TechCrunch Daily Crunch
Today’s biggest tech headlines in a flash from TechCrunch.
Episodes
Bumble agrees to a $1.3B acquisition deal
Spotify users on iOS 27 can now ask Siri to play music without having to say ‘on Spotify’; Meta releases its first frontier model, Muse Wonder
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ben Affleck is an AI nerd, and the internet is impressed
They cast the wrong lead in “Good Will Hunting,” apparently, because it’s Ben Affleck who is the secret genius, as it turns out.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Flock cuts staff
Plus - President Trump awards Big Tech donors with nation’s highest science prizes; Automattic loses its interim CFO just weeks after boardroom shakeup
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google brings agentic AI to Gemini
Plus - Anthropic changes usage policy to ban model abuse and election interference; OpenAI’s revenue is reportedly $20 billion less than previously projected
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spotify expands audiobooks to over 180 markets
Apple is reportedly partnering with LG to launch a smart lock, thermostat, and doorbell; How to find out if Amazon thinks you have ‘flat buttocks’
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Paramount closes historic Warner Bros. merger to form Skydance
Plus - Anthropic is giving startups a free year of Claude Team and $1,000 in credits; Pinterest’s AI now turns beauty Pins into action plans
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
TikTok rolls out an AI shopping assistant and one-click checkout
Plus - Hot Girl Hotline is like ‘Dear Abby’ for the AI era; OpenAI launches visual ads that appear alongside image generation results
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Shopify debuts Canvas
Plus - Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery to become Skydance Shopify debuts Canvas, a way to build online stores by chatting with AI
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google releases Gemini 4 Argon
Plus - Amazon introduces Kindle Click; Audible’s new features let you explore book worlds — and use AI to talk to characters
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Airbnb adds AI search and more social features
Plus - Tinder adapts to a social, IRL dating future with ‘Group Hangouts’ feature; OpenAI reportedly in talks to raise $30B round at $1.4T valuation
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta is expanding its AI agent Muse to small businesses
Plus - OpenAI reportedly ditches model over safety concerns; Google is killing off Gemini’s Gems in favor of ‘skills’
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The iPhone Duo may already have its first killer app: a virtual Walkman
Plus - Meta launches enterprise AI platform; ElevenLabs’ new v4 speech model supports more expression control and 90 languages
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta is putting its muscle behind Muse
Plus - Tesla finally moves to electrify trucking after a decade of work and delays; Anthropic’s founders seek voting control ahead of IPO
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Everything new coming to Meta’s AI agent Muse
Plus - Google tests letting Gemini call businesses for you
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Big Announcements from Made on YouTube 2026
YouTube releases new AI features for creators within its Studio app; YouTube’s new ‘Short Series’ feature brings episodic viewing to Shorts; YouTube adds new creator tools like video A/B testing, dynamic thumbnails, and live dubbing
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta’s Muse is outpacing ChatGPT’s early mobile launch
Plus - Anthropic releases Opus 5.5 with lower prices and Fable-level performance; TikTok’s US arm joins Lantern, a cross-platform child safety initiative
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google’s $899 Googlebook is a bet that you’ll buy a new laptop for Gemini
Plus - A new California law will penalize influencers who don’t disclose political ads; ScrollEd wants to turn textbooks into TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The fix for rogue AI agents could be more AI
As companies hand off longer and more complex tasks to AI agents, they are running into an oversight problem: Agents can act faster, longer, and at greater volume than humans can realistically review.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Snap tries to make the case again for its $2,200 smart glasses
Spotify expands its partner program for podcasts to 35 new countries; After accusations of selling ‘perv glasses,’ Meta prepares to sell a pair without a camera
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The AI data center boom is colliding with cities scarred by big industry
Plus - Amazon gives its workers a raise of $1 per hour; Threads’ new features let podcasters promote shows and reach listeners
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta expands subscription push with new AI-focused plans
Plus - Former TikTok execs built an app that uses AI to teach you how to pose for a photo; AI agents now have a place to snitch
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Obama urges Democrats to have a ‘clear plan’ for AI safeguards
Plus - Larry Ellison cancels $7.5 billion sale of Oracle stock; OpenAI’s Sam Altman says it would be ‘ill-advised’ to go public in 2026
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Scammers target hundreds of thousands of crypto owners after Trezor confirms data breach of email provider
Plus - OpenAI puts Pro subscriptions on hold due to Astra demand; Anthropic details distillation campaigns from Alibaba, Moonshot AI, and DeepSeek
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apple Watch’s new AI features are normalizing the idea that technology is always listening
Plus - There are new shiny iPhones, so Apple is making you pay more for older models
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta debuts its Muse AI agent
Plus - White House takes down ‘Build the Wall’ game
