Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we dive into Google's latest AI models; we learn of some new DJ-friendly features at Apple; and we get the details on a creator who is running for office. Let's do it.

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Google DeepMind

🏡 More models: Google today unveiled Gemini 2.5, a family of "reasoning" models, or models that allegedly think before they answer. The first to launch is Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, a multimodal reasoning AI model.

🏗️ AI agent infrastructure: One of the biggest questions in the rapidly moving world of AI agents is how exactly should companies charge for them. Paid is looking to help companies figure that out and just raised $11 million in pre-seed funding.

🥁 Drop the bass: Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon rejoice! Apple announced that it is opening up its catalog and integrating a number of tools to allow its DJ users to mix sets through Apple Music. The company is also launching a set of DJ-friendly editorial playlists and more.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Character AI

💬 It's about time: Character AI, the company that allows users to create and talk to different AI characters, is rolling out new parental supervision features after being sued over how the company treated its underage users.

🫙 Living in the sprawl: In the age of AI, many enterprises are trying to keep track of several Kubernetes clusters at once. Plural built a platform that brings them all into the same dashboard with the hope of making it easier to manage and update these clusters.

🇺🇸 Pod save America: Podcaster Kat Abughazaleh, who is known for publicly sparring with Elon Musk online, announced plans to run for Congress in Illinois. While Abughazaleh may be one of the first folks of TikTok fame to run for office, she definitely won't be the last.

☁️ Power to the people: AT Protocol, the technology that powers decentralized social media sites like Bluesky, held its first in-person gathering last weekend. Attendees spoke about what the future of the web could look like if the power goes back into individuals' hands.

🪟 The IPO window is jammed: When Donald Trump was elected, Silicon Valley hoped his administration would open the door to a friendlier IPO environment. Cerebras Systems, which has had its IPO held up due to a national security review, is finding that this isn't happening quite yet.

🏝️ On island time: On today's episode of StrictlyVC Download, the hosts catch up with Jonah Peretti, the founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, to discuss BuzzFeed's history and what the company is up to next: a social media platform called BuzzFeed Island.

🍎 Back, back, back again: Apple announced today that this year's WWDC will take place June 9-13. According to some reports, Apple has prepared dramatic software overhauls for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

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Around the web

🫢 Transformational technology: It's no secret that AI has been used to create content that is racist, sexist, and just plain slop. 404 Media reports that the makers of said slop have found out how to monetize it on platforms like Instagram.

🧊 Immigrant ice out: There has been a lot of chatter about how Donald Trump's proposed crackdown on H-1B visas would affect startups but not as much about how it would affect Big Tech. Amazon has employed the most H-1B workers from 2020 through 2024.

Before you go

Image Credits: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

🧬 Data delete: DNA testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this week. While that means the company is for sale, so is the genetic data from millions of Americans. Users can't delete all the data the company has of theirs, but we've got a guide on how to delete everything that you can.