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TechCrunch

September 2026

Two Google alumni raise $11.3M to back AI startups that enterprises will actually pay for

BAG Ventures, founded by Bonita Stewart, a former Google vice president, and Jackson Georges Jr., a former CapitalG partner, closed the fund after about two years of investing from it as it came together

Lots of firms have an operator network,
That means securing internal data flows, building acceptable-use guardrails, and deploying continuous automated red-teaming,
Enterprises are dialing in heavily on the unit economics right now,
Startups that can build the next level of ‘zero trust’ architecture and orchestration rails specifically for agentic systems are going to fill a massive and very lucrative gap,
We’ll be buying completed jobs and outcomes driven by multi-agent workflows,
Founders needed inside access to the organizations they wanted to sell into, and we knew so many high-level operators who wanted to support early founders but didn’t know how,

Airbnb adds AI search, more social features

The company has taken a cautious approach to rolling out AI features, with CEO Brian Chesky opting to stay away from a chatbot-like interface

Brian CheskycEO
We are finally making our first foray into AI search. And what you see is just the very beginning of something. And over the coming months, we’re going to really be iterating this very quickly. It’s not hard to create AI search; it’s hard to create AI search in e-commerce when you have $100 billion going through your platform,

Tinder adapts to a social, IRL dating future with ‘Group Hangouts’ feature

One inspiration was seeing a college women’s volleyball team make a Tinder profile while traveling for away games, so they could explore a new town and meet locals,

WhatsApp adds new parental controls for teen accounts

WhatsApp is introducing new parental controls that could allow guardians to keep a tab on who their teens interact with, and also choose content settings for Meta AI chats

Pledge signed by President Trump and top AI leaders misspells the United States

The spelling error shows, perhaps, how much time and attention went into drafting the document before it was signed and released to the public

We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins,

Google launches Fitbit Air in India, though its high price might deter the masses

The health tracking space now has screen-less devices from Garmin, Fitbit founders’ new company, Luffu Link, as well as from Indian startups like Noise and Urban, which have been trying to undercut their Western rivals on price

Instagram rolls out an AI video assistant for creators

The assistant knows your account’s Instagram metrics, things like follows, views, video retention, likes, shares and combines them with your comments, what’s trending on Instagram and what your audience is into,
One thing we heard consistently: creators want a tool that handles the analysis, not one that does the creative work for them,

AI voice startup ElevenLabs doubles valuation to $22B

The recent $300 million tender offer gave employees an opportunity to sell their shares to investors

Hackers stole millions of US military personnel records during months-long data breach

The U.S. government is reportedly alerting millions of current and former U.S. military service members and staff that their personal information was stolen during a months-long breach of the Pentagon’s personnel records, the latest in a spate of thefts involving federal workers’ data in recent months

We make sure that the right people get access and the wrong people don’t: security of identity information is paramount,

BMW built the same car for gas and electric. The EV is $4,400 cheaper.

EV prices have dropped significantly in the last few years, but it has been hard to compare prices with fossil fuel vehicles because not every EV has a like-for-like gas-powered model

Valor, Atreides, and Sequoia back AI startup Flow Engineering at $750M valuation

Three-year-old, San Francisco-based Flow is is tackling the difficulties of hardware design by offering AI agents that automatically align CAD drawings with product requirements, simulation results, and other testing

The Pentagon taps Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey to help decide what the military should do next

They’ll be joined by others from fields such as academia and policy, all working under the direction of Defense Department CTO Emil Michael

Reco raises $55M as AI agent security startups crowd the market

Some others, like CrowdStrike, are building detection and response controls on the devices agents run, and still others are focused on finding and resolving unapproved AI usage

Ofer Kleinco-founder and CEO
The market demand right now for agent security is not only about the agent itself; it’s about the entire ecosystem end-to-end,

Still running iOS 26? Update your iPhones, iPads, and Macs for this urgent security fix

Apple has fixed a security vulnerability in its iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS 26 operating systems that the company says “may have been exploited” by hackers