June 30, 2026

TechCrunch Top 3

Chamath Palihapitiya raises $135M Series A for his AI coding startup, takes CEO role: VCs remain thirsty to fund AI coding startups. This one, founded by investor Chamath Palihapitiya, is no exception. Read More

Waymo and Uber quietly part ways in Phoenix: Uber said it is readying the launch of a separate autonomous vehicle partnership in the city, but did not name the partner. Read More

Vibe-coding platform Base44 launches own model as AI startups seek defensibility: Wix-owned vibe-coding platform Base44 has started rolling out its own AI model — with hopes that it will eventually outperform frontier models. Read More

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Morning Must-Reads

Arena, the AI leaderboard everyone uses, is now a $100M business: The startup, which runs a popular free AI leaderboard, launched its commercial service just last September. Read More

The AI jobs debate just got messier: A new report finds "high-intensity AI adopters” saw headcount increase 10.2%. Among those companies, entry-level headcount rose by 12%, countering the rhetoric that AI kills junior jobs. Read More

Gemini's personalized AI image generation is now free for US users: Google is expanding Gemini’s personalized AI image generation to eligible free users in the U.S., allowing the chatbot to create images based on your interests and data from connected Google apps. Read More

Watch out, Amazon: The Kobo eReader now has a Goodreads rival: Kobo users can now automatically sync their reading progress to StoryGraph, making it easier to track books, reading stats, and challenges without relying on Amazon’s Goodreads. Read More

Lumo, Proton's privacy-focused AI chatbot, gets an upgrade: Proton's Lumo 2.0 is dropping this week, giving users a broader variety of capabilities. Read More

Last but Not Least

TIDAL cracks down on AI music by cutting off monetization: In addition, TIDAL will use automated tools to remove AI-generated music that attempts to impersonate an artist or a group, the company said. Read More

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