August 29, 2026

TechCrunch Top 3

Two years after launch, Walmart's Flipkart is closing in on India's quick-commerce leaders: Flipkart's quick-commerce venture is delivering 1.1 million to 1.2 million orders a day, nearly triple its November volume. Read More

Fitbit founders launch Luffu Link, an LTE health and safety band: Luffu Link combines all-day health sensing, voice logging, location awareness, and the ability to get help from trusted contacts into a single device, all without needing a phone nearby. Read More

Flock CEO calls for ‘compromise’ as surveillance company faces growing backlash: Flock Safety faces a growing public outcry over concerns that its surveillance technology could be misused. Read More

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This Week's Must-Reads

Nvidia’s AI advantage is moving beyond the GPU: The new generation of data center systems is increasing efficiency with smarter traffic control instead of just more processor cycles. 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

Nvidia closes in on Hugging Face acquisition: Nvidia has reportedly agreed to buy Hugging Face, the popular open source AI hub, for $12.9 billion in a move that would let Nvidia both protect its chip empire and jump back into the cloud business. Read More

An Anthropic researcher just gave us a peek at self-improving AI: Given 10 benchmarks for specific misaligned behaviors, the automated systems were able to improve performance on every single one without degrading overall performance. Read More

Viral AI startup Instinct has raised $350M at a $2.5B valuation: The startup is only a year old but it has already generated a massive amount of hype (and money) while also spurring privacy concerns. Read More

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Last but Not Least

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

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