Anthropic has unveiled a preview of Mythos — one of its most powerful AI models yet — granting limited access to select tech partners to hunt for software vulnerabilities, even as the company warns it’s too risky for public release, owing to potential misuse by cybercriminals and state actors. Experts say systems like Mythos could mark a turning point in cybersecurity, with AI agents capable of identifying and exploiting weaknesses at a speed and scale far beyond human hackers.. TechCrunch has more here.

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By Amanda Silberling

I cannot say with 100% certainty that nineteen-year-old Justin Jin is not pulling an elaborate prank on me. In my defense, Jin’s company Giggles — which he describes as “putting a trading app and TikTok together” — started as a joke.

“This was around 2023, when TikTok was rumored to get banned and whatnot, and people were trying to find a new social media platform,” Jin told TechCrunch. “So I started this meme about an app called Giggles, and it wasn’t real at the time, but it went viral on TikTok.”

The name is a riff on an existing joke — people on TikTok would see someone post a stale meme and reply, “bro got banned from google giggles.” It’s supposed to be the kind of place where you’d post millennial cringe (like Threads), only it’s not real. But then Jin made it real.

Jin said he created a landing page for the fake app and a logo that makes it look like it could be a real Google app. The site included a field where people could sign up for a waitlist. The site got 100,000 visits in one day, so Jin called up his friend Edwin Wang to actually make an app.

Jin and Wang weren’t Stanford roommates, or co-workers at McKinsey, or buddies from a startup incubator — no, Jin met his co-founder when he was a YouTuber running a dubious marketplace on Minecraft that eventually got shut down for violating platform monetization rules.

The new company that Jin would end up creating is something that could only come from a Minecraft YouTuber who collects NFTs: a TikTok-meets-Kalshi marketplace where users can post “brainrot” videos and invest “aura points” in the videos. Soon, the app will let users invest actual cryptocurrency instead of aura. If you invest early in a meme and it gains traction, you get paid. Though it is still an invite-only beta, Jin says that 450,000 users have signed up.

“The goal for us is to be the first crypto app where people spend more than, like, 30 minutes a day on it,” Jin said. “I think once we are able to be that doomscroll feed that’s really well made, it kind of naturally capitalizes on people’s dopamine cycles, and we think that this can retain users.”

Aria Networks, a one-year-old Palo Alto startup that is building networking infrastructure for AI data centers, raised a $125 million Series A round from Sutter Hill Ventures, Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, and Eclipse Ventures. Reuters has more here.

Endovascular Engineering, a seven-year-old Menlo Park startup that is developing a thrombectomy system for treating pulmonary embolism, raised an $80 million Series C round co-led by Gilde Healthcare and Norwest, with Santé Ventures, 415 Capital, S3 Ventures, Panakès Partners, and M&L Healthcare Investments also stepping up. MassDevice has more here.

Firmus, a seven-year-old startup based in Saint Leonards, Australia, that develops and operates data centers built for AI workloads, raised a $505 million round at a $5.5 billion valuation. Coatue was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of approximately $1.22 billion. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Hermeus, a seven-year-old startup based in El Segundo, CA, that develops unmanned hypersonic aircraft for defense applications, raised a $200 million Series C round at a $1 billion post-money valuation (which seems low to us). The deal was led by Khosla Ventures, with Cox Enterprises and Destiny Tech100 as well as previous investors Canaan Partners, Founders Fund, In-Q-Tel, and RTX Ventures also participating. Hermeus also raised $150 million in debt. TechCrunch has more here.

Modus, a one-year-old New York startup that invests in accounting firms and provides them with AI audit technology, raised an $85 million seed round led by Lightspeed, with Comma Capital and Garry Tan also contributing. More here.

Starfish Space, a seven-year-old startup based in Tukwila, WA, that develops satellite servicing vehicles that can dock with and maneuver spacecraft in orbit, raised a $110 million Series B round co-led by Point72 Ventures, Activate Capital, and Shield Capital, with Industrious Ventures, NightDragon, Nomi Capital, Gaingels, and Overlap Holdings as well as previous investors NFX, Munich Re Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and PSL Ventures also piling on. The company has raised a total of $150+ million. GeekWire has more here.

Stipple Bio, a five-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that identifies tumor-specific cell surface epitopes for precision oncology therapies, raised a $100 million Series A round co-led by RA Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Nextech Invest, with previous investors Emerson Collective Investments, GV, LoLa Capital Partners, and GordonMD Global Investments also taking part. The company has raised a total of $100 million. More here.

Beacon Biosignals, a seven-year-old Boston startup that develops wearable EEG devices and software to measure brain activity for clinical trials and diagnostics, raised an $11 million Series B extension. Investors included JSL Health and Samsung Next. The company has raised a total of $132+ million. Medical Device Network has more here.

