timef 01/29/2025

Only 3 days remain to score the ultimate deal for TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 — two of the same ticket types for the price of one! Don’t wait to take advantage of these massive savings. This limited-time offer ends this Friday, January 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT — after that, these 2-for-1 Passes will be gone. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

When it comes to the world of cybersecurity, identity is often thought of as a “perimeter” around an organization. So many breaches begin through techniques like password theft, phishing, and credential stuffing; ergo, securing the identities of not only users, but also applications and machines, is the key to securing the whole system.  Easier said […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Even just a few years ago, FinOps — a collection of best practices to manage the costs of cloud computing — wasn’t something that was top of mind for a lot of businesses. Since then, though, businesses have started tightening their purses. Today, FinOps is pretty much a standard discipline, and there are dozens of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Tesla earnings day is upon us — the quarterly check in with one of the world’s largest EV makers and its controversial CEO Elon Musk. Tesla’s fourth-quarter and full-year earnings are expected to be released Wednesday after market close. A webcast, in which Tesla management will answer questions from analysts and retail investors, is scheduled […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

After more than a year of helping solar installers sell, plan, and finance panels for residential and small commercial building owners, Niko found another opportunity. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hours after Italian authorities requested information from DeepSeek about how the company handles user data, the Chinese AI startup’s app is no longer available in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. The app has claimed the top spot in the download charts in multiple countries, including in the U.S. where it is at the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

U.K.-based engineering giant Smiths Group has confirmed a cybersecurity incident involving “unauthorized access” to its systems. The London-listed company, which operates across multiple sectors including energy, security, aerospace and defense, said Tuesday that it is currently “managing” the incident. The company said it isolated affected systems and activated its business continuity plans, implying a disruptive […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Uber-backed Moove, an Africa-born mobility fintech that offers vehicle financing to ride-hailing and delivery app drivers across six continents, has acquired Kovi, a Brazilian urban mobility provider. The value of the deal is not being disclosed, but Moove confirmed it was an all-share transaction, and Kovi is now wholly owned by Moove. Moove co-founder and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The AI bubble hasn’t burst yet, at least when it comes to consumer spending on AI apps. Led by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, overall spending on AI apps jumped to $1.42 billion in 2024, according to app analytics firm Appfigures. This marks a 274% increase from 2023 (the app launched in May of that year). Among tens […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Martin Fengler knows a lot about the weather. Fengler got his Ph.D. in mathematics, focused on numerical weather prediction, before working for Meteomedia AG, a network of weather stations in Switzerland and Germany. But while he knew a lot about weather forecasting from the prediction side, he realized the gaps that remained on the consumption […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

AI chatbot DeepSeek has taken the world by storm, topping app store charts and sending Silicon Valley and Wall Street into meltdown. An offshoot of Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, DeepSeek’s cost-to-performance ratio makes for impressive reading compared to incumbents such as OpenAI. However, reports have increasingly documented some of the things the AI chatbot is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Just a few hours after David Sacks claimed DeepSeek used OpenAI’s models to train its own models, Bloomberg Law reports that Microsoft is investigating DeepSeek’s use of OpenAI’s application programming interface (API). According to security researchers working for Microsoft, the Chinese company behind the R1 reasoning model may have exfiltrated a large amount of data […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

If you talk to a fintech entrepreneur about their business, chances are they’ll end up talking about ledger issues at some point. A ledger is a record of money movements that serves as the source of truth for financial assets, but when a company starts having multiple bank accounts, payment processors and funds spread across […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Until a few years ago, it used to be difficult to make payments across borders almost anywhere in the world. But it’s still a big problem in Africa, where fragmented, disconnected systems, high fees, and poor infrastructure make it tough for businesses and individuals to move money quickly and affordably. The majority of people and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Swedish shared micromobility giant Voi had its first profitable year in 2024, according to preliminary unaudited results the company shared exclusively with TechCrunch.  Voi, which offers shared e-scooters and e-bikes across more than 100 markets in Europe, recorded €132.8 million ($138 million) in net revenue in 2024. On an adjusted basis, Voi earned €17.2 million […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek's Android app has taken the No. 1 spot on the Google Play Store, days after the chatbot app clinched the top spot on the App Store. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

If you’ve ever tried to book a venue for a company event, you’ll know how onerous a task it can be. You have to contact multiple vendors, wait for quotes, evaluate them, see if you can get a good deal, and then get all that approved. So it makes sense that depending on the size […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

