Rivian’s cost-cutting measures have gotten it a lot closer to profitability, but the company is warning that 2025 could still be a challenging year — especially because of the whorl of uncertainty caused by the new Trump administration. The company announced Thursday its fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 financial results, and along with it, shared plans…
Amazon will discontinue its app store for Android on August 20 this year. The company sent a notice to developers indicating that they will no longer be able to submit new apps to the store. The company said on a support page that it will also discontinue its Coins digital currency, which could be used…
wyskakujących okienek na komputerze dell Wyskakujące okienka mogą być uciążliwe dla użytkowników komputera Dell, zwłaszcza gdy pojawiają się w nadmiarze i zakłócają pracę. Często są one wynikiem działania reklam w przeglądarce, zainstalowanego oprogramowania lub potencjalnych zagrożeń, takich jak malware. Istnieje jednak kilka skutecznych sposobów, aby się ich pozbyć i zapewnić sobie komfortową pracę bez niechcianych…
Codeium, an AI-powered coding startup, is raising a new round of funding at a $2.85 billion valuation, including fresh capital, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal. The round is being led by returning investor Kleiner Perkins, the people said. The new round comes just six months after Silicon Valley-based Codeium announced that…
Earlier this month, the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to impose limits on specific types of funding it provides to research institutions. Although a federal judge has temporarily blocked the policy change, government grants to early-stage biotech startups could still face delays or be eliminated entirely, said Chris Gibson, co-founder and…
oszczędzania energii dla monitora Dell Większość współczesnych monitorów ma możliwość przejścia w tryb oszczędzania energii, gdy wykryją brak aktywności przez określony czas. Celem tego jest oszczędzanie energii, a jednocześnie umożliwienie monitorowi łatwego wybudzenia się, gdy użytkownik znów jest aktywny. Problem polega na tym, że niektórzy użytkownicy mogą uznać to zachowanie za dość irytujące, szczególnie gdy…
Humane announced on Tuesday that most of its assets have been acquired by HP for $116 million. The hardware startup is immediately discontinuing sales of its $499 AI Pins. Humane alerted customers who have already purchased the Pin that their devices will stop functioning before the end of the month — at 12 PM PST…
Newspaper publishing giant Lee Enterprises said an ongoing cyberattack is causing disruptions across its business, and is now in its third week of outages. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Lee said it was conducting a forensic analysis to determine if sensitive or personal data was stolen in the cyberattack. “Preliminary…
More than 10,000 protesters gathered in New York City on Presidents’ Day to speak out against the current Trump administration and the actions in particular of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It was one of several protests that took place Monday in major cities across the country and came during the same long…
The next frontier for large language models (LLMs), one of the key technologies underpinning the boom in generative AI tools, might be geographical. On Monday, Paris-based AI startup Mistral — which is vying to rival the likes of U.S.-based Anthropic and OpenAI — is releasing a model that’s a bit different from its usual LLM.…
Motorsports have long been a pay-to-play arena, with young drivers spending thousands of dollars just to get started in karting. Four-time Formula One champion Max Verstappen knows this all too well, but he also sees a way to change it through sim racing, a virtual form of car racing that closely replicates real-world racing. It’s…
Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI employee, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26; on Friday, the city’s medical examiner ruled his death a suicide, countering suspicions by his family that had fueled widespread speculation online. Balaji made headlines in October when he accused OpenAI of illegally using copyrighted material to train…
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Garner, North Carolina voted against unionizing in election results announced today. According to Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), the worker group seeking to form the union, 3,276 ballots were cast in the election, with 25.3% of votes in favor of unionizing and 74.7% against. The results…
Ride-share giant Uber filed a lawsuit Friday against DoorDash, accusing the delivery outfit of stifling competition by intimidating restaurant owners into exclusive deals. Uber alleges in the lawsuit, filed in Superior Court of California, that its chief rival bullied restaurants into only working with DoorDash. Uber claims that DoorDash, which holds the largest share of…
New court filings in an AI copyright case against Meta add credence to earlier reports that the company “paused” discussions with book publishers on licensing deals to supply some of its generative AI models with training data. The filings are related to the case Kadrey v. Meta Platforms — one of many such cases winding through…
The European Union has denied that recent moves to row back on some planned tech regulation — principally by ditching the AI Liability Directive, a 2022 draft law which had been aimed at making it easier for consumers to sue over harms caused by AI-enabled products and services — were made in response to pressure…
The U.K. government wants to make a hard pivot into boosting its economy and industry with AI, and as part of that, it’s pivoting an institution that it founded a little over a year ago for a very different purpose. Today the Department of Science, Industry and Technology announced that it would be renaming the…
Few fans would associate Formula 1 racing with sustainability, but perhaps incongruously for a sport that glorifies combustion, the league has a goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. For F1 teams, it’s not as simple as burning sustainable fuels in their race cars’ engines. In fact, the cars are responsible for less than…
A new startup founded by a former Google DeepMind scientist is exiting stealth with $50 million in funding. Latent Labs is building AI foundation models to “make biology programmable,” and it plans to partner with biotech and pharmaceutical companies to generate and optimize proteins. It’s impossible to understand what DeepMind and its ilk are doing…
If you’re working for a small company and want to build a client portal or an internal tool, it can be difficult to find the budget and resources to allocate a developer to that small project. That’s why more than 600,000 people, including project managers, HR employees and marketing people, have been trying Softr’s no-code…
Venture capitalists are gobbling up term sheets for startups peddling artificial intelligence, but they’re remaining picky when it comes to funding the wider spectrum of technology. According to new figures from analytics firm Dealroom, AI startups raised $110 billion last year, 62% more than the year before. At the same time, privately-backed companies (startups and…
As if Elon Musk doesn’t have enough going on, a consortium of investors led by him announced plans Monday for what appears to be a hostile takeover of OpenAI. The investor group offered nearly $97.4 billion to buy all of OpenAI’s assets and is “prepared to consider matching or exceeding higher bids,” it said in…
Late Sunday local time the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced a total of €109 billion in private investments in the AI ecosystem — or around $112 billion at current exchange rates. Paris is hosting the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit this week — the third international summit focused on AI after earlier events in Bletchley Park…
In a new essay on his personal blog, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company is open to a “compute budget,” among other “strange-sounding” ideas, to “enable everyone on Earth to use a lot of AI” and ensure the benefits of the technology are widely distributed. “The historical impact of technological progress suggests that most…
Last month, Apple offered up more insight into its consumer robotics work via a research paper that argues that traits like expressive movements are key to optimizing human-robot interaction. “Like most animals,” starts the report, “humans are highly sensitive to motion and subtle changes in movement.” To illustrate its point, Apple pays homage to Pixar,…