Mappedin, a 15-year-old company based in Waterloo, Canada, that creates and maintains 3D digital maps of indoor spaces for navigation and operations, raised a $24.5 million round led by Edison Partners, with Betatron Venture Group also pitching in. More here.

Natter, a five-year-old New York startup that conducts AI-moderated video conversations to gather feedback from employees and customers, raised a $23 million round led by Renegade Partners, with Kindred Capital, Costanoa Ventures, Rackhouse Ventures, Village Global, and Asymmetric Capital Partners also engaging. Tech Funding News has more here.

NeuBird AI, a three-year-old startup based in Redwood City, CA, that automates incident detection, root cause analysis, and remediation for site reliability engineers, raised a $19.3 million round led by Xora Innovation, with previous investors Mayfield, StepStone Group, Prosperity7 Ventures, and M12 also digging in. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Q-Factor, a recently founded Tel Aviv startup that is building a quantum computer using neutral atom technology, raised a $24 million seed round co-led by NFX and TPY Capital, with Intel Capital, Korea Investment Partners, Deep33, and the Matias family also participating. CTech has more here.

Trent AI, a one-year-old London startup that finds and helps remediate security vulnerabilities in AI agents and the code they generate, raised a $13 million seed round co-led by LocalGlobe and Cambridge Innovation Capital. SiliconANGLE has more here.

True Footage, a seven-year-old Austin startup that provides residential appraisal services and valuation software for mortgage lenders, raised a $40 million Series C round led by Cox Enterprises' Socium Ventures and including Nava Ventures, Pilot Enterprises, Story Ventures, The Kraft Group, and PagsGroup. The company has raised a total of $105+ million. More here.

nFuse, a one-year-old Bulgarian startup that enables small retailers to place wholesale orders through messaging apps, raised a $2 million round. Investors included Eleven Ventures and LaunchHub. The Next Web has more here.

Satellites on Fire, a six-year-old Buenos Aires startup that detects wildfires using satellite data and AI to generate real-time alerts and spread predictions, raised a $2.7 million seed round led by Dalus Capital, with Draper Associates, Draper Cygnus, VitaminC, Savia Ventures, Avesta Fund, Reciprocal, Zenani Capital, Innventure, Air Capital, Gain VC, Antom VC, and Embarca Tech also anteing up. The Next Web has more here.

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Eclipse has raised a new $1.3 billion fund to back — and in some cases incubate — startups working on “physical AI,” betting that the next big wave of tech will move intelligence off screens and into the real world. TechCrunch has more here.

Bloomberg’s Parmy Olson argues that Sam Altman’s best path to a successful OpenAI IPO may be less about building an all-in-one AI “superapp” and more about repairing ties with Microsoft, whose enterprise distribution could prove more valuable than another flashy product push. More here.

Elon Musk has amended his lawsuit against OpenAI to say that any damages he wins — more than $150 billion, by his estimate — should go to the company’s nonprofit arm rather than to him, while also asking that Sam Altman be removed from the nonprofit’s board. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai tells Stripe co-founder John Collison and VC Elad Gil that the company’s AI comeback is real; 2026 will be defined by supply constraints in memory, power, and construction; and some of Google’s longer-term bets now include robotics, quantum computing, and data centers in space. Cheeky Pint has more here.

Jeff Bezos’s secretive AI startup Project Prometheus has hired Kyle Kosic, an xAI co-founder who most recently worked at OpenAI, as it ramps up efforts to build AI systems that can understand and operate in the physical world. The Financial Times has more here.

AI search results are already being gamed, with SEO firms and brands racing to influence what chatbots and AI search tools say about them through tactics ranging from self-serving “best of” listicles to more overt forms of prompt manipulation. The Verge has more here.

Google’s AI Overviews are getting more accurate, according to a new analysis, but they still get roughly 1 in 10 answers wrong, and even many of the right ones cite sources that don’t fully support the claims being made. The New York Times has more here.

Silicon Valley’s favorite startup metric, ARR, is increasingly losing credibility, with founders and investors acknowledging that the widely cited revenue figure is so flexible it can be easily massaged and sometimes outright misrepresented. Bloomberg has more here.

Protein has officially reached the cocktail bar, with drinks like Buffalo Wild Wings’ “Espresso Proteini” and chicken-bone martinis joining a broader trend that asks an important question: whether the gains are worth the booze.

An Off Broadway show called Burnout Paradise is putting its cast on treadmills for 75 straight minutes, asking them to complete increasingly absurd tasks while running — and refunding the audience if they fail.

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