Thursday, June 26, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we have the latest on Meta's quest to lure OpenAI talent; we look at Google's plan to help publishers as traffic to their sites decreases; and we learn that Jeff Bezos is reportedly cozying up to Donald Trump with the hope of Blue Origin government contracts. Blast off!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg / Getty Images

💰 $100 million, please: Meta is clearly on a quest to land the best AI talent. The company hired notable researcher Trapit Bansal, who was a foundational contributor on OpenAI's first AI reasoning model, o1. This comes after a slew of new Meta AI hires yesterday.

👀 Tesla turmoil: Elon Musk reportedly fired one of his closest confidants at Tesla, Omead Afshar, who was a vice president in charge of sales and manufacturing for the company in North America and Europe. The reason for his firing is unknown.

🤝 A compromise? Google's AI features are increasingly killing traffic to publishers' content. The company is now proposing a potential solution with the launch of Offerwall, a tool that lets publishers generate revenue beyond just ads through options like micropayments, surveys, and more.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: CoreWeave

🤑 Not bad: While the tech industry wasn't confident CoreWeave would have a successful IPO, it definitely paid off for the company — especially for its co-founder and CEO, Michael Intrator. Intrator's net worth has skyrocketed to a cool $10 billion, yes, billion with a "B," since the company's IPO in March.

👀 Sliding into his DMs: Jeff Bezos knows how to spot an opportunity. He's reportedly been cozying up to President Donald Trump after Trump and Elon Musk's crash-out earlier this month. Bezos reportedly has Blue Origin government contracts on his mind.

🛋️ Phew: Recent headlines would make it seem like many people are entering into companionships with AI bots, for better … or for worse. However, the actual percentage of people doing that is pretty low. For Anthropic's Claude chat bot, people seek out emotional support and personal advice only 2.9% of the time.

🔒 Stay vigilant: U.S. Homeland Security issued a bulletin that it expects to see Iranian government-backed cyberattacks against U.S. networks amid the ongoing geopolitical struggles. Iran is known for its offensive cyber capabilities.

☹️ Rivian layoffs: Electric vehicle company Rivian laid off 140 people, roughly 1% of the company, as Rivian gears up to launch its new R2 SUV in 2026. The cuts were mainly made to the manufacturing team in an effort to improve operational efficiency, the company said.

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Around the web

🥸 Surveillance state: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is using a new facial recognition tool to identify someone. The tech, Mobile Fortify, can identify people based on their fingerprints or a photo of their face. Oh, good.

🪴 In the weeds: AI slop is everywhere, and The Verge looks at how AI is affecting people with houseplants. Scammers are using AI to generate photos of plants that don't exist to get people to buy fake seeds, and AI can give plant owners some pretty bad advice.