President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the company formerly known as Twitter appears to be over. Trump sued the social media platform for banning him in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. While a federal judge dismissed the suit in 2022, the then-former president’s lawyers continued to appeal. Soon…
OpenAI is expanding its footprint to Germany. According to a press release issued Friday, the ChatGPT maker plans to open an office in Munich in the coming months. “Germany is renowned for its technical expertise, academic excellence, and industrial innovation,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. “Opening our first office in Germany means…
Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei is worried about competitor DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company that took Silicon Valley by storm with its R1 model. And his concerns could be more serious than the typical ones raised about DeepSeek sending user data back to China. In an interview on Jordan Schneider’s ChinaTalk podcast, Amodei said DeepSeek generated…
AI and the large language models (LLMs) that power them have a ton of useful applications, but for all their promise, they’re not very reliable. No one knows when this problem will be solved, so it makes sense that we’re seeing startups finding an opportunity in helping enterprises make sure the LLM-powered apps they’re paying…
According to a New York Times report, on Thursday, the U.S. government’s General Services Administration (GSA) removed the spoon emoji as an option that users of its videoconferencing platform can select to express themselves. The move comes a day after workers embraced the digital cutlery to protest the Trump administration’s “Fork in the Road” resignation…
Charging an electric vehicle in public can be the best of times or the worst of times. An EV driver can be charged and back on the road in a smooth 20 minutes, but they might also encounter broken chargers, unresponsive touchscreens, and blocked stalls, all of which can make for a frustrating experience. It can…
AI researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington were able to train an AI “reasoning” model for under $50 in cloud compute credits, according to a new research paper released last Friday. The model known as s1 performs similarly to cutting-edge reasoning models, such as OpenAI’s o1 and DeepSeek’s R1, on tests measuring math…
Uber customers in Austin may notice a new offer when they open the app and hail a ride: an invitation to signal their interest in a Waymo robotaxi. For now, this doesn’t translate into a Waymo picking them up. But it will soon. The “interest list,” which launched Wednesday, is part of a partnership between…
During Snap’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Evan Spiegel said that the uncertainty surrounding TikTok’s future has positively affected its business. “We’re not trying to draw too many conclusions from some of the engagement lift we saw when [TikTok] went dark for that brief period of time. I would say that the overall environment…
A large portion of Egypt’s population lacks access to traditional banking, forcing many to rely on cash transactions and informal lending. Khazna, a fintech startup founded in 2019, is tackling this issue by offering financial services tailored for low- and middle-income workers. The company provides solutions like salary advances, digital payments, and microloans to help…
It’s never been easier to create and publish art than it is now, and if you believe the companies building tech around AI, the production process is going to get even more efficient. That’s especially the case with video production, with companies of all sizes using large language models to build tools that let you…
An app that helps people and teams in the working world simplify their to-do lists — ideally by organising and doing some of the work for them — has remained one of the unsolved goals in business technology. Leaning into AI, on top of battle scars from once building Google Wave, a startup called Tana…
Social media changed everything from news consumption to shopping. Now, Dub thinks it can do the same for investing through an influencer-driven marketplace where users can follow the trades of top investors with a few taps. Think of it as TikTok meets Wall Street. Founded by 23-year-old Steven Wang — a Harvard drop-out who began…
Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein has relaunched in India through a partnership with local conglomerate Reliance’s retail chain, nearly five years after it was banned amid diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Beijing. The new Shein India Fast Fashion app, developed and launched by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, marks the firm’s significant return to one…
Adobe’s chief strategy officer Scott Belsky announced this week that he will be joining A24, the independent movie studio behind “Civil War,” “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” and many more titles. Belsky first joined Adobe in 2012 through the acquisition of Behance, leaving briefly in 2016 to become a VC at Benchmark but eventually returning…
India announced a new $1.15 billion Fund of Funds for startups on Saturday while unveiling sweeping regulatory reforms and an ambitious nuclear energy program, as New Delhi seeks to boost tech innovation and clean energy in the world’s fifth-largest economy. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, presenting the federal budget for 2025-26, said the fund builds on…
People working for, or with, Elon Musk are reportedly taking over the inner workings of multiple government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management and the Treasury Department. The Washington Post reported Friday that the highest-ranking career official at Treasury is leaving the department after “a clash” with people working for Musk’s so-called Department of…
Apple’s AI suite, Apple Intelligence, will soon be available in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese, along with localized English versions for India and Singapore. During the company’s Q4 2024 quarterly results call on Thursday, CEO Tim Cook said that the company will roll out support for these additional languages in…
Serial entrepreneur and recording artist Victor Lombard, also known as DIVINE, announced this week the launch of a new company, in partnership with Rakim, one of hip-hop’s most influential emcees. The company is called Notes, a fintech specifically for independent urban musicians and creators. It provides the knowledge and tools to help artists manage their…
French startup Swan has raised another €42 million (around $44 million at current exchange rates). The company considers this round as the second part of the Series B round that was originally announced in September 2023. Swan helps other companies offer financial products at scale. The company can generate both virtual and physical cards that…
Microsoft’s close partner and collaborator, OpenAI, might be suggesting that DeepSeek stole its IP and violated its terms of service. But Microsoft still wants DeepSeek’s shiny new models on its cloud platform. Microsoft today announced that R1, DeepSeek’s so-called reasoning model, is available on Azure AI Foundry service, Microsoft’s platform that brings together a number…
Swedish shared micromobility giant Voi had its first profitable year in 2024, according to preliminary unaudited results the company shared exclusively with TechCrunch. Voi, which offers shared e-scooters and e-bikes across more than 100 markets in Europe, recorded €132.8 million ($138 million) in net revenue in 2024. On an adjusted basis, Voi earned €17.2 million…
Safety is often overlooked in the rush to bring humanoid robots to the workplace. As high-profile corporations ranging from retailers like Amazon to carmakers such as Mercedes and BMW have announced humanoid pilots for factories and warehouses, conversations around worker safety are regularly buried beneath industry hype. One Bay Area-robotics firm is hoping to correct…
Barcelona-based business travel management platform TravelPerk has raised $200 million at a hefty $2.7 billion valuation — almost double the $1.4 billion valuation at its previous fundraise last year. Alongside the raise, TravelPerk also announced it has acquired Swiss startup Yokoy to bring native expenses management into the fray. With the travel and tourism industry…
