Only Products and Other Stuff

Amazon wants companies to build public-facing chatbots using its Q Business assistant. On Wednesday, the company announced that Q Business, its AWS-hosted AI assistant that can answer questions, provide summaries, and complete tasks, now supports anonymous user access. This effectively means that AWS users can now create Q Business chatbots for websites, support portals, and […]

Meta has updated the privacy policy for its AI glasses, Ray-Ban Meta, giving the tech giant more power over what data it can store and use to train its AI models. The company emailed Ray-Ban Meta owners on Tuesday with a notice that AI features will now be enabled on the glasses by default, according […]

Google Play’s app marketplace is losing apps. From the start of 2024 to present, the Android app marketplace went from hosting about 3.4 million apps worldwide to just around 1.8 million, according to a new analysis by app intelligence provider Appfigures. That’s a decline of about 47%, representing a significant purge of the apps that […]

CaaStle, the embattled fashion startup whose board of directors accused its founder, Christine Hunsicke, of financial misconduct, is starting to face lawsuits from a partner and a supplier over missed payments and more allegations of fraud. As first reported by Axios and by suits seen by TechCrunch, CaaStle is being sued by P180, a vehicle […]

Temu is adding “import charges” of around 145% in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods shipped from China, CNBC reports. The fees cost more than the products that U.S. consumers are buying, and in some cases are more than doubling the price of a standard order. For example, CNBC found that a summer […]

It’s been a busy year for TechCrunch events — and it’s about to get even bigger. StrictlyVC, our boutique, highly exclusive event series for VCs and startups, is crossing the Atlantic this May with stops in London and Athens! We’re bringing StrictlyVC’s insider conversations to Europe. On May 8, we’ll dive into Athens’ booming tech […]

In Silicon Valley, where the same high-wattage names tend to dominate the headlines, Ali Partovi has long wielded outsized influence despite limited name recognition. The Iranian-born Harvard graduate built an impressive resume early on — joining the founding team of LinkExchange (acquired by Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million), co-founding iLike (sold to MySpace for […]

Cancer ranks as one of the top causes of death worldwide. The National Cancer Institute reported nearly 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million cancer-related deaths globally in 2022, with projections showing a rise to 29.9 million new cases by 2040. Craif, spun off from Nagoya University in Japan in 2018, is using microRNA(miRNA) […]

4chan is partly back online after a hack took the infamous image-sharing site down for nearly two weeks. The site first went down on April 14, with the person responsible for the hack apparently leaking data including a list of moderators and “janitors” (one janitor told TechCrunch they were “confident” that the leaked data was […]

Not so long ago, the idea of public tech companies emerging from Latin America seemed far-fetched, and Mercado Libre once appeared as rare and mythical as a true unicorn. Today, however, the region is home to several startups that have reached billion-dollar valuations. Some of these startups, propelled into the spotlight by cross-border expansion, are […]

Julie Wainwright has taken two companies public, a pretty incredible feat by any standard. Yet in her new memoir, Time to Get Real, she offers readers something even more valuable: a blunt look at the messy realities of leadership. Wainwright shares the kinds of tough truths that many high-achieving CEOs can relate to but rarely […]

Around 300 London-based members of Google’s AI-focused DeepMind team are seeking to unionize with the Communication Workers Union, according to a Financial Times report that cites three people involved with the unionization effort. These DeepMind employees are reportedly unhappy about Google’s decision to remove a pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance from […]

Google announced this week that beginning on October 25, it will no longer support or release software updates for the first and second generation Nest Learning Thermostats. And it will completely stop launching new Nest products in Europe. That means owners of the Nest thermostats released in 2011 and 2012 (as well as the version […]

In the battle between two “agentic” coding tools — Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex CLI — the latter appears to be fostering more developer goodwill than the former. That’s at least partly because Anthropic has issued takedown notices to a developer trying to reverse-engineer Claude Code, which is under a more restrictive usage license […]

Slate Auto, the buzzy new EV startup that broke stealth this week, is close to locking in a former printing plant located in Warsaw, Indiana as the future production site for its cheap electric truck, a review of public records shows. The company is expected to lease the 1.4 million-square-foot facility for an undisclosed sum. […]

This glossary includes the most common terms and expressions TechCrunch uses in our security reporting, and explanations of how — and why — we use them.

