Trends

Anthropic accuses DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax of using 24,000 fake accounts to distill Claude’s AI capabilities, as U.S. officials debate export controls aimed at slowing China’s AI progress. Source

The team that sold their last app Dark Sky to Apple are back with Acme Weather, which offers alternative forecasts, rainbow and sunset alerts, and more. Source

While some dual investors are understandable, others were more shocking, and signal the disregard of a longstanding ethical conflict-of-interest rule. Source

Chinese hackers allegedly broke into the network of an Ivanti subsidiary in 2021. The hackers exploited a backdoor in its VPN product, which allowed the hackers to gain access to 119 other unnamed organizations. Source

Finnish unicorn IQM plans to go public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) valuing the company at approximately $1.8 billion — joining the growing cohort of quantum computing companies listed on U.S. stock markets.  Source

Spotify continues to test its AI-powered “Prompted Playlists” feature, now rolling out the tool to Premium subscribers in the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and Sweden. Source

AI news app Particle can now pull in key moments from podcasts, letting readers instantly play short, relevant clips alongside related stories. Source

Citrini Research imagines a report from two years in the future, in which unemployment has doubled and the total value of the stock market has fallen by more than a third. Source

5 days to save up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket. These lowest rates of the year disappear on February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Register here. Source

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon for a tense discussion over the military's use of Claude. Hegseth has threatened to designate Anthropic a "supply chain risk." Source