TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

⭐️ Gold star startups: Each year, TechCrunch covers a lot of startups, like a lot of startups. This means we've got our finger on the pulse of the founders and tech worth paying attention to. So we compiled a list of the 51 most disruptive startups we talked to this year. Read more

☁️ Bluesky's growing pains: Decentralized social media startup Bluesky is facing arguably its biggest moderation crisis yet. Many users of the platform want it to ban user Jesse Singal for his anti-trans views and are posting that Bluesky needs to make a call on what kind of platform it wants to be. Read more

💰 More money for Trump: Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos become the latest Big Tech figures to donate money to Donald Trump's inaugural fund, which is used for an incoming president's inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg's Meta also donated. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: JHVE Photo / Getty Images

👎 Oops! A security researcher found that Healthcare company Optum had an internal AI chatbot meant for employees that could be accessed by anyone through a web browser. The company has since restricted access to it. Read more

🎙️ Lumen Orbit is cruising: The Equity gang covers GM's decision to shut down robotaxi company Cruise. They also talked about Lumen Orbit's $11 million round, Freysa.Ai's drama, and more. Listen here

📔 NotebookLM expands to enterprise: Google's note-taking and research app NotebookLM now has a version aimed at enterprises. It delivers the same experience as the consumer product but will include enhanced security and privacy features. Read more

🚗 Covering up crashes: The Trump transition team wants to ax a federal rule that requires automakers to report crashes when autonomous technology is engaged. If successful, federal safety agencies would lose the ability to investigate crashes. Let's not do this. Read more

🥊 For-profit fight club: The drama between OpenAI and Elon Musk got a lot juicier today. OpenAI released a series of texts and emails that show Musk saw both a nonprofit and for-profit future for OpenAI — which goes against his own lawsuit. Read more

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Around the web

🧑‍💻 Maybe AI is taking jobs: BNPL Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg that the company stopped hiring over a year ago and has used AI to fill in the gaps. Because roles aren't being replaced, the company's headcount has gone down 22%. Read more

🤺 Being the biggest isn't everything: While OpenAI dominates the lion's share of headlines and conversations around AI, a lot of Silicon Valley's tech insiders actually strongly prefer Anthropic's Claude models. Let the battle begin. Read more