The Federal Aviation Administration approved eight pilot programs that will allow a handful of companies, including Archer Aviation, Beta Technologies, Joby Aviation, and Wisk to start widespread electric aircraft testing as early as this summer.

The three-year program, which will span 26 states, is designed to ensure U.S. companies lead the way in next-gen aircraft used for personal travel, regional transportation, cargo logistics, and emergency medicine, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in remarks Monday.

The pilot program, known as the Advanced Air Mobility and Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing Integration Pilot Program, was announced last year through an executive order by President Donald Trump in an effort to speed up development of the futuristic aircraft.

Numerous electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) companies have emerged in recent years with promises of launching urban air taxis and other regional electric aircraft. However, getting those aircraft into commercial operation takes years and hundreds of millions of dollars. The FAA must certify any new aircraft, which is a multi-year process.

The pilot program will allow these companies to test their eVTOL aircraft even though they have not received full regulatory certification.

That kind of accelerated timeline could bolster the efforts, and share prices, of many eVTOL companies such as Archer, Beta, and Joby that have gone public in recent years.

Beta Technologies founder and CEO Kyle Clark said being selected for the program will allow the company to start aircraft operations one year earlier than anticipated. The company’s stock price popped nearly 12% Monday. Archer and Joby, which are also publicly traded, saw stock jumps as well.

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Archer compared the eVTOL program to robotaxi testing and said it will help build trust and establish a playbook for safely scaling electric air taxis. The company, which is developing a four-passenger piloted eVTOL called Midnight, said it will also help it prepare for air taxi operations in Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympic Games.

Archer’s Midnight EVTOL Image Credits:Archer Aviation

“These partnerships will help us better understand how to safely and efficiently integrate these aircraft into the National Airspace System,” FAA Deputy Administrator Chris Rocheleau said in a prepared statement. “The program will provide valuable operational experience that will inform the standards needed to enable safe Advanced Air Mobility operations. We appreciate the strong interest reflected in the many proposals we received.”

The FAA said it received 30 proposals.

These companies aren’t going it alone, however. The pilot program requires companies to partner with state, local, tribal, or territorial governments.

The projects cover several applications of electric aircraft, including urban air taxis and regional flight. For instance, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have partnered with Archer, Beta, Electra, and Joby to test a dozen operational concepts, including one based out of a Manhattan heliport.

The Texas Department of Transportation will work with Archer, Beta, Joby, and Wisk to test regional flights connecting Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and eventually Houston. That program will include building networks of air taxis that will expand from each city to extend regional reach, according to the DOT.

Image Credits:U.S. Department of Transportation

Some projects have widespread geographic implications.

For instance, a project led by Utah that will test next-generation aircraft and operational concepts across the Pacific Northwest, the Rocky Mountains, and the Plains of Oklahoma will test a wide range of next-generation aircraft and operational concepts. Another project, led by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, will include 13 states to revitalize regional flights across the country.

Other projects are focused on cargo delivery, medical response, and automation. Beta, Elroy Air, and others will test cargo and personnel transportation flights into the Gulf of America and to energy industry locations in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi.

The departments of transportation in Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina also are leading projects. The city of Albuquerque is working with Reliable Robotics to test autonomous operations.

In Brief

OpenAI announced Monday it has acquired Promptfoo, an AI security startup founded in 2024 to protect LLMs from online adversaries.

The frontier lab said in a blog post that once the deal closes, Promptfoo’s technology will be integrated into OpenAI Frontier, its enterprise platform for AI agents.

The development of independent AI agents that perform digital tasks has generated excitement about productivity gains. But it’s also given bad actors fresh opportunities to access sensitive data or manipulate automated systems. This deal underscores how frontier labs are scrambling to prove their technology can be used safely in critical business operations.

Promptfoo was founded by Ian Webster and Michael D’Angelo to develop tools that companies can use to test security vulnerabilities in LLMs, including an open source interface and library. The company reports that its products are used by more than 25% of Fortune 500 companies.

Promptfoo has raised just $23 million since its founding and was valued at $86 million after its most recent round in July 2025, according to PitchBook. OpenAI did not disclose the value of the transaction.

OpenAI’s post said Promptfoo’s technology will allow its agent platform to perform automated red-teaming, evaluate agentic workflows for security concerns, and monitor activities for risks and compliance needs. The company also said it expects to continue building out Promptfoo’s open source offering.

Die-hard Chevrolet Bolt fans rejoiced when General Motors announced it was bringing a refreshed version of the EV subcompact back into production.



The GM brand gave a lot of credit to those owners — and to Bolt supporters within General Motors — for the car’s revival. But fandom alone doesn’t restart a multimillion-dollar program. The math has to pencil out in more ways than one.

An examination of GM’s business and market conditions at the time it was approved hints at what compelled the automaker to bring the Bolt back.

It started with GM’s factory capacity. The U.S. automaker had capacity to spare at its Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas. The factory previously made the Chevy Malibu, which ended production two years ago, and it isn’t going to start making Chevy Equinox SUVs until mid-2027 or Buick Envisions until 2028. Into that gap went the Bolt.

