TechCrunch Industry News

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid eight hundred twenty five thousand dollars earlier this year to a company that manufactures vehicles equipped with various technologies for law enforcement, including fake cellphone towers known as “cell-site simulators,” which can be used to spy on nearby phones.   Also, hackers working for the North Korean government have stolen more than $2 billion in crypto so far this year. That’s according to blockchain analysis firm Elliptic.  On Tuesday, Elliptic published a blog post with this new estimate, which the company says is the “largest annual total on record, with three months still to go,” and is based on more than thirty hacks this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Deloitte is rolling out Claude to its nearly 500,000 employees after issuing a refund for a report that contained AI hallucinations. Plus, Taylor Swift fans love a good puzzle, but some were rubbed the wrong way by a promotional scavenger hunt which appeared to use AI-generated videos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AMD has signed a multi-year chip supply deal with OpenAI that could generate tens of billions in revenue for the chipmaker, helping accelerate its momentum in the AI industry.  AMD has agreed to supply 6 gigawatts of compute capacity to OpenAI, which is enough to power up to 4 ½  million homes, across multiple generations of its Instinct GPUs, starting with the Instinct MI450 GPU. OpenAI will receive the first gigawatt of capacity in the second half of next year, when the new chip is scheduled for deployment.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A waffle-centric controversy underlines ongoing tensions between Bluesky and some of its most vocal users. Also, police say they have arrested a suspect allegedly connected to multiple online threats that led TikTok to evacuate its headquarters near Los Angeles on Friday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

California's Department of Insurance has been warning Tesla to fix its claims process since 2022, but consumer complaints have skyrocketed anyways. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a rare public appearance at Italian Tech Week in Turin on Friday and used the opportunity to predict that millions of people will be living in space “in the next couple of decades,” the Financial Times reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A notorious predominantly English-speaking hacking group has launched a website to extort its victims, threatening to release about a billion records stolen from companies who store their customers’ data in cloud databases hosted by Salesforce. Apple has removed ICEBlock and other apps from its App Store that allow users to anonymously report sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, following pressure from the Trump administration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google says hackers associated with a prolific ransomware group are sending extortion emails to executives at “numerous” large organizations after claiming to have stolen their sensitive information from a suite of business software products developed by Oracle. Also, OpenAI has sold 6.6 billion dollars in shares held by current and former employees, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The sale pushed OpenAI’s total valuation to 500 billion dollars, the highest ever achieved by a privately held company. Purchasers included SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital, MGX, and T. Rowe Price, the report said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

London-based actress Tilly Norwood has about 40 thousand Instagram followers. One thing to know though is she’s not real. She is an AI-generated character created by Xicoia, the AI division of the production company Particle6. Also, Apple is sidelining plans to overhaul its Vision Pro VR glasses to focus on developing AI smart glasses that can compete with products from Meta, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Current and former OpenAI researchers seem torn over how the company's Sora app fits in with its broader mission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Fortnite maker Epic Games said that Apple’s new installation workflow, implemented in iOS 18.6, has had a positive impact on its user growth, with a 60 percent decrease in drop-offs. On Wednesday, Wikimedia Deutschland announced a new database that will make Wikipedia’s wealth of knowledge more accessible to AI models. The U.S. Department of Energy has taken equity stakes in Canadian company Lithium Americas and its Nevada mining joint venture with General Motors as part of a renegotiation of a federal loan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices