Hey, of us, welcome to Week in Assessment (WiR), TechCrunch’s common publication recapping noteworthy happenings in tech over the previous few days.

This week, TechCrunch seen leaked paperwork out of SpaceX exhibiting some questionable practices associated to worker inventory choices.

X CEO Elon Musk introduced that he would open supply Grok, X’s AI-powered chatbot meant to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Grok — developed by Musk’s AI startup, xAI — was launched final 12 months, armed with options comparable to entry to “real-time” info on X and views undeterred by “politically right” norms.

Elsewhere, Ron interviewed Denise Dresser, the CEO of Slack, on her effort to convey stability to the Salesforce enterprise that’s seen three CEOs in a single 12 months.

Heaps else occurred. We recap all of it on this version of WiR — however first, a reminder to enroll to obtain the WiR publication in your inbox each Saturday.

Information

Leaked SpaceX docs: We acquired our arms on some leaked SpaceX paperwork that present some uncommon phrases to inventory awards that workers are required to comply with. Amongst different issues, the corporate provides itself the suitable to ban previous and current workers from collaborating in tender gives if they’re deemed to have dedicated “an act of dishonesty in opposition to the corporate” or to have violated written firm insurance policies.

Phantom, now a phantom: Phantom Auto, a distant driving startup that launched seven years in the past amid the thrill of autonomous car expertise, is shutting down after failing to safe new funding, Kirsten solely experiences.

Meme inventory: In a brand new SEC submitting, Reddit reveals that, following its IPO, it’ll permit its group members to promote their shares instantly as a substitute of being topic to the same old lock-up agreements that stop IPO traders from promoting shares for six months.

Funding

Banking as a service: U.Ok.-based Griffin Financial institution, an API-driven banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform, simply obtained a license to launch as a completely operational financial institution — and raised $24 million from traders, together with MassMutual Ventures, NordicNinja and Breega.

EU breaches knowledge guidelines: An investigation into the European Union’s use of Microsoft 365 has discovered that the European Fee, the cupboard authorities of the EU, breached the bloc’s knowledge safety guidelines by means of its use of the cloud-based productiveness software program.

Evaluation

Deepfakes go royal: Amanda writes about how a photograph of Kate Middleton and her kids, presumably edited with the assistance of AI, is an omen of what’s to return as AI deepfaking and modifying instruments proliferate.

Rest gadget: Haje goes hands-on with Moonbird’s leisure gadget, which is designed to assist clients discover sleep and scale back stress by means of respiratory workouts.

Podcasts

This week on Fairness, Alex checked out knowledge from Carta on how startup compensation is altering, raises from Empathy and Bear Robotics and developments from Bluesky, Courageous and Chamath Palihapitiya’s VC agency Social Capital.

On Discovered, Becca and Dom spoke with Rebecca Hu, the CEO and co-founder of Glacier, an AI robotics firm that’s constructing robots to precisely kind recycling.

And on Chain Response, Jacquelyn interviewed Melody Hildebrandt, CTO of Fox Company, and Mike Clean, COO at Polygon Labs. The episode is a part of Chain Response’s month-to-month sequence diving into completely different subjects and themes in crypto. This month’s theme is blockchain and AI integrations.

Bonus spherical

Metaverse royale: Readyverse Studios — co-founded by blockchain tech firm Futureverse and Ernest Cline, the thoughts behind the sci-fi sequence Prepared Participant One — this week debuted Open, a third-person battle royale expertise. Lauren has the story.