Tech
Patreon CEO calls AI companies’ fair use argument ‘bogus,’ says creators should be paid
Patreon CEO Jack Conte says he’s not anti-AI. He can’t be.
“I run a frickin’ tech company,” he told the audience at the SXSW conference in Austin this week. Still, the founder of the creator platform has limits. Conte doesn’t think AI companies should be able to train their models on the work of creators without compensation, calling their decision to dub this “fair use” a “bogus” argument.
Conte’s SXSW talk positioned AI as another moment within the ongoing cycle of disruption that creators have been through many times before in the internet age. Like the transition from buying music on iTunes to streaming, or shifting video to the vertical format favored by TikTok, AI will likely break a lot of the models that creative people have worked hard to build over the years. Still, he believes they will thrive.
“I learned a very important thing as an artist, which is that change does not mean death. You can get back up, and you can fucking go again,” said Conte, who created Patreon to solve a problem he had faced as a musician: getting people to pay creators for their work.
Similarly, he doesn’t believe that AI companies should be able to scoop up creators’ content to train their models without some sort of compensation.
“The AI companies are claiming fair use, but this argument is bogus,” Conte said, reading from a printout of his speech, or rather, his manifesto. “It’s bogus because while they claim it’s fair to use the work of creators as training data, they do multimillion-dollar deals with rights holders and publishers like Disney and Condé Nast and Vox and Warner Music.”
If the AI companies’ argument around fair use was legal and sound, then they wouldn’t be paying these large rightsholders, he noted.
“If it’s legal to just use it, why pay?” he asked rhetorically. “Why pay them and not creators — not the millions of illustrators and musicians and writers — whose work has been consumed by these models to build hundreds of billions of dollars of value for these companies?”
Reading between the lines, it’s clear that Conte would like to tap into some of those payouts, too, for Patreon’s own community of creators. And he’s using Patreon’s scale as a creator community filled with hundreds of thousands of people to make that argument.
The founder also clarified that his decision to call out AI companies’ behavior is not because he’s anti-AI or anti-tech or even anti-change.
“I accept the inevitability of change, and I feel agency in discovering my next path through the chaos. A part of that challenge even excites me,” Conte said. “Still, the AI companies should pay creators for our work, not because the tech is bad — but because a lot of it is good, or it will be soon — and it’s going to be the future. And when we plan for humanity’s future, we should plan for society’s artists, too, not just for their sake, but for the sake of all of us. Societies that value and incentivize creativity are better for it,” he added.
The talk ended on a hopeful note, with Conte expressing his belief that humans will make and enjoy the work of other humans for a long time, despite whatever progress AI makes on this front.
“Great artists don’t play back what already exists,” Conte said, referencing large language models’ (LLMs) ability to predict the appropriate output. “They stand on the shoulders of giants. They push culture forward.”
Tech
Doss raises $55M for AI inventory management that plugs into ERP
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are often described as a company’s “central brain” because the software connects different departments — including finance, HR, and inventory — into a single database where everyone shares the same information.
In recent years, a new crop of AI-powered ERP startups, such as Rillet and Campfire, has emerged hoping to replace legacy offerings like NetSuite. These companies claim that traditional ERPs are clunky, expensive, and time-consuming to implement.
However, according to Doss co-founder and CEO Wiley Jones, many new AI ERPs lack robust inventory management, the process of ensuring that the data on physical goods remains synced with the accounting ledger.
Doss claims to solve this by providing an AI-native inventory management layer that integrates with existing accounting systems, whether traditional ERPs or ones built by AI-based startups.
On Tuesday, Doss announced that it raised a $55 million Series B co-led by Madrona and Premji Invest, with participation from Intuit Ventures. Other new and existing inventors in the round include Theory Ventures, General Catalyst, Contrary Capital, and Greyhound Capital.
Doss, founded in 2022, originally focused on a core accounting product similar to those offered by AI-native startups like Rillet and Campfire. But last year, the startup decided instead of competing with these companies, “we would rather partner with them, and play a different game,” Jones told TechCrunch.
Jones explained that AI-native ERP companies manage accounts receivable, accounts payable, and other finance functions, but most don’t offer procurement and inventory management that integrates with accounting workflows.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
“We’re building a lot of the traceability for the supply chain, but through the lens of plugging into a finance and accounting partner,” Jones said.
The company’s main partners include Rillet and Campfire. Many clients also use Doss in conjuction with Intuit’s QuickBooks.
“The reason that they work with us is that [physical goods management] is not something that they’re likely going to build as a core competency without putting in a lot of energy and effort,” Jones said.
