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Apple’s next-generation version of its popular CarPlay infotainment software is finally launching three years after it was announced. The company said Thursday that this new version of CarPlay — now known as “CarPlay Ultra” — will start rolling out on new Aston Martin vehicles in the U.S. and Canada, roughly half a year late. While still powered (wirelessly) by an iPhone, CarPlay Ultra takes over both the main infotainment screen as well as the digital dashboard in front of the driver, and is more deeply integrated with the vehicle’s systems. That means the new CarPlay software will display things like the vehicle’s speed, fuel mileage, trip info, and water temperature. CarPlay Ultra will also be able to control certain vehicle settings — provided drivers have an iPhone 12 or later running at least iOS 18.5. Meanwhile, certain functions like backup cameras will still be able to “punch through” the CarPlay UI. Apple said some existing and compatible Aston Martin vehicles will get CarPlay Ultra “in the coming weeks through a software update available at local dealers.” The company also said the Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands have signed up to make it compatible in their vehicles. The launch of CarPlay Ultra helps Apple even the playing field with Google, which for years now has helped automakers ship cars with an embedded version of its Android Auto operating system. Just this week, Google announced it was bringing its generative AI Gemini to Android Auto. Apple has implied that the slow rollout of CarPlay Ultra was, in part, related to the work required to make the software fit the “unique brand and visual design philosophies” of its partner automakers. The company said in its press release Thursday that it has crafted these “custom themes” in “close collaboration” with the design team of automakers like Aston Martin. It also said drivers will be able to customize the “colors and wallpapers of themes to match their individual tastes.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW It’s an ambitious leap forward from the basic version of CarPlay, which has proven so popular that an uproar starts pretty much any time an automaker shuns the software. But the rollout is still a far cry from what Apple originally teased at its 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference, when it showed a slide with 14 automaker logos and said those brands were “excited to bring this new vision of CarPlay to customers.” At least one of those, Mercedes-Benz, has since said it won’t use the new CarPlay Ultra.

Apple says the warning messages now appearing next to EU App Store listings that use third-party payment systems are not actually new. According to a number of recent reports, Apple added a warning with a red exclamation mark next to apps that it found were not using its own “private and secure payment system.” The message was seemingly meant to discourage users from using external payment mechanisms, as is now permitted under the new EU law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA). However, the iPhone maker confirmed to TechCrunch that these user-disclosure screens have been live on the EU App Store since the beginning of Apple’s DMA Compliance Plan back in March 2024. They were not newly added, as some had reported. It’s understandable that there was concern over the warning screens, given that Apple just suffered a major loss in court to Fortnite maker Epic Games. The court’s decision forced Apple to allow app developers in the U.S. to link to external payment options without having to pay Apple’s commission. The company is appealing that decision, and many likely suspected the added EU warnings were part of some sort of retaliatory plan on Apple’s part. Perhaps the company wanted to send a message to developers that it would not give up commissions without a fight? But since the screens are not new, another explanation is in order. The confusion appears to stem from a single post that gained traction on the social network X on Monday. The post shows an App Store listing for an EU-based app called Instacar that features a message warning users, “[T]his app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system. It uses external purchases.” The cautionary message also points to a link that users can click to “Learn More.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW first time seeing this. Apple will punish the apps with external payment system pic.twitter.com/MBeqi8huW5 — Viktor Maric (@maric_viktor) May 12, 2025 “First time seeing this,” wrote X user Viktor Maric, remarking on the warning screen. “Apple will punish the apps with external payment system [sic].” Maric’s post was liked by thousands of X users and reposted by hundreds, including those in the mobile developer community. Unsurprisingly, most didn’t care for the message, calling it “malicious compliance” and “entitled” behavior on Apple’s part. Opinions aside, the user disclosure screen itself is not new. Apple pointed us to an X post from RevenueCat CEO Jacob Eiting, who, responding directly to Maric, correctly suggested that the disclosures are EU-only and “have been around for a while.” I think this is EU only and might have been around for a while, I just assumed nobody bothered with the DMA implementation for external purchases since they were pointless. Fewer than 100 developers have availed themselves of this option for obvious reasons.… pic.twitter.com/mYdZNbIRky — Jacob Eiting — iap/acc (@jeiting) May 12, 2025 Eiting theorized that people are just now noticing these warnings because few EU developers have bothered to take advantage of the external purchases option that the DMA permits. (Apple critics have called out the company’s DMA Compliance Plan as being confusing and filled with “junk fees” meant to make up for the lost commissions on in-app purchases.) In its response to TechCrunch, Apple also noted that it intended to update the message after initial pushback. In August 2024, the company announced a series of changes to its DMA plan that would have included a change to the user disclosure screen. Instead of warning users of the dangers of using external purchases, the new message would have read: “Transactions in this app are supported by the developer and not Apple.” (See below). Image Credits:Apple The tech giant claims that the European Commission (EC) raised no objection to the updated message but instructed Apple to hold off on making any changes. Without further guidance, Apple kept the existing screen in place. In April 2025, the EC fined Apple €500 million for noncompliance under the Digital Markets Act. Apple is now appealing the decision.

Redpoint Ventures, a San Francisco-based firm that is about a quarter century old, has raised a $650 million 10th early-stage fund, according to a regulatory filing. Redpoint’s new fund matches the size of its prior fund, which was raised just under three years ago. In a market where many venture firms are decreasing their capital hauls, this consistency could indicate the firm’s limited partners are relatively happy with its performance. The firm’s early-stage strategy is managed by four managing partners: Alex Bard (pictured above), Satish Dharmaraj, Annie Kadavy, and Erica Brescia, who joined the firm in 2021 after serving as GitHub’s COO for nearly three years. The early-stage team’s recent prominent investments include AI coding startup Poolside, which was founded by former Redpoint partner and GitHub CTO Jason Warner, a distributed SQL database developer Cockroach Labs, and procurement management platform Levelpath. The multistage firm also runs a growth strategy, led by partners Logan Bartlett, Jacob Effron, Elliot Geidt, and Scott Raney. Last year, Redpoint raised its fifth growth-stage fund at $740 million, a slight increase from its $725 million fund closed three years prior. Redpoint’s recent exits include Next Insurance, which was sold for $2.6 billion in March; food and travel media startup Tastemade, which was scooped up by Wonder for $90 million; and IBM, which acquired HashiCorp for $6.4 billion. Redpoint didn’t respond to a request for comment. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW

