Happy Friday! Did we tell you that Mark Wahlberg is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt this year? He is, and we're thrilled. Like a lot of savvy celebs, he's leaning into tech investing more than outsiders might realize, and we'll get to sit down with him to find out what he looks for and why. We’re also a little curious if he’s ever sat through a pitch and thought, "I could play this guy."

Disrupt is coming up fast, October 13-15 in downtown San Francisco. Come join us. We'll have newsmakers, VCs, how-to sessions, and, of course, our storied Startup Battlefield competition. (We're super excited about this year's slate of companies.) As readers of SVC, you can get 30% off, too (code is svc 30). More here.

Google won dismissal of antitrust lawsuits from Chegg and Penske Media, dealing a setback to publishers trying to use competition law to preserve the old bargain in which search engines index their content and send traffic back in return. The ruling suggests the fight over AI-generated search summaries may increasingly shift toward copyright law, licensing, and legislation rather than antitrust claims. Reuters has more here.

Apple is tightening macOS controls around Full Disk Access after warning that increasingly capable AI agents make the permission – which can expose files, mail, messages, and browsing history – substantially riskier. TechCrunch has more here.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law requiring robotaxi operators including Waymo, Tesla, and Zoox to provide local technicians when vehicles cause problems, use U.S.-based licensed remote drivers, and face fines if their vehicles block first responders for more than 30 minutes. TechCrunch has more here.

Harmonic 

Hey Scout 
“Find me prospects that have just made a hire that fits our buyer persona. Run it weekly” 
Fireworks and Baseten use Scout to find their best customers. 

Join them 

By Connie Loizos

Flock, whose cameras scan license plates across the country, continues to draw public anger, and now Senator Bernie Sanders wants the federal government out of the business altogether.

Sanders (D-Vermont) on Friday introduced the Ban Flock Act, which would bar federal agencies from using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) or tapping into data collected by readers run by local police and private companies. Despite its title, the bill doesn’t call out nine-year-old Flock in the text but rather covers any and all ALPR systems.

The bill allows exceptions only for toll collection and for uses that Congress approves in future legislation, which would have to limit data retention to 48 hours.

State and local governments would be dinged financially for not complying if the bill became law. (Like most bills, this one faces long odds.) Starting the first fiscal year after enactment, they would lose grants from five federal departments, including the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, unless they ban the tech.

Americans could also sue the federal government over violations, and state attorneys general could enforce the law.

Flock is the largest ALPR vendor in the U.S., according to Sanders, with more than 120,000 cameras. In a blog post back in February, the company — currently valued by its venture backers at north of $8 billion — said its network processes more than 20 billion vehicle reads each month.

Under increasing pressure from communities that are protesting the product, suspending their use, and, at an escalating rate, canceling their contracts, Flock has tightened its rules. In August, CEO Garrett Langley, who’d previously said that how police use the cameras is up to local agencies, announced a new default data retention period of seven days, down from 30.

FieldAI, a three-year-old company based in Irvine, CA, and the Bay Area that develops software enabling robots to operate autonomously across different machines, tasks, and environments, is reportedly in talks to raise $700 million at a $10 billion valuation, five times its $2 billion valuation from last year. Business Insider has more here.

Fortem Technologies, a 10-year-old company based in Lindon, UT, that develops radar, command software, and autonomous interceptor drones that detect, track, and capture unauthorized drones, raised a $50 million Series B round. The deal was led by Lockheed Martin, with Unusual Machines also pitching in. More here.

Homeward, an eight-year-old Austin startup that provides short-term financing and cash offers to homeowners buying before selling or seeking a faster home sale through real estate agents, raised a $120 million Series D round led by Saluda Grade, with Continental General Insurance Company, Citi Ventures, Magnetar, Harmony Partners, Norwest, Adams Street Partners, LiveOak Ventures, Parker89, Era Ventures, and Javelin Venture Partners also taking part. It also secured $330 million in asset-backed debt facilities. The company has raised a total of $360 million in equity. Crunchbase News has more here.

Reverion, a four-year-old startup based in Eresing, Germany, that builds reversible fuel cell power plants that convert gas into electricity and surplus electricity into storable gases, raised a $174.2 million Series B round led by Kembara, with additional support from Allianz, KfW Capital, Aurum Impact, and Carbon Equity as well as previous investors Extantia, Energy Impact Partners, UVC Partners, European Innovation Council Fund, alfa8, and Possible Ventures. EU-Startups has more here.

Supabase, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that provides developers with an open-source Postgres backend for databases, authentication, storage, and server functions, raised a $150 million round led by GIC, with CapitalG, IronArc, and SquarePeg also investing. The company also acquired database infrastructure startup Turso. More here.

TriGemX Bio, an 11-year-old New York company that develops an oral drug that blocks a sensory-signaling protein to treat acute migraines, raised a $94 million round co-led by The Column Group, TCGX, and Viking Global Investors. More here.