Perhaps more critical to the Bolt’s comeback was the broader availability of EV-specific parts, which helped bring the costs of the new model down. It’s not built on a flashy new platform, instead relying on incremental improvements to make the final product better.

TechCrunch recently drove the new Bolt. It is compelling enough to suggest it will give GM an EV sales bump in an uncertain U.S. market.

The original 2017 Bolt was GM’s first dedicated EV in 20 years. It was a ground-up effort, which meant the company had to design and build the motor and battery management system while also coordinating with LG Chem (now LG Energy Solution) to make the battery pack. The car got an entirely new chassis that wasn’t a rehashed version of an internal combustion engine platform. None of those items are cheap.

Fast-forward to today, and GM sells about a dozen all-electric models in the U.S. across the Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC brands. That gave it plenty of parts and experience to draw upon when engineering the new Bolt.

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For drivers, that influence is seen the moment they sit in the car. The large touchscreen runs the Android Automotive operating system, which is kept apprised of the battery’s state of charge. That allows it to recommend chargers along a route and prepare the battery so that it can charge as quickly as possible.

Under the hood, the new Bolt borrows the Chevy Equinox’s front drive motor. At 200 horsepower, it matches the previous generation exactly. But with 169 pound-feet of torque, it would appear to come up significantly short. Yet because of what GM has learned over the years, this new motor spins faster and more efficiently, allowing Chevy to use a shorter gear in the single-speed transmission. At the wheel, the motor produces about as much as before.

The new motor combined with more efficient power electronics means the 2027 Bolt can travel about 15 miles farther than the previous Bolt EUV, the body style on which the new model is based.

GM anticipates that the new Bolt will be profitable, something the old model struggled with.

The EV transition hasn’t been smooth sailing for GM or for many other legacy automakers. The company said in January that it would take a $6 billion charge in the wake of slower-than-expected EV adoption. But GM has said it remains committed to producing EVs. And so far, it hasn’t backed off its pledge to phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2035.

The cynical take on the new Bolt is that it’s a half-measure, a rehashing of an old model to squeeze more out of its most loyal customers.

The new model should perhaps be viewed as a bull case for sharing technology and incremental improvements. A 15-mile range improvement from a new motor and battery management system may not seem like much, but if GM can march forward at a steady pace, the next decade could be transformative for the company and for the EV market. Flashy new platforms make for great headlines, but not every breakthrough requires a multibillion-dollar investment.

Anthropic has made good on its promise to challenge the Department of Defense (DOD) in court after the agency labeled it a supply-chain risk late last week.

The Claude maker filed two complaints against the DOD on Monday in California and Washington, D.C., after a weeks-long conflict between Anthropic and the DOD over whether the military should have unrestricted access to Anthropic’s AI systems. Anthropic had two firm red lines: It didn’t want its technology to be used for mass surveillance of Americans and didn’t believe it was ready to power fully autonomous weapons with no humans making targeting and firing decisions.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued that the Pentagon should have access to AI systems for “any lawful purpose” and that it shouldn’t be limited by a private contractor.

A supply-chain risk label is usually reserved for foreign adversaries and requires any company or agency that does work with the Pentagon to certify that it doesn’t use Anthropic’s models. While several private companies are still working with Anthropic, the firm is poised to lose much of its business within the government.

Anthropic called the DOD’s actions “unprecedented and unlawful” and accuses the administration of retaliation in a complaint filed in San Francisco federal court. “The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech,” the lawsuit reads.

The protected speech Anthropic refers to is its belief about the “limitations of its own AI services and important issues of AI safety,” per the lawsuit. The administration, including Defense Secretary Hegseth and President Trump, have criticized Anthropic and its CEO Dario Amodei as “woke” and “radical” over the company’s calls for stronger AI safety and transparency measures.

In the lawsuit, Anthropic argued the government doesn’t have to agree with its views or use its products, but it cannot employ the power of the state to punish or suppress Anthropic’s expression.

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Anthropic also argued that “no federal statute authorizes the actions taken here,” claiming the Defense Department’s supply-chain risk designation was issued “without observance of the procedures Congress required.” The law generally requires agencies to conduct a risk assessment, notify the targeted company and allow it to respond, make a written national-security determination, and notify Congress before excluding a vendor from federal supply chains.

The firm also accuses the president of operating outside the bounds of the authority granted by Congress when he directed every federal agency to immediately stop using Anthropic’s technology, following Amodei’s statement that he would not budge on his hard lines. As a result of the statements made by both President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, the General Services Administration — the federal agency that manages government contracts and purchasing — terminated Anthropic’s “OneGov” contract, ending the availability of Anthropic services to all three branches of the federal government.

“Defendants are seeking to destroy the economic value created by one of the world’s fastest-growing private companies,” the lawsuit reads. “The Challenged Actions inflict immediate and irreparable harm on Anthropic; on others whose speech will be chilled; on those benefiting from the economic value the company can continue to create; and on a global public that deserves robust dialogue and debate on what AI means for warfare and surveillance.”