Savings and investing startup Acorns has acquired EarlyBird, an investment gifting platform for families, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the acquisition, EarlyBird will shut down, and all customer accounts will officially close on June 23. Customers’ funds will be returned to the bank account connected to their account. Founded in 2019, EarlyBird launched a product that combined financial investing with community. The app allowed families and friends to gift investments to children while preserving memories through a digital time capsule. The investments would become the child’s once they turned 18, and they could use funds for things like paying for college, paying a down payment on a home, or seeding their first business. “When we founded EarlyBird, we envisioned creating a platform that would transform how families leave lasting legacies for their children,” said EarlyBird CEO and co-founder Jordan Wexler in a statement. “The opportunity to join Acorns not only reaffirms our vision, but expands our impact to millions of families who also care deeply about building their children’s financial futures.” Wexler and co-founder Caleb Frankel will join the Acorns team to help build out Acorns Early, the startup’s smart money app for kids. Acorns Early offers a debit card designed for kids and teens to help them develop financial literacy and manage their money. The company launched Acorns Early following its acquisition of GoHenry, a startup focused on providing money management and financial education services to 6- to 18-year-olds. Acorns believes that by bringing on Wexler and Frankel, the company will be able to leverage their experience and passion for the space to enhance Acorns Early. “Our vision is to build a financial wellness system for the whole family, creating compound growth at every life stage,” Acorns CEO Noah Kerner said in an email to TechCrunch. “The shared experiences and insights between our two teams will enable us to deliver this vision faster and better so that we create maximum value for everyday American families.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Existing EarlyBird customers will be offered a free one-year subscription to “Acorns Gold,” a plan that offers access to all Acorns products, including Acorns Early. Customers will receive an email detailing the sign-up process. Acorns notes that EarlyBird users will not be able to transfer their EarlyBird funds over to Acorns Early. If users want to continue their investing journey with Acorns, they need to withdraw their funds from EarlyBird and open a new account with Acorns. The company plans to integrate EarlyBird’s digital time capsule feature into the Acorns Early app at a later date. On EarlyBird, the feature allowed users to build out time capsules by recording videos at memorable moments in their lives. For example, if a mother received a promotion and wanted to gift a one-time investment to her child, she could record a video talking to her child about it to commemorate and remember the moment. The acquisition comes as Acorns has doubled its customers on Acorns Gold, its $12 per month subscription plan, over the past year. “Our Gold Plan will be the place to deliver financial wellness for the whole family — products for parents, kids, and all the connective fabric between the family unit,” Kerner said. “This will be the place where the whole family can manage their money as they grow smart money habits together.” Acorns raised $300 million in March 2022 and was valued at $2 billion at the time. The company did not provide an updated valuation.

The Broke Man’s Guide to $2k/Month Affiliate Keywords (No Paid Tools) I haven’t paid for a keyword tool in over 2 years. I don’t need to. Not when I’ve ranked dozens of affiliate pages using free tools, instincts, and a bit of manual digging. Honestly, if you're chasing low competition goldmines, most paid keyword tools just slow you down. They show the same stuff to everyone. If 100 other affiliates are looking at the same KD 8 keyword in Ahrefs... it’s already dead. Let me show you how I actually find keywords no one’s targeting — the kind that rank with AI content, no links, and a new domain. Amazon Autocomplete Is Better Than Any SEO Tool Go to Amazon. Start typing in a product you’re curious about — even something boring like “heated blanket” or “portable shower.” Watch what Amazon suggests. Now tweak your phrasing: Add “for…” → “heated blanket for car” Add “with…” → “portable shower with water tank” Add pain points → “heater that won’t trip breaker” These are actual buyer searches. Real people, typing with purchase intent. And guess what? A lot of those keywords have zero optimized blog content targeting them properly. The trick is this: Whatever Amazon shows you = people want it. Whatever Google shows with weak results = you can rank for it. Cross-check the two. That’s your goldmine. Stalk the Forgotten Pages of Affiliate Sites This one’s dirty but effective. Pick a niche affiliate site that’s been around a while. Check their sitemap or plug them into a free SEO tool like Ubersuggest (if you must). Then scroll straight past the high-traffic pages. Look at the pages that get 0–10 visits/month. Why? Because they once had hope. Someone wrote that article for a reason. They thought it would rank. They wanted that keyword. But they gave up, or it got buried. Now it’s yours to steal, but do it better. Same topic, tighter headline, clearer intent, better formatting. Add visuals. Make it skimmable. Turn a dead keyword into a hit. I’ve had pages like that rank in a week. Mine Reddit & YouTube Comments for Hidden Phrases This one’s lowkey my favourite. Reddit is where people ask real questions — unfiltered, unoptimized, untapped. YouTube comments are raw buyer feedback — frustrations, use cases, “Does this work for X?” What I do: Search Reddit with: site:reddit.com “best [product] for” Sort by recent. Look for posts where people say: “I’m looking for X but I need it to do Y” Copy exact phrases into Google. Check if any blog is covering that long-tail variation. If not? Jackpot. Same thing with YouTube: Find a popular product video Sort comments by “Newest” or “Top” Look for stuff like: “Will this work for someone with arthritis?” “Does this fit on older models?” “Looking for a version that runs on battery.” Each of those is a keyword in disguise. You won’t find them in Ahrefs. But they’re real, rankable, and they convert. My Personal Filter: The “1 Page Rule” Here’s the final litmus test: If I can rank for this keyword with 1 good page, it’s worth targeting. That means: The top 10 results are weak (forums, low DR sites, Quora, outdated posts) No one is targeting the exact phrase in the title The search intent is clearly buyer-related or problem-solving I can hit all the sub-questions in one article I’ve built sites off this alone. No topical authority. No cluster content. No links. Just sniper content around zero comp keywords that buyers are actively searching. I’m not knocking paid tools — they have their place. But if you're starting out (or even if you’re advanced and just tired of the competition), this way of finding keywords is faster, cleaner, and works like hell. Hope this helps someone. It’s what I still do today.

