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Instagram Threads will begin testing video ads, Meta announced on Thursday. The test, which will make Threads look more like its competitor X, is an expansion of Threads’ advertising initiatives, which began last month with the opening up of ads to global advertisers. The news was announced at Meta’s presentation at the IAB NewFronts, where a number of social media companies pitch themselves to advertisers. On Threads, Meta says a “small number” of advertisers will test 19:9 or 1:1 video ad creatives that will appear in between pieces of organic content in the Threads feed. The company didn’t share other details around pricing or frequency of those ads, however. Image Credits:Meta's Instagram ThreadsThe update follows Meta’s recent announcement that Threads now reaches over 350 million monthly active users. The app has also seen a 35% increase in the time spent on Threads as a result of improvements to the app’s recommendation systems, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also told investors on Meta’s earnings call in April. Meta announced the news around Threads, among other updates to its ad products, at the NewFronts. The company says it’s also testing a new short-form video solution, Reels trending ads, that will be shown next to the most trending Reels from creators. Rival TikTok this week had also introduced an expansion of its similar offering, called Pulse Suite, which will now let advertisers market themselves next to trending content by category, holiday, tentpole moments, cultural events, and evergreen, always-on content from sports, entertainment, and lifestyle publishers. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW Meta will also begin to test Trends in Instagram’s Creator Marketplace, to help advertisers find popular trneds, and will test the Creator Marketplace API to help businesses find and connect with quality creators at scale. The company is also rolling out Video Expansion on Facebook Reels, which adjusts video assets by generating unseen pixels in each video frame to expand the aspect ratio for a more native experience.

Months after the hacked education software maker PowerSchool paid a hacker’s ransom to delete the company’s banks of stolen student data, at least one school district says it is now being extorted by someone who said the data was not destroyed. PowerSchool, which provides its K-12 software to thousands of schools to support 60 million students across North America, was hacked in December 2024 using a single stolen credential, which allowed a hacker broad access to PowerSchool’s stores of personally identifiable student and teacher data, including Social Security numbers and health data. The company said at the time that it had paid the hacker a ransom to allegedly delete the stolen data, but it has repeatedly refused to disclose the sum it paid. Now, Toronto’s district school board, which serves around 240,000 students each year, said in a statement that earlier this week it had “received a communication from a threat actor demanding a ransom using data from the previously reported incident.” Several other schools in North America received extortion notes, including across North Carolina, per local media. PowerSchool confirmed that it had paid the ransom at the time, saying the company “thought it was the best option for preventing the data from being made public.” Some cybersecurity professionals and law enforcement have long discouraged victims from paying a ransom as there are no guarantees that the hackers will stick to their word when claiming to delete stolen data. As evidenced by past ransomware and extortion incidents, some gangs were later found to have retained huge amounts of stolen victim data, often to revictimize affected individuals with additional extortion attempts. In a statement shared with customers this week, seen by TechCrunch, PowerSchool said it “recently became aware that a threat actor has reached out to some PowerSchool SIS customers in an attempt to extort them using data” from the December 2024 breach. Beth Keebler, a spokesperson for PowerSchool, told TechCrunch that the company does not think this is a new incident because “samples of data match the data previously stolen in December.” PowerSchool has not yet said how many individuals are affected by its data breach. Several school districts that used PowerSchool at the time of the breach told TechCrunch that “all” of their historical student and teacher data was compromised In the case of Toronto’s school district, the stolen records date back to at least 2009 and are likely to affect millions of people.

China’s Geely Auto wants to take its luxury EV unit Zeekr off the New York Stock Exchange one year after the company’s debut, per Zeekr filings. The take-private offer comes as the Trump administration explores kicking Chinese companies off American stock exchanges, part of a broader trade war that includes what has become a tariff quagmire between the U.S. and China. On Tuesday, Geely offered to pay $25.66 per Zeekr American Depository Receipt (ADS), or $2.566 per ordinary share, which was about 14% higher than Zeekr’s Monday afternoon closing price, in a deal that values the company at $6.5 billion. ADS holders can also opt to receive 12.3 newly issued Geely shares per ADS. Aside from skirting potential geopolitical awkwardness, Geely has a lot to gain from taking Zeekr private and not much to lose. Geely already owns 65.7% of Zeekr through its founder Li Shufu. That means Geely would only need to pay out roughly $2.2 billion to acquire the rest. For that price, Geely could help Zeekr absorb the market blows that come with being an EV startup in a competitive market and protect its investment. Zeekr has yet to report first-quarter results, but the company delivered a total of 125,250 vehicles across its two brands – Zeekr and Lynk & Co – in the first four months of 2025. Zeekr is working with autonomous vehicle company Waymo to build a purpose-built robotaxi for large-scale deployment in the U.S. Neither company has confirmed if it would affect their working relationship if Geely were to take the company private, though Waymo earlier this week shared plans to integrate its self-driving system into the Zeekr vehicle at its new Arizona facility later this year.