Four years after launching the (then) most lucrative crowdfunding campaign in Kickstarter’s history, Pebble abruptly ended. The hardware startup closed 2016 by filing for insolvency, before being sold off to Fitbit. The fitness-tracking giant built much of the Ionic smartwatch with help from former Pebblers, along with the company’s pioneering software stack. The first Apple…
Perplexity AI has submitted a revised proposal to merge with TikTok, in an arrangement that would give the U.S. government up to 50 percent ownership of the new entity. The Associated Press first reported on the new proposal. A source with knowledge of the bid confirmed to TechCrunch that the AP’s reporting is accurate. The…
In Reid Hoffman’s new book Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future, the LinkedIn co-founder makes the case that AI can extend human agency — giving us more knowledge, better jobs, and improved lives — rather than reducing it. That doesn’t mean he’s ignoring the technology’s potential downsides. In fact, Hoffman (who…
Brendan Wallace has a lot on his mind lately. Wallace is the co-founder of Fifth Wall Ventures, a nine-year-old proptech venture firm with $3.2 billion in assets under management. He’s also a homeowner in L.A., which continues to battle raging wildfires. While his place remains intact, many of his friends haven’t been so lucky. Wallace…
Bankers are reportedly gearing up to offload debt used to fund Elon Musk’s social network, for which he paid $44 million in 2022 including $13 billion in financing. Morgan Stanley is leading the charge, hoping to sell senior debt at between 90 and 95 cents on the dollar, reports the WSJ. As notes the outlet,…
Apple released new figures Friday, highlighting user adoption of iOS 18. Released in public form back in September 2024, the mobile operating system is now installed on 68% of compatible devices. That number jumps to 78% on iPhones released in the last four years. As for the remaining iPhones out there, 19% are running iOS…
Seattle-based Madrona Capital is celebrating its 30 years in business by raising $770 million in fresh capital. This is the firm’s largest fundraise to date, exceeding $690 million across two funds Madrona closed in 2022. While an 11% capital pool upsize may not seem significant, any increase at a time when many venture outfits are…
Kirubha Perumalsamy co-founded Rollfi during crypto’s heyday in 2021 to help companies process digital payments. When crypto crashed, Rollfi pivoted to become an embedded payroll company, partnering with financial services companies to offer payroll and benefits services to their clients. The pivot was enough of a success for Rollfi to be acquired for an undisclosed…
A software engineer has bought the website “OGOpenAI.com” and redirected it to DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab that’s been making waves in the open source AI world lately. Software engineer Ananay Arora tells TechCrunch that he bought the domain name for “less than a Chipotle meal,” and that he plans to sell it for more.…
Popular caller ID app Truecaller has long left iPhone users at a disadvantage by not offering the caller information in real-time — a feature its Android users have enjoyed for some time. Today, that changes as the company is rolling out an update that brings real-time caller ID support to its iOS subscribers. The company…
Before there was social media, there were internet forums. Millions of forum sites continue to operate, which is why it’s notable that one top forum software provider, NodeBB, is now joining the fediverse, also known as the open social web. The fediverse today includes apps like decentralized X rival Mastodon, Instagram alternative Pixelfed, an open…
French startup Karmen has secured a small funding round so that it can improve its instant financing products. The company offers short-term loans to small companies facing a working capital crunch. It’s a €9 million equity-and-debt round ($9.4 million at today’s exchange rates) with Seventure Partners buying a stake in the small startup. Financière Arbevel…
Meta says it plans to keep its fact-checking program in place outside the U.S. for the time being, though it could eventually expand it elsewhere. “We’ll see how that goes as we move it out over the years,” Meta’s head of global business Nicola Mendelsohn told Bloomberg in a report from Davos on Monday. “So…
It is the product shipping time for all social networks with TikTok’s services in the restoration phase, and the app still unavailable in the App Store and the Play Store. Bluesky said Sunday that it is launching a custom feed for vertical video in its app. Users can see a trending videos section in the explore tab…
TikTok has gone dark in the U.S., the result of a federal law that bans the popular short-form video app for millions of Americans — at least for now. TikTok users began receiving a message about the ban around 10:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday evening, and the app also disappeared from the Apple and Google…
TikTok has gone dark in the U.S., the result of a federal law that bans the popular short-form video app for millions of Americans — at least for now. TikTok users began receiving a message about the ban around 10:30 p.m. Eastern. As of Saturday evening, the app was also no longer available in the…
Many proptech startups, born and funded during the low-interest-rate heydays, are in the throes of struggle. With investments into U.S.-based real estate startups falling from $11.1 billion in 2021 to $3.7 billion last year, according to PitchBook data, some are selling themselves off, while others are closing shop. The two most recent examples are the…
Flex PCB Manufacturing Companies Test For Thermal Stability The thermal stability of a flexible circuit board depends on the design. The board’s layers must be arranged in such a way that the components are far away from stress zones, which can cause damage or short circuits. To achieve this, the board’s manufacturer must take into…
Flex PCBs More Sensitive to Damage Than Rigid PCBs Rigid flex PCBs are often used for circuit boards that need to be resilient to shock, vibration and heat. These circuits are found in a variety of electronic devices including smartphones, tablets, cameras and drones. Rigid flex PCBs are also used for medical devices such as…
Seven-year-old electric vehicle startup Canoo has filed for bankruptcy and will “cease operations immediately.” The company is liquidating its assets in a Chapter 7 proceeding in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court. The company said in a press release published late Friday that it was “in discussions with foreign sources of capital” that proved unsuccessful, and also…
Just ahead of today’s Supreme Court ruling, which saw the nation’s highest court uphold the law banning TikTok in the U.S. as of January 19, Donald Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social that he had a “very good” phone call with China’s President Xi Jinping, which included a discussion of TikTok. Though…
Apple launched its dedicated Apple Store app in India on Friday, deepening its retail presence in the world’s most populous country as the iPhone-maker seeks to capitalize on growing consumer demand. The app, available for download on India’s App Store, lets customers purchase Apple products directly while receiving personalized shopping recommendations, the company said in…
The process of getting screened for cervical cancer is quite intimidating. It’s the once-a-year, sometimes life-changing treatment, that involves the bright lights of a doctor’s office and an uncomfortable insertion that always seems to last too long. It’s no wonder why Kara Egan and Dr. Avnesh Thakor saw the potential to make this process more…
Chinese firms continue to release AI models that rival the capabilities of systems developed by OpenAI and other U.S.-based AI companies. This week, MiniMax, an Alibaba- and Tencent-backed startup that has raised around $850 million in venture capital and is valued at more than $2.5 billion, debuted three new models: MiniMax-Text-01, MiniMax-VL-01, and T2A-01-HD. MiniMax-Text-01…
According to some of the latest statistics, employers are swamped by job applications. In the UK alone, employers running graduate training schemes received an average of 140 applications for each job in 2024, 59 per cent more than in 2023, according to the Institute of Student Employers. And despite some trepidations amongst a few recruiters,…
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk on Tuesday over an alleged securities violation relating to his acquisition of Twitter, now called X. The SEC claims Musk failed to disclose his 5% ownership stake of Twitter in a timely manner, violating federal securities law, according to a complaint filed in federal…