Arceus, a San Francisco startup founded this year that provides flat-fee legal services to fast-growing companies using licensed attorneys, AI agents, and its own software, raised a $17 million round led by Greycroft, with Craft Ventures and South Park Commons also investing. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Doxx.net, a one-year-old Miami startup that lets people and AI agents create private networks, communicate directly, and set security policies, raised a $38 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Animo Ventures and Focal.vc also opting in. More here.

Halluminate, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that builds benchmarks and simulated environments for training and evaluating AI agents on financial-services tasks, raised a $30 million Series A round led by Oak HC/FT, with Y Combinator, Orange Collective, FT Partners, and Heavybit also investing. The company has raised a total of $38.5 million. TokenPost has more here.

Laki Power, an 11-year-old company based in Reykjavík, Iceland, that develops monitoring technology for high-voltage transmission lines, raised a $6.8 million Series A round led by NATO Innovation Fund, with ReykVC also stepping up. Tech Funding News has more here.

Parakeet Health, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI to automate patient communications, scheduling, and other access workflows for healthcare organizations, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Canvas Ventures, with additional participation from Blank Space Ventures, StoryHouse Ventures, and HMC INQ. The company has raised a total of $13 million. More here.

Voltaback, a one-year-old startup based in Levallois-Perret, France, that automates fleet management and reimbursement for employees charging electric vehicles at home, raised a $3.2 million round. Investors included Serena, Aurélien de Meaux, and Maxime Brousse. The SaaS News has more here.

International Fund for Peace 

An Opportunity for Impact 

The world spent nearly $2.9 trillion on militaries last year. IF4Peace is bringing together technology, systems thinking and leadership to tackle one of humanity’s oldest challenges. For founders, technologists and investors looking to create impact beyond their companies and portfolios, this is an opportunity to help build systems that identify risks earlier, strengthen resilience and prevent violence before it spreads. Good for business. Good for humanity. Let’s meet: Bob Berg, Chair, IF4Peace.org 

Contrarian Thinking Capital, a four-year-old Austin venture firm co-led by Codie Sanchez and Christopher Petkas, is targeting $50 million for its second fund, according to a new SEC filing. The firm invests in early-stage startups building technology for SMBs. More here.

Firmus, the Australian data center operator backed by Blackstone and Nvidia, is seeking a $30.6 billion valuation in a $5 billion IPO, nearly triple its valuation from two months ago, even as some prospective investors balk at its limited operating track record, $30 billion debt load, and aggressive growth projections. Reuters has more here.

Mynt, the Philippine fintech behind the 94 million-user GCash app, priced its IPO at a roughly $7 billion valuation and is set to raise about $844 million – potentially rising to $970 million with an over-allotment – in what would be one of the Philippine Stock Exchange’s largest-ever listings. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Vanity Fair profiles Larry Ellison as an increasingly far-reaching power broker whose influence now spans Oracle’s risky AI infrastructure push, his son’s Hollywood empire, the U.S. operations of TikTok, and relationships with Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Tony Blair. The magazine notes that Ellison has long joked that he is an octopus, a metaphor that now looks eerily prescient. Vanity Fair has more here.

Pope Leo XIV is warning that AI-generated images are fundamentally different from human art, arguing that machines can recombine millions of existing works but lack the “spark of humanity.” Meanwhile, Anthropic has reportedly been lobbying the Vatican to reconsider its stance on non-human consciousness. TechCrunch has more here.

Nscale, the London AI infrastructure company preparing to raise as much as $3 billion in an IPO, hired 18-year Meta veteran Justin Osofsky as COO, making him at least the fourth former Meta/Facebook executive helping lead the company alongside Nscale board members Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg, and Fidji Simo. Bloomberg has more here.

Meta is letting go of employees it hired from AI safety startup Virtue AI just four months after bringing the team aboard, with the company attributing the split to clashing work styles. Semafor has more here.

New Mexico is asking a judge to impose $35 billion to $40 billion in penalties on Meta after a jury found that 26 of 29 company statements about privacy and other practices were misleading, amounting to more than 43 million violations of state consumer-protection law. Engadget has more here.

Dutch eyewear chain Hans Anders has suspended sales of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses in the Netherlands and Belgium amid privacy concerns, one of the first retailers to do so. Reuters has more here.

Registrations of Slovenia’s .si domain surged 2,199% in September, with 11,000 new addresses registered the day after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to call artificial intelligence “super intelligence.” TechCrunch has more here.

AI is making hiring so murky that nearly 1 in 5 U.S. hiring managers struggle to determine whether they are interviewing a human rather than AI. Fast Company has more here.

James Patterson and MrBeast teamed up on a 480-page novel complete with a $1 million puzzle contest intended to lure screen-addicted young people into reading, but The Atlantic’s reviewer found the book painfully repetitive, reporting that a friend’s 11-year-old MrBeast-loving son called the writing “amateur” and quit after 100 pages.

Larry Ellison is relisting his 8.4-acre oceanfront estate in North Palm Beach for $165 million, more than double the $80 million he paid in 2021; the property includes a roughly 16,000-square-foot Tuscan-style house with seven bedrooms and more than 500 feet of ocean frontage.

Please send all of your hot gossip to [email protected] or [email protected].

To book ads directly, contact us at [email protected].