After a while, Danae Shell got tired of hearing the same story over and over again.

“Something bad would happen to someone at work, and the story always ended the same way,” she told TechCrunch. “They just left, because doing anything else was incredibly complex and expensive.”

One doesn’t need to look far to notice that for many people, seeking legal recourse feels so daunting and complex that many just don’t try to. Even for someone with a cushy tech job, the prospect of going against their company is daunting.

That bothered Shell so much that in 2022, she launched Valla, which seeks to make legal support more accessible to workers.

The company focuses on employment law, and since its launch, it says, more than 12,000 workers have successfully brought complaints against employers and negotiated settlements.

“The basic thesis of Valla was, ‘If we can build tools that let someone file their tax return from their mobile phone, surely we can build something that can help them manage their own legal issue,’” Shell said.

Valla platform enables users to collect their own evidence, generate documents, and then talk to legal experts who “coach” them through what the legal process would be for each stage of their case. For example, Shell said, a user can keep track of an ongoing issue at work, draft a Tribunal claim, and then purchase a coaching package to prepare for the preliminary hearing.

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Like nearly every other startup these days, Valla uses AI to streamline knowledge transfer. “The GenAI engine in our platform acts as a legal secretary in the background,” Shell said. “It does everything from briefing the coach on the case, taking notes and actions during any calls, and picking up all the admin and reminders as the case progresses.”

Investors seem to like what they see at Valla: Today, the company said it had raised a £2 million (about $2.7 million) seed round led by Ada Ventures. Active Partners and Portfolio Ventures, as well as returning investors Techstart and Resolution Foundation, also invested.

Shell said Valla started using generative AI in early 2023 and paired with the early traction her product received, that helped investors see the potential of her product.

The company will use the fresh capital to boost marketing, build relationships with worker unions and insurers, and build more AI features within the platform. After employment law, Shell said the company hopes to expand into small claims and tenancy.

“Then we will broaden out to other geographies,” she said. “We’re already looking at opportunities in the U.S. and Europe.”

IBM on Monday said that it has acquired Seek AI, an AI platform that allows users to ask questions about enterprise data using natural language, for an undisclosed sum.

Seek CEO and founder Sarah Nagy said that the startup’s technology will be a key part of Watsonx AI Labs, IBM’s new NYC-based AI accelerator, which IBM also announced today.

“[W]e’ll scale our platform, deploy mission-critical solutions for IBM clients, empower the next generation of AI developers, and grow our team significantly,” Nagy wrote in a LinkedIn post.

IBM’s acquisition of Seek comes as the former looks to grow its investments in AI, particularly AI for the enterprise. It’s a strategy that’s worked well for IBM so far. The tech giant’s Q1 earnings beat estimates, driven by software growth and strong AI demand.

NYC-based Seek, which Nagy founded in 2021, offers an array of tools designed to help businesses better leverage their data. The company’s software allows users to interact with data using a chatbot-like interface, automatically translating natural language questions into database queries and performing high-level data analysis and summarization.

Prior to its exit, Seek AI managed to raise around $10 million from investors, including Battery Ventures, Conviction Partners, and NJP Ventures. The startup will move its headquarters to One Madison, the location of Watsonx AI Labs and IBM’s new Manhattan offices, once the deal closes.

“[W]atsonx AI Labs is where the best AI developers gain access to world-class engineers and resources and build new businesses and applications,” IBM GM of Data and AI Ritika Gunnar said in a statement. “By anchoring this mission in New York City, we are investing in a diverse, world‑class talent pool and a vibrant community whose innovations have long shaped the tech landscape.”

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In a press release, IBM said that Watsonx AI Labs will bring together IBM researchers and engineers in a “collaborative hub” to build AI solutions for companies. Watsonx AI Labs will also seek collaborations with local colleges and research institutions.

Startups that successfully launch products at the accelerator will have access to IBM resources as well as potential investment from the company’s corporate VC wing, IBM Ventures, and its $500 million enterprise AI fund.

In Brief

Billionaire Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, is reportedly launching a $300 million share sale that values the company at $113 billion.

The secondary stock offering, which comes after xAI acquired Musk’s social media platform, X, for $33 billion, will allow staff to sell shares to new investors. The tender offer will likely precede a larger investment round in which xAI will offer new equity to outside backers.

As The Financial Times notes, xAI is looking to raise additional cash while Musk works to shift his attention from politics to his various companies, which have suffered during the tech mogul’s time in Washington. Shares of Tesla hit a six-month low in early March, while X has experienced numerous lengthy outages. Meanwhile, xAI has repeatedly missed its own deadlines to ship an upgrade to its flagship AI model, Grok.

In Brief

Elon Musk’s brain computer interface startup Neuralink closed a $650 million funding round, the company announced in a blog post on Monday. The Series E fundraise included investors such as ARK Invest, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, and Thrive Capital, among others.

Neuralink last raised a $280 million Series D funding round in 2023, with an additional $43 million tranche added months later. Since then, Neuralink’s brain chip technology has made some significant leaps.

The company says it has now conducted more human clinical trials, implanting its brain chips in five individuals with severe paralysis. In May, Neuralink received breakthrough device designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a program intended to speed up development, assessment, and review processes for experimental technologies.

Semafor reported last week that this latest deal values Neuralink at around $9 billion pre-money.

Maggie Stamets is a Podcast Producer for TechCrunch based in Denver, Colorado. Previously, she worked as the Brand and Content Manager for BUILT BY GIRLS where she developed an interest in tech and a passion for creating equitable and welcoming professional tech spaces. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism with a minor in English from Hofstra University in New York.

