For the first time, the FDA has just approved a device that lets people screen for cervical cancer from home. Known as the Teal Wand, from the company Teal Health, the prescription device lets patients self-collect samples and mail them to a lab to receive...
SoundCloud appears to have quietly changed its terms of use to allow the company to train AI on audio that users upload to its platform. As spotted by tech ethicist Ed Newton-Rex, the latest version of SoundCloud’s terms include a provision giving the platform permission...
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. This week was busy for startups: While there were no IPOs of note, there were other exits...
HR tech startup Rippling has raised a $450 million Series G round at a $16.8 billion valuation, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. It is also conducting a $200 million tender offer to give current and former employees some liquidity. The equity raise marks a big...
At Stripe’s Sessions conference this week, Mark Zuckerberg pitched what he calls the “ultimate business machine”: a fully automated, end-to-end AI ad engine promising to replace agencies, creatives, and media buyers with a single black box. You just need to connect your bank account first. ...
Data center operator CoreWeave is reportedly seeking a $1.5 billion debt deal after a disappointing IPO. According to the Financial Times, CoreWeave is holding a roadshow this week with bankers at JPMorgan for debt options. The company’s executives intend to use the meetings to gauge...
President Trump’s tariffs have started pushing prices higher. Tech giants and ecommerce strategists offer some clues on when to buy....
Is Trump selling access to the administration in exchange for cryptocoins? On today’s episode of Uncanny Valley, we talk about the ethical concerns associated with TRUMP coin....
Applications are almost closed, and you have until 11:59 p.m. PT tonight to reserve your exhibitor table at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, our premiere industry event that’s happening at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on June 5. Imagine walking into a room filled with 1,200+ investors, founders,...
Microsoft employees aren’t allowed to use DeepSeek due to data security and propaganda concerns, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith said in a Senate hearing today. “At Microsoft we don’t allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app,” Smith said, referring to DeepSeek’s application...
After pleading guilty to two counts of fraud, the founder of failed cryptocurrency platform Celsius will serve 12 years in federal prison....
OpenAI is enhancing its AI-powered “deep research” feature with the ability to analyze codebases on GitHub. On Thursday, OpenAI announced what it’s calling the first “connector” for ChatGPT deep research, the company’s tool that searches across the web and other sources to compile thorough research...
Sankaet Pathak’s last startup, fintech Synapse, filed for bankruptcy in 2024 amid issues with partner Evolve Bank & Trust. Tens of millions of dollars in deposits made by consumers, mostly customers of fintechs that worked with Synapse, remain unaccounted for. Yet according to The Information,...
Social media startup Fizz is suing grocery delivery giant Instacart and party planning app Partiful for trademark infringement, the company announced on Thursday. Earlier this week, Instacart launched a new drinks and snack delivery app for parties called Fizz and announced that Partiful had integrated Fizz...
Meta has chosen Robert Fergus to lead its Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab, according to Bloomberg. Fergus had been working at Google DeepMind as a research director for roughly five years, per his LinkedIn. Prior to Google, he worked as a researcher scientist at Meta....
Google is rolling out a feature in its Gemini API that the company claims will make its latest AI models cheaper for third-party developers. Google calls the feature “implicit caching” and says it can deliver 75% savings on “repetitive context” passed to models via the...
A US deal to drop car tariffs from 25 to 10 percent could bolster UK luxury car sales—but only for the first 100,000 vehicles. This is particularly welcome news for Jaguar Land Rover....
Google announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out new AI-powered defenses to help combat scams on Chrome. The tech giant will begin using Gemini Nano, its on-device large language model (LLM), on desktop to protect users against online scams. It’s also launching new AI-powered warnings...
If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to act, this is it. You have just 24 hours left to secure your exhibit table at TechCrunch Sessions: AI and position your brand at the center of the conversation shaping the future of the AI industry....
It took seven years of hard work for Kareem Amin, co-founder and CEO of sales automation startup Clay, to see the company’s product finally take off in 2022. Since then, the startup has experienced explosive growth, reached a valuation exceeding a billion dollars, and expanded...
OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help...
Amazon said Thursday it is releasing a new generative AI-powered tool to help merchants improve their listings with missing details or attributes. Sellers often have hundreds of products listed on Amazon, and they need to update information related to them from time to time, which...
Turns out, telling an AI chatbot to be concise could make it hallucinate more than it otherwise would have. That’s according to a new study from Giskard, a Paris-based AI testing company developing a holistic benchmark for AI models. In a blog post detailing their...
Hims & Hers, the telehealth and wellness company, has hired a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry as its next chief technology officer. The move, according to Hims & Hers co-founder and CEO, Andrew Dudum, was intentional. Hims & Hers on Thursday said its next...
Simo, already a board member at OpenAI, will transition out of Instacart over the next few months and join the AI company full-time as Application CEO....
In a rare moment of global consensus, AI researchers from the US, Europe, and Asia came together in Singapore to form a plan for researching AI risks....
Donald Trump has proposed launching a “gold card” program offering US residency for $5 million. Elon Musk’s DOGE has begun rolling out the technology to enable it....
Tech giants like to boast about trillion-parameter AI models that require massive and expensive GPU clusters. But Fastino is taking a different approach. The Palo Alto-based startup says it’s invented a new kind of AI model architecture that’s intentionally small and task-specific. The models are...
OpenAI has met with officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to discuss the agency’s use of AI to speed up drug evaluations, Wired reported on Wednesday. According to the report, OpenAI and the FDA have discussed a project called cderGPT, which seems...
During his junior year study abroad, Max Morganroth, traveled to 30 countries, primarily flying in business and first class. His jet setting was funded almost entirely by airline points he collected through strategic credit card applications and miles redemptions. Morganroth told TechCrunch that just about...