Startups and tech giants are trying to move from chatbots that offer help via text, to AI agents that can get stuff done. Recent demos include an AI coder called Devin and agents that play videogames....
Coreshell, a battery materials startup, revealed a breakthrough this week that could lower the cost of lithium-ion batteries while reducing reliance on China. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
ShopMy, a marketing platform for content creators to connect with brands and monetize their content, announced today that it raised $18.5 million. The company will use the money to help scale its network of 40,000 creators, including Alix Earle, the latest “It Girl” on the...
After a shakeup at Kleiner Perkins a few years back, one of its star B2B investors, Ted Schlein, started his own firm. Ballistic has already closed a second fund, even bigger than the first. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
A surprisingly fast ruling at the end of a six-week trial in the UK High Court ends Craig Wright's campaign to be recognized as the inventor of Bitcoin....
The European Commission has sent a series of formal requests for information (RFI) to Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, TikTok and X about how they’re handling risks related to the use of generative AI. The asks, which relate to Bing, Facebook, Google Search, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok,...
Satellite sensors collect an incredible amount of raw data, but on-orbit compute limitations mean that operators have little way to process this data in space. Aethero, a startup founded 13 months ago, wants to change that. The startup is developing radiation-hardened edge computers for on-orbit...
There is perhaps no bigger jump for a startup to make than from the incubatory seed stage to its Series A round. Given how large a step-up landing a Series A can be, there are many guidelines out there. But most seem to be a...
The European AI Office and the UK government are trying to hire experts to study and regulate the AI boom—but are offering salaries far short of industry compensation....
When thousands of subreddits went dark in protest, it exposed the tension at the core of Reddit. Is the web’s most reliably human forum a gold mine for investors, or an old-fashioned dumpster fire?...
Amazon launched generative AI-powered features last year to help sellers quickly create listings by entering just a few words about the product. The company is now making it easier for sellers to create listings if an item is already listed on their website. The e-commerce...
Elaia's third deep tech seed fund, DTS3, is double the size of the two previous funds, and signals the momentum that is forming around an emerging concept: European dynamism. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
OpenAI’s legal battle with The New York Times over data to train its AI models might still be brewing. But OpenAI’s forging ahead on deals with other publishers, including some of France’s and Spain’s largest news publishers. OpenAI on Wednesday announced that it signed contracts...
You might’ve heard of Grok, X’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s a chatbot and, in that sense, behaves as you’d expect — answering questions about current events, pop culture and so on. But unlike other chatbots, Grok has “a bit of wit,” as X owner...
The company says it was cash flow positive in 2023, and plans to be again in 2024. With $8.7 billion in venture capital it likely means it has little to no need to raise more before it goes public. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For...
Investors bet the startup’s algorithms, which feed on satellite data, will fill a significant gap in the methane market. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
Downshift into get ’er done gear, and you can save a hefty $1,000. How? Simply take decisive action and buy your pass to TechCrunch Disrupt before Friday, March 15 at 11:59 p.m. PT. We can think of a lot of great ways to use an...
Content delivery networks (CDN) have changed. They used to be platforms for efficiently delivering static files — and little else. These days, however, virtually every CDN service is adding edge compute services, security tools and more on top of their core delivery networks. As a...
The U.K. has exited the European Union, but semiconductor development is emerging as one of the areas where it hopes to partner for better economies of scale — and much-needed funding. Today, the government announced that it was joining up with the EU’s “Chips Joint...
These AI agents can adapt to games they haven't played before. Google made them by feeding data on how humans play different video games to a language model like those behind the latest chatbots....
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday episode, in which we dig into critical startup news to stay abreast...
AI models that play games go back decades, but they generally specialize in one game and always play to win. Google Deepmind researchers have a different goal with their latest creation: a model that learned to play multiple 3D games like a human, but also...
The cement startup promises to slash carbon emissions in the process, helping the company raise a $6.5 million seed round. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
A new sports tech startup, Volley, aims to revolutionize the way racquet sports players (platform tennis, padel, and pickleball) train with its AI-enabled sports training machine. Unlike traditional tennis ball machines that simply launch balls at varying speeds and heights, Volley’s trainer robot leverages AI...
Employee-focused mental health company Journey is acquiring Felt, a startup formerly known as Mine’d that specializes in matching individuals with therapists using artificial intelligence. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Journey, which offers a mental health employee assistance program used by companies...
The European Parliament voted Wednesday to adopt the AI Act, securing the bloc pole-position in setting rules for a broad sweep of artificial intelligence-powered software — or what regional lawmakers have dubbed “the world’s first comprehensive AI law”. MEPs overwhelmingly backed the provisional agreement reached...
A global network of violent predators is hiding in plain sight, targeting children on major platforms, grooming them, and extorting them to commit horrific acts of abuse....
Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off since 2022. Some who don’t fit the young coder archetype say being more experienced can feel like a disadvantage....
Simulations are an essential step in physical product engineering. They enable engineers to create prototypes and understand how they might perform in the real world, accounting for factors like aerodynamic drag, air and water flows and pressure and temperature distributions. But today’s engineering simulators tend...
The young automotive company raised $5.4 million and added a Tesla co-founder to its board. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....