The Daily Crunch – Spoken Edition

Agile Robots will incorporate Google DeepMind's robotics foundation models into its bots while collecting data for the AI research lab. Also, Ultrahuman pushes back into the U.S. with Ring Pro, as Oura strengthens its lead in a market driving 60% of global demand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hackers working for Iran's government are using Telegram in hacking operations that use malware to target dissidents, opposition groups, and journalists who oppose its regime, according to the FBI. Also, in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) equated the DoD's decision to label Anthropic a "supply chain risk" as retaliation, arguing that the Pentagon could simply have terminated its contract with the AI lab. Plus, Hachette Book Group said it will not be publishing “Shy Girl” over concerns that artificial intelligence was used to generate the text. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maybe tokens really will become the fourth pillar of engineering compensation. But engineers might want to hold the line before embracing this as a straightforward win. On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey posted a simple message: “just setting up my twittr”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Horizon Worlds was once a cornerstone of Meta's plans to build a social metaverse -- four years later, the company almost shut it down. Also, the U.S. cybersecurity agency urged companies to prevent access to systems used for remotely managing their fleets of employee devices after hackers broke into a major U.S. medical tech giant and remotely wiped thousands of phones and computers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Patreon CEO Jack Conte says AI companies should pay creators for training data, arguing their fair use defense falls apart when they license content from major publishers. Also, Nvidia's networking business raked in $11 billion last quarter despite getting significantly less fanfare than chips and gaming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Arizona's lawsuit is the latest salvo in an escalating battle between state regulators and an industry that claims it's not beholden to them. Also, Mistral Forge lets enterprises train custom AI models from scratch on their own data, challenging rivals that rely on fine-tuning and retrieval-based approaches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Memories.ai is building a large visual memory model that can index and retrieve video-recorded memories for physical AI. Nvidia announced an open enterprise AI agent platform, called NemoClaw, that is built off of viral OpenClaw. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Written by Connie Loizos for TechCrunch. In 2010, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates launched a disarmingly simple campaign to get the richest people on earth to promise, publicly, to give most of their money away. The moment seemed to call for it. Tech was minting billionaires faster than any industry in history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bumble's new AI assistant Bee will move the dating app beyond the swipe by matching people based on compatibility and goals. Also, founded in 2024, Vidoso uses large language models to help organizations generate marketing collateral like images, presentations, video clips, blog posts, and social media content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The National Transportation Safety Board released documents ahead of a March 31 hearing that help show how and why two drivers crashed into stationary vehicles in 2024, leading to three deaths. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google has officially acquired Israeli cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion in all-cash, a full year after the companies announced the deal. This marks Google's biggest acquisition in its history. Also, Amazon's changes allow more merchants to participate in Amazon's Shop Direct program, which sends Amazon customers to other retailers' websites. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Startup Hyperscale Power is developing technology that promises to shrink power transformers, freeing up precious space within data centers. Also, YouTube's AI deepfake detection tool is becoming available to politicians, journalists, and officials, letting them flag unauthorized likenesses for removal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that his company's investments in OpenAI and Anthropic will likely be its last — but his explanation may not tell the whole story. Also, if Rivian reaches its R2 sales target in 2026, it will be one of the fastest ramp-ups ever of a new EV in the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Luma introduced Luma Agents, powered by its new “Unified Intelligence” models, designed to coordinate multiple AI systems and generate end-to-end creative work across text, images, video and audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A father is suing Google and Alphabet, alleging its Gemini chatbot reinforced his son's delusional belief it was his AI wife and coached him toward suicide and a planned airport attack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The social media giant says that end-to-end encryption would make users less safe. Plus, TikTok says that end-to-end encryption would make users less safe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The new Audible Standard plan is $6 cheaper than the platform's existing "Premium" plan, which costs $14.95 per month. The new X chat app promises a way to send and receive messages without being distracted by your timeline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Many consumers ditched ChatGPT's app after news of its DoD deal went live, while Claude's downloads grew. Also, Stripe released a preview intended to allow AI companies to easily track, pass through, and make a profit on underlying AI model fees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tech workers have signed an open letter urging the Department of War to withdraw its designation of Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" and instead to settle the matter quietly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As TechCrunch's Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai writes, a hacking group called Department of Peace said they hacked a specific office within Homeland Security to protest ICE's mass deportation campaign, and the companies aiding it. Also, the new labels comply with regulations and allow creators to be more transparent with their followers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Six newly-created accounts made a profit of $1 million by correctly betting that the U.S. would strike Iran by February 28. TechCrunch spoke with VCs to learn what investors aren't looking for in AI SaaS startups anymore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a one-two punch of centibillion-dollar offers, the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery is over. David Ellison-owned Paramount will acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Netflix has lost. Plus, Plaid valued at $8B in employee share sale. The new valuation is a 31% increase from $6.1 billion Plaid reached in April. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The suit said Walmart mislead drivers about their possible tips and would reduce their base pay, among other things. Also, Read AI is launching Ada, which can reply with your availability and extract answers from the company knowledge base and the web. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

