Thursday, March 6, 2025

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we bring you notes on the U.K.'s newfound hate for encryption; Volkswagen's newest electric car; Y Combinator's embrace of generative AI; and why the U.S. shouldn't try to Manhattan Project its way to artificial general intelligence. There's much more, of course, so let's get started! — Rebecca

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

1. Big Bruv is watching: The U.K. has quietly scrubbed advice on how people should use encryption from its government web pages. The move comes just a few weeks after the U.K. demanded backdoor access to U.K. users' encrypted data that's stored on Apple's iCloud service. Read More

2. Will we need to learn coding in the future? The current batch of Y Combinator startups has apparently created almost entire code bases using AI. Jared Friedman, a managing partner at the accelerator, noted that doesn't mean the founders are non-technical. But it does make me wonder how many founders in the future will know how to code. Read More

3. Don't rush into this: Top minds in AI, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Center for AI Safety director Dan Hendrycks, say the U.S. shouldn't pursue a Manhattan Project-style push to develop AI systems with "superhuman" intelligence. That approach, they say, is likely to escalate geopolitical tensions. Read More

Morning Must-Reads

Image Credits: Volkswagen

🚗 Volkswagen has unveiled an ultra-cheap electric car, the ID EVERY1, and it runs on software made by Rivian, TC has learned. It's a big deal for both automakers — VW is going to market with a $21,500 EV, and Rivian is securing an additional revenue stream in a tough market. Read More

🔋 The Vitruvian reactor: Renaissance Fusion's founder Francesco Volpe has studied nuclear fusion for decades, and his startup's design for a reactor is now attracting investor attention. The startup recently closed a $34.6 million Series A1 to build a demonstrator that should prove parts of its novel design. Read More

🚀 Too many drones: If $500 drones in Ukraine can take down multi-million-dollar tanks, anti-drone solutions need to ante up. Enter German startup Alpine Eagle, which is using "inexpensive, mass profitable systems to establish a symmetry against the numerical advantage of cheap strike drones." Read More

🏴‍☠️ One man's trash and treasure: Canoo's CEO has offered to buy nearly all of the defunct EV startup's assets out of bankruptcy for $4 million in cash. That sale will also wipe out the $11 million in debt Canoo owed to the CEO's financial firm. Read More

⚕️ Every cancer patient doesn't need chemo: NY-based Ataraxis AI wants to use AI to accurately predict not only if a patient has cancer, but also what the outcome of treatments would look like in five to 10 years. Because if there's a small chance of cancer returning, aggressive treatment like chemotherapy could be avoided. Read More

Around the Web

🤳 The online equivalent of picture books: The Washington Post has an interesting review of how the Trump admin is relentlessly transforming its traditional press shop into a rapid-response influencer operation. Because the brain rot is so deep, Americans speak in memes now. Read More

🔍 DuckDuckGoAI: DuckDuckGo is bringing AI-generated answers to its search engine, sourcing answers from across the web in a "less obnoxious" version of Google's AI Overviews. Soon, its AI chatbot will also integrate web search, reports The Verge. Read More

🤓 Buttoning up: Discord, the social chat app used widely by the video game and coding community, is in talks with bankers to discuss an initial public offering as soon as this year, reports The New York Times. Read More

Before You Go

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

✍️ Summarize everything: The newest update to Apple's iOS, version 18.4, will be able to give you AI-powered summaries of App Store reviews. We wonder if this is necessary, since summaries may leave out details that make reviews useful, and also if this will make the problem of fake, bot-written reviews worse. Read More