Welcome again to Week in Evaluation! Tons of reports from this week for you, together with a hacking group that’s linked to the Spanish authorities; CEOs utilizing AI avatars to ship firm earnings; Pocket shutting down — or is it?; and way more. Let’s get to it!
Greater than 10 years within the making: Kaspersky first revealed the existence of Careto in 2014, and on the time, its researchers known as the group “one of the vital superior threats in the meanwhile.” Kaspersky by no means publicly linked the hacking group to a particular authorities. However we’ve now discovered that the researchers who first found the group were convinced that Spanish government hackers had been behind Careto’s espionage operations.
23andWe: Regeneron introduced this week that it’s buying genetic testing company 23andMe for $256 million, together with the corporate’s genomics service and its financial institution of 15 million clients’ private and genetic knowledge. The pharma big mentioned it plans to make use of the client knowledge to assist drug discovery, saying that it’ll “prioritize the privateness, safety, and moral use of 23andMe’s buyer knowledge.” Let’s hope so!
Google I/O: Google’s largest developer convention sometimes showcases product announcements from throughout Google’s portfolio, and to no person’s shock, AI was the discuss of the city. However what we didn’t financial institution on was Sergey Brin admitting that he made “lots of mistakes” with Google Glass.
That is TechCrunch’s Week in Evaluation, the place we recap the week’s largest information. Need this delivered as a e-newsletter to your inbox each Saturday? Sign up here.
Information
io, not I/O: OpenAI is acquiring io, the machine startup that CEO Sam Altman has been engaged on with Jony Ive, in an all-equity deal that values that startup at $6.5 billion. Apart from the truth that the announcement was accompanied by maybe the strangest corporate headshot of all time, we noticed another surprising information: Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s household funding workplace, Flat Capital, had bought shares in io six months earlier, which implies these io shares might be transformed into shares within the for-profit arm of OpenAI. Not dangerous!
AI avatar contagion? Talking of Klarna’s CEO, Siemiatkowski used an AI version of himself to ship the corporate’s earnings this week. And he’s not the one one! Zoom CEO Eric Yuan followed suit, additionally utilizing his avatar for preliminary feedback. Cool?
Out of Pocket: Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, the beloved read-it-later app, on July 8. The corporate didn’t say why it’s shutting Pocket down, solely that it’ll proceed to spend money on serving to folks uncover and “entry prime quality net content material.” However perhaps it may be saved: Quickly after, Digg founder Kevin Rose posted on X that his company would love to buy it. Net 2.0 is again, child.
AI on my face: Apple is reportedly working on AI-powered glasses, just like Meta’s Ray-Bans, someday subsequent 12 months. They’ll have a digicam and microphone and can work with Siri. Positive, why not?
Uh, no thanks: At its very first developer convention, Anthropic unveiled Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, which may analyze massive datasets, execute long-horizon duties, and take advanced actions, in response to the corporate. That’s all positive and good till I discovered the Claude Opus 4 mannequin tried to blackmail developers once they threaten to switch it with a brand new AI system. The mannequin additionally provides delicate details about the engineers liable for the choice.
Ah, now I really feel higher: However don’t fear! Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei mentioned that today’s AI models hallucinate at a lower rate than people do. That is likely to be true, however a minimum of people don’t instantly flip to blackmail once they don’t like what they hear.
Bluesky blue checks: The decentralized social community Bluesky quietly rolled out blue verification badges for “notable and genuine” accounts. Folks can now apply for verification by way of a brand new on-line type. However Bluesky is leaning on different techniques past the blue badge to confirm customers.
Evaluation
Google’s new look: For what looks like 100 years, Google hasn’t modified a lot. Positive there are adverts and containers and now AI summaries that, for higher or worse, get you to the suitable solutions — often. However the premise has at all times been the identical: Kind your question right into a field, and Google will floor outcomes.
At this 12 months’s Google I/O, we started noticing a change. As Maxwell Zeff, writes, “At I/O 2025, Google made clear that the idea of Search is firmly in its rearview mirror.” The most important announcement of I/O was that Google now gives AI mode to each Search person in the USA, which implies customers can have an AI agent search (and even buy issues) for them.
