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President Donald Trump is expected to sign the Take It Down Act today, a bipartisan law that enacts stricter penalties for distributing non-consensual explicit images, including deepfakes and revenge porn. The bill criminalizes the publication of such images, whether they’re authentic or AI-generated. Whoever publishes the photos or videos can face criminal penalties, including fines, imprisonment, and restitution. Under the new law, social media companies and online platforms must remove such material within 48 hours of notice from the victim. The platforms also have to take steps to delete duplicate content. Many states have already banned sexually explicit deepfakes and revenge porn, but this will be the first time federal regulators step in to impose restrictions on internet companies. First Lady Melania Trump lobbied for the bill, which was sponsored by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). Cruz said he was inspired to act after hearing that Snapchat refused for nearly a year to remove an AI-generated deepfake of a 14-year-old girl. Free speech advocates and digital rights groups have raised concerns, saying the law is too broad and could lead to censorship of legitimate images, like legal pornography, as well as government critics.

Microsoft on Monday became one of the first hyperscalers to provide managed access to Grok, the AI model developed by billionaire Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI. Available through Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry platform, Grok — specifically Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini — will “have all the service-level agreements Azure customers expect from any Microsoft product,” says Microsoft. They’ll also be billed directly by Microsoft, as is the case with the other models hosted in Azure AI Foundry. When Musk announced Grok several years ago, he pitched the AI model as edgy, unfiltered, and anti-“woke” — in general, willing to answer controversial questions other AI systems simply won’t. He delivered on some of that promise. Told to be vulgar, for example, Grok will happily oblige, spewing colorful language you likely wouldn’t hear from ChatGPT. According to SpeechMach, a benchmark comparing how different models treat sensitive subjects, Grok 3 is among the more permissive models. Grok, which powers a number of features on X, Musk’s social network, has been the subject of much controversy lately. A recent report found that Grok would undress photos of women when asked. In February, Grok briefly censored unflattering mentions of Donald Trump and Musk. And just last week, an “unauthorized modification” caused Grok to repeatedly refer to white genocide in South Africa when invoked in certain contexts. The Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models in Azure AI Foundry are decidedly more locked down than the Grok models on X. They also come with additional data integration, customization, and governance capabilities not necessarily offered by xAI through its API.

At its Build 2025 conference, Microsoft open-sourced a number of apps and tools, including a new command-line text editor for Windows called Edit. Open source software may not earn the company direct revenue, but it can serve as a form of market research — and a funnel to paid applications and services. By contributing to the open-source community, Microsoft gains valuable knowledge and product suggestions, as well as ideas for future directions. Edit, which will be installed by default on Windows via the Windows Insider Program beginning this summer, will allow developers to edit files directly in the command line by running the command “edit.” The goal is to minimize unnecessary context switching and let developers stay in their current flows, says Microsoft. Elsewhere, Microsoft is open-sourcing GitHub Copilot in VS Code, its assistive coding extension for Visual Studio Code. Over the next few months, AI-powered capabilities from the GitHub Copilot extension will migrate to the VS Code open-source repository, says Microsoft. Lastly, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), the feature in Windows that allows users to run a Linux environment directly on their Windows system, will be open-sourced, says Microsoft. This will allow developers to access the source code and make any changes they may need for a particular use case.

Microsoft is getting rid of developer onboarding fees for the Microsoft Store on Windows, the digital distribution platform for its flagship operating system, the company announced Monday during its Build 2025 conference. Starting June 2025, individual developers will be able to sign up and publish apps to the Microsoft Store without having to pay to register an account. Previously, Microsoft charged around $19 for registration. The waiving of the Microsoft Store’s app publishing fees comes as Microsoft rival Apple faces intense legal pressure to eliminate certain developer fees it charges in the App Store. Those fees are commissions, however — Apple still levies an annual fee of $99 on developers publishing to the App Store. Meanwhile, Google charges a one-time $25 fee for Google Play, the app store on Android. Microsoft says that it will continue to charge developers with apps on the Microsoft Store who use its commerce platform a 12% fee for games and a 15% fee for apps. Developers who use their own commerce system keep 100% of the revenue for non-gaming apps.

