Pod Insights Equity Podcast LinkedIn wants a piece of Wordle’s success About this episode This is our Monday show, in which we take a look back at the weekend and what’s ahead in the week. We’re coming to the end of earnings season, which means that there are just a few weeks left in the first quarter.
With spring in the air, here’s what we got into this morning:
Apple may tap Google for AI: Sure, Apple is working on its own AI tech, but Google’s Gemini model could be headed for an iPhone near you. Bloomberg broke the news.
Grok goes open source: As promised, xAI’s LLM Grok is out for people to play with. Most importantly, startup founders seem excited.
Reddit’s IPO makes progress: Oversubscription is always a good signal, but is also no promise of IPO riches to come.
Gumroad says ‘no thanks’ to NSFW content: Another year, another platform booting adult creators. It’s a tale as old as time!
Gaming is coming to LinkedIn: Look I don’t know what to tell you other than that all platforms eventually become one.
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Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
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Transcript 0:10 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome back to Equity, the TechRunch Podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines. This is Alex. Good morning. Today is March 18th, 2024, and I got to say, guys, I'm loving this early spring. I hate winter with a fiery passion, and I'm waiting for summer. So anytime I see flowers coming out of the ground, my soul is alive. And that means I am hyped for today's show because it is packed. We have a quick markets update with a special note on crypto, then the latest Apple and Google AI news. This is the talk of tech today, so let's talk about it. Then Grok's open source debut and what it means for startups, Reddit's IPO progress, Gumroad's
0:54 Speaker 00 NSFW retreat, and then to close this out, why gaming is coming to LinkedIn. Let's do it.
1:04 Speaker 00 Let's start with a look at the world of money. So spin that globe and let's talk about stocks. Shares are higher in Asia today and sharply higher over in Japan. Chinese shares are staging a bit of a rebound lately, but I'd say too soon to call it a comeback. Then over in Europe, stocks are modestly higher, just as they are set to rise here in the US when things open. And we're seeing the best gains over on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, thanks to Alphabet. We'll get to the why there in just a second. Now, on the earnings front, we are nearly done. Woo! And that means just a couple of names for you this morning. On Monday, we'll hear from Joy, that's Joy with two Y's. Then Tuesday is Tencent Music, Xpeng and Huayi.
1:49 Speaker 00 Then Wednesday will bring us numbers from PDD, which owns both Penjoojo and Timu. Then Micron Technology, Chewy and Kingsoft Cloud. Thursday is Accenture, Friday, SK Telecom, and then we start all over again on April 1st. But the real action has been in crypto lately. However, after a couple of weeks of great news, this week is a little bit softer. Now, for two major tokens, there have been small and negative price movements in the last week. Bitcoin is off about 5% in the last seven days to 68,000, while Ethereum is off about 11% in the last seven days to about 3.6K. Not that bad, they've gained a lot lately.
2:32 Speaker 00 But Solana is the real recent mover, rising nearly 40% in the last week to $207, and that rise has helped drive spot trading volumes to their second highest level ever. That's good news for both exchanges and overall crypto sentiment. So why is Solana's token soaring? Well, I did a little bit of research and it turns out that meme coins are blowing up on its blockchain, which means that this crypto boom is very much like the one before it and that we're not seeing tons of new consumer apps per se, but instead a lot of fun, if familiar, speculation.
3:11 Speaker 00 All right, big news that matters. And the biggest news that matters the most this morning is that Apple may team up with Google to leverage the Gemini AI model for iPhone. This was originally reported by Bloomberg and it's just so tasty. Now, this potential tie-up would be great for Google, which already has a deal with Apple as its preferred search engine provider on iPhone in Safari. I'm sure everyone already knows that, but still two is better than one. Now, people familiar with the matter have said that Apple is looking to license Google's AI tech so that it can introduce AI-powered features into iOS later this year. So the timeline here is pretty quick.
3:51 Speaker 00 And according to Bloomberg, the company also held chats with OpenAI to potentially use GPT models. There's so much to unpack here. First of all, it's really interesting that Apple is looking to partner instead of just build? That's fascinating. Two, that Apple is looking to Google's Gemini instead of a different model from a different company, especially given that Gemini's reputation has in fact seen Better days, but you know, no matter which way it goes, if Apple chooses to work with Google or OpenAI, which of course is a Microsoft Vassal company, it's going to hand a win to one of its competitors. And I think that this deal setup also just underscores how much room the biggest tech companies have already consumed in the world of modern AI.
4:37 Speaker 00 You know, sure, there's Anthropic and Mistral and a couple of others, but Apple, it seems, is talking with two peer companies, or you know, at least one peer company and one Microsoft investment. The good news for iPhone users is that Apple is willing to partner. The bad news potentially for Apple investors is that it thinks that that might be the best approach. Something else to consider, Google's Gemini and OpenAI's models are not open source. However, guess what is now? Yep, it's Grok. Over the weekend, XAI, Elon Musk's AI company, open sourced Grok, or at least mostly, there are a few things missing, but reception does
5:17 Speaker 00 seem to be pretty damn positive over on Twitter. One thing that's good, they included weights data. Fantastic. Bad news, training data does seem to be lacking. But what I think is most important in this Grok AI open source saga is that some startup founders are pretty excited by the news that Grok is now open for their consumption. So I picked a couple of examples. First up, Varun Mather says that hyperspace AI will quote network Grok into its service. Bindu Reddy of Abacus AI says that her company will fine tune Grok. And then Aravind Srinivas of Perplexity AI says that his company will quote fine tune it for conversational search
5:58 Speaker 00 and optimize the inference and offer it to its own users. Good, especially in light of the possible Google Apple tie up. It is so nice and welcome to see startups get a boost versus the already massive momentum from the trillion dollar giants.