As part of its complaint, Anthropic asked the court to immediately pause the Defense Department’s designation while the case proceeds and ultimately invalidate and permanently block the government from enforcing it.

“Seeking judicial review does not change our longstanding commitment to harnessing AI to protect our national security, but this is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners,” an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement. “We will continue to pursue every path toward resolution, including dialogue with the government.”

Anthropic filed a separate complaint in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals because the federal procurement law allows companies to appeal supply-chain risk designations. The petition asks the court to review and overturn the Defense Department’s decision to designate the company a national security supply-chain risk. In the complaint, Anthropic argued the move was unlawful, retaliatory, and improperly executed under federal procurement law.

This story has been updated with more details and news that Anthropic has filed a separate lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Slate Auto, the electric vehicle startup backed by Jeff Bezos, has replaced its CEO months ahead of the launch of its affordable electric truck.

Former Amazon Marketplace vice president Peter Faricy is the new person in charge of the company, and he started on Monday, Slate spokesperson Jeff Jablansky told TechCrunch. Most recently, Faricy had been an adviser at McKinsey and Bessemer Venture Partners. Faricy left the role at Bessemer to join Slate, according to Newsweek, which first reported the hire.

Slate Auto’s first CEO, longtime Chrysler veteran Christine Barman, is now the President of Vehicles, according to Jablansky. Barman was Slate’s first hire. The company was still a secretive project called Re:Car that was started inside a manufacturing incubator based in Massachusetts called Re:Build Manufacturing, as TechCrunch first revealed last year.

Barman stood out not only because she was one of only two women CEOs running a U.S. automaker, but also because she had become the face of the company since it emerged from stealth in April 2025. She was featured in many of the promotional videos Slate has produced in the past year, including one last month where she teased that the company would finally reveal the price of its basic electric truck in June.

In her new role, Barman is going to do “everything we need” to deliver its truck “on time and on budget,” according to Jablansky.

The company, which has raised around $700 million from Bezos and other wealthy backers, at one point promoted that its electric truck would start at “under $20,000” before Congress and the Trump administration took away the federal EV tax credit. It’s now targeting the mid-$20,000 range for the starting price of its truck. Buyers will be able to customize it in all kinds of ways, including converting it into an SUV, for more money.

Faricy has become CEO at a time when Slate is about to start converting its list of refundable preorders — which now has about 160,000 people — into vehicle orders, according to Jablansky.

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“Peter’s experience building Amazon Marketplace was really critical for us,” Jablansky said.

Changing CEOs so early in the company’s history may come as a shock, although it’s not surprising that the company tapped a former Amazon executive. Bezos helped fund the startup, as did former Amazon executive Diego Piacentini. Bezos’ family office head has a board seat. One of Slate’s co-founders is Jeff Wilke, who used to be the Amazon Consumer CEO. And the heads of Slate’s mobility, UX/UI, e-commerce, fleet sales, and HR teams all used to work at Amazon.

As any “Star Trek” fan will tell you, the reason why this sci-fi world has endured for so long is because it illustrates an optimistic future, with tech starring as a power for good.

In fact, famed Xprize founder, author, tech investor, motivational speaker, and longevity guru Peter Diamandis has just launched a new $3.5 million Future Vision Xprize to encourage more such optimistic sci-fi worlds to come to our screens.

He credits his whole fabulous career to watching “Star Trek” as a child growing up.

“’Star Trek’ offered a hopeful vision of the future, right? It was humans/humanity and technology in collaboration,” Diamandis told TechCrunch. “I truly credit it with everything that I since achieved, because it motivated me to want to go and create and manifest that future.”

He finds that sci-fi movies and TV shows these days are largely fixated on calamity.

“Every science-fiction movie I was seeing painted this dystopian vision of the future. It was always, everything is going wrong, and it’s a result of technology. You know, killer robots, dystopian AIs. It’s ‘Black Mirror.’ It’s ‘Terminator.’ It’s ‘Ex Machina,’” he said. “Why would you ever want to live in that future?”

So he called up his friends Rod Roddenberry, son of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, famed investor and Ark CEO Cathie Wood, and his buddies at Google. They all agreed to sponsor the new Future Vision Xprize.

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It’s a contest to encourage film creators to tell more stories about how good things can be in a technological future. Diamandis believes that if we see that, we will build it.

“Right now, there’s a huge amount of growing uncertainty in people’s lives. Will my kids have a job? Will I have a job?” he said. The speed of change makes it hard for people to envision their futures, especially when clobbered with “negative stories about tomorrow.”

Another truth exists, too, Diamandis says. As a person standing at the corner of AI and longevity, he knows that it’s never been easier for anyone with an idea to pursue it.

“The most powerful tools on the planet are free and available to everybody,” he said, referring to consumer AI models from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others. “I mean, that’s honestly incredible, right? … We have democratized and demonetized the ability for people to solve problems.”

Take longevity, for instance, the study of living longer as well as healthier as we age.

“AI is enabling us to understand what’s going on in our 40 trillion human cells,” he said. (Diamandis, along with Tony Robbins, is a co-founder of longevity health tech Fountain Life.) He wants to see more of this kind of future on-screen.

