Technology
Week in Review: Instacart CEO heads to OpenAI

Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got lots of news for you this week: There were CEO shake-ups at Instacart and 11x; the web series is back — kind of; Threads is getting video ads; and much more. Let’s get to it!
Big move: Instacart CEO Fidji Simo will become OpenAI’s CEO for Applications, the company said this week. Simo is already on the OpenAI board. She’ll be tasked with helping OpenAI in scaling “traditional” company functions, CEO Sam Altman said, but he didn’t provide any details on what that means.
Speaking of OpenAI: The company decided that its nonprofit division will retain control over its for-profit organization after initially announcing that it planned to convert to a for-profit organization. OpenAI says that it made the decision “after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California.”
And speaking of CEO moves: 11x CEO Hasan Sukkar announced that he’s stepping down and moving into a “non-executive chairman” position. In March, TechCrunch reported that 11x had been showing off on its website customer logos of companies that were not active customers, and one of those companies was threatening to sue over the matter.
This is TechCrunch’s Week in Review, where we recap the week’s biggest news. Want this delivered as a newsletter to your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.
News

Trademark friction: Tesla wants to trademark the terms “Cybercab” and “Robotaxi” but was denied by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office because the terms are too generic. Tesla has three months to file a response, or the office will abandon the application.
No thanks: Speaking onstage at Stripe’s annual Sessions conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out his plans to automate the entire ad industry with a black-box, end-to-end AI ad tool. As Maxwell Zeff reports, “It’s an open question as to what AI ad testing will do to Meta’s platforms from a user experience point of view, considering they’re already brimming with generative AI slop.”
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And speaking of ads: Meta announced at the NewFronts conference that it’s testing video ads in Threads. The update follows Meta’s recent announcement that Threads now reaches over 350 million monthly active users.
Yes, please! I’m not too savvy in the kitchen, so Posha’s new robot that cooks your meals for you sounds like a dream come true. You scroll through a list of recipes, select the one you want, add the proper amounts of the requested ingredients, and the machine makes the meal from there.
We’re back, baby: Before the rise of vertical video, scripted web series on YouTube were successful enough to spin out into cult-favorite TV shows like “Broad City,” “Insecure,” and “Letterkenny.” Now the web series is back, but it lives on a new platform: TikTok.
Goodbye to a real one: Bill Gates said Thursday that the Gates Foundation will have just 20 years to exhaust its coffers and wind down operations. He has pledged to donate 99% of his fortune, which today is worth an estimated $107 billion, to the foundation.
Analysis

What’s next for OpenAI: OpenAI’s new restructuring plan could satisfy regulators and investors who have invested heavily in the company hoping for future profits. But it might also disrupt OpenAI’s future ambitions, especially regarding a potential IPO.

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Technology
Twenty years strong: a love letter to TechCrunch