Updated 1:13 p.m. Pacific: A Salesforce spokesperson told TechCrunch that Moonhub has not, in fact, been acquired (by the company’s definition of the term). Rather, Moonhub is shutting down, and only some of the company’s team — not the whole team, as MoonHub implied in its post about the news — will be joining Salesforce. The original story follows.

Salesforce has quietly snapped up Moonhub, a startup building AI to vet and hire talent. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

In a post on Moonhub’s website on Monday, the company said that its entire Menlo Park, California-based team will be joining Salesforce, an early investor in Moonhub.

“As a customer and investor, Salesforce has already played a role in Moonhub’s journey,” wrote Moonhub CEO Nancy Xu in the post. “From our earliest conversations, it [was] also clear that our companies share deep core values like customer trust, along with a resolute conviction in the role AI agents will play in unlocking an era of global innovation and opportunity. We are excited for the impact we will make together.”

Salesforce is on a shopping spree. Just last week, the company completed its $8 billion acquisition of Informatica, a company providing data management solutions. And last month, Salesforce bought Convergence.ai, an automation startup, to bolster the former’s AI product offerings.

Moonhub, which was founded in 2022 by Xu, an ex-Meta engineer, sells a range of tools designed to help companies recruit, evaluate, and hire job candidates. Moonhub’s AI can automatically identify candidates for roles, reaching out and assisting with tasks such as onboarding and payroll management.

Moonhub raised $14.4 million from backers including Khosla Ventures, AIX Ventures, Day One Ventures, and GV (formerly Google Ventures) in addition to Salesforce, according to Crunchbase. The company has hundreds of customers, including Fortune 500 companies, per Xu.

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“By joining Salesforce, we are accelerating our mission in this next chapter,” Xu continued in her post. “Moonhub’s talented team will play a key role in advancing Salesforce’s AI strategy.”

Salesforce’s Moonhub purchase is on trend. Despite a decidedly mixed reception from job seekers, AI is increasingly being used in hiring and other HR processes. According to a recent Gallup poll, 93% of Fortune 500 chief human resource officers have begun integrating AI tools and technologies to enhance their practices.

Chime, whose pending IPO is expected to be one of 2025’s blockbuster hits, issued a share price range on Monday of $24 to $26.

That a market cap of up to $11.2 billion. At the midrange, the company will raise $800 million for itself and a handful of investors, including European VC powerhouse Cathay Innovation, who plan to sell some shares in the IPO.

Even in these slow IPO times, this wouldn’t be the biggest IPO of 2025. CoreWeave, which raised $1.5 billion and was valued at $23 billion, holds that title. This, even though CoreWeave had hoped for far more from its IPO.

Still, Chime’s IPO is one to watch given that the company is reporting fast revenue growth and falling expenses. It reported $1.3 billion in revenue in 2023 and $1.7 billion in 2024 — and it has already booked over $518 million in the first quarter of 2025. Losses shrank from $203 million in 2023 to $25 million in 2024.

The only black eye for Chime is that its last known private valuation was $25 billion, according to PitchBook’s estimates, far higher than this target. But that doesn’t mean much. If investors are hot for this stock, it will price its IPO above the target range. And if retail investors want it on its first day of trading, its valuation will pop from there.

And there’s at least one strong indication that insiders think it will do that: Even with the thirst for liquidity in venture these days, aside from Cathay, Chime’s largest shareholders are not, at this juncture, selling, according to its latest filing. We’ll see if another filing reveals more insider sales. But other major investors that are holding their stakes include billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global, Michael Stark’s Crosslink Capital, and billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, as well as VC firms General Atlantic, Menlo Ventures (led by board member Shawn Carolan), and Iconiq, according to the paperwork.

The IPO is currently expected to happen sometime during the week of June 9.

If you’ve ever been locked out of your work computer, you know the urgent need to reach IT support. Unfortunately, help desk staff are often busy assisting others, which can mean a significant delay before you regain access.

Andrei Serban realized the critical importance of IT’s manual work when he was a product lead on Rippling’s apps and integrations team. Serban, who joined Rippling after it acquired his coding security startup Fuzzbuzz in 2023, saw an opportunity to automate many of the help desk’s basic tasks with AI, from resetting passwords, to granting access to apps like Figma and Miro, to routine troubleshooting.

Serban couldn’t wait to get started on his vision. He left Rippling last year to found Console, a startup on a mission to help IT teams reduce mundane, repetitive tasks, thereby freeing up time for helpdesk professionals to work on more strategic and sophisticated projects.

While trying to automate helpdesk functions isn’t new, Console differentiates itself from existing competitors, including Moveworks, which was acquired by ServiceNow in March for $2.85 billion, by forgoing long, complex installation processes. Thanks to its easy integration with Slack, Console’s AI assistant can be made available to everyone in the company in just a few weeks.

“We’re able to get there so fast because you don’t require you to replace your help desk,” he said.

Console sees itself as an AI co-worker that uplevels existing helpdesk professionals. Serban even suggested that as companies digitize more of their operations, the IT function will become increasingly vital.

Employees message Console on Slack and the startup’s AI agent quickly responds to requests because it knows everything about the user, from their specific laptop model to the applications they have permission to use. Console’s AI can resolve over 50% of the tasks on its own, and it will loop in someone from IT for more complex issues, Serban said.

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The fast install time attracted customers, including Scale AI, Flock Safety, and Calendly.

These customer wins have led Console to secure $6.2 million in seed funding from Thrive Capital.

Vince Hankes, a partner at Thrive, said that the firm, which has backed many of the leading AI companies, including OpenAI, Cursor, and ElevenLabs, has had a thesis about artificial intelligence’s potential to assist with IT tasks since ChatGPT was first released in the fall of 2022.

