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Pour one out for CodeWhisperer, Amazon’s AI-powered assistive coding tool. As of today, it’s kaput — sort of. CodeWhisperer is now Q Developer, a part of Amazon’s Q family of business-oriented generative AI chatbots that also extends to the newly-announced Q Business. Available through AWS, Q Developer helps with some of the tasks developers do […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Financial losses, founder revolts, public firings and overflowing office sewage mark the storied institution’s annus horribilis. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

EV startup Fisker Inc. is laying off more employees to “preserve cash,” one week after warning investors it would have to make cuts to stave off impending bankruptcy, according to an internal email viewed by TechCrunch. Founder and CEO Henrik Fisker told employees Monday morning in the email that the company is “continuing to evaluate […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI, maker of the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, has netted another news licensing deal in Europe, adding London’s Financial Times to a growing list of publishers it’s paying for content access. As with earlier OpenAI’s publisher licensing deals, financial terms of the arrangement are not being made public. The latest deal looks a touch cozier […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Kubik, a plastic upcycling startup, has raised a $1.9 million seed extension, months after announcing initial equity investment. The startup’s latest investment is from African Renaissance Partners, an East African venture capital firm; Endgame Capital, an investor with a bias for technologies around climate change; and King Philanthropies, a climate and extreme poverty investor. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI is facing another privacy complaint in the European Union. This one, which has been filed by privacy rights nonprofit noyb on behalf of an individual complainant, targets the inability of its AI chatbot ChatGPT to correct misinformation it generates about individuals. The tendency of GenAI tools to produce information that’s plain wrong has been […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas announcement. As I write this, the sub-40 second video is steadily approaching five million views. A day prior, the company tugged at the community’s heart strings when it announced that the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Last week, the UK announced its largest ever military support package for Ukraine. The bill takes the U.K.’s total support for this financial year to £3 billion — not quite the $50 billion the US pledged recently, but still substantial. But while most of those funds will be spent on very traditional military hardware, a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

President Joe Biden signed a bill on Wednesday that could ban TikTok – for real this time. After so many false starts and stops, some creator economy founders and their clients are rolling their eyes. They’ve been through this before. “I think two years ago, this would have been devastating,” Karat Financial co-founder and co-CEO […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

“When an investor passes on you, they will not tell you the real reason,” said Tom Blomfield, group partner at Y Combinator. “At seed stage, frankly, no one knows what’s going to fucking happen. The future is so uncertain. All they’re judging is the perceived quality of the founder. When they pass, what they’re thinking […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Asheem Chandna says he was so impressed with founder Bipul Sinha's grit and tech, he led Rubrik's $40 million Series B in 2015. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

EyeEm, the Berlin-based photo-sharing community that exited last year to Spanish company Freepik, after going bankrupt, is now licensing its users’ photos to train AI models. Earlier this month, the company informed users via email that it was adding a new clause to its Terms & Conditions that would grant it the rights to upload […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Ticktock, TikTok: It’s been a wild week for TikTok. Even as the company starts testing its Twitter competitor in certain markets and launches its luxury secondhand shop […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

