TechCrunch Top 3

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1. Defense tech gets a $1.5B boost: Anduril is here to disrupt the American defense contracting industry. The defense tech startup just closed a $1.5 billion deal that values it at $14 billion to "hyper-scale" defense production. The round is a massive step up from Anduril's prior $8.5 billion valuation set in December 2022. Read More

2. U.K. investigates Amazon's Anthropic deal: The Brits have launched a formal investigation of Amazon's ties with Anthropic after the e-commerce giant completed a $4 billion investment into the AI startup. The U.K.'s competition and antitrust regulator last week also launched a probe of Google's ties with Anthropic. Read More

3. Techstars takes a step back: Techstars is letting go 17% of its workforce, and plans to shutter its $80 million, JP Morgan-backed AdvancingCities program at the end of the year. The program launched in 2022 across cities like Oakland, New York, Miami and Washington D.C. with the goal of backing more diverse founders. Read More

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Morning must-reads

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💰 SoundHound doubles down on AI: The voice recognition tech maker has acquired Amelia AI for $80 million. Amelia has an AI agent that businesses can customize for internal or customer use, and this deal gives SoundHound access to verticals where it doesn't have much presence in: financial services, insurance, healthcare, retail and hospitality. Read More

🐲 TikTok wants to also be a discovery engine: TikTok and Warner Bros are partnering to let users discover movies and TV shows. The kids are already using TikTok to share short clips of movies and TV, but this tie-up makes it more official. Read More

🌮 Hasta la vista, baby: Silvia is a bilingual dictation assistant that understands 'Spanglish' and other language mixtures. The app will be available to download for iOS devices at the end of August, and it'll present in your phone as a pop-up on the left side of your keyboard. We love it, because this is a multilingual world, and AI had better keep up. Read More

📈 To IPO or not to IPO: The strong 2024 IPO pipeline investors had hoped for doesn't appear to be materializing. Experts told TC they don't expect it to, especially with the upcoming presidential election and high interest rates. We thought it might actually be easier to list which companies aren't going public, so we did just that! Read More

🌌 Astronomy-as-a-Service: London-based Blue Skies Space wants to bring in a "new era of space research" where astronomy data is collected, packaged and sold "as a service." The startup plans to launch its first satellite soon as part of SpaceX's rideshare program. Read More

🧑‍⚕️ Feeling Great with AI: A psychiatrist with 40 years of experience has leveraged his expertise to build an app, Feeling Great, that offers interactive courses on mental health and managing emotions, as well as stories and a chatbot that you can talk to about your issues. The startup has raised $8 million in seed funding. Read More

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Around the Web

🐦 Elon Musk continues spreading misinformation: For a guy who accuses journalists of spreading fake news, Musk is becoming the pot calling the kettle black. Musk quote-tweeted a fake article mimicking The Daily Telegraph that said the U.K. was setting up detainment camps for rioters in the Falkland Islands, BBC reported. Musk deleted the post within 35 minutes, but not before it had accumulated over 1.8 million views. Read More

🤫 Google and Meta had secret ad deals to target teens: The two tech giants struck a deal to target teens for ads promoting Instagram, violating Google's own rules for how minors are advertised to, according to The Financial Times. It's really not a good look for either company. Read More

📢 Adtech funding is ebbing: U.S. advertising-focused startups have raised only $350 million this year, Crunchbase reports, putting the industry on track for the slowest year in over a decade when it comes to venture dollars raised. Experts attribute the lack of funding to market saturation, greater regulatory pressures, and economic uncertainties. That said, mature adtech companies appear to be doing just fine. Read More

Before you go

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🧠 Brainstorm with Gemini: Google doesn't want its creators opening up ChatGPT to get help with ideation, so it's testing a YouTube integration with Gemini that creators can use to generate video ideas, titles and thumbnails. We're betting this will likely result in even more unhinged titles. Read More