TechCrunch Top 3

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👓 Anduril to the battlefield: Defense tech startup Anduril is taking over Microsoft's $22 billion VR military headset program. While this government contract is a high-profile get for Anduril, the Integrated Visual Augmentation System program has had multiple past issues. Read more

👀 A different tone: At the AI Action Summit in Paris, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged regulators to quickly figure out how to regulate AI, as it could be disastrous if they don't. This comes after U.S. vice president JD Vance essentially said the opposite. Read more

🤖 Digital workforce: HR giant Workday released a new platform today designed to help companies manage their AI agents like they would manage their regular employees. The company also released more AI agents as part of this announcement. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: ALI KHALIGH/Middle East Images/AFP / Getty Images

🤨 This isn't good: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) placed 17 of its employees on administrative leave. These workers focus on foreign influence operations and disinformation. Read more

🐠 A fish outta stealth: Pinkfish, a startup that helps enterprises build deterministic AI agents through natural language prompts, has emerged from stealth today with $7.6 million in pre-seed funding and more than 100 users. Read more

🤝 Apple and Alibaba: Apple has reportedly chosen Alibaba as its partner to help it bring its Apple Intelligence platform to China. Apple allegedly rejected proposals from DeepSeek and ByteDance in the process. Read more

🎧 Speaking of Apple: Apple announced the debut of Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds, its AirPod alternative that is designed to wear during a workout and is made in partnership with Beats. This upgrade comes nearly six years after the original Powerbeats earbuds were released. Read more

🥊 OpenAI fight club: The battle between OpenAI and Elon Musk continues. After Musk announced an unsolicited bid to buy OpenAI, Sam Altman dismissed it and added that Musk is just trying to slow OpenAI down. Read more

🤔 Speaking of OpenAI: When Sam Altman said Elon Musk's bid for OpenAI was meant to slow OpenAI down, it seems that may be true. This unsolicited bid may stall OpenAI's transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity. Read more

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Around the web

🎸 Battle of the biotech bands: This year, Boston's battle of the bio/tech bands charity event series, which features musical members of Boston's life sciences industry, will host its 10th event. Some of this year's band names include Almost the Cure, The Impurities, and Supernova. Fun! Read more

🛍️ A Temu trick: If you've ever wondered how Temu is able to keep its prices so low — other than because of the dismal quality of the products, of course — it may also be because many Temu merchants use counterfeit USPS labels to avoid extra shipping charges. Read more

Before you go

Image Credits: BuzzFeed

🤳 Do we need this: The folks over at BuzzFeed understandably think the internet is too negative. In response, they are launching a social media site that will focus on interactive storytelling and new content formats. Interesting! Read more