President Joe Biden signed the bill this week that could ban TikTok from the U.S. if its parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell the platform. According to young political content creators, the ban could decimate Gen Z’s access to political news and information. “An unfortunately large amount of 18- to 24-year-olds find out information about local […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Stripe continues to hold the title of being the biggest financial technology business still in private hands, with a current valuation of about $65 billion and a whopping $1 trillion in total processed payment volume last year alone. But fintech is fragmented and a fast-moving target, and with competitors chipping away at its place, Stripe is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Senate passed a bill, included with the foreign aid package, that will ban TikTok if its owner, ByteDance, doesn’t sell it within a year. Senators passed the bill 79-18 Tuesday after the House passed it with overwhelming majority over the weekend. President Joe Biden will have to sign the bill to make it law, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Mercedes-Benz G-Class — the rugged off-road powerhouse that launched in 1979 and has since become a brutalist status symbol — has gone electric. This is, in many ways, Mercedes’ most prestigious car, a model more prized for its presence and exclusivity than its power and capability. Going electric, then, is more than an historic […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Tesla’s been undergoing some major changes, and now we have a sense of why: the company says it is upending its product roadmap because of “pressure” on EV sales. The new and accelerated plan now includes “more affordable models” that the company claims will be launched next year. Or if Tesla CEO Elon Musk is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Tesla profits fell 55% to $1.13 billion in the first quarter from the same year-ago period as a protracted EV price-cutting strategy and “several unforeseen challenges” cut into the automaker’s bottom line. Tesla reported revenue of $21.3 billion in the first quarter, a 9% drop from the first quarter of 2023. Analysts polled by Yahoo Finance […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Pomelo, a startup that combines international money transfer with credit, has raised $35 million in a Series A round led by Dubai venture firm Vy Capital, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Additionally, the company is announcing a $75 million expansion of its warehouse facility. Founders Fund and A* Capital also participated in the financing, along with […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Piyush Gupta, one of the operating leaders at Peak XV Partners, is leaving the firm at the end of this month to start his own fund, four people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Gupta joined Peak XV (called Sequoia India and SEA then) in 2017, leading the influential venture firm’s strategic development team. Before […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It’s not uncommon for people to screenshot dating profiles and send them to their friends and loved ones, either to get feedback or to let them know who they’re seeing that weekend. Now, Tinder users are able to share their date plans directly from the app thanks to a new feature called “Share My Date.” […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TikTok Shop, TikTok’s social commerce marketplace, is launching a secondhand luxury category in the U.K., putting it in closer competition with The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective, Depop, Poshmark, and Mercari, among others. The offering has already existed in TikTok Shop U.S. for over six months. The new category allows customers in the U.K. to purchase pre-owned […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Tesla is back in the news cycle and our crystal ball says it’s one of those long-term affairs. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Poetry Camera takes the concept of photography to new heights by generating poetry based on the visuals it encounters. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill this afternoon that would require TikTok-owner ByteDance to sell the popular social media app or see it banned in the United States. Efforts to ban TikTok go back to the Trump Administration, but the issue has been revived in recent months. The House already passed a similar […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Validating consumer demand is a crucial step for any startup, and TechCrunch Early Stage is offering a golden opportunity to learn how to do it right. Peter Gladstone, senior adviser for startups at Harvard Innovation Labs, is set to lead an engaging roundtable titled “Validating Consumer Demand: How to Make the Most of Your Expertise.” […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Kenyan B2B e-commerce company MarketForce is winding down its B2B e-commerce business that served informal merchants (mom-and-pop stores) after a turbulent two-year period that saw it scale down operations severely. The shutdown of the B2B e-commerce arm dubbed RejaReja comes months after MarketForce withdrew the service from all its markets, including Nigeria and Kenya, save […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

