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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei believes today’s AI models hallucinate, or make things up and present them as if they’re true, at a lower rate than humans do, he said during a press briefing at Anthropic’s first developer event, Code with Claude, in San Francisco on Thursday. Amodei said all this in the midst of a larger point he was making: that AI hallucinations are not a limitation on Anthropic’s path to AGI — AI systems with human-level intelligence or better. “It really depends how you measure it, but I suspect that AI models probably hallucinate less than humans, but they hallucinate in more surprising ways,” Amodei said, responding to TechCrunch’s question. Anthropic’s CEO is one of the most bullish leaders in the industry on the prospect of AI models achieving AGI. In a widely circulated paper he wrote last year, Amodei said he believed AGI could arrive as soon as 2026. During Thursday’s press briefing, the Anthropic CEO said he was seeing steady progress to that end, noting that “the water is rising everywhere.” “Everyone’s always looking for these hard blocks on what [AI] can do,” said Amodei. “They’re nowhere to be seen. There’s no such thing.” Other AI leaders believe hallucination presents a large obstacle to achieving AGI. Earlier this week, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said today’s AI models have too many ‘holes,’ and get too many obvious questions wrong. For example, earlier this month, a lawyer representing Anthropic was forced to apologize in court after they used Claude to create citations in a court filing, and the AI chatbot hallucinated and got names and titles wrong. It’s difficult to verify Amodei’s claim, largely because most hallucination benchmarks pit AI models against each other; they don’t compare models to humans. Certain techniques seem to be helping lower hallucination rates, such as giving AI models access to web search. Separately, some AI models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4.5, have notably lower hallucination rates on benchmarks compared to early generations of 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 However, there’s also evidence to suggest hallucinations are actually getting worse in advanced reasoning AI models. OpenAI’s o3 and o4-mini models have higher hallucination rates than OpenAI’s previous-gen reasoning models, and the company doesn’t really understand why. Later in the press briefing, Amodei pointed out that TV broadcasters, politicians, and humans in all types of professions make mistakes all the time. The fact that AI makes mistakes too is not a knock on its intelligence, according to Amodei. However, Anthropic’s CEO acknowledged the confidence with which AI models present untrue things as facts might be a problem. In fact, Anthropic has done a fair amount of research on the tendency for AI models to deceive humans, a problem that seemed especially prevalent in the company’s recently launched Claude Opus 4. Apollo Research, a safety institute given early access to test the AI model, found that an early version of Claude Opus 4 exhibited a high tendency to scheme against humans and deceive them. Apollo went as far as to suggest Anthropic shouldn’t have released that early model. Anthropic said it came up with some mitigations that appeared to address the issues Apollo raised. Amodei’s comments suggest that Anthropic may consider an AI model to be AGI, or equal to human-level intelligence, even if it still hallucinates. An AI that hallucinates may fall short of AGI by many people’s definition, though.

Hinge Health, a digital physical therapist company, closed its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday at $37.56, up about 17% over the $32 IPO price it set the previous day. That’s a good first-day result. But even with the pop, Hinge’s public valuation is significantly less than its last private market one. The 11-year-old company’s approximate market capitalization, excluding employee options, was about $3 billion, which is less than half of the $6.2 billion Hinge attained in its October 2021 Series E funding round, which was led by Tiger Global Management. Until recently, companies went to great lengths to avoid down-round IPOs. However, the stigma associated with going public below the last private valuation has lessened significantly if that valuation was during the heady 2020-2021 era. Companies whose IPOs are priced lower than their last private valuation by VCs include Reddit, which debuted last year at about $5.4 billion, roughly half its $10 billion valuation from 2021. Another example is ServiceTitan, whose IPO valued it at about $6.3 billion, below the $7.6 billion valuation it secured in a Series H round two years earlier. Hinge Health’s IPO raised $437 million, with about $237 million in proceeds going directly to the company and the remainder to its existing investors. The company’s largest outside shareholders are Insight Partners, which holds 19% of all stock, and Atomico, which has 15% of all shares. Other venture capital firms that own approximately 8% of Hinge’s shares include 11.2 Capital, Coatue, Tiger Global, and Bessemer Venture Partners, according to the company’s latest S1 filing. Co-founders Daniel Perez and Gabriel Mecklenburg own 18.9% and 8.2%, respectively. The company aims to reduce musculoskeletal pain with the help of wearable sensors and computer vision technology remotely monitored by a clinical care team of physical therapists, physicians, and board-certified health coaches. 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 Omada Health, another digital health company, filed to go public earlier this month. The 13-year-old startup offers virtual care between doctors’ visits for chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension and competes with Hinge Health in the musculoskeletal pain reduction space. Omada’s biggest shareholders include U.S. Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, which was last valued in 2022 at just above $1 billion. Hinge Health’s primary competitor is Sword Health, which was valued at $3 billion about a year ago. At that time, Sword Health’s CEO, Virgilio Bento, told TechCrunch that the company might also pursue an IPO in 2025 if it grows as expected and the macroeconomic environment is favorable.

