Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! I'm guest-writing the newsletter this morning, and we're taking a look at a slew of developments, including: Databricks' $1B acquisition, Amazon's AI infra deal in Saudi Arabia, Y Combinator throwing hands, Chime's IPO filing, and more. Let's dive in!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Smith Collection/Gado / Getty Images

1. Dipping into the warchest: Databricks is buying open-source database platform Neon for $1 billion. Databricks argues that it's seeing a lot of AI agent workload, and Neon's serverless database management platform is an ideal fit for that. Read More

2. Calling 'em out: Y Combinator has weighed in on the Google monopoly case, and it's got choice words for the search giant, calling it a "monopolist" that has "stunted" the startup ecosystem. "Google has effectively frozen the web search and text advertising markets for over a decade," YC wrote in its amicus brief. Read More

3. Money sees no borders: Amazon is tying up with Humain, a new AI company founded by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The partnership will see Amazon set up AI infrastructure, servers, networks, and training and certification programs in the country. Read More

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Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Chime

Finally! Digital bank Chime has filed a Form S-1 with the U.S. SEC for an IPO. The company had raised over $2.65 billion in total, and was last valued at $25 billion, per PitchBook. Read More

Exploring greener pastures: AirBnB is diversifying beyond just letting you rent properties. The company is now offering experiences as well, letting travelers book services like haircuts, massages, catering and even photography. Read More

Betting on the boom: Even as investors and analysts worry about data centers accumulating too much capacity, TensorWave, which runs data centers for AI cloud purposes, has raised $100 million to further build out its "dedicated training" cluster of AMD GPUs. Read More

Consistent inconsistency: Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, has missed its own deadline to release its AI safety framework. That's not very surprising, as xAI isn't exactly known for making strong commitments to developing AI safely, and its Grok chatbot routinely outrages folk. Read More

Avoiding vendor lock-in: Legal AI tool Harvey said it would start using foundation models from Anthropic and Google, in addition to its backer OpenAI's models. Harvey says it's not leaving OpenAI, however, and it's just adding more models to its offerings. Read More

Did you know? WhatsApp's victory over spyware maker NSO Group surfaced several revelations, so we dove into court transcripts to find more nuggets, like NSO's attack did not require users to interact at all, or that the company's HQ is in the same building as Apple in Tel Aviv. Read More

Around the Web

Worth a thousand words: Business Insider has a nice visual feature of U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, which also saw a bunch of top Wall Street and Silicon Valley execs in attendance. The pics are worth scrolling through. Read More

Not all AI usage will be good: Visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic (of Star Wars fame) recently showed off a short film, touting it as the possible future of Star Wars films made with AI, and, in 404 Media's words, "the result was very bad." Read More

Before You Go

Line goes down: The IP for CryptoPunks, once all the rave in the crypto space for its pixel-art NFTs, was just sold to an art nonprofit designed to help preserve digital art. Read More