Crypto giant Coinbase has confirmed its systems have been breached and customer data, including government-issued identity documents, were stolen. In a legally required filing with U.S. regulators, Coinbase said a hacker this week told the company that they had obtained information about customer accounts and demanded money from the company in exchange for not publishing the stolen data. Coinbase said the hacker “obtained this information by paying multiple contractors or employees working in support roles outside the United States to collect information from internal Coinbase systems to which they had access in order to perform their job responsibilities.” The support staff are no longer employed, the company said. The filing said Coinbase’s systems detected the malicious activity “in the previous months,” and that it has “warned customers whose information was potentially accessed in order to prevent misuse of any compromised information.” Coinbase said it will not pay the hacker’s ransom. According to a social post by CEO Brian Armstrong, the hackers demanded $20 million from the company. The company said the hacker stole customer names, postal and email addresses, phone numbers, and the last four digits of users’ Social Security numbers. The hacker also took masked bank account numbers and some banking identifiers, as well as customers’ government-issued identity documents, such as driver’s licenses and passports. The stolen data also includes account balance data and transaction histories. The company said some corporate data, such as internal documentation, was also stolen during the breach. In a blog post, Coinbase said it was opening a new U.S.-based support hub and will strengthen its security defenses. When reached for comment, Coinbase spokesperson Natasha LaBranche told TechCrunch that the number of affected customers is less than 1% of its 9.7 million monthly customers, per the company’s latest annual report ending March 2025. Coinbase said it expects to incur costs of around $180 million to $400 million relating to incident remediation and customer reimbursements. Do you work at Coinbase and know more about the breach? Contact this reporter via Signal with the username: zackwhittaker.1337 or by email: [email protected] Updated with more from Coinbase.

xAI blamed an “unauthorized modification” for a bug in its AI-powered Grok chatbot that caused Grok to repeatedly refer to “white genocide in South Africa” when invoked in certain contexts on X. On Wednesday, Grok began replying to dozens of posts on X with information about white genocide in South Africa, even in response to unrelated subjects. The strange replies stemmed from the X account for Grok, which responds to users with AI-generated posts whenever a person tags “@grok.” According to a post Thursday from xAI’s official X account, a change was made Wednesday morning to the Grok bot’s system prompt — the high-level instructions that guide the bot’s behavior — that directed Grok to provide a “specific response” on a “political topic.” xAI says that the tweak “violated [its] internal policies and core values,” and that the company has “conducted a thorough investigation.” We want to update you on an incident that happened with our Grok response bot on X yesterday. What happened: On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on X. This change, which directed Grok to provide a… — xAI (@xai) May 16, 2025 It’s the second time xAI has publicly acknowledged an unauthorized change to Grok’s code caused the AI to respond in controversial ways. In February, Grok briefly censored unflattering mentions of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of xAI and owner of X. Igor Babuschkin, an xAI engineering lead, said that Grok had been instructed by a rogue employee to ignore sources that mentioned Musk or Trump spreading misinformation, and that xAI reverted the change as soon as users began pointing it out. xAI said on Thursday that it’s going to make several changes to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. Beginning today, xAI will publish Grok’s system prompts on GitHub as well as a changelog. The company says it’ll also “put in place additional checks and measures” to ensure that xAI employees can’t modify the system prompt without review and establish a “24/7 monitoring team to respond to incidents with Grok’s answers that are not caught by automated systems.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Despite Musk’s frequent warnings of the dangers of AI gone unchecked, xAI has a poor AI safety track record. A recent report found that Grok would undress photos of women when asked. The chatbot can also be considerably more crass than AI like Google’s Gemini and ChatGPT, cursing without much restraint to speak of. A study by SaferAI, a nonprofit aiming to improve the accountability of AI labs, found xAI ranks poorly on safety among its peers, owing to its “very weak” risk management practices. Earlier this month, xAI missed a self-imposed deadline to publish a finalized AI safety framework.

Veteran Chipotle executive Jack Hartung was appointed a member of Tesla’s board of directors Thursday, according to a Tesla filing with the SEC. Hartung’s addition to the board comes as Tesla quietly works to finish its 1950s-style diner and charging station in Los Angeles. Hartung brings over two decades of experience as a Chipotle CFO, president, and chief strategy officer to Tesla’s board. He has overseen all finance and accounting at Chipotle, as well as supply chain, strategy, and safety and asset protection as the company has grown to over 3,700 restaurants across the U.S. and globally. Prior to Chipotle, Hartung spent almost 20 years at McDonald’s, where he served as VP and CFO of the restaurant chain’s partner brands group. While Hartung’s business and financial acumen are likely transferable across industries, his debut on Tesla’s board comes as the company gears up to launch the above-mentioned retro-futuristic diner and charging station in LA. Last August, Tesla advertised a role for a Tesla Diner Experience Specialist to work with the charging team to build out great customer service at the up-and-coming diner. TechCrunch has reached out to Tesla and Hartung to learn if the Chipotle executive will offer strategic insight and a network of contacts in the food and beverage industry. Tesla’s regulatory filing announcing Hartung’s appointment also discloses a related-party transaction; his son-in-law has worked as a Tesla service technician since December 2016, and last year took home a $124,000 salary. Tesla says this salary is in line with the company’s standard compensation practices. Hartung will begin his duties on the board, including on the audit committee, effective June 1. He has waived his ability to collect cash compensation, as well as his equity compensation, as the other board members have done. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW

Epic Games claims that Apple is blocking its Fortnite app from the U.S. and EU App Stores. After winning a decisive victory for app developers in a legal battle with Apple, forcing the tech giant to allow external payments in its U.S. App Store without charging commission, Epic Games attempted to resubmit Fortnite to the U.S. App Store on May 9, 2025. However, Apple failed to accept its submission for a week, leading Epic Games to pull its request and try again. According to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, the update was pulled because Epic Games needs to release a weekly Fortnite update with new content, and all platforms must be updated simultaneously. The company then submitted a new version to the U.S. App Store for review on Wednesday, May 14, with the updated content. In a Friday morning post on X, Fortnite said that Apple has blocked its latest U.S. submission and has made it so Epic Games can’t release its app to the European Union, either. “Now, sadly, Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it,” the post from Fortnite reads. TechCrunch reached out to Epic Games and Apple for comment. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Apple disputed Epic Games’ characterization of the issue. A spokesperson for Apple said the following: “We asked that Epic Sweden resubmit the app update without including the U.S. storefront of the App Store so as not to impact Fortnite in other geographies. We did not take any action to remove the live version of Fortnite from alternative distribution marketplaces in the EC.” Updated after publication with Apple’s comment.

