Gig workers get paid, Fidelity slashes Reddit’s valuation and AI conquers MinecraftHey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the week in tech. Hope the summer’s treating y’all well — it’s a balmy 90 degrees here in NYC! — and that some much-needed R&R is on the agenda.
Speaking of “agenda,” mark your calendars for Disrupt, TC’s annual conference, kicking off in September. Whether you’re a startup rookie learning the ropes or a founder hell-bent on changing the world, Disrupt will deliver the tools, knowledge and connections to help you make it happen. You don’t want to miss it.
Elsewhere, stay tuned for City Spotlight on June 7 (Wednesday), which will highlight Atlanta, Georgia, this go-round. Atlanta has emerged as one of the buzziest new hubs in the nation, with booming cybersecurity and software-as-a-service sectors as well as a slew of investors looking to back the hot new startups coming from the metro. Among the speakers at City Spotlight will be mayor Andre Dickens — we’re looking forward to hearing his perspective.
Now with the PSAs out of the way, here’s your WiR!
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Fidelity sours on Reddit: This week, Fidelity, the lead investor in Reddit’s most recent funding round in 2021, slashed the estimated worth of its equity stake in the social media platform by 41% since the investment. The devaluation, part of a broader trend that has hit a variety of growth-stage startups across the globe in the past year, raises uncertainties about whether Reddit will maintain its initial intent to reportedly go public at a valuation around $15 billion.
Amazon Prime Data: Amazon is considering offering low-cost or possibly free nationwide mobile phone service to Prime subscribers in the United States, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The tech giant is reportedly in talks with Verizon, T-Mobile, Dish Network and AT&T.
Gig workers get paid: Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other app-based ride-hail and delivery companies will have to reimburse California gig workers potentially millions of dollars for unpaid vehicle expenses between 2022 and 2023. The back payments come from a provision in Proposition 22, the controversial law that classifies gig workers as independent contractors rather than employees and promises them half-hearted protections and benefits.
Volkswagen’s ace in the hole: Volkswagen is betting big on the upcoming ID.Buzz electric van. With availability of the vehicle still a year out, the automaker is counting on years of pent-up anticipation to not only sell the bus shrouded in nostalgia, but to also have it act as a halo product to bring customers to the brand’s entire EV lineup.
Shopify launches Shop Cash: Shopify’s Shop app is introducing a new rewards program called Shop Cash, the e-commerce platform announced on Friday. The new program is funded by Shopify and earns shoppers 1% back on purchases made using its Shop Pay online checkout service.
Stripe gets into credit: Stripe wants to make it easier for businesses to access credit. The private financial infrastructure giant announced a new charge card program today from Stripe Issuing, its commercial card issuing product. Denise Ho, head of product at Stripe, gave TechCrunch the exclusive details — go read the piece by Mary Ann.
AI conquers Minecraft: AI researchers have built a Minecraft bot that can explore and expand its capabilities in the game’s open world — but unlike other bots, this one basically wrote its own code through trial and error and lots of GPT-4 queries. Called Voyager, this experimental system is an example of an “embodied agent,” an AI that can move and act freely and purposefully in a simulated or real environment.
YouTube Shorts, in minutes: Dumme, a startup putting AI to practical use in video editing, is already generating demand before opening to the public. The Y Combinator–backed company has hundreds of video creators testing its product, which leverages AI to create short-form videos from YouTube content, and it has a waitlist of over 20,000 pre-launch, it says.
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Need a new podcast to get your weekend started right? Good news — TC has you covered (and then some). On Equity, the crew took a look at the latest from Web Roulette, Stripe’s acquisition of Okay, what Klarna’s Q1 means for the fintech market and QED and a16z’s early-stage strategies. Found spoke with Dr. Stacy Blain, the co-founder and chief science officer at Concarlo Therapeutics, about the company’s novel therapeutic solutions for drug-resistant cancer. Over at Chain Reaction, Gary Vaynerchuk, the chairman of VaynerX and the CEO of VaynerMedia and NFT collection VeeFriends, spoke on his experiences in the creative media industry. And the TechCrunch Live folks dove into how AI doomerism is overblown — and why the blowhards doing the blowing want it that way.
TechCrunch+
TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:
Competition concerns in the age of AI: AI is rapidly changing how businesses sense, reason and adapt in the market. But these groundbreaking capabilities are creating an upheaval in how companies engage with competitors and consumers. Henry Hauser is counsel in Perkins Coie’s antitrust and litigation practice groups. He muses on this in an informative piece.
Salesforce becomes a data company: Could the data exhaust being generated by the Salesforce family of products become more valuable than the products themselves — at least in terms of new revenue adds? This piece explores the possibility.
Why don’t more scientists become founders?: Why is it so common to see outsiders bringing research out of the lab and not the scientists themselves? It’s a complex issue to unravel, but Rebecca does it deftly.
Gig workers get paid, Fidelity slashes Reddit’s valuation and AI conquers Minecraft by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Get FREE Eventide Quadravox With All Loopcloud Plans
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Vicious Antelope Hot Tubes - Knifonium Hot Tubes is a collection of 40 progressive rock vintage polysynths for Knif Audio Knifonium. The soundbank is pretty much focused and dedicated to this music genre. From dark... Read More