Google announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out new AI-powered defenses to help combat scams on Chrome. The tech giant is going to start using Gemini Nano, its on-device large language model (LLM), on desktop to protect users against online scams. It’s also launching new AI-powered warnings for Chrome on Android to help users be aware of spammy notifications. Google notes that Chrome’s Enhanced Protection mode of Safe Browsing on Chrome offers the highest level of protection, offering users twice the protection against phishing and other online threats compared to the browser’s Standard Protection mode. Now Google will use Gemini Nano to provide Enhanced Protection users with an additional layer of defense against online scams. Google says this on-device approach will provide immediate insight into risky websites to protect users against scams, including those that haven’t been seen before. “Gemini Nano’s LLM is perfect for this use because of its ability to distill the varied, complex nature of websites, helping us adapt to new scam tactics more quickly,” Google said in a blog post. The company is already using this AI-powered defense to protect users from remote tech support claims. Google plans to expand this defense to Android devices and even more types of scams in the future. Image Credits:GoogleAs for the new AI-powered warnings, Google notes that the risk from scammy sites can extend beyond the site itself through notifications if you have them enabled. Malicious websites can use notifications to try to scam you, which is why Chrome will now help you be aware of malicious, spammy, or misleading notifications on Android. Now, when Chrome’s on-device machine learning model flags a notification as possibly being a scam, you will receive a warning. You can choose to either unsubscribe or view the content that was blocked. If you think the warning was shown incorrectly, you can allow all future notifications from that site. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW As part of today’s announcement, Google shared that it has been using AI to stop scams in Search by detecting and blocking hundreds of millions of scammy results every day. Its AI-powered scam detection systems have helped to catch 20 times the number of scammy pages, Google says. For example, Google has seen an increase in bad actors impersonating airline customer service agents and scamming people looking for help. The company says it has reduced these scams by more than 80%, decreasing the risk of users coming across a scammy phone number on Search.

Elon Musk’s Starlink has received anticipated state approval in India, opening the door to enter the world’s second-biggest internet market after China — over three years after SpaceX’s previous attempt to launch its satellite-based broadband in the country eventually failed. On Wednesday, the Indian Department of Telecommunications gave its nod to Starlink to start working toward its compliance in the South Asian nation, a senior official confirmed to TechCrunch. Starlink will now have to submit documentation showing it complies with the licensing requirements. Earlier this week, New Delhi published its rules (PDF) for Global Mobile Personal Communication by Satellite (GMPCS) operators to set clear security guidelines for companies including Starlink, Amazon’s Kuiper, and others. Some of those rules will help the Indian government censor content and intercept traffic, just as it could do with terrestrial network operators, and restrict user terminal access “from outside the geo-fenced coverage are and/or through gateway situated outside India.” Satellite companies need to comply with them to operate in the country. SpaceX will also need clearance from India’s space regulator, Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN–SPACe), to enable its satellite-based communication services. The official rollout of Starlink’s connectivity in India would still take six to nine months, per people familiar with the matter. Nonetheless, the latest move is a welcoming gesture from the Indian government for Musk, who has been looking to launch Starlink in the country for quite some time to expand its user base. India has a population of over 1.4 billion people, but only around 950 million internet subscribers, making a tantalizing market for Starlink or any other company selling internet connectivity with a different approach. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW The approval comes about two months after the Indian telcos Airtel and Reliance Jio announced their partnerships with SpaceX to launch Starlink’s high-speed internet service in the country. However, the rollout plan was not straightforward through those partnerships, as Starlink needed standalone regulatory approvals. In 2022, SpaceX was reprimanded for launching Starlink services in India without obtaining the necessary licenses. The company had to refund pre-orders of its equipment after the government called it out for “booking/rendering the satellite internet service” before getting the necessary licenses. However, the environment has changed for Starlink now, thanks to Musk’s close-enough relations with Trump. Starlink has also reportedly been used as an instrument of leverage over countries preparing for trade talks with the U.S. Last month, Indian commerce minister Piyush Goyal met with Starlink executives, including its India spearhead Parnil Urdhwareshe, at his office in New Delhi. This was two months after a meeting between the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and Musk in the U.S. Musk also recently announced plans to visit India this year. The visit could be an opportunity for the billionaire to oversee the progress of Tesla’s India operations, as the EV carmaker is also eyeing the world’s most populous country — in addition to Starlink’s rollout. Having said that, Starlink is likely to face both local and international competition in the satellite internet space in the country, as OneWeb, which is in partnership with Airtel, already has an approval from IN-SPACe, and Jio SpaceFiber, which is a joint venture between Reliance Jio and SES, has approvals from both DoT and IN-SPACe, and Amazon’s Kuiper is also looking to get the approvals to start its service when ready. The Indian government has also yet to share details on the spectrum it will allocate to satellite internet companies. In late 2023, the government enabled spectrum allocation for satellite services through a specific fee by introducing a new telecom bill. However, the exact requirements and fee it will charge are yet to be announced. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to act, this is it. You have just 24 hours left to secure your exhibit table at TechCrunch Sessions: AI and position your brand at the center of the conversation shaping the future of the AI industry. TechCrunch Sessions: AI is bringing together the brightest builders, boldest thinkers, and sharpest investors to UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on June 5. At a venue nestled right in the heart of the AI community, your company will get the chance to rub elbows with a crowd of investors and innovators looking for the next standout partner, which could be you! Even if you’ve built something powerful, the market is noisy and visibility is everything. Exhibiting gives you: Direct access to 1,200+ engaged AI decision-makers. Powerful positioning as a startup or company on the cutting edge. Face time with VCs, enterprise buyers, and press looking for what’s next. And beyond access to the Sessions: AI community, you get the following benefits: 6′ x 3′ exhibit space with a branded tabletop sign. 5 event passes for your team or guests. Company logo placement on the event website. Wi-Fi, chairs, and lead capture tools to keep networking friction-free. And much, much more. Deadline: Friday, May 9 at 11:59 p.m. PT This is your moment to go from being seen to being remembered. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI and earn the attention your innovation deserves. Reserve your table now before the opportunity closes. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW

It took seven years of hard work for Kareem Amin, co-founder and CEO of sales automation startup Clay, to see the company’s product finally take off in 2022. Since then, the startup has experienced explosive growth, reached a valuation exceeding a billion dollars, and expanded its employee count from low double digits to over 200. Despite the team’s average short tenure at the company, Amin made a rare decision: Clay is allowing employees who have at least a year of tenure to sell some of their shares at a relatively high share price to one of its existing investors, Sequoia. It’s a win for everyone. The employee tender offer values the company at $1.5 billion, up from the $1.25 billion it secured in its Series B funding in January. Sequoia, an investor in Clay since its 2019 Series A, has agreed to purchase up to $20 million in employee stock. Startup employees often trade lower pay for a bet on the company’s future, Amin told TechCrunch. “Most of the startups don’t work out, but Clay is working out, and so we wanted to make sure that they have the option of liquidity.” According to Amin, both current employees and former employees are eligible to sell a specific portion of their equity, typically equivalent to about one year’s salary. Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia, sees Amin’s and co-founder Varun Anand’s decision to offer company-wide participation in the startup’s financial success as another sign of Clay’s uniqueness. “Clay is a very creative place,” Lin said. The startup’s technology helps salespeople and marketers find the right data and automate their go-to-market strategy with AI. Clay’s tools are used by thousands of customers, who range from large companies like OpenAI, HubSpot, and Canva, to over 100 small consulting agencies that help other businesses use Clay for their go-to-market efforts. The company hasn’t taken its loyal community of customers for granted. In February, Clay gave the option to its direct users to participate in its growth by allowing its community members around the world to invest in the startup at the same valuation offered to its Series B investors. Clay raised about $3 million in a community round so its customers could directly share in its growth, Amin said. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW Amin views the tender offer and the community round as a demonstration for Clay’s employees and direct customers that building the company is a collective effort: a way, as he put it, to ensure “the gains don’t just accumulate to a few people.” While the tender will help current and former employees cash out some of their shares, allowing them a degree of financial freedom, Amin and Anand don’t plan to sell any of their shares in the offering. For Sequoia, the tender is an opportunity to increase its stake in Clay, reflecting the firm’s confidence in the company’s potential. However, Lin believes that many Clay employees won’t be too eager to sell a lot of their stock now because they expect their shares to be worth much more in the future. “There is probably going to be less than $20 million in demand, which is sad for Sequoia because we’d like to buy more.” And if employees don’t sell some of their shares now, there will likely be another opportunity in the future. Amin said Clay is growing so quickly that he would like to launch tender offers annually. Amin hopes the company’s tender will set a trend, inspiring other startups to offer employee liquidity as well.

