TechCrunch Top 3

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🚨 More meddling: The U.S. on Monday formally accused Iran of being behind the hack of Donald Trump's campaign earlier this month. The statement also said that Iran has tried to access both parties' campaigns. Iran denies the allegations. Read more

📖 AI is en Vogue: Condé Nast is the latest publisher to ink a deal with OpenAI. This deal gives OpenAI the right to surface stories from Condé Nast's publications in its ChatGPT and SearchGPT tools. The New Yorker publisher joins a long list of media companies cozying up with AI startups. Read more

🛍️ Shopping spree: YouTube is expanding its partnership with Shopify to allow more brands to take part in its YouTube Shopping affiliate program. Creators will now have thousands of new brands to feature in their videos. Sound familiar? It might be a ploy to take on the growing popularity of TikTok Shop. Read more

A Message from The Aerospace Corporation

Pitch your startup directly onstage at TC Disrupt 2024!

Who will be the next startup to revolutionize the space industry? The Aerospace Corporation invites you to apply your startup to the space pitch-off competition! The top companies will have an opportunity to present their startup directly on the Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Apply by August 30.

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Afternoon must-reads

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👛 Wallet wars: On the heels of the news that Apple would allow third-party developers to access its near-field-communication technology, the backbone of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, PayPal looks poised to take advantage. Read more

🤐 Silence is scary: Tech giant Cisco confirmed in an SEC filing this week that it will cut another 7% of its workforce in September. Which employees will be affected by this upcoming cut? We don't know and neither do the Cisco employees who have to wait a month to see if they still have their job. Read more

🧑‍⚖️ Ticketmaster troubles: The United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster back in May that accused the ticket conglomerate of being a monopoly. This week, 10 more state attorneys general joined the suit. Read more

🚘 Whoa, Waymo: Robotaxi company Waymo announced today that it's giving more than 100,000 rides a week in its self-driving taxis. That is a big jump from the 50,000 figures reported earlier this summer by both Google and Waymo. Read more

⚙️Taking on Nvidia and betting on transformers with Gavin Uberti from Etched: In this week's episode of Found, Becca and Dom sit down with Gavin Uberti, co-founder and CEO of Etched, an AI chip startup focusing on developing specialized chips. Gavin shares the bold bet his startup is making on transformer models for AI chips, aiming to take on industry giant Nvidia. Listen here

A Message from Lumin

Lumin CEO announces DocuSign competitor

Founder and CEO of PDF multi-tool Lumin, Max Ferguson, has announced a competitive new product. Lumin Sign is an eSignature workflow tool that provides enterprise-level care to the small and medium-sized businesses left behind by eSignature giants like DocuSign. Try before you buy and compare for yourself — no strings attached.

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Money, money, money

Image Credits: Aleksandar Georgiev / Getty Images

🪙 Climate coins: New kid on the climate investor block BEVC is raising $25 million for its first formal fund. The Berkeley-based VC backs life science companies as well and has invested in Radar Therapeutics and Insamo since its founding last year. Read more

🚧 Trunk Tools: Construction startup Trunk Tools raised $20 million in Series A funding to help construction companies use AI to search their documents for specific information. Read more

💻 Chips for cryptography: Fabric Cryptography is developing a new kind of chip for cryptography, writing or solving code, that offers more security and privacy than its predecessors. The startup just raised $33 million. Read more

Around the web

💸 Sad trombone: Today The Wall Street Journal reported that the $13 billion that banks loaned to Elon Musk for his takeover of Twitter may be the worst merger-financing given by a bank since the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Oops! Read more

👖 Oligarch oversight: One of my favorite former colleagues, David Jeans, published a piece in Forbes that looks at Joe Lonsdale's venture fund 8VC and its potential ties to sanctioned Russian oligarchs. 8VC has backed multiple defense startups, including Palantir and Anduril. Read more