Interestingly, while he encourages the contestants to use AI tools for their projects, Diamandis warns that AI slop — fully AI-written and produced submissions — probably won’t win.

“I don’t want an AI generated-script and an AI-generated film without the human,” he advises. “The humanity of it all is really important.”

In fact, the Future Vision Xprize is being conducted with help of the 100 Zeros initiative. That’s a partnership between Google and production company Range Media Partners. It works with filmmakers to produce tech-inspired stories using Google tools. (Google has a video-generation model called Veo, for instance, and a video-creation tool called Flow.)

Submissions open March 9, close August 15, with winners announced September 25. Each applicant will submit a three-minute trailer. Diamandis expects to “flood” YouTube with these submissions, allowing anyone to view and comment. Judges, led by the team at Range Media, will cull those submissions into a handful that receive funding to produce a 10-minute short.

The grand prize winner will be selected from the short films, receiving $2.5 million in production funding toward developing a feature film and a $100,000 cash prize. The winning project is also expected to be featured on the film section of crowdsourcing site Republic, to help it raise an additional $5 million to $10 million for its production budget.

Diamandis says that members of his Abundance community of CEOs that he mentors have also opened their wallets. About 15 of them have contributed nearly half the prize money, he said.

In addition, other key donors include Andreessen Horowitz’s Ben Horowitz, Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb, and actor producer Seth Green.

Diamandis hopes that this becomes a repeated contest. He wants to turn dread into what he calls “an exponential mindset.” That means “having agency, where you feel like the future is not happening to you, that the future is happening for you,” he said.

German robotics startup Neura Robotics has inked a partnership with semiconductor giant Qualcomm to build the next generation of robots and physical AI. The deal is the latest coupling in the emerging physical AI industry between robotics startups and larger tech hardware and software companies.

While no specific products were mentioned in the Monday announcements, the companies will work together to build the “brain and nervous system” of robots in a quest to advance the deployment of humanoid and general-purpose robots in the real world in both domestic and industrial settings.

More specifically, Neura will use Qualcomm’s Dragonwing Robotics IQ10 processors as reference designs in its robots. This IQ10 series was announced at CES earlier this year, and these chips are designed to work with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and humanoids.

Neura also plans to use its Neuraverse robotic simulation and training platform, which was released in June 2025, to test and fine-tune the robots running on Qualcomm’s IQ10 processors.

“This collaboration marks a major step toward making physical AI real: open, scalable, and trusted,” David Reger, CEO and founder of Neura Robotics, said in a press release. “By bringing together our cognitive robotics platforms and the Neuraverse ecosystem with Qualcomm Technologies’ leadership in edge AI and connectivity, we’re aiming to accelerate a future where cognitive robots operate safely alongside humans across industries and throughout everyday life.”

This deal makes a lot of sense for both sides. And it’s a formula that will likely become a popular strategy for robotics companies trying to bring their products into the real world. For instance, Boston Dynamics announced a strategic partnership with Google DeepMind in January to speed up the development of the robotic company’s Atlas humanoid robot by using Google’s AI foundational models.

While Boston Dynamics and Neura’s respective partnerships deal with different technologies — AI models versus chips — the same conclusion can be drawn. Instead of these two companies just being customers of tech vendors, partnering allows for these robotic companies to better use and embed these technologies.

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A robotic company that has technical prowess in software will have a much easier — and likely cheaper — path to market and scale through partnering with hardware companies that have already figured out tough technical challenges like building robotics hands with dexterity, for example.

In Neura’s case, the company gets to build and test robots designed for the chips they are running on while Qualcomm gets an intimate look at how robotic companies can use its processors.

As more AI companies like Nvidia look to physical AI as the next major market for their technology, they are going to want a seat at the table of how their tech is being used. The upshot: expect more partnerships.

Russian government hackers are targeting Signal and WhatsApp users, particularly government and military officials, as well as journalists all over the world, Dutch intelligence said on Monday.

The Netherlands’ Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) and the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) published details about a “large-scale global” hacking campaign against Signal and WhatsApp users. The two agencies accused “Russian state actors” of using phishing and social engineering techniques — rather than malware — to take over accounts on the two messaging apps.

In the case of Signal, the hackers are masquerading as the app’s support team and messaging targets directly with warnings of suspicious activity, “a possible data leak,” or of attempts to access the target’s private data. If the target falls for it, the hackers ask for a verification code sent via SMS — the hackers themselves request this code from Signal — as well as the targets’ PIN code.

Contact Us Do you have more information about this hacking campaign, or other campaigns targeting Signal and WhatsApp? From a non-work device, 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 this hacking campaign, or other campaigns targeting Signal and WhatsApp? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email .

The hackers then use the verification and PIN codes to register a new device with a new phone number, impersonate the target, and potentially access their contacts, according to the report. Also, the target gets locked out of their account, but can re-register their number.

“Because Signal stores the chat history locally on the phone, a victim can regain access to that history after re‑registering. As a result, the victim may assume that nothing is wrong. The Dutch services want to stress that this assumption could be incorrect,” the report reads.

