Rivian's CFO is leaving the company

Plus more of TechCrunch's top stories this afternoon

View this email online in your browser  August 27, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 Rivian's CFO is leaving the company: Claire McDonough is stepping down on October 30 to pursue a new opportunity, the company said in a filing on Thursday. Read More OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 100 other companies call for action to defend against rogue AI: Some of the world's largest tech companies and AI startups have come together to decry the current state of cybersecurity and to advertise a new solution that they say can ward off a new generation of cyber threats. Read More Buried in Meta's $18B settlement is a legal pass on kids' data: Meta’s settlement with 29 states allows it to retain certain data from children under 13 to train and test age-detection models, highlighting a privacy trade-off built into the deal. Read More Afternoon Must-Reads Google’s new Fitbit Air brings Pokémon Sleep to your wrist: Google teamed up with the Pokémon Company to introduce a special-edition Fitbit Air that works with the Pokémon Sleep app. Read More Hold up, there's a new Twitter in town: Former Twitter trademark counsel Stephen Coates said in a LinkedIn post that the company is not trying to re-create Twitter. Read More Australian police arrest two over TeamPCP hacks targeting Mercor, OpenAI, and others: The arrests come after a wave of cyberattacks earlier this year targeting tech companies that rely on high-profile and widely used open source software. Read More Hugging Face is selling a cute $399 open source duck robot, Microduck: Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, said the Microduck is an “open-source robot you can teach new tricks with reinforcement learning.” Read More Sprains, pain, and whiplash: Waymo and Zoox test drivers are getting hurt as robotaxis scale: Test drivers for Waymo and Zoox sustained more than two dozen injuries in 2024 and 2025 from hard braking or other sudden movements made by the autonomous vehicles, according to a TechCrunch review of data submitted to OSHA. Read More A message from ThoughtSpot Why Traditional Analytics Are Failing Modern Teams Your customers want answers inside your product, not another dashboard. Join ThoughtSpot on August 27 to see how top teams build AI-native analytics that tell users what to do next. Register Now Last but Not Least AI's memory crunch is coming for Android apps: Google is setting new memory-use limits for Android apps as AI data centers contribute to hardware shortages that could leave lower-cost phones with less memory. 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

Hold up, there's a new Twitter in the town

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

View this email online in your browser  August 27, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 Hold up, there's a new Twitter in the town: You read that right. There is a new social network called "Twitter.now" on the block, and it's being operated by a startup called Operation Bluebird, whose founding team includes former Twitter trademark counsel Stephen Coates. As ArsTechnica reported, X sued the company last year and asked a Delaware judge to issue an injunction to stop Operation Bluebird from launching a social media platform called Twitter. But Operation Bluebird argued, per a petition last year, that X had let go of trademarks like "Twitter" and "Tweet." Coates said in a LinkedIn post that the company is not trying to recreate Twitter. "When X Corp. retired the Twitter brand, we saw an opportunity to build something new: a public square organized around trust, transparency, and user choice," he said. "Twitter.now is not an attempt to recreate the old platform. We are building a different service, with trust signals that provide context for what users see and tools that allow people—not an opaque algorithm—to decide how much credibility and noise reach their feeds." The site is currently in testing, and early access right now costs $20. On its home page, the company says it is using an AI system, called VERA, that gauges posts, checks claims, gives users the source of the claims, the context, and attaches a trust score. Users will be able to set their preferred trust score to filter out low-trust posts. But all social networks struggle with moderation. As user numbers ramp up, platforms often find themselves being forced Read More Nvidia closes in on Hugging Face acquisition: Nvidia has reportedly agreed to buy Hugging Face, the popular open-source AI hub, for $12.9 billion in a move that would let Nvidia both protect its chip empire and jump back into the cloud business. Read More AI's memory crunch is coming for Android apps: Google is setting new memory-use limits for Android apps as AI data centers contribute to hardware shortages that could leave lower-cost phones with less memory. Read More The Best Disrupt 2026 Discount Ends Soon AI has made it faster than ever to bring an idea from concept to launch.   But it hasn't made it easier to build something durable.     Disrupt 2026's programming is built around that challenge, delivering practical sessions on what actually holds up and how to build it. Ticket prices increase at midnight PT Friday, so grab yours before then!  Register Now Morning Must-Reads Australian police arrest two over TeamPCP hacks targeting Mercor, OpenAI, and others: The arrests come after a wave of cyberattacks earlier this year targeting tech companies that rely on high-profile and widely used open source software. Read More Plaud's new earphones come with an eSIM-enabled case for talking to AI agents: Plaud's new 'agentic' earbuds are priced at $249. Read More Viral AI startup Instinct has raised $350M at a $2.5B valuation: The startup is only a year old but it has already generated a massive amount of hype (and money) while also spurring privacy concerns. Read More Here’s all the times AI has gone rogue and hacked other companies: A recap of all the incidents involving LLMs made by Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI, which went rogue and attacked real companies and individuals on the internet. Read More Sprains, pain, and whiplash: Waymo and Zoox test drivers are getting hurt as robotaxis scale: Test drivers for Waymo and Zoox sustained more than two dozen injuries in 2024 and 2025 from hard braking or other sudden movements made by the autonomous vehicles, according to a TechCrunch review of data submitted to OSHA. Read More Get Your Startup in Front of the Disrupt Crowds Not everyone needs a keynote slot to make noise at Disrupt 2026. Sometimes the best way to meet investors, customers, and partners is by exhibiting directly in the Expo Hall. And by exhibiting, you get 10 passes to Disrupt to share with your team! Learn More Last but Not Least OpenAI to start showing ads on ChatGPT's free and Go tiers in India: OpenAI has more than 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users in India, a huge chunk of whom are on the free or the lower-priced Go tiers. 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