TechCrunch Top 3

Apple was surprised by AI-driven demand for Macs: Apple said it will be supply-constrained on Mac mini, Studio, and Neo in the next quarter, too. Read More

EV startup Faraday Future paid $7.5M to company tied to founder Jia Yueting: The perpetually struggling EV company made the payments while being investigated by the SEC. That four-year probe was ultimately closed in March. Read More

Elon Musk testifies that xAI trained Grok on OpenAI models: "Distillation" is a hot topic as frontier labs try to prevent smaller competitors from copying their models. Read More

Disrupt 2026: Where deals and ideas ignite

Oct 13–15 at San Francisco's Moscone West, 10,000 founders, investors, and operators gather for high-signal insights, curated connections, and real momentum.

Morning Must-Reads

Y Combinator alum Skio sells for $105M cash, only raised $8M, founder says: Subscription billing fintech Skio sold to its competitor Recharge in what was a healthy exit, according to its founder and former CEO. Read More

After dissing Anthropic for limiting Mythos, OpenAI restricts access to Cyber, too: OpenAI will begin rolling out its cybersecurity testing tool, GPT-5.5 Cyber only "to critical cyber defenders" at first. Read More

Hackers are actively exploiting a bug in cPanel, used by millions of websites: Web hosts are scrambling to fix the bug under active attack by hackers. One company said hackers have been abusing the bug for months. Read More

Sources: Anthropic potential $900B+ valuation round could happen within 2 weeks: Anthropic is asking investors to submit allocations for the AI company’s latest fundraise within the next 48 hours, according to sources familiar with the matter. Read More

Legal AI startup Legora hits $5.6B valuation and its battle with Harvey just got hotter: The two wildly fast-growing rivals have raised massive sums, pushed into each other's home turf, and now have dueling ad campaigns. Read More

Last but Not Least

Rivian downsizes DOE loan to $4.5B for Georgia factory: Rivian has reworked its loan deal with the Department of Energy and now expects to borrow $4.5 billion to build its new factory in Georgia, down from the original amount of $6.6 billion. Read More