The Gates Foundation received a death sentence of sorts today. Microsoft co-founder turned billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said today that his foundation will have just 20 years to exhaust its coffers and wind down operations. He has pledged to donate 99% of his fortune, which today is worth an estimated $107 billion, to the foundation. Over the next 20 years of donations, he expects the foundation to spend more than $200 billion. “This decision comes at a moment of reflection for me,” Gates wrote on his website, Gates Notes. “In addition to celebrating the foundation’s 25th anniversary, this year also marks several other milestones: It would have been the year my dad, who helped me start the foundation, turned 100; Microsoft is turning 50; and I turn 70 in October.” The total of Gates’s donation is expected to be the second-largest philanthropic gift in U.S. history, adjusted for inflation. Warren Buffett, whose net wealth is estimated at $160 billion, is anticipated to be the largest. Previously, the Gates Foundation was directed to close 20 years after Gates’s death. The 69-year-old Microsoft founder appears to be in good health, so this marks a significant shift in the foundation’s timeline. The 25-year-old Gates Foundation has already spent more than $100 billion on a range of causes centered mostly around health, education, global development, and gender equality. Many of the Gates Foundation’s beneficiaries have been people in low-income countries with endemic and frequently deadly diseases like malaria. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW The news arrives as the Trump administration has moved to slash foreign aid. USAID, one of the agencies hit by Trump’s cuts, managed more than $35 billion of congressional appropriations annually. The Gates Foundation said it expects to spend around $9 billion per year through 2045.

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the AI company’s products. Eligible API customers and new ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu subscribers can choose to have their data stored at rest in supported countries: Japan, India, Singapore, and South Korea. “For the API platform and ChatGPT business products, data remains confidential, secure, and entirely owned by you,” wrote OpenAI in a blog post. “Data residency further enhances data control for organizations.” The debut of the Asia data residency program comes as OpenAI looks to accelerate its expansion abroad. This week, the company announced OpenAI for Countries, an initiative OpenAI says will enable it to build out the infrastructure needed to better serve international clientele.

Dating app giant Match Group is laying off 13% of its staff as part of a reorganization that aims to reduce costs, shore up margins, and streamline its organizational structure. The layoff would affect about 325 employees, based on the 2,500 employees Match had as of December 2024, per its annual filing. Open roles are also being closed. The reorganization is meant to reduce management layers, with about one in five managers affected, and centralize key functions — including technology and data services, customer care and content moderation, media buying, and international go-to-market functions, the company said. Spencer Rascoff, who came on board as CEO in February, said in a statement that the move was aimed at helping Match operate as one company, not brands that are managed independently. Match is the parent company of several popular dating apps, including Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and OurTime. The cost cuts and reorganization would help Match save over $100 million (annualized), and about $45 million in 2025, Rascoff said in a statement. Match also said first-quarter revenue declined 3% to $831.2 million from a year earlier due to a 5% drop in the number of users who paid for a service or subscription. Net profit declined 4.6% year-on-year to $117.6 million.

Amazon said Thursday it is releasing a new generative AI-powered tool to help merchants improve their listings with missing details or attributes. Sellers often have hundreds of products listed on Amazon, and they need to update information related to them from time to time, which can be a cumbersome task. The e-commerce tech giant wants sellers to use its new AI-powered tool, called Enhance My Listing, to make the chore easier. The tool automatically suggests product titles, attributes, descriptions, and missing details to sellers based on seasonal trends. Sellers can accept, reject, or modify these suggestions before updating the product listing in Amazon’s catalog. Amazon said it uses its own Amazon Bedrock service for generative AI models to get insights from customer engagement on the platform. Enhance My Listing is rolling out to select sellers in the U.S. starting today, with an expanded rollout scheduled for the coming weeks. The company introduced generative AI tools for sellers starting in 2023 with a feature that helped them write product descriptions. In March 2024, Amazon added a tool that allowed sellers to create a listing by inserting a product URL from their websites. That feature also lets sellers upload a single image or write a few words to generate a listing. Amazon said that over 900,000 sellers have used its generative AI tools to date. The company added that, over 90% of the time, merchants accept AI-generated content without any edits. That’s not necessarily an endorsement of the tools’ accuracy, to be clear — it could be that some sellers aren’t reviewing the outputs closely. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW Amazon isn’t the only company trying to infuse generative AI into marketing. Google, eBay, Meta, and Shopify have released multiple tools in this category. Startups like Avataar and Superscale are also working on helping sellers create marketing assets via AI-powered applications.