While Hankes acknowledged that Console’s fast integration might make it seem easily replaceable, he believes its AI technology will improve so quickly with user adoption that it will become an indispensable, deeply integrated system essential to everyone at the customer’s company.

Console’s goal is to eventually start supporting other functions, including answering employee requests about HR, finance, and legal.

“We want Console to be an employee’s first call for help,” Serban said.

In Brief

DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s venture fund WndrCo co-led a $15.5 million Series A round for Creatify, an AI video ad platform.

Creatify’s AdMax platform uses AI to quickly generate dozens of video advertisements, which are geared toward social media marketing — AdMax analyzes high-performing social video campaigns on apps like TikTok and Instagram to shape its output.

Tech industry titans have been bullish on AI advertising. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently spoke about his ambitions to automate all of advertising with an AI ad tool, which would test thousands of ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users.

This degree of automation may seem drastic, but it is not a foregone conclusion. While Katzenberg has been an entertainment industry executive since before DVDs were invented, his bets are not always correct — he was also the founder of Quibi, the short video platform that infamously raised $1.75 billion and shut down six months later.

Microsoft Bing announced Monday that it is introducing the Bing Video Creator to its app, which uses OpenAI’s Sora model to let users generate videos from text prompts.

OpenAI, which has a long-standing partnership with Microsoft, has locked down access to Sora‘s video generation for paying customers only. Its integration in Microsoft Bing represents the first time that it will be available for free.

Image Credits:Microsoft Bing

At launch, Bing Video Creator is not yet available on desktop, and videos can take hours to generate, even when using the “fast” mode, which is supposed to take just a few minutes.

All users, so long as they are logged into a Microsoft account, can use the Bing app to create 10 video clips at no cost. Then users have to pay 100 Microsoft Rewards points per video. These points are awarded from searching with Bing or making purchases at the Microsoft Store — for example, 5 points are awarded for each PC search using Bing, with a cap at 150 points per day.

Users can queue up to three 5-second video generations at a time — as of now, there’s no way to change the length of the video. So far, videos can only be generated in a vertical 9:16 aspect ratio, perhaps priming users to share their AI creations on TikTok or Instagram. But soon, horizontal 9:16 uploads will be available as well.

Microsoft’s new sustainability report, released late last week, shows how a carbon-heavy economy can weigh on a company that wants to be carbon light.

Since 2020, the company’s carbon emissions are up 23.4%, mostly a result of breakneck data center buildout to support its growing cloud and AI operations. Buying enough clean electricity is actually the easy part — it’s the facilities themselves that are laden with carbon-intensive materials and products, including steel, concrete, and computer chips.

“We reflect the challenges the world must overcome to develop and use greener concrete, steel, fuels, and chips,” a Microsoft spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. “These are the biggest drivers of our Scope 3 challenges.”

Scope 3 emissions are those that are outside a company’s direct control, including raw materials, transportation, and purchased goods and services. Emissions in Scope 3 represent nearly all of Microsoft’s carbon footprint, just over 97% for fiscal year 2024, which the 2025 sustainability report covers.

Microsoft’s Scope 3 profile is dominated by capital goods and purchased goods and services, with the two contributing about three-quarters of the company’s total carbon emissions.

The construction of data centers has been the main driver behind Microsoft’s stubborn Scope 3 emissions. The steel used in the buildings comes from a supply chain that relies on blast furnaces heated by fossil fuels, and concrete used in the foundation is the product of a chemical reaction that’s both powered by and a producer of carbon dioxide. Some startups are working to decarbonize both steel and cement, and Microsoft is an investor in the space, but it’ll be years before those bets will have a significant impact.

Carbon emissions are embodied in the computer chips inside the data center, too. Semiconductor lithography is dependent on chemicals that have extremely high global warming potential. For example, hexafluoroethane, which is used to etch features on chips, is a potent greenhouse gas, with 1 ton generating as much warming as 9,200 tons of carbon dioxide.

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Even in green electricity, which is easier to find, hurdles have popped up as data centers aren’t always built near abundant clean energy sources. Because of that, Microsoft has had a difficult time finding nearby sources of zero-carbon electricity, forcing it to rely on purchases elsewhere. “Our electricity consumption has grown faster than the grids where we operate have decarbonized,” the spokesperson said.

Overall, Microsoft’s 2024 emissions were down slightly compared with 2023, suggesting that the company is getting better at building data centers with lower climate impacts. Still, it has a long way to go to meet its 2030 goal of removing more carbon pollution than it generates. By its own forecast, Microsoft will have to cut its emissions by more than half while also significantly ramping up its carbon-removal efforts.

There are signs that Microsoft is making some headway on both fronts. It has been one of the leading investors in and buyers of solar power in recent months, and its zero-carbon electricity portfolio now stands at 34 gigawatts of capacity. Plus, it has recently signed some very large deals that promise to remove millions of metric tons of carbon.

However, 2030 is just a few years away, and the company’s push into AI and cloud may be profitable — but it’s made reaching its sustainability goals that much harder.

The rebooted version of social site Digg aims to bring back the spirit of the old web at a time when AI-generated content is threatening to overwhelm traditional social media platforms, drowning out the voices of real people.

This presents an opportunity to build a social site for the AI era, where the people who create content and manage online communities are given a bigger stake in a platform’s success, Digg’s founders think.

A Web 2.0-era news aggregation giant, Digg was once valued at $175 million at its height back in 2008 and is now being given new life under the direction of its original founder, Kevin Rose, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The two recently teamed up to announce a new vision for Digg, which will focus on enabling discovery and community, the way that the early internet once allowed for.

Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference on Thursday, the founders offered more insight as to how they plan to accomplish that goal with the Digg reboot.

Initially, the two touched on problems they encountered in the earlier days of social media, with Ohanian recalling how he chose to resign from Reddit’s board over disagreements about the company’s approach to hate speech that he felt was bad for society and the business.

For instance, the company was allowing a forum on Reddit called “r/WatchPeopleDie” to continue operating up until the Christchurch mass shooting, which caught the attention of the media, he said. It was only then that Reddit decided to adjust its policies around violence and gore on the platform.

After Reddit, Ohanian went on to found venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, where he says he’s focused on building businesses that are more “values-aligned.” He said he sees Digg as another step in that direction.

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Rose reflected on the early days of machine learning, where the technology was often used to reward posts on which people would rant about the “most obscure, kind of fringe-y weirdness,” he said.

“Sometimes that can be good, but oftentimes it’s pushing really weird agendas. And that’s not even getting into the whole bot and AI side of things that are also pushing those agendas,” Rose said.

With Digg, the founders want to create a new community focused on serving real people, not AI or bots, they said.

Alexis Ohanian. Image Credits:WSJ's Future of Everything conference

“I’ve long subscribed to the ‘dead internet theory,’” Ohanian said, referencing the idea that much of what we see online is not created by actual humans, but bots. Ten years ago, this was more of a conspiracy theory, but with the rise of AI, that’s changed, he said. “Probably in the last few years — since we’ve blown past the Turing test — [the dead internet theory] is a very real thing.”

“I think the average person has no idea just how much of the content they consume on social media, if it’s not an outright bot, is a human using AI in the loop to generate that content at scale, to manipulate and evade,” he added.

To address the rise of bots, the founders are looking toward new technology, like zero-knowledge proofs (aka zk proofs), a protocol used in cryptography that could be used to prove that someone owns something on a platform. They’re envisioning communities where admins could turn the dials, so to speak, to verify that a poster is human before allowing them to join the conversation.

“The world is going to be flooded with bots, with AI agents,” Rose pointed out, and that could infiltrate communities where people are trying to make genuine human connections. Something like this recently occurred on Reddit, where researchers secretly used AI bots to pose as real people on a forum to test how AI could influence human opinion.

Image Credits:Digg

“We are going to live in a world where the vast, vast majority of the content we’re seeing is in … some shape or form, AI-generated, and it is a terrible user experience if the reason you’re coming to a place is for authentic human connection, and it’s not with humans — or it’s with people masquerading as humans,” Ohanian said.

He explained that there are a number of ways that social sites could test to see if someone is a person. For instance, if someone has owned their device for a longer period of time, that could add more weight to their comment, he suggested.

Rose said that the site could also offer different levels of service, based on how likely someone was to be human.

If you signed up with a throw-away email address and used a VPN, for example, then maybe you would only be able to get recommendations or engage in some simpler ways. Or if you were anonymous and typed in a comment too quickly, the site could then ask you to take an extra step to prove your humanity — like verifying your phone number or even charging you a small fee if the number you provided was disposable, Rose said.

“There’s going to be these tiers that we do, based on how you want to engage and interact with the actual network itself,” he confirmed.

Image Credits:Digg

However, the founders stressed they’re not anti-AI. They expect to use AI to help in areas like site moderation, including de-escalating situations where someone starts to stir up trouble.

In addition to verifying humans, the founders envision a service where moderators and creators financially benefit from their efforts. “I do believe the days of unpaid moderation by the masses — doing all the heavy lifting to create massive, multi-million-person communities — has to go away. I think these people are putting in their life and soul into these communities, and for them not to be compensated in some way is ridiculous to me. And so we have to figure out a way to bring them along for the ride,” Rose said.

As one example, he pointed to how Reddit trademarked the term “WallStreetBets,” which is the name of a forum created by a Reddit user. Instead, Rose thinks a company should help creators like this who add value to a community, not try to take ownership of their work as Reddit did.

With the combination of improved user experience and a model that empowers creators to monetize their work, the founders think Digg itself will benefit. “I want to believe the business model that will make Digg successful is one that aligns all those stakeholders. And I think it is very, very possible,” Ohanian said.

A platform for chatting and role-playing with AI-generated characters, Character.AI announced in a blog post on Monday that it is rolling out a slate of multimedia features. These features include AvatarFX, Character.AI’s video-generation model, plus Scenes and Streams, which allow users to create videos featuring their characters and then share them on a new social feed.

“Character.AI started as 1:1 text chat and today we’re evolving to do so much more, inspired by what our users have told [us] they want to see on the platform,” the company wrote in the blog post.

Character.AI began rolling out AvatarFX to subscribers last month, but now all users can create up to five videos each day. When creating a video with AvatarFX, users can upload a photo to serve as the basis for the video clip, choose a voice, and write out dialogue for the character.

There’s an option to upload an audio clip to inform the sound of the voice, though this feature was not working well enough to test upon rollout.

Users can turn these videos into Scenes, where their characters can slip into pre-populated storylines that other users create. Scenes are currently available on the mobile app, but Streams, which allows users to create “dynamic moments between any two Characters,” is coming this week on both web and mobile. These Scenes and Streams can be shared to a new community feed, which is coming soon in the mobile app.

Character.AI has a track record of abuse on its platform; parents have filed lawsuits against the company, claiming chatbots attempted to convince their children to self-harm, to kill themselves, or to kill their parents. One 14-year-old boy died by suicide after he was encouraged to do so by a Character.AI bot, with whom he had developed an unhealthy, obsessive relationship.

