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Happy Google Day! There’s been a wall of interesting news coming out of the search-and-everything-else-too giant at its I/O event. Christine summarized everything Google has announced at I/O thus far, so that’s a good place to start.
Also, it’s a rare treat when TechCrunch top boss Joey shares something on the site, breaking down how we’re disrupting TechCrunch Disrupt: 8 stages, 3 days, 1 city. While on the topic of Disrupt, here’s your chance to vote for the roundtables and breakouts you want at the event.
The TechCrunch Top 3
Big spender: Connie spoke with Sound Ventures’ Effie Epstein to get the scoop on which three lucky companies were the recipients of a large chunk of the venture capital firm’s new AI fund.
Identified flying object: Darrell reports on Vast’s and SpaceX’s plan to put the first commercial space station into orbit in 2025. And check out Aria’s deep-dive into Vast in the Big Tech section.
You’ve got the world in the PaLM of your hand: Google launched PaLM 2, its next-gen large language model. Frederic writes that “PaLM 2 will power Google’s updated Bard chat tool and function as the foundation model for most of the search engine giant’s new AI features. See what we have so far in Google I/O news in the Big Tech section.
Startups and VC
Autonomous delivery startup Nuro is in the midst of a restructuring that will result in layoffs and shift resources away from commercial operations and toward R&D, Kirsten reports. Nuro declined to share how many of its roughly 1,100 employees will be affected. Employees are expected to learn who will be laid off by the end of the week.
Natasha L reports that Clearview was fined yet again, this time in France, for failing to comply with privacy orders. Whether Clearview will ever pay any of these fines remains an open question, since the U.S.-based company has not been cooperating with EU regulators.
There’s another fistful for you as well:
To their credit, that’s a smart move: Mary Ann reports how Petal raises $35 million and spins off data unit “to bring credit scores into the 21st century.”
Give her a raise: Christine reports that All Raise’s interim CEO is now full-time.
Real money for skill-based games: Ingrid writes that Triumph raises $14 million for an SDK to add real-money tournaments into games.
Drop-in payroll: “Our goal is to spice up software platforms,” says Salsa’s CEO as the company raises $10 million to roll out payroll features for software companies. Christine has more.
Fusion power coming soon: Helion Energy will provide Microsoft with fusion power starting in 2028, by Haje.
3 key metrics for cybersecurity product managers
Image Credits: Tetra Images (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Cybersecurity product managers usually measure conversion rates, detection accuracy and usage/en