timef 02/09/2025

Canadian investment firm Brookfield plans to invest €20 billion by 2030 in artificial intelligence projects in France (around $20.7 billion at current exchange rates), according to a report from La Tribune Dimanche confirmed by news agency AFP. The majority of the sum will be used to build AI-focused data centers. This announcement is the latest […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Consumer demand for alternatives to Big Tech’s social apps is heating up. Alternative social networks like Bluesky and Mastodon are gaining traction with people looking to leave X, while others are building ban-proof TikTok alternatives on open protocols. Similarly, many independent developers are also working on open, decentralized alternatives to Instagram, Meta’s flagship photo-sharing app […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple has released a new app called Invites that is designed to make it easy to create custom invitations for events using an iPhone or on the web. Invites is Apple’s version of Partiful, a popular invitation app that was crowned Google Play’s Best App of 2024.  Invites lets you create and share invitations, RSVP […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the company formerly known as Twitter appears to be over. Trump sued the social media platform for banning him in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. While a federal judge dismissed the suit in 2022, the then-former president’s lawyers continued to appeal. Soon […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Last month, Apple offered up more insight into its consumer robotics work via a research paper that argues that traits like expressive movements are key to optimizing human-robot interaction. “Like most animals,” starts the report, “humans are highly sensitive to motion and subtle changes in movement.” To illustrate its point, Apple pays homage to Pixar, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk recently said he is “not chomping at the bit to acquire TikTok.” Musk made those remarks during an interview at the WELT Economic Summit on January 28. A video of the interview was published today. The interview came after President Donald Trump delayed a law requiring parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok or […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week we’re diving into Google quietly removing its pledge to not build AI weapons for surveillance; how Elon Musk and DOGE are facilitating the biggest breach of U.S. government data; researchers who were able to re-create a premium “reasoning” model for $50; and more! Let’s get into it. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Fei-Fei Li, the Stanford computer scientist and startup founder sometimes known as “the Godmother of AI,” has outlined “three fundamental principles for the future of AI policymaking” ahead of next week’s AI Action Summit in Paris. First, Li said policy must be based on “science, not science fiction.” In other words, policymakers should focus on […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. Raji Arasu, the CTO of Autodesk, said that she’s been using AI for “multiple decades” to solve software-related challenges. “When traditional software […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.