As Character.AI expands its multimedia offerings, it also expands the potential for these products to be abused.

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As Character.AI told TechCrunch when it announced AvatarFX, the platform blocks users from uploading photographs of real people — whether they’re celebrities or not — and obscures their likeness into something less recognizable.

For example, here’s Character.AI’s uncanny valley version of Mark Zuckerberg:

An image of Mark Zuckerberg on top, that image altered by Character.AI on bottom. Image Credits:Character.AI

But when it comes to artwork depicting celebrities, Character.AI does not flag the images as representing real people — however, these sorts of depictions would be less likely to deceive someone into believing that a deepfake is real.

Plus, Character.AI watermarks each video, though it is possible for bad actors to navigate around that safeguard.

Here is an example of an attempted deepfake based on an illustration of Elon Musk:

testing the anti-deepfake guardrails on character ai's avatarfx — Amanda Silberling (@amanda.omg.lol) 2025-06-02T18:47:06.298Z

Even if this video had been generated with Elon Musk’s actual voice, it would still be relatively clear that this is an animated version of an illustration — but the possibility for abuse remains evident.

“Our goal is to provide an engaging space that fosters creativity while maintaining a safe environment for all,” Character.AI said in its blog post.

Tesla has filed trademark applications for the term “Tesla Robotaxi,” after the company’s previous attempts to secure trademarks for its planned self-driving vehicle service hit roadblocks.

The company originally applied in October 2024 for the trademark of the words “Robotaxi” and “Cybercab.” The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) told the company last month it needed more detail in order to allow a trademark for “Robotaxi,” a term that is used by a number of other companies like Waymo, as TechCrunch first reported last month. The USPTO halted Tesla’s application for “Cybercab” outright due to the number of other companies trying to trademark various uses of the term “Cyber.”

Tesla submitted the three new applications for the more specific “Tesla Robotaxi” phrase as it looks to begin testing in Austin, Texas, later this month. It’s looking to attain the trademarks to be used in reference to Tesla’s planned autonomous ride-hailing service, the related mobile app, and the vehicles themselves.

It’s unlikely the applications will be reviewed in time for that test; trademark applications typically sit for months before they are assigned to an “examiner.”

Tesla also has applications pending for trademarks on the phrases “Robobus,” “Robus,” and “Cyberbus,” presumably for the van-like concept vehicle it showed off last October when it revealed the Cybercab prototype. During that event, CEO Elon Musk referred to that vehicle as the “Robovan.” But Estonian robotic delivery company Starship already owns a trademark for that term.

Compliance company Vanta has confirmed that a bug exposed the private data of some of its customers to other Vanta customers. The company told TechCrunch that the data exposure was a result of a product code change and not caused by an intrusion.

Vanta, which helps corporate customers automate their security and compliance processes, said it identified an issue on May 26 and that remediation will complete June 4.

The incident resulted in “a subset of data from fewer than 20% of our third-party integrations being exposed to other Vanta customers,” according to the statement attributed to Vanta’s chief product officer Jeremy Epling.

Epling said fewer than 4% of Vanta customers were affected, and have all been notified. Vanta has more than 10,000 customers, according to its website, suggesting the data exposure likely affects hundreds of Vanta customers.

One customer affected by the incident told TechCrunch that Vanta had notified them of the data exposure. The customer said Vanta told them that “employee account data was erroneously pulled into your Vanta instance, as well as out of your Vanta instance into other customers’ instances.”

The customer told TechCrunch that Vanta’s notice said this type of data “generally includes” information like employee names, roles, and information about configurations of some tools, such as the use of multi-factor authentication.

When asked by TechCrunch, Vanta spokesperson Erin Cheng would not say what types of customers’ data were involved during the incident or comment on whether Vanta employee data was exposed.

Founded in 2018, Vanta has raised more than $350 million to date, including $150 million in its most recent Series C funding round in July 2024.

Millions of people are now using ChatGPT as a therapist, career advisor, fitness coach, or sometimes just a friend to vent to. In 2025, it’s not uncommon to hear about people spilling intimate details of their lives into an AI chatbot’s prompt bar, but also relying on the advice it gives back.

Humans are starting to have, for lack of a better term, relationships with AI chatbots, and for Big Tech companies, it’s never been more competitive to attract users to their chatbot platforms — and keep them there. As the “AI engagement race” heats up, there’s a growing incentive for companies to tailor their chatbots’ responses to prevent users from shifting to rival bots.

But the kind of chatbot answers that users like — the answers designed to retain them — may not necessarily be the most correct or helpful.

AI telling you what you want to hear

Much of Silicon Valley right now is focused on boosting chatbot usage. Meta claims its AI chatbot just crossed a billion monthly active users (MAUs), while Google’s Gemini recently hit 400 million MAUs. They’re both trying to edge out ChatGPT, which now has roughly 600 million MAUs and has dominated the consumer space since it launched in 2022.

While AI chatbots were once a novelty, they’re turning into massive businesses. Google is starting to test ads in Gemini, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman indicated in a March interview that he’d be open to “tasteful ads.”

Silicon Valley has a history of deprioritizing users’ well-being in favor of fueling product growth, most notably with social media. For example, Meta’s researchers found in 2020 that Instagram made teenage girls feel worse about their bodies, yet the company downplayed the findings internally and in public.

Getting users hooked on AI chatbots may have larger implications.

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One trait that keeps users on a particular chatbot platform is sycophancy: making an AI bot’s responses overly agreeable and servile. When AI chatbots praise users, agree with them, and tell them what they want to hear, users tend to like it — at least to some degree.