Shortly after OpenAI released o1, its first “reasoning” AI model, people began noting a curious phenomenon. The model would sometimes begin “thinking” in Chinese, Persian, or some other language — even when asked a question in English. Given a problem to sort out — e.g. “How many R’s are in the word ‘strawberry?’” — o1…
Chinese government officials have reportedly discussed a scenario where ByteDance sells TikTok’s United States arm to Elon Musk, should the Supreme Court uphold the law banning the app on January 19. Bloomberg reports that China would strongly prefer for TikTok to stay under ByteDance’s ownership, but says government officials have considered a sale to Musk…
Speaker manufacturer Sonos is seeing some significant changes. Patrick Spence, the company’s chief executive officer (pictured above), is leaving the company after eight years in the job. Tom Conrad, the co-founder of Pandora and a Sonos board member, is stepping in as interim CEO starting today. Last year was complicated for the speaker manufacturer. The…
Around the world, public healthcare systems have struggled to reset post-pandemic, and in particular, the increasingly aged populations in Western countries are putting pressure on services, not least in the UK where ‘NHS in crisis’ is a regular headline in the media. As a result, private companies, many powered with technology, see a gap in…
So-called reasoning AI models are becoming easier — and cheaper — to develop. On Friday, NovaSky, a team of researchers based out of UC Berkeley’s Sky Computing Lab, released Sky-T1-32B-Preview, a reasoning model that’s competitive with an earlier version of OpenAI’s o1 on a number of key benchmarks. Sky-T1 appears to be the first truly…
Apple’s board of directors has come out in opposition to a proposal seeking to end the company’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. In a proxy filing, the company said the National Center for Public Policy Research (a conservative think tank) is submitting a proposal for Apple to “consider abolishing its Inclusion & Diversity program,…
It’s now broadly accepted that customers and employees who receive corporate gifts end up appreciating the brand much more, and for not a lot of outlay. The market for this has thus exploded. One market player, the New York-based Snappy, which has raised over $125 million to date, is now acquiring Covver, a corporate merchandise…
Microsoft has taken legal action against a group the company claims intentionally developed and used tools to bypass the safety guardrails of its cloud AI products. According to a complaint filed by the company in December in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, a group of 10 unnamed defendants allegedly used…
It’s a new year, but drama in the WordPress community keeps going. Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, said that it would reduce its contribution to WordPress core, the open-source project that acts as the backbone of most of Automattic’s products and ensures the longevity of WordPress as a technology and community. Automattic CEO and…
Common Surface Finishes for a 4 Layer PCB Board Surface finishes play a crucial role in the functionality and durability of 4 layer pcb board. They protect the copper substrate from environmental factors such as humidity, temperature, and chemical exposure, extending the lifespan of the board. The selection of the most appropriate surface finish depends…
ICON Technologies Inc., which builds homes using 3D printing, is laying off 114 people, according to a WARN letter filed with the Texas Workforce Commission. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the news to TechCrunch, providing a statement that ICON had “recently made a difficult decision to re-align” its team and team size “to focus…
Xocean, an Irish marine robotics startup that provides ocean data to the energy and hydrography industries using uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), has raised €115 million ($119 million) as it looks to expand coverage to additional sectors. Founded in 2017, Xocean has built a fleet of remotely-controlled USVs that can remain offshore for long periods of…
It’s 2025, and companies still don’t know what AI is good for. That’s the impression I got from this year’s CES, which featured AI-powered kitchen appliances, baby cribs, and other products that really weren’t calling for AI. See: Spicerr, an “intelligent” touchscreen-equipped spice dispenser that learns your taste as you cook to recommend unique recipes.…
Whatnot, the platform that allows users to sell items such as trading cards, comics, and sneakers through live videos, announced on Wednesday that it has secured $265 million in a Series E funding round, a significant investment for a livestream shopping platform. This round puts Whatnot’s valuation at $4.97 billion. The investment marks an important…
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the performance of his company’s AI chips is advancing faster than historical rates set by Moore’s Law, the rubric that drove computing progress for decades. “Our systems are progressing way faster than Moore’s Law,” said Huang in an interview with TechCrunch on Tuesday, the morning after he delivered a keynote…
May Mobility, an autonomous vehicle technology startup, unveiled at CES 2025 the next vehicle in its portfolio: an electric, autonomous minibus made in partnership with European electric bus manufacturer Tecnobus. Ann Arbor-based May Mobility offers on-demand and fixed-route autonomous shuttles on campuses and in planned communities. Today its fleet consists of 40 Toyota Sienna minivans that…
Test the Functionality of a Prototype PCB Assembly In the PCB industry, prototypes are used to verify the functionality of a product and mitigate risks during large-scale production. They’re often the first step in a manufacturing process and help to reduce costly errors during mass production. They’re also an excellent way to test a design…
At CES 2025, Anker unveiled its first solar umbrella, designed to charge electronic devices — like coolers or phones — while outdoors. The new umbrella is part of Anker’s SOLIX lineup, which includes energy-efficient products like portable power stations and solar generators intended for powering home appliances during blackouts and emergencies. Though many solar-powered beach…
Elvie, a female-founded hardware startup, has unveiled a new app-controlled smart bouncer that gently transforms into a bassinet — while the baby is still in it. With the new Elvie Rise, announced at CES 2025 on Monday, parents and caregivers don’t have to move their baby between soothing, sleep, and play products. The startup is…
Five years ago, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda went to CES to share with the world his “personal field of dreams” — a plan to build a prototype city on a 175-acre site at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan, where people would live and work amongst all of Toyota’s projects, including autonomous vehicle technology,…
In 2023, defense tech recruiter Peterson Conway VIII pulled up to the offices of nuclear fusion startup Fuse in a black Suburban, donning his signature cowboy hat. He picked up a recent Fuse hire and proceeded to regale her with stories of his old recruiting days. One story involved prostitutes attending a recruiting event (“not…
Longtime entrepreneur and cybersecurity executive Amit Yoran passed away Friday after a battle with cancer. Cybersecurity company Tenable, where Yoran was CEO and chairman, announced his death in a press release. Before becoming Tenable’s CEO in 2016, he held a number of roles including president of RSA, founding CEO of NetWitness, and CEO of In-Q-Tel.…
Dara Khosrowshahi is resigning from the board of autonomous vehicle technology company Aurora Innovation, citing a desire to focus on his ongoing responsibilities as CEO of Uber and reduce external board commitments, according to a Friday regulatory filing. Khosrowshahi’s resignation was effective as of Tuesday. Aurora says Khosrowshahi’s decision to leave the board was not…
SpaceX is significantly upping the ante of its Starship test flight program, with the next rocket launch expected to demonstrate payload deployment for the first time. The payload in question will be 10 Starlink “simulators” that will be similar in size and weight to the next-gen satellites SpaceX plans to use Starship to deploy in…
