timef 03/11/2025

Waymo will start offering robotaxi rides to people in its “Waymo One” early rider program in Mountain View, Los Altos, Palo Alto, and “parts of Sunnyvale” starting Wednesday, an expansion that will bring its footprint in Silicon Valley to 27 square miles. The Waymo vehicles will be available around-the-clock, and the new territories add to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hinge Health, a 10-year-old company that offers a digital solution to treat chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, filed to go public. Although Hinge has not yet announced how many shares, nor priced them, the IPO specialists at Renaissance Capital estimate the company hopes to raise up to $500 million in its offering. Hinge’s revenue in 2024 […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The banking-as-a-service space took a hit last year when Synapse collapsed. But that hasn’t stopped BaaS startup Synctera from raising another $15 million in funding, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. Synctera works to provide companies “of all shapes and sizes with everything they need to launch and operate fintech and embedded banking products,” including: accounts, cards, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Worth, a company focused on helping fintechs, banks, and enterprises underwrite small and medium-sized businesses more easily, has raised $20 million in a seed funding round, the startup tells TechCrunch exclusively. It’s a large seed round, especially these days when capital is harder to come by. But the founders’ history may have something to do […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

You’re not the only one getting voicemails about your car’s extended warranty. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), about 2.6 million people submitted reports on falling victim to fraud in 2024, totaling $12.5 billion in losses. That’s a big jump from $2.5 billion lost in 2023, when the FTC received roughly the same […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TikTok announced on Tuesday that it’s rolling out new features to protect teens on its app. The social network is giving parents the ability to block their teen from using TikTok during certain hours and see their teen’s following and followers lists through new Family Pairing features. TikTok is also going to encourage young users […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Plankey, if approved by the Senate, will serve as CISA's third director. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Ahead of a May deadline to lock in guidance for providers of general purpose AI (GPAI) models on complying with provisions of the EU AI Act that apply to Big AI, a third draft of the Code of Practice was published on Tuesday. The Code has been in formulation since last year, and this draft […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A new venture firm called Leitmotif has been on a quiet blitz for the last 16 months, funding around 20 startups broadly focused on decarbonization. Its portfolio includes EV companies, space and battery plays, and four nuclear fusion startups. But the firm has only said its funding is from “European industrial interests.” Now, Leitmotif has […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It’s no secret that AI has eaten the lion’s share of funding over the past couple of years, with investments into the sector surging 62% to $110 billion in 2024 alone, while startup funding overall declined 12%.  Startups may think that just adding “AI” to their company’s name might help them secure that funding. But […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Airtel has tied up with SpaceX to launch Starlink in India. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Medical devices, wearables — we are all familiar with them. But are they linked in any way to the healthcare system and the databases that are supposed to keep us healthy? The answer in most cases is no, they are not. Vital, which is rebranding to “Junction”, provides a single API to integrate wearables and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The reactor, called Lawson Machine 26 (LM26), is General Fusion’s latest iteration in a string of devices that have tested various parts of its unique approach. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Zolve, a neobanking startup targeting global citizens seeking credit, has raised $251 million in a new round to expand into Canada and launch loans. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Enterprises these days can choose from hundreds of apps and services available to secure their networks, data and assets — nearly as many more to help them manage all the alerts and extra work that those security apps generate. But what if you could build your own apps, customised to your own workloads, to simplify […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hawcx, backed by Engineering Capital, aims to solve passkeys' adoption challenge with its new tech. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