The judge in Canoo’s bankruptcy case has blocked an attempt by a mysterious financier to disrupt the sale of the EV startup’s assets. In a hearing Tuesday, Judge Brendan Linehan Shannon ruled the financier, a U.K.-based man named Charles Garson, lacked standing to request the sale to Canoo’s own CEO be vacated. While Garson had told the court he was willing to pay as much as $20 million for Canoo’s assets, he missed the deadline to formally submit that bid. Garson also never made it clear where he was sourcing that money from, causing the bankruptcy trustee in the case to raise concerns the bid could get blocked by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The last remaining challenge to the asset sale comes from Harbinger Motors, a commercial electric trucking startup created by a handful of former Canoo employees. Harbinger objected to the sale before it was finalized in April. The judge denied Harbinger’s objection, but the company has since appealed that decision. Jason Angelo, a lawyer for Garson, framed his client’s attempt to disrupt the sale as a “David versus Goliath type matter.” Angelo tried to make the case during the hearing that Garson’s conversations with the bankruptcy trustee — which were submitted to the court under seal — led him to believe he had until the end of April to formalize a bid. He also repeated the claims made in Garson’s original filing about the sale allegedly being unfair because the assets ultimately went to Canoo’s CEO Anthony Aquila. “I think it would make sense here to allow a redo, so to speak,” Angelo said, citing “the sincerity and earnestness” of his client. “I know that is asking a lot, I do.” Mark Felger, the lawyer representing the bankruptcy trustee, disagreed by saying there was little in dispute and the negotiations were fair. “We think it’s pretty clear-cut in terms of the facts. There’s no he said, she said,” he told the judge. “Your Honor, it’s all in the emails. I’ve read them over many, many times. I don’t see any miscommunication. I don’t see any deception. It was clear how we were proceeding. He knew there was a sale hearing on the ninth, and he chose not to file anything.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Regarding the fairness of the sale process, Felger said he and the trustee “were concerned about this insider sale [to the CEO].” “But they’re the ones who stepped up, right and we negotiated hard. We went back and forth a dozen times on that agreement,” he said. Felger also repeated the trustee’s claims, made in earlier filings and testimony, that the cost of maintaining Canoo’s assets — especially its battery packs — was costing too much money. Letting a sale process drag out for too long could damage the value of the estate, he said. Judge Shannon, after hearing the arguments from Angelo, Felger, and a lawyer for Aquila, ruled swiftly against Garson. He said the financier lacked standing to properly argue his motion to vacate the sale, since he is not owed any money by Canoo and did not submit a formal bid before the deadline. “I am sympathetic to Mr. Garson’s frustration at what I sense and am satisfied is a genuine interest to provide a superior bid and purchase these assets,” Shannon said. “But it was a complex process run by the chapter seven trustee that I don’t think Mr. Garson had a full handle on exactly what the process was, and what was necessary in order to fully engage in that process.” Shannon also pointed out it was made clear to the trustee from the beginning who Aquila was, and that his role as CEO alone did not preclude him from buying his company’s assets. “I came into the process late and had hoped for the opportunity to participate and enter my bid. While the outcome wasn’t what I’d hoped for, I respect the court’s decision and want to extend my congratulations to Tony Aquila,” Garson said in a statement to TechCrunch. This story has been updated with a statement from Charles Garson.

Creator platform Patreon has to modify its app to comply with Apple’s guidelines after a recent update allowed U.S. users to make purchases via the web. The company says that its own web-based checkout option is now the default for U.S. fans, but it has to update its app so that this checkout option opens in an external browser instead, per Apple’s instruction. This creates more steps for fans who want to pay using Patreon directly, but it still allows the company to forgo having to pay Apple a 30% commission on in-app purchases. Patreon first updated its app shortly after a court ruling in the Apple-Epic legal battle that forced Apple to support external payments in apps published on its U.S. App Store without charging commissions. Last week, the Patreon iOS app (version 125.5.0) added an option that let users pay via the web using a variety of payment methods, including credit cards, Venmo, PayPal, and even Apple Pay. These options appeared within an in-app browser, providing a more seamless checkout experience for Patreon users. Now, Patreon’s checkout flow opens in an external browser instead — a change Patreon made based on Apple’s feedback. In addition, the company says creators on older billing models will also be able to accept payments through Patreon’s iOS app. Image Credits:Patreon Previously, Apple didn’t support billing models outside of subscription billing, and it required the exclusive use of its own in-app purchases system. That limited the options for creators on legacy billing models, like first-of-the-month and per-creation billing, Patreon says. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW With the update, creators will be able to use those billing options on iOS, which could make a significant impact on their bottom line. Within the week, Patreon says that U.S. fans will be able to purchase memberships from these creators at the price they’ve set for their tiers in the iOS app. (However, creators will still need to offer subscription billing to sell new memberships outside the U.S.) Currently, approximately 95% of active creators are already using subscription billing, the company notes, as it allows them to use other tools like free trials, discounts, gifting, tier repricing, autopilot, and more. But now it can address the needs of the remaining 5%. Because of this new flexibility, Patreon’s deadline to switch creators to subscription billing is no longer in effect, it says. Last August, Patreon said Apple had given it a deadline to switch all creators to Apple’s iOS in-app purchase system by November 2025 or risk removal from the App Store. “We’ve stayed in close conversation with Apple and have continued advocating for a more flexible approach — one that gives creators more time and choice,” Patreon shared in a blog post. “As a result of the recent ruling and changes on Apple’s end, the November 2025 deadline is no longer in effect, and as of today, no new deadline has been set. This means that, as of now, we can give creators more time and flexibility in when and how they switch while we simultaneously work to resolve issues that have blocked them from switching in the first place,” it said.

