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Daily Crunch: Startup says it has received $1M in preorders for its $60K hydrofoiling personal watercraft

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riderless personal watercraft sitting on a serene body of water at sunset. or maybe sunrise.
Image Credits: Boundary Layer (opens in a new window)

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Hey, folks, welcome back! Below we’ve got some 2022 roundups and even some news. I suspect it’ll get even leaner as the week wears on, but no matter! There will always be stories to share. Now, here is your Wednesday edition of the Daily Crunch. — Hank

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Sports on Amazon: The tech giant wants to continue its march into broadcasting live sports, adding to its current lineup of Thursday Night Football, Premier League soccer and the like, Aisha reports. Pro tip, Amazon: Add cricket to your plans.
  • Ring true: Movano beat the CES rush and launched Evie, a smart ring focused on women’s health, Brian reports.
  • In the water: Earlier this month, Boundary Layer pivoted to producing personal watercraft that will run interested parties upward of $60,000 once they’re ready. Haje reports that the company has more than $1 million worth of orders.

Dear Sophie: Do employees have to stop working until they get their EAD?

lone figure at entrance to maze hedge that has an American flag at the center
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Dear Sophie,

One of our employees is on an H-4 visa and has an Employment Authorization Document. It’s been five months since he filed to renew his EAD, which will expire next month. Is there any way to expedite this process? Does he have to stop working if he doesn’t receive his new EAD card before his old one expires?

Because it’s taking so long to get EAD cards, we’re worried about another of our employees, who has an L-2 visa with an EAD scheduled to expire early next year.

In addition, the H-4 visa employee wants to visit his family in India because it’s been more than three years since he last went. Will he and his family be able to return to the U.S. after four weeks?

— Mindful Manager

Dear Sophie: Do employees have to stop working until they get their EAD?

We also rounded up the best of our climate coverage on TC+ this year. And Tim had a couple more favorites:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech, Inc.

  • Twitter trimming: A Norway-based developer told Ivan that she created a tool to help you cull the list of accounts you follow, because she was reaching the follow limit on the platform.
  • Political … tick tock: The U.S. House of Representatives has ordered all staff and lawmakers to delete TikTok from their gov-issued phones, citing “security issues,” Carly writes.
  • Bitcoin mining deal: Galaxy Digital has agreed to acquire Argo Blockchain’s bitcoin mining facility, Helios, for $65 million, Jacquie writes.
  • Code-generating AI: Sounds cool, right? Well, Kyle wrote about a study that found code-generating AI can introduce security vulnerabilities.

2022 in Review

  • Good news!: Amanda, Kyle, Tim, Devin and Rebecca have a roundup of some good news in tech for you. This crop of TC reporters put their heads together to mine 2022 for some tech goodness. Climate tech bolstered by the Inflation Reduction Act and the James Webb Space Telescope are on the list.
  • On the move: Rebecca has compiled the biggest transportation stories that drove the year.
  • Surveying investors: And Karan and Ram give you a glimpse of the investor surveys that we ran on TC+ this year.

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Women in AI: Rachel Coldicutt researches how technology impacts society

SAP Chief Sustainability Officer Sophia Mendelsohn wants to incentivize companies to be green because it’s profitable, not just because it’s right.

SAP’s chief sustainability officer isn’t interested in getting your company to do the right thing

Here’s what one insider said happened in the days leading up to the layoffs.

Tesla’s profitable Supercharger network is in limbo after Musk axed the entire team

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Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.  Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…

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The deck included some redacted numbers, but there was still enough data to get a good picture.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Cloudsmith’s $15M Series A deck

The company is describing the event as “a chance to demo some ChatGPT and GPT-4 updates.”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT announcement: What we know so far

Unlike ChatGPT, Claude did not become a new App Store hit.

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Scarcely five months after its founding, hard tech startup Layup Parts has landed a $9 million round of financing led by Founders Fund to transform composites manufacturing. Lux Capital and Haystack…

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AI startup Anthropic is changing its policies to allow minors to use its generative AI systems — in certain circumstances, at least.  Announced in a post on the company’s official…

Anthropic now lets kids use its AI tech — within limits

Zeekr’s market hype is noteworthy and may indicate that investors see value in the high-quality, low-price offerings of Chinese automakers.

The buzziest EV IPO of the year is a Chinese automaker

Venture capital has been hit hard by souring macroeconomic conditions over the past few years and it’s not yet clear how the market downturn affected VC fund performance. But recent…

VC fund performance is down sharply — but it may have already hit its lowest point

The person who claims to have 49 million Dell customer records told TechCrunch that he brute-forced an online company portal and scraped customer data, including physical addresses, directly from Dell’s…

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The social network has announced an updated version of its app that lets you offer feedback about its algorithmic feed so you can better customize it.

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Smart ring maker Oura is launching two new features focused on heart health, the company announced on Friday. The first claims to help users get an idea of their cardiovascular…

Oura launches two new heart health features

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

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Garena is quietly developing new India-themed games even though Free Fire, its biggest title, has still not made a comeback to the country.

Garena is quietly making India-themed games even as Free Fire’s relaunch remains doubtful

The U.S.’ NHTSA has opened a fourth investigation into the Fisker Ocean SUV, spurred by multiple claims of “inadvertent Automatic Emergency Braking.”

Fisker Ocean faces fourth federal safety probe

CoreWeave has formally opened an office in London that will serve as its European headquarters and home to two new data centers.

CoreWeave, a $19B AI compute provider, opens European HQ in London with plans for 2 UK data centers

The Series C funding, which brings its total raise to around $95 million, will go toward mass production of the startup’s inaugural products

AI chip startup DEEPX secures $80M Series C at a $529M valuation 

A dust-up between Evolve Bank & Trust, Mercury and Synapse has led TabaPay to abandon its acquisition plans of troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse.

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The Twitter for Android client was “a demo app that Google had created and gave to us,” says Particle co-founder and ex-Twitter employee Sara Beykpour.

Google built some of the first social apps for Android, including Twitter and others