TechCrunch Top 3

Google Vids now lets you star in your own AI videos: Google is adding personalized AI avatars to Vids that let users create videos starring a digital version of themselves, alongside Gemini Omni-powered tools for generating and editing videos from prompts and reference images. Read More

Uber's $14.8B Delivery Hero deal would nearly double its global footprint: Uber has agreed to acquire Delivery Hero in a $14.8 billion all-stock deal that would nearly double the company’s global footprint and create one of the world’s largest food-delivery platforms outside China. Read More

Oil giant BP shutters its corporate venture arm after 20 years: BP Ventures is shutting down, ending a nearly 20-year run that was marked by reportedly lackluster returns. Read More

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Afternoon Must-Reads

Moonshot's upcoming Kimi 3 is expected to close the gap with Anthropic's Opus 4.8: The FT reports Kimi K3 will be the largest open AI model from China, with a parameter count between 2 trillion and 3 trillion. Read More

Why is OpenAI selling a ChatGPT basketball?: You may have heard that OpenAI released its first piece of hardware this week. You may not have heard about the ChatGPT basketball. Read More

Google continues its renaming streak by turning NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook: Google said users can soon access their notebooks through AI Mode in Search. Read More

How a former DeepMind researcher raised at a $300M pre-seed valuation before launching a product: Drawing on more than a decade spent helping build some of the world's most influential AI systems, including research that later informed the development of ChatGPT, Andrew Dai explains why he believes visual AI is one of the next major frontiers in artificial intelligence. Read More

Founders Fund hires former OpenAI exec Ryan Beiermeister (and not because of her 'Mafia' skills): Ryan Beiermeister, who demonstrated cool analysis in the Founders Fund YouTube series "Mafia," has joined the firm as a partner. Read More

Last but Not Least

Sheryl Sandberg leads $10 million investment in AI-powered vehicle inspection service: The startup, founded in 2021, lets enterprise customers use smartphones to scan and spot vehicle damage. Read More