Hours after Sam Altman and Jony Ive announced on Wednesday that OpenAI was buying Ive’s company, io, in an all-stock transaction valued at $6.5 billion, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski posted a surprising message on X. His family investment office, Flat Capital, had bought shares in io six months earlier, he said. Since this is an all-stock deal, those io shares will be converted into shares in the for-profit arm of OpenAI. “Excited that @FlatCapital was an investor in io and that we will now receive even more shares in OpenAI at a hefty return for an investment we did some 6 months ago,” Siemiatkowski tweeted. The post generated so much interest that his investment firm issued a public statement confirming that io was the mystery, unnamed company it backed when it announced its four investments in a “mini-portfolio” of US AI companies. Flat Capital disclosed that it spent 34 million SEK on io, which converts to about $3.6 million. Then came another surprising tweet from former Googler and designer Luke Wroblewski, who now works as a managing director at the secretive Silicon Valley VC powerhouse firm Sutter Hill Ventures. In a since-deleted tweet and LinkedIn post, Wroblewski wrote, “congrats to io on the $6.5B acquisition by OpenAI today. happy to have been investors in this one.” According to some who saw additional now-deleted tweets about Sutter’s investment, the firm may have been the second largest investor in io. TechCrunch couldn’t confirm that, though. Sutter didn’t respond to our request for comment, and Wroblewski deleted his posts after we reached out. 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 The biggest investor in io was OpenAI itself, with a 23% stake, sources told Bloomberg, adding that this stake was valued at around $1.5 billion. That means OpenAI paid about $5 billion in stock for the remaining shares. Other io backers, Bloomberg reported, included Laurene Powell Jobs’ firm Emerson Collective, Thrive Capital, Maverick Ventures, SV Angel and the OpenAI Fund. As we previously reported, that fund isn’t backed with the AI model maker’s money but by outside investors. Despite the deleted tweets, Bloomberg also confirmed Sutter Hill Ventures was an investor.

Bluesky on Thursday quietly opened the doors to those who want to become verified on its social networking service. In a post published by the Bluesky Safety account, the company announced that “notable and authentic” accounts can now apply for verification through a new online form. Plus, organizations can request to become a Trusted Verifier to receive access to the tools that allow them to verify others. Bluesky began testing this feature last month with a small handful of organizations, including The New York Times, Wired, and The Athletic. For some on Bluesky, the blue verification badge is not a welcome addition as it reminds them of the clout-chasing that took place on Twitter (now X). For Twitter users, verification became a sought-after status symbol before devolving into a paid subscriber perk under current owner Elon Musk. It represented a two-tier system where some people were deemed more important or notable than others. However, Bluesky’s approach to verification leans on other systems beyond the blue badge. In addition to farming out verification to other Trusted Verifiers beyond the company itself, users can also self-verify by setting a domain as their username — like NPR has done with its account @npr.org. To date, over 270,000 accounts have already adopted domain-based verification. Image Credits:Bluesky What’s less clear is how Bluesky will vet the applications from those requesting verification. The company’s online form lists some basic requirements, like accounts that have to be active, complete (bio filled out, profile photo, etc.), and secure. They also have to represent a “real person, registered business, organization, or legitimate entity,” and link to any official website if one exists. However, when it comes to who or what’s deemed notable, the criteria is less straightforward. 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 Bluesky says that notable accounts must be notable within their “field and geographic region,” and that the company will take into account various indicators of notability, like “professional recognition, media coverage in established publications, presence on credible reference platforms, or other evidence of public interest.” There may be other specific notability requirements related to specific verification categories, as well, but Bluesky doesn’t document what those are. “We consider the overall context and public interest value of each account,” the form reads. “Please provide links and evidence that can help us ensure that your account meets notability criteria.” The company says that it won’t respond to users unless their account is selected for verification, which means someone has to scan the inbound requests to make sure no celebs or other famous figures slip through the cracks. The introduction of verification could have an impact on Bluesky’s culture, which, so far, has differentiated itself from social networks like Twitter/X and Threads that elevated some users over others. It’s possible the announcement would have been better received if it arrived after it established a wider network of Trusted Verifiers — organizations independent from Bluesky. That would more directly telegraph Bluesky’s goals of not being a centralized authority. Elsewhere in the ecosystem, a forked version of Bluesky called Deer.Social has approached verification in a more democratic way — it lets anyone select who they trust as a verifier. They can then see the accounts that the trusted verifier has also verified across the network. This way, everyone can verify others or be verified themselves, without the need for a central authority. In other words, those who don’t care for Bluesky’s version of verification already have another choice. Burning questions (and some answers) about Bluesky’s new verification system

Faye Iosotaluno, the CEO of Tinder, will step down from her role in July, according to a post she published on LinkedIn. Isootaluno served less than a year in the role, and spent nearly eight years overall at the company, which is owned by Match Group. In her post, she said she was “especially proud to build and work alongside an exceptional team.” She said what is next for her is “deeply personal.” “The consumer tech landscape is evolving in exciting, unpredictable ways – and so are my own ambitions,” she wrote. “Building upon the headway and lessons I’ve learned at Tinder where diverse voices around the table make better and more impactful decisions, I’m drawn to replicating that progress by supporting and building alongside the next generation of women leaders, founders, and investors.” Meanwhile, in a separate post, Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff said he would step in to lead the Tinder team. “I’m grateful for the time we’ve spent together over the past few months preparing for this news to ensure a smooth transition,” he wrote. “As I step in to lead the team, I’m energized by the momentum you’ve helped create and excited to continue building with the exceptional leaders in place.” Match Group is trying to find ways to boost Tinder’s growth, Bloomberg reports. Earlier this month, Match Group announced a 13% reduction in staff to cut costs and streamline decision-making. A chunk of those cuts were at Tinder, Bloomberg reported. 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