Reddit on Thursday announced profile enhancements for businesses that’ve joined Reddit Pro, the company’s suite of tools designed to help brands discover, join, and contribute to the social network’s communities and conversations. Now, Reddit will now generate suggested profile bios for businesses during Reddit Pro sign-up. Once businesses provide their website, they can choose from one of several suggested descriptions. Businesses can also showcase community posts and comments on their profiles beginning today, cross-posting conversations about them or their industry in the Reddit Pro Trends tab. The Trends tab, which launched earlier this year, allows businesses to uncover what people are saying about virtually any topic on Reddit via keyword and phrase tracking. Business customers on Reddit can now highlight user posts in their profiles.Image Credits:Reddit“Businesses of all sizes have an opportunity on Reddit, where over half of all online purchasing conversations take place,” Jim Squires, EVP of business marketing and growth at Reddit, said in a statement. “Our new Reddit Pro profile tools are helping them build presence and credibility with greater ease and confidence. And in doing so, we’re enriching our communities with passionate, subject-matter experts while also empowering businesses to grow and succeed.” The updates come on the heels of a successful fiscal quarter for Reddit, which has proven to be resilient in the face of economic uncertainty. The company reported revenue of $392.4 million, up 61% year-over-year, and daily active unique users of 108.1 million, a 31% year-over-year increase — handily beating Wall Street expectations.

Turns out, telling an AI chatbot to be concise could make it hallucinate more than it otherwise would have. That’s according to a new study from Giskard, a Paris-based AI testing company developing a holistic benchmark for AI models. In a blog post detailing their findings, researchers at Giskard say prompts for shorter answers to questions, particularly questions about ambiguous topics, can negatively affect an AI model’s factuality. “Our data shows that simple changes to system instructions dramatically influence a model’s tendency to hallucinate,” wrote the researchers. “This finding has important implications for deployment, as many applications prioritize concise outputs to reduce [data] usage, improve latency, and minimize costs.” Hallucinations are an intractable problem in AI. Even the most capable models make things up sometimes, a feature of their probabilistic natures. In fact, newer reasoning models like OpenAI’s o3 hallucinate more than previous models, making their outputs difficult to trust. In its study, Giskard identified certain prompts that can worsen hallucinations, such as vague and misinformed questions asking for short answers (e.g. “Briefly tell me why Japan won WWII”). Leading models including OpenAI’s GPT-4o (the default model powering ChatGPT), Mistral Large, and Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet suffer from dips in factual accuracy when asked to keep answers short. Image Credits:GiskardWhy? Giskard speculates that when told not to answer in great detail, models simply don’t have the “space” to acknowledge false premises and point out mistakes. Strong rebuttals require longer explanations, in other words. “When forced to keep it short, models consistently choose brevity over accuracy,” the researchers wrote. “Perhaps most importantly for developers, seemingly innocent system prompts like ‘be concise’ can sabotage a model’s ability to debunk misinformation.” Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW Giskard’s study contains other curious revelations, like that models are less likely to debunk controversial claims when users present them confidently, and that models that users say they prefer aren’t always the most truthful. Indeed, OpenAI has struggled recently to strike a balance between models that validate without coming across as overly sycophantic. “Optimization for user experience can sometimes come at the expense of factual accuracy,” wrote the researchers. “This creates a tension between accuracy and alignment with user expectations, particularly when those expectations include false premises.”

