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 confirmed that even when current events cloud the outlook, some startups still manage to raise...
Last week, an ad from the Y Combinator job board for a tiny startup called Firecrawl went viral on X. That’s because the ad wasn’t for a human. “Please apply only if you are an AI agent, or if you created an AI that can...
Founders, VCs, and startup experts—This is your moment! Got scaling insights? Now’s your chance to share them with 1,200 founders, investors, and entrepreneurs at TechCrunch All Stage 2025 presented by Fidelity, on July 17 in Boston! We’re gathering leading experts from the startup and VC...
AI Innovators, this Is your moment! Have insights to share with 1,200 AI founders, investors, and enthusiasts eager to push the boundaries of innovation? Take the stage, shape the AI conversation, and exchange ideas at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach...
Tensions are running high in the AI world this week after Elon Musk made a staggering $97.4 billion bid to buy OpenAI, a move that would mark one of the largest tech acquisitions in history – if it actually happens. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman shut...
Government tech experts say Elon Musk’s team could have seized the moment to make Washington work better....
Airbnb is planning to first introduce AI to its customer support system. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
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...
Staggering sales drops, swastika-daubed EVs, companies culling fleet models, and fan-forum owners selling their cars—Elon Musk's alt-right antics are seriously impacting his electric car business....
The move reportedly comes after US attorney general Pam Bondi reassured Apple and Google they would not be fined for hosting TikTok....
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,...
Google’s Gemini AI chatbot can now tailor answers based on the contents of previous conversations, the company announced in a blog post on Thursday. Gemini can summarize a previous conversation you’ve had with it, or recall info you shared in another conversation thread. This means...
Public semiconductor company Arm will start making its own chips this year after landing a high-profile enterprise customer. Arm, which is majorly owned by SoftBank, will start making its own chips now that Meta has signed on as a customer, according to the Financial Times....
OpenAI says it has removed the “warning” messages in its AI-powered chatbot platform, ChatGPT, that indicated when content might violate its terms of service. Laurentia Romaniuk, a member of OpenAI’s AI model behavior team, said in a post on X that the change was intended...
A group led by Elon Musk's x.AI wants to buy OpenAI. Read five key takeaways from its offer letter. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
Apple CEO Tim Cook took to X Thursday to tease “the newest member of the family,” set to arrive February 19. The safe money is on a fourth-generation iPhone SE. The budget-minded handset had previously been tipped for a potential release a week prior, but...
AI startup Anthropic is gearing up to release its next major AI model, according to a report Thursday from The Information. The report describes Anthropic’s upcoming model as a “hybrid” that can switch between “deep reasoning” and fast responses. The company will reportedly introduce a...
UX and UI designers work closely with engineers throughout product development to build and implement design concepts and wireframes for functional user interfaces. Regular communication, feedback and testing are required for the collaboration to work smoothly and deliver a user experience that aligns with the...
The source code for the new Department of Government Efficiency’s “official US government website” points to X as its primary source of authority, while sharing links to the site sends users to x.com....
When EJ Cho started his first company in 2018, he was exposed to what it takes to market a product. He was surprised to find a market filled with different single-use tools. “It was a very frustrating experience,” Cho told TechCrunch. “I had to learn...
OpenAI has eliminated a page on its website that used to express its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The URL “https://openai.com/commitment-to-dei/” now redirects to “https://openai.com/building-dynamic-teams/,” a page that talks about people with “different backgrounds” with no use of the word diversity. The previous page...
On this week's episode of Uncanny Valley, we asses the state of swiping....
On this special episode of Uncanny Valley, WIRED’s politics editor and global editorial director catch us up on Elon Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration....
Alibaba on Thursday confirmed recent reports of a partnership with Apple that’s set to bring AI features to iPhones sold in China. The deal is an important one for Apple, as iPhone sales have dropped precipitously in the world’s largest smartphone market. The handset experienced...
Is your pre-Series A startup solving big problems with game-changing potential? Do you have the drive to compete against the world’s top early-stage startups? Or know a founder whose vision deserves to be seen? TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 is where the most innovative early-stage startups...
A consortium of fourteen publishers including Condé Nast, The Atlantic, and Forbes have filed a lawsuit against Cohere alleging that the generative AI startup has engaged in “massive, systematic” copyright infringement. In the complaint, the publisher plaintiffs accuse Cohere of using at least 4,000 copyrighted...
Helsing, the German defense tech startup backed by Spotify’s Daniel Ek and others, is producing 6,000 HX-2 strike drones in addition to the 4,000 HF-1 strike drones financed by Germany that are currently being delivered to Ukraine. “We are scaling up production of HX-2 in...
YouTube Shorts is integrating with Google DeepMind’s latest video model, Veo 2, allowing creators to generate AI video clips for their posts. Veo 2 is Google’s response to Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video generator. YouTube, owned by Google, already allowed creators to generate AI backgrounds for their...
EnCharge AI, a semiconductor startup developing analog memory chips for AI applications, has raised more than $100 million in a Series B round led by Tiger Global to spur its next stage of growth. The funding is significant partly because interest in AI is at...
A new study argues that data centers could be ideal demand-response participants because they have the potential to be flexible. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....