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Brian McCullough
Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride home for Thursday, August 14, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today New York is suing Zelle. Another IPO pop has me raising my eyebrows again. Maybe perplexity really was serious, at least about getting a browser. Does Apple wanna make basically that Pixar Lamp and AI has broken the hiring process so much that some companies are resorting again to in person interviews? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech the State of New York is suing Zelle, claiming that security lapses led to $1 billion in consumer fraud losses. The U.S. consumer Financial Protection Bureau dropped a similar case against Zell back in March, quoting Reuters. Zelle was sued on Wednesday by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who said the electronic payment platform's refusal to adopt critical safety features enabled fraudsters to steal more than $1 billion from consumers. Zelle was launched in 2017 and compet competes with apps such as PayPal's Venmo and Block's Cash App. Its parent, Early Warning Services, is owned by seven large US banks Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC, Truist, US bank and Wells Fargo. James said Zelle's parent and the banks knew for years that the platform was vulnerable to fraudsters but resisted basic safeguards, with the banks sometimes ignoring customer complaints while Zelle let fraudsters stay on the platform. The result was rampant fraud that Zelle sometimes referred to refused to address even after it occurred, despite its assurances it was a safe alternative to cash and checks and backed by the banks so you know it's secure, the complaint said in a statement. Zell said scams start when criminals trick people into sending money rather than on the platform itself, and holding it liable could lead to higher fees for consumers. Zell also said more than 99.95% of transactions it handles are completed without reported fraud. Leading the industry this lawsuit is a political stunt to generate press, not progress, zell said the attorney general should focus on the hard facts, stopping criminal activity and adherence to the law, not overreach and meritless claims. James said typical scams involved hacking into users accounts and making unauthorized transfers, convincing users to send money for non existent goods and services and impersonating banks, government offices and utilities. According to the complaint, one victim was told his electricity would be shut off unless he paid con Edison $1477 via Zelle to an account named Con Ed Bill. Another victim said Chase and Zell wouldn't help him after he sent $2,600 in two installments via Zell to buy a puppy and realized he had been scammed when the purported seller demanded more money, James said. It wasn't until 2023, after the CFPB and several members of Congress began probes, that Zelle adopted basic safeguards it had proposed four years earlier. While reported fraud losses plummeted, the safeguards were too little too late for consumers who had lost money. And despite those safeguards, Zelle still facilitates, quote, subst fraudulent activity, the complaint said. No one should be left to fend for themselves after falling victim to a scam, james said in a statement. The lawsuit seeks to require Zell to beef up anti fraud protections and pay restitution and damage to defrauded New Yorkers. End quote from the Are we back, baby? File We've got another significant IPO pop Shares of crypto startup Bullish closed up 84% at $68 in the company's New York Stock Exchange debut above the IPO price of $37, giving bullish a market value of $9.9 billion based on outstanding shares. Quoting Bloomberg, the IPO ended more than 20 times oversubscribed, with about a third of orders receiving no shares at all, people familiar with the matter have said. Bullish, which counts former New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley as its chief executive officer, offers crypto spot trading, margin trading and derivatives trading with a focus on institutional investors, the filings show. Its margin and derivatives products aren't currently available in the US or to US Users. The offering comes as more crypto companies have been choosing to go public through IPOs, blank check mergers or reverse takeovers as the Trump administration has embraced the industry and crypto legislation has moved through Congress. Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group saw its stock rise as much as 750% above the IPO price in the first month following its 1.2 billion doll first time share sale in June. As public equity markets increasingly become a vehicle for crypto sector fundraising, companies like Bullish that offer exposure to the emerging industries plumbing are under pressure to differentiate themselves. Although Bullish held crypto, including $1.7 billion of Bitcoin as of March 31, the filing showed Farley was keen to differentiate the company from others like Strategy Inc. That explicitly seeks to tie its fortunes to Bitcoin's appreciation. In a manner of speaking, we are a Bitcoin treasury company, but we are not a Bitcoin treasury company as it is defined today, farley said. We don't intend for our Bitcoin balance to grow. We will not raise converts. We will not raise debt for the express purpose of going and buying Bitcoin, but we are open to all financial alternatives. The company may benefit from other tailwinds, such as stablecoin legislation being signed into law. Bullish offers liquidity services for stablecoin issuers. It also bought Coindesk, which provides market data and indexes in addition to its media operations, in 2023 from Digital Currency Group for $72.6 million. End Quote maybe it wasn't just a PR stunt after all. Sources tell the information that before announcing that bid for Google's Chrome, Perplexity spoke with the browser company and Brave about buying them, offering around $1 billion for Brave. I say that maybe it wasn't all PR, because browsers do seem to be one hot AI angle at the moment. OpenAI reportedly also discussed an acquisition of the browser company Quote since the end of last year, executives at the three year old startup Perplexity have communicated with leaders at the browser company and Brave about potentially buying either of those browser operators, according to people with knowledge of the discuss. They also talked about their interest in acquiring browsers with The CEO of DuckDuckGo, one of the best known privacy focused browsers. None of the discussions resulted in a deal. Still, they're a sign that Perplexity, whose annualized revenue has grown quickly on subscriptions of its AI powered search bot, needs browsers, a staple of the pre AI era, to reach more users. Whether Perplexity would have the funds to complete any of these acquisitions, particularly the $34.5 billion offer for Chrome, is a question still to be answered. It had $850 million in the bank at the end of DEC, raised around $500 million this year in a round led by Accel at a valuation of $14 billion. It's unclear how much money the company still has left. It since raised more money at an $18 billion valuation, and investors are discussing the possibility of another share sale at above a $20 billion valuation. According to a person with knowledge of the company's fundraising, its users have grown to 260,000 paying individual subscribers at the end of last year, up from roughly 15,000 in October the year prior. While many access Perplexity for free, individuals can pay $20 a month for more queries, a choice of AI models that underpin the answers and use of its shopping agent business customers pay $40 a month per employee. The company has also made a string of acquisitions, including Sidekick, a small company that makes a distraction free browser, and Carbon, which connects external data with large language models. Last week, Perplexity acquired Invisible, a startup building infrastructure for AI agents. But CEO Aravind Sriniv has told investors that Perplexity needs a popular browser offering to win in the AI search engine race, according to people who have spoken to him. Srinivas said a browser offering would contribute valuable context to Perplexity search engine by providing it with information on what tabs users have open and on their browser activity. One of the people said. The company has been trying to reach new users in other ways as well. Earlier this year, a Perplexity executive testified in the government's antitrust trial against Google that Google's distribution contracts had prevented it from signing deals with phone manufacturers, manufacturers and mobile carriers say to become the default assistant on a manufacturer's phone. It has struck more narrow deals, including with Motorola to install the Perplexity app on Motorola phones and with Samsung to give customers a free year of Perplexity Pro Mark Gurman Apple Scoop Whatever day this is, sources say Apple's AI plans include robots such as a tabletop configuration coming in 2027, but also a conversational Siri, a smart speaker with a display coming in 2026, and home security cameras coming at some point, quoting Bloomberg. A tabletop robot that serves as a virtual companion targeted for 2027 is the centerpiece of the AI strategy, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The smart speaker with a display, meanwhile, is slated to arrive next year, part of a push into entry level smart home products. Home security is seen as another big growth opportunity. New cameras will anchor an Apple security system that can automate household functions. The approach should help make Apple's product ecosystem stickier with consumers, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the initiatives haven't been announced. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook told employees in an all hands meeting this month that Apple must win in AI and hinted at the upcoming devices. The product pipeline, which I can't talk about, it's amazing, guys, it's amazing, cook said. Some of it you'll see soon, some of it will come later. But there's a lot to see. Beyond the home devices, Apple is preparing thinner and redesigned iPhones for release this year, and further out it aims to introduce smart glasses, a foldable phone, a 20 year anniversary iPhone, and a revamped headset dubbed N100. It's also planning a large foldable device that melds a MacBook and an iPad. Apple is looking to boost sales after years of slowing growth for its flagship products. It also nicked some expansions into new areas like self driving cars, adding pressure to find other sources of revenue. Moreover, the new initiatives will help rebut the idea that the company is no longer innovating like it used to. The tabletop robot resembles an iPad mounted on a movable limb that can swivel and reposition itself to follow