A trio of phone surveillance apps, which was caught spying on millions of people’s phones earlier this year, has gone offline. Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie were three near-identical but differently branded stalkerware apps that allowed the person planting one of the apps on a target’s phone access to their personal data — including their messages, photos, call logs, and real-time location data — usually without that person’s knowledge. Stalkerware apps, like Cocospy and its clones, are designed to stay hidden from device home screens, making the apps difficult to detect by their victims but all the while making the phone’s contents continually available to the person who planted the app. In February, a security researcher told TechCrunch that the apps share the same security flaw that allowed anyone to access the personal data of any device with one of the apps installed. The flaw also revealed the scale of the spying operations behind these apps by exposing the email address of every user who signed up to these spyware services with the intention of planting the spyware on someone’s phone. The researcher used the bug to scrape 3.2 million email addresses of Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie customers who had signed up, and provided those email addresses to the data breach notification site Have I Been Pwned. Following our reporting on the breach, the stalkerware apps have since stopped working, their websites disappeared, and their Amazon-hosted cloud storage was deleted, TechCrunch has found. It’s not clear for what reason the stalkerware operations were shuttered. The operators could not be reached for comment. Consumer-grade phone surveillance operations are known to shut down (or rebrand entirely) following a hack or data breach, typically in an effort to escape legal and reputational fallout. LetMeSpy, a spyware developed out of Poland, confirmed its “permanent shutdown” in August 2023 after a data breach wiped out the developer’s servers. U.S.-based spyware maker pcTattletale went out of business and shut down in May 2024 following a hack and website defacement. Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie are among the most recent apps in a growing list of dozens of phone surveillance operations that have been hacked or otherwise exposed their victims’ data as a result of shoddy coding or poor security practices. By TechCrunch’s count, at least 25 stalkerware operations have been breached since 2017, with at least 10 of those operations — including Cocospy — shutting down in the wake of a breach. Phone monitoring apps like Cocospy are often sold under the guise of parental control or tracking software, but are also referred to as “stalkerware” (or spouseware) for their propensity to be misused — or explicitly marketed — for spying on a person’s spouse or partner without their consent, which is illegal. As such, stalkerware apps are banned from app stores and are not allowed to advertise on search engines. Web hosts like Amazon, which hosted the stalkerware operations’ cache of stolen victims’ phone data, also claim to prohibit surveillance operations from using its platform. Although the trio of Cocospy apps now appears non-operational and its servers are offline, affected individuals should still take action to remove the spyware from their phones. To detect Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie on your Android phone, you can generally enter ✱✱001✱✱ on your phone app’s keypad and then press the “call” button. This backdoor feature prompts the hidden stalkerware apps to appear on-screen if they are installed. From here, you can delete the malicious app, which appears as a generic-looking app called “System Service,” from your device. — If you or someone you know needs help, the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) provides 24/7 free, confidential support to victims of domestic abuse and violence. If you are in an emergency situation, call 911. The Coalition Against Stalkerware has resources if you think your phone has been compromised by spyware.

