Apple promises to show off its GenAI work later this year

Good morning, and welcome to TechCrunch AM for February 2, 2024. It’s Friday! We made it! And to celebrate that, we have drama at an Indian unicorn, Apple’s genAI plans, the latest on Apple’s App Store payments fracas, a neat startup out of Armenia, and a small Tesla fine.

– Alex

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No one’s happy with Apple’s App Store shenanigans: Apple’s recent moves to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) have been met with criticism, but it’s not just from small app developers and the like. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks that the company’s new plan is “so onerous” that he doesn’t expect developers to adopt the new policies.

That’s good news for Apple, which wants to keep its lucrative status quo in effect. How much money is at stake? Apple just revealed that the EU accounts for 7% of its total App Store revenue. That’s about one in every fourteen dollars. That was lower than I expected given how large the EU is.

A startup market to watch: Armenian startup Podcastle just raised $13.5 million in a round led by Mosaic Ventures. The company’s service offers a podcasting platform infused with AI elements for recording and editing. And we should expect more news out of Armenia, where developer talent is driving tech interest, according to Podcastle CEO Arto Yeritsyan. “We’re basically becoming a small Silicon Valley here,” he says.

Paytm’s expensive regulatory woes: The value of Indian fintech giant Paytm has been in freefall after India’s central bank imposed measures that would impact Paytm’s Payments Bank. The company’s stock fell about 20% on Friday after falling 20% on Thursday, causing its market cap to shrink by $2.1 billion.

Today in tiny corporate fines: Just two days after 25 California counties filed a lawsuit against Tesla alleging that the automaker repeatedly mishandled hazardous waste at its facilities throughout the state, the parties have reached a settlement. The total bill? $1.5 million. That’s, well, just about nothing to a company of Tesla’s size.

Amazon’s Rufus wants to help you shop: Amazon has a new shopping tool coming your way, an AI-powered shopping assistant called Rufus. The gist is that the tool aims to help customers find products, compare them, and get better recommendations. Sure, but why not just make the normal Amazon shopping system… better?

Before you go

Will the UK kill the AI golden goose? The UK’s House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee thinks that the “government should refocus its efforts on more near-term security and societal risks posed by large language models (LLMs) such as copyright infringement and misinformation,” instead of apocalyptic scenarios. That seems reasonable enough. On the other hand, there’s risk of “regulatory capture” if governments focus on the issues that existing foundation model companies want to keep in center view, Paul Sawers reports.

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