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What to expect from the upcoming Apple launch
Apple’s annual iPhone release events are always interesting in one way or another, but this year’s presentation is one of the most anticipated in a while.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oura files to go public
Plus - Tesla is asking people if they want to buy and run Cybercab fleets
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The sameness problem behind those unappetizing AI-generated menus
Generative AI menus have hit the restaurant business courtesy of models trained on a narrow, “pleasing” aesthetic that feels wrong even when you can’t articulate why.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google’s latest AI weather model gives you no excuse to forget your umbrella
Plus - Nvidia confirms it will buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion; Amazon’s Zoox expands its robotaxi service to Las Vegas airport
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Adobe is making its tools available in Slack
Plus - Apple follows Google in adopting Trump’s ‘Lake America’ name; Amazon’s shopping AI can now tell you if that message is a scam
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Alexa can now alert you when something new might tempt you to shop
Plus - GoPro to be acquired for $285M; Instagram puts new limits on undisclosed AI profiles.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
MapQuest’s app surges to No. 1
Plus - Tim Cook’s parting message; Caterpillar is bringing to AI deployment what it learned from automating mining
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anthropic gets its first court win over the Pentagon’s supply chain risk label
Plus - Hugging Face is selling a cute $399 open source duck robot; YouTube now lets creators tag Amazon products and earn commissions from purchases
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 100 other companies call for action to defend against rogue AI
Plus - Google’s AI Mode can now track flight prices, help book hotels, and more
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bill Gates wants to see a robot tax
Plus - Apple is holding its iPhone launch event on September 9th Bill Gates Ring introduces a new encryption standard
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apple debuts its ‘most powerful chip ever’ in M5 Ultra and M6
Plus - Uber launches live video streaming for teen accounts; Amazon hikes hardware prices by 60%
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hugging Face reportedly in talks to be acquired for $13B
Plus - Flock CEO calls for ‘compromise’ as surveillance company faces growing backlash; Two years after launch, Walmart’s Flipkart is closing in on India’s quick-commerce leaders
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenAI is gaining on Anthropic
Plus - Walmart to finally start accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay; Oura faces lawsuit accusing it of misleading consumers about sleep-tracking accuracy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta’s experimental vibe-coding gaming app
Plus - Patreon launches 30 new creator features; Senators demand answers from TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Amazon’s Prime Air is taking off in nearly 500 US cities
Plus - You can Venmo your college tuition, for some reason; TikTok explores peer-to-peer payments via DMs
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why Apple’s camera-equipped AirPods may not be the ‘pervert pods’ consumers fear
Plus - Peacock is raising prices across all of its streaming plans; OpenAI launches a safer ChatGPT for teens
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anthropic CEO says AI backlash is ‘fundamentally a crisis of trust’
Plus - Uber adds Zipline drones to its Eats delivery network; YouTube will now count a view as soon as a video starts playing
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Flock says its new tool will help identify police abuse, but hasn’t explained how it works
Plus - Google will now allow users to remove visible watermark from its AI generations; Apple proposes to take a 15% cut of purchases made outside the App Store
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Facebook officially rolls out its stand-alone Creator Studio app
Plus - Microsoft kills off unsuccessful AI features while merging its separate Copilot apps; Apple in talks to pay publishers to provide Siri with current news
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Everything announced at Made by Google ’26
Plus - The latest in startup business news
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jeff Bezos might finally get his hands on a sports team
Plus - OpenAI reportedly completed a $7 billion employee tender offer; Anthropic says it will watermark text generated by its AI models
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta gets a new AI model
Plus - Planned Amazon data center could become the biggest climate polluter in the US; Anthropic is turning Claude Code’s auto mode on by default
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Airbnb says AI is helping it ship features faster
Plus - The Trump administration has spent nearly $4B to cancel offshore wind farms; Bumble teases a swipe-free future as it doubles down on IRL meetups;
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
eBay continues to bet on live shopping
Plus - Google Maps adds agentic features, including food ordering and hotel bookings; Mirendil inks $100M+ Google Cloud deal to scale self-improving AI
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Disney+ looks to TikTok creators to bring fan content
Plus - Anthropic signs $10B deal with AI cloud startup Volta; SpaceX doubles revenue on Anthropic and Google compute deals, Starlink growth
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spotify now has over 300M subscribers
Plus - Bending Spoons to buy Airtable for $1.28B; Influencers draw backlash for attending OpenAI’s first luxury trip
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apple finally fixed Siri. So why does it feel anticlimactic?