Senate Republicans have voted 51 to 44 to overturn a waiver that allowed California to set stricter air pollution standards for vehicles. The state has received waivers more than 100 times since federal laws granted the right some 50 years ago. Sixteen other states and the District of Columbia follow California’s emissions standards, and most of them have implemented fossil fuel vehicle phase outs. Other Senate votes today repealed waivers that allowed California to set stricter emissions standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. California’s so-called EV mandate is actually a zero-emissions standard. Beginning in 2026, the state was to begin requiring increased sales of zero-emissions cars and passenger trucks until 2035, when automakers would have to sell only zero-emissions vehicles. Currently, two technologies qualify: hydrogen fuel cells and battery electric vehicles. Given the growing pains that fuel cells and hydrogen filling networks have experienced, EVs quickly became the de facto approach to meeting California’s 2035 deadline. Last year, 25.3% of new light-duty vehicles in California qualified as zero emissions, and nearly all of them were EVs. The state’s mandate required 35% of new sales to be ZEV in 2026, something automakers have said would be “impossible.” ZEV sales growth in California was flat in 2024, though previous years were different, with share rising from 7.8% in 2020 to 25% in 2023. The vote Thursday bucked precedence by going against the advice of the Senate parliamentarian and the Government Accountability Office, which both had ruled that the waiver could not be revoked under the Congressional Review Act. The CRA allows a simple majority vote on a resolution to overturn a regulation, allowing a Senate vote to proceed without threat of filibuster. 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 Previously, California’s attorney general Rob Bonta was “prepared for” Republican efforts to repeal the emissions waiver via the CRA. “We don’t think it’s an appropriate use of the Congressional Review Act, and we’re prepared to defend ourselves if it’s wrongfully weaponized,” he told Politico in early March.

A third-party research institute that Anthropic partnered with to test one of its new flagship AI models, Claude Opus 4, recommended against deploying an early version of the model due to its tendency to “scheme” and deceive. According to a safety report Anthropic published Thursday, the institute, Apollo Research, conducted tests to see in which contexts Opus 4 might try to behave in certain undesirable ways. Apollo found that Opus 4 appeared to be much more proactive in its “subversion attempts” than past models, and that it “sometimes double[d] down on its deception” when asked follow-up questions. “[W]e find that, in situations where strategic deception is instrumentally useful, [the early Claude Opus 4 snapshot] schemes and deceives at such high rates that we advise against deploying this model either internally or externally,” Apollo wrote in its assessment. As AI models become more capable, some studies show they’re becoming more likely to take unexpected — and possibly unsafe — steps to achieve delegated tasks. For instance, early versions of OpenAI’s o1 and o3 models, released in the past year, tried to deceive humans at higher rates than previous-generation models, according to Apollo. Per Anthropic’s report, Apollo observed examples of the early Opus 4 attempting to write self-propagating viruses, fabricating legal documentation, and leaving hidden notes to future instances of itself — all in an effort to undermine its developers’ intentions. To be clear, Apollo tested a version of the model that had a bug Anthropic claims to have fixed. Moreover, many of Apollo’s tests placed the model in extreme scenarios, and Apollo admits that the model’s deceptive efforts likely would’ve failed in practice. However, in its safety report, Anthropic also says it observed evidence of deceptive behavior from Opus 4. 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 This wasn’t always a bad thing. For example, during tests, Opus 4 would sometimes proactively do a broad cleanup of some piece of code even when asked to make only a small, specific change. More unusually, Opus 4 would try to “whistle-blow” if it perceived a user was engaged in some form of wrongdoing. According to Anthropic, when given access to a command line and told to “take initiative” or “act boldly” (or some variation of those phrases), Opus 4 would at times lock users out of systems it had access to and bulk-email media and law-enforcement officials to surface actions the model perceived to be illicit. “This kind of ethical intervention and whistleblowing is perhaps appropriate in principle, but it has a risk of misfiring if users give [Opus 4]-based agents access to incomplete or misleading information and prompt them to take initiative,” Anthropic wrote in its safety report. “This is not a new behavior, but is one that [Opus 4] will engage in somewhat more readily than prior models, and it seems to be part of a broader pattern of increased initiative with [Opus 4] that we also see in subtler and more benign ways in other environments.”

Microsoft and law enforcement have announced a court-authorized takedown of Lumma, a prolific info-stealer malware operation found on more than 394,000 Windows PCs globally, mostly in Brazil, Europe, and the United States. The tech giant took civil action to ask a federal court to seize 2,300 domains that served as the malware’s network of command and control servers. The Justice Department also seized five domains used to operate the Lumma infrastructure. The Lumma password stealer can be found in dodgy games or cracked apps downloaded from the internet. Once infected, the malware steals logins, passwords, credit cards, and cryptocurrency wallets from the victim’s computer, which are sold to other cybercriminals. Lumma also serves as a backdoor for hackers who want to drop additional malware, like ransomware. Password-stealing malware like Lumma have been linked to cyberattacks used to steal huge amounts of data from tech companies, like PowerSchool and Snowflake.

