TechCrunch Top 3

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🧠 OpenAI o3: It's the final day of OpenAI's 12-day "shipmas" event, which the company ended with a bang. OpenAI announced its o3 family of models, which are successors to its o1 "reasoning" models. The company claims the new models approach artificial general intelligence — but with caveats. Read more

⛔️ Hit the brakes: Electric vehicle company Rivian was hit with multiple unreported harassment lawsuits this year. Multiple suits were brought against the company's chief designer, Jeff Hammoud; one suit was against the company's COO, Frank Klein; and one was against a fellow colleague. Read more

😞 A hack! Ascension, a U.S. healthcare company with 140 hospitals and dozens of senior care facilities, was hit with a ransomware attack in May. Now we know that this breach allowed the Black Basta group to steal information on 5.6 million patients. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

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🎙️ When did AI mean defense? This week on Equity, the gang talks about a trend they've been noticing: AI companies being described as defense tech. They also talk about a new VC fund, how Cohere isn't like its AI peers, and more. Listen here

💰 Fresh funds: Swizzle Ventures is a VC firm founded by Jessica Kamada that's focused on early-stage investments into areas that concern women, including caretaking, health and wellness, and finances. The fund has raised $5 million. Read more

🌎 Gemini goes global: Google is expanding its Gemini in-depth research mode to 40 more languages. The new languages include Arabic, Italian, and Danish. Read more

🤝 One down, one to go: Nvidia announced its intent to acquire Run:ai in April. Today, the European Union cleared the transaction, but the deal isn't out of the woods yet. The U.S. Department of Justice's probe into the deal is ongoing. Read more

👋 Hello again, Lerer Hippeau: Lerer Hippeau, known for backing consumer companies, including Allbirds, BarkBox, and Casper, is back to raise its ninth fund. The target hasn't been disclosed. Read more

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Around the web

🧍Second Life forever: I'm infinitely interested in Second Life as someone who has always been a little too into The Sims. VentureBeat caught up with the virtual world's founder and discovered the company has paid out more than $1.1 billion to its creators and still has 600,000 players. Read more

🚪Who is at the door? The Verge makes the argument that 2025 will be the year of front door hardware after a lot of technical advances in 2024 with more expected next year. I'd never put a surveillance device on my door, so I'll just have to take their word for it. Read more

Before you go

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📚 Is this hell? Another day, another reason to ask myself, "Has AI gone too far?" Today's moment of panic is brought by the news that there will be an online charter school opening in Arizona where everything will be taught by AI. What are we doing here? Read more