Chess.com reaches a new membership milestone as it nears its 20th birthday. Chess.com, the online chess platform that was founded in 2005 and launched in 2007, has surpassed 200 million members. Of those 200 million members, 1.5 million are paying users. More than 6 million games of chess are played every day on the platform. […]

The U.S. Department of Justice is probing Disney’s deal to take a controlling stake in FuboTV, Bloomberg reports. Fubo is a live TV streaming service known for its extensive sports coverage. Officials are examining whether the deal would create a concentration of power in the sports streaming market. In January, Disney announced that it was going […]

Character.AI, a leading platform for chatting and roleplaying with AI-generated characters, unveiled its forthcoming video generation model, AvatarFX, on Tuesday. Available in closed beta, the model animates the platform’s characters in a variety of styles and voices, from human-like characters to 2D animal cartoons. AvatarFX distinguishes itself from competitors like OpenAI’s Sora because it isn’t […]

Andreessen Horowitz’s hiring spree continues. On Monday, Erik Torenberg announced that the giant VC firm had acquired his Turpentine podcast, with him joining as a general partner. Torenberg’s podcast focuses mostly on interviewing VCs at a variety of firms about their approach to investing. Recent guests include Accel’s Andrew Braccia, Seven Seven Six’s Alexis Ohanian, […]

One of the chief complaints of Airbnb users over the years has been not being able to tell right away how much they would pay for their stay, including charges such as cleaning fees. Airbnb is now fixing that by showing the total cost for a given property, including all charges, automatically. Users across the […]

“A Minecraft Movie” isn’t just a hit — after three weekends in theaters, the film is estimated to have grossed $344 million domestically and $720 million worldwide. That makes it the biggest movie of an admittedly underwhelming year at the box office (so far), and the second biggest video game movie of all time. Coming […]

“I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to their models.” It was a seemingly random question posed by a user on X (formerly Twitter), but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman jumped in to reply that typing those words has added up to “tens of millions […]

With the first week of Meta’s antitrust trial behind us, documents shared by the U.S Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offered more insight into Meta’s internal struggles to keep Facebook relevant. In emails from 2022, Meta executives mulled different visions for Facebook’s future to boost its success, acknowledging that its cultural relevance was decreasing.  Fast-forward to […]

3The leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said they are investigating how 23andMe’s bankruptcy might affect customers’ data. Representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis, and Gary Palmer (all Republicans) sent a letter Thursday to the genetic testing company’s interim CEO Joe Selsavage asking a number of questions about how 23andMe will handle customer […]

It looks like humanoid robots have a long way to go before catching up with human runners. Beijing’s E-Town tech hub hosted what it described as the first world’s first humanoid half-marathon on Saturday, with 21 humanoid robots competing alongside thousands of humans. Bloomberg reports that the winning robot, Tiangong Ultra, was built by the […]

Some ChatGPT users have noticed a strange phenomenon recently: Occasionally, the chatbot refers to them by name as it reasons through problems. That wasn’t the default behavior previously, and several users claim ChatGPT is mentioning their names despite never having been told what to call them. Reviews are mixed. One user, software developer and AI […]

Geoff Ralston, known for his years at Y Combinator, has a new AI VC fund called SAIF. It is seeking AI startups focused on safety.

Chatbot Arena, the crowdsourced benchmarking project major AI labs rely on to test and market their AI models, is forming a company called Arena Intelligence Inc., reports Bloomberg. In a blog post published Thursday, Chatbot Arena said that the company will “give [it] the resources to improve [its platform] significantly over what it is today.” […]

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy said that the administrations actions were “neither reasonable nor reasonably explained.”

Meal-kit company HelloFresh has added 70 all-electric Rivian vans to its fleet, the first major customer to buy the commercial EVs since the automaker ended its exclusive deal with Amazon. The 70 all-electric commercial vans represent nearly one quarter of HelloFresh’s fleet, which has already helped the company save an estimated 20,000 gallons of gasoline, […]

One of the bugs was discovered by Google's security researchers who investigate government-backed cyberattacks.

