Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we've got plenty of news out of Google's Cloud Next conference; a list of Android apps that are actually Chinese spyware; and details on the new drone company in town. We've also got a new AI startup challenging Meta and DeepSeek, fresh funds for autonomous vehicles, M&A in e-commerce and crypto, and more. Let's go!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Google

1. Do you think he's compensating for something? Besides a host of other features and updates, Google unveiled its latest TPU AI accelerator chip at the Cloud Next conference, and its name is "Ironwood." This will be the company's first chip that's optimized for inferencing — AKA running AI models. Read More

2. The Android masquerade: A coalition of governments has published a list of Android apps that look legit, but are actually spyware used to target civil society that may oppose China's state interests. These spyware apps are capable of accessing a phone's cameras, microphones, chats, photos, and location data. Read More

3. Silicon Valley loves Boy Geniuses: And the latest example is Blake Resnick, a 25-year-old founder of police drone startup Brinc Drones. Brinc just raised $75 million in fresh funding led by Index Ventures to form an alliance with Motorola Solutions. Read More

Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Anadmist / Getty Images

🥷 Things just got interesting: Have today's AI bigwigs already claimed dominance, or is there still room for startups to compete? Possibly the latter. A new company, Deep Cogito, has emerged from stealth with a family of openly available AI reasoning and non-reasoning models that it claims outperform models from Meta and DeepSeek. Read More

🏦 Debunking rumors: You may have heard that Stripe is becoming a bank after it came to light that the fintech had applied for a banking license. We're here to tell you, that's not true. The banking license isn't for accepting deposits, but rather for processing payments. Read More

🚕 The AV 2.0 race is heating up, and Nuro's latest $106 million round is proof of that. Granted, it's a down-round for the company, but it comes as Nuro shifts away from building and operating delivery robots to licensing its self-driving tech to automakers and fleets. Read More

🧑‍💻 The agents are here: Gemini Code Assist, Google's AI coding assistant, is gaining new "agentic" capabilities in preview. Google said its agents can create apps from product specs in Google Docs, and perform code transformations from one language to another. Read More

🛍️ Out of style: High-end fashion marketplace Lyst was once valued at $700 million. Now, it's being acquired by Japan-based fashion business Zozo for $154 million in cash. TC's Ingrid Lunden writes the selling price is a "sign of the times" as the e-commerce world faces "spectacular levels of uncertainty." Read More

Around the Web

🌪️ Not in Kansas anymore: The Las Vegas Sphere is a feat of entertainment engineering, and until recently, it has never screened a movie that wasn't specifically filmed for its unique display, let alone one shot with technology from the 1930s. The Wall Street Journal has a look at how Google used AI to recreate "The Wizard of Oz" for the Sphere. Read More

🔮 Ripple effects: Crypto trading firm Ripple has acquired multi-asset brokerage firm Hidden Road for $1.5 billion, one of the largest crypto M&A deals in history, per Coin Desk. Other crypto deals are in the works, signaling that while tariffs wreak havoc on stock markets, digital assets might be in for a heyday. Read More

🪦 Dark days: U.K. regulator Ofcom is investigating a pro-suicide forum – its first using new powers from the Online Safety Act, per the BBC, which has linked the site with at least 50 deaths in the U.K. The new law gives Ofcom authority to take action against sites hosting illegal content. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Silas Stein/picture alliance / Getty Images

🤳 Finally: Instagram head Adam Mosseri says Meta will invest in improving the app's search functionality, which, in my experience, has been useless for finding the content I'm looking for. The goal is to compete with TikTok, of course, which is way better for searching. Read More