Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we bring you extensive notes on: the unbalanced state of global AI funding; Apple's App Store economics; Anthropic's new models for governments; a super fancy frame for art; good news for robotics devs; AI car salesfolk, and more. To work! | | | Image Credits: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images | 1. The AI movement isn't truly global, at least when it comes to money. VCs invested $69.7 billion in North American AI startups between February and May this year, compared to just $6.4 billion in Europe, and $3 billion in Asian startups, per PitchBook. Read More 2. Changing the narrative: As Apple fights to retain its stranglehold over in-app payments in its ecosystem, a study supported by the company has found that its App Store facilitated $1.3 trillion of billings and sales in 2024. Of that, 90% did not involve commissions, the study says. Read More 3. Selling to the man: Looking for new sources of revenue, Anthropic has released a set of AI models customized for U.S. national security customers. Called "Claude Gov," the new models are supposedly tailored for government tasks including "operational planning, operational support, and intelligence analysis." Read More | | | 😜 DeviantHardware: Angelo Sotira, the founder of digital art platform DeviantArt, has come up with a tricked out $22,000 display meant to show off fancy digital art. A bit overkill, in my opinion, but if I learned anything from the NFT craze, it's that there's a market for everything. Read More 🦈 Big fish in a little pond: Cellebrite, the company that law enforcement uses to hack into smartphones, has acquired Corellium, a startup that lets you run virtual versions of Android and iOS, for $170 million. The deal is significant, especially because Apple sued Cerellium a few years ago, saying its tech could compromise iPhone security. Read More 🤖 Here's to better robots: AI dev platform Hugging Face has released an open AI model for robotics that can apparently run on a single consumer GPU or a MacBook. Called SmolVLA, the model is 450 million parameters in size, and is available to download now. Read More 🧑💼 Meet your new car salesperson: Yes, it's an AI bot. Toma's AI voice agent is already at work at more than a 100 dealerships, helping customers schedule service appointments, handling parts orders, and answering sales questions. The product's apparently a hit, and the startup has raised $17 million to date. Read More 🛑 No freebies: X has changed its developer agreement to ensure other companies aren't using all the data on its platform to train their AI models. Feels like a little too late to be taking this tack, as most big AI companies have already trawled most of the open internet, but one can't blame the platform's new owner xAI for wanting to protect its font of data. Read More 🧐 So AI's not taking your job? Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai said no, AI is not actually going to reduce his company's workforce. Speaking to Bloomberg, he said Alphabet plans to actually expand its engineering prowess, saying as AI accelerates innovation, there will be demand for more workers. Read More | | | | The conversation is real—and it's happening now at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall. Hear unfiltered insights from leaders at Odyssey, NLX, Google DeepMind, Global Innovation Hub, Felicis, Tanka, Accel, Cohere, and more. Join candid main stage talks, sharp breakouts, startup pitch-offs, and high-impact networking. Don't miss the pulse of AI—live now. | | | 🏦 A lesson in the making: British AI startup Builder.ai has filed for bankruptcy protection after its creditors seized its cash, Bloomberg reports. The company was found to have overstated its 2024 sales and allegedly faked business with an Indian startup. Read More 🥷 No one saw that coming: OpenAI says malicious Chinese groups are increasingly using ChatGPT to do nasty things like generating fake or inflammatory content and making tools to brute-force passwords, Reuters reports. Read More | | | 📱Wheat from the chaff: Apple's about to show off its next iPhone operating system, iOS 19, next week. But since there's no shortage of rumors around the upcoming release, we've put together a list of the most likeliest features Apple might release. Read More | | | Featured jobs from CrunchBoard | | | 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 | | | | |
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