The ruling against Juuling?

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An illustration shows a man exhaling smoke from an electronic cigarette in Washington, DC on October 2, 2018.
Image Credits: EVA HAMBACH/AFP / Getty Images

Hello and welcome back to Week in Review, your one-stop spot for the biggest stories from the week. Greg Kumparak is off enjoying the beginning of summer and has entrusted me to keep you updated in his absence.

If you want this in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here. And while you’re at it, check out our other newsletters. Okay let’s get on with it, shall we?

Juul has had a week. The e-cigarette maker, which was once valued at $38 billion, received news from the FDA that it would no longer be allowed to sell or distribute its vaping devices or its 5% and 3% tobacco and menthol-flavored pods in the U.S. without “risk[ing] enforcement action.” The ban was a result of the company’s inability to prove its products are safe. But on Friday, a federal appeals court froze the ban after the company sought an emergency administrative stay. The stay buys time until the case can be heard by the court, though according to court documents, it “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits.”

other stuff

Outage: One of the most read stories was about the Cloudflare outage, which was responsible for knocking many of the platforms we all know and love offline. The outage was short-lived, however, and the company published an explanation hours after it occurred.*

Zendesk acquired: A consortium of private equity firms acquired the company for $10.2 billion, well below offer prices it received earlier this year. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, at which point Zendesk will go private again.

Amazon whispers: At its re:Mars conference this week, Amazon announced CodeWhisperer, an AI pair programming tool that can autocomplete entire functions based on only a comment or a few keystrokes. The company trained the system, which currently supports Java, JavaScript and Python, on billions of lines of publicly available open source code and its own codebase, as well as publicly available documentation and code on public forums.

C-suite departures: The CEO and COO of MindGeek, parent company of PornHub and other similar sites, abruptly left the company this week. MindGeek claims the departures were planned, despite having come a week after a report in the New Yorker about its moderation policies.

M&M & AI: Microsoft and Meta announced this week that they are using AI to help run their data centers. For Microsoft’s part, it is developing an AI system to analyze data and generate alerts for teams to be able to “prevent or mitigate the impact of safety incidents,” the company said. A complementary but related system, also under development, attempts to detect and predict impacts to data center construction schedules. Meta says that it has been developing physical models to simulate extreme conditions and introducing this data to the AI models responsible for optimizing power consumption, cooling and airflow across its servers.

Gamifying engineering: Israeli-based startup Wilco is out of stealth this week to help software engineers learn how to do the non-engineering parts of their jobs. On the platform, devs join a fake tech company and participate in challenges designed to simulate real-world experiences. They then navigate these experiences using real tools and technologies. Haje spoke with On Freund, the company’s CEO. Read the Q&A here.

audio stuff

On the TechCrunch Podcast this week, you can hear Darrell chat with Bill Gates. The two spoke at our TechCrunch Sessions: Climate event last week about whether we can still avoid climate disaster, the importance of crypto and Elon Musk’s time management skills. Also on this week’s episode, Darell talks with Ingrid about Spotify’s acquisition of the Voice AI startup Sonatic.

And over on Found, Darrell and Jordan talked to Anja Health CEO and founder Kathryn Cross, the 23-year-old TikTok influencer turned founder who discusses how the different social channels can be helpful to founders in different industries and why she thinks every company will have to be its own influencer.

Check out our full roundup.

added stuff

Want even more TechCrunch? Head on over to the aptly named TechCrunch+, where we get to go a bit deeper on the topics our subscribers tell us they care about. Some of the good stuff from this week includes:

Pitch Deck Teardown: WayRay’s $80M Series C deck: WayRay’s deck consists of a whopping 75 slides, and it’s clear that the founders took a different tack than what we’re used to seeing these days. Nonetheless, you can’t argue with a successful fundraise of this caliber.

It’s time for LPs to take more responsibility in the fight for economic equality: Dominic-Madori Davis, one of our newest TC+ reporters, examined the responsibility LPs have to increase the amount of venture capital for Black founders.

What if my crypto job is no longer available? Immigration lawyer Sophie Alcorn answers a question from an F-1 student who recently graduated with a bachelor’s in computer science — and a job lined up at a crypto company.

*Corrected to add a link to Cloudflare’s explanation of the outage. 

More TechCrunch

Fisker is just a few days into its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the fight over its assets is already charged, with one lawyer claiming the startup has been liquidating assets…

The fight over Fisker’s assets is already heating up

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Hacker claims to have 30 million customer records from Australian ticket seller giant TEG

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Dot is a new AI companion and chatbot that thrives on getting to know your innermost thoughts and feelings.

Dot’s AI really, really wants to get to know you

The e-fuels startup is working on producing fuel for aviation and maritime shipping using carbon dioxide and other waste carbon streams.

