TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Google

📞 New phone, who dis? Google has revealed its newest Pixel phone, Pixel 9a. The 9a features a new camera design, a chip upgrade to Google's Tensor G4 processor, and a reasonable $499 price tag. It will be available starting in April.

♻️ Back at the start: Twitter — I'm sorry, X — has seen its valuation fluctuate since Elon Musk bought the social media site in 2022. The company just raised a new round of funding that values it at $44 billion, the same amount Musk paid for the platform.

🏡 Neat employee benefits: Multiply Mortgage is an employee benefit startup that offers customers 1:1 sessions with mortgage advisers, education sessions about the process, and mortgage rate discounts. The company just raised a $23.5 million Series A.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: AMT

🤳 Influencer tech: Influencer marketing doesn't fit neatly into the traditional ad and marketing model. Agentic Marketing Technologies (AMT) built an AI chatbot to sit between brands and influencers and help make their interactions more seamless.

🎙️ AngelList on AI: AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli came on Equity to talk about how AI "effectively impacts all startups," how AngelList has evolved its model from investing through SPVs to collaborating with larger funds, how founders can thrive in today's market, and more!

🏗️ Back to building: Raj Aggarwal has left his position as GM of generative AI and revenue acceleration at AWS after nearly three years. Aggarwal, who has founded multiple startups in the past, said he's getting back to his roots and launching another company.

👯 Speaking of leaving to launch a startup: Pete Florence, a former senior research scientist at Google DeepMind, left the company to launch a robotics startup, Generalist AI. The company has already raised funding from Nvidia.

👕 T-shirt TAM: Decentralized social media company Bluesky made headlines last week when it was selling T-shirts that poked fun at Mark Zuckerberg. Now the company is saying it made more in one day of T-shirt sales than in two years of selling domains — its actual business.

Around the web

📀 Oh, good! DOGE-fueled cuts have thrown many federal agencies into absolute chaos. Individuals in the United States Agency for International Development who were laid off are now stuck with government-issued laptops filled with sensitive information.

🙅 Um, don't do that: Controversial face-recognition startup Clearview AI attempted to purchase millions of arrest records that included mugshots, Social Security numbers, and other information to incorporate into its product. Maybe we shouldn't!

Before you go

Image Credits: Liane Hentscher/HBO

🤟 Some good news: Streaming service Max announced that "The Last of Us" will be available to stream in American Sign Language. This will be the first time that HBO original content will be available to stream in ASL. Neat!