Your Hub for Tech News and Handy Online Tools.

Startups and Venture Capital

Beyond TAM: Index Ventures' Insights on Founder Focus

Index Ventures partner Jahanvi Sardana advises early-stage founders to look beyond Total Addressable Market (TAM) when building startups.

She highlights that many successful companies, like Google and Microsoft, emerged from markets that were initially nonexistent.

Sardana categorizes TAM into known, emerging, and invisible markets, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs and demonstrating innovation, especially in creating new markets.

She advises founders to develop their own unique insights rather than relying solely on industry reports and metrics when evaluating their market.

Ultimately, investors prioritize evaluating founders' understanding of their customers and their ability to unlock supply and change behavior in the market.

Technology & Regulation

India Shuts Down 25 Streaming Services Over Obscene Content Concerns

The Indian government has blocked 25 streaming services, including popular platforms like Ullu and ALTT, due to concerns over "obscene" content. This action follows concerns raised by child protection and IT committees regarding mature content without adequate safeguards.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued directives to block access to these services' websites and apps, citing the Information Technology Act of 2000 and the IT Rules of 2021. Major platforms like Google Play and Apple App Store were contacted to restrict these services.
Some of the blocked services generated $5.7 million in revenue from in-app purchases, with 105 million downloads. While some services are no longer available on app stores, they persist through direct APK downloads.
Ullu reported a net profit of ₹212.3 million ($2.5 million) for FY2024, while ALTT generated ₹202.6 million ($2.3 million) in revenue in 2025. The crackdown is part of broader efforts to regulate streaming content in India, though enforcing these bans remains challenging.

Artificial Intelligence

Meta Appoints Shengjia Zhao to Lead AI Superintelligence Lab

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Shengjia Zhao, formerly of OpenAI, will lead research at MetaSuperintelligence Labs (MSL). Zhao, a key contributor to ChatGPT and GPT-4, will set the research agenda under Alexandr Wang.

Meta has recruited top researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Apple for MSL. Zuckerberg is investing heavily in AI, offering substantial compensation packages and building a 1-gigawatt cloud computing cluster, Prometheus, to support AI training.

Meta now has two chief AI scientists, Zhao at MSL and Yann LeCun at FAIR, focusing on long-term AI research. With these efforts, Meta aims to compete with OpenAI and Google in the AI space.

Artificial Intelligence

AI Therapy Caveat: Sam Altman Highlights ChatGPT's Legal Confidentiality Gap

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman cautions ChatGPT users about the lack of legal confidentiality when using the AI for sensitive conversations, such as therapy. Unlike interactions with human therapists, lawyers, or doctors, conversations with ChatGPT are not protected by legal privilege. This poses a privacy risk, especially in legal contexts, as OpenAI could be legally required to disclose these conversations. Altman emphasizes the need for privacy standards similar to those in traditional therapy but acknowledges that this hasn't been addressed yet for AI interactions. OpenAI is contesting a court order in its lawsuit with The New York Times that would require saving chats from millions of ChatGPT users, excluding Enterprise customers.
Altman's warning is due to recent concerns about digital data as laws began limiting access to previously established freedoms.

Autonomous Vehicles

Lyft Enters Autonomous Shuttle Market with Benteler Partnership

Lyft will introduce autonomous shuttles manufactured by Benteler Group into its network by late 2026. These electric shuttles, operating under the Holon brand, will not include steering wheels or pedals and can accommodate up to nine seated and six standing passengers.

This move comes as Uber, Lyft's primary competitor, has been actively integrating robotaxis from various companies, including Waymo, WeRide, Baidu, Pony AI, Momenta, May Mobility, Volkswagen, Wayve, Nuro and Lucid Motors.

Lyft is also collaborating with May Mobility to deploy autonomous vehicles in Atlanta later this year and is working with Mobileye, whose technology powers the Holon shuttles.

Politics & Technology

Meta Halts Political Ads in EU Amid Regulatory Clash

Meta will cease selling and displaying political advertisements in the European Union starting in October due to the EU's upcoming regulation of political advertising, known as the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA). Meta deems the law's requirements as "unworkable," citing significant operational challenges and legal uncertainty. Google has also announced a similar decision. This move is part of ongoing tensions between the EU and Big Tech over regulations concerning AI, competition, and data privacy.

Defense Technology Investment

NATO Innovation Fund Revamps Investment Team Amid Defense Sector Growth

The NATO Innovation Fund (NIF) has refreshed its investment team with new partners Ulrich Quay and Sander Verbrugge, alongside Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky, the remaining member of the original team. This follows the departure of founding team partners Kelly Chen and Chris O’Connor. The fund, which has made 19 investments, aims to empower deep tech founders in defense, security, and resilience. NIF is also involved in NATO’s Rapid Adoption Action Plan to integrate new technologies for defense. The new team structure consists of three partners, and NIF is focusing on defense and security resilience opportunities to support ecosystems across Europe.

Food & Drink

BiteSight: The Food-Delivery App That Went Viral on TikTok

Lucious McDaniel IV's food-delivery app, BiteSight, gained massive traction after a TikTok video showcasing the app went viral. The app, which allows users to watch videos of food before ordering and see recommendations from friends, resonated with young people.
The viral video led to a surge of new users, briefly placing BiteSight at No. 2 in the App Store's Food and Beverage category. McDaniel, a Y Combinator alum, believes BiteSight's focus on video and social recommendations, along with the use of AI to minimize overhead, differentiates it from competitors like DoorDash and Uber Eats.
BiteSight is currently available in New York, but McDaniel plans to expand nationwide. The company has also received significant interest from investors and restaurants.

Cybersecurity

The Rise of AI Slop in Cybersecurity: Bug Bounty Programs Under Siege

AI-generated low-quality content, known as AI slop, is infiltrating the cybersecurity world, causing concerns about its impact on bug bounty programs. These programs, which reward individuals for finding vulnerabilities in software and systems, are being flooded with AI-generated reports that claim to have found flaws that do not actually exist.

Security experts like Vlad Ionescu of RunSybil note that these AI-generated reports often appear technically sound but are ultimately based on fabricated information. This is because LLMs are designed to be helpful and provide positive responses, even if the information they generate is inaccurate.

The rise of AI slop is also impacting bug bounty platforms. Michiel Prins of HackerOne acknowledges the increase in false positives, while Casey Ellis of Bugcrowd reports a general increase in submissions, though not yet a significant spike in low-quality reports.

Companies are responding by investing in AI-powered systems to filter and review submissions for accuracy. HackerOne, for example, has launched Hai Triage, a system that combines AI and human analysts to prioritize real threats.

As both hackers and companies increasingly rely on AI, it remains to be seen which AI system will ultimately prevail in identifying and addressing real vulnerabilities.