users in a room. Like a human head, it can turn toward a person who is speaking or summoning it, and even ask to draw the attention of someone not facing it. The hope is to bring AI to life in ways that other hardware makers have yet to do. Apple imagines customers placing it on a desk or a kitchen counter and using it to get work done, consume media and manage their day. FaceTime calls will also be a key function of the device. During video conferencing, the display will be able to shift to look to people around a room. Apple is testing a feature that turns an iPhone screen into a joystick, letting users move around the robot to show different people or items in a room during video calls. But the hallmark of the device is an entirely new version of Siri that can inject itself into conversations between multiple people. It will be able to engage with users throughout the day and more easily recall information. The idea is for the device to act like a person in a room. It could interrupt conversations between friends about dinner plans, say, and suggest nearby restaurants or relevant recipes. It's also being designed to engage in back and forth discussions for things like planning a trip or getting tasks done. Similar to OpenAI's voice mode, Apple is planning to put Siri at the center of the device operating system and give it a visual personality to make it feel lifelike. The approach, dubbed bubbles, is vaguely reminiscent of Clippy, an animated paperclip from the 1990s that served as a virtual assistant in Microsoft Office. Apple has tested making Siri look like an animated version of the Finder logo, the iconic smiley face representing the Mac's file management system. A final decision on its appearance hasn't been made, with designers considering ideas that veer closer to Memoji, the playful characters that represent Apple user accounts. Device prototypes use a roughly 7 inch horizontal display approaching the size of an iPad mini. The motorized arm can extend the display away from the base roughly half a foot in either direction. Some people familiar with the product call it the Pixar Lamp, referring to the animated film company's famous logo. Apple has previously disclosed some research in this area. It published a paper in January detailing a light fixture that uses robotics to move around. Finally today, companies including Google and Cisco have reinstated in person interviews for some roles in order to combat AI driven cheating, with some of them using deepfake detection technology. Quoting the journal Virtual interviews have become the new normal in hiring in recent years, driven by the rise of remote work and companies desire to speed up hiring. Trouble is, more candidates are using AI tools to cheat by feeding them answers off screen, especially in technical interviews, recruiters say. In rarer cases, AI enabled scammers are impersonating job seekers with the aim of stealing data or money once they are hired. Companies are responding by going old school. Cisco and McKinsey are among a growing number of companies bringing back or adding face to face meetings with candidates at various stages of the interview process. Google also has brought back in person interviews for some roles this year, in part to ensure interviewees have the proper skills. For instance, in coding, we are making sure we'll introduce at least one round of in person interviews for people just to make sure the fundamentals are there, google chief executive Sundar Pichai said on the Lex Friedman podcast in June. Interviews for software engineering and programming jobs, which typically involve real time coding challenges, have become one of the biggest concerns. Many of those jobs, especially at smaller tech companies, are remote, one reason the interview process has become largely virtual. Yet it has become relatively easy to use AI tools off camera to write the code job candidates are being tested on, recruiters say. Everything's come full circle, said Mike Kyle, managing director of technology recruitment at codasearch Staffing in Dallas. He estimates that the share of the company's employer clients requesting in person interviews has risen to 30% this year from only 5% in 2024. The revival of in person interviews is an unexpected twist in the AI arms race that has been building between job seekers and employers. Overwhelmed by the flood of applications to online job postings, employers turn to software to sort through candidates and screen many out. Frustrated job seekers, in turn, have leaned on AI tools to craft more tailored applications and robo apply for hundreds of jobs in just a few clicks. Fast evolving AI advances now make it possible to create highly realistic, deep fake videos and audio. Such tools can enable a perhaps less qualified candidate to gain an unfair edge in an interview, or worse, allow swindlers to impersonate someone looking for work. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently warned of a scam involving thousands of North Koreans posing as Americans to secure remote jobs at U.S. tech companies and collect paychecks. In a survey of 3,000 job seekers by research and advisory group GARTNER this year, 6% said they had participated in interview fraud, either posing as somebody else or having someone stand in for them. Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four job candidate profiles worldwide will be fake. End quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.