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Apple and Google ordered to purge ‘nudify’ apps from App Stores

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The city of San Francisco has ordered Apple and Google to remove dozens of “nudify” apps — — software programs that can digitally alter pictures to unclothe the people in them — from their app stores. California law criminalizes any activity that “knowingly facilitates” or “recklessly aids or abets” the creation of non-consensual deepfake pornography.

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Nuclear startup Valar Atomics in talks to raise new funding at $6B valuation

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Valar Atomics, a startup building small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) — essentially miniaturized, factory-built power plants designed to be cheaper and faster to deploy than traditional reactors — is in talks to raise a new round of capital, according to three sources familiar with the company. The three-year-old company is seeking a valuation of about

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Databricks hits $188B valuation, extending its run as AI’s favorite second act

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Databricks on Thursday announced a new round of funding that values the company at $188 billion. The round was led by Coatue. Databricks didn’t disclose exactly how much it raised; it said the money isn’t in its hands yet and that the round will close later this summer. (Other outlets have since reported the raise

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Applications close in 48 hours — here’s everything Australian founders need to know about Stripe x Startup Battlefield

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The window is almost shut. On August 19, eight startups will take the stage at Stripe Tour Sydney in front of investors, global press, and the Australian tech community. One startup walks away with automatic entry into TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco — no application, no further competition, a guaranteed spot on the world’s most

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Federal employees can download TikTok on their work phones again

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The Department of Justice says that federal employees can now download TikTok on their government devices, according to Reuters. A 2022 law banned federal employees from using the short-form video app on those devices, but the DOJ reportedly says the law no longer applies, thanks to a deal transferring ownership of TikTok’s U.S. operations to

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Ultrahuman’s former hardware VP raises $5.5M for devices that control AI agents, not just record you

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The race to build the next AI interface is crowded with startups. The Sandbar ring, Plaud’s AI pin and desktop notetaker, and Pocket’s credit card-sized pucks are all vying to capture what you say and do. Bee and Friend take the wearable route, while Meta Ray-Bans and Even Realities are betting on smart glasses. Now,

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Meta now alerts parents if their teen discussed suicide or self-harm with its AI chatbot

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Meta announced on Thursday that it will now notify parents if their teen discusses suicide or self-harm with the company’s Meta AI chatbot. Meta says it’s also working on the ability to contact emergency services if someone’s conversations suggest they may be at risk of self-harm. These changes arrive as Meta and other tech companies

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Anthropic, Blackstone bet the next trillion-dollar AI business is implementation, not models

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AI models are becoming ever more capable, but exactly what enterprise adoption will look like remains a big question. In a bid to shape that future, labs like Anthropic and OpenAI have spun up separate businesses dedicated to deploying AI engineers to their customers’ offices — a bet that assisting businesses in figuring out how

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Indian AI coding startup Emergent becomes a unicorn with $130M Series C

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Indian AI coding startup Emergent has raised $130 million in a Series C funding round at a $1.5 billion post-money valuation, a five-fold jump in six months. The funding round was led by private equity firm Creaegis. New investors MNI Ventures-Claypond, Sentinel Global, and existing backers Khosla Ventures, SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed, and Y

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Backed by $60M in funding, Oak steps out of stealth to fix the identity mess that AI agents are making worse

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Physical badges used to be all you needed for identity management at a company. But with humans now working alongside machines and AI agents in digital environments, even the identity tools built for the cloud era are proving inadequate. That’s the gap Israeli startup Oak is stepping out of stealth to fill, it says. Co-founded

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