July 4, 2025

The Download: India’s AI independence, and predicting future epidemics

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Inside India’s scramble for AI independence Despite its status as a global tech hub, India lags far behind the likes of the US and China when it comes to homegrown AI. That gap…

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Meta adds business voice calling to WhatsApp, explores AI-powered product reccomendations

July 1, 2025
WhatsApp is adding more AI features to its business suite. The company on Tuesday announced it’s introducing the ability for large businesses to reach customers through voice calls, which will allow the app to explore the use of AI-powered voice agents. The company is also looking into using AI to recommend products to users. WhatsApp […]

David George from a16z on the future of going public at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

July 1, 2025
TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is coming to Moscone West in San Francisco from October 27–29, bringing together 10,000+ startup and VC leaders to chart what’s next in tech. And on October 27, on the premiere industry stage: Going Public, David George of Andreessen Horowitz will take the mic for a fireside chat focused on one of […]

The Download: tripping with AI, and blocking crawler bots

July 1, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. People are using AI to ‘sit’ with them while they trip on psychedelics A growing number of people are using AI chatbots as “trip sitters”—a phrase that traditionally refers to a sober person…

Cloudflare will now, by default, block AI bots from crawling its clients’ websites

July 1, 2025
The internet infrastructure company Cloudflare announced today that it will now default to blocking AI bots from visiting websites it hosts. Cloudflare will also give clients the ability to manually allow or ban these AI bots on a case-by-case basis, and it will introduce a so-called “pay-per-crawl” service that clients can use to receive compensation…