GitHub and Microsoft, GitHub’s corporate parent, are joining the steering committee for MCP, Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to the systems where data resides. The announcement, which was made at Microsoft’s Build 2025 conference on Monday, comes as MCP gains steam in the AI industry. Earlier this year, both OpenAI and Google said they would support MCP in their respective AI products. MCP lets models draw data from sources like business tools and software to complete tasks, as well as from content repositories and app development environments. The protocol enables developers to build two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered applications, such as chatbots. Developers can expose data through “MCP servers” and build “MCP clients” — for instance, apps and workflows — that connect to those servers on command. Microsoft and GitHub say that they’ll deliver “broad first-party support” for MCP across their platforms and services, including Microsoft Azure and Windows 11. For example, in the next few months, Windows will gain MCP integrations that allow developers to expose the functionality of apps to MCP-enabled models. “Developers will be able to wrap desired features and capabilities in their apps as MCP servers and make them available […] for Windows,” explains Microsoft in press materials provided to TechCrunch. “This will include Windows system functionalities like File System, Windowing, and Windows Subsystem for Linux as MCP servers for [models] to interact with.” GitHub and Microsoft are also making several contributions to the MCP standard. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Microsoft says that its identity and security teams collaborated with Anthropic, the MCP steering committee, and the broader MCP community to design an updated authorization spec that allows MCP-connected apps to more securely connect to MCP servers. The spec enables people to use “trusted sign-in methods” to give AI-powered apps access to data and services including personal storage drives and subscription plans. Meanwhile, GitHub says that it and the MCP steering committee collaborated to design a registry service for MCP servers. The service allows developers to implement public or private, centralized repositories for MCP server entries and enable the discovery and management of various MCP implementations with their associated configurations.

Microsoft is launching new APIs for Edge, its web browser, to let developers incorporate AI functionality into web apps using models built into Edge. Unveiled at Build 2025, the AI APIs mirror some of the functionality in Google Chrome, which also offers “built-in AI” that developers can tap to power their web applications. Microsoft’s move suggests that it’s keen to offer a competitor — one that might sway devs to its side. Edge’s new APIs give websites and Edge browser extensions access to Phi 4 mini, an AI model that Microsoft released in late February. Around 3.8 billion parameters in size, Phi 4 mini excels at math problems, Microsoft says, thanks to a training data set that includes a mix of human-crafted and synthetic data (i.e. data generated by AI models). Parameters roughly correspond to a model’s problem-solving skills, and models with more parameters generally perform better than those with fewer parameters. Small models have the advantage of being more efficient, however, particularly on less powerful hardware like that found in laptops and mobile devices. Edge is also gaining other AI APIs, including a set of writing assistance APIs for generating, summarizing, and editing text. In a few months, Microsoft plans to release a translator API to serve AI-powered language translations via Edge, the company says. “These experimental APIs are intended as potential web standards and will work across platforms, browsers, and with other AI models,” writes Microsoft in a press release provided to TechCrunch. “For developers dealing with sensitive data or working in regulated industries, these APIs offer the privacy and security of on-device processing, eliminating the need to send data to external cloud services.” All of the new AI APIs are available in the Edge Canary and Dev channels. 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 In related news, Microsoft is bringing a translation tool for PDFs to Edge. With support for over 70 languages, the tool lets users open a PDF in Edge, click the “Translate” icon in the Edge address bar, and create a new doc translated into the language of their choice. PDF translation will be generally available next month, and Canary users can try it starting today.

As part of an effort to make building AI-powered chatbots on the web simpler, Microsoft is launching an open project called NLWeb. Announced at Build 2025, NLWeb lets websites provide a “conversational interface” — i.e. a text field and a submission button — for their users with a few lines of code, the AI model of their choice, and their own data. A retailer could use NLWeb to create a chatbot that helps users choose clothing for specific trips, for example, while a cooking site could use it to build a bot that suggests dishes to pair with a recipe. Webpages built using NLWeb can optionally make their content discoverable and accessible to AI platforms that support MCP, Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to the systems where data resides. “[W]e believe [NLWeb] can play a similar role to HTML for the agentic web,” writes Microsoft in press materials provided to TechCrunch. “[It] allows users to interact directly with web content in a rich, semantic manner.” Microsoft didn’t say either way, but NLWeb may have its origins in tech from ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Microsoft’s close collaborator. The Information reported last November that OpenAI was working with partners including Condé Nast, Redfin, Eventbrite, and Priceline on an early version of NLWeb. Back then, OpenAI was pitching the tech as a way for brands to bring ChatGPT-like conversational features to their websites, but the project faced several delays due to technical hurdles. Months later, it seems NLWeb is ready for prime time — albeit perhaps in a different form than OpenAI originally envisioned. 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