OpenAI announced on Friday it’s launching a research preview of Codex, the company’s most capable AI coding agent yet. Codex is powered by codex-1, a version of the company’s o3 AI reasoning model optimized for software engineering tasks. OpenAI says codex-1 produces “cleaner” code than o3, adheres more precisely to instructions, and will iteratively run tests on its code until passing results are achieved. The Codex agent runs in a sandboxed, virtual computer in the cloud. By connecting with GitHub, Codex’s environment can come preloaded with your code repositories. OpenAI says the AI coding agent will take anywhere from one to 30 minutes to write simple features, fix bugs, answer questions about your codebase, and run tests, among other tasks. Codex can handle multiple software engineering tasks simultaneously, says OpenAI, and it doesn’t limit users from accessing their computer and browser while it’s running. What users see when they open up CodexImage Credits:OpenAI Codex is rolling out starting today to subscribers to ChatGPT Pro, Enterprise, and Team. OpenAI says users will have “generous access” to Codex to start, but in the coming weeks, the company will implement rate limits for the tool. Users will then have the option to purchase additional credits to use Codex, an OpenAI spokesperson tells TechCrunch. OpenAI plans to expand Codex access to ChatGPT Plus and Edu users soon. AI tools for software engineers, also known as vibe coders, have surged in popularity in recent months. The CEOs of Google and Microsoft claim that roughly 30% of their companies’ code is now written by AI. In February, Anthropic released its own agentic coding tool, Claude Code, and in April, Google updated its AI coding assistant, Gemini Code Assist, with more agentic abilities. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW All that vibe coding has made the businesses behind AI coding platforms some of the fastest-growing in tech. Cursor, among the most popular AI coding tools, reached annualized revenue of around $300 million in April and is reportedly raising new funds at a $9 billion valuation. Now, OpenAI wants a piece of the pie. The ChatGPT maker has reportedly closed on a deal to acquire Windsurf, the developer behind another popular AI coding platform, for $3 billion. The launch of Codex shows very clearly that OpenAI is building out its own AI coding tools, in addition. Users with access to Codex can find the tool in ChatGPT’s sidebar, and assign the agent new coding tasks by typing a prompt and clicking the “Code” button. Users can also ask questions about their codebase and click the “Ask” button. Below the prompting bar, users can see other tasks they’ve assigned Codex to do, and monitor their progress. In a briefing ahead of Codex’s launch, OpenAI’s Agents Research Lead, Josh Tobin, told TechCrunch the company eventually wants its AI coding agents to act as “virtual teammates,” completing tasks autonomously that take human engineers “hours or even days” to accomplish. OpenAI claims it’s already using Codex internally to offload repetitive tasks, scaffold new features, and draft documentation. OpenAI’s new coding agent, CodexImage Credits:OpenAI OpenAI Product Lead Alexander Embiricos says a lot of the safety work for the company’s o3 model applies to Codex as well. In a blog post, OpenAI says Codex will reliably refuse requests to develop “malicious software.” Furthermore, Codex operates in an air-gapped environment, with no access to the broader internet or external APIs. This limits how dangerous Codex could be in the hands of a bad actor — but it may also hamper its usefulness. It’s worth noting that AI coding agents, much like all generative AI systems today, are prone to mistakes. A recent study from Microsoft found that industry-leading AI coding models, such as Claude 3.7 Sonnet and o3-mini, struggled to reliably debug software. However, that doesn’t seem to be dampening investor excitement in these tools. OpenAI is also updating Codex CLI, the company’s recently launched open source coding agent that runs in your terminal, with a version of its o4-mini model that’s optimized for software engineering. That model is now the default in Codex CLI, and will be available in OpenAI’s API for $1.50 per 1M input tokens (roughly 750,000 words, more than the entire Lord of the Rings book series) and $6 per 1M output tokens. Codex’s launch marks OpenAI’s latest effort to beef up ChatGPT with additional products besides the notorious chatbot. In the past year, OpenAI has added priority access to the company’s AI video platform, Sora, its research agent, Deep Research, as well as its web browsing agent, Operator, as benefits for subscribers. These offerings could entice more users to sign up for a ChatGPT subscription, and, in the case of Codex specifically, convince existing subscribers to pay OpenAI more money for increased rate limits.

Spotify announced last week that it would roll out public play counts on all podcasts as a way of “helping attract new fans.” But podcasters swiftly responded with criticism of the new feature — mainly, that it would further promote podcasts that already have large audiences while making smaller shows less appealing to new listeners. On Friday, Spotify changed course on its plans, but did not completely eschew the idea. Now, play counts will only appear on shows with at least 50,000 plays each. Instead of showing an exact play count, the designation will only update at specific milestones, like 100,000 or 1 million plays. “We plan to roll this newly evolved version of play counts over the coming week,” the company wrote in a blog post. “This update reflects our evolving efforts to provide the best insights for creators and a clear experience for their fans.” For decades, podcast hosting platforms have not shared many public indicators of a show’s popularity — Apple Podcasts, for example, has had reviews and charts on its app, but it would be challenging for a listener to know if a show had an audience in the tens or the tens of thousands. Though Spotify takes the angle that this ambiguity is a detriment, creators have been drawn to the podcasting medium in part because it’s refreshingly different from other forms of online media. When someone clicks play on a YouTube video, for example, they are approaching the media with the existing knowledge of how many views the video has, and how many people have subscribed to that channel. But podcasting can level the playing field for more niche creators. Podcasters have also expressed frustration with the lack of a clear metric for what counts as a “play” or a “stream” among various different platforms. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) works with podcast platforms to establish a clear metric for what is defined as a “play,” creating more consistency for dealmaking among podcasters and advertisers. But according to Podnews, the definition of what counts as a “play” is different on Spotify and YouTube — two of the most popular podcast listening platforms — than the IAB standard. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Spotify said that play counts will refer to the number of times “people actively tried” the content, whereas streams and downloads only count after 60 seconds of engagement.

TechCrunch is joining forces with VivaTech, Europe’s biggest startup and tech event, to select startups for the prestigious VivaTech Innovation of the Year at VivaTech 2025. This partnership will highlight exceptional creativity, technological ingenuity, and industry-transforming potential among exhibiting startups. The VivaTech Innovation of the Year Award acknowledges and celebrates exhibiting startups at VivaTech 2025 that showcase outstanding innovation, advanced technological capabilities, and significant potential to revolutionize their respective industry. Image Credits:VIVA Technology TechCrunch will curate a shortlist of the top 30 candidates, appoint a jury member to help select the final top five, and participate onstage at VivaTech on June 11 alongside the full jury during the final award presentation. On June 12, TechCrunch will also serve as the official host of the VivaTech Global Awards Ceremony, where the winners of the five VivaTech Awards will be announced, providing the Master of Ceremony to lead the event with introductions, award transitions, and the closing moment. Five finalists will receive a valuable opportunity to pitch on the VivaTech stage on June 11, gain introductions to venture capitalists, enjoy exclusive networking with jury members, achieve high visibility across VivaTech marketing channels, and receive two additional four-day passes to attend VivaTech 2025. The Innovation of the Year award winner will also secure a place in the highly competitive Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200, with eligibility to present at TechCrunch’s flagship annual event held in San Francisco in October 2025. VivaTech Innovation of the Year Award eligibility guidelines: Must be an exhibiting startup at VivaTech 2025 Founded in or after 2020 Fewer than 50 employees Selection of five Finalists – June 4 Finalists’ Pitch Session at VivaTech – June 11 VivaTech Global Awards Ceremony – June 12 Book your pass now About Viva Technology VivaTech accelerates innovation by connecting startups, tech leaders, major companies, and investors responding to our world’s biggest challenges. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Each year, over four exciting days in Paris, VivaTech creates Europe’s biggest technology and startup event, exploring the most disruptive topics in tech with world-premiere demos, launches, and conferences in a collaborative ecosystem. This is where business meets innovation. Take part in the ninth edition of VivaTech 11-14 June 2025.