Plus - Congress’s favorite AI tool? ChatGPT; Samsung bans smart TV apps that share users’ internet connections with strangers
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spotify launches ‘User Notes’ to let users add memories to songs, and more
Plus - Google says it fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI; LinkedIn adds a button to report AI-generated ‘slop’
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mark Zuckerberg predicts billions will have personal AI agents in five years
Plus - A new AI startup co-founded by Martha Stewart offers an AI
assistant for homeowners; Winamp aims for a comeback with a new music
player powered by Deezer
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
DoorDash is building its own drone delivery business
Plus - Sam Altman is ready to decelerate; Data centers may face temporary power cuts to prevent blackouts on largest US grid
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Peacock bets on bundles through a new deal with YouTube
Plus - Satya Nadella says companies that trust one AI for everything may not survive; Lyft and Baidu enter London’s robotaxi battleground as testing begins
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Can Apple make smart glasses that aren’t a constant privacy threat?
Plus - Snapchat now lets you share what you’re listening to in real time; Threads users can now chat with Meta AI in their DMs
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Facebook launches a dedicated Marketplace app for sellers
Plus - Patreon lays off 20% of its workforce; OpenAI’s new voice mode makes it to the ChatGPT desktop app
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google’s Gemini nears billion-user milestone
Plus - Amazon is bringing games to Prime Video; Ford bets on Apple for its next-generation of EVs
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jack Dorsey is taking on Slack
Plus - Meta is testing an AI bedtime story app for people with no imagination; Instagram now lets you swap out the music in your old posts.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Deezer says more than 50% of daily music uploads are AI-generated
Instagram now lets you swap out the music in your old posts; Threads rolls out parental supervision tools
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
YouTube clarifies policies around AI slop
Plus - Adobe camera app’s new feature will critique your photos using AI; Netflix paid $587M for Ben Affleck’s AI filmmaking startup
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google’s AI Mode gets an update
Plus - Uber’s $14.8B Delivery Hero deal would nearly double its global footprint; Google Vids now lets you star in your own AI videos;
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Microsoft is reportedly training salespeople to talk down to OpenAI
Plus - Meta now alerts parents if their teen discussed suicide or self-harm with its AI chatbot; Stripe and Advent reportedly offered to buy PayPal
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenAI announces first hardware device
Plus - Lorde says AI glasses are ‘not sexy’; Google Images gets a Pinterest-like redesign focused on discovery
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sam Altman’s space data center trash talk is what most experts already believe
Plus - X just tweaked its algorithm to make it more friendly; 12 states sue to block Paramount’s $110B Warner Bros. deal
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenAI bets on families as ChatGPT goes deeper into households
More than three years after ChatGPT’s launch brought generative AI into the mainstream, OpenAI is broadening its focus beyond individual users to families.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Netflix could be planning ‘always-on’ live TV channels
Plus - EU threatens Meta with fines over addictive features on Facebook and Instagram; Meta enters the crowded AI coding battle with Muse Spark 1.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anthropic’s new Claude feature is quietly selling you on AI
Plus - Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX are bigger than the last 25 years of tech exits; Feds demand autonomous vehicle companies stop interfering with first responders
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta just launched a new AI generator
Plus - Microsoft joins AI cost-cutting trend by relying more on its own models; Venus Williams-backed WeWard can now lock your apps until you hit your steps
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Netflix dabbles in shorter video content
Netflix invented binge-watching. Now it may have outgrown it.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
If you use Google, you’re training its AI
Plus - Microsoft lays off nearly 5,000 employees
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A warning sign about AI’s real cost, courtesy of Google and Amazon
Plus - Mark Zuckerberg tells staff that AI agents haven’t progressed as quickly as he’d hoped; Jersey Mike’s IPO illustrates how bad the AI hype has become
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Microsoft launches its own AI deployment company
Plus - US government says it got hacked — again; Popular TV-tracking app TV Time is shutting down
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenClaw is finally available on Android and iOS
Plus - Trump drops restrictions on Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
X now offers an MCP server to make its platform easier for AI tools to use
Plus - Tesla starts testing Cybercab without pedals or a steering wheel in Austin
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In major privacy win, Supreme Court rules geofence warrants are protected by privacy rights
Plus - TIDAL cracks down on AI music by cutting off monetization
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Robotaxis drive miles just to get cleaned and charged; this new startup wants to fix that
Plus - YouTube Shorts are getting even shorter with an update that lets you double the playback speed
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Trump admin proposes axing brake-pedal requirement for AVs in a boost for Tesla
Plus - Apple raises Mac and iPad prices, spares iPhone for now
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Slate Auto’s radically simple electric truck starts at $24,950
Plus - If you want to cut your screen time, just get a Brick
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Recommended
Crickets Corner
History of the Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco
Fox news
K-Drama Obsessed Mamas | Beyond “Just One More Episode!”
True Crime Classics
The Healer Revolution
Becoming: HER with Nikki Spoelstra
Booked, Blonde & Busy w/ Olivia Ponton
McKinsey on Consumer and Retail
megahired.com
Hard Knocks Podcast
Effective Weight Loss for Moms | High protein, Strength Training, Lose Weight, Meal Planning, Fat Loss, Healthy Habits
