Friday, March 14, 2025

What exactly is an AI agent?

Friday, March 14, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we are pondering what an AI agent actually is; we learn of a new startup that is making an alternative to GPS; we get the latest on TikTok; and more. Have a great weekend!

TechCrunch Top 3

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🤹 Juggling jargon: While many AI companies assure us that AI agents are the future of work as we know it, it's still unclear what an AI agent actually is. AI companies all define the term a little differently, and some, like OpenAI, have multiple definitions.

⬆️ Bid for Binance: The Trump family is considering a bid for an equity stake in crypto exchange Binance's U.S. business. This comes just a few years after that exact business arm plead guilty for money laundering.

📞 Rest in power: Mark Klein, an AT&T technician turned whistleblower, has died at age 79. Klein is known for going public in 2006 with documents that proved the U.S. government was accessing internet data on millions of Americans after 9/11.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Gilbert Flores / Contributor / Getty Images

☁️ Cloud beef: On today's episode of Equity, we dig into the details of the recent deal between OpenAI and CoreWeave. We also talk about the sale of Niantic's games business and the latest Y Combinator batch, and we've got an audio update from SXSW.

🥂 Cheers for Cheersy: Cheersy, a wedding marketplace startup that helps people find day-of-service coordinators, raised a pre-seed round with a notable lead investor: Kerry Washington. Washington has backed other startups, including Spill and Equip.

⏰ An update: While the TikTok drama has settled down significantly since January, many questions still remain. We've got an update on what's going on with the app and a list of all the players in the ring to buy it.

🔥 Insurance bailout: Arizona lawmakers are considering a bill that would make it harder to find utility companies at fault for wildfires. In exchange for the reduced liability, insurance companies are supposed to file plans every two years on how they are mitigating wildfire risk.

🗺️ Sign me up: GPS is great in a lot of ways and faulty in many others. Tern AI is a startup looking to build a more accurate GPS equivalent that relies less on satellite data and more on a car's sensor data. So far, the tech seems like it has strong potential.

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Around the web

👀 Deep into DeepSeek: While the release of DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model in January created quite the uproar in the U.S., it may have created more buzz in its native country, China. Chinese companies ranging from automakers to appliance makers are rushing to implement the tech.

🇷🇺 Oh, crypto: Russia is allegedly using various cryptocurrencies to facilitate its oil trades with China and India while skirting Western sanctions. This is not a great look for the crypto industry, which can't shake its image that the only use cases are criminal.