Only Products and Other Stuff

The design brief was simple: each grind and dry cycle had to be completed before breakfast. Here's how Mill made it happen. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The product, which ZeroMark calls a “fire control system,” has two components: a small computer that has sensors, like lidar and electro-optical, and a motorized buttstock. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Eric Lefkofsky knows the public listing rodeo well and is about to enter it for a fourth time. The serial entrepreneur, whose net worth is estimated at nearly $4 billion, has already taken three businesses he’s founded public.  Today he’s the founder of Tempus, a genomic testing and data analysis company preparing to IPO. But […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TechCrunch Disrupt showcases cutting-edge technology and innovation, and this year’s edition will not disappoint. Among thousands of insightful breakout session submissions for this year’s Audience Choice program, five breakout sessions have soared to the top and were selected by thousands of people from around the globe to speak at this year’s event. Without further ado, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Check Point is the latest security vendor to fix a vulnerability in its technology, which it sells to companies to protect their networks. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

With the release of iOS 18 later this year, Apple may again borrow ideas third-party apps. This time it's Arc that could be among those affected. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ifeel is being offered as part of an employer’s or insurance provider’s healthcare coverage. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

AI models are always surprising us, not just in what they can do, but what they can’t, and why. An interesting new behavior is both superficial and revealing about these systems: they pick random numbers as if they’re human beings. But first, what does that even mean? Can’t people pick a number randomly? And how […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Infra.Market, an Indian startup that helps construction and real estate firms procure materials, has raised $50M from MARS Unicorn Fund. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Small operations can lose customers by not offering financing, something the Berlin-based startup wants to change. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ledger, a French startup mostly known for its secure crypto hardware wallets, has started shipping new wallets nearly 18 months after announcing the latest Ledger Stax devices. The updated wallet features an E-Ink display and has been designed in partnership with Tony Fadell, one of the main designers behind the iPod. E-Ink technology is generally […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

AniML, the French startup behind a new 3D capture app called Doly, wants to create the PhotoRoom of product videos, sort of. If you’re selling sneakers on an online marketplace or need to create Instagram ads for your direct-to-consumer wares, Doly helps you generate 3D models with your phone and turn them into professional-looking product […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has raised $6 billion in a new funding round, it said today, in one of the largest deals in the red-hot nascent space, as he shores up capital to aggressively compete with rivals including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Prince Alwaleed […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Indian startup Zypp Electric plans to use fresh investment from Japanese oil and energy conglomerate ENEOS to take its EV rental service into Southeast Asia early next year, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The company aims to be in 15 markets over the next two years. Of those 15 markets, Zypp Electric plans to launch its […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Last month, one of the Bay Area’s better-known early-stage venture capital firms, Uncork Capital, marked its 20th anniversary with a party in a renovated church in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, where 420 guests showed up to help the firm to celebrate, trade tips, and share war stories. There’s no question the venture scene has changed […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Miriam Vogel, profiled as part of TechCrunch's Women in AI series, is the CEO of the nonprofit responsible AI advocacy organization EqualAI. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google has been taking heat for some of the inaccurate, funny, and downright weird answers that it’s been providing via AI Overviews in search. AI Overviews are the AI-generated search results that Google started rolling out more broadly earlier this month, with mixed results — apparently, a user looking for help in getting cheese to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

