Rivian's CEO says autonomy will enable 'dramatically different' vehicle designs

Plus more of TechCrunch's top stories this afternoon

View this email online in your browser  October 19, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 Rivian's CEO says autonomy will enable 'dramatically different' vehicle designs: Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said he thinks autonomy will allow his company to build radically different kinds of vehicles than the outdoorsy SUVs and trucks it currently makes. Read More AI assistant startup Town nabs unicorn valuation 4 months after launch: AI assistant startup Town nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B round co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures. Read More Tolan snags $30M for its AI companion that helps users navigate life: AI companion app Tolan has raised another $30 million after attracting more than 250,000 active users. Read More A message from Fidelity Your equity data deserves a system you don’t have to second-guess. Does your equity management platform keep raising renewal costs and waving red flags around data practices? Switching to a new solution might seem overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. With Fidelity Private Shares, transitioning is simple and fast. Our expert team guides you through every step, helping to ensure your equity data is migrated seamlessly and securely. Learn More Afternoon Must-Reads People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again: Fed up with ads, tracking, and sluggish interfaces, some smart TV owners are turning to AI agents to strip away bloatware and take back control of their TVs. Read More Amazon to fund 12 small nuclear reactors at former Indiana coal plant: Amazon and X-energy have inked another deal to deploy nuclear power to the grid. This one will generate nearly 1 gigawatt of electricity. Read More Amazon is taking its biggest shot at Nvidia yet with new TorchNeuron dev tool: Amazon wants to break Nvidia’s hold on PyTorch, the free toolkit used to build most AI apps, so that more developers run their apps on alternative chips like its own. Read More Musk pledges to give 'every kid in America' one of his SpaceX shares: Musk's post came just a few hours after Anthropic promised to put 5% of its shares into a new "public benefit fund," which it intends to use to make "large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations" after its upcoming IPO. Read More Nvidia launches new open models to run agents in the enterprise and on PCs : Nvidia is leaning hard into the trend of enterprise companies wanting to run their own open models in their own data centers and also trying to make on-device, private AI agents a thing. Read More Last but Not Least Hackers hit AI coding tool OpenCode, running up charges on users’ AI accounts: OpenCode is an open-source AI coding agent that's become a popular alternative to Claude Code and Cursor. But hackers got into part of its online platform and stole some users’ API keys, and the AI tools it turned to for help kept refusing to look at the malicious code. 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

Everyone’s watching the Elizabeth Holmes documentary ‘You Can See Everything’

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

View this email online in your browser  October 19, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 Everyone’s watching the Elizabeth Holmes documentary ‘You Can See Everything’: "You Can See Everything" is having the second biggest opening weekend ever for a documentary film. Read More Musk pledges to give 'every kid in America' one of his SpaceX shares: That's more than $10 billion in shares, or around 1% of Musk's current net worth. Read More Disney agrees to hire the majority of Character.AI’s workforce: The filing also says that the “vast majority” of Character.AI employees who were offered jobs at Disney accepted them. However, this is a stalking horse bid, so another company could come forward with a higher offer. Read More A message from North.cloud North.cloud brings automation to cloud, data, and AI spend at scale.  North.cloud unifies spend intelligence and enables full automation across cloud, AI, and data providers. Finance and engineering can now understand, optimize, and automate infrastructure spend. Understand every dollar, manage AI usage, and forecast with confidence. We just raised a $60M Series B to help every team spend smarter. Start saving.  Learn more  Morning Must-Reads Replit makes OpenAI its default over Anthropic, CEO says: Over the weekend, Masad clarified that OpenAI would replace Anthropic as its default model provider. Claude will still be available to customers on the platform. Read More Anthropic says its workforce has become less junior and is spending more time in meetings: The composition of Anthropic’s workforce and the type of work getting done have changed significantly in the past year. Read More Khosla Ventures doubles down on Even Healthcare to challenge India's hospital economics: Even Healthcare reaches a $300 million valuation in a Khosla Ventures-led round as it plans to expand its hospital network in India. Read More TikTok says it's restored ‘Musk’ documentary advertising account: A four-hour documentary about Elon Musk continues to meet resistance from social media platforms. Read More Apple updates guidelines to ban nudify apps masquerading as regular apps to pass review: Apple said that it will ban AI apps that don't moderate offensive content. Read More Last but Not Least TechCrunch Mobility: Rivian's next act: Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. 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