Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we have Hinge Health's public debut, Trump's escalating tension with Apple, and the secret io investors doing a victory lap. We've also got more AI avatar CEOs, verified Bluesky users, Anthropic's new Claude Opus 4, AR glasses, a Spanish government-backed hacking group, and more. Let's dive in! | | | Image Credits: Hinge Health | 1. IPO rollercoaster: Hinge Health made a splash yesterday with its NYSE debut. Still, its public valuation has dipped below its private market worth, a trend that's become all too common for startups IPOing. Read More 2. Olé: We have a deep dive into the hacking group Careto, which was allegedly run by the Spanish government. Researchers apparently found out about this more than a decade ago, with Spain now joining the ranks of Western countries with their own hacking groups. Read More 3. Investor mystery party: It's come out that the family office of Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski was a secret investor in io, the Jony Ive company that OpenAI plans to acquire for $6.5 billion. Other secret investors in the company have also started to come out of the woodwork. Read More | | | 🌀 Cyclone time: Anthropic released a report on its new AI model, Claude Opus 4, and found that the model is a pretty good programmer and a writer. Oh yeah, and it's also delivering some entertaining emojis. Read More 🗣 Speaking of Anthropic, AI models hallucinate less than humans do, per the company's CEO Dario Amodei. He also noted that hallucinations are not necessarily a hindrance in the company's path toward AGI. Read More 😨 But blackmail is a problem: Claude Opus 4 frequently tries to blackmail developers when they threaten to replace it with a new system. Concerning behavior that has led the company to beef up safeguards. Read More 🇺🇸 Go big or go home: Trump has threatened a 25% tariff on iPhones if Apple doesn't shift production to the U.S. Apple CEO Tim Cook has been trying to avoid Trump's China tariffs by shifting production to India, which clearly hasn't escaped the president's notice. Read More 👹 Replace CEOs with AI: Zoom's CEO used an AI avatar on its quarterly call, following in the footsteps of Klarna's CEO, who did so earlier this week. Zoom's CEO has long been a fan of using avatars and said the company wanted to create digital versions of users. Read More 👓 Disrupt the smartphone: Apple is looking to release its own pair of smart glasses by the end of next year as it hopes to compete against Meta's popular Ray-Ban AI glasses. Apple's glasses will have a camera, a microphone, and access to Siri. Read More | | | 🔮 HODL: The Wall Street Journal has the exclusive on the big banks looking to create their own stablecoins as they hope to curb competition from the crypto industry. Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase are all said to be having these conversations. Read More 🇦🇪 MENA dreams: OpenAI revealed its plans to officially build a data complex in the U.A.E., as part of a deal between Oracle, Nvidia, Softbank, and others, The New York Times reports. The hope is for at least one of the data centers to be up and running by next year. Read More 🥊 Trade War: Trump said he would put a 50% tariff on all imports from the EU next month since talks with the bloc have stalled. The Financial Times has the update on the new flare-up with Brussels. Read More | | | ✅ Bluecheck: Bluesky will officially verify "notable and authentic" accounts. Users can apply for verification through an online form, while organizations can ask to become Trusted Verifiers so they can verify others. Read More | | | Featured jobs from CrunchBoard | | | Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. | | | Update your preferences here at any time | | Copyright © 2025 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. TechCrunch Media LLC. 9720 Wilshire Boulevard, 6th floor, Beverly Hills, CA | | | | |
