TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Artur Widak/NurPhoto / Getty Images

☄️ A comet is coming: AI search startup Perplexity is building its own web browser called Comet. While the details of this future browser are unclear, the company posted a sign-up list for it today. Read more

🤦 Immediate impact: Meta will start phasing out its third-party fact-checking teams in March, as previously reported, and reintroduce its bonus program for creators who go viral on Meta platforms. This seems likely to fuel more misinformation. Read more

🎉 Fanfare for features: Logistics company Flexport announced a slew of new, largely AI-powered, features today. Flexport plans to start announcing new features on a semi-annual basis. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Cambium

💵 Cash for Cambium: Cambium built a software platform that helps connect players in the lumber industry to repurpose otherwise wasted wood. The startup just raised an $18.5 million round led by VoLo Earth Ventures. Read more

🤳 Instagram 2.0: Yope is a new Instagram competitor that lets people post pictures in the app to groups they have joined or created themselves. Despite there being quite a few new photo-sharing startups, Yope garnered a $50 million valuation on its recent seed round. Read more

🙇 Selective thinking: Anthropic released a new model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which is designed to "think" about questions as long as the user wants and is somehow meant to simplify the user experience around AI products. Anthropic is calling it the industry's first "hybrid AI reasoning model." Read more

❤️ Gotta catch 'em all: When Anthropic was building Claude 3.7 Sonnet, the company tapped Pokémon Red as a benchmark and had the AI model play the game continuously. Can I say I'm playing that for work, too? Read more

🔓 Wide open: Security researchers have found a security bug, kind of, in Hirsch's Enterprise MESH door access system. Landlords are installing the system without changing the default password. The company is rightly saying it isn't its fault that landlords aren't changing the password. Read more

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Around the web

🤺 Tariff tussle: President Donald Trump on Friday signed a memorandum stating that any fines against U.S. businesses could result in tariffs or other responsive actions. Understandably, the European Union vows to fight back. Read more

🏡 Committed to remote: The debate around remote work has started again after JPMorgan announced in a fiery town hall meeting that all of its employees have to return to the office. But the founders of Stripe are still committed to remote work and have some good reasons why. Fortune has more

Before you go

Image Credits: Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch

💰 Battlefield begins: The wait is finally over! Applications for this year's TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 are now open. Startups that are pre-Series A are encouraged to apply to the program, which gives selected founders the chance to pitch to VCs onstage at this year's Disrupt conference in October. Read more