Only Products and Other Stuff

Last year’s techwide reckoning continues. The tech industry has seen more than 240,000 jobs lost in 2023, a total that’s already 50% higher than last year and growing. Earlier this year, mass workforce reductions were driven by the biggest names in tech like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Meta and Zoom. Startups across many sectors also […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Tesla Cybertruck, the first of which will be delivered Thursday four years after its debut, is loved and loathed. For fans, it’s a symbol for what Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk stand for: creativity, irreverence, rebellion. Others see it as an act of hubris. It could be both. Either way, the stakes are […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

We are all talking about the business gains from using large language models, but there are lot of known issues with these models and finding ways to constrain the answers that a model could give is one way to apply some control to these powerful technologies. Today, at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, AWS CEO […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk is hyping the imminent release of his ChatGPT competitor Grok, yet another example of how his entire personality is just itself a biological LLM made by ingesting all of Reddit and 4chan. Grok already seems patterned in many ways off of the worst of Elon’s indulgences, with the sense of humor of a […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Veev, a real estate developer turned tech-enabled homebuilder, is on the verge of shutting down after reaching unicorn status last year, according to multiple reports. Calcalist reported on Sunday that the company – which raised $600 million in total, $400 million of which was secured in March of 2022 – has to shut down after […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A lot of the buzz these days in artificial intelligence is around generative AI and how AI is being used to accelerate software and products for consumers. Today, a AI startup called PhysicsX, co-founded by two theoretical physicists — including a Formula One engineering superstar — is emerging from stealth with a very specific focus […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Anil Goel, the CTO of Byju’s, is leaving the edtech giant, he informed some colleagues amid a broader restructuring at the Bengaluru-headquartered startup as it looks to pare down costs and unify many of its businesses. Jiny Thattil is replacing Goel as the CTO, according to an internal communication. Goel, a former Amazon executive, was […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

EMotorad, an Indian startup manufacturing electric bikes, raised $20 million in a Series B round as it aims to disrupt China’s market domination and expand its presence in global markets. The three-year-old startup has raised more than $22.5 million in total funding, with Singapore’s Panthera Growth Partners leading the latest round, along with participation from […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

David Blumberg, founder and managing partner at Blumberg Ventures, explains how early-stage startups can look to their investors for help with solving problems, scaling, hiring, and strategic planning. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Now that the OpenAI leadership saga has died down, startup founders building with AI can get back to work building the future. If that’s you, TechCrunch+ has a pile of notes, opinion pieces and forward-looking stories with your name on them. Sure, TechCrunch+ is a lot more than AI-related coverage, but we are also going […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular recap of the past few days in tech. The headlines have been dominated — nay, overwhelmed — by the drama unfolding at AI startup OpenAI, but plenty else happened in the half-week leading up to Thanksgiving. So much for a sleepy pre-holiday! In this edition […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-founded company developing implantable chips that can read brain waves, has raised an additional $43 million in venture capital, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing published this week shows the company increased its previous tranche, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, from $280 million to $323 million in early […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

On a weekday afternoon at Red Rock Coffee, the cafe known for spotting venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, one is likely to overhear a few conversations in Mandarin. Since China reopened its border this spring after three years of COVID-19 restrictions, managers of U.S. funds in the country have been flocking to the Bay Area. […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Raphael Ouzan Contributor Share on X Raphael Ouzan is the founder and CEO of A.Team, a future-of-work company pioneering the world’s first AI-enabled team formation platform. More posts by this contributor A Developer’s Guide To The Wild West Of App Discovery The AI skills gap is real. A recent study from Randstad, the recruitment company, […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Berkshire Hathaway sold its shares in the Paytm-parent firm One97 Communications Friday, booking a loss of about 40% on the investment it made more than five years ago. The Warren Buffett firm invested about $260 million in Paytm in 2018, acquiring a 3% stake in the financial services startup at a valuation of about $10 […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Saviu Ventures, a VC firm targeting startups in Francophone Africa, has made an initial close of €12 million for its second fund with the backing of private investors, including French and Kenyan family offices. The VC firm aims to close the fund at between €30 million and €50 million to primarily invest in startups within […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Teenage Engineering’s new $300 groovebox has no business being this cute. That’s the whole point. The EP–133 K.O.II (we’ll just call it Knock Out II) is a combination drum machine, synthesizer and sampler. It’s a supersized upgrade to Teenage Engineer’s pint-sized PO-33 K.O, which offers many of the same features for a fraction of the price. […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

If you’re looking for a gift for someone but don’t want to break the bank, there are a number of great gadgets you can choose from. This list includes a selection of budget-friendly gift ideas, ranging from Bluetooth trackers and wireless earbuds, to smart home accessories. I personally use most of the items on this […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

