June 18, 2026

TechCrunch Top 3

Amazon hopes to challenge Nvidia more directly by selling its AI chips: AWS is in talks to sell its chips to other data centers. CEO Andy Jassy has said this represents a $50 billion opportunity for the company. Read More

AI data centers just got a government-mandated fast lane to the grid: FERC told grid operators to give data centers a fast lane for interconnections, but it failed to address electricity supply shortages. Read More

The 11 standout startups from YC's Demo Day, according to VCs: TechCrunch spoke to investors to find the hottest startups in the Spring 2026 YC batch. Some of them commanded valuations of over $175 million, VCs said. Read More

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Afternoon Must-Reads

OpenAI is bringing on some big guns in the lead-up to its IPO : OpenAI is bulking up before its IPO, landing Transformer co-inventor Noam Shazeer from Google DeepMind and former Trump AI policy official Dean Ball in the same week. Read More

Snap spins off AI video team into new company, Dotmo, due to costs: The Snapchat maker is spinning off yet another internal unit. Dotmo will be comprised of current Snap staff who are leaving the social media company to focus on AI video development. Read More

Waymo recalls nearly 4,000 robotaxis to stop them driving into highway construction zones: The company has identified at least 13 instances where its robotaxis drove into highway sections closed for construction. Read More

Rivian owners file lawsuit alleging false promises on self-driving features: Plaintiffs in the class action complaint allege Rivian falsely promised for years it would bring hands-free driving to its first-generation R1 vehicles. Read More

General Intuition in talks to raise $300M at around $2B valuation: The startup trains embodied AI and world models using Medal’s dataset of 2 billion videos per year from 10 million monthly active users. Read More

Last but Not Least

The smartphone era created an attention crisis. Slowtech is fixing it: “People just really want to take back control of their time, their lives, their attention... They’re down for whatever helps them do that.” Read More

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