Can AI speed up aspects of the scientific process? Microsoft appears to think so. At the company’s Build 2025 conference on Monday, Microsoft announced Microsoft Discovery, a platform that taps agentic AI to “transform the [scientific] discovery process,” according to a press release provided to TechCrunch. Microsoft Discovery is “extensible,” Microsoft says, and can handle certain science-related workloads “end-to-end.” “Microsoft Discovery is an enterprise agentic platform that helps accelerate research and discovery by transforming the entire discovery process with agentic AI — from scientific knowledge reasoning to hypothesis formulation, candidate generation, and simulation and analysis,” explains Microsoft in its release. “The platform enables scientists and researchers to collaborate with a team of specialized AI agents to help drive scientific outcomes with speed, scale, and accuracy using the latest innovations in AI and supercomputing.” Microsoft is one among many AI labs bullish on AI for science. Earlier this year, Google unveiled an “AI co-scientist,” which the tech giant said could help scientists with creating hypotheses and research plans. Anthropic and its chief rival, OpenAI, along with outfits like FutureHouse and Lila Sciences, have asserted that AI tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery, particularly in medicine. But many researchers don’t consider AI today to be especially useful in guiding the scientific process, largely due to its unreliability. Part of the challenge in developing an “AI scientist” is anticipating an untold number of confounding factors. AI might come in handy in areas where broad exploration is needed, like narrowing down a vast list of possibilities, but it’s less clear whether it can do the kind of out-of-the-box problem-solving that leads to bona fide breakthroughs. Results from AI systems designed for science have so far been mostly underwhelming. In 2023, Google said around 40 new materials had been synthesized with the help of one of its AIs, called GNoME. But an outside analysis found not even one of those materials was, in fact, new. Meanwhile, several firms employing AI for drug discovery, including Exscientia and BenevolentAI, have suffered high-profile clinical trial failures. 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 Microsoft no doubt hopes that its effort will fare better than those that’ve come before it.

Microsoft wants to make it easier for developers to build AI-powered apps on Windows devices. On Monday during its Build 2025 conference, Microsoft announced Windows AI Foundry, a rebranding and expansion of the Windows Copilot Runtime service the company launched last May. Microsoft describes Windows AI Foundry as a “unified platform for local AI development” — a way to fine-tune, optimize, and deploy the AI models underpinning Windows apps. Microsoft increasingly sees AI, whether running locally or in the cloud, as a major profit driver, despite the high costs associated with developing tentpole models. In January, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the tech giant has $13 billion in annualized AI revenue, in part thanks to its partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Microsoft might not profit directly from third-party AI-powered apps on Windows. Still, by providing resources to make it easier to build AI software on the tech giant’s flagship operating system, Microsoft aims to foster a flourishing ecosystem at the expense of rivals. Hence, Windows AI Foundry. According to a press release shared with TechCrunch, Windows AI Foundry can automatically detect a Windows machine’s hardware and fetch the necessary software components to run a particular AI model. Windows AI Foundry will also keep these components up to date as new devices are released, Microsoft says, and deliver tools designed to simplify the process of prepping models. Windows AI Foundry also includes Foundry Local, a new service that “bring[s] the power of [AI] models […] to client devices,” explains Microsoft in the press release. Foundry Local, which supports macOS in addition to Windows, comes with a set of modules to run AI models and tools directly on-device, leveraging the ONXX Runtime, an open source project aimed at accelerating AI across platforms. Foundry Local also ships with command-line interface support, letting developers use prompts like “Foundry model list, Foundry model run” to browse, test, and interact with models running on a local server. 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 “Foundry Local will automatically detect device hardware — CPU, GPU, and NPU — and list compatible models for developers to try,” Microsoft writes. “Developers will be able to leverage the Foundry Local SDK to easily integrate Foundry Local in their app.”