Roughly a month after Moonvalley, a Los Angeles-based startup developing AI tools for video creation, said it secured $43 million in new funding, the company has raised more, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing, submitted Thursday, reveals that Moonvalley actually landed (so far) around $53 million total from a group of 14 unnamed investors. The filing indicates that this is an additional $10 million in cash, rather than a whole new round. It brings the company’s total raised to about $124 million, estimates PitchBook, following on the heels of Moonvalley’s $70 million seed round last November. Moonvalley declined to comment. The wide availability of tools to build video generators has led to such an explosion of providers that the space is becoming saturated. Startups such as Runway, Lightricks, Genmo, Pika, Higgsfield, Kling, and Luma, as well as tech giants like OpenAI, Alibaba, and Google, are releasing models at a fast clip. In many cases, little distinguishes one model from another. Moonvalley’s Marey model, built in collaboration with a new AI animation studio called Asteria, offers customization options like fine-grained camera and motion controls and can generate “HD” clips up to 30 seconds long. Moonvalley claims it’s also lower risk than some other video-generation models from a legal perspective. But where Moonvalley is attempting to differentiate itself — hence the high VC interest — is on the data it’s using to train its models, as well as the safeguards in its video creation tools. Many generative-video startups train models on public data, some of which is invariably copyrighted. These companies argue that fair-use doctrine shields the practice, but that hasn’t stopped rights holders from lodging complaints and filing cease and desists. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Moonvalley says it’s working with partners to handle licensing arrangements and package videos into datasets that the company then purchases. The approach is similar to Bria’s and Adobe’s, the latter of which procures content for training from creators through its proprietary Adobe Stock platform. Moonvalley is also crafting an interface for its model. The company’s software, which it hasn’t previewed publicly yet, has storyboarding and “granular” clip adjustment tools, Moonvalley’s co-founders revealed in recent interviews. Marey can generate videos from not only text prompts but also from sketches, photos, and other video clips, claims Moonvalley. Naeem Talukdar, who previously led product growth at Zapier, founded Moonvalley with former DeepMind scientists Mateusz Malinowski and Mik Binkowski. John Thomas joined as Moonvalley’s COO — he and Talukdar had founded another startup, Draft, several years ago. Moonvalley also counts Asteria head Bryn Mooser as a co-founder. Many artists and creators are understandably wary of video generators, as they threaten to upend the film and television industry. A 2024 study commissioned by the Animation Guild, a union representing Hollywood animators and cartoonists, estimates that more than 100,000 U.S.-based film, television, and animation jobs will be disrupted by AI by 2026. Moonvalley intends to allow creators to request their content be removed from its models, let customers delete their data at any time, and offer an indemnity policy to protect its users from copyright challenges. Unlike some “unfiltered” video models that readily insert a person’s likeness into clips, Moonvalley is also committing to building guardrails around its tools. Like OpenAI’s Sora, Moonvalley’s models will block certain content, like NSFW phrases, and won’t allow users to prompt them to generate videos of specific people or celebrities. “We founded Moonvalley to make generative video technology that works for filmmakers and creative professionals,” Moonvalley wrote in a blog post in March. “That means addressing fear and distrust, as well as solving technical problems that keep generative AI from being a realistic tool for professional production.”

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Elon Musk isn’t the only tech billionaire with power over the federal agencies that regulate his businesses. Since Donald Trump took office, more than three dozen employees, allies, and investors of Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Palmer Luckey have taken roles at federal agencies, helping direct billions in contracts to their companies. Companies owned, founded, or invested in by Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and Luckey have collected more than a dozen federal contracts totaling about $6 billion since Trump’s inauguration in January, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. And they’re actively pursuing billions more. Those appointments, which are in departments that oversee, regulate, and award business to the four men’s companies, raise a number of red flags. They could violate conflict-of-interest laws or government ethics regulations, both of which prohibit federal employees from using public office for private gain. And while it’s not unusual to install trusted allies in government roles, Musk’s network has moved in at an unprecedented rate and scale. TechCrunch has previously reported on all of the people in Musk’s universe who have joined him at DOGE, where he has shuttered federal agencies and slashed workforces in departments that regulate his businesses. At least 19 others with Silicon Valley connections, be they founders or investors, have also joined DOGE. “The second Trump administration is actually the first in recent years to not impose any sort of additional ethics safeguards on high-level appointees,” Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program, told TechCrunch. He noted that Trump fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics and 17 inspectors general who served as watchdogs for fraud and abuse, immediately after taking office. “It certainly does potentially increase the risk that you have people working on matters that do impact, at least indirectly, their bottom lines,” Weiner said. “But this is a long-term issue in our government that’s not unique to this administration.” Innovation versus accountability Peter Thiel speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference.Image Credits:Marco Bello / Getty Images Some may argue that it makes sense for employees and associates of Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and Luckey to join government agencies. Their insiders are talented individuals who are behind the cutting-edge technology the government genuinely needs, and they understand how to innovate quickly and compete globally. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW More serious questions arise when favoritism threatens to undermine competition, when policy is created or destroyed to protect market dominance, or when regulations that would serve the public good are waylaid to promote business interests. For instance, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently retreated from pursuing rules that would restrict data brokers, despite growing privacy concerns — a shift that stands to benefit companies involved in AI, surveillance, and data analytics. Another example is DOGE’s firing of staffers at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who investigate autonomous vehicle safety, including several probes into Tesla. “One of the defining structural challenges the government of the United States has right now is that we have a system in which the very wealthiest interests have so much power to shape our elections and then turn around and shape government policy,” Weiner said. Another Silicon Valley appointee, Mike Kratsios — a former Thiel employee — is now leading technology policy for the U.S. government. In an April speech, he spoke about throwing away bad regulations that “weigh down our innovators,” particularly those who are innovating in AI. “Many people in Silicon Valley tend to think that whatever worked in Silicon Valley is also going to work for administering the United States government,” Weiner said. “And as we’re seeing now, the danger is a lot of people are going to get hurt because of the assumptions they make.” “The fact that you had a successful startup after five others failed doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to run the Social Security Administration,” he continued. A network inside and a payoff outside Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz.Image Credits:David Paul Morris/Bloomberg / Getty Images All of the businesses between Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and Luckey are related. Musk’s SpaceX was backed by Thiel’s Founders Fund and Andreessen’s a16z (which also invested in X and xAI). Both of those VCs also backed Anduril, Luckey’s defense startup. The overlapping network of founders, funders, and insiders extends into several federal agencies. And in many cases, those agencies are steering billions in federal contracts back to those companies. The Journal found that across Washington, people from Musk’s network, including Tesla, X, and SpaceX, are in more than a dozen agencies, from the executive office of the president and Office of Personnel Management all the way down to the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy. SpaceX employees are also in agencies that could provide the company new business. For example, the Journal reports that SpaceX senior engineer Theodore Malaska got an ethics waiver in February that lets him take a temporary job at the Federal Aviation Administration while still working at the rocket company. The FAA hasn’t given any contracts to SpaceX yet, but Malaska said on X the agency has used Starlink to upgrade a weather-observing system in Alaska. SpaceX is also the main commercial provider that transports crew and cargo for NASA. Despite national security concerns — like the company’s secret backdoor for Chinese investment and Musk’s reported drug use — SpaceX in April won $5.9 billion of a $13.7 billion multi-year contract from the U.S. Space Force to launch Pentagon missions. The DOD, which is currently a Starlink customer, also plans to buy SpaceX’s Starshield satellites, a militarized version of the internet satellites. Employees at Thiel-backed firms have found themselves in roles in the State Department, the Office of Management and Budget, Health and Human Services, and Social Security, per The Wall Street Journal. Thiel’s Palantir has already been awarded nearly $376 million since 2020 from the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2024, the company was also awarded at least $1.2 billion in Department of Defense contracts in 2024 and is in the running for another $100 million deal. Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX recently submitted a multibillion-dollar proposal for Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile-defense program, which would also add to Anduril’s existing contracts with the U.S. Army. Recently, Anduril and Microsoft took over a 2021 contract worth up to $22 billion to develop AR headsets, per the Journal. An Anduril executive, Michael Obadal, has been nominated to a top role at the Department of Defense. In his ethics disclosure, he stated that he would retain his Anduril stock if appointed. TechCrunch has reached out to Anduril, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Palantir, and SpaceX for comment. “This sort of concentration of private wealth and political power is ultimately very risky for our economy,” Weiner said. “Because instead of the government making decisions that are intended to foster competition, foster economic growth, you run the real risk that government decisions are going to instead be structured around protecting particular companies and particular industries from full economic competition.”

