Only Products and Other Stuff

In the latest twist in Bolt’s aggressive fundraising efforts, the fintech company’s CEO appears to have made a veiled threat of legal action against Silverbear Capital, the investment bank whose involvement in the deal remains in some dispute. “We believe there was some internal miscommunication at Silverbear Capital, one of our lead investors, which has […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A Brazilian court’s decision to ban X (formerly Twitter) seems to benefiting its rivals, especially Bluesky. The microblogging platform announced late Friday that it was seeing “all-time-highs for activity” with 500,000 new users joining in the previous two days. It’s also number one on the free iPhone app chart in Brazil today, ranking just ahead […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

SB 1047 has drawn the ire of Silicon Valley players large and small, including venture capitalists, big tech trade groups, researchers and startup founders. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Redfin is responding to a new startup that is hoping to upend the way people search for and buy homes by offering a flat-see service. On August 29, TechCrunch reported that a startup called Landian had emerged from stealth to offer homebuyers a way to tour and make offers on homes through a flat-fee service, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Magic, an AI startup creating models to generate code and automate a range of software development tasks, has raised a large tranche of cash from investors including ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In a blog post on Thursday, Magic said that it closed a $320 million fundraising round with contributions from Schmidt, as well as Alphabet’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Fluid Truck, a startup that was founded to disrupt the commercial vehicle rental industry, has ousted its sibling co-founders – CEO James Eberhard and chief legal counsel Jenifer Snyder – according to sources familiar with the matter. The shakeup, which employees have described as a hostile takeover, was led by two minority investors on the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Midjourney, the AI image-generating platform that’s reportedly raking in more than $200 million in revenue without any VC investment, is getting into hardware. The company made the announcement in a post on X on Wednesday. Its new hardware team will be based in San Francisco, it revealed. As for what hardware Midjourney, which has a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

VerSe Innovation, India's content tech startup, has acquired digital marketing firm Valueleaf Group to bolster its presence in the Indian digital ad space. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander failed to reach the moon because of a problem with a single valve in the propulsion system, according to a report on the mission released Tuesday. Company leadership said in a press conference that engineers have redesigned the valve and introduced additional redundancy into the propulsion system of its next lander, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta and Spotify are exploring deeper music integration in Meta’s Instagram app. New findings indicate the companies are testing a feature that would allow users to continuously share what music they’re listening to through Instagram’s Notes. The new functionality was first spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, who often finds unreleased features while they’re still […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In Latin American countries like Brazil and Chile, messaging platform WhatsApp has become one of the most popular apps to use to buy things online. It was even the e-commerce platform of choice in the region during the pandemic. But WhatsApp is designed to be a messaging platform, not an e-commerce site. A startup called […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI threw its support behind a California bill requiring tech companies to label AI-generated content, according to a letter from OpenAI’s chief strategy officer viewed by Reuters. The bill is headed for a final vote in August. AB 3211 requires watermarks in the metadata of AI-generated photos, videos, and audio clips. Lots of AI companies […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Generative AI models aren’t actually human-like. They have no intelligence or personality — they’re simply statistical systems predicting the likeliest next words in a sentence. But like interns at a tyrannical workplace, they do follow instructions without complaint — including initial “system prompts” that prime the models with their basic qualities, and what they should […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov in France is starting to impact the app’s traction and ranking. On Saturday, the founder was arrested for allegedly allowing illegal activity to thrive on the social app by failing to moderate messages adequately, particularly in areas involving drug trafficking, money laundering, and the distribution of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ride-hailing platform Uber has been fined €290 million — around $324 million at current exchanges rates — by the Netherlands’ privacy watchdog for breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The penalty is related to transfers of personal data of drivers out of the European Union to the US, where Uber’s main business […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A holding company affiliated with an Emirati royal family is injecting a new joint venture between Abu Dhabi-based Marlan Space and startup Loft Orbital with over $100 million to grow the region’s domestic satellite manufacturing capabilities.  The joint venture, called Orbitworks, will be the first commercial firm in the United Arab Emirates to mass manufacture […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

