April 03, 2026

TechCrunch Top 3

Mercor says it was hit by cyberattack tied to compromise of open source LiteLLM project: The AI recruiting startup confirmed a security incident after an extortion hacking crew took credit for stealing data from the company's systems. Read More

The reputation of troubled YC startup Delve has gotten even worse: Delve faces new allegations that it violated the open source license of its customer, Sim.ai, by taking the customers's tool and passing it off as its own. Read More

From moon hotels to cattle herding: 8 startups investors chased at YC Demo Day: We polled nearly a dozen VCs to find out which W26 startups are the sought after in the batch. Read More

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Must-Reads

The Facebook insider building content moderation for the AI era: Moonbounce has raised $12 million to grow its AI control engine that converts content moderation policies into consistent, predictable AI behavior. Read More

Whoop's valuation just tripled to $10 billion: The fitness tracking startup just closed a $575 million Series G with Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James among its investors. The obvious question looming over a round of this size at this valuation: Is an IPO coming? Read More

Elon Musk’s last co-founder reportedly leaves xAI: All but two of Musk's 11 xAI co-founders departed before this week. Read More

Yupp shuts down after raising $33M from a16z crypto's Chris Dixon: Less than a year after launching, with checks from some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, crowdsourced AI model feedback startup Yupp is closing its business, the company said Tuesday. Read More

Startup funding shatters all records in Q1: The record quarterly fundraise largely fueled four mega-deals into OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Waymo. But it also indicates a generally hot market. Read More

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Limited tickets available: StrictlyVC San Francisco

StrictlyVC kicks off the series in SF on April 30. Be in the room for unfiltered fireside chats on fundraising and AI accuracy with industry leaders like Forum AI founder Campbell Brown, Replit co-founder Amjad Masad, and more. Make high-value connections that actually move the needle. Tickets are limited.

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Last but Not Least

Delve whistleblower strikes again, with alleged receipts about 'fake compliance': Shortly after Delve's founder published a lengthy denial of allegations, while promising changes, the accuser came forward with more alleged details. Read More

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