Citing data privacy concerns, Italy temporarily bans ChatGPT

Fri-yay Crunch!

We are pretty excited about Disrupt 2023 getting a whole stage dedicated to fintech. And while we’re talking about events…There’s just a few hours left to save $200 on TC Early Stage tickets in Boston in a couple of weeks, so get yer tickets while you can!

On that note, enjoy your weekend! — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

Here's why the UK should be known as the 'Unicorn Kingdom'

Sponsored by GREAT Britain & Northern Ireland

Boasting more unicorns than Germany, France and Sweden combined, the UK tech sector is valued at $1 trillion, along with the US and China. Hear from the experts how the UK’s ability to scale tech startups has now captured the interest of VCs on the West Coast.

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Startups and VC

What do you do when you have a very successful and popular product (marijuana) that is legal in some places, but federally has been a Schedule 1 drug since 1970? Well, you can’t rely on any national institutions as your business partners, Haje reports. One of the major places that shows up is in payments and payment processing; even after recreational cannabis became legal in 21 states and decriminalized in another dozen or so, cannabis has become largely a cash business. In a world that is increasingly cashless, that’s a problem for both consumers and businesses. Smoakland is currently beta-testing a loophole that lets its customers pay by credit card. The secret, it turns out, is crypto.

Need some more to get you through the long bleak gap of “less tech news” known as the weekend? Don’tcha worry fam, we gotchu:

Yeah, of course, YC’s winter class is oozing with AI companies

Just over one-third of the fledgling startups in Y Combinator’s latest class say “that they are an AI company or use AI in some kind of way,” reports Rebecca Szkutak.

“You can’t blame the YC companies for leaning into AI,” she writes. “If you saw VCs dumping dollars — in a tougher fundraising market, no less — into a technology like AI that you could implement into your own business, why wouldn’t you?”

Three more from the TC+ team:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

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Big Tech Inc.

Checkout.com has a new president who recently spoke with Mary Ann about being bullish on a U.S. expansion and how she “welcomes” comparisons to Stripe. Céline Dufétel says of the payments industry this year: “Now more than ever amid the uncertain economic landscape, CFOs and heads of payments are narrowing in on the impact of payments on topline growth and profitability. Increasingly, business leaders are recognizing the measurable impact of high-performing payments systems in maximizing acceptance rates, minimizing costly fraud concerns, and reducing operational costs.”

And we have five more for you:

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