Goodbye passwords, hello Google passkeys

In today’s top story, Google makes passkeys the default sign-in method for all users. Just don’t misplace it.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of changes going on over at X, the company formerly known as Twitter. First, we hope you don’t always want to comment because a new setting lets only verified accounts reply to a post. Second, your view of what’s newsy may not match X’s. There were some changes to its public interest policy to redefine “newsworthiness” of posts.

And Zest Equity, a UAE-based startup digitizing private market deals, raised $3.8 million in seed funding to provide a place to make all of those private market deals quicker. Read more.

More top reads

DNA in the wild: We hope you have that 12-character password at the ready. 23andMe resets user passwords after genetic data was posted online. More on that.

Alphabet soup: Tidalflow helps any software play nice with ChatGPT and other LLM ecosystems. Check it out.

PC shipments may be on a decline, but so is Apple: New numbers show that neither PCs nor Apple were immune to shipment decline in the third quarter. See for yourself.

Shine bright like a Firefly: We’ve got a trio of Adobe tidbits, starting with Adobe Firefly, which can now generate more realistic images and its generative AI models can create vector graphics in Illustrator. And finally Project Stardust is a sneak preview of Adobe’s next-generation AI photo editing engine.

It’s like eight tools in one: SuperOps.ai streamlines the work of managed service providers. Here’s how.

Here kitty, kitty: TabbyML, an open source challenger to GitHub Copilot, raises $3.2 million to help you write code. Read more.

A computer you can access from any device: Shadow launches Windows-based cloud PCs for $9.99 per month. Shadow computer, get it?

Now, that’s a big seed round: Gutsy launches with a huge $51 million seed to bring process mining to security. Find out what that means.

A yarn of a funding tale: Thread (not Threads), a company developing a platform to autonomously inspect utility assets, raises $15 million. For those really tall jobs.

Ham, but made from plants: Heura hit store shelves with “York ham–style slices” that are 100% plant-based. Something to sink your teeth into.

For those of you looking for the 411 on SBF: Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial is into its second week. Here’s what we know so far. (TC+) And Alameda Research’s ex-CEO Caroline Ellison testifies, claiming SBF directed her to commit crimes. Get the scoop.

More for your Tuesday:

Plenful raises $9M to automate healthcare workflows

For VCs in India, bank is the new hot investment

X competitor Bluesky adds email verification, flags misleading links in security-focused update

Canopy Servicing’s $15.2M Series A1 shows fintech startups that raised in 2021 can still get money (TC+)

The Q3 venture capital market explained in five charts

The global venture capital market failed to turn the corner in the third quarter of 2023, instead racking up another quarter’s worth of declines in most parts of the world.

The data, however, can become a little bit abstract in numerical form. So, today, the TechCrunch+ team has charted the most important venture capital data we’ve seen thus far to help you better understand where global startup investing really is today. See where deal count and deal activity were the best and worst.

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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On the pods

This week on Found, we’re joined by Giovanni Fili, the founder and CEO of Exeger, a startup that creates flexible solar cells that can create electric energy off of any light condition.

Fili talked about what it has been like devoting the last 15 years of his career to a company based on tech that hadn’t previously been proven to work.

He also talked about running a deep tech company as a nontechnical founder and how he’s built a capital-intensive startup off of relatively little funding. Listen here.

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