Welcome to TechCrunch AM! We're off to a cracking start this morning with notes on a devastating data breach that probably affects everyone reading this, Mastodon's move to a non-profit model, and the departure of Sonos' CEO. We've also got the top tech trends from self-driving cars, a powerful new telescope, TC's best advice for founders, a low-cost AI reasoning model, OpenAI's arms race, and more. Let's go! — Rebecca | | | Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch | 1. What could go wrong? Data broker Gravy Analytics was hacked, and now the location data of millions of people around the world is floating around out there. The data comes from top phone apps – from Tinder and Grindr to Microsoft Outlook and MyFitnessPal – and can easily show where people have been, live, work, and travel. Read More 2. Non-profit social media: We talk a lot about AI alignment, but what about ensuring that the tools we use everyday, like social media, are aligned with humanity? Mastodon has an answer for that: transitioning to a non-profit structure. Read More 3. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is leaving the company after nearly a decade on the job. His departure comes after the Great Sonos Update Screw Up of 2024, where everyone around the world with a Sonos device was angered by the buggiest software update that cost the company a ton of time, money, and cred. Read More | | | Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch | 🚗 Self-driving cars are back, baby: Despite the shutdown of major players (see: Cruise), autonomous vehicles are seeing a revival — if CES announcements and demos are to be believed. The show was full of automated driving tech, as well as other transportation trends like Nvidia chips in everything that moves. Read More 🤠Becca's best founder advice: TC's Rebecca Szkutak is sharing the five best pieces of advice she learned as the host of the Found podcast, and it should be required reading for any first-time founder. Read More 🫧 AI healthcare is taking off: Have we all been noticing the truckloads of money going to AI healthcare companies, or is it just me? Qventus, a startup that builds AI tools to automate work across healthcare scenarios, has just raised $105 million. Read More 💸 Does it really take billions to train AI models? A team of researchers at UC Berkeley released an open-source AI reasoning model that can apparently compete with an earlier version of OpenAI's o1 and was trained for less than $450. So what is OpenAI doing with all that cash?! Read More 💳 The Brex of Canada: Float Financial wants to be the Brex of the North, and it's just raised $48.5 million to scale its expense management and corporate card startup. Goldman Sachs Growth Equity led the round, bringing the startup's warchest to $92.6 million. Read More | | | 🔫 The AI arms race: OpenAI has released its economic blueprint for "AI in America" that suggests ways policymakers can spur the development of AI in the U.S. and keep its lead over China. The New York Times reports it's part of a larger attempt to court the incoming Trump administration. Read More ✊ Meanwhile at Epic Games: Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic, is throwing shade at big tech for cozying up to Trump, writes TechSpot. "After years of pretending to be Democrats, Big Tech leaders are now pretending to be Republicans… Beware the scummy monopoly campaign to vilify competition law as they rip off consumers and crush competitors." Read More 🤓 Top 10 breakthrough technologies, from MIT Technology Review. The list includes a powerful new telescope to help astronomers study dark matter, small language models, long-acting HIV prevention meds, green steel, and more. Read More | | | ⛔ Opt out of AI summaries: And by AI, I mean Apple Intelligence. The company's feature summarizes notifications, but it's not always accurate and often causes confusion. Not to worry, you can turn it off. Here's how
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