TechCrunch Top 3

SpaceX alum's aviation startup, Reliable Robotics, lands $115M, topping $1B valuation: Reliable Robotics extended its Series D round with $115 million in equity and $25 million in debt. Read More

Spotify launches paid podcast memberships with perks beyond bonus content: Spotify's new paid memberships let podcasters offer fans exclusive perks, including ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content, while keeping 90% of the revenue. Read More

Google has joined Amazon in attacking Nvidia's stronghold with AI app developers: Google has joined Amazon in releasing a developer tool that makes it easy for PyTorch users to move their apps off Nvidia GPUs. Read More

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Afternoon Must-Reads

SpaceX's AI business is beating expectations: SpaceX hit profitably in the third-quarter, with net income of $4.4 billion. AI was the engine. Read More

Anthropic’s cloud partnerships are getting messy: Anthropic is reportedly struggling to secure enough compute from cloud providers that increasingly view it as a competitor, even as its infrastructure spending balloons ahead of a planned November IPO. Read More

Eric Schmidt reportedly owns about half as much of Anthropic as CEO Dario Amodei: The former Google CEO owns about 1% stake in the leading AI lab, Bloomberg reported. Read More

Meta's Muse hits 10M U.S. downloads in 40 days, a milestone reached by only 11 other apps: Meta's AI companion Muse has surpassed 10 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days, joining an exclusive group of apps that includes Threads. New data also shows Muse is retaining users at higher rates than its AI rivals. Read More

Eka is worth $1.45B thanks to a physical AI model that has experts raving: Eka Robotics may be the first robotic arm that is actually good at picking a wide range of objects up, and it is so smooth and human-like, it is wowing the industry. Read More

Last but Not Least

Figma co-founder Dylan Field thinks MCP is not a perfect protocol: Figma said it plans to support as many standards as possible without exposing all of its data. Read More