Latest AI News
From teen hacker to Iron Dome researcher, this founder raised $28M to fight AI phishing
Shay Shwartz knows a lot about email phishing attacks. As a teenager, he made money as a hacker, but after getting caught at age 16, he realized he could use his cyber talents to prevent attacks rather than launch them. He went on to spend about a decade in top-tier cybersecurity roles, leading major projects for Israel’s elite defense and intelligence units, including work connected to the Iron Dome project, before joining Axis, the startup later acquired by HPE. All along, he had been itching to launch his own startup, and two years ago, he finally took the plunge. His startup Ocean, an agentic email security platform built to fight AI-powered attacks, just emerged from stealth mode with $28 million in total funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Picture Capital and Cerca Partners. High-profile angel investors also joined the round, including Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport, as well as Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael, the co-founders of Armis, which recently sold to ServiceNow for $7.75 billion. While established vendors like Proofpoint and Mimecast, along with newer players like Abnormal Security, help detect standard phishing attacks, Shwartz (pictured right next to co-founder and CTO Oran Moyal) argues that AI requires a different defensive approach. In the past, only highly sophisticated hackers could pull off spear-phishing due to the sheer amount of time, research, and manual labor needed to launch targeted attacks. “AI just made the entire process automatic, so the scale is much, much bigger now,” Shwartz told TechCrunch. “I can instruct LLM to go and understand exactly who you are, harvest large amount of public information, and create those phishing attacks very targeted against you.” Ocean claims its AI can thoroughly analyze the context of every incoming email to detect fraud and impersonation attempts. The startup is already reviewing billions of emails each month for customers including Kayak, Kingston Technology, and Headspace. Shwartz said Ocean built a small language model tailored to quickly analyze emails, understand the sender’s intent, and evaluate it against the user’s specific organizational context. “This is like having a guard in every door,” Shwartz said. “This is how we make the inbox a safe place with high hygiene.”
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How to use Google’s new AI agents to go beyond your standard searches
At theGoogle I/O 2026keynote, the tech giantrevealed new agentic capabilities in Search, where users can create, customize, and manage multiple AI agents to stay updated on topics of interest. The announcement is part of Google’s larger push toward agentic AI systems that can take initiative and assist with ongoing tasks instead of answering one question at a time. Unlike traditional search tools that respond only when prompted, Google’s information agents are designed to operate continuously in the background, 24/7, helping users stay informed about their interests without needing to repeatedly search for the same information every day. Instead of delivering a list of links, the agents can synthesize information from multiple sources, explain why something matters, compare perspectives, and provide actionable insights. In many ways, the agents represent the next evolution of Google Alerts, the notification service Google launched in 2003. However, these agents are designed to go beyond simple notifications. For instance, someone following the stock market could create an information agent focused on specific companies, share price, or economic trends. The agent could monitor market activity throughout the day, track breaking news, summarize earnings reports, alert users when major changes happen, and provide summaries and links to learn more. It could also help with everyday tasks, such as tracking flight prices for upcoming trips, monitoring sports teams and live events, following breaking news, keeping tabs on housing or job market trends, and tracking weather or traffic. To use the feature, users can open AI Mode in Search and enter a prompt. For example: “Keep me updated on nearby movie tickets for ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu.’” When something relevant appears, the Google app sends a push notification. You’ll also see your active tracked topics in your AI Mode history, where you can jump back in to manage, refine, or turn off an alert. Information agents will be available this summer. The company is first rolling them out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S., then to additional markets later on. In addition to these information agents, Google also introduced amajor redesign of Search, including what it describes as a reimagined “intelligent search box,” the company’s biggest change to Search in more than 25 years. The new interface is designed to support longer, more conversational queries. There’s also a new AI-powered query suggestion system that goes beyond traditional autocomplete, helping users craft nuanced and context-aware searches. Google Search as you know it is over Google updates Gemini app to take on ChatGPT and Claude Google introduces Gemini Spark, a 24/7 agent assistant with Gmail integration How to use Google’s new information agents
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OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic’s pre-training team
