Welcome back to Week in Review. Today, we have a lot of news to share with you: Amazon earnings and Apple earnings, ChatGPT sycophancy and Alibaba’s AI models. Let’s get started!
Well? Tim Cook revealed during Apple’s earnings conference yesterday that the company had paid $900,000,000 in tariffs for the last quarter. The CEO has not announced any price increases yet, despite the fact that Apple paid $900 million in tariffs last quarter.
Big bucks : Defense technology startup Mach Industries, founded by 21-year old Ethan Thornton is about to close another $100 million in funding, sources told TechCrunch. This new funding will bring the startup’s funding total to $185 million.
Additional models: Alibaba revealed this week that they are releasing a Qwen3 family of AI models that, according to the company, can outperform OpenAI or Google. Alibaba says that the Qwen3 models will be “hybrid models” and are not yet available to download.
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News
Shoot to the stars: Amazon began its effort to create a satellite-based internet network this week. The company launched its first 27 internets satellites on February 2. The FCC has set a deadline of mid-2026 for the first half of the network to be installed.
AI on your phone: Meta has launched a standalone AI app which was unveiled Tuesday at the company’s LlamaCon first event. The app lets users access Meta AI through an app similar to ChatGPT and other AI assistants.
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Block: In India, a judge has blocked the encrypted email service provider Proton Mail throughout the country. This was in response a legal complaint by New Delhi’s M Moser Design Associates which alleged its employees received emails with obscene or vulgar content sent through Proton Mail.
The truth is that cheaters never win. Cluely recently went viral for its bold claim to help people cheat at everything. Some startups claim they can catch Cluely users.
Amazon’s Alexa+: Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, said that 100,000 users have Alexa+.
AI in the real world: Airbnb appears to be taking a more calculated approach with AI. It began rolling out a customer service bot powered by AI in the U.S. a month ago. Brian Chesky, CEO of the company, said in February that it would first use AI to improve customer service before moving on to other applications like travel planning and booking tickets. Epic ruling: Epic Games scored a victory in a legal dispute with Apple. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple had “willfully violated” a 2021 order that prohibited it from imposing anticompetitive prices. Fortnite may be available on iPhones by next week.
LOL : Stripe shared documentation showing iOS developers how they can avoid the Apple commission following the Epic Games ruling.
Check out your settings: Meta sent an email to Ray-Ban Meta users on Tuesday informing them that AI features would be enabled by default. Meta’s AI analyzes photos and videos taken by the glasses when certain AI features are turned on.
Yikes! OpenAI announced that it would “roll back” the most recent update to the default AI models powering ChatGPT and GPT-4o after complaints about strange behaviors, namely it being too agreeable and validating. OpenAI claims that the update was designed to make the default personality of the model “feel more intuitive and efficient,” but was influenced too much by short-term feedback. Now, the company promises to make changes to prevent this from happening again.
Before you go
Oh the drama:We read through the 80-page Epic v. Apple decision to pull out the judge’s juiciest, fieriest comments. Here’s one to get you started: “Apple engaged in tactics to delay the proceedings. The Court later concluded that delay equaled profits.”
Karyne Levy is the deputy managing editor of TechCrunch. Before joining TC, Karyne was deputy managing editor at Protocol, helping manage a newsroom of more than 40 people. Prior to that she was a senior producer at Scribd, an assigning editor at NerdWallet, a senior tech editor at Business Insider, and assistant managing editor at CNET, where she also hosted Rumor Has It for CNET TV. She lives outside San Francisco.
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