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By Christine Hall

Thursday, June 27, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch PM! This afternoon, we have a good lineup of stories, from a new FCC rule that will unlock your phone sooner to how Evolve Bank’s customers are doing after a data breach. There is also news about AI funds, changes over at Amazon and some fresh rounds of funding. Let’s go!

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The key to your phone: The FCC wants to make it significantly easier for consumers to unlock their phones from their carriers, proposing that all devices must be unlockable just 60 days after purchase. How this will mesh with current plans and phone-buying trends, however, is something the agency is hoping to learn before putting such a rule into effect. Read more

Reliance Jio is jacking up prices: Analysts expect India’s largest telecoms operator to boost the tariffs on some of its plans to upward of 20%. Even with the plan raises, Jio continues to be one of the more affordable options out there. Read more

Evolve Bank’s data breach has arms: After the notorious ransomware gang LockBit posted data allegedly stolen from Evolve on its dark web leak site, TechCrunch reached out to a number of Evolve’s clients to see how they were faring. Read more

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Mark Zuckerberg has some things to say about AI: In an interview about the future of the sector, he touted the value of open source to put AI tools into many people’s hands. Then Zuckerberg took a moment to disparage the efforts of unnamed competitors who he sees as less than open, adding that they seem to think they’re “creating God.” Read more

AI big shot Andrew Ng raising new AI fund: Andrew Ng’s AI Fund, a startup incubator that backs small teams of experts looking to solve key problems using AI, plans to raise upward of $120 million for its second tranche. This is smaller than the first tranche of the fund, and perhaps a sign that the AI bubble — particularly the buzzy generative AI segment within it — may be deflating. Read more

Sila charges up with $375 million in new funding: Amid a fraught environment for battery startups, Sila has raised $375 million to finish construction of a U.S. factory that will scale its next-generation battery technology for customers like Mercedes-Benz and Panasonic by the end of 2025. Sila’s ability to raise such a large round in a challenging environment could be seen as a vote of confidence for the company’s approach to battery chemistry and its ability to scale production. Read more

Meta tests user-created AI chatbots: The company will begin to surface AI characters made by creators through Meta AI Studio on Instagram. The tests will begin in the U.S. And don’t worry, Mark Zuckerberg noted that these chatbots will be clearly marked as AI so users are aware. Read more

If you can’t beat ChatGPT, join ’em: That’s what MagicSchool AI, which is building generative AI tools for educational environments, is doing for teachers and schools — helping them use AI tools, like ChatGPT, to plan lessons, write tests, and produce other learning materials. Read more

Climate’s “valley of death”: Companies in the climate sector need large infusions of cash, sometimes well beyond what a typical venture investor might offer, to reach a size where they’ll be able to make a mark. A new deal involving Rondo Energy, which makes thermal energy batteries, suggests a new way forward: Philanthropic grants. Read more

Amazon folds Amazon Clinic into One Medical: Amazon rebranded its telehealth clinic offering and continues to bet on its healthcare strategy as health tech startups, particularly in the virtual care space, are still emerging. Read more

Who’s your avatar?: Character.AI now enables all users to talk to AI characters over calls, which the company said can be useful for practicing language skills, giving mock interviews, or adding them to the gameplay of role-playing games. Read more

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Reddit is taking a stand against AI crawlers: Earlier this week, Reddit announced that it’s changing its Robots Exclusion Protocol, also known as its robots.txt file. This dry-sounding edit is part of a larger negotiation/battle between the AI companies that are hungry for content they can use to train their language models and the companies that actually own the content. So by changing its robots.txt file and by continuing to rate limit and block unknown bots and crawlers, Reddit seems to be working to prevent the practices that companies like Perplexity AI have been criticized for. Hit play and let’s chat!

Inside changes at Boeing: NPR went into Boeing’s 737 factory to look at how new hires are being trained following the problems that have plagued the airplane maker, including one of its doors coming off mid-flight. Read more

SpaceX makes a tender offer: SpaceX will sell insider shares at $112 apiece in a tender offer, Bloomberg reports. This is a higher price than investors previously discussed, but what Elon Musk wants, Elon Musk gets, right? The offer boosts the space and satellite company’s valuation closer to $210 billion. Read more

Roam if you want to: Americans traveling in Europe say they have not been able to use their mobile phones. Cell service outages have gone on for a day now among the three largest carriers, Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile, with no solution in sight. Read more

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