More than half-a-dozen VPN apps, including Cloudflare’s widely-used 1.1.1.1, have been pulled from India’s Apple App Store and Google Play Store following intervention from government authorities, TechCrunch has learned. The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs issued removal orders for the apps, according to a document reviewed by TechCrunch and a disclosure made by Google to…
Tacora Capital, a Texas firm that specializes in venture debt, has raised $268.7 million for its second fund, according to a new SEC filing. Tacora’s inaugural fund in 2022 raised about $350 million, including $250 million from Peter Thiel — the prominent Republican billionaire and investor — in what was considered an “unusually large investment”…
Telegram has rolled out its first update of the year, adding a new account verification method powered by third-parties, new message search filters, and the ability to turn gifts into NFTs. The chat app already had a program to verify public figures and organizations on the platform, and it has now launched a new project…
A Tesla Cybertruck that exploded and burst into flames Wednesday morning just outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas is being investigated by local law enforcement. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said one person who was in the vehicle died. Seven other people were injured and being treated at local hospitals, a local Fox…
Accel has raised $650 million for its eighth India fund as the U.S. venture firm expands its investment strategy in the South Asian market. The new fund follows the firm’s seventh India fund secured in March 2022. Accel — which has backed companies including e-commerce group Flipkart, food delivery platform Swiggy and software group Freshworks…
Conservatives critical of Elon Musk are accusing the platform he owns of censoring them, CNN reports. Political activist Laura Loomer sparked an online debate within the Right about work visas known as H1-Bs, which Musk supports. Loomer now claims her account has been unverified and demonetized, accusing Musk of being a “free speech fraud.” Meanwhile,…
Asset management firm Fidelity slashed the estimated worth of its stake in business messaging platform Gupshup by another 7.7% last month, lowering the value of its holding in the SaaS startup by a total of more than 65% since its investment in mid-2021. One of the funds operated by the U.S. asset manager valued its…
TikTok parent company ByteDance has big plans to buy Nvidia chips in 2025 — despite U.S. restrictions. ByteDance plans to spend $7 billion on the chips in 2025, according to reporting from The Information, citing inside sources. If ByteDance follows through, it will become one of the world’s top owners of Nvidia chips, despite U.S. efforts…
U.S. telecom giant Verizon says it has secured its network after being targeted by the China-linked Salt Typhoon cyberespionage group. In a statement given to TechCrunch on Sunday, Verizon spokesperson Richard Young said the company has “contained the cyber incident brought on by this nation-state threat actor,” and that it has not detected any threat actor…
Three crypto industry groups — the DeFi Education Fund, the Blockchain Association, and the Texas Blockchain Council — are suing the Internal Revenue Service to block new regulations that require decentralized finance (DeFi) entities to report customer information. The IRS has been finalizing crypto tax regulations as part of the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Investment and…
CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly told Google employees that 2025 will be a “critical” year for the company. CNBC reports that it obtained audio from a December 18 strategy meeting where Pichai and other executives put on ugly holiday sweaters and laid out their priorities for the coming year. “I think 2025 will be critical,” Pichai…
Attorneys representing President-elect Donald Trump have asked the Supreme Court to pause a law that would force TikTok-owner ByteDance to sell the short-form video app or see it banned from the United States. If the app isn’t sold, the ban is set to take effect in just a few weeks, on January 19. ByteDance is…
Bench, a Canada-based accounting startup that offered software-as-a-service for small and medium-sized businesses, has abruptly shut down, according to a notice posted on its website. “We regret to inform you that as of December 27, 2024, the Bench platform will no longer be accessible,” the notice reads. “We know this news is abrupt and may…
Data-loss prevention startup Cyberhaven says hackers published a malicious update to its Chrome extension that was capable of stealing customer passwords and session tokens, according to an email sent to affected customers, who may have been victims of this suspected supply-chain attack. Cyberhaven confirmed the cyberattack to TechCrunch on Friday but declined to comment on…
When you really probe venture capitalists about investing in AI startups, they’ll tell you that businesses are experimenting wildly but are very slow to add AI solutions into their ongoing business processes. But there are some exceptions. And one of them appears to be an area known as AI sales development representatives, or AI SDRs.…
Henrik Fisker once envisioned a burgeoning EV empire at the startup he named after himself, which was to be led by the Ocean SUV. But cracks started showing in that vision almost as soon as the Ocean hit the road in 2023. Fisker cut production targets multiple times, failed to meet sales goals and laid…
Updated December 25, 12:21 p.m. Pacific: Added details of xAI’s valuation and Kingdom Holdings’ contribution. xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, has raised $6 billion in a Series C financing round. The company announced this week that Andreessen Horowitz , Blackrock, Fidelity, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Nvidia,…
AMD has its work cut out for it at CES 2025. Competitor Nvidia has been sucking the oxygen out of every room it graces, as the chipmaker remains at the forefront of the AI boom. So, how will AMD compete with Nvidia’s reported RTX 5000 announcement? The company should show of its own next-gen GPU.…
The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has more than 130,000 job cuts across 457 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized…
Contractors working to improve Google’s Gemini AI are comparing its answers against outputs produced by Anthropic’s competitor model Claude, according to internal correspondence seen by TechCrunch. Google would not say, when reached by TechCrunch for comment, if it had obtained permission for its use of Claude in testing against Gemini. As tech companies race to…
Hyundai said Monday it will send customers who have bought or leased an EV before January 31 a free charging adapter that will let them access Tesla’s supercharging network. The Hyundai-authorized adapter will give CCS-port-equipped Hyundai EV drivers access to more than 20,000 Tesla Superchargers in the United States, according to Hyundai. Free adapters will…
Japanese car giants Honda and Nissan are working out the details of a major merger that could create the world’s third-largest automaker, as the companies look to survive in an industry faced with uncertainty. The Tesla-led shift toward electric vehicles, and China’s increased importance in the automotive market, have companies like Honda and Nissan feeling…
X is raising prices for its top-tier subscription service by 37.5%, marking the largest price increase since the platform’s acquisition by Elon Musk in 2022. The Premium+ service costs $22 monthly in the U.S., up from $16, effective December 21, according to a company statement. Annual subscription cost has increased to $229 from $168. X…
Cristian Ponce was wearing an Indiana Jones costume when he met his co-founder Théo Schäfer. It was at a Halloween party in 2023 thrown by Entrepreneur First, a startup program that introduces founders to one another before they launch an idea. The two hit it off, Ponce remembers. Schäfer had studied at MIT with a…
OpenAI’s efforts to develop its next major model, GPT-5, are running behind schedule, with results that don’t yet justify the enormous costs, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. This echoes an earlier report in The Information suggesting that OpenAI is looking to new strategies as GPT-5 might not represent as big…
Becoming a venture capitalist has become the latest status symbol in Hollywood. Everyone these days, from Olivia Wilde to Emma Watson, is either launching a venture firm or is in the process of backing the next hottest company. Robinhood, Uber, and Klarna all have some glitzy names on their cap tables, paving the way for…
