Techin' Geek

Clicks Technology, a startup gearing up to unveil its distinctive version of the BlackBerry smartphone, has showcased what it has planned in a new video released today.

The device, named the Clicks Communicator, was first unveiled at January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, targeting users who do substantial work on their phones, such as texting and emailing. It’s particularly designed to attract those who long for the BlackBerry’s physical keyboard, which many claim is superior for these tasks.

With a price tag of $499, the Communicator resembles what a contemporary BlackBerry might look like, featuring a display for viewing and responding to messages, along with a tactile, touch-sensitive keyboard underneath.

However, the phone is more than just a BlackBerry imitation, as it brings forth innovation in various aspects. For example, its unique “Signal Light” feature includes a light-up button on the side of the device that can be customized with different colors and light patterns, indicating when messages are received from specific individuals, groups, or applications. 

It also features interchangeable back covers that can be easily removed and swapped, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a physical SIM card slot (alongside an eSIM), expandable microSD storage (up to 2TB), and a tactile switch to toggle airplane mode on and off.

The Clicks Communicator may also attract a growing demographic of users seeking to disconnect from modern smartphones laden with addictive social apps and games. (The company has collaborated with the Niagara Launcher to ensure access to the Android apps it supports). With the Signal Light feature, you can safely disregard your phone unless a crucial notification pops up.

In the recent video, the company presents its pre-production hardware and internal software as a sneak peek of what’s to come when the phone starts shipping in Q4 of this year.

At CES, TechCrunch had the opportunity to experience the Communicator by handling a prototype that matched the size and weight of the device set to ship by the year’s end. It felt comfortable to hold, not overly light or heavy, and was easy to grip. The keys had a satisfying click, reminiscent of a BlackBerry, although the team intended to make some slight adjustments to the key pressure for improved performance for fast typers.

Future videos will delve deeper into specific features of the Clicks Communicator, including the Signal Light, Prompt Key, Message Hub, touch-sensitive keyboard, and additional functionalities.

Etched, a rival to Nvidia’s AI chip, released a progress update on Tuesday after TSMC successfully produced its chip earlier this year. The startup claims to have secured $1 billion in contract orders for its offering: complete systems powered by these chips.

Etched is presently engaged in customer testing of its initial product. These systems are referred to as “frontier inference clusters,” packages that consist of the chips along with specially designed racks and software, all intended to enable frontier models to perform inference more quickly, affordably, and efficiently than competitors, according to Etched. (Inference occurs after a user inputs a prompt — it is currently the largest bottleneck and cost driver for AI firms attempting to serve clients at scale, which is precisely why investors are focusing on those claiming to remedy this issue.)

Founded in 2022, Etched disclosed that it has raised a cumulative total of $800 million so far. The latest tranche was a previously undisclosed $500 million round completed in December, achieving a $5 billion post-money valuation, the firm noted.

The startup has garnered significant interest from a prominent group of investors, such as VentureTech Alliance, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, and Ribbit Capital. It has also attracted angel investments from AI luminaries including Andrej Karpathy, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Arthur Mensch, and Scott Wu. The cap table features billionaires Stanley Druckenmiller and Peter Thiel as well.

Although the startup’s press statement positions Tuesday’s announcement as Etched “emerging from stealth,” the co-founders — CEO Gavin Uberti and President Robert Wachen — have been discussing their chip ambitions with TechCrunch since 2024. Both left Harvard and became Thiel fellows to establish Etched, as Uberti informed TechCrunch at that time.

By 2024, Etched was already attracting investor interest, having raised over $125 million. However, during Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s “Invest Like the Best” podcast, the founders recounted their struggles in 2023 to engage investors — even with a comprehensive 30-page memo advocating that AI would ultimately require specialized chips instead of just general-purpose GPUs. Every major investor they approached declined. The company was reportedly operating on a month-to-month basis, nearing a cash shortfall in those initial stages.

