TechCrunch

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned the U.S. government could sanction Chinese AI companies after White House officials accused Moonshot of distilling Anthropic's Fable model to develop Kimi K3.

A closely watched social media addiction lawsuit that had been set to go to trial next week has been dropped after the plaintiff voluntarily dismissed his claims against Meta, leaving none of the major tech companies facing trial in the case.

SoundCloud has acquired decentralized music platform Nina Protocol, months after the startup announced it would shut down. The deal brings Nina’s artists, editorial archive, and music discovery tools to SoundCloud as the company continues expanding its platform for independent musicians.

OpenAI made a mistake setting up what it called a “highly isolated” testing environment and sandbox. According to cybersecurity experts, that human mistake is what made the AI-powered attack on Hugging Face possible.

Uber is also investing in Travis Kalanick's company Atoms, which has made gauzy claims about using industrial AI to modernize the world.

Yope, a fast-growing social app focused on private groups of friends and family, has raised $12.3 million in seed funding. Instead of chasing creators and algorithmic feeds, the startup is betting that the future of social networking lies in small, private communities powered by messaging, photo sharing, and AI features designed to strengthen real-world relationships.

"The thing that the space needs is a company making $100 million a year of revenue," Science Corp. CEO Max Hodak said.

Watch as Menlo's Matt Murphy joins Equity to discuss backing Anthropic early, AI startup growth, and more.

The company said it is reducing its headcount by 20%, or about 630 staff, to "support a leaner, more focused operating model" as it focuses on its AI Work Platform.