TechCrunch Top 3

DeepMind thinks its new Genie 3 world model presents a stepping stone toward AGI: Google DeepMind has revealed Genie 3, its latest foundation world model that the AI lab says presents a crucial stepping stone on the path to artificial general intelligence, or human-like intelligence. Read More

ElevenLabs launches an AI music generator, which it claims is cleared for commercial use: The AI audio-generation unicorn ElevenLabs announced the launch of a new model that allows users to generate music that's cleared for commercial use. Read More

Hacker used a voice phishing attack to steal Cisco customers' personal information: Cisco disclosed a data breach including customer names, organization names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of Cisco.com users. Read More

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Uzbekistan's first unicorn, Uzum, leaps to a $1.5B valuation: Uzbekistan's Uzum has raised $65.5 million in a new funding round co-led by China's Tencent and the New York- and London-based VR Capital, with participation from U.S.-based FinSight Capital. Read More

AI-powered fintech Alaan raises $48M, one of the largest Series A rounds in MENA: Alaan has raised $48 million in a Series A funding round led by Peak XV Partners with participation from others like founders of 885 Capital, Y Combinator, 468 Capital, and Pioneer Fund. Read More

Roku launches Howdy, a $2.99 ad-free streaming service: The service features a library of nearly 10,000 hours of content from Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FilmRise, alongside select Roku Original titles. Read More

Google says its AI-based bug hunter found 20 security vulnerabilities: The discoveries by an AI-based bug hunter are significant, as it shows these tools are starting to get real results, even if they still need a human. Read More

Jury rules Meta violated California privacy laws by quietly collecting Flo users' menstrual health data: The class-action suit was brought by users of period tracking app, Flo, who alleged that the tech giant collected private menstrual health data without users' consent and used it for ad-tracking purposes. Read More

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Last but Not Least

Perplexity accused of scraping websites that explicitly blocked AI scraping: Internet giant Cloudflare says it detected Perplexity crawling and scraping websites, even after customers had added technical blocks telling Perplexity not to scrape their pages. Read More