Signal does not provide support directly through the app. And it’s important to note that, generally speaking, when a user adds a new device to their Signal account, the new device does not have access to previous messages.

Signal did not respond to a request for comment, but posted a thread on social media sharing advice for users on how to protect themselves, including advising against ever sharing the SMS verification code and PIN.

an example of a malicious Signal message sent by the hackers, currently “the most common illustration of such a message and the method of account takeover.” Image Credits:Netherlands’ General Intelligence and Security Services

Hackers are also trying to trick targets on both apps into scanning malicious QR codes or clicking on malicious links. “For example, an actor may send a QR code or link to a victim to add them to a chat group, but this QR code or link actually links the actor’s device to the victim’s account,” the report explained.

In the case of WhatsApp, the hackers are abusing the “Linked devices” function, which allows users to access WhatsApp from a secondary device such as a laptop or a tablet. If the hackers successfully trick their targets, — unlike with Signal — they can potentially read past messages. And sometimes, the victim may not realize that they have granted access to the hackers’ given that they don’t get logged out of their account.

Meta’s spokesperson Zade Alsawah said that WhatsApp suggests users to never share their six-digit code with anyone, and pointed to a Help Center page to help users recognize suspicious messages, and a page about the Linked Devices feature.

Laurens Bos, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence declined to provide more details about the campaign.

The Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. did not respond to a request for comment.

Some of the techniques highlighted by the Dutch intelligence services in this report have been known to be used by Russian government hackers in the context of the war against Ukraine.

Salt Typhoon is behind one of the broadest hacking campaigns in recent years, targeting some of the world’s largest phone and internet companies and stealing tens of millions of phone records about senior government officials.

The hacking group, attributed to China, is part of a wider cluster of hackers with the collective aim of helping China prepare for an eventual war with Taiwan, according to researchers. U.S. officials have called China’s potential invasion of Taiwan an “epoch-defining threat.” Much of the group’s efforts have focused on hacking Cisco routers at the edge of a company’s network to break in and taking control of surveillance devices that U.S. telecom companies are legally required to install to allow law enforcement to monitor calls and messages.

While Salt Typhoon is focused on hacking telecom infrastructure, other China-hacked groups like Volt Typhoon are prepositioning for destructive cyberattacks capable of causing widespread disruption, and Flax Typhoon runs a botnet of hijacked internet-connected devices for hiding the hackers’ malicious internet traffic.

But Salt Typhoon is by far one of the most prolific hacking groups in recent years, including targeting some of the top American phone companies.

The hacks allowed China to obtain call records, text messages, and captured phone audio from senior U.S. officials, many of whom were considered government targets of interest. This prompted the FBI to urge Americans to switch to end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, fearing that a foreign adversary could eavesdrop on their communications.

Salt Typhoon went even further, hacking at least 200 companies around the world, according to FBI officials. The list of affected countries keeps growing.

Here are the countries that have attributed hacks to Salt Typhoon.

United States

Some of the top U.S. phone companies, including AT&T and Verizon, were confirmed hacked by Salt Typhoon, as was internet provider CenturyLink (now Lumen). T-Mobile said it was targeted but that the hackers had no access to its customers’ calls, text messages, or voicemails.

Satellite communications giant Viasat was also compromised, allowing hackers to gain access to tools used by law enforcement to access the communications of others.

Internet and data providers Charter Communications (Spectrum) and Windstream were also named as Salt Typhoon victims. Fiber network giant Consolidated Communications was reportedly hacked as part of the campaign.

The hackers didn’t just target phone and internet providers. Per several reports, Salt Typhoon compromised the networks of a U.S. state’s National Guard, allowing them to steal data and access to other networks in every other U.S. state and several territories.

North and South America

According to security firm Recorded Future, its researchers have seen Salt Typhoon target Cisco devices associated with universities in Argentina and Mexico and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government confirmed that its top telecommunications firms were hacked by China as part of Salt Typhoon’s extended espionage campaign. Canada also confirmed several Cisco routers at one telecom giant were hacked to steal data from the company.

The government in Ottawa warned it saw targeting of companies that were “broader than just the telecommunications sector.”

Trend Micro said it saw Salt Typhoon activity in Brazil, the most populous country in South America.

Asia, Africa, and Oceania

Recorded Future said it’s seen Salt Typhoon targeting at least one Myanmar-based telecoms provider, Mytel, by way of hacked Cisco routers, as well as a South African telecommunications provider. It’s also seen attacks targeting routers of universities across Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Japan has also warned of the threat of Salt Typhoon to its networks.

Both the governments of Australia and New Zealand say they’ve seen Salt Typhoon activity in their telecom and critical infrastructure sectors. New Zealand said it also saw Salt Typhoon hackers across the government sector, as well as transportation, lodging, and military infrastructure networks.

Trend Micro also said it found at least 20 compromised organizations across the telecoms, consulting, chemical, and transportation industries, as well as government agencies and nonprofits in various countries, including Afghanistan, Eswatini, India, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Europe

The British government has confirmed that a “cluster of activity” from Salt Typhoon was seen across the United Kingdom. While the activity wasn’t specified, news reporting suggests that senior U.K. government staff may have had their phone records tapped and text messages read.