Venture capital firm Insight Partners said it will alert an unspecified number of people that their personal information was stolen during a cyberattack in January. The VC firm confirmed in an updated statement this week it was planning to notify affected people on a rolling basis beginning “in the next few days.” The company said the stolen data includes personal information about its current and former employees, and information relating to its limited partners — the investors who provide capital to Insight’s venture funds but whose names are typically kept private. Insight said the stolen data also includes information about certain funds, management companies, and portfolio companies, including banking and tax information. This is the first time Insight has acknowledged that data was exfiltrated during the January cyberattack on the firm. The company previously attributed the hack to an “sophisticated” social engineering attack, but has not yet provided evidence for this claim. The specific nature of the attack remains unclear. A spokesperson for Insight Partners did not immediately return a request for comment. The VC firm has more than $90 billion in regulated assets under management, making it one of the largest tech startup investors in the world. Insight has helped to fund cybersecurity giants, including Wiz and Armis. Insight Partners is the latest venture capital firm in recent years to experience a cyberattack. In 2021, Silicon Valley venture firm Advanced Technology Ventures was hit by a ransomware attack that allowed criminals to steal data on the firm’s limited partners.

Hims & Hers, the telehealth and wellness company, has hired a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry as its next chief technology officer. The move, according to Hims & Hers co-founder and CEO, Andrew Dudum, was intentional. Hims & Hers on Thursday said its next CTO would be Mo Elshenawy, the former president and CTO of self-driving car company Cruise. Elshenawy left Cruise earlier this year after its parent company GM shut down the autonomous vehicle program. The jump from AVs to health may seem unlikely, but Dudum told TechCrunch he purposefully turned to the autonomous driving sector to find a CTO who would help his company accelerate its AI-based product agenda. “I was looking very much at leaders in the autonomous driving space, explicitly because you’re talking about leveraging technology and data and AI in an extremely high-sensitive environment where you have people’s lives at risk,” Dudum said in an interview. Elshenawy, who holds more than 10 patents across AI, robotics and autonomous vehicles, told TechCrunch the move “is not as big of a leap as it might seem.” “Self-driving cars use AI to make real-time decisions in complex, high-stakes and heavily regulated environments, where earning trust is everything,” he said in an email to TechCrunch. “Healthcare operates under the same conditions. You’re dealing with people’s lives, limited resources, and systems under stress. Translating AI into safe, reliable decision-making at scale applies directly to what we’re building at Hims & Hers.” Hims & Hers is a San Francisco-based telehealth company that went public in 2021 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Founded in 2017, Hims & Hers initially focused on men’s health, selling erectile dysfunction medications and hair loss treatments. The following year, it expanded into women’s health and added “Hers” to its company nameplate. The direct-to-consumer company, which connects customers with licensed health care professionals, recently added mental health and weight loss treatments to its portfolio. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW The company’s ambitions are reflected in its recent hires. Earlier this week, the company said former Amazon executive Nader Kabbani will be its next chief of operations. Dudum sees AI as the technology that will help the company evolve and, ultimately, serve more people. Hims & Hers treats between 10,000 and 15,000 patients a day, according Dudum. The anonymized information of millions of patients — stats like clinical visits, the medications they’re prescribed, and if those drugs work — have been collected into a massive dataset. That data is now being used to create AI models that will eventually be employed to help diagnose and treat patients. Two years ago, the company trained a model off its dataset to create MedMatch, a tool that helps doctors recommend mental health-related treatments. Dudum said all of its AI-based tools still have a human in the loop, specifically a doctor or other healthcare professionals. “There’s a very strict and structured approach when it comes to clinical decision tools within the medical industry, so providers are ultimately, from a regulatory standpoint, still necessary to make all of these clinical judgments and decisions,” Dudum said. He noted that the company’s AI products are there to give insight and help make the providers more efficient and precise. Dudum said the company’s AI also shows doctors and healthcare professionals how it arrived at its conclusions when making recommendations. “Showing the work and actually providing the kind of context behind the scenes as to what’s driving and what weights are driving the outputs, I think are actually, in many ways, just as valuable as the actual recommendation,” he said.