San Francisco’s AI startup boom is so big, even international founders who don’t run AI startups are relocating there to help their companies grow, according to several founders who recently moved.  This is largely because the tech talent and investor money is still overwhelmingly concentrated there, according to new data that VC firm SignalFire exclusively […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Y Combinator’s first defense startup, Ares Industries, launched earlier this week. In a post on the YC website, the startup outlined a vision to build low-cost cruise missiles that will be compatible with existing launch platforms, saying it will “deliver the capabilities that the [Department of Defense] wants in a form factor that’s 10x smaller […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A roundup of the year's billion-dollar take-private deals in the technology sector. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Eruditus, an Indian edtech startup, is in advanced stages of talks to secure about $150 million in new funding, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in what would be the largest fundraise by an Indian education firm in years. TPG, a major private equity player, is discussing to lead the investment, the sources […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, was arrested on Saturday evening while leaving his private jet at France’s Bourget airport, according to French television network TF1. Reports of Durov’s arrest sparked widespread discussion and speculation on social media, including on Telegram itself, although it seems to be largely based on the same […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple will be unveiling new products on September 10, with the announced phones going on sale on September 20, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. That lineup will reportedly include the iPhone 16, with larger screens on the Pro models and a new button just for taking pictures. The phones should also support […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Andrew Ng is stepping down from his role as CEO at Landing AI, the computer vision platform he founded in 2017. Dan Maloney, formerly the COO, will take the reins as Ng transitions to Executive Chairmanm to “continue to help drive” the tech and collaborate on “key decisions.” Formerly of Google Brain, Coursera, and Baidu, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Marc Andreessen's family is planning to build a large housing development near the proposed California Forever city. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Tens of millions of customer dollars remain unaccounted for at his previous startup, fintech Synapse. But that’s not deterring Sankaet Pathak from forging full steam ahead with his new robotics venture. Foundation is a robotics startup with a self-proclaimed mission “to create advanced humanoid robots that can operate in complex environments” to address the labor […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Until today, we’ve seen exactly 40 seconds of Boston Dynamics’ new electric Atlas in action. The Hyundai-owned robotics stalwart is very much still in in the early stages of commercializing the biped for factory floors. For now, however, it’s doing the thing Boston Dynamics does second best after building robots: showing off in viral video […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

When you really probe venture capitalists about investing in AI startups, they’ll tell you that businesses are experimenting wildly but are very slow to add AI solutions into their ongoing business processes.  But there are some exceptions. And one of them appears to be an area known as AI sales development representatives, or AI SDRs. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A bug in the iPhone makes it crash just by typing four characters. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Renovate says this model is faster and more accurate than its predecessor, despite being roughly half its weight. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI has inked a deal with Condé Nast — the publisher of storied outlets such as The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit and Wired — to surface stories from Condé Nast properties in OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot platform ChatGPT and its search prototype SearchGPT. The specific terms of the partnership weren’t disclosed. But in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Few truly autonomous systems are deployed on the battlefield, but one startup is looking to change that with robotic systems that use cooperative behavior to boost troops’ intelligence and tactical advantage. Those systems are called “swarms,” and they’re basically collections of autonomous robots that can coordinate their actions.  Swarm robotics have been the stuff of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Over 30% of 7- to 9-year-olds have an X account, according to a new report. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Amazon is considering shifting its payments offerings in India into a standalone app, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, as the e-commerce giant aims to boost usage of Amazon Pay in the country. Amazon Pay is currently housed within the company’s primary e-commerce app in India, and lets users transfer money to individuals […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Root helps food and beverage companies collect primary data on their agricultural supply chains.  © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

This post contains spoilers for the movie “Alien: Romulus” In the long-running Alien movie franchise, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation can’t seem to let go of a terrible idea: It keeps trying to make a profit from the deadly xenomorph. No matter how many times they fail, and how many people die in the process, whenever the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

This is just one area of leadership where Parker Conrad takes a contrarian approach. He also said he doesn't believe in top-down management. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi issued a statement late yesterday laying out her opposition to SB 1047, a California bill that seeks to regulate AI. “The view of many of us in Congress is that SB 1047 is well-intentioned but ill-informed,” Pelosi said. She noted that other congresspeople from the Bay Area — Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Rimac revealed Friday during The Quail, a Motorsports Gathering at Monterey Car Week the Nevera R, an all-electric hypercar that’s meant to push the performance bounds of its predecessor. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

At a price of $111 for the Sat75 X board, this is a fun and easy way to get into building a custom mechanical keyboard without breaking the bank. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

California residents will soon be able to store their driver’s license or state ID in their Apple Wallet or Google Wallet apps, as the state’s government announced Thursday that support for digital IDs is launching in the coming weeks. Californians with an ID in the Apple Wallet or Google Wallet app will be able to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Roughly one week ago during an earnings call, the chief executive addressed ongoing issues with Sonos’ mobile app. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Wednesday a final rule that will tackle several types of fake reviews and prohibit marketers from using deceptive practices, such as AI-generated reviews, censoring honest negative reviews and compensating third parties for positive reviews. The decision was the result of a 5-to-0 vote. The new rule will […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