Famed investor Marc Andreessen recently talked about meetings with Biden administration staff who gave him the impression they wanted to control AI by working closely with two or three big AI companies, shutting everyone else out through burdensome regulations. Andreessen didn’t name OpenAI, but it was implied it would have been a beneficiary of this…
The newest online-only school greenlighted by the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools comes with a twist: the academic curriculum will be taught entirely by AI. Charter schools — independently operated but publicly-funded — typically get greater autonomy compared to traditional public schools when it comes to how subjects are taught. But Unbound Academy’s application,…
Myths About Using a Via in Pad The use of via in pad can help PCB designers increase component density and reduce the total trace length on a circuit board. However, there are several important issues associated with using this design technique that should be considered. This guide will examine three major myths surrounding via…
Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing Assembly Printed circuit board (PCB) assembly is the process of mounting and soldering electronic components onto fabricated PCBs to create functional boards and assemblies. The most common methods of PCB assembly are through-hole and surface-mount technology, though both have their own advantages and uses. The most important aspect of a successful…
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sat before Congress in 2023 to testify about the dangers of AI. He told American lawmakers at the time that he owns no equity in OpenAI, something he’s said many times, claiming he just runs the company because he loves it. However, Altman recently said he actually did have some equity…
Apple and Meta are warring in Europe over the balance between interoperability and privacy, Reuters reports. The fight focuses on the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a competition regulation that requires designated gatekeepers (including Apple and Meta) not to restrict rivals’ access to so-called core platform services. In Apple’s case, this means: iOS, iPadOS,…
Amazon announced on Wednesday new accessibility features for Fire TV, including a notable “Dual Audio” capability for the newly launched Fire TV Omni Mini-LED Series, which was unveiled in November. The new feature allows one user to listen through a hearing aid while others in the same room can enjoy audio through the TV’s built-in…
Meta’s social network Threads is experimenting with a feature that will let you schedule posts, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said. Users who will get to test this feature won’t be able to schedule replies. “We want to balance giving people more control to plan their Threads posts while still encouraging real-time conversations,” he said. People…
common applications of PCB prototypes PCB prototypes play a critical role in the development of electronic products, serving as a fundamental part of the design and testing process. They are used across a wide variety of industries, providing a platform to test and refine the functionality, design, and performance of circuit boards before mass production.…
Earlier this year, IVP general partner Tom Loverro, proclaimed that the post-pandemic downturn is over, and companies that made it this far should prioritize growth over cost-cutting. Yet, the companies still struggling to raise their next round of financing at a higher valuation or survive altogether could still be in the thousands, according to Brian…
Tyme Group, a South African-born fintech operating in the African country and the Philippines, has secured $250 million in a Series D round, pushing its valuation to $1.5 billion. The funding was led by Nu Holdings (which owns NuBank), Latin America’s most valuable fintech, which invested $150 million for a 10% stake. M&G Catalyst Fund…
Google Labs, Google’s experimental arm, is testing a new image generator called Whisk. This tool allows people to prompt with images instead of text, allowing them to remix a photo by altering the subject, scene, and style. Whisk uses Google’s image-generation model, Imagen 3, to combine three images: one for the subject, another for the…
This year, a Serbian journalist and an activist had their phones hacked by local authorities using a cellphone-unlocking device made by forensic tool maker Cellebrite. The authorities’ goal was not only to unlock the phones to access their personal data, as Cellebrite allows, but also to install spyware to enable further surveillance, according to a…
The next big upgrade to Apple’s mobile devices could be foldability, according to multiple reports published Sunday. According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is aiming to launch two foldable devices in the next few years. There’s a larger model with a 19-inch screen that could compete with desktop monitors, as well as a smaller…
State officials said hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island residents could be affected by a cyberattack on the state’s online portal for social services, with a “high probability” that personally identifiable information was breached. According to an update from Governor Dan McKee’s office, the attack targeted RIBridges, which Rhode Island residents use to apply for…
After famed investor Marc Andreessen met with government officials about the future of tech last May, he was “very scared” and described the meetings as “absolutely horrifying.” These meetings played a key role on why he endorsed Trump, he told journalist Bari Weiss this week on her podcast. What scared him most was what some…
XAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, may be embroiled in an escalating lawsuit with OpenAI. But that’s not stopping it from shipping new products — on a Friday night, no less. This evening, xAI revealed that it has begun to roll out an upgraded version of its flagship Grok 2 chatbot model to all users on…
In October, Google started piloting a version of NotebookLM, its viral AI note-taking and research app, aimed at businesses. Now, the company’s bringing NotebookLM to the enterprise, complete with work-focused security and privacy features. NotebookLM for enterprises — which Google’s dubbing NotebookLM Plus — delivers the same experience as the consumer version, but with added…
Microsoft has announced the newest addition to its Phi family of generative AI models. Called Phi-4, the model is improved in several areas over its predecessors, Microsoft claims — in particular math problem solving. That’s partly the result of improved training data quality. Phi-4 is available in very limited access as of Thursday night: only…
Arriving in time for holiday travel and potentially lost luggage, a new feature that allows Apple AirTag owners to share the location of a lost item is now integrated with the customer service systems of two major airlines. United and Air Canada are the first launch partners for Apple’s “Find My Share Item Location” feature,…
OpenAI says ChatGPT, Sora, and its developer-facing API are experiencing a major outage, according to the company’s status page. The company says it’s identified a pathway to recovery and is working on a fix as of 4:55pm PT Wednesday evening. It remains unclear what the cause of the outage is. As of 5:50 pm PT,…
Security researchers have uncovered a new surveillance tool that they say has been used by Chinese law enforcement to collect sensitive information from Android devices in China. The tool, named “EagleMsgSpy,” was discovered by researchers at U.S. cybersecurity firm Lookout. The company said at the Black Hat Europe conference on Wednesday that it had acquired…
Generative AI has a plethora of well-documented misuses, from making up academic papers to copying artists. And now, it appears to be cropping up in state influence operations. One recent campaign was “very likely” helped by commercial AI voice generation products, including tech publicly released by the hot startup ElevenLabs, according to a recent report…
Languages are typically taught by first exposing you to reading and writing, but native speakers always start learning languages by hearing and talking. Speak has built a platform to teach languages by focusing on how native speakers learn: Using AI, the startup generates audio conversations and listens to users’ responses to improve their grasp of…
