Anthropic launches more Claude subscriptions

Plus: Laundry startups as far as the eye can see

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Szkutak Wednesday, April 9, 2025 Welcome to TC PM! Today we learn of new subscription offerings for Anthropic's Claude chatbot; we catch up with the CEO of predictions marketplace Kalshi; and we get the latest on Canoo's bankruptcy proceedings. Buckle up! TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Benjamin Girette/Bloomberg / Getty Images 🤑 Costly Claude: Anthropic announced two new subscription plans today, weirdly both called Max, for its Claude chatbot. One runs $100 a month, the other $200, and both come with more features and higher usage limits than the company's Claude Pro subscription.  🧍 Series A for AI: Artisan, the AI sales agent startup known for its controversial ad campaign that tells companies to stop hiring humans and use their AI instead, raised a $25 million Series A round. And yes, Artisan is definitely still hiring humans.  🧺 A load of laundry startups: There are a lot of startups looking to do people's laundry for them that have raised a not-insignificant amount of money. While there is a lot of capital understandably heading to AI, it's nice to see money going into companies looking to fix everyday annoyances, too.    A Message from Persona As your company grows, so do your fraud risks. Company growth attracts fraudsters, who often strike after launches, promos, or funding announcements — basically when you're most distracted. Protect your business with identity checks that adjust friction in real time based on risk so you can onboard good users faster while keeping bad actors out. Learn More   Afternoon must-reads Image Credits: TechCrunch 🎰 Up to the states? Predictions marketplace Kalshi, which allows users to bet on the outcome of almost anything at all, has run into trouble with state regulators who say it's a sports betting platform. Kashi CEO Tarek Mansour says his company doesn't need to listen to state regulators. OK? ☁️ Cloud partnership: Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of and former chief scientist at OpenAI, has decided to partner with Google Cloud for his new startup, Safe Superintelligence. The AI lab is using Google Cloud's TPU chips to power its research.  🧪 Speaking of OpenAI: OpenAI thinks AI benchmarks are broken. I'd love to hear a third-party take on that. Regardless, the company is launching a new initiative, the OpenAI Pioneers Program, that will work to build domain-specific AI evaluations.   👀 Export crackdown: TSMC may have to pay a fine of $1 billion or more related to an investigation on whether the company's export-controlled AI chips are being used in a Huawei AI processor.  🛶 Canoo continues: Bankrupt EV company Canoo was given the green light to sell its assets to the company's CEO, Anthony Aquila. The assets are worth roughly $4 million. This comes after another EV company, Harbinger, recently objected to the proposed sale.  Around the web 🍎 Tariff turmoil: It's clear that Apple will be strongly affected by the current tariff-off between the U.S. and China. But while much of the conversation centers on how costs would rise for the U.S. consumer, Chinese consumers have the potential to further hurt the company, too.  🫢 Oh good! Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group is looking to get back into good graces with the U.S. The company, which has been tied to multiple human rights violations and has been blacklisted by the U.S. government, has hired a new lobbying team that has direct ties to the Trump administration.  Featured jobs from CrunchBoard Head of Strategic Finance, GITAI USA (Torrance, CA) Senior Software Engineer, Source (Remote) Engineering & Support Senior Director, AAOS (Rosemont, IL) Research Systems Engineer - Computing Services, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) Machine Control Technician, Sinacola (Dallas, TX) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.   Check out some of our other newsletters: Startups Weekly TechCrunch Events TechCrunch Mobility 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. Update your preferences here at any time Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 680 Folsom Street,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy

Meet Ironwood, Google’s new AI accelerator chip

Also: The spyware masquerading as Android apps

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Bellan 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 Featured jobs from CrunchBoard Head of Strategic Finance, GITAI USA (Torrance, CA) Senior Software Engineer, Source (Remote) Engineering & Support Senior Director, AAOS (Rosemont, IL) Research Systems Engineer - Computing Services, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) Machine Control Technician, Sinacola (Dallas, TX) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.   Check out some of our other newsletters: Startups Weekly TechCrunch AI TechCrunch Mobility 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. Update your preferences here at any time Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 680 Folsom Street,San Francisco,CA Privacy Policy