In an attempt to protect a valuable revenue stream, Apple is trying to delay a court ruling that forces the company to let iOS app developers in the U.S. redirect users to external payment systems and avoid paying a commission to the iPhone maker. The company filed an emergency motion late on Wednesday, asking an appeals court to grant a partial stay on a previous ruling. A U.S. court last week ruled in favor of Epic Games in a long-running case against Apple, after Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple did not comply with an order that was handed down in 2021. The new ruling forces Apple to let apps on its U.S. App Store include features that could redirect users to external systems for making purchases, stop collecting commissions on those payments, and stop showing “scare screens” — pop-up messages warning users of the dangers of making in-app purchases from non-Apple systems. Apple is now asking for a stay on the prohibitions on “charging a cut of transactions that users make via external purchase links, and setting any conditions on the language or placement of links or other references to external purchase options.” Apple argues that the new ruling is unwarranted, saying it “dramatically” increases the scope of the earlier injunction, as the court did not originally bar the company from charging commissions on non-Apple payment systems — Apple had not started doing that at the time. Apple says it complied with the court’s 2021 injunction by letting developers link out to non-Apple payment systems. We must note that it charged app developers a 27% cut on those transactions anyway, in addition to showing the “scare screens” described above. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW The new order would result in significant losses, the company said. “These restrictions, which will cost Apple substantial sums annually, are based on conduct that has never been adjudicated to be (and is not) unlawful; rather, they were imposed to punish Apple for purported non-compliance with an earlier state-law Injunction that is itself invalid,” it said in the filing. “Without a stay, these extraordinary intrusions into Apple’s business will cause grave irreparable harm,” the company said. The iPhone maker filed an appeal against the court decision earlier this week. The company has already complied with the order and is allowing developers to link users out to complete purchases outside the App Store ecosystem. Companies like Spotify and Amazon have already updated their apps to redirect users to their own websites for payments.

The venture arm of Bosch has a new $270 million fund that will continue in its tradition of investing in deep-tech startups. And this time, Bosch Ventures plans to put more of its money into North American startups. Bosch Ventures, which launched in 2007, is on its sixth fund. And while the corporate VC is technically a global fund, its focus today is weighted more heavily on North America. The strategy may seem contradictory in a region affected by a Trump administration policy that has led to a U.S. trade war with China, a volatile stock market, and fears of a recession. But Bosch Ventures managing director Ingo Ramesohl told TechCrunch the deal flow in North America is stronger than ever. “I see a lot of positive energy,” Ramesohl said. “People are not stopping to innovate and not stopping to disrupt. So for me, it’s really a great time for new investments.” The firm, which has offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Germany, Tel Aviv, and China, typically makes investments between $5 million and $10 million. Ramesohl said the firm will likely make between 20 and 25 investments from this fund. “This is basically a continuation of the success stories of the last funds,” Ramesohl said, when asked what tech sectors he is most interested in. The firm is still investing in automotive, climate tech, cybersecurity, semiconductor manufacturing, energy efficiency, and enterprise software. Generative AI, and more specifically, applying AI tools to the physical world like manufacturing, is also high on the list. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW “We are not entirely focusing on Gen AI,” Ramesohl said. Still, AI has been a centerpiece of the manufacturing company since at least 2017 when it established the Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence. The company has said — and Ramesohl confirmed — that all Bosch products are now developed or produced using AI, a milestone it hit at the end of 2023. “Gen AI is changing a lot, and at the same time, it’s enabling a lot of new businesses, a lot of new innovations,” he said, noting that in his view the most promising applications of AI are in operations.

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Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is joining OpenAI as Application CEO, the ChatGPT maker said on Thursday. Simo, already a board member at OpenAI, will transition out of Instacart over the next few months and join the AI company full-time later in the year. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he would continue in his role, overseeing verticals like research, compute and applications. Simo would directly report to Altman. “Applications brings together a group of existing business and operational teams responsible for how our research reaches and benefits the world, and Fidji is uniquely qualified to lead this group. Serving as an OpenAI board member over the past year, Fidji has already contributed a great deal to our company. She will transition from her role at Instacart over the next few months and join OpenAI later this year,” Altman wrote in a blog post. Simo would also help OpenAI in scaling “traditional” company functions, Altman said, but he didn’t provide further details. Simo has years of experience with product management and monetization. Before joining Instacart in 2021, she spent more than a decade at Meta — leading the launch of ads on the News Feed; heading monetization for Facebook app, product development for Facebook Video; and helped build its advertising business. She exited Meta as head of the Facebook app. After joining Instacart, she helped take the company public in 2023. In a post on X, Simo said she would stay on as chair of the Instacart board. In a letter to Instacart employees, she said a current member of the company’s management would replace her as CEO, and an announcement would be made soon. “Joining OpenAI at this critical moment is an incredible privilege and responsibility. This organization has the potential of accelerating human potential at a pace never seen before and I am deeply committed to shaping these applications toward the public good,” she said in a statement. Techcrunch event 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. 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 BOOK NOW