When it comes to the world of venture-backed startups, some issues are universal, and some are very dependent on where the startups and its backers are located. It’s something we talked about this week in London, when TechCrunch took its StrictlyVC series of more intimate, more investor-focused events on the road. Sitting down with Saul […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. OpenAI announced this week that it’s removing Sky, one of the voices used by its new GPT-4o model, after users found it sounded eerily similar to Scarlett Johansson’s AI character […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Sarah Myers West, profiled as part of TechCrunch's Women in AI series, is managing director at the AI Now institute. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Evan, a high school sophomore from Houston, was stuck on a calculus problem. He pulled up Answer AI on his iPhone, snapped a photo of the problem from his Advanced Placement math textbook, and ran it through the homework app. Within a few seconds, Answer AI had generated an answer alongside a step-by-step process of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Well, folks, it looks like Techstars’ drama just got a new plot twist. CEO Maëlle Gavet is making her exit, leaving co-founder David Cohen to swoop […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Expressable is a platform that offers one-on-one virtual sessions with speech language pathologists. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Spotify is notifying customers who purchased its Car Thing product that the devices will stop working after December 9, 2024. The company discontinued the device back in July 2022, but had said at the time that it would still support the units that had already been sold. The company’s plans for the device have changed, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk’s X is preparing to make “likes” private on the social network, in a change that could potentially confuse users over the difference between something they’ve favorited and something they’ve bookmarked. According to new posts by company employees, the decision to hide “likes” is meant to incentivize engagement, by allowing people to favorite content […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The perception in Silicon Valley is that every investor would love to be in business with Peter Thiel. But the venture capital fundraising environment has become so difficult, that even Valar Ventures, one of the VC firms he helped found, has raised a much smaller fund this year compared to previous ones.  Thiel set up […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Microsoft announced on Tuesday during its annual Build conference that it’s bringing “Windows Volumetric Apps” to Meta Quest headsets. The partnership will allow Microsoft to bring Windows 365 and local PC connectivity to Quest headsets, enabling developers to extend their apps into the 3D space. “We’re deepening our partnership with Meta to make Windows a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Longtime New York-based seed investor, Contour Venture Partners, is making progress on its latest flagship fund after lowering its target. The firm closed on $42 million, raised from 64 backers, for Contour Venture Partners Fund V, according to an SEC filing from May 17. The firm is targeting $70 million for its fifth flagship fund […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta's Oversight Board has now extended its scope to include the company's newest platform, Instagram Threads, and has begun hearing cases from Threads. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Founder-market fit is one of the most crucial factors in a startup’s success, and operators (someone involved in the day-to-day operations of a startup) turned founders have an almost unfair advantage in finding that fit. Data shows that a lack of expertise and business acumen in founders contributes to failed VC investments. The same principle applies […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A Singapore High Court has effectively approved Pine Labs' request to shift its operations to India. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ahead of the AI safety summit kicking off in Seoul, South Korea later this week, its co-host the United Kingdom is expanding its own efforts in the field. The AI Safety Institute – a U.K. body set up in November 2023 with the ambitious goal of assessing and addressing risks in AI platforms – said […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Companies are always looking for an edge, and searching for ways to encourage their employees to innovate. One way to do that is by running an internal hackathon around a theme and having employees attack a problem together. It not only brings in new ideas and new ways to solve problems for the company and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Blue Origin has successfully completed its NS-25 mission, resuming crewed flights for the first time in nearly two years. The mission brought six tourist crew members to the edge of space, including artist and former Air Force Captain Ed Dwight. In 1961, Dwight was selected by President John F. Kennedy to be the country’s first […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the top entertainment and sports talent agencies, is hoping to be at the forefront of AI protection services for celebrities in Hollywood. With many stars having their digital likeness used without permission, CAA has built a virtual media storage system for A-list talent — actors, athletes, comedians, directors, musicians, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review. This week had two major events from OpenAI and Google. OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new model, GPT-4o, which has voice and vision capabilities that can turn ChatGPT into a virtual assistant seemingly aspiring to be “Her.” Hot off OpenAI’s tail, Google’s I/O conference […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the App Store’s charts. But the increased attention also brought the threat of legal action, as Adobe targeted Delta for sporting a logo that looked too […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature for Instagram called “Peek” that would allow users to post authentic pictures that can only be viewed once. While Snapchat popularized the idea of ephemeral […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th cohort of biotech startups. We took special note of a few, which were making some major, bordering on ludicrous, claims that could pay off in a big way. Biotech has been creeping out in recent years to touch adjacent industries, as companies find how much […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI has reached a deal with Reddit to use the social news site’s data for training AI models. In a blog post on OpenAI’s press relations site, the company said that the Reddit partnership will provide it access to “real-time, structured and unique content” — e.g. posts and replies — from Reddit, allowing its tools […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