Doss’ core customer base consists of mid-market consumer brands, typically generating between $20 million and $250 million in top-line revenue. One such customer is Verve Coffee Roasters, a high-end specialty coffee brand.
The startup sees itself as competing with traditional ERPs. But these players are not sitting ideal in the age of AI, either. NetSuite, for instance, has recently introduced its updated AI ERP. It also competes with other agentic procurement startups such as Didero.
While Jones admits that selling two ERP systems, one for accounting and another for inventory management like Doss, “is a hard sell,” he says that legacy ERPs are so hard to implement that many customers are choosing to have two newer, AI-powered systems.
“I think it’s going to be a very intense fight inside of mid-market that ultimately will be determined by whoever rebuilds their architecture to be most legible and usable for agents,” Jones said.
Editor’s Note: The story corrected the list of Doss’ partners.
Tech
Crunchyroll confirms data breach after hacker claims unauthorized access
Anime streaming service Crunchyroll has confirmed a data breach involving customer service ticket information following an incident with a third-party vendor, after a hacker claimed to have accessed user data and internal systems.
The streaming site, which Sony acquired from AT&T in 2020 for $1.18 billion, operates as a joint venture between U.S.-based Sony Pictures Entertainment and Japan-based Aniplex. Crunchyroll has more than 2,000 titles in over 12 languages and serves 15 million subscribers worldwide, per its website.
Reports of a threat actor claiming access to Crunchyroll user data surfaced online this week, with a hacker alleging that they obtained data about millions of users.
Crunchyroll said it is investigating the claims.
“Our investigation is ongoing, and we continue to work with leading cybersecurity experts,” the company said in a statement to TechCrunch, adding that it has not identified evidence of ongoing unauthorized access.
Separately, materials shared with TechCrunch by a cybersecurity-focused account, International Cyber Digest, indicate the attacker may have gained access to Crunchyroll’s Zendesk support system. Screenshots we have seen appear to show the company’s internal Slack messages and stolen support data, apparently stolen by hacking an employee at Telus Digital, an outsourcing giant that handles customer support for Crunchyroll. The hacker allegedly stole customer support ticket data until early 2025, at which point their access was revoked.
The cybersecurity account said the hack was separate from a recent breach affecting Telus Digital, which the company confirmed last week.
Crunchyroll did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the third-party vendor relates to its support partner, Telus Digital.
Telus Digital did not respond to requests for comments.
The hacker told BleepingComputer they had downloaded about eight million support ticket records from Crunchyroll’s systems, including roughly 6.8 million unique email addresses, though the claims have not been independently verified. The hacker also told the publication they gained access on March 12 after compromising an Okta single sign-on account belonging to a Crunchyroll support agent.
Tech
BKR Capital raises $14.5M (so far) to invest in Black founders
Canada’s BKR Capital announced Monday that its Fund II has closed CA$20 million (around $14.5 million), bringing it closer to its CA$50 million target.
This fund is looking to back “high-growth technology companies led by founders from the Black community, building solutions for the future of work, living, and global connectivity,” managing partner Lise Birikundavyi told TechCrunch. The firm is mainly looking at Canada but is open to backing select companies globally. The average check size will be between $250,000 and $1.5 million, she said.
Birikundavyi said that almost 70% of the Black population in Canada is first- or second-generation immigrants, “resulting in founders who build globally from day one, unlocking early access to international markets and creating a structural advantage in scaling.”
Though many U.S. firms have shied away from openly advertising a mission that could be perceived as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Birikundavyi said her Toronto-based fund doesn’t share those exact fears. What’s happening in Canada is less of a DEI rollback and more of a reframing, she said, where investors are “prioritizing discussion on performance,” even though “the underlying opportunity remains unchanged.”
She added, “Expanding access to overlooked founders continues to surface high-quality deals, making this less about DEI and more about arbitrage investing.” She believes investors in Canada still see “inclusive investment” as good for the ecosystem and full of potentially lucrative business opportunities.
The firm’s thesis is rooted in the belief that “overlooked markets and diverse lived experiences can unlock outsized venture opportunities,” Birikundavyi said. The firm launched in 2021 and raised $22 million for its Fund I (which Birikundavyi said is performing better than at least 75% of the other funds launched around the same time). She said BKR Capital hopes to make its final close for Fund II in December and invest in 25 companies.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
Hurdle hints and answers for March 25, 2026
Bucks waive Cam Thomas to convert Pete Nance's contract
