EXCLUSIVE: Mach Industries to raise another $100M

Also: How Stripe is taking advantage of Apple's loss

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Bellan Friday, May 2, 2025 Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we have notes on Airbnb using AI for customer service, Apple's tariff impact, and Reddit's AI answers chatbot. We've also got details of a rising star in defense; drama at Bench; the beginnings of an "AI scientist"; Stripe taking advantage of Apple's big L; yet another small AI model, and more. Let's go! – Rebecca TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Mach Industries 1. There's always money in defense: TC has exclusively learned that Mach Industries, a rising star in the defense tech space, is about to close a fresh $100 million round co-led by new investor Khosla Ventures and existing investor Bedrock Capital. Read More 2. Ye old headcount and budget imbalance: When Employer.com swooped in to save tax startup Bench from collapse, it looked like the company might survive. But the turmoil continues — TC has learned that Bench has laid off swathes of employees, only to keep many of them on as independent contractors. Read More 3. No middleman: Stripe is helping iOS app developers bypass Apple's cut of App Store transactions after a ruling in the Apple-Epic antitrust trial. The company "cooked up a quick guide" to let developers accept payments using Stripe outside of their apps. Read More   A Message from RemoFirst An EOR partner to scale globally Ready to grow your team globally? Don't gamble with compliance or take risky employment shortcuts. RemoFirst enables you to employ international talent in 185+ countries while meeting all global compliance requirements (including AML and KYC). See why startups & Fortune 500 companies choose RemoFirst for their global HR management. Employ International Talent   Morning Must-Reads Image Credits: stockcam / Getty Images 👀 Catering to the guests: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says there are two types of Reddit users: Scrollers, who come for community engagement, and Seekers, who want answers to specific questions. The latter is who the company built Reddit Answers, its AI chatbot, for, and it's already seeing 1 million weekly active users. Read More 🧪 Lab-tested: Eric Schmidt-backed nonprofit FutureHouse has taken a step towards its aim to build an "AI scientist" within the next decade. It's launched a platform and API with AI-powered tools designed to support scientific work, and its CEO says its new agents can perform a variety of tasks "better than humans." Read More 🗣️ Alexa, play Plastic Love: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company's upgraded Alexa+ AI assistant has been rolled out to over 100,000 users. The new Alexa can apparently chat in a more natural way, rather than using canned responses like it did previously. Read More 📲 Taking it on the chin: Apple is among the companies most exposed to Trump's tariffs, which it expects to add $900 million to its Q3 costs. Apple isn't planning to hike prices of its products just yet, but I'd buy any new Apple products sooner rather than later just in case. Read More 🥷 Keeping it low key: Airbnb started quietly rolling out an AI-powered customer service bot in the U.S. last month, and the company says roughly 50% of its users are already using it. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said it has already led to a 15% reduction in people needing to contact human personnel. Read More   A Message from TechCrunch Events 3 days left — Buy 1, 2nd 50% off to TC Sessions: AI Last 3 days for Early Bird deals for TechCrunch Sessions: AI! Buy 1 ticket, get the 2nd 50% off — or go solo and save up to $210. Join us June 5 in Berkeley for AI deep dives with leaders from DeepMind, Anthropic, OpenAI, Twelve Labs, Google Ventures, and more. Connect with other AI leaders in unmatched networking. Offer ends May 4 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Register Now   Around the Web ✍️ Who could've seen this coming? A new study from Cornell shows that the use of AI writing assistants is making everyone's writing feel generic and Western-coded. Not great if you're a thinking human, and doubly not so if you're from the Global South and don't want to sound American. Read More 😣 Knowledge is free, infrastructure is not: The Wikimedia projects are the largest collection of openly available knowledge in the world, but the organization says it's being pushed to its limits by automatic scraping bots that are causing "a significant load on the underlying infrastructure that keeps our sites available for everyone." Read More 🤦 Amateur hour: Mike Waltz, who just got booted as National Security Advisor, inadvertently revealed that he uses an obscure and unofficial version of Signal designed to archive messages, raising more questions about what classification of information officials discuss on the app and how that data is secured, reports 404Media. Read More Before You Go 🤏 Fun-sized: Seems like everybody is coming out with their small AI models this week. Today we have nonprofit AI research institute Ai2's Olmo 2 1B, which is supposedly beating similarly sized models from Google, Meta and Alibaba on several benchmarks. Read More Featured jobs from CrunchBoard Software Engineer, Revive Health (Boston, MA) IT Finance Assistant, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA) Technical Business Systems Analyst, Air Line Pilots Association (Tysons, VA) Partnerships Manager, Clearscope (Remote) Sr. IT Security Engineer - Computing Services, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) 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 © 2025 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. Yahoo Inc.. 680 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA Privacy Policy

