In other tech news, Amazon launched a new unlimited grocery delivery subscription in the U.S., but ended its Prime Air drone delivery operations in Lockeford, California. EV startup Fisker is planning more layoffs and may seek bankruptcy protection within the next 30 days if it fails to raise necessary funds. Meanwhile, Stripe announced at its San Francisco conference that it will de-couple payments from the rest of its financial services stack. The newsletter also features analysis on AI startup R1's first product, the R1, lab-grown diamonds from Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup Pascal, and an AI-generated poetry camera.
Key takeaways:
- TikTok's future in the U.S. is uncertain after President Joe Biden signed a bill that includes a deadline for ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, to divest itself of TikTok within nine months or face a ban on distributing it in the U.S.
- Change, a subsidiary of health insurance giant UnitedHealth, confirmed that the ransomware attack targeting it earlier this year resulted in a huge theft of Americans' private health info, possibly covering "a substantial proportion" of Americans.
- Amazon launched a new unlimited grocery delivery subscription in the U.S. that costs $9.99 per month for Amazon Prime users, with free deliveries for grocery orders over $35 across Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods Market and other local grocery retailers.
- Stripe announced at its Sessions conference in San Francisco that it'll be de-coupling payments from the rest of its financial services stack, a significant change given that Stripe previously required businesses to be payments customers in order to use any of its other products.