CRED has received the in-principle approval for payment aggregator license in a boost to the Indian fintech startup that could help it better serve its customers and launch new products and experiment with ideas faster. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, valued at $6.4 billion, received the in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India for the payment […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Artificial intelligence has been in the crosshairs of governments concerned about how it might be misused for fraud, disinformation and other malicious online activity; now in the U.K. a regulator is preparing to explore how AI is used in the fight against some of the same, specifically as it relates to content harmful to children. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hugging Face has published a new leaderboard and benchmark for evaluating generative AI models on health-related tasks and questions. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Much has been (and will continue to be) written about automation’s impact on the jobs market. In the short term, many employers have complained of an inability to fill roles and retain workers, further accelerating robotic adoption. The long-term impact these sorts of sweeping changes will have on the job market going forward remains to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Over the weekend, another social media platform exploded into the fray: AirChat. The app is like a combination of Twitter and Clubhouse. Instead of typing a post, you speak it. The app quickly transcribes what you say, and as your followers scroll through their feed, they’ll hear your voice alongside the transcription. Built by AngelList […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has published new guidance that has major implications for adtech giants like Meta and other large platforms. Since November 2023, the owner of Facebook and Instagram has forced users in the European Union to agree to being tracked and profiled for its ad targeting business, or else pay it […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Considering how heavily both primes and space startups have been investing in interplanetary capability, this announcement arguably amounts to a historic windfall. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A crypto wallet maker claimed this week that hackers may be targeting people with an iMessage “zero-day” exploit — but all signs point to an exaggerated threat, if not a downright scam. Trust Wallet’s official X (previously Twitter) account wrote that “we have credible intel regarding a high-risk zero-day exploit targeting iMessage on the Dark […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Tel Aviv-based company recently announced that it has raised an $8 million seed round led by NFX, with participation from FJ Labs and Gefen Capital. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI is expanding to Japan, with the opening of a new Tokyo office and plans for a GPT-4 model optimized specifically for the Japanese language. The ChatGPT-maker opened its first international office in London last year, followed by its inaugural European Union (EU) office in Dublin a few months later. Tokyo will represent OpenAI’s first office in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Social media startup ShareChat’s valuation has cratered below $2 billion from nearly $5 billion following a new funding round, a source familiar with the situation told TechCrunch, marking a steep decline for the nine-year-old Indian startup that boasts over 400 million users in the South Asian market. The Bengaluru-based startup, which operates a popular social […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Pula, an insurtech based in Kenya, has since 2015 been keen on enhancing the access to agricultural insurance by small-holder farmers across emerging markets, shielding them against losses from pests, diseases and/or extreme weather events like floods and droughts. So far, the insurtech has supported 15.4 million farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. It was another wild week in the world of transportation, particularly in the EV startup and automated driving industries. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The broad enthusiasm for generative AI is reflected in the investments in GenAI efforts targeting healthcare. But is healthcare-focused generative AI ready for prime time? © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Airchat is a new social media app that encourages users to “just talk.” A previous version of Airchat was released last year, but the team — led by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product exec Brian Norgard — rebuilt the app and relaunched it on iOS and Android yesterday. Currently invite-only, Airchat is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Spyware makers are reportedly working on targeting individuals with stealthy data-stealing malware using online banner ads. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Akamai Technologies is in advanced acquisition talks with Noname Security, an API cybersecurity startup, according to a people person familiar with the deal. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Tesla has slashed the price of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software subscription to $99 per month, down from $199 per month, as the electric vehicle maker aims to boost adoption of its advanced driver assistance system ahead of first-quarter earnings. The price cut comes a couple of weeks after Tesla launched a free one-month trial […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

From remote work to magnetic keyboard switches, we have your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

We are thrilled to unveil our latest innovation: ScaleUp Startups Exhibitor Program at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Tailored specifically for startups in Series A to B funding stages with $35 million or less in funding, this program offers unparalleled access to 10,000 tech leaders, invaluable networking opportunities with investors, and exclusive sessions focused on scaling strategies […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A flagship European Union digital market regulation appears to be shaking up competition in the mobile browser market. It’s been a little over a month since the Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into application and there are early signs it’s having an impact by forcing phone makers to show browser choice screens to users. On […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple News is testing a new game for iOS 17.5 called Quartiles, which requires players to organize a grid of 20 syllables into 5 four-syllable words. Spotted by Gadget Hacks, the interface for Quartiles looks a lot like the New York Times’ newest hit, Connections. Did Apple News sherlock the New York Times? Okay, Quartiles […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

If you haven’t been seeing much political content on Instagram lately, there’s a reason for that. Since March, Instagram and Threads have instituted a new default setting that limits political content you see from people you’re not following. Hundreds of creators, convened by GLAAD and Accountable Tech, have signed an open letter demanding that Instagram […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta announced on Tuesday it’s rolling out the ability for Messenger users to create shared albums in chats, send photos in high-definition, and share larger files up to 100MB in size. With these new features, Messenger is targeting people who tend to create shared albums or share HD images via services like Google Drive. Up […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

