TechCrunch Top 3

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1. AI spy with my little eye: Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei suspects Chinese spies are stealing "algorithmic secrets" from the U.S.'s top AI companies. And he wants the government to step in because companies like his are almost certainly being targeted. Read More

2. Pushing ideologies: The FBI, EPA and other federal agencies have requested Citibank to freeze the accounts of several nonprofits and state government agencies that received federal funding for their climate efforts. The Trump administration is trying to claw back money that was awarded as part of the Inflation Reduction Act's climate package. Read More

3. Don't call it a comeback: Intel has appointed chip industry veteran Lip-Bu Tan as its CEO, replacing Pat Gelsinger. He's a major figure in the semiconductor industry and a long-time tech investor, but will he be able to improve Intel's fortunes? Read More

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Morning Must-Reads

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🎉 A rising tide… One of the side-effects of Chinese AI agent platform Manus going viral has been that another AI tool called Browser Use is getting insane visibility. Browser Use makes websites more accessible for AI agents, and it's one of the components Manus uses to do various things. Think of it as Agent Engine Optimization. Read More

🚕 Whoopsie: Travis Kalanick, the controversial former CEO of Uber, said he thinks the company's decision to abandon its autonomous driving program was a big mistake. He said Uber was on par to catch up with Waymo but pulled out too early, and now it's too late. Read More

🌊 Riding the wave: Chip giant Nvidia is all set to show and tell everything it's getting up to at this year's GTC, focusing on AI, robotics, and, of course, new GPUs. We've put together a rundown of what we can expect from the massive show this year. Read More

🤘 ALL your SXSW news!: Check out our live coverage of SXSW 2025, which had everything from quantum computing and will.i.am launching an AI startup to a Metallica concert in Apple Vision Pro. Read More

😮 In hot water: Chinese tech giant Huawei is suddenly finding itself in the middle of a hot scandal — Belgian police raided several locations in Belgium and Portugal as part of a corruption investigation that apparently found Huawei's lobbyists had bribed EU politicians. Read More

💰 Wherever you are, I'll be investing in you: An Italian VC firm is taking extra effort to foster its local ecosystem. Vento's €75 million second fund will specifically back Italian founders both at home and abroad. Read More

Around the Web

🔮 Strange bedfellows: Trump's newfound love of crypto is manifesting in weird ways. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump family has held talks to take a financial stake in Binance US following the crypto exchange's guilty plea and founder Changpeng Zhao urging the administration to pardon him. Read More

🏎️ Hit the accelerator: Google has unveiled Gemma 3, which it calls the "world's best single-accelerator model." The company says the model can run on a single GPU, create AI-driven workflows using function calling, and delivers high-performance with 'quantized models.' Read More

Before You Go

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❌ Mr. Me Too: Meta is launching its own version of X's Community Notes on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the U.S. this week. The company has been overhauling how it fact-checks information on its platforms. Let's see how this goes. Read More