6:15 Speaker 00 Now, it wouldn't be Equity Monday if I didn't have something to say about Reddit's IPO. So hear me out, everybody. I've got good news. Reddit's IPO is oversubscribed at its current price range, making it more likely that the social forum company can secure a valuation of 6 to 6.5 billion in its upcoming IPO. The question before us and it is whether or not Reddit can get a higher price. Now, we are waiting for updated information from the company. But as of the time I wrote my notes for this show this morning, there was no sign of a new filing. Still, Reuters reports that the company's IPO is, and I quote, "currently between four and five times oversubscribed."
6:59 Speaker 00 Now, that sounds like a lot. Is it a lot? No, we have seen way higher numbers than that for IPO share demand. And this early signal doesn't always correlate to post-IPO performance. As The Wall Street Journal wrote back in 2012, and I quote here, this is a great headline, "Oversubscribed is a weak IPO signal." True, but I will say, at the same time, it is still a signal, and that's good. It does make me slightly more confident that Reddit will be able to get out sooner rather than later. Currently, Reddit is expected to price on Wednesday and trade on Thursday, but that could change. So stick with Equity. We will bring you all the news as it happens.
7:45 Speaker 00 And then next up, we have news from startup land. Gumroad is pulling back on NSFW content. Now, Gumroad, of course, is an e-commerce company for creators. We've talked about it on the show a number of times. And it has updated its rules to be more strictly limiting on NSFW content. And it's doing that because of restrictions from payment processors like Stripe and PayPal. Now, for creators who sell adult art like explicit comic books or lewd cosplay photos, according to TechCrunch, these really sudden policy changes can be detrimental and result in an unforeseen loss of income. But gotta say it, adult creators are taught to anticipate this kind of deplatforming.
8:29 Speaker 00 It's happened on Patreon, which used to be much more lax about adult content. And it actually almost happened on OnlyFans. Now, that doesn't make the impact of these policy changes any less debilitating because when creators have to port over their followers to a new platform or direct fans to a different and new webshop to buy their products, the friction almost always results in a loss of income. Now, why is Gumroad doing this? Well, the company says it has been, quote, "asked to be more rigorous in enforcing its TOS and must comply." That's according to its founder, Sahil Lavingia. And Lavingia went on to tell TechCrunch that, quote, "Obviously, it sucks to do this. We don't take it lightly that many creators rely on Gumroad for their livelihoods
9:14 Speaker 00 and have communicated that to our partners wherever and whenever we could." Also, for Gumroad, this sucks because adult stuff is popular and they get a 10% cut of sales. Competitors are, of course, pouncing on potentially booty Gumroad creators, although I'm going to be very curious to see how long they last at these new homes before they have to find a new, new home, because that is the story of the internet. And then to close us out, I have some news that you did not see coming. LinkedIn, yes, the Microsoft-owned social platform that made a name for itself as a place to post your resume, post your professional accomplishments, is getting into gaming. Yes, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that LinkedIn is working on new games experiences.
9:59 Speaker 00 It's going to do so by tapping into the same wave of PuzzleMania that helps simple games like Wordle find viral success and, in the end, millions of players. Three early efforts at LinkedIn are games called Queens, Inference, and Crossclimb. I don't know what they correspond to, we'll have to wait and see, but three titles is three titles. A spokesperson for Lington confirmed that they are working on gaming, but said that there is no launch date. And I have to read you this quote. This is from the LinkedIn spokesperson. Quote, "We are playing with adding puzzle-based games within the LinkedIn experience to..." Unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations. Oh, Lord, is that a PR sentence?
10:44 Speaker 00 Let's see, unlock a bit of fun, maybe. That's what games are for, kind of goes without saying. Deepen relationships, absolutely not. And then hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations? No, people are going to play them because LinkedIn looks like work at work and games are more fun than actually doing work. What actually is going on here is that The New York Times bought Wordle and has built a very strong games business for itself that people really enjoy. You may have played Queen Bee, you may have played Connections, you may have played Wordle. These are fun games. They're a big part of my marriage, actually. But they're cool because they're in a separate app and they're their own thing and we pay for them and we like them. LinkedIn is a place where you go to try to find a job. I don't know why I need to play games there to deepen my relationship.
11:29 Speaker 00 I mean, why not just buy Steam and just bake in all the games then? LinkedIn, you have a billion users. Remember when every social media service wanted to have stories at the top of their, you know, nav bar? I wonder if games are the next thing like that? Like Netflix is doing gaming, LinkedIn is doing gaming. Maybe everyone else is just out of ideas and this is the next thing everyone copies to try to get one more minute of your daily attention.
11:54 Speaker 00 That is our show for this lovely Monday morning. Of course, if you need even more equity between now and when we are back on Wednesday morning, we are Equity Pod over on X and Threads. And if you would like even more from me, well, I am Alex over on X. Here at the TechCrunch Podcast Network, we have two sister shows, Chain Reaction on all things blockchain and Found, talking to founders about how they built what they did. We'll talk to you soon. We're back in two days. Bye. Equity is hosted by myself, Alex Wilhelm, and TechCrunch senior reporter, Mary Ann Azvedo. We are produced by Teresa Locan Solo with editing by Kel. Bryce Durbin is our illustrator. And a big thank you to the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch Audio Products.
12:38 Speaker 00 Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.
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