TechCrunch Top 3

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Step away from my data: Over a dozen U.S. states are filing a lawsuit to block Elon Musk's team of cost-cutters from accessing sensitive federal government payment systems containing personal data on millions of Americans. Read More

Throwing money at problems: Big Tech isn't slowing down its AI spending, DeepSeek and $50 reasoning models be damned. Amazon is the latest to announce a massive AI spending plan, with its capital expenditures predicted to exceed $100 billion in 2025. Read More

One of Meta's earliest employees is suing the company. Kelly Stonelake spent 15 years at Meta and rose to the rank of director, but she alleges the entire time she faced a cycle of gender-based discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Read More

A Message from Thomas Bravo's Behind the Deal

Thoma Bravo's Behind the Deal Podcast is Back for Season 3

Thoma Bravo's award-winning Behind the Deal podcast takes listeners behind the scenes of one of the world's largest software-focused investors. Hear first-hand from CEOs at leading tech companies – think Dynatrace, Adenza, Coupa. Season 3 promises even more exclusive insights into these companies' innovative strategies. New episodes every Thursday on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

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Morning must-reads

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🪑 Musical chairs: John Schulman, one of OpenAI's co-founders, looks like he'll be joining his old buddy Mira Murati at her secretive new startup. Schulman left OpenAI for Anthropic last August to deepen his focus on AI alignment, but posted yesterday that he has now left Anthropic for another "extremely compelling" opportunity. Read More

🎯 Hitting VC where it hurts: You may recall that one of the reasons a16z backed Trump was in protest to Biden's proposed tax on unrealized capital gains above $5 million. But Trump's new plan to end tax breaks on carried interest would also be a big hit to the VC industry. Read More

🤝 France and the UAE have agreed to invest anywhere from $31 to $52 billion to build an AI campus in France. Most of the funds would go to a data center with a capacity of up to 1GW. Luckily, most of France's electricity comes from nuclear power plants and renewables. Read More

🤖 Meta wants to do robots, too: Meta just announced PARTNR, a new program that is designed to study human-robot interaction, specifically in home environments. Read More

❓ Is this thing on? Remember the 'Big Data and Analytics' craze? Companies spent billions on products that promised big things but never delivered, and the same is probably happening with all these new AI-powered apps. That's where Composo comes in to help enterprises evaluate the accuracy and quality of apps powered by LLMs. Read More

Around the web

🧀 Don't lie to me about cheese: Google has edited its AI bot Gemini's responses in a Super Bowl commercial to remove an incorrect piece of information about Gouda cheese, reports The Verge. Just another reminder that information stated with confidence – whether by an AI chatbot or your local neighborhood billionaire – is not always true. Read More

🦅 The U.S. government is not a startup, and Elon Musk is moving fast and breaking things that can't afford to be broken, reports Wired. Tech startups are scrappy and unconventional; they iterate quickly and take big risks, but they also fail a lot of the time. Read More

🔮 Crypto buttoning up: Crypto firm Gemini is considering an IPO this year, reports Bloomberg. This is part of a growing trend of crypto companies gunning to go public after Donald Trump won the election. Bullish Global is also considering an IPO this year. Read More

Before you go

💏 Swipe left: People aren't using Tinder very much, but the company thinks AI can fix that. It's rolling out new AI-powered features for discovery and matching, rather than show users an endless series of unimpressive profiles. Read More