Hey guys, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular digest of the past few days in tech. The drama unfolding at artificial intelligence startup OpenAI dominated — even overshadowed — the headlines, but a lot of other things happened in the half-week leading up to Thanksgiving. So much for a sleepy pre-holiday break!
In this edition of WiR, along with the OpenAI saga, we cover Apple finally bringing RCS to iPhones, the conviction of a former Silicon Valley VC lover of defrauding investors, the resignation of Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt, and Amazon’s online car sale. Also on the agenda is Elon Musk’s lawsuit over allegations of hate ads on Twitter, Google’s secret deal with Spotify, the Binance CEO’s guilty plea to federal charges, and Signal’s details of the cost of keeping the private messaging service online.
There is a lot to get to, so we should not delay. But first, a reminder to sign up here to receive WiR in your inbox every Saturday if you haven’t already.
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Sam Altman returns to OpenAI: After a weekend and changes, Sam Altman, who was CEO of OpenAI as of Friday morning, is CEO again. The board that fired him eventually realized that firing him probably wasn’t the best course of action — after massive pressure from OpenAI’s grassroots, VCs, and close partner Microsoft is one of their own. For a play-by-play view of how it all unfolded, check out the timeline of events.
Apple is (finally) adopting RCS: Apple plans to add support for the RCS standard on iOS next year, the iPhone maker said last Thursday in a reversal that would resolve the widespread issue of text messaging compatibility between iPhones and Android smartphones. But, as Manish reports, the company has been unable to eliminate what is colloquially known as the “green bubble” terror. Messages from Android phones will still be displayed as green bubbles on iOS.
Conviction of fraud: Mike Rotenberg, a former venture capitalist known for hosting lavish parties, was found guilty late Friday of 21 counts of defrauding investors. The ruling, handed down by a jury in Northern California, ends a 10-year journey for Rothenberg, who showed up in the Bay Area in 2013 when he was 27 with a $5 million fund and enough charm to convince TechCrunch that his one-man company was special enough to be worth… Coverage.
Vogt leaves cruise: Kyle Vogt, the serial entrepreneur who co-founded and led Cruise from a garage startup through its acquisition and ownership by General Motors, resigned over the past week — as did Cruise CEO and co-founder Dan Kahn. A month after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruz’s permits to operate autonomous vehicles on public roads following an accident that saw a pedestrian run over and dragged 20 feet by an AV.
Lawsuit over X ads: Media Affairs last Thursday Published an article With screenshots showing ads from IBM, Apple, Oracle and others appearing next to hateful content on Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter. Musk filed a lawsuit alleging defamation by the news organization. But the lawsuit appears to assert the same thing it claims is defamation, Devine says.
Google’s secret deal for Spotify: The deal with Spotify allows the audio company to bypass Play Store fees, a Google executive said during testimony in the Epic vs Google trial, as first reported by the edge. Don Harrison, head of partnerships at Google, said Spotify pays no fees when it processes its own payments and pays a meager 4% fee when Google processes them — and that the two companies have committed to putting $50 million each into a “success fund.”
Binance CEO faces federal charges: Changpeng Zhao, also known as “CZ,” the founder and CEO of Binance, is stepping down from his position and has pleaded guilty to a number of charges brought through the Department of Justice and other US agencies. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has agreed to pay about $4.3 billion to resolve the Justice Department’s investigations, the agency said in a press release late Tuesday.
The price of privacy: End-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal provided an interesting overview of the costs required to develop and maintain its pro-privacy systems that protect user data from tracking by default. the Blog postSignal’s website, penned by Signal president Meredith Whitaker and developer Joshua Lund, reveals that the company currently spends about $14 million a year on infrastructure to run the private messaging service and another $19 million a year on staff costs. That totals $33 million to keep the lights on.
My voice
With Thanksgiving coming up this week, you probably need audio files to silence the sounds of families squabbling and sports ball games. (I know I am.) Fortunately, TechCrunch has plenty in its stable to choose from.
justice I posted two – count them, two – This week’s episodes. The first recaps OpenAI’s wild weekend, from Sam Altman’s firing to recent activity (as of November 20). The second part — featuring former Equity host Matthew Linley, Alex, and yours truly — looks at what OpenAI’s latest twists and turns might bring to startup founders.
while, is found Studs co-founders and close friends Lisa Babers and Anna Harman were talking about their ear piercing business, which aims to help Gen Z and millennials create the “ears of their dreams” with piercing studios opening across the country.
TechCrunch+
TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and polls – which you know about if you’re already a subscriber. If not, consider subscribing. Here are some highlights from this week:
Pay attention to what happened with the OpenAI board: Domenic Madori takes a critical look at the unusual structure of OpenAI’s board, which was technically part of a non-profit organization with control over OpenAI’s for-profit division. In her words: “If this corporate structure is hurting you, you are not alone.”
Who would have thought that the powerful people would win the battle of artificial intelligence? One way to think about the change at OpenAI in the past few days is that a nonprofit board with a specific mission felt like one of the company’s leaders wasn’t working toward those goals. So they canned it. Another way to think about it, as Alex delightfully writes, is that “a group of Yahoos who had no idea what they were doing played a power play against the real engine of value in their company, and got fired in response.”
OpenAI and vendor lock-in risks: Ron writes that companies that have chosen an agile approach rather than relying on a single AI model vendor must be feeling pretty good after all the OpenAI drama. If there’s any objective lesson to be learned from all of this, he says, it’s that it’s never a good idea to deal with a single vendor.