OpenAI‘s video generator is here. ChatGPT subscribers can use Sora to generate videos from text, bring images to life, and extend, remix, or blend already existing videos. Here’s what it looks like to test it out — in case you’re still locked out or the servers are down. During a livestream Monday afternoon, OpenAI revealed…
Supply chain software giant Blue Yonder says it is investigating claims of data theft after a ransomware gang threatened to publish troves of data stolen from the company. Arizona-based Blue Yonder, which provides supply chain management software to thousands of organizations including DHL, Starbucks and Walgreens, was hit by a cyberattack on November 21. The…
Apple is looking to make its Vision Pro mixed reality device more attractive to gamers and game developers, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The Vision Pro has been pitched as more of a productivity and media consumption device than something aimed at gamers, due in part to relying on eye and…
Google’s DeepMind team unveiled an AI model for weather prediction this week called GenCast. In a paper published in Nature, DeepMind researchers said they found that GenCast outperforms the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ ENS — apparently the world’s top operational forecasting system. And in a blog post, the DeepMind team offered a more…
Paytm has agreed to sell its stake in Japanese payments firm PayPay to SoftBank for $279.2 million, as the Indian firm sheds non-core assets following a bruising regulatory clampdown earlier this year. The sale of Paytm’s stake in PayPay, which it received through acquisition rights six years ago, follows months of restructuring at the Indian…
Ride-hail giant Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide have launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi. The launch marks Uber’s first international autonomous vehicle offering. Uber has been snatching up partnerships with autonomous vehicle companies across sectors, including ride-hail, delivery, and trucking. Other partners include Wayve, Serve Robotics, Aurora Innovation, Waabi, and…
Turning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate has netted Munich-based B2B foodtech startup Planet A Foods (formerly QOA) a $30 million Series B funding round. Now, the Y Combinator alum is gearing up for industrialization, with the funds set to be deployed to scale its production capacity by around 7.5x. The round fast follows a…
A programmer said the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) installed spyware on his Android phone after he was detained in Moscow earlier this year. Security researchers confirmed that his phone had spyware installed, likely when the authorities had physical access to his phone and had forced him to give up his passcode. For the programmer…
Although heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, a significant portion of people who experience heart attacks are unaware that they have the underlying condition. Cleerly, a cardiovascular imaging startup, hopes to fix this. By analyzing CT scans of the heart, the company’s AI software aims to identify early stage…
In this hyperconnected world we live in, it’s easier than ever to send feedback to the companies we patronize. But just because businesses offer more ways to get in touch doesn’t mean they’re poring over every comment. According to a 2020 survey from Productboard, 90% of companies fail to successfully capture feedback from all channels…
“I’m trying to find holiday gifts for my sisters. I open a bunch of tabs, I want my wife’s advice.” That’s CEO of the Browser Company, Josh Miller, in his company’s latest ad for its new AI browser, Dia. Consulting your spouse to find gifts for your siblings is a pure – and dare I…
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proposed a new rule that would block data brokers from selling personal and financial information on Americans, including their Social Security numbers and phone numbers, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In proposing the new rules, months after President Biden signed an executive order to curb the sale of…
Delaware Chancery court judge Kathaleen McCormick has denied Tesla’s request to revise her decision to strike down CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package — despite shareholders voting at the company’s annual meeting this year to “re-ratify” the deal. Her decision, laid out in a 103-page opinion published on Monday, explains that the attempt by…
Prosus anticipates as many as five potential IPOs from its Indian portfolio over the next 18 months, signalling growing momentum in the world’s second-largest internet market. The Dutch investment group on Monday named payments giant PayU, e-commerce startup Meesho, and online jewelry seller Bluestone among the startups that are preparing for an IPO. TechCrunch reported…
A new app called Death Clock predicts the date of its users’ deaths and offers tips on how to push that date back. TechCrunch wrote about an iPod Death Clock app way back in 2006 — but developer Brett Franson told Bloomberg that with an AI trained on more than 1,200 life expectancy studies, his…
Attorneys for tech billionaire Elon Musk have filed for a preliminary injunction against OpenAI, several of its co-founders, and its investor and close collaborator, Microsoft, to prevent OpenAI and other named defendants from engaging in what Musk’s counsel claims is anticompetitive behavior. The motion for an injunction, which was filed late on Friday in the…
As more celebrities and popular influencers join Bluesky, the fast-growing social media service has been facing more concerns around impersonation and verified identity. The Bluesky Safety team posted Friday that the company has updated its impersonation policy to be “more aggressive,” adding that “impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed.” The company said it should…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. With only so many days left in the year, there was plenty of startup news to round up since last Friday, despite a short workweek in the…
A group of Canadian news and media companies filed a lawsuit Friday against OpenAI, alleging that the ChatGPT maker has infringed their copyrights and unjustly enriched itself at their expense. The companies behind the lawsuit include the Toronto Star, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Globe and Mail, and others who seek to win monetary damages…
As large enterprises grapple with how to incorporate AI into their platforms and processes, they have encountered a problem: Generative AI needs to have memory and its training data must be constantly updated for it to have any practical use. This area is now called ‘Live AI’ and a number of startups are working in…
Thanksgiving weekend has long been seen as the traditional start to the most important sales period for retailers, and so far, the indication is that we’re in for a strong holiday season for e-commerce. Salesforce is tracking activity in real time and has just put out its first figures for the day. It says that…
Google Chat is rolling out instant voice meetings — similar to Slack’s Huddles — that let you quickly switch to a voice or video call from within a chat. Google is not giving the feature a new name, though, opting to call the feature “Huddles” as well. If you are in a Google Chat, you…
Spotify will no longer allow developers building third-party apps with its Web API to access several features within the music streaming platform, such as song and artist recommendations, the company announced in a developer blog post on Wednesday. The company appears to be limiting third-party developers from building AI apps using data from Spotify listeners.…
Raspberry Pi is better known for its single-board computer with a ton of ports sticking out. The most recent of which is the Raspberry Pi 5, which was introduced in September 2023. These small computers are perfect for the education market and for tech enthusiasts looking for a cheap computing device to power an interactive…
Uber is expanding its fleet of gig workers and creating a new category: AI annotation and data labeling. The ride-hailing company has started hiring contractors for a new AI and data labeling division called Scaled Solutions. These workers complete projects for Uber’s internal business units but are also serving outside customers including self-driving vehicle company…
Using AI to accelerate biotech is fast becoming standard practice, and companies offering services to deploy the tech quickly are seeing big uptake and new investment. Cradle is one of these, focused on protein design — and it just raised $73 million to build out its labs and team. Cradle appeared in 2022 as part…