You’ve just landed in Dayton, Ohio after a long, overnight journey from SFO. While you were waiting in Denver on a layover, you checked your phone to see the news: After almost a week of confusion and uncertainty, Sam Altman has been reinstated as CEO of OpenAI. The good news is that the Slack workspace […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Founders of a new community-powered product creation platform, Off/Script, are making a huge bet on AI-designed merchandise. Created by Jonathan Brun and Justine Massicotte, the company today announced the official launch of its mobile app, allowing anyone to conceptualize, share, and monetize product mock-ups for a chance to make the concept a reality. Creators can […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Startups are made or broken by product-market fit. Immediately before a funding round, founders know they need to show that they are growing rapidly. Throwing a bunch of money at sales and marketing can make the graph curl up and to the right, but does that represent real product-market fit? The team at VC fund […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Microsoft has hired OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to head up a “new advanced AI research team,” the software conglomerate’s chief Satya Nadella said Monday, capping three days of intense discussions following the unexpected decision by OpenAI’s board to dismiss Altman. Many OpenAI members, including the co-founder Brockman, left the firm in protest […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Capping off a tumultuous weekend at OpenAI that culminated in investors — and a contingent of employees — attempting to convince the company’s board to hire back former Y Combinator president Sam Altman after firing him on Friday, Altman won’t be returning as CEO, according to a report in The Information. Citing an internal memo […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Kyle Vogt, the serial entrepreneur who co-founded and led Cruise from a startup in a garage through its acquisition and ownership by General Motors, has resigned, according to an email sent to employees Sunday evening. In another email, also viewed by TechCrunch, GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra announced that Mo Elshenawy, who is executive […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

On Friday, the board of OpenAI, the AI startup behind ChatGPT and other viral AI-powered hits, did something unexpected but seemingly well within its right: removed the company’s CEO, Sam Altman. But judging by how the situation’s unfolded, it seems that OpenAI’s investors and partners — and many of its employees — were more comfortable […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In a dramatic turn of events late Friday, ex-Y Combinator president Sam Altman was fired as CEO of AI startup OpenAI, the company behind viral AI hits like ChatGPT, GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, by OpenAI’s board of directors. Then, the company’s longtime president and co-founder, Greg Brockman, resigned — as did three senior OpenAI researchers. […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen made it clear that while he was keen on buying Convoy because of the "incredible tech stack" it built, he wasn't buying its strategy. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It's notable that interest rates have risen so much that revenue from cash holdings have grown large enough that their positive earnings impact is broadening. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Art, psychology, theology and philosophy have all struggled with that question for as long as we’ve had conscious thought. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

At its annual Ignite conference, Microsoft today announced that it plans to bring together its various planning tools like Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project for the web into what it calls a “unified experience” that will first be available in Microsoft Teams in the spring of 2024, with the web version launching […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Keegan Caldwell Contributor Share on X Keegan Caldwell is the global managing partner and founder at Caldwell, a premier law firm specializing in high-growth technology and life sciences companies. Cars, phones, watches. It’s easy to put a value on physical objects when we can see their differences and compare their quality. But what about intangible assets […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Amazon’s Buy with Prime, a service that lets Prime members shop directly from third-party merchants and get Prime benefits like free shipping and returns, launched today new features, including the ability to track Buy with Prime orders through Amazon’s website and mobile app as well as access to 24/7 live chats with customer service. Amazon […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Uber is introducing new features geared toward addressing the issues of unfair deactivations that ride-hail and delivery drivers often face. Starting Monday across the U.S., Uber will roll out a technology that identifies riders or Uber Eats customers who consistently give bad ratings or feedback with the intent of getting a refund. Allegations by those […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

If you’re looking for a gift for someone but don’t want to break the bank, there are a number of great gadgets you can choose from. This list includes a selection of budget-friendly gift ideas, ranging from Bluetooth trackers and wireless earbuds, to smart home accessories. I personally use most of the items on this […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The World Economic Forum states that Africa has an average annual demand for 2.4 million cars and 300,000 commercial vehicles. This demand is increasing because of a continent-wide increase in disposable income, strong middle-class growth and rapid urbanization. But while most cars meeting this demand are used, car ownership in Africa is less than 45 […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

For years, any time someone asked what brand of headphones they should buy for a flight, the answer was a simple one syllable: Bose. The company’s QuietComfort line had long been synonymous with drowning out plane noise on long flights. But over the last several years, the question has become an increasingly difficult one, as […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The sheer number of non-economic mistakes made by VCs due to their human nature is seriously underestimated. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome back to The Interchange, where we take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. If you want to receive The Interchange directly in your inbox every Sunday, head here to sign up! Due to the U.S. holiday, this is an abbreviated edition. Buy now, pay later comeback Both Klarna and Affirm — […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