Today’s investment landscape seems like an entirely different realm. Investors are pursuing every AI-related opportunity, particularly chip technology that accelerates inference. Competitor Cerebras achieved the first major IPO of the year, while AI chip manufacturer Groq recently raised $650 million. Hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all developing their own proprietary AI chips. Even OpenAI just announced its inaugural custom chip, created by Broadcom.

As the capacity for agentic functionality becomes an essential requirement among foundation model companies, Anthropic is unveiling Claude Sonnet 5, a more robust and agentic iteration of the lab’s mid-tier model. 

“It is capable of planning, utilizing tools such as browsers and terminals, and operating independently at a level that, only a few months back, necessitated larger and more costly models,” Anthropic noted in a blog entry. 

This perspective aligns with what OpenAI and Google have articulated regarding their latest releases. OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol was introduced in preview last week as the firm’s most agentic model to date, enabling users to delegate tasks across subagents for extended autonomous projects. Google’s Gemini 3.5 Flash, launched in May, was promoted as a transition from a conversational chatbot to an agentic tool that strategizes, constructs, and iterates on actual tasks with minimal human involvement.

The emphasis on Sonnet 5 indicates that agentic capability is now the baseline expectation across all pricing levels. The distinguishing factor will no longer be who excels at agentic work, but rather how affordably and reliably they can execute it without human supervision.  

Sonnet 5 claims to deliver performance nearly on par with Opus 4.8, but at significantly reduced costs. Starting Tuesday, Claude Sonnet 5 will be the standard model for both free and Pro plans and is accessible for every subscription type.

At its launch, Sonnet 5 is set at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens until August 31, after which the price will rise to $3 per million input tokens and remain at $10 per million output tokens. This pricing positions Sonnet 5 as less expensive than Opus 4.8, as well as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 and Google’s Gemini 3.1 Pro. (It remains pricier than Gemini 3.5 Flash.)

The updated model also shows considerable enhancements over its forerunner Sonnet 4.6, released in February, particularly in agentic performance metrics such as reasoning, tool usage, software development, and knowledge tasks, according to Anthropic. 

For instance, on one benchmark, Sonnet 5 achieves 63.2% in agentic coding, compared to Opus 4.8’s 69.2% and Sonnet 4.6’s 58.1%. On a knowledge work benchmark, Sonnet 5 actually slightly surpasses Opus 4.8, which is renowned for excelling at resolving complex issues like nuanced judgments and in-depth research. 

“Opus 4.8 remains the preferred model for achieving higher accuracy on these challenges, but Sonnet 5 offers developers more affordable options that are significantly superior to those previously available,” Anthropic states. “Between Sonnet 5 and Opus 4.8, users can modify the effort level to strike the right balance between cost and efficacy.”

Testers referenced in the blog post indicate that Sonnet 5 also excels at completing intricate tasks where earlier model versions would have faltered and “reviews its own output without being explicitly instructed.”

“We assigned Claude Sonnet 5 a two-part task — updating Salesforce account tiers and sending a launch announcement to enterprise contacts — and it completed the entire process,” Daniel Shepard, a senior engineer at Zapier, commented. “That would have stalled midway before. For everyday automation, it’s an obvious choice.”

In terms of safety, Sonnet 5 also exhibits a lower frequency of “undesirable behaviors” such as collusion with misuse and deception compared to its predecessor, making it safer for use in agentic environments. It is more adept at declining harmful requests and evading hijacking attempts in prompt-injection assaults. Additionally, it hallucinates and engages in sycophantic behavior less frequently than Sonnet 4.6.

However, it does not match the capabilities of Opus 4.8 and Claude Mythos Preview regarding misaligned behavior. “Evaluations indicate that it significantly lags in the ability to execute dangerous cybersecurity tasks compared to our current Opus models,” the blog post states.

Lovable co-founder Fabian Hedin remarked that Claude Sonnet 5 “consistently and effectively declines unsafe requests.”

“At Lovable, we’re equipping millions of creators with powerful tools,” Hedin mentioned. “A model that knows when to decline is just as critical as one that understands how to construct.”