Friday, July 11, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we look at a YC-backed space startup that is seeing strong investor interest; we dive into a new solo GP fund; and we learn about not one, but two conspiracies.

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Apolink

🚀 Blast off: Apolink is a Y Combinator-backed startup looking to build a real-time connectivity network for satellites in low Earth orbit. It just raised an "oversubscribed" seed round that resulted in $4.3 million in fresh funds and a $45 million valuation. Not bad for a 19-year-old founder.

🍔 McWhoops! Security researchers discovered that they could hack into McDonald's AI hiring chatbot, McHire (genius). How? By simply entering "123456" as both the username and password. In doing so, the researchers found they could access personal info on 64 million people. Yikes!

🔓 Security flaw: Speaking of security bugs, U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA said hackers are actively exploiting a security flaw in a widely used Citrix NetScaler. CISA has given federal government departments just one day to patch their systems.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Matt Cardy / Getty Images

🌝 To the moon: Bitcoin has been on a bit of a tear this week, hitting a new all-time high today at $118,900. Some industry analysts think that if it reaches $150,000, it could set off a buying frenzy.

💰 AI mania: Startup Cognition just landed a notable customer for its AI coding agent Devin — Goldman Sachs. The financial giant is looking to use Devin to augment its workforce of more than 12,000 human developers and plans to roll out "hundreds of instances of Devin."

💵 New fund just dropped: Sarah Smith Fund, a new VC firm by, yes, Sarah Smith, just raised $16 million for its first fund. The solo GP said that while she thinks company building requires a team effort, she believes early-stage investing is best done by a solo investor.

🤗 Talking bots: On today's episode of Equity, the hosts dig into Hugging Face's release of its Reachy Mini open source desktop robots. The hosts also dug into Linda Yaccarino's exit from X, how Rivian's micromobility spinoff raised $200 million, and more.

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Around the web

🔎 Speaking of conspiracies: The Department of Justice released 11 hours of "raw" footage of Jeffrey Epstein's prison cell the night before he was found dead. While this was to dispel claims that Epstein was murdered, the video's metadata shows that it was modified. Interesting!

🙄 Loser behavior: It's not new that snark subreddits can be brutal when creators post or say something the trolls don't like. But a new trend in these subreddits is that people are falsely reporting creators to government agencies like ICE and CPS. Who has the time?

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A 19-year-old's space company