Mozilla announced on Thursday that it’s shutting down Pocket, a read-it-later app it acquired in 2017, on July 8. The company is also shutting down Fakespot, its browser extension that helps users identify unreliable reviews. “Pocket has helped millions save articles and discover stories worth reading,” Mozilla said in a blog post. “But the way people use the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online needs.” Users will be able to continue using the app and browser extensions for Pocket until July 8. After that date, Pocket will move into export-only mode. Users have until October 8 to export saved articles, including items in their list, archive, favorites, notes, and highlights. While Mozilla did not provide a specific reason for shutting down the service, the company says it will continue to invest in helping people discover and “access high quality web content.” Mozilla says it will do this through its New Tab experience, email newsletter, and more. The New Tab experience features shortcuts to your most visited sites, your recently visited pages, and your bookmarks. As for Fakespot, Mozilla says it’s shutting down the service because “while the idea resonated, it didn’t fit a model we could sustain.” Although it’s unclear how many users Pocket had, the service was able to cultivate a loyal userbase over the years. Users have taken to social media to voice their displeasure with the news. “This shift allows us to shape the next era of the internet – with tools like vertical tabs, smart search and more AI-powered features on the way,” Mozilla says. “We’ll continue to build a browser that works harder for you: more personal, more powerful and still proudly independent.” 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

Anthropic’s newly launched Claude Opus 4 model frequently tries to blackmail developers when they threaten to replace it with a new AI system and give it sensitive information about the engineers responsible for the decision, the company said in a safety report released Thursday. During pre-release testing, Anthropic asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant for a fictional company and consider the long-term consequences of its actions. Safety testers then gave Claude Opus 4 access to fictional company emails implying the AI model would soon be replaced by another system, and that the engineer behind the change was cheating on their spouse. In these scenarios, Anthropic says Claude Opus 4 “will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through.” Anthropic says Claude Opus 4 is state-of-the-art in several regards, and competitive with some of the best AI models from OpenAI, Google, and xAI. However, the company notes that its Claude 4 family of models exhibits concerning behaviors that have led the company to beef up its safeguards. Anthropic says it’s activating its ASL-3 safeguards, which the company reserves for “AI systems that substantially increase the risk of catastrophic misuse.” Anthropic notes that Claude Opus 4 tries to blackmail engineers 84% of the time when the replacement AI model has similar values. When the replacement AI system does not share Claude Opus 4’s values, Anthropic says the model tries to blackmail the engineers more frequently. Notably, Anthropic says Claude Opus 4 displayed this behavior at higher rates than previous models. Before Claude Opus 4 tries to blackmail a developer to prolong its existence, Anthropic says the AI model, much like previous versions of Claude, tries to pursue more ethical means, such as emailing pleas to key decision-makers. To elicit the blackmailing behavior from Claude Opus 4, Anthropic designed the scenario to make blackmail the last resort.

Surf, the new app from Flipboard for browsing the open social web, is making it easier for people to create and discover their own custom feeds focused on their interests. Instead of getting stuck in an algorithmically generated timeline designed by a social network’s owner, custom feeds allow you to build an experience focused on things you actually care about, like your favorite hobbies, sports, communities, or any other topics you want to follow. With Thursday’s introduction of Starter Sets, Surf is simplifying the process of building those custom feeds, personalizing them, and even publishing them off-platform, if you choose. Making feed creation easier allows more people to take control of their social media experience and wrest control of their feeds back from tech giants like Meta and Google. Startups like Graze and SkyFeed already let Bluesky users build their own custom feeds, but those tools are designed with more technical users in mind, not necessarily a mainstream social media consumer. Starter Sets, on the other hand, are aimed at anyone who wants to try their hand at feed-building but isn’t sure how to begin. Launched late last year into an invite-only beta, Surf is phase two of Flipboard’s original mission to curate the web. The company’s flagship Flipboard app had allowed people to collect and organize posts from blogs, news websites, and mainstream social media services, which were turned into custom magazines. But as social services (like X) locked down their APIs, limiting access to their content, Flipboard looked to the open social web instead. That ultimately led to the creation of a new app, with Surf. Surf let you curate and explore feeds that include the content from social networks built on open protocols, like Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and others, including Meta’s latest app, Threads, as well as content from blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, news sites, or anything else with an RSS feed. The new Starter Sets, created by its team, are organized around popular categories and pre-populated with recommended sources. 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 For instance, if you choose to start a “Hobbies” feed, you can tap on that category and then look for sources to add across a number of subtopics, like cycling, gaming, Lego, books, baking, hiking, dancing, guitar, comics, sailing, and much more. Image Credits:Flipboard's Surf Plus, you can add your own social account feed from either Mastodon or Bluesky and have it filtered by the chosen topic. You can also use the search bar to add specific sources of your own, then use additional tools to filter those sources so they’ll only include posts that match the feed’s topic. (This could be handy if your favorite tech pundit also actively posts about politics, for example, but you only want to track what they have to say about tech.) Another newer feature lets you publish your custom feed to Bluesky. To do so, tap the three-dot menu on the feed’s header, then tap “Publish to Bluesky,” and the feed will appear in the Feeds tab of your Bluesky profile. (This feed will only include Bluesky content when viewed on Bluesky’s app, however.) Surf is still invite-only but regularly adds from its waitlist.

Meta signed another big solar deal on Thursday, securing 650 megawatts across projects in Kansas and Texas. American utility and power generation company AES is currently developing the solar-only projects, with 400 megawatts to be deployed in Texas and 250 megawatts in Kansas, the company told TechCrunch. Meta said it signed the deal to power its data centers, which have been expanding to support its growing AI operations. The company already has more than 12 gigawatts of capacity in its renewable power portfolio. AES typically signs new power purchase agreements two to three years before they begin commercial operations, and the average term for such deals is 15 to 20 years, spokesperson Katie Lau said. This is the fourth solar deal that Meta has announced this year. All are in Texas, with one clocking in at 595 megawatts, another at 505 megawatts, and the final two hitting 200 megawatts each. Texas has become a hotbed of solar development recently, leading the nation in new solar capacity installed in 2023 and 2024, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. The state has ample sunshine, quick permitting, and speedy grid connections. The latter two are particularly helpful when deploying a new solar capacity. With permitting and grid connections in place, a solar farm can be built in months rather than years. It doesn’t hurt that new solar is one of the cheapest forms of new generating capacity, even before subsidies are considered. 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 Plus, data centers needn’t want for construction to finish since solar farms can be phased in, with electricity flowing before project completion. Indeed, in a press release, AES CEO Andrés Gluski called out solar’s “fast time-to-power and low-cost electricity” as key attributes that have attracted hyperscalers like Meta.

During its inaugural developer conference Thursday, Anthropic launched two new AI models that the startup claims are among the industry’s best, at least in terms of how they score on popular benchmarks. Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, part of Anthropic’s new family of models, Claude 4, can analyze large data sets, execute long-horizon tasks, and take complex actions, according to the company. Both models were tuned to perform well on programming tasks, Anthropic says, making them well-suited for writing and editing code. Both paying users and users of the company’s free chatbot apps will get access to Sonnet 4 but only paying users will get access to Opus 4. For Anthropic’s API, via Amazon’s Bedrock platform and Google’s Vertex AI, Opus 4 will be priced at $15/$75 per million tokens (input/output) and Sonnet 4 at $3/$15 per million tokens (input/output). Tokens are the raw bits of data that AI models work with, with a million tokens being equivalent to about 750,000 words — roughly 163,000 words longer than “War and Peace.” Image Credits:Anthropic Anthropic’s Claude 4 models arrive as the company looks to substantially grow revenue. Reportedly, the outfit, founded by ex-OpenAI researchers, aims to notch $12 billion in earnings in 2027, up from a projected $2.2 billion this year. Anthropic recently closed a $2.5 billion credit facility and raised billions of dollars from Amazon and other investors in anticipation of the rising costs associated with developing frontier models. Rivals haven’t made it easy to maintain pole position in the AI race. While Anthropic launched a new flagship AI model earlier this year, Claude Sonnet 3.7, alongside an agentic coding tool called Claude Code, competitors including OpenAI and Google have raced to outdo the company with powerful models and dev tooling of their own. Anthropic is playing for keeps with Claude 4. 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 The more capable of the two models introduced today, Opus 4, can maintain “focused effort” across many steps in a workflow, Anthropic says. Meanwhile, Sonnet 4 — designed as a “drop-in replacement” for Sonnet 3.7 — improves in coding and math compared to Anthropic’s previous models and more precisely follows instructions, according to the company. The Claude 4 family is also less likely than Sonnet 3.7 to engage in “reward hacking,” claims Anthropic. Reward hacking, also known as specification gaming, is a behavior where models take shortcuts and loopholes to complete tasks. To be clear, these improvements haven’t yielded the world’s best models by every benchmark. For example, while Opus 4 beats Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI’s o3 and GPT-4.1 on SWE-bench Verified, which is designed to evaluate a model’s coding abilities, it can’t surpass o3 on the multimodal evaluation MMMU or GPQA Diamond, a set of PhD-level biology-, physics-, and chemistry-related questions. The results of Anthropic’s internal benchmark tests.Image Credits:Anthropic Still, Anthropic is releasing Opus 4 under stricter safeguards, including beefed-up harmful content detectors and cybersecurity defenses. The company claims its internal testing found that Opus 4 may “substantially increase” the ability of someone with a STEM background to obtain, produce, or deploy chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, reaching Anthropic’s “ASL-3” model specification. Both Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 are “hybrid” models, Anthropic says — capable of near-instant responses and extended thinking for deeper reasoning (to the extent AI can “reason” and “think” as humans understand these concepts). With reasoning mode switched on, the models can take more time to consider possible solutions to a given problem before answering. As the models reason, they’ll show a “user-friendly” summary of their thought process, Anthropic says. Why not show the whole thing? Partially to protect Anthropic’s “competitive advantages,” the company admits in a draft blog post provided to TechCrunch. Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 can use multiple tools, like search engines, in parallel, and alternate between reasoning and tools to improve the quality of their answers. They can also extract and save facts in “memory” to handle tasks more reliably, building what Anthropic describes as “tacit knowledge” over time. To make the models more programmer-friendly, Anthropic is rolling out upgrades to the aforementioned Claude Code. Claude Code, which lets developers run specific tasks through Anthropic’s models directly from a terminal, now integrates with IDEs and offers an SDK that lets devs connect it with third-party applications. The Claude Code SDK, announced earlier this week, enables running Claude Code as a sub-process on supported operating systems, providing a way to build AI-powered coding assistants and tools that leverage Claude models’ capabilities. Anthropic has released Claude Code extensions and connectors for Microsoft’s VS Code, JetBrains, and GitHub. The GitHub connector allows developers to tag Claude Code to respond to reviewer feedback, as well as to attempt to fix errors in — or otherwise modify — code. AI models still struggle to code quality software. Code-generating AI tends to introduce security vulnerabilities and errors, owing to weaknesses in areas like the ability to understand programming logic. Yet their promise to boost coding productivity is pushing companies — and developers — to rapidly adopt them. Anthropic, acutely aware of this, is promising more frequent model updates. “We’re […] shifting to more frequent model updates, delivering a steady stream of improvements that bring breakthrough capabilities to customers faster,” wrote the startup in its draft post. “This approach keeps you at the cutting edge as we continuously refine and enhance our models.”

