Thursday, May 8, 2025

Spotify's update gives users more control

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we've got the highlights from Spotify's latest app update; we have the details on a new AI agent from Hugging Face; and we learn of AWS' latest expansion plans. Rock on!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Spotify

🎧 Shiny new Spotify: Spotify announced updates to its app today that will give users more control over what they hear. These new features include an updated Spotify Queue, an easier process to hide songs, and more control over playlists on mobile.

💻 A mid agent: Hugging Face yesterday released a cloud-hosted, computer-using "agent" creatively called Open Computer Agent. This agent is free to use, but Kyle Wiggers reports that it is slow and prone to making mistakes.

😐 Cybersecurity layoffs: Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike said it would lay off 5% of its workforce today, which we estimate to be around 500 people. The company said these were part of its plan to find greater operational efficiencies, and it will continue to hire.

Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Aleksander Kalka/NurPhoto / Getty Images

💡 Hey, that's a good idea: Microsoft is embracing Google's recently launched open protocol that allows AI agents to talk to each other. Microsoft said it would bring support for Google's Agent2Agent spec to Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio.

🛒 Another acquisition: Workflow automation platform company ServiceNow announced its plans to acquire Data.World. The latter is a data catalog and governance startup that raised more than $130 million. This is ServiceNow's second acquisition in two months.

🦾 Invisible touch: Amazon said it developed a new humanoid robot, Vulcan, that has the sense of "touch." The company said this robot uses force sensors to know when it has made contact with an item. Vulcan robots are already in use in some of Amazon's warehouses.

🌎 AWS heads south: Amazon is bulking up its AWS presence in Latin America. The company announced a $4 billion investment in building an infrastructure region of data centers in Chile. This isn't the company's first AWS foray in the country, but it is the most substantial yet.

🤝 Call it a comeback? Indian cab-hailing startup BluSmart abruptly halted service last year. Now some of the company's investors are floating a $30 million bid to revive the startup on one condition: that BluSmart's co-founder, Anmol Singh Jaggi, agrees to resign.

Around the web

🇳🇬 A feud in Nigeria: Meta and Nigeria are currently in a spat. Nigeria has fined the company $290 million for regulatory breaches. Meta is threatening to pull the country's access to Facebook and Instagram. It will be interesting to see what happens, as Nigeria isn't a huge percentage of Meta users, but it is Africa's most populous country.

🗑️ Slop fest: While many people are embracing AI slop for some reason, no one seems to be more into it than Donald Trump's White House. Over the weekend, the Trump administration posted at least seven AI-generated images. Is this good?

Before you go

Image Credits: SweetBabeeJay / Getty Images

🧐 Another contradiction: The Trump administration wants to wind down the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program, which helps consumers save a collective $40 billion a year in energy costs. This goes directly against the president's plan to lower consumer energy costs.