Instagram users: Here’s how to stop Meta’s AI from using your photos

Plus more of TechCrunch's top stories this afternoon

View this email online in your browser  July 09, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 Instagram users: Here’s how to stop Meta’s AI from using your photos: Muse Image allows users to generate AI images using photos from public Instagram accounts. As long as a person's profile is public, another user can tag that account and use their images as part of an AI-generated creation. Read More Mercor is in talks for a $20B valuation: A new $20 billion valuation would be a giant step up from the $10 billion valuation it reached in October. Read More Meta enters the crowded AI coding battle with Muse Spark 1.1: Meta's pitch to users is Spark's ability to handle large agentic workloads, fix bugs, and help with large code migrations — the kind of automation that enterprises are increasingly turning to AI companies to provide. Read More A message from Ai4 America’s Largest AI Conference Returns to Las Vegas Join 12000+ attendees at Ai4 2026, America’s largest AI conference. Discover the strategic insights and use cases driving real business impact. Hear from industry pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrew Ng, explore 400+ exhibits, & network with peers in Las Vegas, Aug 4-6. Final call to register now and save $600+ before Aug 2. Register Now Afternoon Must-Reads Anthropic’s new Claude feature is quietly selling you on AI: Claude’s new Reflect dashboard doesn’t just visualize how you use AI. It also subtly reinforces how much of your daily work now depends on Anthropic’s chatbot. Read More Popular open source AI developer tool Ollama raises $65M, grows to nearly 9M users: Benchmark-backed Ollama has amassed 176,000 stars, and nearly 17,000 forks on GitHub by helping developers easily run AI on their PCs. Read More Meta's new AI chips will begin production in September: The company is taking a modular approach to designing these chips, anticipating that their needs will change as AI evolves rapidly by the time the chips are in production. Read More Charles Hudson shares the common mistakes he’s seen after investing in 500+ startups: In this week’s episode of Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen talks with Precursor Ventures' Charles Hudson about the headwinds facing early-stage founders today and the most common mistakes founders should avoid in order to get funded.  Read More Nvidia is a victim of the compute marketplace it created: Having proven how valuable compute can be, the company finds itself at the center of a market everyone wants to be in — while simpler technologies and less interesting companies get rich on the sidelines. Read More Last but Not Least Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX are bigger than the last 25 years of tech exits: Three big AI IPOs are set to generate more value than all the U.S. VC-backed exits since 2000. Read More Check out some of our other newsletters: StrictlyVC TechCrunch Events TechCrunch Mobility Want to adjust your daily newsletter schedule? You can do it right here Got a tip? Get in touch securely. Want to advertise on TechCrunch? advertise@techcrunch.com Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Unsubscribe Member Center Privacy Policy Copyright © 2026 TechCrunch Media LLC 501 2nd Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94107

SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.5, which Elon describes as an 'Opus-class model'

Plus more of TechCrunch's top stories to start your morning

View this email online in your browser  July 09, 2026 TechCrunch Top 3 SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.5, which Elon describes as an 'Opus-class model': Elon Musk's tech company released the newest version of Grok on Wednesday, promising a cheaper, more efficient alternative to other powerful AI models. Read More Popular open source AI developer tool Ollama raises $65M, grows to nearly 9M users: Benchmark-backed Ollama has amassed 176,000 stars, and nearly 17,000 forks on GitHub by helping developers easily run AI on their PCs. Read More Anthropic’s new Claude feature is quietly selling you on AI: Claude’s new Reflect dashboard doesn’t just visualize how you use AI. It also subtly reinforces how much of your daily work now depends on Anthropic’s chatbot. Read More A message from General Compute General Compute is making a $300m bet against GPUs General Compute raised $15m to build the worlds first ASIC cloud. By removing the GPU bottleneck, it runs frontier LLMs up to 16x faster than standard GPU clouds. ASIC silicon is also far more energy efficient, so it deploys in air-cooled data centers, making growth and expansion dramatically easier. Learn more here Morning Must-Reads Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX are bigger than the last 25 years of tech exits: Three big AI IPOs are set to generate more value than all the U.S. VC backed exits since 2000. Read More Character.AI enters the microdrama arena with its own productions, but there's a twist: In an interesting twist that takes advantage of the company's core product, users can chat with these shows' characters, ask them questions, and even roleplay different storylines. Read More Despite 'misgivings,' judge approves Elon Musk's $1.5M SEC settlement: The saga of Musk's tussle with the SEC over how he disclosed his growing stake in Twitter (now X) has come to an end. Read More Lovable reportedly in talks to double its valuation to $13.2B: The $300 million round is expected to be led by Menlo Ventures, Sifted reported. Read More Feds demand autonomous vehicle companies stop interfering with first responders: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said emergency scenes are not "edge cases." Read More Last but Not Least Truecaller clashes with India's telecom regulator over anti-spam rules: The caller ID company says users are increasingly ignoring and blocking calls from India's dedicated business number series. Read More Check out some of our other newsletters: StrictlyVC TechCrunch Events TechCrunch Mobility Want to adjust your daily newsletter schedule? You can do it right here Got a tip? Get in touch securely. Want to advertise on TechCrunch? advertise@techcrunch.com Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. Unsubscribe Member Center Privacy Policy Copyright © 2026 TechCrunch Media LLC 501 2nd Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94107