Only Products and Other Stuff

Microsoft says that it’s creating a new unit, the Advanced Planning Unit (APU), within its Microsoft AI business division that will help the company understand the societal, health, and work implications of AI the company hopes to build. Microsoft AI, which encompasses Microsoft’s Copilot, Bing, and Edge products, is becoming core to Microsoft’s growth strategy […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

U.S. prosecutors accused an Argentinian national living in Spain of being an “active administrator” of Nulled, one of the two hacking forums seized and shut down by authorities. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

These days, nothing is certain about the tech market or the world at large. Even NVIDIA’s seemingly bulletproof stock took a hammering on Monday, enduring a $589 billion market cap decline after China-based DeepSeek raised questions for investors about more efficient AI models. But Apple’s stock has remained steady ahead of its first quarter earnings […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Extreme weather conditions will be more common, according to the study, adding fresh urgency to a burgeoning group of climate adaptation startups. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Amazon announced Monday it has picked the North England town of Darlington as the first site for its planned U.K. drone-delivery expansion. Amazon was expected to expand Prime Air to the U.K. and Italy in 2024. After missing that initial target, the company opted to not share a timeline for this latest launch. Instead, the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The mobile app for DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab, skyrocketed to the No. 1 spot in app stores around the globe this weekend, topping the U.S.-based AI chatbot, ChatGPT. On iOS, DeepSeek is currently the No. 1 free app in the U.S. App Store and 51 other countries, according to mobile app analytics firm Appfigures. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

1X has acquired Kind Humanoid, the Norwegian robotics startup told TechCrunch on Monday. The deal marks a small but key consolidation for a humanoid robotics industry on the brink of a major moment in 2025. TechCrunch spoke with Kind Humanoid in October, when the then-three-person startup announced that it had enlisted famed designer Yves Behar […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A hacker claims to be selling the data of 18.8 million TalkTalk customers, but the telecoms giant says this figure is ‘significantly overstated’ © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Perplexity AI has submitted a revised proposal to merge with TikTok, in an arrangement that would give the U.S. government up to 50 percent ownership of the new entity. The Associated Press first reported on the new proposal. A source with knowledge of the bid confirmed to TechCrunch that the AP’s reporting is accurate. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Since Chinese AI company DeepSeek released an open version of its reasoning model R1 at the beginning of this week, many in the tech industry have been making grand pronouncements about what the company achieved, and what it means for the state of AI. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, for example, posted that DeepSeek is “one […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In Reid Hoffman’s new book Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future, the LinkedIn co-founder makes the case that AI can extend human agency — giving us more knowledge, better jobs, and improved lives — rather than reducing it. That doesn’t mean he’s ignoring the technology’s potential downsides. In fact, Hoffman (who […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Trump administration is negotiating a deal that would see Oracle take over TikTok alongside new U.S. investors, according to a report in NPR. Lawmakers passed a bill last year forcing Chinese parent company ByteDance to either sell TikTok or see it banned in the U.S. The app briefly went dark before the law took […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

2024 was a busy year for lawmakers (and lobbyists) concerned about AI — most notably in California, where Gavin Newsom signed 18 new AI laws while also vetoing high-profile AI legislation. And 2025 could see just as much activity, especially on the state level, according to Mark Weatherford. Weatherford has, in his words, seen the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Legendary musician Paul McCartney is warning against proposed changes to UK copyright law that would allow tech companies to freely train their models on online content unless the copyright holders actively opt out. In excerpts of an interview with the BBC, McCartney said the government needs to do more to protect musicians and other artists. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The developer behind Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup, open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, respectively, is now raising funds on Kickstarter to fuel the apps’ further development. The trio is part of the growing open social web, also known as the fediverse, powered by the same ActivityPub protocol used by X alternative Mastodon. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Solar farms can be completed far faster than nuclear reactors and natural gas power plants. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple released new figures Friday, highlighting user adoption of iOS 18. Released in public form back in September 2024, the mobile operating system is now installed on 68% of compatible devices. That number jumps to 78% on iPhones released in the last four years. As for the remaining iPhones out there, 19% are running iOS […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Social network X has grown its in-app revenue over the past year, despite a decline in active users, new data shows. Global consumer spending in the X mobile app across both iOS and Android has climbed by 76.3% year-over-year, when comparing two similar periods in January, according to data from app intelligence firm Appfigures. However, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Billionaire Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are fighting on X about Stargate, the enormous infrastructure project to build data centers for OpenAI across the U.S. Stargate, announced Tuesday during a press conference at the White House, would funnel as much as $500 billion from investors including SoftBank and Middle East AI fund MGX […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Fintech giant Stripe is laying off 300 people, according to a leaked memo reported on Tuesday by Business Insider. The affected employees are “largely in product, engineering, and operations roles,” the memo said. Despite the layoffs, Chief People Officer Rob McIntosh said that Stripe intends to still grow its headcount by 17% “to land at […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Friend, a startup creating a $99, AI-powered necklace designed to be treated as a digital companion, has delayed its first batch of shipments until Q3. Friend had planned to ship devices to pre-order customers in Q1. But according to co-founder and CEO Avi Schiffman, that’s no longer feasible. “As much as I would liked to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A U.S. federal safety regulator has “upgraded” its investigation into Ford’s hands-free advanced driver assistance system known as BlueCruise — a required step before a recall can be issued. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation launched a probe into Ford BlueCruise last April after the agency confirmed the system was active […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