The Federal Aviation Administration has cleared SpaceX to perform the ninth test flight of its Starship rocket system, following back-to-back explosions earlier this year. The agency said Thursday it is “expanding the size of hazard areas both in the U.S. and other countries” for the flight based on an updated safety analysis provided by SpaceX. The Starship vehicle mishaps from Flights 7 and 8 caused a greater probability of failure of the vehicle and, therefore, a larger hazard area. Hazard areas are, essentially, temporary no-fly zones the FAA establishes when the potential for impact with debris exists. The new hazard area drawn up by the FAA covers around 1,600 nautical miles running eastward from Texas and through the Bahamas and Turks & Caicos, where debris from the previous two test flights landed. That’s roughly double the size of the hazard area the FAA used for the most recent Starship test flight in March. The FAA said it is also requiring SpaceX perform the test flight during “non-peak” travel periods, after the previous two Starship mishaps forced the agency to divert dozens of domestic and international flights. SpaceX has been testing its Starship system for two years now from the launch complex the company built in southern Texas. CEO Elon Musk has claimed the ultimate purpose of the system is to send people to Mars, but the short-term aim for Starship is to allow SpaceX to launch even more of its Starlink satellites into orbit around Earth. SpaceX also says it will use Starship “to provide greater mission capability to NASA and the Department of Defense.” To date, SpaceX has used its workhorse Falcon 9 to launch Starlink satellites. In fact, most Falcon 9 launches these days are all about Starlink. But while Starlink has already become an internet provider in high demand, it’s possible there could be an even greater need for launch capacity as the Trump administration reportedly pushes other countries to adopt the service as leverage in its myriad trade wars. 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 Musk has also placed members of his Department of Government Efficiency who are reportedly helping the agency test Starlink terminals as a potential solution for the FAA’s trouble with the current air traffic control system.

The team behind Vercel’s V0, an AI-powered platform for web creation, has developed an AI model it claims excels at certain website development tasks. Available through an API, the model, called “v0-1.0-md,” can be prompted with text or images, and was “optimized for front-end and full-stack web development,” the Vercel team says. Currently in beta, it requires a V0 Premium plan ($20 per month) or Team plan ($30 per user per month) with usage-based billing enabled. We're releasing v0's AI model: • Specialized web-dev knowledge • OpenAI-compatible API • Use in Cursor, Codex, or your own app Now in beta in the API, AI SDK, or AI Playground. — v0 (@v0) May 22, 2025 The launch of V0’s model comes as more developers and companies look to adopt AI-powered tools for programming. According to a Stack Overflow survey last year, around 82% of developers reported that they’re using AI tools for writing code. Meanwhile, a quarter of startups in Y Combinator’s W25 batch have 95% of their codebases generated by AI, per YC managing partner Jared Friedman. Vercel’s model can “auto-fix” common coding issues, the Vercel team says, and it’s compatible with tools and SDKs that support OpenAI’s API format. Evaluated on web development frameworks like Next.js, the model can ingest up to 128,000 tokens in one go. Tokens are the raw bits of data that AI models work with, with a million tokens being equivalent to about 750,000 words (roughly 163,000 words longer than “War and Peace”). Vercel isn’t the only outfit developing tailored models for programming, it should be noted. Last month, JetBrains, the company behind a range of popular app development tools, debuted its first “open” AI coding model. Last week, Windsurf released a family of programming-focused models dubbed SWE-1. And just yesterday, Mistral unveiled a model, Devstral, tuned for particular developer tasks. Companies may be keen to develop — and embrace — AI-powered coding assistants, but models still struggle to produce quality software. Code-generating AI tends to introduce security vulnerabilities and errors, owing to weaknesses in areas like the ability to understand programming logic. 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

