Apple terminates Epic account, Meta platform goes offline, former Twitter executive sues Musk

Hey guys, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering it all (or at least most of it)! ——Notable events in the field of technology.

This week, Roku took a hard line with customers, asking them to agree to new dispute resolution terms. That means users can’t use Roku devices until they agree to the terms (or opt out via snail mail), which requires any customer with a legal complaint against Roku to first refer them to the company’s attorneys.

In other news, a leaked repository has leaked two-factor authentication codes online for the world’s tech giants, including Facebook, Google and TikTok. YX International, an Asian technology and internet company that sends millions of text messages around the world, exposed a repository containing one-time security codes that may have granted access to user accounts.

X CEO Elon Musk sued OpenAI, accusing it of “betraying” its non-profit mission. (OpenAI started out as a nonprofit, but in 2019 it transformed into a “profit capped” company managed by a nonprofit entity.) OpenAI co-founder and early supporter Musk accused OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president and co-founder Greg Brockman pursues profit at the expense of the organization’s founding mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

A lot of other things happened. We recap it all in this issue of WiR – but first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.

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Epic knockout: Apple has terminated Epic Games’ App Store developer account, reportedly posing a “threat” to the iOS ecosystem. Epic and Apple have long been engaged in a war of words and multiple court battles over the latter’s power and influence over the app economy.

Social media collapse: Facebook, Instagram and Threads were knocked down in a massive Meta outage on Tuesday. After restoring service, Meta revealed that the problem was “technical” in nature, but did not provide further details.

Musk Money: Four former Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, sued Musk on Monday, claiming they were owed more than $128 million in severance pay.

Unrestricted data transfer: AWS follows Google’s lead and announces unlimited free data transfer to other cloud providers. As Paul writes, the move stems from regulatory pressure surrounding cloud lock-in practices, and Microsoft Azure seems a bit odd.

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Artificial Intelligence Workers: A startup called Ema has raised $25 million for what it calls a “universal AI worker,” an enterprise-focused, AI-driven platform designed to “simulate human responses,” such as handling customers Service tasks, provide technical support, etc.

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Startups that cannot be invested in: Haje wrote about a case study of unwise capitalization – a Norwegian hardware startup gave up more than two-thirds of its equity to raise $3.3 million. Such a move could make it impossible for the company to invest, he said. But there is hope.

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exist fairDuring the show, the crew discussed the battle between OpenAI and Musk, as well as the situation of the venture capital company OpenView. Also on the agenda is a big investment in online banking startup Monzo, a noteworthy funding deal in artificial intelligence and upcoming climate regulations.

it’s over established, Becca and Dom chat with Advocate founder Emilie Poteat. Advocate helps Americans participate in federal benefit programs through its technology-powered service platform.

and chain reaction Zora co-founder Dee Goens stars. Zora is a platform and protocol that helps developers and creators bring their ideas to the blockchain and Ethereum through an open and shared environment.

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Udacity exits: Accenture announced this week that it will acquire learning platform Udacity for $80 million. Ron reports that this is well below the approximately $300 million in revenue Udacity has generated since its founding in 2011.