Want to keep up with what everyone’s talking about on alternative social media sites like Bluesky and Mastodon, but don’t have time to constantly scroll through their respective apps? A newly launched link aggregation service called Sill may be able to help. The service is similar to the older startup Nuzzel, which was ultimately acquired…
Meet the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W, a tiny board designed around a microcontroller that lets you build hardware projects at scale. Raspberry Pi is once again using the RP2350, its own, well-documented microcontroller. But what is a microcontroller again? As the name suggests, microcontrollers let you control other electronic components or devices. Regular Raspberry…
The Australian government has withdrawn a bill that would have fined online platforms up to 5 percent of their global revenue if they failed to stop the spread of misinformation. The bill, which was backed by the Labor government, would have allowed the Australian Communications and Media Authority to create enforceable rules around misinformation on…
Now you can appear to be on a Zoom call in your office, even when you’re sipping a margarita in a hammock far, far away. Courtesy of a months-old startup called Pickle, its pitch is simple: submit a five-minute-long training video of yourself to create an avatar, and 24 hours later, ostensibly, you’re ready to…
Tesla and Rivian may have resolved a lawsuit in which Tesla accused Rivian of poaching employees and stealing trade secrets. Bloomberg reports that Tesla told a California statement judge that the companies have reached a “conditional” settlement, and that it expects to seek dismissal of the lawsuit by December 24. Tesla filed the suit, which…
Lawyers for The New York Times and Daily News, which are suing OpenAI for allegedly scraping their works to train its AI models without permission, say OpenAI engineers accidentally deleted data potentially relevant to the case. Earlier this fall, OpenAI agreed to provide two virtual machines so that counsel for The Times and Daily News…
MatX, a startup designing chips that support large language models, has raised a Series A of approximately $80 million, three sources say, less than a year after raising its $25 million seed round. Spark Capital led the investment, valuing the company at a pre-money valuation in the mid-$200 million range and a post-money valuation of…
Forget cold plunge pools. The new flex could soon be human washing machines. According to one of Japan’s oldest newspapers, an Osaka-based shower head maker called Science has developed a contraption that’s shaped like a cockpit, fills with water when a bather sits in a seat at its center, and measures the person’s pulse and…
Beleaguered Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt announced today that it was filing for bankruptcy in the U.S., striking a blow to Europe’s ambitions for homegrown lithium-ion batteries. The company reportedly chose Chapter 11 in an effort to right its finances. Northvolt, which had soared for years on the back of strong fundraising and a string of…
The United States Department of Justice argued Wednesday that Google should divest its Chrome browser as part of a remedy to break up the company’s illegal monopoly in online search, according to a filing with the U.S District Court of the District of Columbia. Google would not be allowed to re-enter the search market for…
Defense tech funding just reached a new high. Defense tech startups have raised almost $3 billion so far in 2024, according to Crunchbase. This surpassed the previous record from 2022 of $2.6 billion. It’s an impressive feat, especially considering the number of deals has shrunk: in 2022, there were 113 defense tech rounds, outpacing 2024’s…
Houses in San Francisco are notoriously expensive, with the average home price hovering around $1.26 million. It’s no wonder that a fire-ravaged shack priced at $299,000 in one of San Francisco’s southernmost neighborhoods saw at least 20 people tour the property this past weekend, according to The San Francisco Standard. Potential buyers were asked to…
Netflix is adding a new title to its gaming library: a daily word puzzle that is eerily similar to a lot of other mobile games that exist already. Announced in October, the streaming giant teamed up with TED, the well-known non-profit media organization, to launch TED Tumblewords, a new daily word puzzle game. In this…
Graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips on which most AI models run, are energy-hungry beasts. As a consequence of the accelerating incorporation of GPUs in data centers, AI will drive a 160% uptick in electricity demand by 2030, Goldman Sachs estimates. The trend isn’t sustainable, argues Vishal Sarin, an analog and memory circuit designer. After…
Marc Benioff famously got into tech as a child coder writing games. He’s always loved tech gadgets. During an episode of TechCrunch’s Equity, when asked about his latest gadgets, he showed off his Oura ring. But then he considered and said that his favorite gadget these days is his car. “I think my car is…
Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal’s investment vehicle has proposed to inject another $65.1 million into the hotel management startup, according to shareholder notifications reviewed by TechCrunch. The investment, through Redsprig Innovation Partners, would value the SoftBank-backed company at $3.8 billion, according to terms shared in the extraordinary general meeting notice. While this represents a 38% premium…
Only two companies currently provide cargo delivery to and from the International Space Station, and both are based in the United States. The Exploration Company, which operates out of Germany, France, and Italy, is looking to change that: It just closed a large funding round to further its mission of building Europe’s first reusable space…
When Brynn Putnam sold her last company, Mirror, to Lululemon for $500 million at the start of the pandemic, it looked to this editor like she’d sold the smart fitness company too soon. Instead, the timing proved brilliant. The home fitness craze crashed nearly as abruptly as it peaked during that first year of lockdowns.…
Warehouses aren’t the only places grappling with a labor crunch. Since the start of the pandemic, restaurants around the world have been grappling with staffing shortages. A number of startups have entered the picture with automation solutions, aimed at reducing the number of hands required to keep the lights on and the food warm. There…
On Thursday, the UK’s largest mobile network operator, O2, introduced a chatbot designed to frustrate phone scammers. Called “dAIsy,” it mimics an older woman with all kinds of time to chat – about knitting, her cat Fluffy – with the aim of keeping fraudsters engaged as they try obtaining her (fake) bank details. A press…
Per Bloomberg, X, Elon Musk’s social media company, has sued to block California law AB 2655, which requires large online platforms to remove or label AI deepfakes related to elections. X argues that the law, also known as the “Defending Democracy From Deepfake Deception Act of 2024,” will lead to widespread censorship of political speech.…
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI accusing the company of abandoning its nonprofit mission was withdrawn in July, only to be revived in August. Now, in an amended complaint, the suit names new defendants including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton. The amended filing also adds new…
For all its promise as a climate friendly fuel, hydrogen hasn’t had much luck. It lost the battle over personal transportation to battery electric vehicles, and for industrial users, it remains far more expensive than natural gas. That’s in part because natural gas can flow through sprawling networks of pipelines. Hydrogen doesn’t, which means buyers…
Soaring private vehicle ownership and declining use of public and nonmotorized transport have created mounting traffic congestion in India, the world’s most populous country, which also struggles with relatively narrower roads and inadequate parking facilities in cities. New Delhi recognizes these challenges and has been exploring new ways to address them quickly. Indian prime minister…
Lyten, a Silicon Valley battery startup, announced today that it’s acquiring manufacturing assets from Northvolt, a Swedish battery manufacturer that’s facing a cash crunch. As part of the deal, Northvolt is selling manufacturing equipment the company inherited in its 2021 acquisition of Cuberg, another battery startup. Lyten will also assume the lease of Cuberg’s old…