An arena. A hype tunnel, the kind through which NBA players typically streak. A competitor dressed in a jersey patterned with a six-pack abs. In a new piece, The New York Times takes readers to an event that organizers call the Microsoft Excel World Championship, a 40-minute, Las Vegas-based competition featuring 12 contestants — all […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

After the TikTok ban went into effect on Sunday, social network Bluesky launched a custom feed for videos on its platform. Now, Flipboard’s newest app, Surf, which is dedicated to browsing the open social web and decentralized services like Mastodon and Bluesky, is taking advantage of that move to introduce a video feed of its […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Peter Conway has recruited for some of the buzziest defense and hard tech firms in Silicon Valley over the last decade, like Palantir and Mach Industries. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta today announced a new video editing app called Edits, after ByteDance’s video editing app CapCut was removed from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store as part of the TikTok ban. Instagram head Adam Mosseri (pictured above) said on Threads that the app will launch next month on iOS, with an Android version […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Amid the TikTok shutdown, in a rare move, Apple published a statement and a support document listing all affected apps that are inaccessible in the U.S. The iPhone maker typically doesn’t publish information for when it blocks apps. Notably, other ByteDance apps, including CapCut, Lemon8 — which surged in the last few months — and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TikTok has gone dark in the U.S., the result of a federal law that bans the popular short-form video app for millions of Americans — at least for now. TikTok users began receiving a message about the ban around 10:30 p.m. Eastern. As of Saturday evening, the app was also no longer available in the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Federal Trade Commission said in a staff report issued Friday that there are potential competitive issues in partnerships between big tech companies and generative AI developers — specifically, Microsoft’s backing of OpenAI and Amazon and Alphabet/Google’s partnerships with Anthropic. “The FTC’s report sheds light on how partnerships by big tech firms can create lock-in, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search. In an email to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson claimed that the change is intended to “better protect” Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spam, and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Is the grass greener on the other side? We’re not sure, but the sky is most certainly bluer. It’s been two years since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now X, leading people to set up shop on alternative platforms. Mastodon, Post, Pebble (two of which have already shuttered operations) and Spill have been presented as potential […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hiya, folks, welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. If you want this in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. This week was something of a swan song for the Biden administration. On Monday, the White House announced sweeping new restrictions on exporting AI chips — restrictions that tech giants, including Nvidia, loudly criticized. (Nvidia’s business […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

WhatsApp is adding new features including creating new stickers from selfies, sharing sticker packs, and adding new camera effects. Stickers and camera effects are good engagement ploys to keep users interacting with their contacts. The chat app added the ability to create custom stickers from photos last year. Now, the company is adding an option […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI on Monday published what it’s calling an “economic blueprint” for AI: a living document that lays out policies the company thinks it can build on with the U.S. government and its allies. The blueprint, which includes a forward from Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s VP of global affairs, asserts that the U.S. must act to attract […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Blaize, an AI chip manufacturer founded by former Intel engineers, is set to IPO on the NASDAQ on January 14. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Groww, India’s largest retail stockbroker, is positioning itself to file for an IPO in 10-12 months and is seeking a valuation between $6 billion to $8 billion, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in what would be a landmark listing for the country’s fintech sector. The Bengaluru-headquartered’s listing would be the first IPO by […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Around the world, public healthcare systems have struggled to reset post-pandemic, and in particular, the increasingly aged populations in Western countries are putting pressure on services, not least in the UK where ‘NHS in crisis’ is a regular headline in the media. As a result, private companies, many powered with technology, see a gap in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Even before CES 2025 kicked off a few trends began to emerge — or more accurately, some gaps appeared.  All U.S. and some European automakers that have helped turn CES into an auto show were absent. Several Chinese automakers filled that void, notably Zeekr, the EV brand owned by China’s Geely Holdings. Wey, a premium […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, some of whom have been spearheading a push to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project. While community criticism of WordPress’s governance isn’t new, the latest brouhaha kicked off back in September when Mullenweg publicly chastised WP […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

