Google Pay is going away in the US

Good afternoon, and welcome to TechCrunch PM. We made it to the weekend, and your reward is some great reporting by the news team. Starting with Google, we learned that its Google Pay isn’t as popular as Google Wallet in the U.S. There’s also more evaluation of Reddit’s IPO, lots of consumer tech pinching features and a reason to be nice to chatbots. Have a great weekend!

— Christine

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TechCrunch PM Top 3

U.S. Google Pay users are on borrowed time: Google Wallet is being used more frequently in the United States than Google Pay, so Google has decided to sunset the app in June.

I-Soon, too soon?: The Chinese government’s hacking operations were exposed when documents were leaked showing that its Chinese hacking firm I-Soon hacked governments around the world.

More Reddit: TechCrunch AM summarized the glee that is Reddit’s IPO filing. This afternoon, I bring you more we gleaned from the S-1, including how the community of retail investors called r/WallStreetBets could pose a risk to investors, and how Reddit is downplaying the risks of developer backlash, among other things.

More top reads

Mutale Nkonde’s nonprofit is working to make AI less biased: As part of TechCrunch’s series of interviews focused on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution, we highlight Mutale Nkonde, the founding CEO of the nonprofit AI for the People. The organization seeks to increase the amount of Black voices in tech.

Arc’s new pinching feature leaves something to be desired: The Browser company’s Arc, a browser focused on a less cluttered web experience, has a new “pinch-to-summarize” feature that shows a formatted summary of a website or news story. However, when Ivan put it to practice, it missed a few important things.

Humane pushes Ai Pin ship date to mid-April: Good things come to those who wait. Unfortunately, this means a couple more months before the Ai Pin device, which shows who’s calling you on your hand when you make a pinching motion, will be ready for prime time.

Treat chatbots the way you want to be treated: My family rolls their eyes when I tell Alexa thank you for giving me my notifications. Now that a research paper shows chatbots like encouragement, I can tell them I was an early adopter of “emotive prompts.”

Your living room, digitized: Virtual Staging AI, a bootstrapped startup, is helping Realtors digitally furnish rooms in seconds with the help of generative AI.

On the pods

In today’s Equity, Mary Ann, Kirsten and Alex discuss some deals of the week, including PermitFlow raising $31 million to bring software to the construction permitting market. They also cover one man’s plan to keep Cake e-bikes alive for a while longer and Match Group’s tie-up with OpenAI.

Unfortunately, the news about Reddit filing to go public came out after the episode was recorded. Don’t worry, they will discuss its S-1 filing in due time. In the meantime, one IPO filing is all it takes to get people excited about who will be next. Maybe Klarna?

Meanwhile, video game startups could prove 2024’s surprise winners, and there is good reason to expect fortunes to turn around for the startup niche. While venture wallets might open for gaming companies this year, some companies like Frost Giant are turning to their own community to raise. Listen here.

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