Norway has also confirmed Salt Typhoon hacked several organizations in the country.

Dutch authorities in the Netherlands say that several smaller internet providers and web hosts were targeted and had access to routers, but their internal networks were not compromised.

An Italian internet provider was hacked, per Recorded Future.

And, according to Czech cybersecurity officials, incidents related to Salt Typhoon hacks have been witnessed in Finland and Poland.

Amid growing demand for data centers that can deliver AI compute at scale, Nvidia-backed British AI infrastructure company Nscale is now valued at $14.6 billion. This makes it one of Europe’s latest decacorns alongside Helsing and Mistral AI.

Nscale has bet on vertical integration, from energy and data centers to compute and orchestration software. Its new valuation stems from a $2 billion Series C, which it calls “the largest in European history,” though the figure includes a $433 million pre-Series C SAFE backed by Blue Owl, Dell, Nvidia and Nokia in October.

The raise was supported by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, whose involvement has been interpreted as IPO preparation — and not without reason: Nscale CEO Josh Payne told The New York Times his company might seek to go public “as early as this year” to generate more capital.

Alongside its funding and plans, the company also announced that former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, former Yahoo president Susan Decker, and former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg are joining its board.

Nscale is no newcomer to big rounds and announcements. In September, it announced a $1.1 billion Series B led by Aker. Aker is a public Norwegian company with interests in energy and is also co-leading the Series C alongside New York-based investment firm 8090 Industries.

The companies also agreed that Aker’s joint venture with Nscale will now be fully managed by the startup. Dubbed “Stargate Norway,” this Norway-based AI infrastructure project has the ambition to run on 100,000 Nvidia GPUs by the end of 2026, with OpenAI as an initial customer.

According to Aker president and CEO, Øyvind Eriksen, who sits on Nscale’s board, “this step strengthens execution by putting delivery and governance under one roof, while keeping continuity for the people and projects already underway.”

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Last October, Nscale also signed an expanded deal with Microsoft to bring approximately 200,000 Nvidia GPUs to three data centers in Europe and one in the U.S., in collaboration with Dell.

Dell and Nvidia both participated in the Series C, as did Astra Capital, Citadel, Jane Street, Lenovo, Linden Advisors, Nokia, and Point72. Nscale expects the new funding to accelerate the development of its AI infrastructure across Europe, North America, and Asia, while helping the company expand its engineering and operations teams, and strengthen its platform.

Equity aside, the company also raised debt last month, with a $1.4 billion delayed draw term loan backed by GPUs to finance some of its clusters across Europe. It aims to harness rising enterprise demand and low-cost renewable energy while renewing its pledge to reuse waste heat, develop local skills, and invest in regional infrastructure as part of Stargate Norway.

More than 30 OpenAI and Google DeepMind employees filed a statement Monday supporting Anthropic’s lawsuit against the U.S. Defense Department after the federal agency labeled the AI firm a supply-chain risk, according to court filings.

“The government’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk was an improper and arbitrary use of power that has serious ramifications for our industry,” reads the brief, whose signatories include Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean.

Late last week, the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk — usually reserved for foreign adversaries — after the AI firm refused to allow the Department of Defense (DOD) to use its technology for mass surveillance of Americans or autonomously firing weapons. The DOD had argued that it should be able to use AI for any “lawful” purpose and not be constrained by a private contractor.

The amicus brief in support of Anthropic showed up on the docket a few hours after the Claude maker filed two lawsuits against the DOD and other federal agencies. Wired was first to report the news.

In the court filing, the Google and OpenAI employees make the point that if the Pentagon was “no longer satisfied with the agreed-upon terms of its contract with Anthropic,” the agency could have “simply canceled the contract and purchased the services of another leading AI company.”

The DOD did, in fact, sign a deal with OpenAI within moments of designating Anthropic a supply-chain risk — a move many of the ChatGPT maker’s employees protested.

“If allowed to proceed, this effort to punish one of the leading U.S. AI companies will undoubtedly have consequences for the United States’ industrial and scientific competitiveness in the field of artificial intelligence and beyond,” the brief reads. “And it will chill open deliberation in our field about the risks and benefits of today’s AI systems.”

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The filing also affirms that Anthropic’s stated red lines are legitimate concerns warranting strong guardrails. Without public law to govern AI use, it argues, the contractual and technical restrictions developers impose on their systems are a critical safeguard against catastrophic misuse.

Many of the employees who signed the statement also signed open letters over the last couple of weeks urging the DOD to withdraw the label and calling on the leaders of their companies to support Anthropic and refuse unilateral use of their AI systems.

When it comes to coding, peer feedback is crucial for catching bugs early, maintaining consistency across a codebase, and improving overall software quality.

The rise of “vibe coding” — using AI tools that take instructions given in plain language and quickly generate large amounts of code — has changed how developers work. While these tools have sped up development, they have also introduced new bugs, security risks, and poorly understood code.

Anthropic’s solution is an AI reviewer designed to catch bugs before they make it into the software’s codebase. The new product, called Code Review, launched Monday in Claude Code.