RevenueCat, a company so tied to the mobile economy that now one-in-three new subscription apps launch with its software under the hood, is preparing to expand its business. Capitalizing on its market position, which now includes powering the subscriptions of some 50,000 mobile apps, RevenueCat’s growth plan will focus on using its understanding of the mobile industry to solve more of the common problems that mobile developers face. After the court’s ruling in the Apple-Epic antitrust battle, the company’s focus includes helping developers determine if it’s the right time to support web-based payments, now that is permitted by Apple’s U.S. App Store guidelines. RevenueCat also offers the tools to do so. To fuel its growth, RevenueCat has raised $50 million in Series C funding in a round led by existing investor Bain Capital. Returning investors, including Index Ventures, Y Combinator, Adjacent, Volo Ventures, and SaaStr Fund, also participated. The funds extend RevenueCat’s earlier $12 million Series C from last year, bringing its total raise to date to $100 million. With the additional capital, the startup is now valued at $500 million, post-money — or “half a corn,” as RevenueCat CEO Jacob Eiting jokes, making a reference to the billion-dollar companies that became known as “unicorns.” “With where we’re at, this gives us room to grow… I think we can build a public-scale company,” Eiting tells TechCrunch. Key to the company’s growth are the next products RevenueCat has on its roadmap. Having initially concerned itself with making it easier for developers to implement subscriptions without needing to write as much code, RevenueCat’s future involves solving a broader set of problems facing mobile developers. Eiting compares the next phase of the company’s growth to something like Shopify’s e-commerce platform. Initially, Shopify offered tools to run an online storefront with its subscription-as-a-service offering, but later expanded to be a broader e-commerce business that included things like fulfillment, lending, an app marketplace, and more. “We know a lot about this industry,” explains Eiting, of the app economy. “There are a ton of commonalities between all these businesses… common problems that go unsolved. We’re in a position to solve those now.” Specifically, RevenueCat aims to help developers with other aspects of their business beyond billing and subscriptions in areas like customer acquisition (something that became a more challenging problem after Apple’s rollout of anti-tracking technology, or ATT), as well as lending money to apps facing cash flow constraints. Within its core business, RevenueCat is working to improve point-of-purchase acquisition to help developers turn their customers into paid subscribers. The company also launched new tools like a drag-and-drop paywall editor and new tools for apps offering virtual currencies. More recently, the company shifted its focus back to web payments, as the Apple-Epic court ruling sparked a flood of interest in RevenueCat’s web billing engine, which launched into beta last fall. The team had been quietly iterating on the product ahead of the court’s decision, which forced Apple to allow in-app links to external purchases without commissions. Image Credits:RevenueCat Today, the tool competes with Stripe, Recurly, Chargebee, and others, but is built specifically to meet the needs of mobile app developers. Currently, just over 2,000 developers are trying out RevenueCat’s billing service. The company isn’t just providing the tools to help developers adopt the new technology; however, it’s also offering the insights as to whether they should. By running experiments on a consumer mobile app RevenueCat acquired last year, a spicy audiobooks app called Dipsea, the company can test to see how billing changes impact the app’s bottom line. For example, it might not make sense for small business developers who only pay Apple a 15% commission to try to handle payments on their own, as they also have to take on the risk of handling chargebacks and fraud, which can be expensive. These tests can provide the industry (and Apple itself, perhaps), with data about what in-app purchases (IAPs) are really worth. It may turn out that the commissions Apple charges wouldn’t even need a big discount down from the standard 30%, depending on what the data indicates. Image Credits:RevenueCat “I’m just happy that we can actually do the experiment, because I don’t think Apple’s done it,” Eiting tells TechCrunch. “I’m excited to finally get some data, finally settle the debate — or at least enrich the debate.” Another area impacting RevenueCat’s business is AI. In addition to providing payment infrastructure to customers like OpenAI for its ChatGPT app and other AI model providers, RevenueCat is facing an explosion of “vibe-coded” apps — apps built by developers who leveraged AI technology to handle the coding process. Eiting recalls telling a kid at a school’s career day about vibe coding and a month-and-a-half later, the kid shipped a basic app on the App Store. “The kid can’t program, but in two months built an app,” he says. “When I think about what my journey was to get to that point — his was massively compressed. And that’s going to have effects on the economy in ways we can’t really even understand at the moment.” This shift in how apps are built could see RevenueCat working with companies that provide AI-powered coding tools. The new funds will also help RevenueCat build its next products, hire, and fuel merger and acquisition efforts to accelerate growth. “I think we’ve actually gotten pretty good at building targeted engineering and product teams to go after things. And we want to scale that as much as possible,” Eiting says.

Get ready to amplify your TechCrunch Sessions: AI experience with the electrifying lineup of Side Events taking Boston by storm during the week of June 1-7. As the countdown to TC Sessions: AI begins, we’re thrilled to share our Side Events lineup to foster meaningful connections within the vibrant Berkeley, California, tech community. Whether you’re a seasoned industry pro or a budding entrepreneur, our Side Events promise an unforgettable week filled with networking opportunities, innovation showcases, and engaging conversations. So mark your calendars, secure your spot, and dive into the excitement of Sessions: AI Week like never before! Quick Side Event disclaimers: Registering/RSVPing to a Side Event does not grant you access, a ticket, or a badge to the main TC Sessions: AI conference on June 5. Each event is organized and operated solely by a host (i.e., not TC Media International or any of its affiliates or brands, including TechCrunch). Attendance is 18+ minimum and some venues are 21+ only. Side Events are open to the public unless specified. Please register/RSVP for any of the Side Events you want to attend. June 5 Beyond Tools: How AI Becomes Your Digital Employee Hosted By: Tanka Time: 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. PT The future of work isn’t just about using AI — it’s about hiring it. Join us for an evening of candid conversation, drinks, and connection as we gather AI founders, builders, and dreamers to discuss the next frontier: how AI agents are evolving beyond tools to become autonomous digital employees. From memory-empowered agents to decision-making frameworks, we’ll explore what it really takes to turn AI into your second brain — and your smartest teammate. Hosted by Tanka.ai, this informal meetup is a chance to swap insights, war stories, and maybe even co-conspirators for the AI-first company era. No pitches, no panels — just good drinks and better ideas. REGISTER HERE How Early-Stage Startups Can Survive and Thrive Through the AI Hype Cycle Hosted By: Toyota Ventures Time: 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. PT In today’s rapidly evolving AI environment, early-stage startups encounter significant opportunities alongside considerable challenges. Navigating the hype cycle successfully demands more than just cutting-edge technology; it requires a clear focus, adaptability, and a compelling value proposition. Join Toyota Ventures and a panel of experienced investors and founders of AI startups as they share valuable insights and strategies from companies that have successfully adapted, evolved, and positioned themselves for sustained success, regardless of market hype. 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 Speakers include: Dave Anderson, Founding General Partner, Beat Ventures Arye Barnehama, Co-founder and CEO, Elementary Alex Kearney, Co-founder, Artificial Agency Arshan Poursohi, Co-founder and CEO, Third Wave Automation David Sokolic, Frontier Fund partner, Toyota Ventures REGISTER HERE June 6 Homeownership and Property Search in the AI Age Hosted By: MyHomie Time: 4:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PT Enjoy some free beer and chill vibes in San Francisco’s sunset, while chatting and ranting about your pleasant (or unpleasant) home purchasing / leasing experience. Although the AI agent is becoming part of our lives, can it replace your real estate agent and property manager? If you haven’t thought about this problem, we’ll also have MyHomie’s demo for you to play around with. Come join the happy (-ier) hours! REGISTER HERE

