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Pornhub has been playing the chicken game with some state legislatures for some time. Last year, the porn trafficker blocked users in Mississippi, Virginia and Utah.
This week, if you live in the Lone Star State, the site went offline. That’s right, Texans are now officially banned from the hallowed halls of Pornhub unless they’re cunning enough to use a VPN to sneak past the digital guards. This huge development has been helped by the debate over age verification laws that have been popping up like unwelcome weeds in states.
Surprisingly, Pornhub isn’t excited about requiring customers to show their digital IDs at the door. This rumor has been going on for a while, but instead of risking data security demons, the site chose to lock Texans outright, citing concerns that any privacy advocate would nod to. It was a bold move, especially considering they were initially subject to similar laws in Louisiana. As you might imagine, users who’d like to see people make beasts with two backs aren’t necessarily very keen on uploading their driver’s license before enjoying the carnal feast, so this pretty much blocks access.
Pornhub isn’t exactly a startup, so why are we highlighting it front and center in our Startup Weekly newsletter? Well, as a connoisseur of adult entertainment and deeply fascinated by the power struggle between corporations and regulators, I thought you might be equally fascinated. If not, rest assured that I won’t mention the unmentionables again in the rest of this edition.
Let’s move on to the less exciting stories from the past week…
The most interesting startup stories of the week
Image Source: TechCrunch
In the latest episode of Corporate Drama: The Techstars Chronicles, we find our protagonist, Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet, sparking some heated reactions during a Zoom meeting. Gavitt revealed that the Driving Cities Fund, an $80 million program aimed at supporting underrepresented founders, isn’t quite the rainbow bridge to diversity it hoped for. Note the collective gasp at JPMorgan Chase, where the financial giant’s clients have been dreaming of diversification dividends.
“Well, it looks like you’ve been having a lot of fun lately,” a friend said as we met for coffee. In the middle of my dining room table, there was a contraption that, now he mentioned it, looked an awful lot like a sex toy. The Moonbird’s raison d’être isn’t to make your pulse race and your breath hitch. Quite the opposite in fact. The Belgian company has helped more than 35,000 customers find sleep and reduce stress through breathing exercises.
Will IPO gain the upper hand? : Reddit, a digital watering hole for everything from cat memes to existential debates, is marching toward an IPO as confidently as a peacock in mating season, with an eye on matching the “impressive” and “are you kidding me?” Valuations swing between. Reddit, whose per-share price might give Scrooge McDuck pause, is targeting a valuation of more than $5 billion, positioning itself as “we’re a big deal” and “we’re not profitable, but you see our artificial intelligence Do you have a plan?”
We found some issues: Inscribe, a fraud detection startup powered by artificial intelligence, has cut its headcount by nearly 40%. Despite raising $25 million in Series B funding, Inscribe found itself grappling with the reality of missed revenue targets and market tolerance.
You get a GPU! You get a GPU! : The AI2 Incubator hit the jackpot, receiving a whopping $200 million in computing resources from an unknown source, making it a fairy godmother to AI startups hungry for computational wizardry.
The most interesting fundraisers of the week
Image Source: pallet change (Opens in new window)
In the latest “because we really need more of a world like this” news, Tavus, a startup that’s essentially a digital Frankenstein for our time, has raised $18 million to perfect the idea of cloning humans into Art in digital replicas for personalized video campaigns. Nothing says “personal touch” like a cloned CEO thanking you for your purchase. The four-year-old generative artificial intelligence wunderkind is now opening its platform to third-party software integration on a mission to make sales and marketing as personal as possible.
The term “innovation disruption” gets tossed around like confetti at a parade, but Ted Schlein and his fellow cybersecurity musketeers at Ballistic Ventures Decided to enter the Middle Ages completely. Schlein launched “Ballistic” a few years ago for $300 million, and now he’s upping the ante with a $360 million sequel. Unlike the hands-off, “please don’t bother me” approach of their venture capital counterparts, the Ballistic team became so comfortable with their new startup that they stopped before moving in, bringing in “value-added investors” A whole new meaning”.
Brother, don’t you buy NFT? : Remember NFT? Pallet Exchange is doubling down on its efforts to fulfill the dream of people who still want to trade digital gadgets on a blockchain that no one has ever heard of. Co-founders Kelvin Wang and Davy Li were new to web3 gaming, and they somehow convinced investors to part with $2.5 million because they predicted NFTs had a future somewhere.
Small pickup trucks attract top talent: In a world obsessed with “bigger is better,” Telo Trucks is among the companies that have launched a vehicle that has small truck enthusiasts and fleet managers alike excited. Telo raised $5.4 million and added a Tesla co-founder to its board of directors.
Take it to the grave: Death remains as elusive as taxes, and Empathy has become a tech-savvy fairy godmother to bereaved families, suddenly dropping $47 million in cash to put some digital magic on the dreary task of posthumous paperwork and the grieving process.
Other TechCrunch stories you can’t miss…
Every week, I always want to share some stories with you that somehow don’t fall into the above categories. It would be a shame if you missed it, so here are some random goodies for you:
Surprise, baby Rivian! : Last week, Rivian unexpectedly unveiled an all-electric hatchback called the R3, giving the company an Apple-esque “one more thing” announcement at the event, which was ostensibly supposed to be about its new R2 SUV of.
At Dawn is the LL.M.: Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI will open source Grok this week, its chatbot to compete with ChatGPT, the entrepreneur said, days after he sued OpenAI and complained about the Microsoft-backed company Startups stray from their open source roots.
Several people are typing: It’s unusual for an established company to go through three CEOs in less than a year. But that’s what happened to Slack due to circumstances beyond its control.
Stuck in a dead end: Phantom Auto, a remote driving startup founded seven years ago amid the boom in self-driving car technology, has shut down after failing to secure new funding.
That heavy feeling: Lucid Motors is at risk of losing its trademark for the Gravity SUV name, just months before the company expects to start production.