In an update to its Preparedness Framework, the internal framework OpenAI uses to decide whether AI models are safe and what safeguards, if any, are needed during development and release, OpenAI said that it may “adjust” its requirements if a rival AI lab releases a “high-risk” system without comparable safeguards. The change reflects the increasing […]

We may be witnessing the makings of a new tech industry feud between competitors. Figma has sent a cease-and-desist letter to popular no-code AI startup Lovable, Figma confirmed to TechCrunch.  The letter tells Lovable to stop using the term “Dev Mode” for a new product feature. Figma, which also has a feature called Dev Mode, […]

HR tech startup Rippling is trying to serve Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz with papers as part of a blockbuster lawsuit against its competitor. There’s just one problem: French bailiffs hired by Rippling can’t seem to find Bouaziz, Irish newspaper Business Post reports. Rippling sued Deel earlier this year in Ireland alleging the company paid one […]

The Trump trade war has gone viral on TikTok, pushing a Chinese e-commerce app, DHgate, to the top of the Apple App Store in the U.S. After Trump increased U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports by 145%, numerous Chinese suppliers and manufacturers began making TikTok videos explaining to consumers how the global luxury goods market actually […]

Neptune is one of the newest short-form video apps on the block seeking to compete with major players like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.  The app, currently in beta, has attracted attention from hundreds of thousands of users, with 970 testers participating and 400,000 people on the waitlist, per the company. Neptune announced Monday […]

Demand for solar energy in power-starved Nigeria has soared in the last decade thanks to worsening grid reliability and rising fuel costs. That’s drawn investor interest to Arnergy, a cleantech startup meeting that need. The company just raised a $15 million Series B extension (on top of a $3 million B1 round last year), bringing […]

According to Dealroom data cited by the Financial Times, British start-ups raised just £16.2 billion last year, far less than the more than £65 billion raised by their counterparts in Silicon Valley during the same period. In fact, the U.S. appears to be pulling further ahead each year. In 2024, 57% of global venture capital […]

Apple isn’t giving up on its mixed reality headset the Vision Pro, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company has been debating the best direction forward for the product after disappointing sales, Gurman says, but is now moving forward with two different models. One would address probably the two biggest complaints about the initial product […]

The Linux Foundation has become something of a misnomer through the years. It has extended far beyond its roots as the steward of the Linux kernel, emerging as a sprawling umbrella outfit for a thousand open source projects spanning cloud infrastructure, security, digital wallets, enterprise search, fintech, maps, and more. Last month, the OpenInfra Foundation […]

In a quiet transformation from merchandising giant to (also) healthcare giant, Amazon may be positioning its sprawling logistics network and growing medical footprint to potentially save lives, starting with your front door. According to Bloomberg, back in 2023, Amazon piloted a several months-long pilot program called Project Pulse, equipping delivery vans with defibrillators and training […]

“Mythic Quest,” the Apple TV+ workplace comedy about the making of a popular online roleplaying game, is ending after four seasons. A new version of the show’s fourth season finale — first aired on March 26, and now the de facto series finale — will premiere on Apple TV+ next week, with a new ending. […]

Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup led by OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised an additional $2 billion in funding at a $32 billion valuation, according to the Financial Times. The startup had already raised $1 billion, and there were reports that an additional $1 billion round was in the works. […]

A court hearing on the sale of bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola’s assets to Lucid Motors was going smoothly on Friday. No objections had been filed to the transaction, and Delaware bankruptcy Judge Thomas Horan verbally approved it without hesitation. Until, that is, a lawyer piped up on the Zoom call towards the end of […]

General Motors is laying off 500 workers at a factory in Canada because of weak demand for its all-electric BrightDrop vans, according to CNBC. GM told CNBC that the cuts were not related to the ongoing trade war being waged by President Donald Trump. The company is cutting one of the two shifts at the […]

Is the grass greener on the other side? We’re not sure, but the sky is most certainly bluer. It’s been over 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 […]

Social network Bluesky is rolling out a new version of its software, which adopts some of the features former X users have missed. Nope, it’s not an edit button! Instead, the open social network is adding support for chat reactions in its direct messages feature and is revamping its search page as “Explore,” directing users […]

Meta is starting to test a new feature in Threads that lets users follow the same creators they follow on X, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. “We’re currently testing a way for you to find and follow creators from other platforms on Threads, making it easier to connect with the people and conversations that matter […]

The list of 1,223 victims in 51 countries hints at the “true scale of the spyware problem,” per one researcher.