“We’ve seen a lot of growth in Claude Code, especially within the enterprise, and one of the questions that we keep getting from enterprise leaders is: Now that Claude Code is putting up a bunch of pull requests, how do I make sure that those get reviewed in an efficient manner?” Cat Wu, Anthropic’s head of product, told TechCrunch.

Pull requests are a mechanism that developers use to submit code changes for review before those changes make it into the software. Wu said Claude Code has dramatically increased code output, which has increased pull request reviews that have caused a bottleneck to shipping code.

“Code Review is our answer to that,” Wu said.

Anthropic’s launch of Code Review — arriving first to Claude for Teams and Claude for Enterprise customers in research preview — comes at a pivotal moment for the company.

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On Monday, Anthropic filed two lawsuits against the Department of Defense in response to the agency’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk. The dispute will likely see Anthropic leaning more heavily on its booming enterprise business, which has seen subscriptions quadruple since the start of the year. Claude Code’s run-rate revenue has surpassed $2.5 billion since launch, according to the company.

“This product is very much targeted towards our larger scale enterprise users, so companies like Uber, Salesforce, Accenture, who already use Claude Code and now want help with the sheer amount of [pull requests] that it’s helping produce,” Wu said.

She added that developer leads can turn on Code Review to run on default for every engineer on the team. Once enabled, it integrates with GitHub and automatically analyzes pull requests, leaving comments directly on the code explaining potential issues and suggested fixes.

The focus is on fixing logical errors over style, Wu said.

“This is really important because a lot of developers have seen AI automated feedback before, and they get annoyed when it’s not immediately actionable,” Wu said. “We decided we’re going to focus purely on logic errors. This way we’re catching the highest priority things to fix.”

The AI explains its reasoning step by step, outlining what it thinks the issue is, why it might be problematic, and how it can potentially be fixed. The system will label the severity of issues using colors: red for highest severity, yellow for potential problems worth reviewing, and purple for issues tied to preexisting code or historical bugs.

Wu said it does this quickly and efficiently by relying on multiple agents working in parallel, with each agent examining the codebase from a different perspective or dimension. A final agent aggregates and ranks the findings, removing duplicates and prioritizing what’s most important.

The tool provides a light security analysis, and engineering leads can customize additional checks based on internal best practices. Wu said Anthropic’s more recently launched Claude Code Security provides a deeper security analysis.

The multi-agent architecture means this can be a resource-intensive product, Wu said. Similar to other AI services, pricing is token-based, and the cost varies depending on code complexity — though Wu estimated each review would cost $15 to $25 on average. She added that it’s a premium experience, and a necessary one as AI tools generate more and more code.

“[Code Review] is something that’s coming from an insane amount of market pull,” Wu said. “As engineers develop with Claude Code, they’re seeing the friction to creating a new feature [decrease], and they’re seeing a much higher demand for code review. So we’re hopeful that with this, we’ll enable enterprises to build faster than they ever could before, and with much fewer bugs than they ever had before.”

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down from the top leadership position and transitioning to a new role as chief innovation officer, the company announced Monday.

Graber, who has helped grow the X and Threads competitor to 43 million users and furthered the development of its underlying AT Protocol, will be replaced by Toni Schneider as interim CEO. Schneider is the former CEO of Automattic and a partner at True Ventures

Both Automattic and True Ventures are investors in Bluesky.

In a blog post announcing the changes, Graber explained that, as a more mature company, Bluesky needs a “seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution.” Graber said she feels better suited to building Bluesky’s technology itself.

“I’m most energized by exploring new ideas, bringing a vision to life, and helping people discover their strengths. Transitioning to a more focused role where I can do what brings me energy is my way of putting that belief into practice,” Graber said.

The company said its board will search for a permanent chief executive. In the meantime, Schneider’s experience with Automattic, which commercialized WordPress’s open source technology through WordPress.com, positions him to understand the challenges that come with balancing open source tech with the needs of a company to generate a profit.

Under Graber, Bluesky has seen remarkable growth at times, particularly after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now X, led to a number of changes to the platform’s product and community. Bluesky has also struggled with moderation issues as it scaled. Some users expected the company to apply a heavier hand, while Bluesky promoted the use of moderation tools that users themselves could manage.

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Now the company is facing a new challenge: complying with a growing number of age-assurance laws around social media. One such law in Mississippi led to Bluesky choosing to block the state entirely. Other state laws, like those in Ohio, South Dakota, and Wyoming, have forced the company to begin age verification. For someone interested in building a new protocol for social networking, these compliance battles are arguably less fun.

In his blog post, Schneider touted the company’s growth to more than 40 million users and an ecosystem of over 500 active apps. He said the focus now would be on the next phase of growth, which includes allowing third-party builders to thrive. During this transition, Schneider will remain active in his role at True Ventures as well.

“Bluesky has cracked a case that stumped the industry for years: How to create a social network that has the best of both worlds. The personal freedom and ownership that comes from being part of an open network and the immediacy and ease of use that people expect from modern social services,” Schneider wrote.

