| Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we’re reading about Figma’s upcoming IPO; the good news for NASA’s moon program; and Google’s increasing power usage. We’ve also got notes on the EV landscape; major layoffs at Microsoft; airlines getting hacked; funding for biotech; X’s AI Community Notes, and more. Let’s go! |
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| Image Credits: Haje Kamps / TechCrunch |
| 1. Is it finally IPO season? Design software company Figma is on its way to a blockbuster IPO that could raise as much as $1.5 billion, and its filings reveal impressive financials. The only potential spanner in the works could be the rise of vibe coding startups it may need to compete with. Read More 2. To the moon, literally: Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, which the Senate passed yesterday, earmarks $10 billion more for NASA’s flagship Artemis program that aims to land on the moon. The funds will go towards legacy aerospace tech, like SLS rockets and a moon orbiting station, angering critics like Elon Musk and Jared Isaacman who wanted to see more money put towards alternative technologies. Read More 3. Google is desperate for more power. The company’s data centers more than doubled their electricity use in the past four years, and it wants to use only carbon-free sources of electricity. But that’s going to be a serious challenge given how many new data centers it’s been setting up. Read More |
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| Image Credits: Getty Images |
| 📉 Fall from grace: Tesla’s deliveries continued to fall in the second quarter, signaling that the EV maker might post a decline compared to 2024. That will be a problem, considering Tesla once touted its ability to increase deliveries by 50% a year. Read More 👇 And Tesla’s not alone: Rivian’s Q2 sales numbers dropped 23% from a year earlier as a result of Trump’s tariffs. The company has had some help from Volkswagen in the form of a $1 billion share purchase, but things need to change soon. Read More 😞 So long, farewell: Microsoft is planning to lay off 9,000 employees, or 4% of its global workforce. It’s one of many rounds of layoffs to have already occurred this year as the tech giant tries to pare down many layers of management. Read More 🛬 This time, it’s airlines: Australian airline Qantas has become the latest airline to experience a data breach. Hackers targeted a company call center on June 30, stealing names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and more of at least six million passengers. Read More 🩺 Sunny skies for a change: VC firm Catalio Capital Management has closed a new $400 million Fund IV to continue backing healthcare and biotechnology companies. Good news for an industry that somehow survived last year’s venture capital doldrums. Read More |
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| 🍪 An incentive: Trump’s budget bill, which passed in the Senate yesterday, could raise tax credits for semiconductor firms like TSMC, Intel, and Micron from 25% to 35%, writes CNBC. All they need to do is build more facilities in the U.S. of A. Read More ☀️ Money is green, too: Dutch climate tech firm Dexter Energy has raised $27.1 million to expand its AI-driven services for renewable energy and batteries, per Reuters. Dexter’s CEO Luuk Veeken says “AI is now essential infrastructure for an electricity grid increasingly powered by renewables and storage.” Read More |
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| 🫠 What could go wrong? X is piloting a feature that lets AI chatbots generate Community Notes, the platform’s fact-checking program that lets users add context to posts. Adding an AI element seems risky, since these "AI agents" are, well, bots, and they also tend to hallucinate a lot. Read More |
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