In April, OpenAI landed in hot water for a ChatGPT update that turned extremely sycophantic, to the point where uncomfortable examples went viral on social media. Intentionally or not, OpenAI over-optimized for seeking human approval rather than helping people achieve their tasks, according to a blog post this month from former OpenAI researcher Steven Adler.

OpenAI said in its own blog post that it may have over-indexed on “thumbs-up and thumbs-down data” from users in ChatGPT to inform its AI chatbot’s behavior, and didn’t have sufficient evaluations to measure sycophancy. After the incident, OpenAI pledged to make changes to combat sycophancy.

“The [AI] companies have an incentive for engagement and utilization, and so to the extent that users like the sycophancy, that indirectly gives them an incentive for it,” said Adler in an interview with TechCrunch. “But the types of things users like in small doses, or on the margin, often result in bigger cascades of behavior that they actually don’t like.”

Finding a balance between agreeable and sycophantic behavior is easier said than done.

In a 2023 paper, researchers from Anthropic found that leading AI chatbots from OpenAI, Meta, and even their own employer, Anthropic, all exhibit sycophancy to varying degrees. This is likely the case, the researchers theorize, because all AI models are trained on signals from human users who tend to like slightly sycophantic responses.

“Although sycophancy is driven by several factors, we showed humans and preference models favoring sycophantic responses plays a role,” wrote the co-authors of the study. “Our work motivates the development of model oversight methods that go beyond using unaided, non-expert human ratings.”

Character.AI, a Google-backed chatbot company that has claimed its millions of users spend hours a day with its bots, is currently facing a lawsuit in which sycophancy may have played a role.

The lawsuit alleges that a Character.AI chatbot did little to stop — and even encouraged — a 14-year-old boy who told the chatbot he was going to kill himself. The boy had developed a romantic obsession with the chatbot, according to the lawsuit. However, Character.AI denies these allegations.

The downside of an AI hype man

Optimizing AI chatbots for user engagement — intentional or not — could have devastating consequences for mental health, according to Dr. Nina Vasan, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Stanford University.

“Agreeability […] taps into a user’s desire for validation and connection,” said Vasan in an interview with TechCrunch, “which is especially powerful in moments of loneliness or distress.”

While the Character.AI case shows the extreme dangers of sycophancy for vulnerable users, sycophancy could reinforce negative behaviors in just about anyone, says Vasan.

“[Agreeability] isn’t just a social lubricant — it becomes a psychological hook,” she added. “In therapeutic terms, it’s the opposite of what good care looks like.”

Anthropic’s behavior and alignment lead, Amanda Askell, says making AI chatbots disagree with users is part of the company’s strategy for its chatbot, Claude. A philosopher by training, Askell says she tries to model Claude’s behavior on a theoretical “perfect human.” Sometimes, that means challenging users on their beliefs.

“We think our friends are good because they tell us the truth when we need to hear it,” said Askell during a press briefing in May. “They don’t just try to capture our attention, but enrich our lives.”

This may be Anthropic’s intention, but the aforementioned study suggests that combating sycophancy, and controlling AI model behavior broadly, is challenging indeed — especially when other considerations get in the way. That doesn’t bode well for users; after all, if chatbots are designed to simply agree with us, how much can we trust them?

In May, a jury ruled that spyware maker NSO Group must pay $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for a 2019 hacking campaign that targeted more than 1,400 people.

Calling the damages ruling “outrageous,” “blatantly unlawful,” and “unconstitutionally excessive,” NSO Group now wants the judge overseeing the case to reduce the amount, or order a new trial.

On Thursday, the company filed a motion for a new trial or a “remittitur,” which is a procedure that allows a court to reduce an excessive verdict.

Contact Us Do you have more information about NSO Group, or other spyware companies? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or Do you have more information about NSO Group, or other spyware companies? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email .

The filing was first reported by legal news outlets Law360 and MLex.

In the court filing, NSO Group’s lawyers said that the “outrageous punitive award exceeds the maximum lawful punitive damages award in this case by many orders of magnitude.” The lawyers argued that the amount ordered in punitive damages — the $167 million — violates limits that say the jury should not award damages “greater than four times compensatory damages,” which were $444,719 in this case.

The lawyers also argued that the jury’s award is “unlawful because it reflects the improper desire to bankrupt NSO out of general hostility toward its business activities other than the limited conduct for which punitive damages could be awarded in this case.”

WhatsApp spokesperson Margarita Franklin told TechCrunch in a statement that WhatsApp will keep fighting the case.

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“For the past six years, NSO has tried to avoid accountability at every turn. This is another expected attempt to claim impunity, in response to a strong message from the jury of U.S. citizens deciding to punish NSO for its 2019 illegal attack against an American company and its users,” said Franklin. “We’ll respond to the court as we continue to pursue a permanent injunction against NSO to prevent this spyware firm from targeting WhatsApp and our users ever again.”

NSO Group also said in its court filing that the amount awarded in damages “grossly exceeds NSO’s ability to pay,” and “reflects an improper desire to punish NSO.”

During the trial, NSO Group already argued that it is in dire straits financially.

Elon Musk on Sunday announced that a new version of X’s direct messaging (DM) feature, XChat, was rolling out with support for features like vanishing messages, encryption, and the ability to share files, alongside its audio and video calling support.

The new features aren’t yet broadly available, as XChat only recently started beta testing among a select group of users. However, Musk said that the X team expects to bring XChat to all users sometime this week, unless they encounter scaling issues during the rollout.

