Thursday, February 27, 2025

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! We have so much to get through today: A16z has made another political hire, the DOGE expansion continues, and Nvidia's shedding worries like a husky in spring. We also have notes on AI agents for fintech, funding for maternity health, sidewalk bots in Tokyo, a list of indie apps that you can use to wean yourself off big tech, and more.

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Steve Jennings for TechCrunch / Getty Images

1. Money = power: Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz has hired former Republican congressman Patrick McHenry as senior advisor to advocate for startups with policymakers. The firm last month controversially hired Daniel Penny, a former Marine who was acquitted last year after choking a homeless man to death in the New York City subway. Read More

2. From meme to affecting geopolitics: U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order giving Elon Musk and DOGE more powers to review spending at the federal government. Read More

3. What's a DeepSeek? That was the energy at Nvidia's post-results conference call yesterday, after the company posted yet another record-breaking quarter, exceeding analysts' expectations for revenue. CEO Jensen Huang said he was confident about the company's future, and that DeepSeek posed no problem. Read More

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Morning must-reads

Image Credits: Unique

Speaking of AI agents, Swiss startup Unique has raised a $30 million Series A to use AI agents to speed up data gathering and research in financial work for banking, insurance and private equity. Read More

Maternity health takes center stage: Maternity clinic Millie raised a $12 million Series A and its cap table is all women. The company provides full "modern" maternity care for pregnant women and will use the fresh capital to continue a physical store expansion. Read More

Tokyo gets cooler by the day: Autonomous vehicle startup Avride has struck a partnership with Rakuten to have its bots make restaurant and grocery deliveries in Tokyo. The company's sidewalk bots currently deliver food and groceries at Ohio State University. Read More

Go indie: Tired of big tech's shenanigans? We've put together a list of alternative apps you can check out. These include read-it-later app Wallabag, Nextcloud, an alternative to Dropbox; and Joplin, an alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft 365. Read More

To the moon, literally: Data storage provider Lonestar and semiconductor storage company Philson just launched data infrastructure to the moon on a SpaceX rocket. It conducted test launches last year. Read More

Around the web

Meta had to apologize last night after an "error" led violent videos to fill the feeds of Instagram users. According to the Wall Street Journal, users were shown videos of people being shot and hit by cars. Read More

Meanwhile, in creator land: Mr. Beast is looking to raise a few hundred million dollars at a $5 billion valuation to back a holding company that owns several parts of his business empire, Bloomberg reports. He reportedly wants to expand into more media and packaged goods. Read More

Before you go

Fair-weather corporations: There's been a drastic change in sentiment around diversity, equity and inclusion across the globe, and companies have been pivoting away from DEI hard. We decided to track all the changes that companies have been making regarding their DEI strategies, and this list will surely be updated regularly. Read More