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As the playoffs rage on, Bluesky announced that it is beta testing a new feature during the NBA playoffs. While an NBA game is in progress, a red border with a “live” designation will appear around posts from the NBA’s account. When users click on the NBA’s profile picture, they will be redirected to the event they’re promoting, even if that means sending users away from Bluesky. “We aren’t trapping you in Bluesky,” wrote Rose Wang, COO of Bluesky, in a post on Sunday. “We want you to use Bluesky to discover what’s happening.” Under its previous ownership, Twitter had tried streaming live sports in the app, spending millions of dollars on licensing deals with sports leagues. But Bluesky, currently propped up by venture capital, does not rely on advertising to make money, unlike most other platforms. That means Bluesky doesn’t have a direct financial stake in users’ time spent on the platform, so long as they have an experience that makes them want to keep coming back. In that regard, Bluesky can cheaply direct users to watch sports elsewhere, rather than shelling out millions for the rights to stream certain games. Wang confirmed that Bluesky will also be testing this feature for WNBA games. It’s wise for Bluesky to invest in its utility for sports fans. “Sports Twitter” (no one calls it “Sports X”) remains a valuable resource for fans to react in real time when they’re watching a game or chasing down trade rumors. While some sports fans have migrated to Bluesky, others have been more hesitant to leave a platform that still has more active users talking about whatever is that day’s big sports news.

Pharmaceutical maker Regeneron announced Monday it will buy genetic testing company 23andMe for $256 million following a bankruptcy auction. Regeneron said it will acquire 23andMe’s genomics service and its bank of 15 million customers’ personal and genetic data as part of the deal. The pharma giant said it plans to use the 23andMe customer data to help drug discovery, and that it will “prioritize the privacy, security, and ethical use of 23andMe’s customer data.” 23andMe filed for bankruptcy protection in March after a data breach exposed the private and genetic data of 7 million customers throughout 2023. The company’s stock price also plummeted to near-zero amid waning consumer interest in the company’s DNA testing kits. 23andMe’s founder and chief executive Anne Wojcicki resigned from the company following the company’s collapse. After its filing, a federal bankruptcy court was appointed to oversee the sale of 23andMe’s assets, sparking concerns that the stores of customer data could be sold to adversarial nations or unethical buyers. Regeneron said in its statement that as the named buyer in the bankruptcy auction, it “intends to ensure compliance” with 23andMe’s privacy policies and laws regarding customer data. The bankruptcy court is set to consider Regeneron’s acquisition on June 17. Regeneron said it will not acquire 23andMe’s Lemonaid Health business.

Nikola’s hydrogen trucks are officially up for auction, one of the company’s last big steps in unloading all of its assets after filing for bankruptcy in February. Auction house Gordon Brothers reached an agreement with Nikola in Delaware bankruptcy court to purchase the hydrogen trucking assets late last week. Over the weekend, Gordon Brothers published the listing and a brochure detailing everything for sale. The auction house says it has around $114 million worth of hydrogen trucks, raw material, and sub-assemblies. That includes 103 finished hydrogen fuel cell-powered trucks, along with spare batteries, tires, and other components. Gordon Brothers is also auctioning off Nikola’s hydrogen storage, refueling, and testing equipment, some of which is still brand new. The hydrogen assets are hitting the market a little more than a month after EV startup Lucid Motors emerged as the surprise buyer of Nikola’s Arizona manufacturing facility and headquarters. Lucid also agreed to bring around 300 Nikola employees on board as part of that transaction, in exchange for roughly $30 million in cash and non-cash considerations. Gordon Brothers will now look to auction these assets at a time when hydrogen as a fuel source has struggled to become a viable option. The technology also faces fresh headwinds. House Republicans are working to roll back financial support for hydrogen power signed into law by former President Biden, as part of a larger attempt to dismantle his entire climate agenda.