For Mark Zuckerberg’s fortieth birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot. Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted recreation of his childhood bedroom. It’s appropriately childish – a lava lamp, a participation trophy, a white stuffed dog – yet the surroundings foreshadow the culture-shifting, technological force Zuckerberg would […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Back in February, Google paused its AI-powered chatbot Gemini’s ability to generate images of people after users complained of historical inaccuracies. Told to depict “a Roman legion,” for example, Gemini would show an anachronistically diverse group of soldiers, while rendering “Zulu warriors” as uniformly Black. Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized, and Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of Google’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It ran 110 minutes, but Google managed to reference AI a whopping 121 times during Google I/O 2024 (by its own count). CEO Sundar Pichai referenced the figure to wrap up the presentation, cheekily stating that the company was doing the “hard work” of counting for us. No surprise, of course, that the topic took […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple devoted a full event to iPad last Tuesday, roughly a month out from WWDC. From the invite artwork to the polarizing ad spot, Apple was clear — the event was all about iPads. Most of the rumors proved true: Apple introduced a new iPad Pro (with a new M4 chip), iPad Air, the Pencil […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple and Google announced on Monday that iPhone and Android users will start seeing alerts when it’s possible that an unknown Bluetooth device is being used to track them. The two companies have developed an industry standard called “Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers.” Starting Monday, Apple is introducing the capability in iOS 17.5 and Google is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Website builder Squarespace is going private in an all-cash deal that values the company on an equity basis at $6.6 billion, or a $6.9 billion enterprise valuation. The acquiring company is U.K.-based private equity firm Permira. Founded in 2004 by CEO Anthony Casalena, Squarespace is best known for its no-code platform designed to help SMEs and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Airtel, India's second-largest telco, is partnering with Google Cloud to develop and deliver cloud and GenAI solutions to Indian businesses. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Alora Baby is not just aiming to manufacture baby cribs in an environmentally friendly way but is attempting to overhaul the whole lifecycle of a product © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Bumble founder and executive chair Whitney Wolfe Herd raised eyebrows this week with her comments about how AI might change the dating experience. During an onstage interview, Bloomberg’s Emily Chang brought up bots posing as real people, or real people falling in love with bots, as examples of how AI might make online dating worse. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The U.K. Safety Institute, the U.K.’s recently established AI safety body, has released a toolset designed to “strengthen AI safety” by making it easier for industry, research organizations and academia to develop AI evaluations.  Called Inspect, the toolset — which is available under an open source license, specifically an MIT License — aims to assess certain […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Venture capital has been hit hard by souring macroeconomic conditions over the past few years and it’s not yet clear how the market downturn affected VC fund performance. But recent data from the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System (SFERS) give us something to chew on. SFERS’s venture portfolio recorded a -.9% internal rate of return […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

CoreWeave has formally opened an office in London that will serve as its European headquarters and home to two new data centers. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Series C funding, which brings its total raise to around $95 million, will go toward mass production of the startup's inaugural products © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A dust-up between Evolve Bank & Trust, Mercury and Synapse has led TabaPay to abandon its acquisition plans of troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Twitter for Android client was "a demo app that Google had created and gave to us," says Particle co-founder and ex-Twitter employee Sara Beykpour. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

With venture totals slipping year-over-year in key markets like the United States, and concern that venture firms themselves are struggling to raise more capital, founders might be worried. After all, if private-market investment doesn’t perk up in the coming quarters, we could be on track for yet another year of declines in total startup investment […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

With U.S. regulators continuing to ramp up scrutiny, crypto startups and founders are looking to Hong Kong to support their growth. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

As DocuSign reportedly explores a sale to private equity, it’s acquiring a company itself. On Monday, DocuSign announced that it’s buying Lexion, a contract workflow automation startup, for $165 million. The purchase comes as DocuSign makes increasing investments in the contract management space, most recently launching DocuSign IAM, a service aimed at connecting different components of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

So far, the biggest surprise about May 7’s “Let Loose” event is that it’s happening at all. We’re just over a month out from Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference, and yet the company determined there was enough news to warrant a stand-alone event, which kicks off tomorrow at 7 a.m. PT/10 a.m. ET. iPads (including […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Lee, a specialist in early-stage investing, explains how Sequioa approaches identifying product-market fit for its startups through three archetypes. © 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. Before I jump into the all the news — and boy there was a lot! — I have an important update for all of you lovely readers. TechCrunch Mobility is moving to Thursdays! It will be the same […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The appetite for alternative clouds has never been bigger. Case in point: CoreWeave, the GPU infrastructure provider that began life as a cryptocurrency mining operation, this week raised $1.1 billion in new funding from investors including Coatue, Fidelity and Altimeter Capital. The round brings its valuation to $19 billion post-money, and its total raised to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

I finally received the rabbit r1 (the company insists on this lowercase styling) I’ve been writing about since its debut at CES in January. And I was able to tell within about 30 seconds of turning it on that it was shipped a couple months too soon — but honestly…that’s fine? It’s weird, relatively cheap, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

While the venture world is abuzz over generative AI, Dayna Grayson, a longtime venture capitalist who five years ago co-founded her own firm, Construct Capital, has been focused on comparatively boring software that can transform industrial sectors. Her mission doesn’t exclude AI, but it also doesn’t depend on it. Construct recently led a seed-stage round, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The new job cuts come over a year after the company cut about 4% of its headcount in February last year. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It's not building any startup, but building a defensible AI startup presents its own set of unique challenges. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google told TechCrunch that Flutter will have new updates to share at I/O this year. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.