CES isn’t much of a gaming show. Every year, however, a few notable products slip through the news deluge. Created in collaboration with My Arcade, Gamestation Go fits the bill. The handheld sports a 7-inch display and comes preloaded with north of 200 titles from various Atari generations. Of course, simply being a portable game […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Scale AI just got hit by another lawsuit alleging widespread wage violations and misclassification of its workers. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Millions of packages stolen each year. DoorBox aims to change how packages are delivered with its smart package box that features a theft-proof design with live camera feeds and an alarm that activates automatically if the box is tampered with.  After selling 2,000 units of its initial version, which offered manual functionality, the startup unveiled […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Russian ISP blamed the Ukrainian hackers for causing a "complete failure" across its internet infrastructure. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

BMW is totally revamping its in-car user interface, starting with the Neue Klasse sedan later this year and ultimately spreading to all models, the company announced at CES 2025. Some of it looks and feels familiar, but the big change is a widget-based system that lets users customize the layout — including on the car’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Pawport, a pet tech startup based in Phoenix, is back at CES 2025 to unveil its upgraded Smart Pet Door, which now features an additional exterior door for added security. If you’re tired of bugs or, worse, raccoons and other critters sneaking into your home through traditional pet doors, Pawport may have the solution. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has strong words for the former board members who abruptly fired him late last November. “[A]ll those people that I feel, like, really f—ed me and f—ed the company were gone, and now I had to clean up their mess,” he told Bloomberg in a wide-ranging interview. Just over a year […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Five years ago, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda went to CES to share with the world his “personal field of dreams” — a plan to build a prototype city on a 175-acre site at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan, where people would live and work amongst all of Toyota’s projects, including autonomous vehicle technology, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A new lawsuit alleges that the PayPal-owned browser extension Honey is cheating creators out of money. Honey, which PayPal acquired for $4 billion in 2019, works by automatically presenting users with relevant coupon codes as they shop. However, in a video posted last month, YouTuber MegaLag described Honey as a “scam” that’s “stealing money from […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

iRobot’s on-going financial crisis aside, the world of robot vacuums is still humming along. At CES Sunday, Roborock announced the Saros Z70. The Roomba competitor showcases what the company believes will be the next big step in robovac evolution: an arm. The idea of mounting a a manipulator is no doubt as old as robot […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

AMD has its work cut out for it at CES 2025. Competitor Nvidia has been sucking the oxygen out of every room it graces, as the chipmaker remains at the forefront of the AI boom. So, how will AMD compete with Nvidia’s reported RTX 5000 announcement? The company should show off its own next-gen GPU. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A few months ago, United Airlines announced its deal with Starlink to offer in-flight internet access for its passengers. At the time, the airline said it would start testing the new service in early 2024 and then offer it on passenger flights later in the year. United has now accelerated this timeline a bit, with […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Conway has recruited for some of the buzziest defense and hard tech firms in Silicon Valley over the last decade, like Palantir and Mach Industries. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Longtime entrepreneur and cybersecurity executive Amit Yoran passed away Friday after a battle with cancer. Cybersecurity company Tenable, where Yoran was CEO and chairman, announced his death in a press release. Before becoming Tenable’s CEO in 2016, he held a number of roles including president of RSA, founding CEO of NetWitness, and CEO of In-Q-Tel. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Andav Capital's founder claims PayPal's program was discriminatory as it sought to exclusively focus on Black and Hispanic-led enterprises. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

From the looks of things, companies in the category — including Agility Robotics and Formlogic — can’t hire quickly enough. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The president of Meta’s Global Affairs team, Nick Clegg, is stepping down from his position at the company, the executive announced in a tweet on Thursday. Clegg, Meta’s politically centrist policy chief since 2018, will be replaced by one of the company’s most prominent Republican executives, Joel Kaplan. Clegg noted on X that Kaplan is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Telegram has rolled out its first update of the year, adding a new account verification method powered by third-parties, new message search filters, and the ability to turn gifts into NFTs. The chat app already had a program to verify public figures and organizations on the platform, and it has now launched a new project […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Chinese government hackers targeted the U.S. Treasury’s highly sensitive sanctions office during a December cyberattack, according to reports. According to The Washington Post, the state-sponsored hackers targeted the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a government department that imposes economic and trade sanctions against countries and individuals, to potentially access information on Chinese organizations that […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Five years ago, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda went to CES to share with the world his “personal field of dreams” — a plan to build a prototype city on a 175-acre site at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan, where people would live and work amongst all of Toyota’s projects, including autonomous vehicle technology, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.