Technology

How Justin Ernst invested nearly $500 million in hot startups without the need for a traditional venture capital fund

How Justin Ernst invested nearly $500 million in hot startups without the need for a traditional venture capital fund

💥 Check out this must-read post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Fundraising,Venture,anduril,Anthropic,playground global,SpaceX,SPV 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: Last year, Justin Ernst noticed a huge gap in how venture capital worked: Family offices and smaller institutional investors were eager to invest in the fastest-growing AI companies, but they couldn't reach those cap tables. Having spent more than five years at Playground Global investing in deep technology and helping lead fundraising, Ernst was confident that his relationships with both investors and founders would allow him to bridge this gap. Instead of launching a formal venture capital fund, a process he says takes…
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Google just fired a warning shot in the AI ​​subscription price wars

Google just fired a warning shot in the AI ​​subscription price wars

🔥 Read this trending post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,google ai,Google AI Plus 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: Google just made its budget AI subscription plan more budget-friendly, bringing a price war that's been brewing in emerging markets directly to US consumers. The company announced Monday that it will cut the monthly price of Google AI Plus from $7.99 to $4.99 — while doubling the storage space included at that tier, from 200GB to 400GB. Vikas Kansal, product lead for Gemini AI subscriptions, said on X that the storage updates will be rolled out to users over the next few…
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How Justin Ernst invested nearly $400 million in hot startups without the need for a traditional venture capital fund

How Justin Ernst invested nearly $400 million in hot startups without the need for a traditional venture capital fund

💥 Explore this insightful post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Fundraising,Venture,anduril,Anthropic,playground global,SpaceX,SPV 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: Last year, Justin Ernst noticed a huge gap in how venture capital worked: Family offices and smaller institutional investors were eager to invest in the fastest-growing AI companies, but they couldn't reach those cap tables. Having spent more than five years at Playground Global investing in deep technology and helping lead fundraising, Ernst was confident that his relationships with both investors and founders would allow him to bridge this gap. Instead of launching a formal venture capital fund, a process he says takes 12…
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Anthropic’s Fable 5 can make weirdly fun video games at the click of a button

Anthropic’s Fable 5 can make weirdly fun video games at the click of a button

🔥 Read this awesome post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Anthropic,Claude,Fable 5,Mythos ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: Anthropic has released Claude Fable 5, the first publicly available version of the closely watched Mythos model. What can Fable actually do? It turns out to be all kinds of things. Ethan Mollick, a prominent AI researcher and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has been playing around with the model and seems to have a lot of fun with it. In his testing, Fable "basically outperformed every other generic model I've used by a wide margin," Mollick wrote Tuesday on his Substack. He…
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General Motors is joining the race to build batteries for AI data centers and the grid

General Motors is joining the race to build batteries for AI data centers and the grid

🔥 Check out this insightful post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: Climate,Transportation,energy storage,GM,sodium-ion batteries 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: The race to secure power for AI data centers has spilled into some unusual places, including the world of cars. Battery recycling company Redwood Materials started the trend last year with a new energy storage division and a project to connect old electric vehicle packs to the Crusoe data center in Nevada. Ford then said it was repurposing some of its battery manufacturing capacity to make grid-scale batteries. And now GM is announcing its own — and arguably more ambitious — plans…
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Hey Siri, this is what I really want from AI

Hey Siri, this is what I really want from AI

🚀 Read this awesome post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Apple,siri 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: After two years and a $250 million lawsuit, Apple's revamped AI Siri is on its way to your phones, laptops, and even mixed reality headsets, if you're one of the three people who already uses an Apple Vision Pro. Apple revealed a slew of new information at its WWDC keynote on Monday about these long-awaited, AI-powered updates that could take advantage of the fact that our devices are supposedly "designed with Apple's intelligence." To be honest, it's hard for AI to impress me enough to…
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Can tech companies learn to love cheaper AI models?

Can tech companies learn to love cheaper AI models?

🚀 Check out this insightful post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,TC,ai models,Anthropic,Harvey,OpenAI 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: The AI ​​boom has been built on a basic assumption: bigger models are stronger, and stronger models win. Now, the industry is about to find out what happens if that assumption starts to crumble. Rising costs have already put pressure on users to give smaller, cheaper models a second look. This cost-conscious shopping model is new and it is not clear how it will impact the industry, but the impact is likely to be significant. One prediction, made by Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong,…
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WWDC 2026: Everything announced on Siri AI, iOS 27, Apple Intelligence, and more

WWDC 2026: Everything announced on Siri AI, iOS 27, Apple Intelligence, and more

🚀 Check out this must-read post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Apple,siri,wwdc 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: Apple's WWDC 2026 event kicked off yesterday at Apple Park, kicking off a week full of reveals for Siri AI, iOS 27, Apple Intelligence and more, along with developer events and demos as Apple looks to reassert itself with users and developers who have been left unimpressed with their releases within the hyper-competitive AI space. This also marks CEO Tim Cook's last WWCD with the company, after announcing he would hand over to senior vice president of hardware engineering John Ternos on September 1.…
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CISA gives US federal agencies three days to fix a VPN bug being attacked by a ransomware gang

CISA gives US federal agencies three days to fix a VPN bug being attacked by a ransomware gang

✨ Read this awesome post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: Security,cybersecurity,zero-day 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: A ransomware group is actively exploiting an unpatched flaw in security tools used across the US federal government, prompting US cybersecurity agency CISA to order all civilian agencies to address the vulnerability by the end of Wednesday. Cybersecurity firm Check Point Software said the flaw affects several remote access tools, firewalls, and virtual private networks, which act as digital gatekeepers to protect company networks from unauthorized access. The company said in a separate blog post that it had confirmed that the flaw had been exploited…
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Rivian begins deliveries of its all-important R2 SUV

Rivian begins deliveries of its all-important R2 SUV

🚀 Discover this trending post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: Transportation,electric vehicles,EVs,r2,Rivian 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: Rivian officially began delivering its first R2 SUVs to paying customers on Tuesday, marking the beginning of a new chapter for the all-electric automaker as it tries to reach mass market reach. Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said the R2 is "probably the most important thing we've launched yet," which is particularly crucial to the company's ambitions in the world of self-driving vehicles. Starting at around $58,000, the R2 takes much of what Rivian did with the R1 SUV and shrinks it into…
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