Monday, February 3, 2025

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we're looking at Google's agriculture tech bet, an app that tracks influencer stock trades, and the risks to national security posed by giving billionaires access to the government Treasury. We've also got OpenAI's latest research bot, new apps that promise to make you more productive, fresh funding for cybersecurity startups, and more. Let's go! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Heritable Agriculture

1. Cream of the crop: Google's moonshot subsidiary, X, has spun out Heritable Agriculture, a data- and machine-learning driven startup that aims to improve how crops are grown. In light of Trump's latest tariffs on the food we import from Mexico, such technology couldn't be more timely. Read More

2. TikTok meets Wall Street: Everybody wishes they had access to Nancy Pelosi's trading portfolio, because it's not really the stocks that people should watch, it's who's trading them. That's the pitch of Dub, an influencer-driven marketplace where you can follow the trades of top investors. Read More

3. National security risk: Elon Musk isn't a government employee, yet he's been given full access to a U.S. Treasury payments system used to disperse trillions of dollars to Americans, as well as to government contractors that directly compete with Musk's companies. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon says this is a national security risk. Read More

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Thoma Bravo's Behind the Deal Podcast is Back for Season 3

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Morning must-reads

Image Credits: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images

🤓 OpenAI's new AI agent is designed to help people conduct in-depth, complex research using ChatGPT. The goal of the aptly named 'deep research' is to help you skip the critical thinking required to do knowledge work and let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting on your behalf. Read More

💪 I need a hero: Hero is a new productivity app that combines the functionalities of several apps, like notes, schedule management, and to-dos, into one interface. With an AI assistant, of course. The startup, founded by Meta alumni, has already raised a $4 million seed round. Read More

🔐 Striking when the iron's hot: French startup Riot has leveraged the increasing frequency of cybersecurity breaches to raise a $30 million Series B after hitting $10 million in annual revenue last year. The fresh funds come from Left Lane Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, FundersClub and Base10. Read More

😡 Tantrum time: Many advertisers stopped advertising on X after Elon Musk took over, and so X started suing them. The company has now expanded its lawsuit to include Nestlé, Abbott Laboratories, Colgate, Lego, Pinterest, Tyson Foods and Shell. Read More

📋 A better to-do list? Imagine an app that can not only help organize your to-do list, but also tick some of those tasks off for you. That's what startup Tana aims to do. The company has just come out of stealth with $25 million in funding from some interesting backers. Read More

Around the web

🤝 The new Gilded Age: The Financial Times has a list of the companies across corporate America — from Boeing, Amazon and United Airlines to Visa — that have cozied up to Elon Musk as he deepens his ties with Donald Trump. This might usually be where anticompetition authorities would take notice, but I'm not holding my breath. Read More

🔮 $Trump: The entities behind President Trump's memecoin have accumulated close to $100 million in trading fees in less than two weeks, according to estimates from blockchain analysis firms like Chainalysis, Reuters reports. Despite Trump trying to pump the stock, it's already sinking, to the detriment of many small traders. Read More

❓ Who is Sebastian Siemiatkowski? For one, he's the CEO of Klarna, a Swedish BNPL company. He's also one of the executives out there bragging about replacing humans with AI. The New York Times explores why the executive not only speaks candidly about an issue that instills terror in most workers, but also overstates the case. Read More

Before you go

💙 Who will be the TikTok for BlueSky? TikTok's potential U.S. ban has sparked a flurry of development within the decentralized web community. Several new apps have cropped up to replace TikTok in a way that allows people to have control over their data — Bluescreen, Reelo, Skylight are a few we've noticed. Read More