a funding landscape dominated by B2B and AI startups, Paris-based VC firm, Intuition, is taking the road less traveled by investing exclusively in consumer tech. Spearheaded by Hugo Amsellem, a former employee of The Family, and Etienne Boutan, co-founder of AI startup Heex Technologies, the firm has raised an initial fund of $16 million. The idea behind this "contrarian" investment approach is to capitalize on the current gap in consumer tech investments, a sector deemed too risky by many due to its unpredictability and the dominance of tech giants.

The firm believes that consumer innovation hasn’t halted and there is still a rich vein of potential waiting to be tapped, especially with the advances in AI. They are betting on the next big thing in consumer tech by investing between €100,000 and €500,000 at the pre-seed or seed stage in over 40 companies.

Not just content with investments, Intuition plans to host a series of co-events with key VC firms in cities like London, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

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NEVER outsource your Tech Startup MVP

When launching a company, it's crucial to assemble the right team. Developers play a pivotal role in this process. While some may opt for outsourcing development work, it often falls short 😎 Subscribe for more!