Freshen Up Your Beats With Left Field One Shots Vol. 3 (20% OFF)
Freshen up your beats with Left Field One Shots Vol. 3 (plus bonus breaks) from AJ Hall, currently 20% off with coupon code SMOKE. Left Field One Shots Volume 3 is a collection of 25 original, production-ready, and entirely royalty-free one-shot kits. The pack also includes 25 bonus breaks that showcase the potential of each [...]
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Getting It Done: The Week in D.I.Y & Indie MusicThis week, our tips and advice for the independent, do-it-yourselfers out there covered how to make your own album cover, understand metadata, and more… Guide to crowdfunding for musicians in. Continue reading
The post Getting It Done: The Week in D.I.Y & Indie Music appeared first on Hypebot.

REWIND: The new music industry’s Week in ReviewA busy week by any definition, and the music industry was no exception, with YouTube losing Stories, a survey revealing stats about AI, and more… What will AI do for. Continue reading
The post REWIND: The new music industry’s Week in Review appeared first on Hypebot.

Nembrini Releases FREE Big Stuff Virtual Fuzz Pedal
Nembrini Audio releases Big Stuff, a freeware Big Muffs guitar pedal emulation VST plugin for Windows, macOS, and iOS. My dear BPB readers, it is Saturday morning, and I’m looking at a free fuzz pedal. Life, my friends, is sounding good, one distorted guitar note at a time. If you’re a massive Sleep fan like [...]
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MDrumStrip plug-in from MeldaProduction MDrumStrip consists of a collection of plug-ins kitted out with EQ, compression, gating and reverb sections, and aims to reduce the time required to achieve a mix-ready drum sound.

Triads in music: Basic types and how to use them
Triads are a key building block of music—in this article, we dive into what they are, the common types, and how to apply them in your music.

Rockgodz Hall of Fame 2023 InductionThe ROCKGODZ Hall of Fame has announced that the 2023 awards show will be held on July 21, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee at the legendary Bowie's Rock 'n' Roll Club. This event will honor some of the most influential musicians and industry leaders in rock music history.

The original members of Vanilla Fudge, (Carmine Appice, Mark Stein, Vince Martell, Pete Bremy and in honorarium, Tim Bogert), Pat Travers (Pat Travers Band), Steve Popovich Sr., (Legendary record promoter for CBS records under Clive Davis, President at Cleveland Internal Records and Polygram Records Nashville), Mike Curb, (Founder of Curb Records and Music Business Impresario and Philanthropist), Bob Bender, (Host and Producer on Business Side of Music, an established music industry veteran with years of major label and indie artist experience) and many more will be honored at the ceremony for their incredible contributions to rock music. This gathering will celebrate unsung heroes behind Rock and Roll’s most legendary musicians and most famous instrumentation on chart-topping albums. 

Rock and roll legends will honor their own during a celebration of music with passion and talent at its core, bringing recognition to individual musicians who built the legacy of rock music. All RockGodz Hall of Fame inductees are selected by inductee alumni, their peers, which continues to make the organization highly respected by the music community. This year’s Event will include an Award Show and Dinner followed by live musical performances from Vanilla Fudge, Pat Travers, Todd Sharp Band and RockGodz Hall of Fame All Star Band Jam. 

“Our mission is to acknowledge the contributions of a group of stunningly gifted musicians and professionals who flew under the radar while delivering to the world music that has orchestrated the soundtrack of many lives,” said Cindy Landeen, RockGodz Hall of Fame Founder.  We believe that these virtuosos, maestros, and those working in the trenches behind the scenes need not wait any longer to be recognized and acknowledged for their part in rock and roll history.  In the day they may have been relatively unknown to the music world and fans at large but RockGodz Hall of Fame has purposely taken on the challenge and goal of celebrating their achievements.”  

Additional 2023 Inductees include: Sandy Gennaro (American rock drummer, author, musician, public speaker, and mentor who recorded and toured with many musical artists including Blackjack, The Monkees, Pat Travers, Cyndi Lauper and Joan Jett.), Todd Sharp (Lead guitarist that has toured with may including Hall & Oates, Christine McVie, Mick Fleetwood to Rod Stewart and many more), , Tom Zutaut  (Founded the American record label The Enclave and former A&R executive for Geffen Records best known for signing Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses), and Don Adkins (Music Industry Photographer with over 4 decades of achievements including 25 record covers including the first Motley Crue record cover.)

