Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we've got notes on Trump's backlash against Ukraine, alleged fraud at a climate-friendly fintech, and the revival of Digg. We've also got details of the tons of money investors are throwing at eco-friendly data centers and anti-drone tech; a solution to the fast-fashion waste problem, a new secret robot language, and more. Let's dive in! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images

1. Unintelligence: The Trump administration has paused its intelligence sharing operation with Ukraine, per CIA director John Ratcliffe. The move comes after a heated exchange between the two countries' leaders on Friday, and it may affect Ukraine's ability to defend against attacks from Russia. Read More

2. Hero to zero: Climate-friendly fintech Aspiration was on the verge of a $2 billion public listing four years ago. Now, a series of loans that were obtained using allegedly fraudulent tactics have come to light, and prosecutors are accusing a board member and a co-founder of defrauding investors of $145 million. Read More

3. Digg is back: One of the web's original news aggregators is coming back under the joint ownership of its founder, Kevin Rose, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The erstwhile rivals are coming together and, of course, AI is involved. Read More

Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Epirus

🔫 Fighting the swarm: Defense tech startup Epirus has raised a $250 million Series D to further build out its tech that protects against drone swarms. The California-based startup plans to use the funds to expand into international and commercial markets. Read More

👗 Plastic-eating enzymes: Epoch Biodesign began as a high school science project on using enzymes to break down plastic waste. Today, the startup has secured a $18.3 million Series A and is coming for synthetic fabrics in the fast fashion industry. Read More

☁️ A rising tide: EcoDataCenter, which builds eco-friendly data centers used by the likes of major AI players like CoreWeave, has raised a whopping $478 million. That truckload of cash will be used to develop new tech for more "green" data centers, and to build more infrastructure. Read More

🥸 Using facial recognition for good: Meta is rolling out two facial recognition tools in the U.K. that are designed to stop scams based on likenesses of famous people and to help get people back into compromised Facebook or Instagram accounts. Read More

🤖 Robotese: A hackathon project created by two Meta software engineers called GibberLink has gone viral this weekend. That's because it allowed an AI agent to recognize when it was speaking to another AI agent, and then switch to talking in a language only robots understand. Read More

Around the Web

💣 AI + DOD: We're a long way from the days of tech workers protesting the use of their inventions in the military. Scale AI has announced a major deal with the Department of Defense to help the agency use AI agents for U.S. military planning and operations, per CNBC. Read More

🙃 The government knows AGI is coming, so says ex-White House AI adviser Ben Buchanan on The Ezra Klein Show. He spoke about the realities of AGI coming to full force in an era where tech leaders and investors like Elon Musk and David Sacks are steering the country. Read More

🎻 Tiny violins playing: Google does not want to get broken up, so it's urging officials within Trump's DOJ to push back against breaking up its search business. This time, it's citing national security concerns, reports Bloomberg. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Daniela Simona Temneanu / EyeEm / Getty Images

🍕 A long way from selling pants: Andy Dunn, the founder of online fashion outlet Bonobos, wants to help people make friends. His newest venture, Pie, is a social app that helps people meet up in person, but it takes things a step further with AI-generated personality quizzes to help people find the right match. Read More