Plus, Lyft is adding autonomous shuttles in 2026 as Uber inks more self-driving deals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

When DeepSeek, Alibaba, and other Chinese firms released their AI models, Western researchers quickly noticed they sidestepped questions critical of the Chinese Communist Party. U.S. officials later confirmed that these tools are engineered to reflect Beijing’s talking points, raising concerns about censorship and bias. Learn more about your ad cho…

LegalOn Technologies, a Tokyo- and San Francisco-headquartered legal tech startup that has built an AI contract review software for legal teams, has raised $50 million in Series E funding led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, along with existing investor World Innovation Lab (WiL), and new investors Mori Hamada & Matsumoto Learn more …

Plus - Snapchat will now let your friends know you’ve made it home safe; X to test using Community Notes to find the posts everyone likes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

Apple launches $19.99 monthly AppleCare One subscription with coverage for three devices Also, Snap Map's new "Home Safe" feature sends one-time alerts to friends, so you don't need to remember to message others that you're back safely. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices…

All-electric truck fleet startup Nevoya has landed a fresh round of capital and plans to expand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

DroneDogs can be sent to places unsafe for humans or real dogs and can do tasks like dangerous chemical detection. In other news, less than a week after becoming Europe’s latest unicorn, Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable has now crossed the $100 million annual recurring revenue mark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adch…

Proton's new AI assistant Lumo promises to keep user data private with zero-access encryption, no logging, and an incognito mode. In other news, NetZeroNitrogen's bacteria approach has attracted investors and $6.6 million in seed funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices…

Plus - Meta researchers are developing a gesture-controlled wristband that can interact with a computer; Uber is finally letting women riders in the US match with women drivers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

RA Capital Planetary Health closed a $120 million fund. Here's the rubric two investors use to determine where to place their fund's money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

Karun Kaushik and Selin Kocalar weren’t planning to raise a Series A so soon. Their AI compliance startup, Delve, which announced a $3 million seed round in January, was growing fast and signing customers at a steady clip. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

The spyware maker was banned from the surveillance industry in 2021, but was caught flouting the ban less than a year later. Now the founder wants the ban lifted altogether. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

Startup Mixus has built an AI agent platform that not only keeps humans in the workflow, but also allows those humans to interact with agents directly from their email or Slack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

Plus - Etsy faces user boycott over ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ branded products; Amazon acquires Bee, the AI wearable that records everything you say Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

The new SS7 bypass-attack tricks phone operators into disclosing a cell subscriber's location, in some cases down to a few hundred meters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

Cursor-maker Anysphere is snapping up top talent from AI enterprise startups in an effort to compete with Microsoft's GitHub Copilot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

Tiffany Luck, a partner at NEA, outlined what she looks for in a pitch, during a presentation at TechCrunch’s All Stage event in Boston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

SpaceX has been moving at breakneck pace, rapid progress comes at a cost. Worker injury rates at its Starbase facility are almost six times higher than the average, data reveals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

Plus -Grok’s AI companions drove downloads, but its latest model is the one making money; ChatGPT users send 2.5 billion prompts a day Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

OpenAI announced the launch of ChatGPT agent, which the company claims to be its most capable AI agent product yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye, one of the first among the small number of Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture capital, announced on Thursday the closure of her award-winning beauty startup Ami Colé. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

Hadrian wants to revolutionize American manufacturing through automation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch

San Francisco-based startup Confident Security wants to be “the Signal for AI." The company just came out of stealth with $4.2 million and a tool that wraps around AI models to guarantee data stays private. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesVon TechCrunch