RockGodz Hall of Fame is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation.  All events and initiatives are funded by ticket sales, sponsorships, volunteers, and donations.

Tickets are available for purchase Eventbrite: eventbrite.com/e/rockgodz-hall-of-fame-honors-vanilla-fudge-pat-travers-and-more-tickets-627683557417

T. Rowe Price has marked down its stake in Canva by 67.6%Last summer, Blackbird, one of Australia’s largest venture operations, marked down the value of one of its most prized stakes, in the Sydney-based design platform Canva. Valued at $40 billion by investors in a $200 million round in the fall of 2021, Blackbird adjusted its own valuation of the company 36% to $25.6 billion.
Now, T. Rowe Price — the mutual fund goliath that began investing aggressively into late-stage startups nearly a decade ago, continued to fund them throughout the pandemic, and which led that $40 billion round in 2021 — has marked down the value of its stake in Canva even more dramatically, adjusting it downward by a whopping 67.6%. (T. Rowe’s Blue Chip Growth Fund, which owns several classes of Canva shares but predominantly Series A shares, has to date invested $99.1 million in Canva and states in its most recent prospectus, dated March 31, that it now values those shares on a cost-adjusted basis at $32.1 million.)
Asked for comment earlier today, a spokesman for Canva responded that, “Overall, despite the broader market conditions, our metrics continue to rapidly move in the right direction. We just crossed 135 million monthly users, $1.5 billion in annualized revenue and had our sixth year of profitability.”
T. Rowe’s “changes in valuation are a result of [Canva] being marked to market when compared to our publicly listed peers,” the spokesman said.
T. Rowe’s investment in Canva represents a minuscule amount of money for the sprawling investment firm. Its Blue Chip Growth Fund had roughly $53 billion in assets under management at the end of the first quarter of this year, down from $63 billion a year ago, in June 2022.
Still, it’s notable that one of the savviest asset managers in the U.S. thinks a company that was for a time the fifth most valuable startup on the planet is currently worth far less — essentially $13 billion and not $40 billion.
Asked if Canva has adjusted its own, independent 409A valuation to match up with T.Rowe’s assessment — T. Rowe’s markdown is really just its opinion, after all — Canva’s spokesman said its assessment does not match that of T. Rowe but declined to comment further.
Naturally, Canva is far from alone in being emphatically marked down by its backers after soaring to new valuation heights in 2021. Klarna, the Stockholm-based buy-now-pay-later provider saw an even steeper markdown a year ago, dropping 85% from the $45.6 billion valuation that it was assigned in 2021 to $6.5 billion.
Klarna, which proactively accepted its reduced valuation, has since tightened its lending standards and slashed costs, including through repeated layoffs, and says it is now “firmly on track” to reach monthly profitability in the second half of the year.
Like so many other outfits right now, both companies are actively being transformed by — and looking to take advantage of — generative artificial intelligence.
In a press release late last week, Klarna credited some of its current momentum to OpenAI, saying an integration with its large language model is “accelerating Klarna’s evolution into a digital financial assistant.”
In an effort to maintain its own leading position in the world of graphic design collaboration, Canva has also integrated generative AI across its product suite, telling Fast Company in March that much of what is now infused throughout has been built in-house through long-term investment and acquisition.
Though Canva also relies partly on major large language models —  it uses them piecemeal, says its spokesman — co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins told FC that it has intentionally relied less on the work of others so that it can promise users that “anything you create in Canva is yours.”
As for AI’s impact on Canva’s valuation going forward, that remains to be seen. While public shareholders will eventually decide what they think the company is worth, an offering isn’t forthcoming, not yet anyway.
Asked about a possible IPO, Canva’s spokesman said today that there are no plans on the horizon. Meanwhile in March, Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht (who is married to Perkins), suggested to Barron’s that it’s now very much top of mind for the now 11-year-old company.
“It’s not the right market to go out right now. But obviously, it becomes an inevitability at our size,” he told the outlet. “It’s on the horizon, but not on the imminent horizon.”
T. Rowe Price has marked down its stake in Canva by 67.6% by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch

Crypto Biz: Six months on from FTX, Tether mines BTC, and Nvidia’s AI superchipsThis week’s Crypto Biz also looks at the crypto industry after FTX collapse, Tether’s Bitcoin mining in Latin America, Tabi’s funding round and Nvidia’s artificial intelligence machines.

From Queen’s $1bn catalog to HYBE raising $380m for acquisitions in the US… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe biggest music biz headlines from the past week, all in one place
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Members of K-pop group EXO move to end ‘unjust long-term contracts’ with SM Entertainment (report)A statement released by law firm Lin on Thursday (June 1) detailed the artists' intention to end their deals with the K-Pop company
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