TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

1. Spies in chat: TC got the scoop that Italian company SIO, which is known to sell products to government customers, is behind an Android spyware campaign called Spyrtacus. The campaign masqueraded a series of malicious Android apps as WhatsApp and other popular apps to steal private data from targets' devices. Read More

2. My way or the highway: Elon Musk says he'll withdraw his $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI if the ChatGPT maker's board "preserve the charity's mission" and stop it from becoming a for-profit company. OpenAI's lawyers call Musk's move "an improper bid to undermine a competitor." Read More

3. VC in the White House: The venture community appears to be stoked by Trump's pick to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – Brian Quintenz, policy lead at a16z's crypto team. Read More

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Morning must-reads

Image Credits: Apple

🤔 Playing favorites: Apple is banned from preferring its own products on iOS and the App Store, per German rules. But it looks like the company is not playing by the rules when it comes to app tracking privacy mechanisms. Germany's antitrust watchdog is taking a closer look. Read More

🧂 Sanctions shmanctions: Chinese government-linked hacking group Salt Typhoon is still compromising telecommunications providers, despite sanctions imposed by the U.S. government. Read More

🤖 Apptronik was making humanoid robots before they were cool. And now the startup has raised a $350 million Series A to reach commercialization and scale in 2026. Read More

🔋 A little goes a long way: The growth of AI has led to more than a little hand-wringing about runaway energy demand. A new paper suggests that if data center operators curtailed their use ever so slightly, they could unlock 76 GW of capacity, or about 10% peak demand in the U.S. Read More

👋 Another one bites the dust: Peer-to-peer carsharing platform Getaround is abruptly shutting down U.S. operations a year after cutting 30% of its North American headcount. The craziest part is that Getaround gave customers about a day to return their rentals before it stopped providing liability coverage. Read More

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Around the web

🚗 Burned bridges: Reuters has an inside look at the collapse of a $60 billion deal that would have helped Nissan and Honda join forces to compete against Chinese automakers upending the car industry. Read More

🧑‍⚖️ Cohere under fire: The Atlantic, Politico, Vox and other publishers are suing AI startup Cohere for copyright and trademark infringement, reports The Wall Street Journal. The publishers say Cohere improperly used at least 4,000 copyrighted works to train its LLMs and displayed large portions of or entire articles while bypassing links to publishers' websites. Read More

💔 Unmatch me: Match Group, the company that owns dating apps like Hinge and Tinder, has reportedly known for years about abusive users on its platform, but has chosen to keep mum, per an investigation by The Markup. Anything to create shareholder value, right? Read More

Before you go

🍔 Bot alert: Uber Eats has partnered with Avride to bring Jersey City its first autonomous sidewalk delivery robots. It's an interesting move, considering the mix of snow, sleet and rain Jersey has been getting lately. Good luck to them! Read More