[A version of this Q&A first appeared in TechCrunch’s weekly robotics newsletter, Actuator. Subscribe here.] Over the next few weeks, TechCrunch will be running a series of Q&As with some of the top minds in robotics. I’ve spoken with Matthew Johnson-Roberson several times since he was named the director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hey, folks, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering the past week (or so) in tech industry happenings. This week marked OpenAI’s first-ever dev conference, where the Microsoft-backed AI startup announced a host of new products. But that was far from the only item of note. In this edition of WiR, we […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Polestar showcased this week its vision for the future: new tech and next-generation vehicles that the Swedish EV company owned by China’s Geely Holdings hopes will spark sales and spur an era of growth. The inaugural Polestar Day event in Los Angeles — designed to sell investors and journalists on its potential for a profitable […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It’s not enough to just know your business model and potential TAM. You also have to consider your personal goals. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It’s an open secret that the data sets used to train AI models are deeply flawed. Image corpora tends to be U.S.- and Western-centric, partly because Western images dominated the internet when the data sets were compiled. And as most recently highlighted by a study out of the Allen Institute for AI, the data used […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Snap is releasing a new version of its AR development tool, called the Lens Studio 5.0 Beta, to developers starting today. The new AR development tool is designed to support more advanced AR development with increased productivity and the addition of new AI capabilities, including one powered by OpenAI. Snap made the announcement at its […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

There seems to be quite a bit of movement in the pre-seed stage, so is that why we now seeing some VC firms closing new funds? © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Other researchers had discovered numerous problems with the scientific paper describing the material. Now, the scientific journal Nature has retracted it. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Before being known as the bank that collapsed, Silicon Valley Blank made a name for itself as a bank that helps support underrepresented founders. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI took the leash (and the “Chat”) off ChatGPT today with the announcement of GPTs, a way for anyone to build their own version of the popular conversational AI system. Not only can you make your own GPT for fun or productivity, but you’ll soon be able to publish it on a marketplace they call […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Vegan cheese isn’t usually anything to write home about, in terms of taste and texture. Dreamfarm, a startup based in Parma, in the Food Valley of Italy, is hoping to change that. It’s cooked up a plant-based mozzarella using a base of fermented almonds, and just a handful of other ingredients, which it reckons does […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In the oversubscribed IPO of Mamaearth, Peak XV Partners has found its fourth 10x or greater return within the six months since separating from the Sequoia family. The venture fund is sitting on an 10x return on its investment in Mamaearth, according to an analysis of its IPO documents by TechCrunch. Mamaearth is Peak XV’s […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Kai-Fu Lee, the computer scientist known in the West for his bestseller AI Superpowers and in China for his bets on artificial intelligence unicorns, has a new venture — and a great ambition. In late March, Lee launched a company called 01.AI with the vision to develop a homegrown large language model for the Chinese market. […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome back to The Interchange, where we take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. If you want to receive The Interchange directly in your inbox every Sunday, head here to sign up! Last week, we chronicled some big rounds in the fintech space, Intuit’s decision to shutter Mint and what that means […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering the past week in happenings around the tech sphere. Winter’s finally arrived, judging by the NYC weather outside my window — and a winter of a sort might be descending on the tech industry, too, as it unfortunately turns out. This edition of […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Android’s in-built security engine Google Play Protect has a new feature that conducts a real-time analysis of an Android app’s code and blocks it from installing the app if it’s considered potentially harmful. Google announced in October the new real-time app scanning feature built into Google Play Protect that the company says can help catch […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Electric mobility startup Revel is officially shutting down its shared moped business in New York City and San Francisco, according to a company-wide email that CEO and co-founder Frank Reig sent Friday. TechCrunch has viewed the email. San Francisco and New York were Revel’s last two moped sharing markets. The company will now focus solely […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

There’s been a bit of FUD around the decision to use a form of AI to resurrect John Lennon’s voice in what Paul McCartney called “the last Beatles record.” What they’ve done is far from the sketchy AI imitations of artists we see cluttering Soundcloud today, and has much more in common with a more […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ford is buying and burying Auto Motive Power, or “AMP” for short. The secretive energy management startup once claimed to power “most of the world’s top electric OEMs,” though as far as we can tell it never disclosed its customers publicly. Following the deal, Los Angeles-based AMP will cease to exist. Instead, Ford will scoop […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

HubSpot, the Boston-based marketing software maker and CRM platform, announced today it’s acquiring the B2B data provider Clearbit, to enhance its platform with third-party company data spanning millions of businesses. The deal also brings Clearbit’s over 400,0000 users and 1500-plus business customers to HubSpot, and will eventually see the two platforms combine in order to […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.