If this had been announced exactly a week prior, it would have been easy to mistake for some corporate April Foolery. Dyson, however, assures us that augmented reality vacuuming is real and coming in June — slightly belated for spring cleaning, sadly. When it launches over the summer, CleanTrace will be available for the Dyson […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Happy Eclipse Day for everyone celebrating! I’m fortunate to be living in a part of the country that’s in the path of totality, so I’ll be away from my desk for much of today, soaking it all in. Want to reach out with a tip? Email Aria at […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TikTok’s upcoming Instagram competitor app for sharing photos could be named TikTok Notes, according to screenshots posted by users. TikTok also confirmed the app was in development. Over the last few days, TikTok users have been getting pop-up notifications about a new TikTok Notes app to share photos. The notification says that the company is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The app includes cloud cover forecasts, guides that pinpoint when totality will occur at your exact location, and information about local events, parks and viewing sites in your area. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Avendus, India’s leading investment bank for venture deals, is looking to raise about $300 million for its private equity unit, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The Mumbai-based firm, backed by U.S. private equity giant KKR, has established itself as the top financial advisor in India, working with popular growth-stage startups including Zepto, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

AI playlists will initially become available to users on Android and iOS devices in the U.K. and Australia and will be iterated on in the months ahead. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Automakers reported auto sales for Q1 and, welp, turns out that pricing sure does matter if you want to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at just how many fintech companies made it into Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 cohort, how much funding slid in the first quarter, and more! To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Sunday at 7:00 a.m. PT, subscribe […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Mahbod Moghadam, the controversial, never-boring co-founder of Genius and Everipedia, as well as an angel investor, passed away last month at age 41 owing to “complications from a recurring brain tumor,” according to a post attributed to his family and published on Genius. The startup world appears to have caught wind of his passing just […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Heya, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the noteworthy happenings in tech over the past several days (and change). Famed startup accelerator Y Combinator had its Demo Days, and the venture desk took it all in with an appropriately skeptical eye. You can read their day one and day two coverage, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta has announced changes to its rules on AI-generated content and manipulated media following criticism from its Oversight Board. Starting next month, the company said, it will label a wider range of such content, including by applying a “Made with AI” badge to deepfakes. Additional contextual information may be shown when content has been manipulated […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Net neutrality’s long trip toward (then away from, then toward again, then away, and now once more toward) federal protections against broadband meddling may be entering its final chapter, either to die forever or be enshrined in law — dependin, like so many things, on the outcome of the election in November. If Biden wins […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Brave's AI assistant, called Leo, allows people to ask questions, summarize pages, create content and more. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Much like the headset for which they were designed, Apple’s Personas are very much a work in progress. The original version of the beta avatars were — is “nightmarish” too strong a word? A subsequent update has made them more palatable and truer to life, and Apple says it’s continuing to work on the 3D […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has transferred formal control of the eponymously firm’s named corporate venture fund to Ian Cathaway, OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch.  The Open AI Startup Fund, launched in 2021, was initially set up with Altman as its named controller. The arrangement could have presented a major issue to the company if he had […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Telegram Business introduces options like a customized start page, plus the ability to set business hours, use preset replies, greeting and away messages, chatbots, tags for chats, and more. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Monday show, where we dig into the weekend and take a peek at the week that is to come. We’ll talk more about Wednesday, but this is Y Combinator Demo […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Microsoft will introduce a new version of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscription service that excludes Teams, unbundling a suite following scrutiny from the European Union regulator and complaints from rival Slack. The move follows Microsoft agreeing to sell Office 365 suite sans Microsoft Teams offering in the EU and Switzerland last year. The company […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.