Welcome back to review week! Lots of stuff for you today, including Nintendo Switch 2. Openai capacity issues; a story worthy of handling Hollywood. And more, more. Let’s go!
In the end, I’m (almost) here. Almost ten years later, Nintendo finally released Switch 2, the Switch successor. According to TechCrunch’s Amanda Silberling, the $450 system “trys to shoot an already beloved console. I’m hooked on it! Unfortunately, US reservations could be delayed in response to Trump’s tariffs.
Delay, Delay: In a series of posts on X, Sam Altman from Openai said that the company’s new image generation tool could cause unspecified product delays. “Fast (), we can really hum,” writes Altman. The company promises to release O3 (after effectively cancelling consumer releases in February).
Old College Attempt: Zach Yadegari, who built the virus Cal AI app, wrote on Twitter that despite having a 4.0 GPA and a $30 million ARR company, he has yet to be accepted by 15 top universities.
This is TechCrunch review week, summarizing the biggest news of the week. Want to deliver this to your inbox as a newsletter every Saturday? Sign up here.
news
Ah, the Trump administration fired the head of the National Security Agency and the head of Cyber Command, and the deputy director of the NSA. It is not clear who is currently overseeing the NSA and Cyber Command after the shooting.
Do My Shop: Amazon announced the Nova Act on Monday. NovaAct is a generic AI agent that takes control of a web browser and can perform several simple actions independently. Amazon is testing a feature called “Buy For Me” (with Nova AI model), which shows a third-party site that has the product that users want. After that, you can buy things from other sites without leaving the Amazon site. Pretty nifty!
Yikes: One malicious use of ChatGpt’s new image generator: faux sheet. People are already using it to generate fake restaurant receipts and could add another tool to the already extended toolkit of AI deepfakes used by scammers. The generated receipts can also contain food and coffee stains to make them look more authentic. wonderful!
The Two Company Story: Rippling announced in March that it was suing rival deals for alleged spying, and this week released an affidavit of a wavy employee who testified that he was working as a spy. There are juicy details, like those who are said to have told him to crush the “old phone with x.” Have you heard of Hollywood?
Finger Pointing: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney called Apple and Google for “gang-style” business practices. You may remember that his company sued both Apple and Google for its exclusive practices in their respective app stores. Epic won that case on Google, but not on Apple.
We knew little about Zelle, which encourages individual payments to people. However, of the 150 million people using Zelle, the 150 million people who have made it through standalone apps, not through banks. Ok, that makes sense.
Speaking of banks, Plaid, which connects bank accounts to financial applications, sold approximately $575 million worth of common stock at a money valuation of $6.1 billion. The rating is less than half of the $13.4 billion valued in April 2021 when San Francisco-based Plaid raised a $425 million Series D.
Power Hungry: New and expanded data centers are expected to double the power demand in the AI sector by 2029. As a result, developers and tech companies are working overtime to lock their capabilities. And that’s where the sun comes in.
analysis
Backslide: Elon Musk’s push for politics, particularly his alliance with President Trump and his work within the federal government, has dragged Tesla into uncertainty. For proof, see the company’s unfortunate first quarter delivery number. The question is whether the Tesla brand can recover.