timef 02/08/2025

Arguments about what is and isn’t “open source” are often resolved by deferring to the Open Source Initiative (OSI): If a piece of software is available under a license rubber stamped as “open source” by the OSI’s formal “definition,” then that software is open source. But waters muddy when you get into the nuts and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Fine art auction house, Christie’s, has sold AI-generated art before. But soon, it plans to hold its first show dedicated solely to works created with AI, an announcement that has been met with mixed reviews. The auction, which Christie’s is calling ‘Augmented Intelligence,’ will feature artwork from artists including Mat Dryhurst, the founder of AI […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei claims DeepSeek generated sensitive bioweapons data in a safety test it ran. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI is expanding its footprint to Germany. According to a press release issued Friday, the ChatGPT maker plans to open an office in Munich in the coming months. “Germany is renowned for its technical expertise, academic excellence, and industrial innovation,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a statement. “Opening our first office in Germany means we […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Just six months after defense tech Anduril raised a massive $1.5 billion round that valued the company at $14 billion, it’s in talks to raise another $2.5 billion, at a valuation of up to $28 billion, sources told CNBC. The deal would, not surprisingly, be led by Founders Fund, which is reportedly writing a $1 […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Department of Transportation has paused funding for a $5 billion EV charging infrastructure program that Tesla has received at least $31 million from. The move is widely viewed to be illegal. It’s the latest attempt from the Trump administration to hack away at federally funded renewable energy projects around the country, a clear priority […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Rapyd Financial Network is reportedly looking to raise $300 million in a new funding at a steep valuation cut from its 2021 high. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

On the same day that President Donald Trump delayed ending a trade exemption targeting certain Chinese imports, ecommerce company Shopify published a blog post making its stance on U.S. trade policy clear. In the post, Shopify endorsed “open trade,” calling for regulators to give online merchants the “freedom to expand without constraints imposed by geopolitical […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk has reportedly picked fresh-faced six engineers to run DOGE. I spoke to one of them in 2023, when his life looked very, very different. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Andrew Ng, the founder and former leader of Google Brain, supports Google’s recent decision to drop its pledge not to build AI systems for weapons. “I’m very glad that Google has changed its stance,” Ng said during an on-stage interview Thursday evening with TechCrunch at the Military Veteran Startup Conference in San Francisco. Earlier this […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk doesn’t want Tesla to be just an automaker. He wants Tesla to be an AI company, one that’s figured out how to make cars drive themselves.  Crucial to that mission is Dojo, Tesla’s custom-built supercomputer designed to train its Full Self-Driving (FSD) neural networks. FSD isn’t actually fully self-driving; it can perform some […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A coalition of organizations and individuals have signed an open letter expressing concern at the U.K. government’s decision to appoint a former Amazon executive as chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The group, which includes U.S. tech outfits such as Yelp, DuckDuckGo, and Mozilla, say that the CMA must be “free from political […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

An AI system developed by Google DeepMind, Google’s leading AI research lab, appears to have surpassed the average gold medalist in solving geometry problems in an international mathematics competition. The system, called AlphaGeometry2, is an improved version of a system, AlphaGeometry, that DeepMind released last January. In a newly published study, the DeepMind researchers behind […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Social network Bluesky will soon give its users more control over who can reply to their posts. Confirmed by Bluesky developer Paul Frazee, Bluesky will add a new “followers only” setting that users can configure to limit replies. In addition, he says, Bluesky will create a way for users to set their default reply settings. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A former iOS engineer, who was sued by Apple for leaking confidential information to journalists, has issued an apology after the lawsuit against him was dismissed. The lawsuit, which was filed last year, alleged that Andrew Aude sent thousands of messages to journalists at The Wall Street Journal and The Information about more than a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk's DOGE has taken control and accessed large swathes of Americans' private information held by the U.S. federal government. © 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. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This first week of February was busy on the geopolitical front, as well as in the world of startups and VC news, with many announcements and significant […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A number of startups are racing to make vehicle inspections faster, easier, and cheaper. Self Inspection, a startup based in San Diego, thinks it has them all beat with its AI-powered service — and now it has convinced outside investors. Self Inspection, founded in 2021, is set to announce Thursday it’s raised $3 million in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

France’s public investment bank announced that it plans to invest as much as €10 billion (around $10.3 billion at current exchange rates) in the artificial intelligence ecosystem in France. This announcement comes a few days before heads of state and global tech leaders gather for the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris. Bpifrance has been […] © 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 (and Google Play, as well). 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 […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Amazon is the latest tech company to remove references to “inclusion and diversity” from its 10-K report. The filing has removed reference to diversity and inclusion as it pertains to the workplace. In its 2023 10-K form, the company had a sentence that read “As we strive to be Earth’s best employer, we focus on investment and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ghaffary is looking to fund startups using AI to create high-paying jobs, rather than replace them. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Under European Union law, X is one of a handful of major social media platforms that has a duty to facilitate public interest researchers’ access to support the study of systemic risks — such as to elections and other democratic processes. But the Elon Musk-owned company formerly known as Twitter has been blocking civil society […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In this post, we explain the many Microsoft Copilots available and what they do, and highlight the key differences between each. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

X-Energy is one of many nuclear startups to have benefitted from the AI-driven data center boom. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, is in talks to raise funding at a valuation of “at least” $20 billion, according to Reuters. It’s not clear how much Safe Superintelligence — which has yet to generate any revenue — is looking to secure, but it could be substantial. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.