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m listening to Bowdoin College’s radio station, interspersed with ambient car honking noises. I am not in Maine. I am not in a car. I am at my desk. This is Internet Roadtrip. Internet Roadtrip is what I will call an MMORTG (massive multiplayer online road trip game). Neal Agarwal, the game’s creator, calls it a “road-trip simulator.” Every 10 seconds, viewers vote on what direction for the “car” to drive on Google Street View — or, you can vote to honk the horn or change the radio station. The direction with the most votes gets clicked, and the car continues on its scenic path to … wherever the chat decides to go. Internet Roadtrip is reminiscent of Twitch Plays Pokémon, an iconic stream from over 10 years ago in which viewers voted on what button to press as part of a collective Pokémon Red game. But Internet Roadtrip is far less chaotic — both because only a thousand or so people are playing at a time, and because we have better organizational tools than we did in the Twitch Plays Pokémon era (thank you, Discord). A radio station in Maine (WBOR) is currently curating songs for us in the in-game radio — Neal Agarwal (@neal.fun) 2025-05-12T19:56:38.315Z Progress on the virtual roadtrip is slow. The car moves at a pace slower than walking. Discord moderators have had to temper newcomers’ expectations, explaining that it’s pointless to suggest driving to Las Vegas from Maine, since it would likely take almost 10 months of real-world time to get there. The same goes for Alaska, but it’s not just a matter of time that’s the issue. “Google Street View works by taking multiple pictures and putting them together. In some areas of the roads leading to Alaska, there are gaps in pictures available and so we would get stuck there, were we to go to these roads,” the Discord FAQ reads. “All potential roads to Alaska have these gaps. We checked.” There is no objective on Internet Roadtrip, as opposed other Street View-based games like GeoGuessr. Some Discord members discussed driving to Canada, which is a somewhat realistic goal, given our current position in Maine. But the destination isn’t the goal — it’s the joy of spontaneously listening to a college radio from a liberal arts school with a thousand strangers on the internet, while taking in the scenic backroads of Blue Hill, Maine.

Google I/O, Google’s biggest developer conference of the year, is nearly upon us. Scheduled for May 20 to 21 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, I/O will showcase product announcements from across Google’s portfolio. Expect plenty of news relating to Android, Chrome, Google Search, YouTube, and — of course — Google’s AI-powered chatbot, Gemini. Earlier this week, Google hosted a separate event dedicated to Android updates: The Android Show. The company announced new ways to find lost Android phones and other items, additional device-level features for its Advanced Protection program, security tools to protect against scams and theft, and a new design language called Material 3 Expressive. Here’s what else you can expect. Gemini and AI Image Credits:Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images AI is the tech du jour, and Google, like its rivals, has been investing heavily in it. A shoo-in for I/O is a new addition (or several) to Google’s flagship Gemini family of AI models. Leaks over the past few weeks suggest that an updated Gemini Ultra model is on the way, Gemini Ultra being Google’s top-of-the-line Gemini offering. With this upgraded Gemini Ultra may come a pricier Gemini subscription. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Google offers a single premium tier, Gemini Advanced ($20 per month), to unlock additional capabilities in its Gemini chatbot, which is powered by the company’s Gemini models. But Google may soon launch two new plans, Premium Plus and Premium Pro. It’s not yet clear what benefits might be attached and how these plans might be priced relative to Gemini Advanced. Google will almost certainly talk about Astra, its wide-ranging effort to build AI apps and “agents” for real-time, multimodal understanding. Also probably on the agenda is Project Mariner, Google’s AI “agents” that can navigate and take action across the web on a user’s behalf. Folks on X spotted references to “Computer Use” in the code for Google’s AI Studio developer platform, which could well pertain to Mariner. Everything else Going by the official I/O schedule, Google will have plenty to discuss following The Android Show and I/O keynote addresses. The schedule lists sessions dedicated to Chrome and Google Cloud, Google Play (the Android app store), Android development tools, and Gemma, Google’s collection of “open” AI models. Last year, Google unveiled a few AI-themed surprises at I/O, including a set of models fine-tuned for education applications called LearnLM. An upgrade to Google’s viral podcast-generating NotebookLM could be one such surprise. Leaked code reveals a “Video Overviews” tool that presumably would create video summaries, most likely leveraging Google’s Veo 2 video-generating model. Updated: 3:19 p.m. Pacific: Added a list of new Android features announced during The Android Show.