Andrej Karpathy, the AI researcher who co-founded and formerly worked at OpenAI and previously led AI at Tesla, has joined Anthropic. “I’ve joined Anthropic,” Karpathyposted on XTuesday. “I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D.” Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time. Karpathy started this week at Anthropic, where he is working on pre-training under team lead Nick Joseph. Pre-training is responsible for the large-scale training runs that give Claude its core knowledge and capabilities, according to the company. It’s also one of the most expensive, compute-intensive phases of building a frontier model. An Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch that Karpathy will start a team focused on using Claude to accelerate pre-training research. Karpathy is one of the few researchers who can bridge the gap between LLM theory and large-scale training practice. Tapping him to build such a team is a clear sign from Anthropic that it believes AI-assisted research, rather than pure compute, is how it stays competitive with OpenAI and Google. While at OpenAI, Karpathy focused on deep learning and computer vision until he departed in 2017 to join Tesla. He led Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) and Autopilot programs before leaving in 2022.He then went back to OpenAI for one year before leaving again in 2024 tostart Eureka Labs, a startup dedicated to applying AI assistants to education. Karpathy hasn’t shared many updates on Eureka Labs since its launch, and it’s not clear if the renowned researcher will continue with the startup. He has also taught an online course calledNeural Networks: Zero to Herothat helps students learn to build neural networks from scratch in code, and he has aYouTube channelwhere he semi-regularly posts lectures on LLMs and AI. “I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time,” Karpathy said. TechCrunch has reached out to Karpathy for comment. Separately, Anthropic has alsobrought onChris Rohlfto its frontier red team, which stress-tests advanced AI models against severe threats. Rohlf is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry with more than 20 years of experience. He previously worked at Yahoo’s well-respected cybersecurity team known as “The Paranoids,” and more recently at Meta, where he worked for six years before joining Anthropic. Rohlf was also a fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, where he worked on the CyberAI project. “We have a real opportunity in front of us to dramatically improve cyber security with AI,” Rohlf said in apost on X. “I can’t think of a better company or team to join at this critical moment in time.”
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Building an AI Operating System for India’s Construction Sector
Founded in 2021 by IIT Roorkee alums, Powerplay started by digitising site-level workflows for mid-sized contractors and has since evolved into a proactive AI layer for construction operations.
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Google Brings AI Educator Series to India, Partners With UNICEF to Boost Learning Outcomes
Google’s initiatives, announced at the Education World Forum 2026 in London, will cover teacher training in six Indian languages and span four countries.
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Andrej Karpathy Joins Anthropic
While Anthropic was already led by former OpenAI executive Dario Amodei, Karpathy’s arrival adds another prominent early OpenAI figure to its ranks.
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Perplexity Users Claim Their Usage Limit Was Significantly Reduced, Company Reportedly Responds
Several Perplexity users woke up last week to find their accounts' usage significantly reduced. Sharing their frustrations online, these users highlighted that the rate limits were cut short to the point that their daily usage was getting exhausted in just a few queries. The list of impacted users includes those on the free tier and those paying for a subscription. After spending multiple days in confusion, the artificial intelligence (AI) company has reportedly issued a statement, shedding light on the reason behind the throttling exercise.
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iOS 27 Could Bring AI Wallpaper Generator, Smarter Siri, Revamped Shortcuts App to iPhone: Report
Apple could introduce new AI-powered features aimed at improving personalisation and productivity across the iPhone experience with iOS 27. According to a report, the Cupertino-based tech giant is developing a custom wallpaper generator powered by Image Playground for iPhone, alongside a revamped Shortcuts app with the ability to automate workflows. iOS 27 could also reportedly expand the Apple Intelligence suite with upgraded Writing Tools, AI-assisted grammar checking, and a more advanced chatbot-style version of Siri.
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Beyond Metros, This Organisation is Building AI Skills for India's Rural Graduates
1M1B has also contributed to India's open AI ecosystem through the GenAI Resource Hub, developed in partnership with Meta and integrated with the national AI platform AIKosh.
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Amazon Alexa+ Can Now Create AI-Powered Podcast Episodes on Demand
Amazon has introduced a new Alexa+ feature called Alexa Podcasts that can generate podcast-style audio episodes on demand. The tool creates AI-generated episodes on nearly any topic in a few minutes using synthetic host voices. Users only need to provide a topic and can adjust the planned coverage before the audio is generated. The feature is designed to help users learn about news, travel, hobbies, and professional topics in an audio format that can be played through Echo devices and the Alexa app.
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Google Starts Rolling Out Gemini Usage Dashboard, Adds Weekly Limit
Google is now rolling out the usage dashboard for Gemini to all users. This new space, which is slowly rolling out globally, acts as a space to let users know how soon they will hit their rate limits and plan their usage accordingly. The dashboard brings more transparency to users who frequently exhaust their usage and have to wait for the bar to reset. However, as a downside, the Mountain View-based tech giant has implemented a weekly rate limit alongside its five-hour limit, which places broader restrictions on the usage one can get out of their artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
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Salesforce to Spend Nearly $300 Mn on Anthropic Tokens in 2026
Salesforce currently has around 15,000 engineers, many of whom now work with AI tools such as Anthropic Claude.
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