TIDAL, the high-definition music streaming platform, is not having the best of times. The company has already made layoffs, and its management has been mulling a potential restructuring to get back on track to profitability. Now, a report claims that an upcoming round of layoffs will affect around a quarter of the current TIDAL staff.
Competition in the music streaming service segment has become quite fierce. Other platforms have been getting more and more features and a growing catalog of songs. TIDAL’s main selling point over the others has always been Hi-Fi audio. While rival services were betting on formats with quality compression, TIDAL offered premium plans with lossless music.
TIDAL could get rid of a quarter of its staff in new round of layoffs
However, the arrival of high-quality audio plans at rival services probably led a percentage of TIDAL users to consider switching. While the latter’s Hi-Fi quality typically offers a higher bit rate than its rivals, only a specific niche of users truly value this feature. It even requires using earbuds or headphones of a certain range to enjoy it.
In December 2023, the company shed around 10% of its workforce. Now, according to Fortune, an upcoming round of layoffs will impact around a quarter of TIDAL’s workforce. The source says they gained access to a memo from Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Block Block Head (Tidal’s parent company). “We’re reducing the size of our design team and foundational roles supporting TIDAL, and we will consider reducing engineering over the next few weeks as we have more clarity around leadership going forward,” the memo said, according to Fortune.
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In this round of layoffs, around 100 employees could leave the company. In July of this year, Dorsey was reportedly considering restructuring TIDAL. The staff reduction could align with this plan. TIDAL is not the only tech company to have made massive layoffs recently. Others, like DropBox and even Meta, have had to do the same.
Recent moves to make TIDAL more attractive
Earlier this year, in a move to become more competitive in the market, TIDAL bundled its Hi-Fi plans. Priced at $10.99, the new premium subscription undercuts the previous, more expensive one. The company has also made moves to solidify its position as a streaming service focused on Hi-Fi audio. The list includes setting FLAC as the default format and adding Dolby Atmos support.
Strange particles that have mass when moving one direction but no mass when moving in another were first theorised more than a decade ago. Now, these mass-shifting particles have been glimpsed in a semimetal exposed to extreme conditions.
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“This [particle] is very bizarre. You can imagine walking on the streets of New York and if you go straight, you are super light, you are massless. But turn 90 degrees east or west, and you become super massive,” says …
Sequoia, a tech investment firm, has announced that they are investing heavily into DecaartAI, using a demo codenamed Oasis to show off the new generative AI technologies. In this case, DecartAI presented a fully playable version of Microsoft and Mojang’s Minecraft not running on a game engine.
This is a fully playable version of Minecraft WITH NO GAME ENGINE, it’s purely a video model rendering pixels in real time pic.twitter.com/pj8AKYEpCC— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) October 31, 2024
In the demo, the game is not being dictated by logic, claims Decaart. It is being created pixel-by-pixel in realtime through generative AI.
“Oasis takes in user keyboard input and generates real-time gameplay, including physics, game rules, and graphics,” Decaart writes in a blog post. “You can move around, jump, pick up items, break blocks, and more. There is no game engine; just a foundation model.”
It might be more accurate to argue that Oasis is an interactive video that takes input that is different from what is traditionally referred to as a video game. But it might be an example of how game creation is changing due to AI, as the idea of an engine-less model might birth new terms as developers come to grips with the technology.
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Money attracts money, as the saying goes. This week seemed to confirm it, with a couple startups announcing new rounds of funding only months after their previous ones, and familiar names launching new ventures.
Most interesting startup stories from the week
Image Credits:Romain Dillet / TechCrunch
Whether it’s about IPOs, lobbying, or launching in public, finding momentum is key to success.
Half Zomato: India’s largest food delivery and quick-commerce scale-up Swiggy is looking to go public at a $11.3 billion value, less than half the market cap of its rival Zomato.
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Wait and see: Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman declared that she wasn’t surprised that we haven’t seen a resurgence in startup IPOs yet. However, she thinks these will start to return with momentum in 2025.
EU Inc momentum: A petition calling for a new legal form for European startups is gaining momentum, with hopes of fostering Pan-European tech champions, but there are many hurdles to overcome along the way.
