Daily Crunch: GitHub CEO says new code completion tool ‘brings the fun back to programming’

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Welcome to Humpday Crunch!

Today we’re sad that Aloria passed away on Sunday, as Lorenzo reported. She was a veteran of the cybersecurity community, especially the one in New York, her home for many years. The Twitter account of the New York City security conference Summercon announced her death on Monday, prompting a seemingly endless list of people to publicly mourn her loss and pay tribute to her life.

— Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• X marks the spot: GitHub launched its Copilot X initiative today, which Frederic reports is an extension of its work on its popular Copilot code completion tool, originally launched into preview all the way back in 2021. The tool also adds a chat mode and more.
• Should you return an investment?: If you’re a struggling founder who took in some venture capital but couldn’t quite find that product market fit, is there “a graceful way out”? That’s the question that Connie takes to investor Gokul Rajaram, who discusses the idea of closing up shop and returning some funding.
• A night at the AI Opera: Opera gets in on the AI excitement with ChatGPT and AI summarization features that let you generate AI prompts by highlighting text on a website or typing it in. Ivan has more.

Startups and VC

Good Meat, the cultivated meat unit of Eat Just, completed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s pre-market consultation for its production method, and the agency concluded this week that it had “no questions,” Christine reports.

Early-stage founders need mentorship and support to build a successful startup, and conventional wisdom says, “Get thee to an incubator or an accelerator!” However, the two programs are not interchangeable — they serve very different purposes — and there are roughly 500 accelerators and 1,400 incubators in the U.S. alone. At our Early Stage event in Boston on April 20, we’ll be going deep on that topic and many others. Come join us!

And we have five more for you:

3 tips for crypto startups preparing for continued compliance

Most startups can avoid getting into the weeds on legal matters before launching, but crypto companies are in a different boat. Facing a tangle of state and federal legislation, inadequate compliance can quickly generate regulatory hassles and undermine customer confidence.

In a TC+ post written by three lawyers from law firm Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP, the authors share basic information relevant for any crypto startups that operate in the U.S.

“By establishing a robust, risk-based compliance function … and staying abreast of the latest regulatory guidance, cryptocurrency companies can better position themselves to weather the crypto winter,” they write.

Three more from the TC+ team:

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.

Zack is following what’s going on with a security flaw in Fortra’s GoAnywhere software and continues to hear from organizations that have been hacked. The Russia-based Clop group claiming to be behind this has said some 130 organizations are said to be victims, but less than half have been disclosed. So stay tuned for more developments.

Meanwhile, payment processing service Checkout.com is letting customers have some fun: It has launched virtual and physical cards that they can customize. Romain writes that this new feature, called Issuing, “represents a business opportunity for fintech companies. When someone pays with a card, the card transaction fees are split between the merchant’s bank, the card scheme (Visa or Mastercard, for example) and the card issuer (Checkout.com in this case).”

And we have five more for you:

Actually, we have one more! Here is a late-breaking story: Indeed, the job listing platform, announced the layoff of 2,200 employees, Amanda reports.