For many companies, this also means that now is the time to start implementing these algorithms. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Made You Look will be available on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold when it launches next month. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is suing a crypto startup, NovaTech, for allegedly fraudulently raising more than $650 million from over 200,000 investors, many in the Haitian-American community. The SEC frames NovaTech, founded in 2019 by husband-and-wife duo Cynthia and Eddy Petion, as a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme — one that lured investors […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The FBI's takedown of the Radar/Dispossessor ransomware and extortion gang is a rare win in the fight against ransomware. © 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. Plus, some special shoutouts. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Kazam, an Indian EV charging solution provider, has raised $8 million to expand its footprint in the country and enter Southeast Asian markets. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Autonomy founder Scott Painter is spinning out a new company called Autonomy Data Services, or ADS, he tells TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.  © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Heavy equipment manufacturer CNH Industrial has a long history of mergers and acquisitions, at times supervising legendary brands like Ferrari. But five years ago, as agtech was booming, the global giant was struggling to tap into the startup scene.  The conglomerate turned to one of its longest-tenured executives, a swashbuckling Italian businessman named Michele Lombardi. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Turkey appears to have restored access to Meta-owned Instagram, after blocking the app on August 2.  Abdulkadir Uraloglu, the country’s minister of transport and infrastructure, posted today that the ban would be lifted at 9:30pm Turkish time.  Cybersecurity monitor NetBlocks says, “Live metrics show that Instagram is being gradually restored on internet providers in #Turkey […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Susan Wojcicki, a longtime Googler who spent nearly a decade as the CEO of YouTube, passed away Friday after a two-year battle non-small cell cancer. Wojcicki, who was 56, famously rented the garage of her Menlo Park home to Larry Page and Sergey Brin as they were starting Google. She then became one of the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The internet is full of deepfakes — and most of them are nudes. According to a report from Home Security Heroes, deepfake porn makes up 98% of all deepfake videos online. Thanks to easy-to-use and freely available generative AI tools, the number of deepfakes online — many of which aren’t consensual — skyrocketed 550% from […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Researchers found flaws that could allow anyone to spy on the owners of Ecovacs home robots by hijacking their cameras and microphones. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Substack is opening up to more users with its recent announcement that anyone can now publish content on its platform without setting up a publication. With the change, Substack is likely looking to attract more types of writers and content creators, not just people who are interested in creating regularly distributed long-form written pieces. While […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Flint Capital just closed its third fund at $160 million. Its has a unique strategy for finding its limited partner investors.  © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The U.K.'s internet regulator Ofcom has published an open letter to social media platforms raising concerns about the use of their tools being used to incite violence. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Waymo, the Alphabet-owned self-driving car company, is adding another 10 square miles to its robotaxi service area to include cities surrounding San Francisco.  The move, which adds Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma, pushes its total commercial service territory to about 55 square miles. Waymo said Tuesday it is also adding 16 square miles of new robotaxi […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

We’re so excited to announce that we’ve added a dedicated AI Stage presented by Google Cloud to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. It joins Fintech, SaaS and Space as the other industry-focused stages — all under one big roof. We couldn’t possibly host TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 without a huge deep dive on all things artificial intelligence. So, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The European Commission has closed a Digital Services Act (DSA) investigation of a rewards feature in TikTok Lite by accepting commitments from the social media giant to permanently withdraw the feature from the EU. The TikTok Lite “task and reward” mechanism, launched in France and Spain earlier this year, lets users earn points for doing […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Groq, a startup developing chips to run generative AI models faster than conventional processors, said on Monday that it’s raised $640 million in a new funding round led by Blackrock. Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI and Samsung Catalyst Fund also participated. The tranche, which brings Groq’s total raised to over $1 billion and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

COVID-19 pushed people to take up outdoor activities. Now, startups are helping companies and consumers keep up with demand. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Any goal that puts cultivated meat in big box grocery stores or on fast food menus in the 2020s is “unrealistic,” according to experts. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A fireside chat between Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg at SIGGRAPH 2024 took some unexpected turns. What started as a conversation about the capabilities of Nvidia GPUs and Zuckerberg’s vision of an AI chatbot future quickly became a more casual affair — including a swap of custom-made jackets, a rare F-bomb from the Meta CEO, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

We spoke to Harness CEO and founder Jyoti Bansal about his previous company, which Cisco bought for $3.7 billion in 2017. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

When the developers replied to the July 19 email, Yelp sent a deck of pricing tiers with base pricing starting from $229 per month for a limit of 1,000 API calls per day. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In spite of a drop for the quarter, iPhone remained Apple’s most important category by a wide margin. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Molly Alter wears a lot of hats. She’s a mockumentary film maker working on a project about an alternate reality where charades is big business. She’s a caesar salad connoisseur and documents her rankings of different restaurants’ attempts on a blog called JULIUS. She’s also Northzone’s newest partner. Alter’s path to venture capital was not […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.