Synthetic-user startup Simile raises $200M at $2B valuation 5 months after $100M Series A

Plus more of TechCrunch's top stories this afternoon

View this email online in your browser  July 30, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 Synthetic-user startup Simile raises $200M at $2B valuation 5 months after $100M Series A: Add another member to the fast-and-furious AI unicorn club: Simile. Read More LinkedIn adds a button to report AI-generated 'slop': LinkedIn is introducing new ways to reduce low-quality AI-generated posts, including a “seems like AI slop” reporting option. It's also replacing its own AI writing feature with a proofreading tool. Read More Spotify launches 'User Notes' to let users add memories to songs: Spotify says the new feature is designed to let users add personal captions to their favorite songs, such as noting why a track was added to a playlist or when they first discovered it Read More Afternoon Must-Reads FTC sues Hims & Hers for allegedly sharing patients' medical data with advertisers Meta and Snap: The U.S. federal consumer watchdog said Hims & Hers, which prescribes for sexual wellness and mental health conditions, used website trackers to share customers' information with advertisers. Read More Judge says Trump admin still lacks evidence for Anthropic ‘supply-chain risk’ label: A federal judge said the Trump administration has not presented enough evidence to justify labeling Anthropic a supply-chain risk, casting doubt on the government's ban on its AI technology. Read More Forward-deployed engineers are the AI industry’s latest talent obsession: A new study estimates only 2,000 U.S. engineers have the expertise to deliver meaningful AI ROI, as enterprises race to hire forward-deployed engineers to implement AI at scale. Read More In the Hugging Face breach, OpenAI's hacker was noisy and fast — but not unstoppable: Cybersecurity experts told TechCrunch that one of the biggest lessons to be taken from the OpenAI hack against Hugging Face has nothing to do with AI, but traditional cybersecurity defense. Read More Okta buys AI security startup Permiso — source says for about $200M: The deal gives Okta identity threat detection capabilities as enterprises seek to secure AI agents and other non-human identities across cloud environments. Read More A message from ThoughtSpot Who’s leading analytics and BI in 2026? Gartner evaluated every analytics platform so you don't have to. See why ThoughtSpot was named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and BI. Read full report Last but Not Least Google says it fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI: As experts have warned for the last two years, some companies — like Microsoft and now Google — are finding and patching an exponential number of bugs in their products, thanks to the use of LLMs and AI tools. Read More Check out some of our other newsletters: StrictlyVC TechCrunch Events TechCrunch Mobility Want to adjust your daily newsletter schedule? You can do it right here Got a tip? Get in touch securely. Want to advertise on TechCrunch? advertise@techcrunch.com Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Unsubscribe Member Center Privacy Policy Copyright © 2026 TechCrunch Media LLC 501 2nd Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94107

FTC sues Hims & Hers for allegedly sharing patients' medical data with advertisers Meta and Snap

Plus more of TechCrunch's top stories to start your morning

View this email online in your browser  July 30, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 FTC sues Hims & Hers for allegedly sharing patients' medical data with advertisers Meta and Snap: The U.S. federal consumer watchdog said Hims & Hers, which prescribes for sexual wellness and mental health conditions, used website trackers to share customers' information with advertisers. Read More In the Hugging Face breach, OpenAI's hacker was noisy and fast — but not unstoppable: Cybersecurity experts told TechCrunch that one of the biggest lessons to be taken from the OpenAI hack against HuggingFace has nothing to do with AI, but traditional cybersecurity defense. Read More Winamp aims for a comeback with a new music player powered by Deezer: Winamp is preparing to relaunch with a Deezer-powered premium music service, betting its nostalgic brand and a new all-in-one music player can stand out in today’s crowded streaming market. Read More A message from General Compute General Compute is making a $300m bet against the GPU General Compute raised $15m to build the world's first ASIC cloud. By removing the GPU bottleneck, it runs frontier LLMs up to 16x faster than standard GPU clouds. ASIC silicon is also far more energy efficient, so it deploys in air-cooled data centers, making growth and expansion dramatically easier. Learn more here Morning Must-Reads Zoox clears final federal hurdle to launch paid robotaxi service: Federal safety regulators have given Zoox a temporary exemption that will allow the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle technology company to charge customers for rides in its custom-built robotaxi. Read More Microsoft logs $3.2B from Anthropic investment, but OpenAI was a mixed bag: When Microsoft reported killer fourth-quarter earnings for its fiscal 2026 year (which ended June 30), it tucked in an interesting little tidbit about how its investments in the two biggest, and competing, AI labs are doing. Read More Thinking Machines co-founder Lilian Weng left the company citing health reasons, then joined OpenAI: Weng previously served as the VP of AI Safety Research at OpenAI. Read More Spotify adds a running mode to its app: Running Mode will be available to Premium users on iOS in select countries Read More Microsoft is openly competing with OpenAI, Anthropic more than ever: Microsoft pitched its own homegrown AI models, harnesses, and even a Mythos competitor on Wednesday, telling Wall Street it plans for continued growth. Read More Last but Not Least Mark Zuckerberg predicts that billions of people will have personal AI agents in five years: As Meta pours billions into AI infrastructure and agents, Zuckerberg is working to convince investors that the payoff will be worth the price. Read More Check out some of our other newsletters: StrictlyVC TechCrunch Events TechCrunch Mobility Want to adjust your daily newsletter schedule? You can do it right here Got a tip? Get in touch securely. Want to advertise on TechCrunch? advertise@techcrunch.com Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Unsubscribe Member Center Privacy Policy Copyright © 2026 TechCrunch Media LLC 501 2nd Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94107