TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Getty Images

1. Please, not again: Fidelity has confirmed that more than 77,000 customers had their personal information stolen during a data breach in August. The asset manager didn't say how just two compromised customer accounts could have led to such a large breach. Read More

2. Tackling AI adoption barriers: With the growth of AI comes concerns about data security as regulations ratch up and clients' concerns mount. Relyance AI is here to help by ensuring companies' data usage complies with governance rules. Read More

3. AI's carbon footprint: Brian O'Kelley started out Scope3 to track the economic and environmental waste of digital advertising. He then decided to pivot, and is now doing the same thing, but for AI. The startup has raised $25 million to do it. Read More

Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Diagram

🌱 Going vert: Montreal-based venture studio Diagram has raised around $58 million to launch climate tech startups in-house. Diagram's unique model involves diving deep into an industry to identify pain points and customers solutions before hand-picking a founding team. Read More

🚨 Internet Archive DDoS'd: "Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!" reads a pop-up on the web archival project's site. Read More

👀 Sorry not sorry: Rapper Tyler, the Creator once included a shoutout to Elon Musk in his hit 2017 song "911." But during a performance last weekend, he changed the lyric to: "man, f**k Elon." Tyler seems unimpressed with Musk transforming into a conservative culture warrior. Read More

🧑‍⚕️ Less is more: Health insurtech startup Qantev thinks LLMs can't be plugged into all workflows. Sometimes, it makes sense to use smaller, highly specialized AI models to handle specific tasks. The startup has raised €30 million on the back of that thesis. Read More

🧬 No-code biology: MiLabratories has developed a no-code platform to help biologists analyze genomic data using data visualizations and generative AI. It's also a marketplace with tools to help support genomic research and drug development. Read More

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Around the Web

🔮 Is crypto cursed? The New York Times has a fascinating deep dive about Ryan Salame, an FTX executive, and Michelle Bond, a crypto policy advocate. They were once a crypto power couple, donating tens of millions to conservative politicians. Now they're both facing jail time. Read More

🧑‍⚖️ Google's plan to deflect regulators: The U.S. Justice Department is proposing to break Google up, alongside other remedies, after the tech giant was found to have a monopoly in search and adtech. But Google has no intention of, as Dumbledore once said, "com[ing] quietly." The Financial Times has a good read about it. Read More

🚫 Protecting Wikipedia from AI slop: A group of saintly Wikipedia editors are collaborating to combat the "increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia," reports 404 Media. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits:Torrey Leonard on LinkedIn

⛓️ The real ball and chain: A photo of Thoughtly's founder working on his laptop at his own wedding has gone viral, sparking equal amounts of awe and outrage. But was he really working at his own wedding? TC's Amanda Silberling found out. Read More