TechCrunch Top 3

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1. Avis suffered a data breach in August, resulting in thousands of the car rental giant's customers getting their personal data stolen, including names, mailing addresses, dates of birth, and license numbers. It's not yet clear why Avis stored such sensitive information in a way that could be compromised. More than 300k people have been affected. Read More

2. India is having an e-scooter moment: Ather Energy, an electric scooter manufacturer, plans to raise $370 million in its IPO, and it's aiming for a valuation of about $1.5B billion to $2 billion. The company's public debut comes at a hot moment for electric vehicles in India — rival Ola Electric recently went public as well. Read More

3. Will Apple take it slow? Apple's much-hyped iPhone 16 reveal is scheduled for today, and while we'll have all the details on that, we're also going to be watching for any delays to the launch of Apple Intelligence. A slow rollout could dampen Apple's "supercycle" potential, but it might be the better long-term strategy. Read More

Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Mangomint

📧 When cold emails work: Daniel Lang, one of the founders of salon and spa operations software startup, Mangomint, connected with Altos Ventures after writing a "really, really good" cold email. Today, Altos is leading the company's $35 million Series B. Read More

🥄 Layoffs hit WeTransfer hard: After buying Dutch company WeTransfer in July, Bending Spoons is now laying off 75% of the acquired company's staff. WeTransfer reportedly has about 350 employees. Read More

💰 Even accounting startups need quirky names: A bookkeeping and accounting startup called finally (yes, we know…) has raised $200 million in a Series B. It offers AI-powered bookkeeping, as well as accounting and financial services to SMB owners who "don't have time to learn 20 different apps for their bookkeeping and finance functions." Read More

💶 European venture capital is back in action: Atomico has raised $1.24 billion across two funds to back early and growth-stage startups in Europe. The focus on later stages is notable and points to risk-averse LPs being more likely to back tried and tested businesses. Read More

🤖 Elon denies Tesla-xAI ties: Musk is pooh-poohing a report from The Wall Street Journal that detailed a revenue-share agreement between Tesla and xAI. The report said Tesla would use xAI models in its FSD software to develop a voice assistant and in its humanoid robot, Optimus. Read More

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Around the Web

🧑‍⚖️ Google's adtech antitrust trial begins: The search giant and its army of lawyers will make their opening arguments defending it in the U.S. Department of Justice's latest case, which alleges Google has illegally dominated the online advertising market, NYT reports. Read More

✍️ Confessions of a chatbot helper: What is it like to be employed by a tech company worth billions that is training large language models? In a story for The Guardian, a journalist shares what he's learned in his time writing "pretend responses for hypothetical chatbot questions." Read More

🤑 Best paid CEOs = worst paid employees: Science fiction author, journalist and activist Cory Doctorow has some thoughts about an "Executive Excess" report that tracks the gap between corporate executives' compensation and the salaries of workers who generate the profits. This year's buzzwords? Stock buybacks. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

🪂 Bluesky sees more traction: The social media platform's user base just keeps growing: As of Friday morning, the company counted 9 million users. That's up 50% in the week since a Brazilian court banned X. Read More