eBay continues to bet on live shopping

0:00This is TechCrunch.

0:30The way Scribe works is simple. It captures work as it happens, then automatically creates clear, step-by-step guides, ready for your team to review and then share in seconds. From there, anyone can launch a live walkthrough right inside the actual tool to clearly show how work gets done. So there's no confusion. Everyone can be on the same page, and your team can skip creating trainings from scratch. You'll also be happy to know that Scribe is built with privacy in mind. It can automatically redact sensitive information like account numbers, names, or emails. Your admin picks the apps, and anything outside them is never captured.

0:59Try it with your team at scribe.how slash tzdaily and mention the show for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans. That's S-C-R-I-B-E dot how slash tzdaily. There's all this tech shit going on right now. We have facial recognition. We have our ring cameras giving data to police. We have the Flock safety cameras. We have Amazon Echo and all these devices that are constantly listening to us and using our data for one purpose or another. Hey, we have a national security problem. When a company like Flock turns it into this organized system that law enforcement can access. To hear more on why you should rethink every safe camera you drive past, check out episode 1308 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

1:39After a record quarter, eBay continues to bet on live shopping. I'm Imran Shaikh and your Daily Crunch for Thursday starts right now. On Thursday, Google announced that Google Maps' Ask Maps feature is gaining a slew of new agentic capabilities, including the ability to order food, book hotels, and even find event tickets. The tech giant is also bringing personal intelligence to Ask Maps, allowing the AI tool to personalize its responses by drawing on information from a user's Gmail and Google Calendar. Now, the launch of the new features reflects Google's ambitions to transform Google Maps from a navigation tool into an assistant that's capable of helping users complete real-world tasks.

2:23Well, with the new agentic food ordering capabilities, users can open Ask Maps in Google Maps and ask a question like, where can I order vegan avocado toast and an oat milk latte near home? The tool will then surface nearby restaurants that have all the vegan-y goodness that they're looking for. After selecting a restaurant, users can tap the Order Online option to place an order through supported platforms, such as Square Toast or Uber Eats. Ask Maps will add the items to a cart. Users can then choose to add more items to their cart, then pay for the order on the supported platform. The new agentic features have rolled out to users in the U.S.

3:01Now, with the addition of personal intelligence, Ask Maps will be able to give users personalized answers to their questions about upcoming flights. dinner reservations, hotels, and more. AskMaps will now also remember prior conversations, allowing users to pick up where they left off. And last but not least, Google's also launching a live transit widget in AskMaps that'll allow users to stay up to date on delays and conditions as they change in real time. Meanwhile, AI Lab Mirindel has signed a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud to source compute capacity for its self-improving AI research.

3:38TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Now, the deal mirrors two trends shaping the AI industry. Cloud giants are courting startups with huge infrastructure commitments, and AI companies are snatching up as many compute deals as they can to secure access as they scale. You see, the deal's worth upwards of$100 million, Merindell's co-founder and CEO Ben Amneshibor told TechCrunch. That's roughly half of what Merindell raised in seed funding at a$1 billion valuation in late June. The deal gives the startup access to both Google's TPUs and NVIDIA GPUs, as well as managed training clusters with which Mirndel will work on its self-improving AI.

4:16The startup hopes its AI will eventually be able to take on the work of an entire frontier AI lab. Now, self-improving AI, also known as recursive self-improvement, refers to AI systems that iteratively improve themselves. It's a concept that major labs like Anthropic, where Mirndel's co-founders hail from, have been working on. A handful of startups like Recursive Superintelligence and Recursive Intelligence have also recently sprung up around achieving that goal. Mirandell believes this process will automate a lot of scientific and AI research, helping scientists make progress in fields like medicine, biology, and material science.

4:54Neishabur thinks AI can mimic how human scientists can learn more about new domains, accumulate knowledge and expertise, and gradually improve their performance. You can have a self-improving AI where you can point a problem at it and it keeps getting better with time, he said. As eBay tries to keep up with competitors like Whatnot and TikTok Shop, the online marketplace is making a bigger push into live shopping after seeing record results. You see, during its second quarter earnings call on Wednesday, the company noted that eBay Live's gross merchandise volume, GMV, jumped about eight times year over year across seven markets, along with increases in viewers, watch time, and items sold.

5:36It plans to expand eBay Live to more international markets in the coming weeks and months. However, it's important to note that eBay didn't share the exact GMV number, okay? Making it difficult to assess how significant the growth really is. That said, eBay clearly sees Live as a key growth area, and the feedback from sellers and buyers looks promising. eBay's reporting that over 90 % of sellers who stream regularly have seen their GMV grow. And those who use live, well, they sell about three times more than those who don't. Now, buyers are also spending more. First-time shoppers in the collectibles category are dropping around 70 % more than their non-live shopping counterparts.

6:19eBay launched live as invite-only in the US in 2022, then expanded internationally, starting with a beta in the UK in 2024 and has since rolled it out in countries like Germany, Australia, France, Italy, and Canada. Last month, the company moved past its invite-only model and now offers self-service onboarding for eligible sellers in over 300 categories, which include everything from electronics to fashion and collectibles. Live shopping in the US has moved beyond a niche trend, with more companies beginning to treat it more seriously rather than a side experiment. And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.

6:55Today's stories were reported by Lauren Forrestal, Elisha Malik, Rebecca Balan, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists. We'll see you here tomorrow, same Tech Time, same Crunch channel. And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.

7:12Hey there, I'm Travis Hoyam, one of the hosts of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Each weekday on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, we talk through the business news you need to know and the stories moving stocks on Wall Street. On weekends, we game plan personal finance strategies and dive into the industry's shaping tomorrow and host the experts, authors, and executives that understand them. Tune in for insights and a long-term perspective on investing and, of course, stock ideas, plenty of them. To quote a listener, it pays to listen. Check us out and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.