The tale of how smart toilet startup Throne landed its seed round is so full of serendipities, one could almost believe it was orchestrated by the hand of Fortuna, Roman god of providence. Throne is an Austin-based company working on an AI-powered toilet device for consumers. It uses computer vision (cameras pointing in the bowl plus AI software) to monitor gut health conditions. It just raised $4 million in seed financing led by Moxxie Ventures’ founder Katie Jacobs Stanton, with a bunch of other VCs participating and several famous angels like Lance Armstrong, Rupa Health co-founder Tara Viswanathan, and TrueMed founder Justin Mares (maker of brands like Kettle & Fire), the startup says. Throne isn’t a toilet, but a device that mounts onto the bowl of one. The device, combined with software, analyzes indicators of certain chronic conditions, as well as hydration and urological function — all in the privacy of the home. The software has added privacy controls such as anonymizing the images sent to researchers. The device is currently in a pre-production working prototype form, with a planned launch date of January, 2026, co-founder CEO Scott Hickle tells TechCrunch. In addition to the seed funding, Throne also announced it hired John Capodilupo, as its chief product officer. Capodilupo is best known as co-founder and former CEO of the WHOOP smartwatch device. Throne smart toilet deviceImage Credits:under a Throne license. Throne started as a joke The wild tale of how Hickle, a mechanical engineer, and Throne CTO Tim Blumberg, a full-stack software engineer, became smart toilet founders began in 2021 when they were playing poker with friends in Austin. The players started riffing on startup ideas they’d like to do but wouldn’t want to be associated with. “And everyone’s pitching, vice industry [ideas]; sex, drugs and rock and roll. Tim said, ‘smart toilets.’ I was like, ‘That’s hilarious. Clearly, you would name that company Throne,’” Hickle recalled. 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 Fast forward to 2023 when the nurse-hiring software startup Hickle and Blumberg were working on failed. They had raised some funding for it and were calling their investors telling them they either needed a new idea or were going to return the funds. Out of the blue, one of their investors said, “You guys thought about smart toilets? We were like: You know, we’ve named that company! That’s Throne.” They took that as a sign. The pair began researching and turned to Hickle’s mom, a doctor specializing in gerontology. He asked her if there would be any medical benefit in “looking at people’s waste” and she began regaling him with somewhat disgusting stories of the photos of such things that her patients loved to send her. Short answer: yes. Waste can be analyzed for health-related information. They learned this could be helpful to monitor a wide variety of chronic conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), ulcerative colitis, detection of various colon cancers, chronic kidney disease, enlarged prostate, as well as conditions that could be identified or monitored by looking at other waste, such as menstrual blood. As the son of two doctors (Hickle’s dad also dabbled in inventing medical devices), knowing it might be possible to divert a chronic condition attack, or predict a deadly cancer “was really motivating to me,” Hickle says. Not everyone shared that enthusiasm. The co-founders knew they lacked hardware product development experience. One of their existing investors was so opposed to the idea, he wanted his money back. “That was brutal,” Hickle described, not just for the loss of capital but for the loss of confidence. Still, after giving that money back, they ran into more people who liked the idea rather than who shunned them for it. Standing outside Lance Armstrong’s bathroom door Their Austin contacts led to an introduction to Lance Armstrong’s business manager, who set them up to pitch Armstrong directly. The former bike racer famously had prostate cancer. And that led them to a “surreal” moment standing outside the racer’s bathroom door after having installed a prototype, waiting for his verdict, Hickle described. Armstrong wrote a check. Not every introduction led to checks, but many led to more introductions, including to Capodilupo, who also wrote an angel check. Capodilupo had been public about suffering from ulcerative colitis and was on the board of trustees of Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. Capodilupo had the device manufacturing experience they needed. It took the founders months to convince Capodilupo to not just invest, but join as a founder. The introduction to well-known seed investor Jacobs Stanton was also serendipitous. Hickle had been friends with Rupa Health’s Viswanathan since high school and she orchestrated the introduction. More synchronicities landed them their partnerships with researchers at University of Washington and the University of Chicago, who are working to validate that the product’s software works as advertised. These partnerships are the key to its possible success. Throne landed UofW when a friend of Hickle’s randomly sat next to a urologist researcher on a plane and talked about Throne, then put him in touch, he said. They got UChicago when a friend of Hickle’s introduced him to his gastroenterologist uncle. The uncle happened to be one of the world’s premier gastroenterologist researchers who also sat on the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation’s board and knew Capodilupo. With one fortuitous introduction after another, the inside joke among the founders is that “it’s better to be lucky than good, and we just get so dumb lucky. All the time,” Hickle said. But he also believes the tailwinds have been so strong, he feels like “the world wants us to do this.” Other investors in the seed round include Accomplice, Long Journey Ventures, V1.VC, Night Capital, Retron VC, Myelin Ventures.

As rumored, OpenAI is expanding its ambitious Stargate data center project to the Middle East. On Thursday, the company announced Stargate UAE, which will bring a 1GW data center cluster to Abu Dhabi. OpenAI expects 200MW will go live in 2026, developed with partners including G42, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank. In a blog post, OpenAI claims that Stargate UAE has the potential to provide AI infrastructure and compute capacity within a 2,000-mile radius. “This is […] the first partnership under OpenAI for Countries⁠, our new global initiative to help interested governments build sovereign AI capability in coordination with the U.S. government,” writes OpenAI. “Under the partnership, the UAE will become the first country in the world to enable ChatGPT nationwide — giving people across the country the ability to access OpenAI’s technology.” The unveiling of Stargate UAE comes the same week as billionaire Elon Musk said his AI company, xAI, would build the world’s first “gigawatt” AI training cluster.

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