# AI Infrastructure, Strategic Pivots, and Semiconductor Valuations

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-05-07

## Transcript

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The AI boom pushes Samsung to $1 trillion.
I'm Imran Shaikh, and your Thursday Daily Crunch, featuring three big tech headlines, starts right now.
Mark Lorre, the veteran e-commerce entrepreneur who sold his previous startups to Amazon and Walmart, has big plans to infuse AI into his current venture, Wonder.
The centerpiece of those plans is Wonder Create, an initiative that would let anyone, from food entrepreneurs to social media influencers, use AI to design and launch their own restaurant brand in under a minute.
The virtual restaurant would then go live across Wunder's growing network of tech-enabled kitchen locations, currently numbering 120 and expected to reach 400 next year.
Lori's startup, a vertically integrated dining and delivery platform, has evolved from food trucks to fast casual restaurants with 10 to 20 seats.
These are not normal restaurants, though.
They're programmable cooking platforms capable of operating as 25 different types of restaurants based on cuisine within their all-electric kitchens that are increasingly becoming robotic.
Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference this week, Lori said these kitchens have a 700-ingredient library.
The restaurants they house actually consist of many different brands that operate from within these locations.
In addition to a staff of up to 12 people in these kitchens, cooking tech like conveyors and robotic arms are involved in the cooking process.
The company also just bought Spice Robotics, a maker of an automatic bowl-making machine previously used by Sweetgreen.
Next year, it plans to offer an infinite sauce machine that can make about 80% of all the sauces found in recipes on the internet today.
WonderCreate was announced earlier this year as a way for anyone to use Wonder Software to launch their own restaurant brand and recipes.
Check out the rest of this story from Sarah Perez right now at TechCrunch.com.
As Bumble gets ready for a big overhaul meant to win back Gen Z users who are pretty much over dating apps at this point, its latest earnings still report that paying users are declining.
In the first quarter of 2026, total paying users fell 21.1% to 3.2 million, down from 4 million a year ago.
This has been the story for a few quarters now.
However, during the call to investors this afternoon, Bumbles framed this as a deliberate shift toward higher quality, more intentional users.
On the company's investor call, founder and CEO Whitney Wolfherd described the paid user decline as part of an intentional reset.
And not just a big ol' swipe to the left.
Bumble's asking investors to look ahead to its massive overhaul, which it hopes will eventually reverse the trend.
Bumble claims more noticeable changes are coming later, saying on Tuesday that its full reimagined experience for members is now expected to launch in Q4.
The company's making a big bet that the swiping model is outdated, and most matches never turn into actual dates.
The company wants to fix that by redesigning profiles.
changing how people interact, and focusing a lot more on getting users to meet in real life.
AI is a huge part of that plan, of course.
Earlier this year, Bumble introduced something called Bee, a built-in matchmaker that learns daters' preferences, relationship goals, and communication style, then suggests matches based on those factors.
In a feature called Date, Bee may even explain why two people are a good fit before they connect.
Profiles are changing, too.
Bumble has been experimenting with more detailed chapter-style profiles that go beyond just photos and a short bio.
Samsung reached a $1 trillion valuation on Wednesday as shares of the South Korean tech giant surged more than 10%, driven by the ongoing artificial intelligence frenzy fueling demand for chips.
The milestone makes Samsung only the second Asian company to cross the trillion-dollar threshold after TSMC.
The news comes on the heels of a blockbuster earnings report last week in which Samsung posted profits eight times higher than the same period a year ago.
Every company building AI right now needs chips, and Samsung makes the memory chips that power those AI systems.
Demand is surging while supply struggles to keep up, pushing prices higher and boosting Samsung's profits.
There is another reason, though, shares surged on Wednesday.
You see, reports came out yesterday that Apple has been in talks with both Samsung and Intel to manufacture chips for Apple devices on U.S.
soil.
Apple has long relied almost exclusively on TSMC in Taiwan for its chip production.
If Samsung lands the deal, it would mark a significant shift in the global semiconductor supply chain.
At the heart of Samsung's profit boom is high-bandwidth memory, HBM, a type of chip critical to running AI systems, which has dramatically improved the company's margins.
But the competition is intense.
Rival SK Hynix, a South Korean semiconductor giant, is aggressively vying for the same market, keeping the pressure on Samsung to maintain its edge.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Kate Park, Lauren Forstall, Sarah Perez, 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.
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