WhatsApp hits 3 billion users

Plus: A data merger

View this email online in your browser By Rebecca Szkutak Thursday, May 1, 2025 Welcome to TC PM! Today we learn that WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion monthly users; we have the latest in the court battle between Epic Games and Apple; and we dig into some new features for Claude users.  TechCrunch Top 3 Image Credits: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images 🙀 Whoa, WhatsApp: Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion monthly users, Mark Zuckerberg noted on the company's Q1 earnings call yesterday. The company hit 2 billion monthly users in 2020.  🤩 Written in the stars: Data movement platform Fivetran acquired data movement platform Census, which will allow Fivetran to offer end-to-end data movement. Fivetran CEO George Fraser told TechCrunch that they've known the Census team for over a decade and this deal seemed like fate.  🔌 Get connected! Anthropic launched a new way for users to connect apps to its AI chatbot Claude. The company also announced expanded "deep research" capabilities that allow Claude to search the web, enterprise accounts, and more.    A Message from HSBC Innovation Banking HSBC helps evolectric transition vehicles to 100% electric Evolectric makes it easy for owners to give their fleets a new lease on life. Discover how HSBC helps connect them to the right investors, resulting in an extended runway and growth plans for both domestic and international markets. Watch Now   Afternoon must-reads Image Credits: Neo 🔎 How a VC vets: Ali Partovi, the co-founder and CEO of startup accelerator Neo, is on today's episode of StrictlyVC Download to talk about his investing philosophy and the traits he looks for when trying to spot future tech billionaires.  🧑‍⚖️ An epic court battle: Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is not happy with Apple. She released an 80-page decision today that said Apple defied court orders set in the original case between Apple and Epic Games. We've got the highlights for you.   🥊 The girls are fighting: AI startup Anthropic came out in support of export restrictions for U.S. AI chips yesterday. Today, Nvidia is striking a very different tone and telling the AI startup it should focus on innovating instead of spreading "tall tales" about AI chip smuggling. Spicy! 🤖 Expanded AI: Google is expanding access to its AI Mode, an experimental feature that allows users to ask complex questions to dig deeper into a topic in Search. One new functionality: People will be able to pick up where they left off on a search.  🎮 In this economy? Microsoft's Xbox is getting more expensive. Consoles are expected to increase in price by $80 to $100 each while controllers and some games will also get more expensive. Microsoft didn't say why they were raising prices but, I mean, we all might have a hunch.    A Message from TechCrunch Events Greece's prime minister joins StrictlyVC in Athens StrictlyVC lands in Athens on May 8 — our first event in Greece! Prime minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis joins Europe's tech leaders, like Dimitrios Kottas (Delian Alliance Industries), Haris Pylarinos (Hack the Box), and more, to talk about Greece's tech momentum. Join the conversation and build meaningful connections here. Register Now   Around the web 💬 Oh, come on: Mark Zuckerberg thinks that we don't have enough real-life friends and should supplement those connections with chatbots. He also cautioned against AI therapy apps despite Meta's own products looking to perform similar tasks.  💰 Cash for creators: Microsoft announced today that it will begin sharing ad revenue with creators on LinkedIn. This is good because creators should get paid for their content. I can't wait to see a post on what this news taught someone about investing in B2B SaaS.  Featured jobs from CrunchBoard Software Engineer, Revive Health (Boston, MA) IT Finance Assistant, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA) Technical Business Systems Analyst, Air Line Pilots Association (Tysons, VA) Partnerships Manager, Clearscope (Remote) Sr. IT Security Engineer - Computing Services, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) 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 © 2025 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. TechCrunch Media LLC. 9720 Wilshire Boulevard, 6th floor, Beverly Hills, CA Privacy Policy