E-fuels startup Aether Fuels is raising $34.3 million, per filing

Fisker was facing “potential financial distress” as early as last August, according to a new filing in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding, which the EV startup initiated earlier this week.…

Fisker faced financial distress as early as last August

Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, has agreed to pay a $112,500 fine for failing to provide full information about an accident involving one of its robotaxis last year.…

Cruise clears key hurdle to getting robotaxis back on roads in California

Feel Therapeutics has a pretty original deck, with some twists we rarely see; the company did a great job telling the overall story.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Feel Therapeutics’ $3.5M seed deck

The Rockset buy fits into OpenAI’s broader recent strategy of investing heavily in its enterprise sales and tech orgs.

OpenAI buys Rockset to bolster its enterprise AI

The U.S. government announced sanctions against 12 executives and senior leaders of the Russia-based cybersecurity giant Kaspersky. In a press release, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets…

US government sanctions Kaspersky executives

Style DNA, an AI-powered fashion stylist app, creates a personalized style profile from a single selfie. The app is particularly useful for people interested in seasonal color analysis, a process…

Style DNA gets a generative AI chatbot that suggests outfit ideas based on your color type

Rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts are surging among U.S. teens. A recent report from the Center of Disease Control found that nearly one in three girls have seriously…

Khosla-backed Marble, built by former Headway founders, offers affordable group therapy for teens

Cover says what sets it apart is the underlying technology it employs, which has been exclusively licensed from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A new startup from Figure’s founder is licensing NASA tech in a bid to curb school shootings

Spotify is introducing a new “Basic” streaming plan in the United States, the company announced on Friday. The new plan costs $10.99 per month and includes all of the benefits…

Spotify launches a new Basic streaming plan in the US

Photographers say the social media giant is applying a ‘Made with AI’ label to photos they took, causing confusion for users.

Meta is tagging real photos as ‘Made with AI,’ say photographers

Website building platform Squarespace is selling Tock, its restaurant reservation service, to American Express in a deal worth $400 million — the exact figure that Squarespace paid for the service…

Squarespace sells restaurant reservation system Tock to American Express for $400M

Featured Article

Change Healthcare confirms ransomware hackers stole medical records on a ‘substantial proportion’ of Americans

The February ransomware attack on UHG-owned Change Healthcare stands as one of the largest-ever known digital thefts of U.S. medical records.

20 hours ago
Change Healthcare confirms ransomware hackers stole medical records on a ‘substantial proportion’ of Americans

Google said today that it globally paused its experiment that aimed to allow new kinds of real-money games on the Play Store, citing the challenges that come with the lack…

Google pauses its experiment to expand real-money games on the Play Store

Venture firms raised $9.3 billion in Q1 according to PitchBook data, which means this year likely won’t match or surpass 2023’s $81.8 billion total. While emerging managers are feeling the…

Kevin Hartz’s A* raises its second oversubscribed fund in three years

Google is making reviews of all your movies, TV shows, books, albums and games visible under one profile page starting June 24, according to an email sent to users last…

Google is making your movie and TV reviews visible under a new profile page

Zepto, an Indian quick commerce startup, has more than doubled its valuation to $3.6 billion in a new funding round of $665 million.

Zepto, a 10-minute delivery app, raises $665M at $3.6B valuation

Speak, the AI-powered language learning app, has raised new money from investors at double its previous valuation.

Language learning app Speak nets $20M, doubles valuation

SpaceX unveiled Starlink Mini, a more portable version of its satellite internet product that is small enough to fit inside a backpack.  Early Starlink customers were invited to purchase the…

SpaceX debuts portable Starlink Mini for $599

Ali Rathod-Papier has stepped down from her role as global head of compliance at corporate card expense management startup Brex to join venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) as a partner…

Brex’s compliance head has left the fintech startup to join Andreessen Horowitz as a partner

U.S. officials imposed the “first of its kind” ban arguing that Kaspersky threatens U.S. national security because of its links to Russia.

US bans sale of Kaspersky software citing security risk from Russia 

Apple has released Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 and Final Cut Camera, the company announced on Thursday. Both apps were previously announced during the company’s iPad event in May.…

Apple releases Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 and Final Cut Camera

Paris has quickly established itself as a major European center for AI startups, and now another big deal is in the works.

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LTK (formerly LiketoKnow.it and RewardStyle), the influencer shopping app with 40 million monthly users, announced on Thursday the launch of a free direct message tool for creators to instantly share…

Influencer shopping app LTK gets an automatic direct message tool

YouTube appears to be taking a firm stance against Premium subscribers who attempt to use a VPN (virtual private network) to access cheaper subscription prices in other countries. This week,…

YouTube confirms crackdown on VPN users accessing cheaper Premium plans