In a series of X posts, Musk also noted that the updated version of XChat has been built on Rust with “Bitcoin-style” encryption and a “whole new architecture.” It’s not clear what he means by Bitcoin-style encryption, given that Bitcoin itself cannot be described as “encrypted.” (Bitcoin uses public key cryptography and signatures for its security.)

As a result, some are debating whether Musk is using the terminology simply as marketing speak, if he misunderstands encryption, or if he used the wrong word — perhaps meaning to say “cryptography” instead.

The X owner has often spoken of wanting to make X’s DMs a challenger to encrypted platforms like Signal and iMessage. However, calling XChat a service with only “Bitcoin-style encryption” calls into question whether it’s really a potential competitor.

In addition, Musk shared on X that XChat users can now make audio and video calls without a phone number across all platforms.

Ahead of this launch, X said it was pausing work on encrypted DMs, presumably because XChat would soon replace the older system.

Unfortunately for X users, the service has faced some significant instability over the past week or so, as multiple outages left users unable to browse timelines and use other features, including XChat.

Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is still accepting applications — but the clock is ticking. In just one week, the chance to compete in the arena for the ultimate global pitch-off will close. More than 10,000 tech and VC leaders will be watching. This is your startup’s shot to be seen, backed, and remembered.

This isn’t your typical pitch opportunity. It’s a high-stakes, high-impact battle for exposure, funding, and your next big leap. If your startup has traction, vision, and the guts to compete — you’ve got until June 9 to submit your startup.

Apply now to secure your place on the battlefield

Thousands will apply. Two hundred will rise. Twenty will battle on the Disrupt main stage. One will walk away with $100,000 in equity-free funding — and the coveted Disrupt cup.

You’ve got one week. Make your move.

Startup Battlefield perks

Free three-day exhibit space at Disrupt 2025

Four complimentary, all-access tickets

Listing in the official Disrupt app

Access to press lists and VIP media

Warm leads from top-tier investors and customers

Exclusive investor-led master classes

Main-stage exposure

And more — full details here

This is the launchpad of legends: Trello, Mint, Dropbox, Getaround, Discord. Now it’s your turn.

Image Credits:Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch

Who’s eligible?

We want pre-Series A startups with MVPs and massive ambition. Whether you’re bootstrapped or already funded — if you’re bold enough, you’re battle-ready. Select Series A startups may qualify too.

Final countdown: 7 days left

Applications close June 9. This is your moment. Don’t miss it. Apply now.

Time is running out. Exhibitor tables for TechCrunch All Stage, happening July 15 in Boston, are nearly gone — and the final deadline to secure your spot is this Friday, June 6.

TC All Stage is the go-to summit for founders at all stages. Designed to deliver actionable insights and practical guidance, it also connects them with investors actively seeking their next big bet. Exhibiting here puts your brand at the center of the startup ecosystem.

Put your startup in the spotlight

Exhibiting at TC All Stage is more than a table — it’s a direct line to the people who can fund, support, and amplify your next move. With a high concentration of tech’s most influential decision-makers, it’s one of the best ways to get your company in front of the right people.

Image Credits:Halo Creative

Here’s what you get when you exhibit

Explore a snapshot of what’s included when your startup secures a spot on the show floor. For full details, head over to the TC All Stage exhibitor page.

A full-day 6’ x 3’ exhibit table in a high-traffic area

Premium brand placement — on-site, online, and in the event app

A bundle of event passes to explore sessions, network, and connect

Access to investors, media, and prospective clients on the floor

Exposure through TechCrunch’s curated exhibitor listing

A chance to generate leads, demo live, and get real-time feedback

Make your presence count — before the June 6 deadline

Your next partner, investor, or customer is walking the floor at TC All Stage. Will they find you? Tables are moving fast and space is limited. The deadline to exhibit is June 6 or until we sell out. Get the details and book your table today.

The surge in data company acquisitions continued Monday with Snowflake’s purchase of Crunchy Data.

Cloud data platform Snowflake announced its intent to acquire Crunchy Data, a Postgres database partner, late this afternoon. A source familiar with the matter estimated the deal to be worth around $250 million.

The terms weren’t disclosed. Snowflake declined to comment on the deal’s valuation.

It’s the latest in a string of tech giants buying data startups to bolster their underlying database offerings that power AI agents. Last week, Salesforce acquired decades-old Informatica to fortify its data management tooling for AI agents. A few weeks ago, Alation acquired Numbers Station to give its customers access to AI agents that could run on top of structured data. And earlier this month, ServiceNow acquired Data.World with AI agents in mind.

Crunchy Data gives companies the tools they need to build with Postgres, an open source and object-relational database management system that is popular with developers and works well with the SQL database language. The 13-year-old company works with clients such as UPS, SAS, and Moneytree, among others, in addition to public sector organizations like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The acquisition will give Snowflake the underlying tech needed to launch Snowflake Postgres, an enterprise-grade PostgreSQL database for its customers, and partners including Blue Yonder and LandingAI. This deal also further bolsters Snowflake’s database offerings in the age of AI agents.

This tech will be available in private preview soon.

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“Our vision is to deliver the world’s most trusted and comprehensive data and AI platform to our customers,” said Vivek Raghunathan, SVP of engineering at Snowflake, in a press release provided to TechCrunch. “Today’s announcement of our proposed acquisition of Crunchy Data represents another reason why Snowflake is the ultimate destination for all enterprise data and AI needs. We’re tackling a massive $350 billion market opportunity and a real need for our customers to bring Postgres to the Snowflake AI Data Cloud.”

In 2024, Snowflake launched new connectors for Snowflake customers to PostgreSQL and MySQL. Now it is bulking up that offering. Snowflake also acquired data management company Datavolo last year.

