Friday, May 16, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we have the details on Codex, OpenAI's new AI coding agent; we dig into a new accusation that Epic Games is making against Apple; and we learn that the U.S. Army is adopting right-to-repair. Have a great weekend!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images

🖥 Coding on Codex: OpenAI announced that it is releasing a research preview of Codex, an AI coding agent. This agent is powered by codex-1, a version of the company's o3 AI reasoning model that is optimized for software engineering.

🍿 Get the popcorn: While the court drama may be over — at least for now — tensions remain high between Apple and Epic Games. The video game company is accusing Apple of blocking its submission to add Fortnite back into the U.S. App Store.

☢ Back to basics: Nuclear power is back in vogue. While some companies in the space are looking to build new kinds of reactors, The Nuclear Company is sticking to the basics and building nuclear reactors using existing plans. This strategy has landed the company a $51 million Series A round.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Canoo

🙅‍♂️ Not this time: Last month, a mysterious financier tried to block bankrupt EV Canoo from selling its assets back to its CEO, Anthony Aquila. This week, it was ruled that this financier, Charles Garson, didn't have the proper standing to make that request.

🎧 Notes on Neon: On today's episode of Equity, the hosts dive into Databricks' recent acquisition of Neon, an AI company. The hosts also dig into Chime's S-1 filing, talk about the return of the web series, and AWS's recent strategic partnership.

📻 Swing and a miss: Last week Spotify announced that it would roll out public play counts on podcasts as a way to help attract more listeners, which received backlash from podcasters. Now Spotify is tweaking this idea and only showing play count on podcasts with over 50,000 plays.

🌝 Money for Moonvalley: Moonvalley, a startup developing AI tools for video creation, seems to be popular with venture capitalists. The company announced a $43 million raise a month ago, and now it appears that the company has raised $10 million more.

🚤 It's electric! Electric boat startup Arc has released its cheapest model yet. This new 24-foot boat, Arc Coast, will cost a cool $168,000 and is already available for preorder. The company expects these boats to hit the water next year.

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Around the web

🛠 Right to repair: Right-to-repair laws, which require tech companies to make it easier for people to repair their own devices, are coming to the military. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll committed to include right-to-repair provisions in all future contracts with manufacturers. Neat!

🇨🇳 Time for a rebrand: For years, Chinese startups tried to hide their origin to avoid negative speculation, especially if they were looking to raise money overseas. Rest of World reports that after DeepSeek's recent success, many Chinese startup founders don't feel that way anymore.