Friday, September 27, 2024

Welcome to TC PM! Today we're looking at the criminal charges being brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against three Iranian hackers; the latest regulatory news regarding Amazon's investment into Anthropic; and that large OpenAI funding round. Happy Friday!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto / Getty Images

⚖️ Criminal charges: The U.S. Department of Justice criminally charged three individuals from Iran for their role in a four-year-long hacking campaign that involved a hack on Donald Trump's presidential campaign earlier this year. Read more

😮‍ Dodging a bullet: The U.K.'s antitrust authority concluded that Amazon's partnership, and investment, into AI company Anthropic can't be investigated as a merger. This is likely welcome news to both companies. Read more

⏳ Almost time: Talk of OpenAI's $6.5 billion funding round, which values the company at $150 billion, has been going on for a while. Now there's good reason to believe that the round could close as early as next week. Read more

Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Wordy

🗣️ Smarter subtitles: Now, this is a good use case for AI. Wordy is a new app that uses AI to automatically translate and define English words from a television show or movie to help non-native English speakers understand and learn them. Read more

🎙️ Equity: On today's Equity, the team dives into Reflect Orbital, a fun satellite and mirror company with a very well-known VC backer. They also dig into Y Combinator's Demo Days and chat about defense tech. Listen here

😟 Drata trims down: Security compliance automation platform Drata laid off 9% of its employees, or 40 people. The company was founded in 2020 and has since raised more than $300 million in venture capital. Read more

🚘 Canoo takes on more water: The troubles at EV startup Canoo continue. Just weeks after the company kicked off a major reorganization, it has now been hit with two fresh lawsuits from its suppliers. Read more

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Around the web

💵 What's an IPO? While rumors have been swirling for a while regarding which startup will go public next, now we have something more concrete. Bloomberg reports that neobank Chime has hired bankers for a 2025 IPO, meaning it could be one of the first out the gate next year. Read more

🤖 Too much AI: Today, 404 Media reported that some companies are using AI agents to conduct job interviews. I'm sorry, but this is too dystopian for me; if a company did this to me, I would question whether I wanted to work for someone who was hiring in this way. Read more