TechCrunch Top 3

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1. Meta + Scale AI = ? Meta's reported $15 billion deal to buy Scale AI is reminiscent of its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, which later became an integral part of the company's empire. TechCrunch's Max Zeff asks if this deal will be similar, or if Meta is grasping at straws to catch up to rivals like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. Read More

2. Paying for the novelty? TechCrunch got the scoop that Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft, which runs contrary to the hope that one day, automating ride-hailing services will make them cheaper. That said, people are paying for it anyway. Is it the novelty factor, or does it feel that good to be alone in the car without a driver? Read More

3. Not shady at all: Two European journalists were hacked using spyware made by Israeli spytech provider Paragon, new research from The Citizen Lab has found. This is the latest in an ongoing spyware scandal that, for now, is focused on the use of the tech by the Italian government. Read More

Morning Must-Reads

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⛔ This is downright bad: Meta has sued Crush AI, the maker of a popular AI "nudify" app, for running thousands of ads across Meta's platforms. The company has said it is taking steps to crack down on other similar apps and networks of advertisers who don't follow its rules. Read More

♾️ Compressing for performance: Spanish startup Multiverse Computing has nabbed a $215 million Series B round on the promise that its quantum computing-inspired compression technology can reduce the size of LLMs by up to 95% without impacting model performance. Read More

🌍 Powered by Earth: Fervo Energy has secured $206 million to continue work on a new geothermal power plant in Utah, which it hopes will be the largest in the world. The initial phase is expected to come online next year and produce 100 megawatts of electricity. Read More

👀 Perusal automation: British legal tech startup Definely has raised $30 million from a mix of European and North American investors to use AI to help lawyers more easily review and edit complex contracts without losing context. Read More

🙋 Vibes: AI startup Landbase, which uses what its founder Daniel Saks calls "vibe GTM" to automate outbound marketing, has raised a $30 million Series A from Ashton Kutcher's VC firm. The startup fine-tuned OpenAI's GPT-4o with data from 40 million marketing campaigns, and learned that trust, not copy, was the key to outreach success. Read More

Around the Web

⚽ Hype = money: Airbnb wants to make sure it's capitalizing on the FIFA World Cup. The company has partnered with FIFA to offer football soccer fans FIFA-themed activities across North America, where the tournament will be held this time. Read More

🤨 A long way to go: A new survey by AI coding platform Qodo has found that while developers like and find AI coding assistants useful, they don't really trust them, which ends up in manual reviews negating some of the productivity gains, The Register reports. Also, devs with concerns about quality often find AI increases their workload. Read More

Before You Go

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🤖 Bring on the robots: Warp helps companies streamline shipping supply chains through a network of shippers, carriers and warehouses. Now, it hopes to automate those warehouses with robots, and it's seeing some early success with retrofitted off-the-shelf bots. Read More