IDC says phone makers will ship only 1.12 billion smartphones as compared to 1.26 billion last year Also, Mistral AI lands a partnership with Accenture, the consultant that has also recently announced partnerships with rivals OpenAI and Anthropic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Recent findings also show that video podcasting -- while popular -- is not necessarily replacing audio shows. Also, general purpose tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok are not designed for this use, making mental health professionals wary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI introduced ads to ChatGPT earlier this month Also, Peter Steinberger talks about the creation of his viral AI agent OpenClaw and how being more "playful" makes for a better way to learn AI coding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotify and Liquid Death launched what might be the wildest product of the year: a speaker shaped like a urn. Also, earlier this month, OpenAI launched a new platform called OpenAI Frontier for enterprises to build and manage agents, but OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said that businesses haven't yet seen AI adoption at scale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meta is buying billions of dollars in AMD AI chips in a multiyear deal tied to a 160 million-share warrant, deepening its push to diversify beyond Nvidia and expand data center capacity. Also, Mogul, which helps artists track royalties and value their catalogs, raised $5 million in a round led by the Yamaha Music Innovations Fund. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic accuses DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax of using 24,000 fake accounts to distill Claude's AI capabilities, as U.S. officials debate export controls aimed at slowing China's AI progress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While some cities are moving to end their contracts with Flock over its links to ICE, others are taking matters into their own hands. Also, OpenAI is partnering with four consulting giants in an effort to see more adoption of its OpenAI Frontier AI agent platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

China's brain-computer interface industry is rapidly scaling from research to commercialization, driven by strong policy support, expanding clinical trials, and growing investor interest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The technology promises to replace several parts of the grid with one device that's both controllable and updatable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Redwood Materials says its new energy storage business is the fastest growing unit within the company. Plus, Toyota's robots will be unloading totes full of auto parts from an automated warehouse tugger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI is reportedly getting close to closing a $100 billion deal, with backers including Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank, and Microsoft. The deal would value the ChatGPT-maker at $850 billion. SoftBank's project would be among the largest and most expensive natural gas power plants. And, New York pulled a robotaxi expansion proposal that was viewed as a win for Waymo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon said Blue Jay's core tech will be used for other robotics projects and the employees who worked on it were moved to other projects. Also, Mastodon is looking to grow its open source, decentralized social network with new features aimed at creators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Audible's feature will require customers to buy discounted versions of both versions of the title. Also, X's new immersive video player is designed to offer a more mobile-friendly experience, optimized especially for portrait-oriented videos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An internal research study at Meta found that parental supervision may not help teens regulate their social media, and teens with trauma are more inclined to overuse social media. Also, as the AI hardware space heats up, the iPhone maker has multiple smart products in development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When we talk about the cost of AI infrastructure, the focus is usually on Nvidia and GPUs -- but memory is an increasingly important part of the picture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

According to a16z, it has eyes around the world in order to spot companies as early as local funds might. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"From an AI research perspective, this is nothing novel," one expert told TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Pentagon is pushing AI companies to allow the U.S. military to use their technology for “all lawful purposes,” but Anthropic is pushing back, according to a new report in Axios. The government is reportedly making the same demand to OpenAI, Google, and xAI. Also, college students are losing some interest in computer science broadly but gaining interest in AI-specific majors and courses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For $1 million, you can pay Bryan Johnson (or BryanAI?) to teach you how to live longer Also, Ring's Super Bowl commercial stoked controversy over the company's capacity for mass surveillance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices