Only Products and Other Stuff

Bungie, the gaming company that created sci-fi hits such as Halo, Destiny, and Marathon, has laid off 220 employees, roughly a 17% reduction to its workforce, the company announced Wednesday. This is Bungie’s second round of layoffs since it was taken over by Sony in 2022. Two former Bungie employees affected by Wednesday’s layoffs say […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The U.S. Copyright Office has issued the first part of a report on how AI may affect its domain, and its first recommendation out of the gate is: we need a new law right away to define and combat AI-powered impersonation. “It has become clear that the distribution of unauthorized digital replicas poses a serious […] © 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.

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies. That growth has propelled OpenAI itself into […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Back in May, Spotify quietly started putting lyrics behind a paywall, limiting free users to lyrics for three songs per month. The move was a bid to push more users to pay for the service. After receiving numerous complaints, the company is now expanding the monthly limit. Starting today, Spotify is raising the limit on […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Here is a timeline of the events that led fledgling automaker Fisker to file for bankruptcy. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

As failed EV startup Fisker winds its way through bankruptcy, a persistent and tricky question has become a flashpoint of the proceedings: does its loan secured lender Heights Capital Management deserve to be at the front of the line to reap the proceeds of a liquidation?  Heights has maintained an unequivocal “yes.” But new information […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

So-called “unlearning” techniques are used to make a generative AI model forget specific and undesirable info it picked up from training data, like sensitive private data or copyrighted material. But current unlearning techniques are a double-edged sword: They could make a model like OpenAI’s GPT-4o or Meta’s Llama 3.1 405B much less capable of answering […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Critics have long argued that device searches at the U.S. border are unconstitutional and violate the Fourth Amendment. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Zapp is launching its urban electric two-wheeler in India in 2025 as it plans to expand globally. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The first time I saw Google’s latest commercial, I wondered, “Is it just me, or is this kind of bad?” By the fourth or fifth time I saw it, I’d stopped wondering. It starts innocuously enough, with a father talking about how much his daughter loves Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (she “might even be the world’s number […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Though MatPat retired from YouTube, he’s still pretty busy. In fact, he’s been spending a lot of time on Capitol Hill. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Samsung is still foldables’ 500-pound gorilla, but the company successes have made the category significantly less lonely in recent years. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles this week granted Nuro approval to test its third-generation R3 autonomous delivery vehicle in four Bay Area cities, giving the AV startup a positive boost after facing some setbacks and financial struggles. The approval gives Nuro the ability to test its driverless delivery vehicle in Mountain View, Palo Alto, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Max Space's expandable habitats promise to be larger, stronger, and more versatile than anything like them ever launched, not to mention cheaper and lighter by far than a solid, machined structure. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

iCloud Private Relay has not been working for some Apple users across major markets, including the U.S., Europe, India and Japan. © 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. To get Startups Weekly in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. This week we are talking about Wiz’s bold decision, VC’s public feud, legal tech’s new capital and a16z’s close call. Let’s go! Most interesting startup stories […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI may have designs to get into the search game — challenging not only upstarts like Perplexity, but Google and Bing, too. The company on Thursday unveiled SearchGPT, a search feature designed to give “timely answers” to questions, drawing from web sources. UI-wise, SearchGPT isn’t too far off from OpenAI’s chatbot platform ChatGPT. You type […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

AltStore, an alternative app store, has launched its first batch of third-party iOS apps in the European Union. The rollout comes a few months after the company launched an updated version of its app marketplace in the EU. AltStore PAL arrived as a response to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is forcing Apple to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Microsoft this afternoon previewed its answer to Google’s AI-powered search experiences: Bing generative search. Available only for a “small percentage” of users at the moment, Bing generative search, underpinned by a combo of large and small generative AI models (mum’s the word on which models, exactly), aggregates info from around the web and generates a […] © 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.

Tesla was not the first company to begin working on a humanoid form factor, but while being the first to market does carry weight in this high-tech space, we’re at the very beginning of the humanoid robot story. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Digital banking startup Mercury informed some founders that it is no longer serving customers in certain countries, including Ukraine. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Cybersecurity startup Wiz has turned down a $23 billion acquisition offer from Alphabet, Google’s parent company, according to a source familiar with discussions. Despite the offer representing a substantial premium over its last private valuation of $12 billion, Wiz’s management team with support of investors have opted to remain independent, the person said. Wiz’s CEO, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Monarch Tractor was in a tricky spot late last year as the autonomous electric tractor startup juggled growth and an uncertain fundraising environment. Now, with $133 million in new funds, CEO Praveen Penmetsa tells TechCrunch that the startup is plowing ahead into greener pastures.  The $133 million Series C funding round was co-led by agri-food […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Before we begin, a quick note: I write this newsletter on Friday and it gets delivered to you on Monday. So if I neglect to mention a world-historical event that happens over the weekend — like, say, the attempted assassination of a former President — that’s why. Now […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Eric Zhu started building Aviato, an analytical platform for private market data, in a very typical place for an entrepreneur: the bathroom in his Carmel, Indiana, high school. Now the 17-year-old’s startup is emerging from stealth with $2.3 million in venture funding. Aviato tracks funding rounds and headcount, similar to competitors like Crunchbase and PitchBook, as […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A little more than a year after launching the ROG Ally, Asus is releasing a refined version of its portable device, the ROG Ally X. This Windows-based machine starts shipping on July 22 for $800. I’ve been playing with the portable console for a few days, and there’s already a lot to like — especially […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

As a part of TechCrunch’s ongoing Women in AI series, which seeks to give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch interviewed Lakshmi Raman, the director of AI at the CIA. We talked about her path to director as well as the CIA’s use of AI, and the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

With President Joe Biden dropping out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris may become the Democrats’ new nominee. In announcing his plans, Biden offered his “full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” while Harris said her “intention is to win and earn this nomination.” That said, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google is expected to announce four Pixel devices: the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL and Pixel 9 Pro Premium, running Android 15. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

WazirX, one of India’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has “temporarily” suspended all trading activities on its platform days after losing about $230 million, nearly half of its reserves, in a security breach. The Mumbai-based exchange said in a tweet Sunday evening that the cyber attack had substantially impaired its ability to maintain the critical 1:1 collateral […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Subject to shareholder approval, Yandex N.V. is adopting the name of one of its few remaining assets, an AI cloud platform called Nebius AI which it birthed last year. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

This week saw one of the most widespread IT disruptions in recent years linked to a faulty software update from popular cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. Businesses across the world reported IT outages, including Windows “blue screen of death” errors on their computers, impacting airlines, banks, retailers, brokerage houses, media companies and railway networks. OpenAI released GPT-4o […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

There’s a man in Florida right now who wants to propose to his girlfriend while they’re on a beach vacation. He couldn’t get the engagement ring before he flew down from New England, but it didn’t seem like that big of an issue — his girlfriend’s daughter Nicole was planning to join them in Florida […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Canadian private equity firm PartnerOne paid $28.2 million for HeadSpin, a mobile app testing startup whose founder has been sentenced for fraud earlier this year, according to documents viewed by TechCrunch. The fire sale was reported by TechCrunch last week. HeadSpin’s 2023 revenue was $21 million and its Q1 2024 revenue stood at $5 million, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies. That growth has propelled OpenAI itself into […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Slope's founders both have a background in AI, so large language models power the company’s underwriting infrastructure.  © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TTT models, a new architecture, could effectively replace transformers if they scale up as their creators suggest they will. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Adtech startup InMobi is eyeing a valuation of about $10 billion in an initial public offering it is planning for next year. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Some of the largest, most damaging breaches of 2024 already account for over a billion stolen records. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple initially added a new flashlight UI in iOS 18’s third developer beta, and with iOS 18 now available in public beta, you can try one of the most underrated additions to your iPhone right now. The company had already introduced a new way to control True Tone Flashlights on iPhone 14 Pro and 15 […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

YouTube Music is introducing two new ways to boost song discovery on its platform. YouTube announced on Monday that it’s experimenting with an AI-generated conversational radio feature, and rolling out a new Shazam-like tool to help users discover the name of a song by singing, humming or playing parts of it. The new AI-generated conversational […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Mitti Labs aims to transform rice farming in India and other South Asian markets by reducing methane emissions by 50% and water consumption by 30%. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

This is a guide on how to check whether someone compromised your online accounts. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google’s parent company Alphabet might be on the verge of making its biggest acquisition ever. The Wall Street Journal reports that Alphabet is in advanced talks to acquire Wiz for around $23 billion. While the deal isn’t finalized, the WSJ says it could come together soon. Wiz offers an all-in-one approach to cloud security, ingesting […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

India is struggling to get new smartphone buyers, and Jio is eying a 5G feature phone to milk the situation. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Roboticists at The Faboratory at Yale University have developed a way for soft robots to replicate some of the more unsettling things that animals and insects can accomplish — say, a reptile self-amputating a limb, or ants building bridges by temporarily fusing their bodies. In one demo video, we see a soft quadruped robot crawling […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

This week, AT&T confirmed it will begin notifying around 110 million AT&T customers about a data breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal the phone records of “nearly all” of its customers. The stolen data contains phone numbers and AT&T records of calls and text messages during a six-month period in 2022, the company says. If […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Regardless of how they're defined, the agents are for helping complete tasks in an automated way with as little human interaction as possible. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta announced former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will no longer be subject to heightened suspension penalties, according to an updated blog post on Friday. The company says it made the decision to ensure all Presidential nominees were on equal footing on their platform ahead of the 2024 Presidential election. When Meta reinstated […] © 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. This week we’re looking at an AI startup that wants to help people get creative with video; Kudos, which raised $3 million to help get rid […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Cat-Wells said she started this platform because traditional hiring processes are exclusionary and often overlook skilled, talented disabled people. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, is continuing to develop a downvoting feature that will be used to improve how replies are ranked. Although the company has not yet officially announced its plans, more recent findings indicate the downvote feature may actually resemble a “dislike” button instead of a Reddit-style downvote icon. Code references found in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Astra CEO Chris Kemp is already pulling out of a parking spot when he warns the person in the passenger seat that he doesn’t have a valid driver’s license. “And the car’s not registered, and they canceled my insurance,” he says. “This is a little risky.” So opens “Wild Wild Space,” a new HBO documentary […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Visual effects (VFX) have emerged as essential in filmmaking and have transformed storytelling and creativity in the film industry with its diverse digital techniques. However, the high cost of VFX tools often leaves independent filmmakers and content creators working with modest budgets struggling to compete with larger productions. A new company, Beeble AI, is turning […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

As venture capitalists continue to pour money into defense tech startups, they’re turning to a new hiring pool: ex-military officials.   © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Dark patterns refer to a range of design techniques that can subtly encourage users to take some sort of action or put their privacy at risk. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk faces several lawsuits for firing more than 6,000 Twitter employees, including then-CEO Parag Agrawal, following Musk’s 2022 takeover of the social media platform. On Tuesday, Musk defeated one of those lawsuits, as a federal judge ruled X Corp. doesn’t owe the ex-employees any more severance. The lawsuit, filed by Twitter’s former head of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Fast-food chain Whataburger’s app has gone viral in the wake of Hurricane Beryl, which left around 1.8 million utility customers in Houston, Texas without power. Hundreds of thousands of those people may remain without power for days as Houston anticipates a heat wave, with temperatures climbing into the mid-90s. Amid frustrations with the local utility […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Here is a timeline of the events that led fledgling automaker Fisker to file for bankruptcy. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Samsung event will feature updates to the Galaxy Z Fold, Galaxy Z Flip, as well as more details on the Galaxy Ring and Galaxy AI. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Berlin-based food delivery giant Delivery Hero has warned investors it may “ultimately” face an antitrust fine of up to €400 million. The development, reported earlier by Reuters, follows unannounced raids by European Union authorities on the offices of Delivery Hero and its Spanish subsidiary Glovo back in November 2023 and July 2022. The EU did […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Investors are betting on Indian wealthtech startups as a growing middle class turns to diversify investments and startups challenge traditional financial advisors for high-net-worth clients. Premji Invest is in advanced stages of talks to lead a funding round of $30 million to $40 million in Dezerv, an app offering a suite of investment solutions to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Three companies with new funds deploy capital to support seed and Series A VCs looking to exercise their pro rata rights. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Here are the latest companies venturing into the gaming scene and details about each offering, including pricing, examples of titles and supported devices.  © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

As deep-pocketed companies like Amazon, Google and Walmart invest in and experiment with drone delivery, a phenomenon reflective of this modern era has emerged. Drones, carrying snacks and other sundries, are being shot out of the sky.  Incidents are still rare. However, a recent arrest in Florida, in which a man allegedly shot down a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A police officer pulled over a self-driving Waymo vehicle in Phoenix after it ran a red light and pulled into a lane of oncoming traffic, according to dispatch records. The incident took place on June 19, but local media including Arizona Republic released bodycam footage of the traffic stop this week, showing the vehicle weaving […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

We’ve created this guide to help parents navigate the controls offered by popular social media companies. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Generative AI models don’t process text the same way humans do. Understanding their “token”-based internal environments may help explain some of their strange behaviors — and stubborn limitations. Most models, from small on-device ones like Gemma to OpenAI’s industry-leading GPT-4o, are built on an architecture known as the transformer. Due to the way transformers conjure […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

There’s no need to worry that your secret ChatGPT conversations were obtained in a recently reported breach of OpenAI’s systems. The hack itself, while troubling, appears to have been superficial — but it’s reminder that AI companies have in short order made themselves into one of the juiciest targets out there for hackers. The New […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk’s X is exploring more ways to integrate xAI’s Grok into the social networking app. According to a series of recent discoveries, X is developing new features like the ability to ask Grok about X accounts, use Grok by highlighting text in the app and access Grok’s chatbot through a pop-up on the side […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In its latest step targeting a major marketplace, the European Commission sent Amazon another request for information (RFI) Friday in relation to its compliance under the bloc’s rulebook for digital services. The development highlights areas where EU enforcers are dialling up their scrutiny of the ecommerce giant, with the bloc asking for more info about […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Quantum Rise, a Chicago-based startup which does AI-driven automation for companies like dunnhumby (a retail analytics platform for the the grocery industry), has raised a $15 million seed round from Erie Street Growth Partners. Its approach is somewhat akin to UIPath’s, a company famous for bringing robotic process automation to the enterprise, but with a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

On July 4, YouTube released an updated eraser tool for creators so they can easily remove any copyrighted music from their videos without affecting any other audio such as dialogues or sound effects. YouTube chief Neal Mohan posted about the tool on X and said, “Good news, creators: our updated Erase Song tool helps you […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator, on Friday denied any breach of its systems following reports of an alleged security lapse that has caused concern among its customers. The telecom group, which also sells productivity and security solutions to businesses, said it had conducted a “thorough investigation” and found that there has been no breach whatsoever […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Amazon has decided to discontinue its Astro for Business device, a security robot for small—and medium-sized businesses, just seven months after launch.  In an email sent to customers and employees on Wednesday, provided to TechCrunch, the reason for putting Astro for Business on the shelf is a simple one: Amazon wants to focus on its […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apiday leverages AI to save time for its customers. But like legacy consultants, it also offers human expertise. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google totally dodges the question of how much energy is AI is using — perhaps because the answer is "way more than we'd care to say." © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

SpaceX’s ambitious plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times per year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are causing a stir among some of its competitors. Late last month, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance submitted comments calling on regulators to ensure minimal disruptions to other launch providers in the area, with Blue […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The situation around a data breach that’s affected an ever-growing number of fintech companies has gotten even weirder. Evolve Bank & Trust announced last week that it was hacked and confirmed the stolen data has been posted to the dark web. Now Evolve has sent a cease and desist letter to the writer of a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A group of senators has banded together to urge Synapse’s owners and bank and fintech partners to “immediately restore customers’ access to their money.” As part of their demands, the senators implicated both the partners and investors of the company as being responsible for missing customer funds. In a letter shared publicly on Monday, U.S. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Music, podcasts, audiobooks…emergency alerts? Spotify’s latest test has the streaming app venturing into new territory with a test of an emergency alerts system in its home market of Sweden. According to code references found within the Spotify app, the company is considering a system that would help distribute public announcements related to things like “accidents, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Simply submitting the request for a takedown doesn't necessarily mean the content will be removed, however. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The round was led by KKR and Teachers' Ventures Growth, an investment arm of Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.