TechCrunch Top 3

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🙀 Whoa, WhatsApp: Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg noted on the company's Q1 earnings call yesterday. The company hit 2 billion monthly users in 2020.

🤩 Written in the stars: Data movement platform Fivetran acquired data movement platform Census, which will allow Fivetran to offer end-to-end data movement. Fivetran CEO George Fraser told TechCrunch that they've known the Census team for over a decade and this deal seemed like fate.

🔌 Get connected! Anthropic launched a new way for users to connect apps to its AI chatbot Claude. The company also announced expanded "deep research" capabilities that allow Claude to search the web, enterprise accounts, and more.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Neo

🔎 How a VC vets: Ali Partovi, the co-founder and CEO of startup accelerator Neo, is on today's episode of StrictlyVC Download to talk about his investing philosophy and the traits he looks for when trying to spot future tech billionaires.

🧑‍⚖️ An epic court battle: Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is not happy with Apple. She released an 80-page decision today that said Apple defied court orders set in the original case between Apple and Epic Games. We've got the highlights for you.

🥊 The girls are fighting: AI startup Anthropic came out in support of export restrictions for U.S. AI chips yesterday. Today, Nvidia is striking a very different tone and telling the AI startup it should focus on innovating instead of spreading "tall tales" about AI chip smuggling. Spicy!

🤖 Expanded AI: Google is expanding access to its AI Mode, an experimental feature that allows users to ask complex questions to dig deeper into a topic in Search. One new functionality: People will be able to pick up where they left off on a search.

🎮 In this economy? Microsoft's Xbox is getting more expensive. Consoles are expected to increase in price by $80 to $100 each while controllers and some games will also get more expensive. Microsoft didn't say why they were raising prices but, I mean, we all might have a hunch.

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Greece's prime minister joins StrictlyVC in Athens

StrictlyVC lands in Athens on May 8 — our first event in Greece! Prime minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis joins Europe's tech leaders, like Dimitrios Kottas (Delian Alliance Industries), Haris Pylarinos (Hack the Box), and more, to talk about Greece's tech momentum. Join the conversation and build meaningful connections here.

Around the web

💬 Oh, come on: Mark Zuckerberg thinks that we don't have enough real-life friends and should supplement those connections with chatbots. He also cautioned against AI therapy apps despite Meta's own products looking to perform similar tasks.

💰 Cash for creators: Microsoft announced today that it will begin sharing ad revenue with creators on LinkedIn. This is good because creators should get paid for their content. I can't wait to see a post on what this news taught someone about investing in B2B SaaS.