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On Tuesday night, Elon Musk gathered the employees of xAI for an all-hands meeting. Evidently, he wanted to talk about the future of his AI company, and specifically, how it relates to the moon.

Co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi wanted to share these growth numbers because there’s so much talk about how AI is going to kill the SaaS business, he told TechCrunch.

AI video generation startup Runway has raised a $315 million Series E round, nearly doubling its valuation to $5.3 billion, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

For much of his career, Mohamed Mohamed worked at institutions — BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey — all of whom, he said, “treated real estate as a computational problem.” “They had proprietary data pipelines, internal valuation models, simulation tools, and increasingly, early AI systems supporting underwriting and capital allocation,” he told TechCrunch of how these firms analyzed property investments. 

Swedish music streaming giant Spotify saw its user numbers peak last quarter, driven by its year-end “Wrapped” campaign, which rounds up stats and listening highlights for users, and new features on its free tier.

Former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke has raised the largest-ever seed round for a dev tool startup, according to its lead backer, Felicis. The startup, Entire, has raised $60 million at a $300 million valuation.

India has ordered social media platforms to step up policing of deepfakes and other AI-generated impersonations, while sharply shortening the time they have to comply with takedown orders. It’s a move that could reshape how global tech firms moderate content in one of the world’s largest and fastest growing market for internet services.

Hauler Herohas picked up fresh funds as demand for its AI-powered waste management software continues to pile up. The New York-based startup raised $16 million in a Series A round led by Frontier Growth with participation from K5 Global and Somersault Ventures, among others, TechCrunch has learned. Hauler Hero has raised more than $27 million in venture capital, to date.

OpenAI sought to address concerns about how ads might affect the user experience, stating in a blog post: “Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you, and we keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers. Our goal is for ads to support broader access to more powerful ChatGPT features while maintaining the trust people place in ChatGPT for important and personal tasks.”