African VC firm Equator has raised $55M for its first fund, which will back early-stage climate tech startups on the continent. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple’s next set of major updates for the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems could bring the biggest design changes across the company’s platforms in years, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources. The revamp, set to come in with iOS19, iPadOS 19 and macOS 16, will refresh icons, menus, apps, windows, and system buttons while simplifing […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Reshape Energy is betting on a more integrated approach to accelerate the decarbonization of the built environment. Founded in Munich, Germany back in May 2024, the startup is led by a team with expertise scaling energy businesses, including the German division of Octopus energy and energy price comparison platform Verivox. It’s focusing on selling energy […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A new venture firm called Leitmotif has been on a quiet blitz for the last 16 months, funding around 20 startups broadly focused on decarbonization. Its portfolio includes EV companies, space and battery plays, and four nuclear fusion startups. But the firm has only said its funding is from “European industrial interests.” Now, Leitmotif has […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Hexa is trying something new. Instead of fostering startups from the ground up and incubating them for the first year or so, the Paris-based startup studio is acquiring a majority stake in Veevart, a vertical software-as-a-service company for museums that provides solutions for ticketing, fundraising, CRM and collection management. Hexa is a familiar name in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Medical imaging is a broad term that encompasses several distinct technologies. After working on AI-powered tools to enhance X-rays and mammographies, French startup Gleamer now aims to tackle magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Instead of starting from scratch, Gleamer has acquired two startups that have already been working on AI-powered MRI analysis: Pixyl and Caerus Medical. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Infinite Uptime, which offers predictive maintenance solutions for factories, has raised $35 million in a Series C round to expand its footprint in the U.S. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Dustin Moskovitz is retiring from Asana, the software company he founded in 2008. Asana, a task management platform, announced his retirement as part of the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report, CNBC reported. Moskovitz informed the board he intends to move into a chair role when a new CEO starts. The company has raised more than […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In an interview with Fox’s Larry Kudlow on Monday, billionaire Elon Musk admitted that his involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Donald Trump’s initiative to reduce federal spending, is making it tougher to run his many businesses: X, Tesla, xAI, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Starlink. “How are you running your other businesses?” […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is taking over as the CEO of Relativity Space, a 9-year-old rocket startup, a company spokesperson confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch. This is Schmidt’s first CEO job since he left Google roughly 15 years ago. On Monday, Schmidt told employees of Relativity Space that he made a significant investment […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Speaking at the SXSW conference in Austin on Monday, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says the social network has been working on a framework for user consent over how they want their data to be used for generative AI. The public nature of Bluesky’s social network has already allowed others to train their AI systems on […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In a grandmaster-level chest move, OpenAI has signed a five-year, $11.9 billion agreement with GPU-heavy cloud service, CoreWeave, Reuters reports citing people close to the deal. The deal involves OpenAI buying $350 million worth of equity in CoreWeave, the sources told Reuters. This stock sale is said to be separate from CoreWeave’s planned IPO. CoreWeave […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Rad Power Bikes CEO Phil Molyneux has stepped down as part of a wider strategic reshuffling at the acclaimed electric bicycle company. The company told TechCrunch that Chief Financial Officer Stephanie Roberts will serve as interim CEO while the company searches for a replacement, and that Molyneux will serve as an adviser. The news, first […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Bluesky now allows videos that are up to 3 minutes long, the decentralized social network announced on Monday. The platform launched support for video back in September with a 60-second time limit. With the new expanded time limit, Bluesky is bringing its user experience more in line with its competitors, X (formerly Twitter) and Meta’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Two initiatives to create a more open web, where users are in control of their own digital identities and data, may be coming together. At SXSW 2025, entrepreneur Frank McCourt, whose Project Liberty is developing open internet infrastructure (and is throwing its hat in the ring as a potential buyer for TikTok), announced that his […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

New details have emerged about PowerSchool's data breach — but here's what PowerSchool still isn't saying. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Poolside co-founder and CEO Jason Warner didn’t mince words: He thinks that most companies looking to build foundation AI models should instead focus on building applications. Poolside is an AI-powered software development platform. Warner told the audience at the HumanX AI conference in Las Vegas on Monday that he doesn’t think anyone who doesn’t think […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Unlike AI competitors, DeepSeek’s founder Liang Wenfeng is in no hurry to get investment from outsiders. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Unlike AI competitors, DeepSeek’s founder Liang Wenfeng is in no hurry to get investment from outsiders. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

When Bluesky CEO Jay Graber walked on stage at SXSW 2025 for her keynote discussion, she wore a large black T-shirt with her hair pulled back into a bun. At first glance, it might appear as though she’s following the same playbook that so many women in tech leadership have played before: downplaying her femininity […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Cheaper, lighter, and denser: the trifecta defines an ideal battery. No one has devised a perfect cell quite yet, but one stealthy startup thinks it has found a new material that solves at least two of those challenges. Daqus Energy has been quietly operating for the past couple years, refining a compound known as TAQ […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk’s X was inaccessible on Monday morning for thousands of users, including many in the U.S. After about eight hours of outages, Musk posted that the platform is facing a “massive cyberattack.” “There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against 𝕏. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Surf, the new app from Flipboard for browsing the open social web, is expanding its support for Bluesky’s social network. On Monday, the company announced a new version of its beta software (dubbed “Blue Wave”) which allows users to log into the app using their Bluesky credentials and then see all their Bluesky feeds in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Given how much money VCs are pouring into AI startups these days, it may seem like VCs have decided: If it’s not AI, they won’t write a big check. But that’s not exactly what’s happening. Dealmaking at the moment is more nuanced, said VC Insight Partners managing director Ryan Hinkle during a recent Equity podcast. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

CrowdStrike says a hacker had access to PowerSchool's internal system as far back as August. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for four years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. Just this past month, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Russian crypto exchange Garantex has yet to directly address the international law enforcement operation that resulted in the seizure of its domains, and criminal charges against two of its administrators. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.