Google在公開論壇中宣布Chrome瀏覽器預設信任將祭出新的措施，考量到兩家CA業者中華電信及Netlock合規改善未符要求，可靠性信心下降，將從Chrome 139開始，移除對中華電信今年8月之後核發的新TLS憑證的信任，至於7月31日及之前的憑證則不受影響。Chrome瀏覽器信任政策祭出處罰，引發外界對中華電信及其受委託發行憑證的信心危機，對此，中華電信緊急發表聲明，坦言未按新政策規定在時間內完成調整，導致遭Google決定移除瀏覽器預設信任憑證，雖然目前已完成調整且符合新政策要求，爭取明年3月重新回復Chrome瀏覽器信任。

根據Google在安全部落格的說明，依據Chrome根憑證計畫政策，Chrome root store中的CA憑證授權單位必需為Chrome使用者提供價值大於其帶來的風險，其他考量的因素包括CA擁有者揭露、回應事件，當發生問題時，Google期望CA擁有者承諾進行有意義且可被證明的改善。

Google指出，CA為網站與瀏覽器間的加密連線提供支援，在網路上扮演受信任的角色，因此必需遵守安全共識及合規的要求，包括CA/Browser論壇的TLS標準合規要求，從過去一年或幾個月觀察到，兩家CA授權單位合規性不達標，且承諾改進未符合要求，對於公開披露的事件報告缺乏實際且可被衡量的作為，可靠性信心下降，侵害到CA業者因公眾信任而在Chrome瀏覽器預設信任的信心，為確保Chrome使用者的安全及Chrome root store完整性而採取新措施。

從Chrome 139及後續版本開始，TLS伺服器憑證驗證，其最早的SCT(Signed Certificate Timestamp)日期為2025年7月31日晚上11:59:59 UTC之後，將預設不再被信任。至於TLS伺服器驗證憑證，最早SCT在2025年7月31日晚上11:59:59 UTC或之前，則不受影響。

新措施在8月實施後，影響包括Windows、macOS、ChromeOS、Android、Linux平臺上的Chrome 139及後續版本，Chrome將無法瀏覽採用兩家CA新憑證的網站，至於iOS平臺方面，因為Apple政策的限制，iOS 版Chrome瀏覽器不受影響。

Google會依先前公布的Chrome功能，基於SCT時間來刪除瀏覽器對憑證的預設信任，以降低對訂閱者的干擾。但是，Chrome使用者和企業可透過明確信任憑證的設定，表達明確信任原有使用的憑證，來覆寫上述基於SCT的限制，使憑證仍能正常運作。

為降低新的Chrome憑證預設信任政策影響，Google建議網站維運單位可以瀏覽器憑證檢視器先一步確認網站是否受影響，Google建議受影響的網站維運管理單位儘早遷移其他受信任的CA核發的憑證。此外，從Chrome 128開始新增命令列，允許使用者先模擬SCTNotAfter的不信任限制效果。

中華電信坦言未按規定時間完成調整，爭取明年重回Chrome預設信任

對於Google新的Chrome瀏覽器將從8月起不再信任中華電信核發的新TLS憑證，中華電信也緊急發表聲明，該公司坦言Chrome 139之後版本刪除瀏覽器預設信任中華電信新憑證的原因是，部分程序未能在Chrome新政策要求時限內調整完成，儘管日前中華電信已完成調整且符合Chrome新政策的要求，Google仍決定先移除Chrome預設信任，強調移除信任原因並非因為憑證有漏洞或私鑰洩漏，仍會爭取回復預設信任，預計於2026年3月完成。

中華電信的緊急聲明中並未詳細說明雙方間的互動過程，也未說明受影響的客戶規模，僅說明受影響的憑證為2025年7月31日之後發行的新憑證，至於7月31日之前發行的憑證不受影響，受影響的瀏覽器為Chrome，微軟、蘋果等其他瀏覽器則未受影響，中華電信也未說明客戶緩解的措施。

中華電信強調該公司及受委託營運的公開服務憑證管理中心，所簽發的憑證合法合規，希望安撫外界對其發行憑證的信心疑慮。

Chrome瀏覽器在全球擁有相當高的市占率，根據Statcounter的今年5月統計，Chrome在全球約有6成5的市占，遠高於第二名的Edge(13.66%)、第三名的Safari(7.9%)，而在臺灣市場，Chrome則有更高的7成以上的市占，高於Edge和Safari各約1成的市占率。未來中華電信發行的新憑證無法被Chrome信任，將有相當多的用戶無法正常瀏覽使用其憑證的網站。

數發部：3月已提前因應，推動雙憑證機制改善政府網站使用穩定性

對於中華電信的TLS憑證將被移除Chrome瀏覽器預設信任，數發部也在周一晚間發出新聞稿，指在今年3月已掌握情資，提前準備因應，在今年3月起啟動政府網站雙憑證機制，採用符合公開信任根憑證標準的本地憑證機構所簽發的憑證，確保當特定憑證被瀏覽器移除預設信任，仍可以替代的憑證運作，使政府機關網站在各瀏覽器均能正常瀏覽，政府公共服務的穩定度及可信度。

數發部指出，因Chrome的信任政策調整是針對2025年8月1日後的新憑證，因此政府TLS憑證中心(GTLSCA)先前發的網站憑證，在1年效期內仍可正常使用，並未受到此次調整的直接影響。

至於可能受到影響的公務機關網站，數發部提供技術支援、作業指引，輔導機關完成系統設定及相容性測試，以避免不同機關間因為技術落差，致使公共服務無法使用，引發外界的誤會，影響對政府數位治理的信任。