TechCrunch is turning 20. I’ve been here half that time. I worked previously at numerous major media properties, including Time Inc, Dow Jones, and Reuters; this has been the best job of my life, which is maybe why the time has gone so fast.
There’s nothing like the culture here. Contrarian, smart, hilarious, and hard-working. Almost everyone at TC wears multiple hats, as anyone who has worked here will tell you. This isn’t just another media company — it’s a place where people are curious about everything, everyone cares a crazy amount about the brand (and each other), and where challenging conventional wisdom isn’t just encouraged but expected.
Over the past decade, I’ve personally had the opportunity to interview some amazing people: Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen, Lina Khan, Conan O’Brien, Al Gore, Finland’s Sanna Marin, along with people making defense tech, building consumer giants, and selling their software companies for billions of dollars. My colleagues have collectively talked with thousands more whose impact on our lives is felt daily. From these conversations, we’ve learned — then explained to our readers — how technology, policy, and human ambition intersect to shape the world.
We’ve done this from our homes, from coffee shops, from offices, but also across the world, to the many places TechCrunch has taken us, from Lisbon, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, and Davos to (nearly) the opposite end of the globe: Lagos, Nairobi, Hong Kong, and Hangzhou.
Across these cities, we’ve sat down with founders who became superstars and superstars who became prison inmates. We’ve watched boring technologies take over the world and celebrated technologies that devolved into dumpster fires.
We’ve seen entire industries born, mature, and sometimes wither. We’ve watched two-person startups become trillion-dollar companies and told you about business innovations that flipped industries upside down — from subscription models to the gig economy to, more recently, AI roll-ups. We’ve reported on breakthroughs that changed everything. We’ve also covered “breakthroughs” that amounted to bupkis.
And we’re still here. In recent weeks alone, TC has sat down with the prime minister of Greece and the mayor of San Francisco; we’ve also covered big stories involving the most prominent VCs, startup founders, and big tech outfits in the industry. I’d stack our transportation, startup, cybersecurity, and AI coverage against anyone’s.
These are tough times in media; it’s among the growing number of industries in flux. But to everyone who’s gleefully written about the supposed demise of TC, plot twist — we’re still here! Twenty years in, we’re still breaking the stories that matter, still holding power accountable, still finding the next big thing before it’s obvious to everyone else. We’re doing it for a growing audience, too.
Michael Arrington, thank you for creating this brand that became so much more than any of us could have imagined. Thanks to every parent company that’s supported us and helped us keep doing what we love, including, today, Regent. TC’s ownership has changed over the years, but our mission to find the signal in the noise and tell stories that matter remains the same.
Here’s to the perspective that twenty years gives you, and to twenty more years of asking hard questions, helping readers see around corners, and working with people who make even the roughest days worth it.
To everyone who’s been part of this story — writers, editors, sources, readers, attendees, speakers, critics, and cheerleaders — thank you for making TechCrunch what it is, a place for people who want to understand what’s coming next, who firmly believe that tech can make the world better — and who trust us to call out when it doesn’t. We appreciate you. Cheers!

A blog which focuses on business, Networth, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Self Improvement, Celebrities, Top Lists, Travelling, Health, and lifestyle. A source that provides you with each and every top piece of information about the world. We cover various different topics.
Technology
Meta AI gains video editing capabilities

Meta said Wednesday that it is adding video editing capabilities to Meta AI that let users edit short videos using preset AI prompts to change costumes, locations, and styles. With these new features, the company is taking on rivals like Google that have been steadily adding generative AI video tools to their apps, as well as other AI-powered editing platforms like Captions.
The company is rolling out the editing tools to the Meta AI app, Meta.ai website, and its Capcut competitor, Edits, in the U.S. It says that the features were inspired by its Movie Gen AI models, but it’s not clear if the company is using those models to power the editing tools.
For now, users will have to deal with 50 presets to edit a 10-second video. Meta said that it gathered feedback from creators to make these presets so that they can be easily included in the Edits app.

The presets can apply a “vintage comic book style” to a video, change the lighting in a clip to a rainy day, or swap out a subject’s clothing to a space cadet suit, to give a few examples. You can share edited videos directly to Facebook and Instagram from the Edits and Meta AI app.
Meta said it plans to add more customization options later this year.
“We built this […] so that everyone can experiment creatively and make fun, interesting videos to share with their friends, family, and followers,” the company said in a blog post. “Whether you’re reimagining a favorite family memory or finding new ways to entertain your audience, our video editing [tools] can help.”
Meta AI already has image generation features across platforms. It seems with this video editing feature, Meta wants more creators to use its own tools rather than third-party apps.

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Technology
Vijay Pande, founding partner of a16z bio and health strategy, steps down

Vijay Pande, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz who founded the firm’s a16z Bio + Health strategy, announced that he is stepping down from his role.
Since its founding in 2014, a16z Bio + Health has raised four funds of nearly $3 billion each, including a $1.5 billion fund that closed in 2022. However, it’s now seeking a much smaller $750 million fifth fund, The Wall Street Journal reported. In January, a16z Bio + Health announced that it will manage a $500 million biotech fund funded by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.
a16z Bio + Health backs digital health startups and companies at the intersection of AI, computation, and biology.
Pande’s investments include Devoted Health, an individualized medical plan provider; Function Health, a personalized lab testing startup; and Freenome, a company aiming to detect cancer through blood draws. Before joining Andreessen Horowitz, Pande was a professor of chemistry, structural biology, and computer science at Stanford University.
The remaining partners on the a16z Bio + Health team are Jorge Conde, Julie Yoo, and Vineeta Agarwala.

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