OpenAI is poised to help develop a staggering 5-gigawatt data center campus in Abu Dhabi, positioning the company as a primary anchor tenant in what could become one of the world’s largest AI infrastructure projects, according to a new Bloomberg report. The facility would reportedly span an astonishing 10 square miles and consume power equivalent to five nuclear reactors, dwarfing any existing AI infrastructure announced by OpenAI or its competitors. (OpenAI has not yet returned TechCrunch’s request for comment, but to put that into perspective, that’s bigger than Monaco.) The UAE project, developed in partnership with G42 — an Abu Dhabi-based tech conglomerate — is part of OpenAI’s ambitious Stargate project, a joint venture announced in January that could see OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle build massive data centers around the globe stocked with powerful computer chips to support AI development. While OpenAI’s first Stargate campus in the U.S. — already under development in Abilene, Texas — is expected to reach 1.2 gigawatts, this Middle Eastern counterpart would more than quadruple that capacity. The project is emerging amid broader AI ties between the U.S. and UAE that have been years in the making, and have made some lawmakers nervous. OpenAI’s relationship with the UAE dates back to a 2023 partnership with G42 aimed at driving AI adoption in the Middle East. During a talk earlier that same year in Abu Dhabi, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman praised the UAE, saying it “has been talking about AI since before it was cool.” As with much of the AI world, these relationships are… complicated. Founded in 2018, G42 is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security advisor and younger brother of the country’s ruler. Its embrace by OpenAI raised concerns in late 2023 among U.S. officials, who feared that G42 could enable China’s government to gain access to advanced U.S. technology. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW These concerns focused on G42’s “active relationships” with blacklisted entities, including Huawei and Beijing Genomics Institute, as well as ties to individuals connected to China’s intelligence efforts. Following pressure from U.S. lawmakers, G42’s CEO told Bloomberg in early 2024 that the company was shifting its strategy, saying: “All of our China investments that were previously made are already divested. Because of that, of course, we have no need anymore for any physical China presence.” Soon after, Microsoft — a major shareholder in OpenAI with its own broader interests in the region — announced a $1.5 billion investment in G42, and its president, Brad Smith, joined G42’s board of directors.

Sonali De Rycker, a general partner at Accel and one of Europe’s most influential venture capitalists, is bullish about the continent’s prospects in AI. But she’s wary of regulatory overreach that could hamstring its momentum. At a TechCrunch StrictlyVC evening earlier this week in London, De Rycker reflected on Europe’s place in the global AI race, balancing optimism with realism. “We have all the pieces,” she told those gathered for the event. “We have the entrepreneurs, we have the ambition, we have the schools, we have the capital, and we have the talent.” All that’s missing, she argued, is the ability to “unleash” that potential at scale. The obstacle? Europe’s complex regulatory landscape and, in part, its pioneering but controversial Artificial Intelligence Act. De Rycker acknowledged that regulations have a role to play, especially in high-risk sectors like healthcare and finance. Still, she said she worries that the AI Act’s broad reach and potentially stifling fines could deter innovation at the very moment European startups need space to iterate and grow. “There’s a real opportunity to make sure that we go fast and address what we’re capable of,” she said. “The issue is that we are also faced with headwinds on regulation.” The AI Act, which imposes stringent rules on applications deemed “high risk,” from credit scoring to medical imaging, has raised red flags among investors like De Rycker. While the goals of ethical AI and consumer protection are laudable, she fears the net may be cast too wide, potentially discouraging early-stage experimentation and entrepreneurship. That urgency is amplified by shifting geopolitics. With U.S. support for Europe’s defense and economic autonomy waning under the current Trump administration, De Rycker sees this moment as a decisive one for the EU. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW “Now that Europe is being left to fend [for itself] in multiple ways,” she said, “we need to be self-sufficient, we need to be sovereign.” That means unlocking Europe’s full potential. De Rycker points to efforts like the “28th regime,” a framework aimed at creating a single set of rules for businesses across the EU, as crucial to creating a more unified, startup-friendly region. Currently, the mishmash of labor laws, licensing, and corporate structures across the countries creates friction and slows down progress. “If we were truly one region, the power you could unleash would be incredible,” she said. “We wouldn’t be having these same conversations about Europe lagging in tech.” In De Rycker’s view, Europe is slowly catching up, not just in innovation but in its embrace of risk and experimentation. Cities like Zurich, Munich, Paris, and London are starting to generate their own self-reinforcing ecosystems thanks to top-tier academic institutions and a growing base of experienced founders. Accel, for its part, has invested in over 70 cities across Europe and Israel, giving De Rycker a front-row seat to the continent’s fragmented but flourishing tech landscape. Still, on Tuesday night, she noted a stark contrast with the U.S. when it comes to adoption. “We see a lot more propensity for customers to experiment with AI in the U.S.,” she said. “They’re spending money on these kinds of speculative, early-stage companies. That flywheel keeps going.” Accel’s strategy reflects this reality. While the firm hasn’t backed any of the major foundational AI model companies like OpenAI or Anthropic, it has focused instead on the application layer. “We feel very comfortable with the application layer,” said De Rycker. “These foundational models are capital intensive and don’t really look like venture-backed companies.” Examples of promising bets include Synthesia, a video generation platform used in enterprise training, and Speak, a language learning app that recently jumped to a $1 billion valuation. De Rycker (who dodged questions about Accel’s reported talks with another big name in AI), sees these as early examples of how AI can create entirely new behaviors and business models. “We’re expanding total addressable markets at a rate we’ve never seen,” she said. “It feels like the early days of mobile. DoorDash and Uber weren’t just mobilized websites. They were brand new paradigms.” Ultimately, De Rycker sees this moment as both a challenge and a once-in-a-generation opportunity. If Europe leans too heavily into regulation, it risks stifling the innovation that could help it compete globally – not just in AI, but across the entire tech spectrum. “We’re in a supercycle,” she said. “These cycles don’t come often, and we can’t afford to be leashed.” With geopolitical uncertainty rising and the U.S. increasingly looking inward, Europe has little choice but to bet on itself. If it can strike the right balance, De Rycker believes it has everything it needs to lead. Asked by an attendee what EU founders can do to be more competitive with their U.S. counterparts, she didn’t hesitate. “I think they are [competitive],” she said, citing companies Accel has backed, including Supercell and Spotify. “These founders, they look no different.” You can catch catch the full conversation with De Rycker here :

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