Friday, February 14, 2025

Happy Friday, everyone! I'm Dom, and I'll be taking over the newsletter today. We've got lots of news, including Meta's new subsea cable project, Brian Chesky's opinions on AI, and more. Let's dive in.

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: makasana / Getty Images

🌊 Under the sea: Meta confirmed that it is working on the world's longest subsea cable called Project Waterworth. We previously reported that Meta was looking to have more control over its services, and geopolitics was also a major factor in the company wanting to build its own sea infrastructure. Read more

🤨 Help wanted: Firecrawl, a company that makes web-crawling bots, listed a job for an AI agent starting at $15,000 a year. The post went viral on X with the founders of Firecrawl telling TechCrunch that it wasn't a joke, either. Read more

🚧 3D homes: Icon, a company that uses 3D printing to build homes, closed a $56 million Series C led by Norwest Venture Partners and Tiger Global. The company has raised more than $500 million with a rumored valuation topping $1 billion. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Airbnb

🏠 Airbnb tests out AI: The company is looking at AI technology that can help with customer support. During an earnings call, CEO Brian Chesky spoke about AI and his belief that much of the technology is too early. Still, he thinks there is much potential for it to grow and even have a "profound impact on travel." Read more

🐥 Return of the quote posts: X competitor Mastodon is looking to adopt the "quote post" feature that caused controversy on X. Critics say the "quote post" option helped make X a more toxic place, but there are some in favor of the feature. Read more

🎖️ Dual-use tech: NATO and the U.K. just announced the names of the first five startups to take part in the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) program. The companies are building in sectors such as material science and AI and were chosen from 2,400 applications. Read more

🤖 Robots ramp up: Earlier this week, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo noted that the company might be working on humanoid robots, and now it's Meta's turn. It's reportedly forming a new team within its Reality Labs hardware division to build robots that can assist with physical tasks. Read more

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Around the web

💔 Party of one: The loneliness epidemic has become a security crisis, especially as AI becomes more sophisticated and scammers become more attuned. Wired has more

💸 The booming days of cheap money are over for VCs and startups: Bloomberg has the breakdown on what happened to the unicorn bubble of a few years ago and what companies caught in the middle are looking to do next. Read more

🇬🇧 Wait, what? Billionaire VC and founder Peter Thiel had a not-so-secret meeting with officials over in the U.K., and the Financial Times is trying to get the scoop on what was said. So far, U.K. officials are saying that releasing details of the meeting could damage "diplomatic relations" between our two countries. Read more

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