If the names below sound familiar, it’s because several of these startups raised their previous rounds quite recently.
Chatbots: Sierra, an AI customer service startup co-founded by OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor and longtime Google exec Clay Bavor, is valued at $4.5 billion after raising $175 million.
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Threat intelligence: French cybersecurity startup Filigran secured a $35 million Series B round of funding for its threat management suite of products, which includes both open source and enterprise offerings.
More bots: Read AI, whose AI bot summarizes meetings and more, released a Chrome extension and announced it raised $50 million in a Series B funding round, only six months after its $21 million Series A.
Protein cages: Archon Biosciences emerged from stealth and announced it raised $20 million in seed funding. The biotech startup is applying AI to drug development, with a focus on addressing shortcomings of antibody treatments.
Chip demand: GMI Cloud, a U.S.-based startup providing GPU cloud infrastructure, raised a Series A round of funding consisting of $15 million in equity and $67 million in debt financing. The round was led by Headline Asia, with participation from strategic investors based in Asia.
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Hot wave: Brightwave, a startup that developed an AI agent for asset managers, raised a $15 million Series A only four months after its seed round.
Most interesting VC and fund news this week
Image Credits:Taylor Hill / Contributor / Getty Images
Wilde bets: Actor and director Olivia Wilde quietly launched a venture firm late last year, according to Bloomberg. Called Proximity Ventures, it is already investing in the consumer and enterprise sectors.
Same thesis, more capital: African venture capital firm Janngo Capital closed its oversubscribed second fund at €73 million (around $78 million) and plans to keep on writing checks ranging from €50,000 to €5 million.
New frontiers: Crosscut’s $100 million sixth fund will invest in “frontier tech,” including energy and power, space and underwater exploration, advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, and security and defense.
Horizon Europe: The European Innovation Council will dedicate €1.4 billion (about $1.5 billion) to European deep tech research and startups next year, a €200 million budget increase in comparison with 2024.
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Last but not least
Image Credits:Xaira
AI is often present in funding stories these days, but aggregate data adds more nuance to the picture. Of the nearly 240 mega-rounds into U.S. startups that Crunchbase tracked so far this year, 87 went to biotech and healthcare, placing this category ahead of pure AI, although crossovers are common — for instance, in AI-enabled drug discovery. Xaira Therapeutics is one example; it raised a $1 billion mega-round earlier this year.
Meta is introducing some big changes with its Quest v71 update, including a redesign of Meta Horizon OS, a calendar app, and the ability to use Travel Mode on a train. The update will start rolling out gradually next week.
Let’s start with the redesign. Meta says that it’s “tweaking the look and feel of Horizon OS” and that new headsets will use an “improved” light theme by default. (Dark mode fans, fear not: the dark theme is still present, and if you’re already using it, Meta won’t switch you over automatically.) Meta has “also made assorted changes to the way panels look and behave, where the control bar resides, the colors of various UI elements, and so on,” according to a blog post. And the Settings menu has “a new look and layout” and improved search.
An image of the updated settings menu.Image: Meta
The calendar app looks like, well, a calendar app, and based on a brief video, it appears you’ll be able to look through different days while you’re in VR. Meta says the app can integrate with Google and Outlook calendars and will also include Meta Horizon Worlds events you subscribe to and meetings you’re invited to that take place in Meta Horizon Workrooms.
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With the update to Travel Mode, you’ll be able to use the feature when on trains. Meta first introduced the feature in May, but at the time, it was only available to use on airplanes. Note that when in Travel Mode, you can’t use the Quest Pro or Touch Plus controllers, so some games might be difficult to play. Instead, Travel Mode is probably better suited for watching a movie or TV show while in transit. (Meta also explicitly says that you should not use travel mode in a car.)
The AI-powered search game is heating up, with OpenAI adding search capabilities to ChatGPT just yesterday, and Perplexity launching a macOS desktop app a week ago. Perplexity could be considered a leader in AI-powered search right now, and now Mac users can quickly use Perplexity’s advanced search engine right from their desktop without having to access it through a web browser.
