Health insurance startup Alan reaches €5B valuation

30% of European unicorns may have lost their billion-dollar status, but not Alan. The French health insurance startup is now valued at €5 billion — approximately $5.83 billion, up from $4.5 billion in 2024. Created in 2016, Alan has grown into a team of 740 people serving one million employees,…

YouTube expands AI deepfake detection to politicians, government officials, and journalists

YouTube is expanding its likeness detection technology, which identifies AI-generated deepfakes, to a pilot group of government officials, political candidates, and journalists, the company announced Tuesday. Members of the pilot group will gain access to a tool that detects unauthorized AI-generated content and lets them request its removal if they…

Meta acquired Moltbook, the AI agent social network that went viral because of fake posts

Meta acquired Moltbook, the Reddit-like “social network” where AI agents using OpenClaw can communicate with one another. The news was first reported by Axios and later confirmed to TechCrunch. Moltbook is joining Meta Superintelligence Labs, a Meta spokesperson told us. Moltbook creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr will join the…

Anduril snaps up space surveillance firm ExoAnalytic Solutions

The first step to fighting a war in space is knowing what’s happening tens of thousands of miles above the planet. Toward that end, defense tech darling Anduril is buying boutique data firm ExoAnalytic Solutions. ExoAnalytic operates a network of 400 telescopes around the world, which it uses to track…

Legora reaches $5.55 billion valuation as AI legal tech boom endures

Legora, an AI platform for lawyers, is now valued at $5.55 billion following a $550 million Series D set to fuel its growth in the U.S. That’s despite growing competition with rival Harvey, but also with Microsoft Copilot and generalist large language models (LLMs). Publicly listed legal software companies saw…

Thinking Machines Lab inks massive compute deal with Nvidia

OpenAI co-founder Mira Murati’s two-year-old AI research lab has signed a sizable deal with semiconductor giant Nvidia. Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab announced it entered into a multi-year strategic partnership with AI semiconductor giant Nvidia on Tuesday. The size of the deal was not disclosed and includes the AI research lab…

US military contractor likely built iPhone hacking tools used by Russian spies in Ukraine

A mass hacking campaign targeting iPhone users in Ukraine and China used tools that were likely designed by U.S. military contractor L3Harris, TechCrunch has learned. The tools, which were intended for Western spies, wound up in the hands of various hacking groups, including Russian government spooks and Chinese cybercriminals. Last…

Google brings Gemini in Chrome to India

Google announced Wednesday that it is bringing Gemini integration for Chrome to new regions, including India, Canada, and New Zealand. The rollout will let users use Gemini in Chrome through a sidebar on desktop, enabling them to ask Google’s AI chatbot questions about the content on the screen, get information…

Mandiant’s founder just raised $190M for his autonomous AI agent security startup

Kevin Mandia, who founded the cybersecurity startup Mandiant in 2004 and sold it to Google for $5.4 billion in 2022, has launched a new AI-native cybersecurity startup with what the company claims is a record-breaking funding round. The new outfit, called Armadin, has raised $189.9 million in combined seed and…

AI-powered apps struggle with long-term retention, new report shows

With the top app stores flooded with AI apps, developers may think the best bet for turning a profit is to integrate artificial intelligence technology into their own products. However, a new study focused on the subscription app ecosystem across iOS, Android, and web is calling that assumption into question.…