Former Siri head John Giannandrea pushed Apple to choose Google’s Gemini chatbot over ChatGPT for the first chatbot integration with Siri last year, according to a Bloomberg report looking at Apple’s uneven AI efforts. Giannandrea, an ex-Google executive who was demoted in a leadership reshuffle in March, thought that OpenAI’s bot wouldn’t have staying power and wasn’t protective of sensitive personal data. Despite these concerns, Apple announced ChatGPT’s integration at WWDC in 2025 and made the feature available to users in December. Apple’s integration lets users tap ChatGPT in instances where Siri isn’t able to answer a question. Last year, Apple announced that it would connect additional chatbots, including Google’s Gemini, to Siri. Apple is also in preliminary talks with AI-powered search engine Perplexity to offer Perplexity as a ChatGPT alternative in Siri and a search provider in the company’s Safari browser, according to Bloomberg.

Tick-tock! Time’s almost up to save up to $900 on individual passes to TechCrunch Disrupt 2025! Or go big and grab an Early Bird ticket now and get a second for your +1 at 90% off — but only for a limited time. These unbeatable deals disappear May 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT — don’t miss out. Lock in your ticket savings here. Be part of the hands-on innovation from October 27 – 29 at Moscone West in San Francisco, where 10,000 tech and VC leaders gather to shape the future. Experience 250+ dynamic sessions led by industry icons, 200+ expert discussions, the adrenaline-charged Startup Battlefield 200, and unmatched networking opportunities. What to expect at Disrupt 2025 Immerse yourself in three thrilling days of disruption, discovery, and momentum. From next-gen products to visionary trends, you’ll gain tools to face challenges head-on and capitalize on what’s next. Plus, we’re doubling down on AI with even more focused exploration. For two decades, TechCrunch Disrupt has championed startup innovation — and in our 20th year, we’re doubling down. Join us to hear game-changing insights from the founders, executives, and investors driving what’s next. Here’s an early look at who’s taking the stage this year. New tech pioneers are added weekly — visit the speaker page for the latest updates. Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, Runway Astro Teller, X, The Moonshot Factory David George, Andreessen Horowitz Doug Pepper, ICONIQ Growth Jai Das, Sapphire Ventures Nirav Tolia, Nextdoor Raquel Urtasun, Waabi Ryan Petersen, Flexport Sangeen Zeb, GV (Google Ventures) Zeya Yang, IVP Bavaria, Munich: Astro Teller, X, the moonshot factory, spoke on stage at the Digital Life Design (DLD) innovation conference at the House of Communication in Munich (Bavaria) on January 16, 2025. 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Deel has lobbed a new volley in the ongoing legal battle with rival HR tech startup Rippling. Deel filed a motion, containing a series of letters, asking the Irish court to make Rippling hand over information. In one letter, Deel wants unredacted versions of witness affidavits, including the famed one by former Rippling employee, Keith O’Brien. In a story full of plot twists that reads like a movie, O’Brien admitted in an Irish court to being a spy for Deel, according to the affidavit released by Rippling. Rippling filed a lawsuit against Deel in March that alleges misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition, and more, largely based on the spying allegations. Deel has since countersued, attempting to get Rippling’s suit dismissed on a series of issues like jurisdiction, but also making its own allegations about Rippling. Deel alleges, for instance, that Rippling was also attempting to spy on Deel. In the letters publicly released Monday, Deel is pointing to an affidavit from Rippling employee, Vanessa Wu, formerly Rippling’s general counsel. Much of the affidavit recounted what Wu recalled of alleged spy-related happenings and her take on various letters sent between the two sides’ lawyers. But Deel points out Wu also testified that Rippling fired O’Brien and paid him a termination fee in exchange for him signing an agreement not to sue. Wu also testified, the affidavit said, that Rippling entered into a second agreement with O’Brien where Rippling “agreed to contribute towards Mr. O’Brien’s costs of these proceedings and to pay his reasonable out of pocket and legal expenses in connection with the cooperation to be provided under that agreement.” Deel wants a court to make Rippling turn over full unredacted versions of both of those agreements. It wants to tell anyone who will listen how unusual it is that an employee fired for cause winds up back on a company’s payroll as a paid witness. 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 Needless to say, both sides vehemently proclaim their own innocence while pointing fingers at the other. We’ll have to wait and see what the court rules, but if it does make more of O’Brien’s testimony and those termination agreements publicly available, we’ll be reading.

