August 27, 2026

TechCrunch Top 3

Rivian's CFO is leaving the company: Claire McDonough is stepping down on October 30 to pursue a new opportunity, the company said in a filing on Thursday. Read More

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 100 other companies call for action to defend against rogue AI: Some of the world's largest tech companies and AI startups have come together to decry the current state of cybersecurity and to advertise a new solution that they say can ward off a new generation of cyber threats. Read More

Buried in Meta's $18B settlement is a legal pass on kids' data: Meta’s settlement with 29 states allows it to retain certain data from children under 13 to train and test age-detection models, highlighting a privacy trade-off built into the deal. Read More

Afternoon Must-Reads

Hold up, there's a new Twitter in town: Former Twitter trademark counsel Stephen Coates said in a LinkedIn post that the company is not trying to re-create Twitter. Read More

Hugging Face is selling a cute $399 open source duck robot, Microduck: Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, said the Microduck is an “open-source robot you can teach new tricks with reinforcement learning.” Read More

Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder ousted before joining OpenAI, is now at Google: Zoph, who co-founded Thinking Machines Lab alongside Mira Murati and also served as the startup's CTO, led a brief stint at OpenAI and is now at Google. Read More

Plaud's new earphones come with an eSIM-enabled case for talking to AI agents: Called Plaud One, these adopt the simple bare-bones style of Apple's AirPods, and can record calls, while their case can be used to record in-person conversations or take notes. Read More

Google’s new Fitbit Air brings Pokémon Sleep to your wrist: Google teamed up with the Pokémon Company to introduce a special-edition Fitbit Air that works with the Pokémon Sleep app. Read More

A message from ThoughtSpot

Why Traditional Analytics Are Failing Modern Teams

Your customers want answers inside your product, not another dashboard. Join ThoughtSpot on August 27 to see how top teams build AI-native analytics that tell users what to do next.

Last but Not Least

Sprains, pain, and whiplash: Waymo and Zoox test drivers are getting hurt as robotaxis scale: Test drivers for Waymo and Zoox sustained more than two dozen injuries in 2024 and 2025 from hard braking or other sudden movements made by the autonomous vehicles, according to a TechCrunch review of data submitted to OSHA. Read More

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