TechCrunch Top 3

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🤝 Partnering up: Vibe coding platform Replit announced a strategic partnership deal with Microsoft today. This means Replit's software will be available through Microsoft's enterprise cloud store and integrated into numerous Microsoft cloud services.

💰 More money for Mistral: French AI startup Mistral is reportedly looking to raise up to $1 billion in new equity. Mistral has raised significantly less capital than its U.S. peers thus far, so if it raises that $1 billion, it will essentially only double its total funds raised.

📧 Something good: Google is launching a new Gmail feature that allows people to better manage their email subscriptions. Users can view all their email subscriptions in one place, see how many emails they received from each one, and unsubscribe from any they don't want anymore.

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Afternoon must-reads

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🛒 A slippery slope: OneText, which just raised $4.5 million, is a startup building a "text-to-buy network." It lets shoppers complete purchases over text message and even lets them repurchase products by simply replying to text messages. Dangerous!

🪞 A mockery: Amazon's annual Prime Day shopping event starts today. Bookshop.org, an e-commerce site that connects shoppers to local independent booksellers, is hosting a sale of its own. It posted an invitation to the sale that looks pretty similar to a recent wedding invitation from a certain somebody.

🙋 Questions remain: U.K. retail giant Marks & Spencer is refusing to disclose whether it paid a hacking group after a cyberattack earlier this year. The company said it doesn't see any public interest in its disclosure of interactions with the cyber criminals.

🕹️ A hack! Gaming giant Activision took down Call of Duty: WWII, the 2017 version of its popular first-person shooter game, because hackers were exploiting a flaw in a specific PC version of the game.

🚙 Teen time: Robotaxi company Waymo is launching teen accounts for the youth in Phoenix so teenagers older than 14 can hail their own autonomous rides. Like Uber's teen accounts, these are linked to their parents' accounts.

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Around the web

⛏️ Mining the mines: The need for lithium in the age of electric vehicles has led many Chinese companies to set up mines in Zimbabwe. But the locals feel left out of the rare metal gold rush and are saying this trend is hurting their local communities more than it's helping.

📱 Early bird: Samsung Galaxy Unpacked is tomorrow, but the news it was going to bring may have already dropped today. A reliable leaker posted that it looks as though Samsung is dropping support for the S Pen on its reported new Z Fold 7 smartphone.