Welcome back to Week in Review! I’m Karyne Levy, TechCrunch’s deputy managing editor, and I’ll be writing this newsletter from here on out. Thrilled to be here!
This week we’re checking out everything at SXSW; Waymo’s expansion into Silicon Valley; Intel’s new CEO; TikTok’s new suitor; and why DeepSeek isn’t taking VC money. Let’s get to it!
Environmental impact: The FBI, the EPA, the EPA inspector general, and the Treasury Department requested that Citibank freeze accounts of several nonprofits and state government agencies. The accounts were frozen in February, but the new documents make public details that had previously been unknown until they were revealed in court filings this week.
SXSW comes to an end: TechCrunch was all over SXSW in Austin this week, riding in Waymo taxis, learning Mark Cuban’s thoughts on AI (it’s a tool, not a panacea), and deciphering the T-shirt that Bluesky’s CEO wore (turns out she was taking a swipe at Mark Zuckerberg).
Intel’s new chief: Intel appointed Lip-Bu Tan as its next CEO. Tan, a Malaysia-born, longtime tech investor, formerly served as CEO of Cadence Design Systems and said that Intel will be an “engineering-focused company” under his leadership. And he’ll have his work cut out for him.
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A new era: Rad Power Bikes has a new CEO just a few days after its previous CEO stepped down. Kathi Lentzsch, who has spent years helping turn around underperforming companies in both the consumer and B2B spaces, will take over the e-bike company as it continues to shift away from direct-to-consumer in favor of a retail-based approach.
Backdoor policies: Last month it was revealed that the U.K. government secretly ordered Apple to create a “backdoor,” allowing authorities to access the cloud-stored data of all Apple customers. U.S. lawmakers are asking the head of the U.K.’s surveillance court to hold an open hearing for Apple’s possible challenge to the alleged secret U.K. government legal demand.
Food for thought: Bryan Johnson — the investor and founder behind the Don’t Die movement — wants to start “foodome” sequencing. His goal is to test as much food as possible, creating a public database where people can donate money to have certain foods and brands tested for toxins.
No parking: Waymo’s 300 driverless vehicles in San Francisco are racking up parking tickets. The cars’ 589 parking violations totaled $65,065 in fines last year.
Open Sesame: AI company Sesame has released the base model used for Maya, its super-realistic voice assistant. The model is open source, too, which means it can be used commercially.
Tick tock, TikTok: TikTok’s deadline to finalize its sale to a U.S. company is just around the corner, and now another suitor is showing interest — Oracle. Sources told The Information that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, is favoring Oracle over other companies.
Little tech’s hero: Y Combinator sent a letter to the White House this week, urging the government to support Europe’s Digital Markets Act, which aims to bust up Big Tech’s market power. It’s unclear how the White House will respond.
Caviar dreams: Trump’s family has been looking into investing in Binance U.S. This comes just a couple of years after Binance’s U.S. arm plead guilty to violating anti-money laundering regulations.
That was easy: I’m not opposed to AI, especially when it helps me be more efficient. Take, for example, a new feature that rolled out this week to Gmail. We can now add events to a Google Calendar directly from an email. That’s cool!
Got him: The co-founder of Garantex, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange, was arrested in India. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Aleksej Besciokov of personally approving transactions on Garantex linked to North Korean-government hackers and other cybercriminals.
Pokémon sold: Niantic, the company behind the viral sensation Pokémon GO, is selling its gaming division to Scopely for $3.5 billion. Niantic said it will now focus on building real-world 3D maps through a new stand-alone entity called Niantic Spatial.
DeepSeek, deep pockets? Though it has tons of interest, Chinese AI company DeepSeek isn’t taking VC money — yet. Charles Rollet runs through a few reasons why.
New day, new deal: OpenAI has signed a five-year, $11.9 billion agreement with the GPU-heavy cloud service provider CoreWeave. But the amount of money isn’t the only reason why this deal is eye-popping. Before this deal, CoreWeave’s biggest customer was Microsoft.
Waymo One: Waymo is expanding its early rider program across Silicon Valley, now offering robotaxi rides to people in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, and parts of Sunnyvale. The new territories add to the 55 square miles of coverage already offered in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Cool, cool: Fact-checking at Meta is getting an overhaul. Starting Tuesday, the company will begin releasing its version of Community Notes for Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users in the United States.
We’ve got questions: Three years after its launch, exactly how Lockdown Mode works is still a mystery. There’s no explanation for why it takes some of the actions it takes, and some of its notifications are super confusing.
The writing’s on the wall: OpenAI’s new creative writing AI is impressive but feels like that one kid in high school fiction club who tries way too hard to sound deep. While the AI can churn out clever metafiction, critics say its writing lacks real emotion and originality, making it more of a showoff than a true storyteller.
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