If you’re not familiar with Perplexity, it’s a conversational search engine that launched the same year as ChatGPT. It allows you to ask questions and make queries using natural language (like how we communicate with each other in real life). Similar to ChatGPT, there are two tiers for users – a free ‘Standard’ tier which allows you to make unlimited ‘Quick’ searches, ideal for those seeking quick, basic answers produced by the Standard Perplexity AI Model (plus five free Pro tier searches a day), and the ‘Pro’ tier which includes Quick searches as well as 600 Pro searches a day.
It’s these Pro searches that are recommended for more complex and lengthy queries, allowing you to choose from several different AI models and tools, including OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Athropic’s Claude-3. It also includes the ability to analyze files like PDFs, spreadsheets, and images using AI tools. You can subscribe to Perplexity Pro for $20 a month or $200 annually.
What makes Perplexity on macOS so good?
Now, the macOS app brings these kinds of key Perplexity features straight to your desktop, allowing you to make Pro searches by typing or using your voice. Then, Perplexity will return real-time answers, powered by advanced AI models, which come with cited sources – so you can check the veracity of Perplexity’s answers for yourself.
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The app also brings a new threaded conversation capability, letting you ask follow-up questions about your initial query without Perplexity losing the context of the original question, allowing for a more naturalistic back-and-forth. It also has a library feature that saves past searches and discoveries, along with the ability to create custom shortcuts to quickly access your favorite features.
Perplexity’s new app could be the key to unlocking a better form of internet searches on your Mac. (Image credit: Shutterstock / Alex Ost)
Before you consider subscribing, I would recommend you try Perplexity for free first – either in your browser or by downloading the app for macOS, available from the Mac App Store now.
It’s interesting to watch the number of AI-powered conversational search products expand, and I’ve seen discussions around ChatGPT’s new search features on sites like Reddit arguing that this could (or perhaps, should) light a fire under companies like Google to stay competitive. If you’re a ChatGPT Plus user, Team user, or signed up to the SearchGPT waitlist, you should see ChatGPT offer you the option to search the web for answers. Enterprise and Education users will get access to this in the next few weeks, and it will become available to all free users in the next few months.
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You can already get the ChatGPT desktop app for both macOS and Windows 11, and I assume its search capabilities extend to the app (or at least, they will soon).
I think it’s hard to call if Perplexity or ChatGPT will end up ahead when it comes to conversational search. ChatGPT has more recognition, but Perplexity has been in this specific game for a little longer. Either way, I’m intrigued and will be watching closely, and I’m pretty eager to dig into both of them.
The Dominion coal burning power plant is seen in Saint Paul, Virginia on Tuesday, February 7, 2023. Community leaders in Southwestern Virginia are giving serious consideration to the idea of utilizing formerly mined coal sites to house small modular nuclear reactors.
“It’s very encouraging to see large power users, including technology companies, express a willingness to invest, partner and collaborate to bring this exciting base load carbon free technology into fruition,” Dominion CEO Robert Blue told investors on the company’s third-quarter earnings call Friday.
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Dominion and Amazon have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore developing a small modular reactor near the utility’s North Anna nuclear station in Louisa County, Virginia. The small reactor would bring 300 megawatts of power to Virginia.
Virginia is one of the most nuclear friendly states in the nation with strong bipartisan support for next-generation nuclear initiatives, Blue said.
“It’s not surprising that our large customers would be interested as they think about us as a good operator of nuclear, to work together on maybe advancing those kinds of technologies,” the CEO told investors.
“So we’ve been talking with Amazon obviously and others,” the CEO said.
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Tech companies are investing in nuclear power as they hunt for carbon-free, reliable electricity to support the growing energy needs of artificial intelligence data centers. Dominion serves the largest data center market in the world, northern Virginia.
Earlier this year, Amazon bought a data center campus from Talen Energy that will be powered by the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Microsoft has signed an agreement to purchase power from Three Mile Island as Constellation Energy aims to restart the plant in 2028. And Alphabet‘s Google agreed last month to purchase power from the startup Kairos Power, a developer of small modular reactors.
Small modular reactors promise to reduce capital costs and speed the deployment of nuclear plants. They have a smaller footprint than large reactors, making them easier to site in principle, and promise a simpler manufacturing process.
But the technology has struggled to reach the commercial stage. There is no operating small modular reactor in the U.S. right now.
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