Your 401k is suffering. The billionaires are fighting. The gamers are imperiled. Not even the penguins on McDonald Island, where no humans reside, have been spared. But at long last, 26-year-old YouTuber and chocolatier MrBeast has weighed in on President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to impose sweeping tariffs on imports. Jokes aside, the prolific YouTuber […]

At 11 a.m. in California last Thursday, the day after President Donald Trump declared sweeping new tariffs under what he dubbed “Liberation Day,” Ryan Petersen was live on camera, fielding questions from a virtual room packed with more than 2,300 anxious customers. The founder and CEO of Flexport, a now 12-year-old global logistics and customs […]

A Meta exec on Monday denied a rumor that the company trained its new AI models to present well on specific benchmarks while concealing the models’ weaknesses. The executive, Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta, said in a post on X that it’s “simply not true” that Meta trained its Llama 4 Maverick […]

"Don't do crime," the ransomware gang's dark web leak site reads.

Peter Diamandis, a futurist with degrees from both MIT and Harvard, has spent much of the past two decades evangelizing a vision of an “abundant future” driven by exponential technologies that will lengthen our lives. The serial entrepreneur and founder of organizations like the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University has also cultivated close ties with […]

One of the new flagship AI models Meta released on Saturday, Maverick, ranks second on LM Arena, a test that has human raters compare the outputs of models and choose which they prefer. But it seems the version of Maverick that Meta deployed to LM Arena differs from the version that’s widely available to developers. […]

The British Broadcasting Corporation has filed a complaint with a UK antitrust regulator complaining that aggregators like Apple News and Google News minimize credit for the stories they feature. Apple Insider reports that the BBC is asking the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to require Apple and Google to more prominently credit news sources. And […]

The big screen adaptation of video game mega-franchise Minecraft brought in $58 million on Friday, putting it on-track for a $135 million opening weekend domestically — or potentially even more. That would give “A Minecraft Movie” the biggest opening of the year, beating out “Captain America: Brave New World” (which earned $88.8 million during its […]

Forerunner has seen a number of high-profile successes, showing an ability to get ahead of consumer trends with investments in Oura, Chime, the Farmer’s Dog, and beyond in non-B2C companies. To get a sense of how that happened, and what’s next for Forerunner in the AI era, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos spoke with […]

Cognition, the startup behind the viral AI programming tool Devin, has introduced a new low-cost plan to incentivize signups. When Cognition released Devin last year, the tool quickly blew up on social media for its ability to perform certain software development tasks autonomously. But it soon became apparent that Devin struggled with more complex coding […]

When OpenAI debuted its image-generation feature in ChatGPT last week, social media exploded when users realized that they could make AI-generated images that looked like something out of an animated film from Studio Ghibli. Fans hoped that Studio Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki would take a stand, but the 84-year-old animator has remained silent. In the […]

As it prepares to transition from a nonprofit corporation to a for-profit, OpenAI says it’s convening a group of experts to “help OpenAI’s philanthropy understand the most urgent and intractable problems nonprofits face today.” This group, which OpenAI says will incorporate feedback from “leaders and communities” in health, science, education, and public services, particularly within […]

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a range of other online services, is reducing its workforce. The layoffs will impact 16% of staff across divisions, an Automattic blog post published Wednesday reveals. Ahead of the layoffs, Automattic’s website listed 1,744 employees, which means north of 270 people may have lost their jobs. (Automattic […]

Rather than divide people into demographic buckets, Northwind Climate analyzes survey responses for behavioral clues.