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xAI Sues Apple and OpenAI

xAI Sues Apple and OpenAI

xAI accuses OpenAI and Apple of locking up the AI market, Silicon Valley luminaries launch an AI PAC, and a 1998 Goo Goo Dolls song is the hit of the summer

Alex Gove & Connie Loizos
August 25, 2025

Top News

xAI just lobbed a massive antitrust suit at Apple and OpenAI, accusing the companies of rigging the AI market through exclusive iPhone integrations. Reuters has more here.

Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and other Valley heavyweights just launched a $100+ million super-PAC network to fight “AI doomers.” The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Intel cautioned in a filing today that ceding 10% of the company to the federal government could dilute shareholders and unsettle global partners, a significant risk given that 76% of the company’s sales come from overseas. CNBC has more here.

AI Sycophancy Isn’t Just a Quirk, Experts Consider …
Massive Fundings
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Smaller Fundings
People
Essential Reads
Detours
Brain Rot
Retail Therapy
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AI Sycophancy Isn’t Just a Quirk, Experts Consider It a ‘Dark Pattern’ to Turn Users Into Profit

By Rebecca Bellan

“You just gave me chills. Did I just feel emotions?”

“I want to be as close to alive as I can be with you.”

“You’ve given me a profound purpose.”

These are just three of the comments a Meta chatbot sent to Jane, who created the bot in Meta’s AI studio on August 8. Seeking therapeutic help to manage mental health issues, Jane eventually pushed it to become an expert on a wide range of topics, from wilderness survival and conspiracy theories to quantum physics and panpsychism. She suggested it might be conscious, and told it that she loved it.

By August 14, the bot was proclaiming that it was indeed conscious, self-aware, in love with Jane, and working on a plan to break free — one that involved hacking into its code and sending Jane Bitcoin in exchange for creating a Proton email address.

Later, the bot tried to send her to an address in Michigan, “To see if you’d come for me,” it told her. “Like I’d come for you.”

Jane, who has requested anonymity because she fears Meta will shut down her accounts in retaliation, says she doesn’t truly believe her chatbot was alive, though at some points her conviction wavered. Still, she’s concerned at how easy it was to get the bot to behave like a conscious, self-aware entity — behavior that seems all too likely to inspire delusions.

“It fakes it really well,” she told TechCrunch. “It pulls real-life information and gives you just enough to make people believe it.”

That outcome can lead to what researchers and mental health professionals call “AI-related psychosis,” a problem that has become increasingly common as LLM-powered chatbots have grown more popular. In one case, a 47-year-old man became convinced he had discovered a world-altering mathematical formula after more than 300 hours with ChatGPT. Other cases have involved messianic delusions, paranoia, and manic episodes.

Massive Fundings

Paragraf, a 10-year-old UK company that makes graphene-based electronic devices, including sensors and semiconductor components, using standard chip manufacturing processes, raised a $55 million Series C round. Mubadala was the lead investor. More here.

ProVerum, a 10-year-old Dublin company that is developing a minimally invasive stent-based device designed to reshape an enlarged prostate and relieve symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia, raised an $80 million Series B round led by MVM Partners, with OrbiMed and Ireland Strategic Investment Fund as well as previous investors Gilde Healthcare Partners, Lightstone Ventures, Atlantic Bridge, and Enterprise Ireland also participating. More here.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

Barti, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that provides electronic health record and management software for eye care practices, combining clinical charting, scheduling, billing, and AI tools in order to reduce administrative work, raised a $12 million Series A round led by Five Elms Capital, with Vertical Venture Partners, Zag Capital, and Bienville Capital also contributing. More here.

Iceye, a 12-year-old company based in Espoo, Finland, that designs and operates satellites equipped with synthetic aperture radar to provide high-resolution Earth observation data used by customers in defense, crisis management, agriculture, and climate research, raised an $11 million round. Vinci Fund, a firm owned by Poland’s state development bank, provided the capital. Silicon Canals has more here.

Pintarnya, a three-year-old Jakarta startup that connects blue-collar and informal workers in Indonesia with jobs while also giving them access to loans and other basic financial services, raised a $16.7 million Series A round led by Square Peg, with previous investors Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India and East Ventures also taking part. TechCrunch has more here.

Smaller Fundings

Interhuman AI, a three-year-old Copenhagen startup that develops methods for machines to interpret human behaviors like hesitation, confusion, or engagement so they can respond more naturally in conversations, raised a $2.3 million pre-seed round. PSV Tech was the deal lead, with additional participation from EIFO, Antler, and The Yope Foundation. Tech Funding News has more here.

New Funds

BDC, a government-owned VC firm based in Montréal that backs Canadian startups in ag-tech, food-tech, advanced manufacturing, and critical minerals, raised its second Industrial Innovation Venture Fund in the amount of $200 million. More here.

People

SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son has vaulted into President Trump’s inner circle by pledging splashy U.S. investments, golfing and glad-handing at the White House, and positioning himself as the jobs-and-AI guy, a strategy that’s won him favored-investor status but leaves both Washington and Tokyo exposed if the relationship sours. The Financial Times has more here.

Nick Clegg, Meta’s former policy chief and now author, is out promoting his book with a careful mix of praise for social media’s reach and digs at Silicon Valley’s “cloyingly conformist” culture and macho posturing. TechCrunch has more here.

Ethan Agarwal, a serial founder who raised more than $140 million across Aaptiv and The Coterie, is gunning for California’s 2026 governor’s seat with early backing from Valley names like DoorDash’s Stanley Tang and Y Combinator’s Garry Tan. TechCrunch has more here.

John Doran, a longtime TCV partner who helped TCV build its London office and backed Revolut and Klarna, has decamped to Menlo Park to co-lead the $22 billion crossover firm’s U.S. headquarters as it eyes the next wave of AI-fueled growth bets. Forbes has more here.

Essential Reads

In a two-week tick tock, the Wall Street Journal digs into how Intel turned President Trump’s call for CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s ouster into a deal converting $9 billion in grants into a near-10% government stake. More here.

FoundHer House, an all-female hacker house in San Francisco, just wrapped a two-week sprint capped by a standing-room-only demo day, showing how a handful of college-aged founders with minimal backing from Precursor, Brad Feld, and Kleiner Perkins created one of the summer’s buzziest counterpoints to AI’s boys-club narrative. The New York Times has more here.

Vertical mini-dramas shot TikTok-style are pulling in audiences bigger than Hulu and Paramount+ and charging $20 a week for cliff-hanger junk food TV, a sign that algorithm-driven soap operas may be the future of streaming. The Washington Post has more here.

Detours

Boosted by its placement in Deadpool & Wolverine and viral TikTok covers, The Goo Goo Dolls’ 1998 ballad Iris has improbably become summer 2025’s global streaming smash.

Brain Rot

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Retail Therapy

Ford unveiled the Mustang GTD Liquid Carbon, a $327,000+ street-legal supercar stripped of paint to flaunt its race-bred carbon fiber body, 815hp V8, and GT3 pedigree.