Signal. External read.
What we're reading across AI and web3 — pulled straight from the source, no rewrite. Every card links out to the original outlet.
OpenAI just wants to win
OpenAI has spent the last few years planting flags across the increasingly difficult terrain in mathematics. This week, it claimed one of its biggest prizes yet: a solution to a legendary Millennium Prize problem. In normal circumstances, this would have been celebrated as a historic achievement. Instead, many mathematicians have watched OpenAI's relentless advance with […]
Y Combinator’s Garry Tan wants US open-weight AI labs to ‘distill’ frontier models, too
Tan wants smaller, American open-weight AI labs to use the same kind of training techniques on American frontier AI labs, giving the U.S. a more robust set of open-weight options that aren’t Chinese.
OpenAI’s feud with mathematicians is only escalating
Twenty-five leading mathematicians signed an open letter arguing that AI labs are threatening their intellectual work.
One week left to book your exhibit table at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Only one week left to secure your exhibit table. Tables are limited and can sell out before the September 18 deadline.
Final, final, final call for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Side Events
The absolute last chance to apply to host an official Side Event during TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is tonight, September 11, at 11:59 p.m. PT.
Kimi-maker Moonshot AI targets $2B in annual revenue
While K3's usage figures have declined slightly in recent months, OpenRouter data currently shows as many as 300 billion tokens being generated each day by K3 models on the system.
An Anthropic researcher’s doomsday warning comes at a very interesting time
An Anthropic researcher resigned this week, warning in a post on X that the company is “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”. The company’s own alignment lead even co-signed the message rather than walking it back. It’s the kind of doomer warning the AI industry has flirted with before, but the timing, with Anthropic reportedly preparing for an IPO, makes it land differently.&
Nscale adds former OpenAI exec Fidji Simo to its board ahead of potential IPO
The No. 2 exec at OpenAI also led Instacart through its IPO in 2023.
Anthropic spent this week in hot water over cybersecurity
After admitting earlier this year that its AI models had hacked other companies' systems on a handful of occasions, Anthropic released a new report on Wednesday detailing the attacks. It reveals a string of incidents displaying what Anthropic deems its models' single-minded "recklessness" - and will likely fuel already raging concerns about cybersecurity and AI. […]
Meta says it’s changing AI suggestions after posing invasive personal questions
Meta says it's making changes to the prompts suggested by its AI chatbot after a viral video showed it digging for personal information about a woman's young daughters, as reported earlier by Futurism. In a statement to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby says the company "missed the mark," adding that "the feature never should […]
Mark Wahlberg is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, and he wants to talk about your work, not his
Mark Wahlberg joins Bruce K. Lee at Disrupt to discuss investing, entrepreneurship, healthcare, wellness, and building businesses.
OpenAI puts Pro subscriptions on hold due to Astra demand
The company said Pro subscriptions put the most strain on its systems, so it's pausing sign-ups while adding more capacity.
Anthropic details distillation campaigns from Alibaba, Moonshot AI, and DeepSeek
A new report released Thursday by Anthropic alleges persistent distillation attacks by China-based AI companies, which have escalated in recent months as competition in the space has intensified.
Anthropic reveals rogue AI agents hate CAPTCHAs, just like you
Come inside the mind of a bot trying to convince the internet it's human.
India’s Pocket FM doubles revenue run rate to $500M as AI powers 93% of audio content
Pocket FM uses AI to produce 99% of its new content, helping make content production about 80 times cheaper.
Slack can now vibe-code interactive charts and reports inside chats
A new feature coming to Slack will allow you to build interactive reports, polls, dashboards, presentations, microsites, and other tools directly inside a chat. With Slackforce Surfaces, you can describe to Slackbot what you need, and it will use AI to gather information from relevant conversations and connected apps, like Google Drive or Salesforce, to […]
Schools are catching on to Big Tech’s playbook
It's the hot new thing in tech, and it's where all the jobs are. Students who don't learn to use it fall behind. And to help them catch up in time, its creators are graciously providing the resources and curriculum for learning it, often pro bono. That's the narrative AI companies are pitching schools on […]
AI agents are flooding public services with new requests
“The vast majority of cases we find are people who are entitled to claim for something, claiming for that thing,” the researcher told TechCrunch.
Maven Robotics wants to steal your robot deployment deal
Maven Robotics emerged from stealth today with a $100 million Series A and active deployments.
Meta’s Muse AI works and creeps me out
Meta has launched its new Muse assistant, marking the company's first real foray into AI-powered productivity tools. The company says its AI agent can "take the busywork off your plate" by helping you with online shopping, emails, trip-planning, and more. I decided to try out the new tool and see how well it performed - […]
Why the current tech backlash feels different
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.  Nick Statt: Hello and welcome to Decoder, Nilay’s show about big ideas and other problems. This is Nick Statt, senior producer. And I’m joined by our brand-new supervising producer, Greg Ott. Greg Ott: Good day, everyone. And Hi, Nilay. Nilay is here too. He is […]
Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn’t use their work
Another researcher is challenging OpenAI about the data driving its increasingly impressive array of mathematical discoveries. Just days after a bitter row erupted over whether the company's models benefited from unpublished work, a second mathematician has come forward accusing the AI giant of unethical and "dishonest" behavior and a lack of transparency about the origins […]
AI research startup Listen Labs scrubbed a $1.5B funding round for Salesforce talks
Listen Labs walked away from a signed Series C term sheet from Menlo Ventures, sources say.
OpenAI adds a prominent AI doomer to its board of directors
Paul Christiano, an influential AI researcher focused on alignment, is joining the OpenAI Foundation as a member of its board.