SoftBank is negotiating a $500 million investment in Skild AI, a software company building a foundational model for robotics at a $4 billion valuation, Bloomberg and Financial Times reported. The two-year-old company raised its previous funding round of $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation last July from investors including Jeff Bezos, Lightspeed Venture Partners, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The jury is still out on whether the Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek is a game changer or possibly part of an elaborate plan by its hedge fund parent company to short Nvidia and other tech stocks. Whichever it might be (maybe both?), DeepSeek and its large language model has made some major waves. Now, it’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

DeepSeek has gone viral. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts. DeepSeek’s AI models, which were trained using compute-efficient techniques, have led Wall Street analysts — and technologists — to question whether the U.S. can maintain its lead in the AI race […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto “czar,” said in an interview on Fox on Tuesday that there’s “substantial evidence” that Chinese AI company DeepSeek “distilled” knowledge from OpenAI’s AI models, a process that Sacks compared to theft. Sacks, who didn’t cite the source of this “evidence,” suggested that DeepSeek used responses from OpenAI models to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hype around DeepSeek sent the stock price of several Chinese companies soaring, but proof of their ties to DeepSeek is non-existent. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Safety is often overlooked in the rush to bring humanoid robots to the workplace. As high-profile corporations ranging from retailers like Amazon to carmakers such as Mercedes and BMW have announced humanoid pilots for factories and warehouses, conversations around worker safety are regularly buried beneath industry hype. One Bay Area-robotics firm is hoping to correct […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

EV owners of GM vehicles like the Chevrolet Silverado EV and Cadillac Lyriq will now officially have access to Tesla’s Superchargers. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Indie bookstore backer Bookshop.org launched an e-book platform on Tuesday, making it easier for readers to buy e-books without padding Jeff Bezos’s pockets. For years, Amazon’s chokehold and sway in the publishing industry have been so strong that authors and booksellers have accused the company of operating a monopoly. Amazon is dominant in the sale […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Barely a week after DeepSeek released its R1 “reasoning” AI model — which sent markets into a tizzy — researchers at Hugging Face are trying to replicate the model from scratch in what they’re calling a pursuit of “open knowledge.” Hugging Face head of research Leandro von Werra and several company engineers have launched Open-R1, a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Openvibe’s clever app that integrates multiple open social networks including Bluesky, Mastodon, Nostr, and Threads, just got a boost toward its future development. The company on Tuesday announced that it has received outside investment of $800,000 in a round led by Czech Founders VC, which includes backing from WordPress.com and Tumblr parent company, Automattic, as […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called for the United States to ramp up open-source AI efforts to address the rise of DeepSeek in a Washington Post op-ed published Tuesday. Just last year, Schmidt said America was two or three years ahead of China. But DeepSeek’s rise marks “a turning point” for the global AI race, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab, has Silicon Valley reeling with its R1 reasoning model, which it claims uses far less computing power than those of American AI leaders — and, it’s open source. The DeepSeek app has shot to the top of the App Store charts this week, dethroning ChatGPT. But who is Liang Wenfeng, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company Waymo might be planning to test a feature that will allow robotaxi riders to add a “tip” that will go to the charity of their choice after a ride. Jane Manchun Wong, a security researcher who recently hacked the display dome on top of a Waymo vehicle, found the new tip […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

U.C. Berkeley spinout Ambi Robotics announced Tuesday the arrival of AmbiStack, a novel system that automates pallet packing. The system features an industrial robotic arm mounted above a conveyer belt that moves along the X and Y axes and lifts boxes up via suction cups mounted to a gripper. Once lifted from the conveyer belt, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Geek Ventures is raising a Fund II, according to a recent SEC filing.  The firm, founded in 2021 by Ihar Mahaniok, focuses on investing in early-stage immigrant founders. Mahaniok immigrated to the U.S. from Belarus and spoke to TechCrunch a few years ago about how hard the venture ecosystem can be for immigrants.  “Talent is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

UK documents show that the UK’s Department of Business and Trade spent five years convincing Andreessen Horowitz to create a presence in London, only for the US firm to leave 18 after launching an office, according to government documents obtained by Sifted.  In 2023, a16z launched a crypto office in London, deeming the crypto environment […] © 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, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Waymo robotaxis have become a common sight on Los Angeles surface streets. Now, those driverless vehicles are heading to the city’s network of freeways. The Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle technology company said Tuesday it will begin testing its fleet of robotaxis on the Los Angeles freeway system, including Interstates 10, 110, 405, and the 90. These […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech!  This week we’re looking at the story behind the sale of Divvy Homes, Ramp’s new product, some notable fundraising deals, and more! To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here. The big story Last week, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Falls are common for older people living semi-independently. According to the CDC, they’re the leading cause of injury for adults aged 65 and up. On average, about 10% of these falls are serious, requiring medical attention. Yet many fall victims don’t get the treatment they need. George Netscher, a software developer by training, watched his […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google Play is rolling out “Verified” badges for select VPN apps to make it easier for users to find trust services. Apps with the badge prioritize user privacy and safety, Google said in a blog post on Tuesday. The badge indicates that the developers of an app have adhered to the Play safety and security […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

There are a number of projects now underway that are focused on developing a video-first app for the open source social network Bluesky. However, one stands out from the rest: An upcoming app called Reelo isn’t building on top of the Bluesky social network, as so many others are, but is building on the underlying […] © 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 supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 demonstrator plane just went supersonic in the skies over California’s Mojave desert, making it the first civil aircraft to break the sound barrier. The American startup’s plane notched the historic achievement in its twelfth test flight. It cleared Mach 1 and stayed supersonic for around four minutes, reaching Mach 1.1. Test pilot […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Jetify, the company formerly known as Jetpack.io, is launching its first AI agent product Tuesday. Dubbed Testpilot, the company’s first AI agent is meant to make the majority of the routine test creation process a matter of simply letting Jetify create a test plan, execute it, and report back, all while the agent directly interacts […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

General Motors expects to save up to $1 billion annually by ending its Cruise robotaxi development program, CEO and Chair Mary Barra said Tuesday during the company’s earnings call.  The estimate comes nearly two months after the automaker said it would no longer fund Cruise, its self-driving subsidiary that aimed to commercialize robotaxis. “GM has […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Quibim, a Spanish startup that’s developing foundational AI models for medical imaging spanning oncology, immunology, neurology, and metabolic disorders, has raised $50 million in a Series A round of funding. The cash injection comes as AI makes ever deeper inroads into healthcare, spanning everything from drug discovery to clinical trials. Quibim, for its part, is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The zero-day bug was fixed in iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, Apple Watches and Vision Pro headsets. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

AI dev platform Hugging Face has partnered with third-party cloud vendors, including SambaNova, to launch Inference Providers, a feature designed to make it easier for devs on Hugging Face to run AI models using the infrastructure of their choice. Other partners involved with the new effort include Fal, Replicate, and Together AI. Hugging Face says […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

President Donald Trump told reporters that Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations, Bloomberg reports. Although Trump didn’t elaborate, he stated that “there’s great interest in TikTok” and that there will be “a lot of people bidding on it.” Microsoft and Oracle were in the running to acquire the ByteDance-owned app back in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk-owned social network X announced a partnership with Visa to handle person-to-person payments for its upcoming X Money product. The company will use Visa Direct, which is Visa’s solution for real-time money transfers, to load money into X Money’s wallet, connect to a debit card for paying other users, and transfer money back to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The edtech giant is notifying state attorneys general about the breach but won’t say how many individuals have been affected © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In a week dominated by headlines about China’s growing AI competitiveness, OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Gov. The new version of the AI-powered chatbot platform is designed to provide U.S. government agencies an additional way to access the tech. ChatGPT Gov includes many of the capabilities found in OpenAI’s corporate-focused tier, ChatGPT Enterprise. Using the platform, agencies […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Quantum computing remains something of a holy grail in the world of technology: It promises a huge leap in computing power, but only if someone can figure out how to square away the fault rates that prevent any scaling of the tech. Now, one of the more promising quantum startups in Europe is announcing a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

While the adoption of IP (intellectual property) blockchain and tokenization of assets is still in its early stages, more creatives in the entertainment industry are embracing what is called “tokenized storytelling.” This approach enables fans to participate in story development, contributing elements — such as characters and plot — that can be tokenized and owned […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Audio streaming company Spotify said Tuesday that it paid $10 billion to the music industry last year. The company added that it has given nearly $60 billion in industry payouts since its inception. This is another effort from Spotify to dispel reports that the company doesn’t reward artists properly for their work. The key point […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Owners of the electric Lucid Gravity SUV will gain access to Tesla’s Supercharging network starting January 31.  The Gravity is Lucid’s second vehicle model in its lineup after its flagship Air sedan series, and the first to be built with charge ports compatible with Tesla’s NACS (North American Charging Standard) charge plugs. Lucid Air owners will […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The engineering and automation contractor for the U.S. government said the hackers encrypted some of the company's files. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Atomicwork has raised $25 million in a Series A round co-led by Khosla Ventures and Z47 to expand its AI agentic platform for enterprises. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Helion's unorthodox approach to fusion power and relative secrecy has earned it plenty of fans — and critics. But don’t count its investors among the naysayers. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.