Uber is entering India’s growing B2B logistics market by extending its partnership with the Indian government-backed nonprofit that aims to break the domination of the e-commerce duo Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart and widen digital commerce in the South Asian nation. On Monday, the ride-hailing giant announced it will soon launch its B2B logistics service through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to help businesses on the network access on-demand logistics through Uber’s 1.4 million driver network, without disclosing a specific timeline. The service will initially enable food deliveries for businesses operating on the open network, but is aimed to be expanded to e-commerce, grocery, pharmacy, and even healthcare logistics. With its new move, Uber will be available as a logistics service provider on ONDC, competing with the likes of Shiprocket (Temasek and PayPal-backed), Shadowfax (TPG, Qualcomm Ventures, and Eight Roads-backed), recent Indian unicorn Porter, and Tiger Global-backed Loadshare. It will be a white-label service and will operate similarly to Uber Direct, launched in the U.S. in 2020, but will be limited to businesses available on the ONDC network, a person familiar with the plan told TechCrunch. Uber’s foray into B2B logistics in India follows the company’s expansion in the consumer logistics space by introducing Courier XL in Delhi NCR and Mumbai earlier this month to help users deliver large goods of up to 1,653 pounds from the company’s rider app by choosing three- and four-wheeler goods carriers. The company has also been offering its regular Courier package delivery service on two-wheelers for some time. Eyeing logistics in general makes sense for Uber as the Indian logistics market is expected to grow 49% to 13.4 trillion Indian rupees ($157 billion) in the financial year 2028 from 9 trillion Indian rupees ($105 billion) in the financial year 2023, per Motilal Oswal. The move will help Uber get another business case in India, after seeing a 41.1% year-over-year increase in its operating revenue in the country to $439 million last year. Its last year’s results also showed collections from rides growing 21.45% YoY of the total operating revenue to $94.27 million. Nonetheless, Uber is facing growing competition in the Indian ride-hailing market from local players, including emerging ones like Rapido (WestBridge Capital and Nexus Ventures-backed) and Namma Yatri (Google, Blume Ventures, and Antler-invested). Its diversification into new domains, such as logistics, is expected to help the San Francisco-based company maintain India as an important market. 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 Alongside its B2B logistics play, Uber has rolled out metro ticketing on its rider app powered by ONDC, based on the memorandum of understanding that the company signed with the Indian government-backed nonprofit during CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s visit to India in February 2024. Delhi Metro tickets are available first through the Uber app, while metro tickets in three more Indian cities will go live later this year. Launched in 2021, ONDC debuted as India’s initiative to boost digital commerce and allow small retailers to go online and reach more customers easily. The network also expanded to the mobility sector in 2023. ONDC was initially designed to replicate the success of the Indian government’s Unified Payments Interface, aiming to drive digital commerce adoption. However, it has struggled to gain traction, as its open-network model has yet to win over major industry players. Recent leadership churn has added to its challenges, with even its former managing director and CEO, T. Koshy, stepping down last month. Retail orders on the network also declined by nearly 34% to 4.3 million in April from a peak of 6.5 million in October. “Uber’s initial enablement of metro ticketing and logistics unlocks new possibilities — from seamless multimodal journeys to unifying a fragmented logistics ecosystem,” said Vibhor Jain, acting CEO and COO at ONDC, in a prepared statement. “This collaboration lays the foundation for future innovations from Uber on the network, enhancing value for users, partners, and the broader mobility and services landscape.”