After a high-profile antitrust lawsuit, the U.S. Justice Department said Monday that it has tentatively settled with Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation.

After merging in 2010, the combined Live Nation and Ticketmaster control the majority of ticket sales and venue bookings in the U.S., leaving talent little choice but to work with these companies. Customers have been fed up for years with dynamic pricing issues that can drive up ticket costs by thousands of dollars (often without consulting the artists), as well as the process of buying tickets — the sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour were so widely aggravating that they triggered government scrutiny.

According to the AP, the settlement would have Live Nation pay a fine of up to $280 million and divest at least 13 venues to give competitors more opportunity. But several states’ attorneys general involved in the lawsuit are not appeased by the settlement.

“The settlement recently announced with the U.S. Department of Justice fails to address the monopoly at the center of this case, and would benefit Live Nation at the expense of consumers,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “We cannot agree to it.”

Twenty-six out of 30 state attorneys general who sued the company alongside the DOJ chose to join Attorney General James in continuing the lawsuit against Live Nation.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown also said that the settlement “does not adequately remedy” the issue for concertgoers.

“For too long, Live Nation has raked in billions from a monopoly that has made it harder for consumers to see the artists they love, stifled artists, and increased the price of tickets for countless music fans,” he said.

The trial had gone on for less than a week by the time the DOJ and Live Nation agreed to this settlement. However, some interesting testimonies emerged during the trial.

John Abbamondi, former CEO of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center (where the Nets play), spoke about a decision he made in 2021 to work with a different ticket sales company, rather than Ticketmaster.

The phone call that followed between Abbamondi and Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino played in the courtroom, and according to The New York Times, the recorded conversation was adversarial and “expletive-laden.”

Abbamondi told the jury last week that Rapino made a comment on the call that he interpreted as a “veiled threat — maybe not-so-veiled threat” that Live Nation would put fewer concerts at the Barclays Center as a result of the ticketing change.

Live Nation reported last month that it sold over 646 million tickets last year and put on over 54,000 events internationally. Within the U.S., Live Nation owns 150 venues and invested $1 billion last year to build an additional 18 live-music venues.

The Berlin-based startup Periwinkle is offering a new avenue for those wanting to leave centralized social media operated by Big Tech companies. Instead of joining a decentralized, open social networking app like Mastodon or Bluesky, Periwinkle allows anyone to set up a social media account on their own domain, under their own control.

Built on top of the AT Protocol, the same open source technology that powers the X alternative Bluesky, Periwinkle aims to provide the infrastructure you need to run your own social media.

That means you can have an account on your own domain on sites like Bluesky, or a hosted social site specific to your organization or community. Periwinkle offers domains for purchase and allows you to store your data, including posts, follows, and your user profile, on your own PDS (personal data server), which is part of the AT Protocol infrastructure.

Periwinkle makes the transition easier for non-technical users or others who don’t want the headache of having to set up and maintain their own server. Once on Periwinkle, users’ servers are updated, backed up, and monitored by the company, leaving the user free to focus on posting to social media.

“We’ll be the first-to-market fully managed PDS service; there is nobody else that is doing this right now,” says Periwinkle founder Charles Blumenthal. (To be clear, there are other organizations offering alternatives to Bluesky’s PDS, like Blacksky, but its tools are focused on those who are building self-governable online communities.)

Image Credits:Periwinkle

This idea is similar to how people who want to create their own blog can choose between an easy-to-use hosted blog on WordPress.com, a DIY installation using the open source software from WordPress.org, or something in between — like a WordPress installation that’s managed by a third-party hosting provider. Periwinkle is offering the same, but for decentralized social media.

Blumenthal, a former software engineer at McKinsey, says that the idea came to him after he realized a lot of people didn’t really understand the AT Protocol and its advantages.

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Image Credits:Periwinkle

“It’s really not a great idea that a couple of billionaires have control over the way billions of people communicate,” he told TechCrunch. “If you could leave Twitter to some competitor and all of your followers and all of your content and everything — it just is there with you, and you just log in — you would do it, right?”

The growth of the AT Protocol-powered app Bluesky, which now has more than 43 million registered users, shows there’s some demand for this type of offering, Blumenthal said, adding that he believes this market will likely expand over time to include people who want to own their own personal data, instead of trusting it to another company.

Image Credits:Periwinkle

Periwinkle’s premium plans start at $4 per month for a Basic Plan with support for five handles and 5GB of storage, with real-time backups and the choice between hosting in the EU or the U.S. The 25GB Pro and 50GB Team plans, at $14 per month and $30 per month, respectively, offer support for more handles, longer backup data retention, and service-level agreements. Custom enterprise plans are also available.

Image Credits:Periwinkle

A free plan is available for those who want to try the service, with 500MB of storage.

These plans could be useful to those who want more granular control over their social media account, like public officials or political candidates, or accounts operated by businesses. Over time, the company aims to add more tools like automated post deletions, archiving tools, and more.

Blumenthal is currently a solo founder, and the company is self-funded for the time being, though he’s been chatting with investors in Europe, he said. In time, he’d like to bring on another engineer and someone else to handle the communications and marketing.