timef 03/18/2025

AI coding assistants are becoming wildly popular, with the vast majority of respondents in GitHub’s latest poll saying that they’ve adopted AI tools in some form. Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman recently claimed that a quarter of YC’s W25 startup batch have 95% of their codebases generated by AI. Sensing an opportunity, VCs are rushing to back startups developing […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Arcade, an AI agent infrastructure startup founded by former Okta exec Alex Salazar and former Redis engineer Sam Partee, has raised $12 million from Laude Ventures. Laude is the new fund launched in 2024 by Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski, the UC Berkeley computer scientist who also co-founded Databricks. This isn’t the only check Laude has cut. But it […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In a brief message Tuesday morning on Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s “open” AI model family, Llama, hit 1 billion downloads. That’s up from 650 million downloads as of early December 2024 — a 153% increase over a roughly-three-month period. Llama, which powers Meta’s AI assistant, Meta AI, across the tech giant’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It’s time to make your voice heard. After receiving an overwhelming amount of applications for speakers at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, we have chosen six incredible finalists. TC Sessions: AI takes place on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley — and you have the power to decide who you want to take the stage […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Rather than trying to beat Chinese companies, Coreshell attempting an end run, swapping graphite for its specially coated silicon. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

According to a report, AI startup Anthropic is working on voice capabilities for its AI-powered chatbot, Claude. The company’s chief product officer, Mike Krieger, told the Financial Times that Anthropic plans to launch experiences that allow users to talk to Anthropic’s AI models. “We are doing some work around how Claude for desktop evolves  [… […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Chat platform WhatsApp said today that it will limit the number of broadcast messages individual users and businesses can send to curb spam on the app. In the coming weeks, the company will start testing limits on individual broadcast messages. Under these limits, WhatsApp will put a monthly limit on the number of broadcasts. While […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A new iOS social wellness app called Exist wants to help middle-aged consumers connect and build meaningful communities with one another as they navigate their lives and the stresses that come with it. The app describes itself as the edgier cousin of Calm or Headspace, and its main feature is social journaling. The idea behind […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

During a health-focused event in New York on Tuesday, Google announced that it’s developing a collection of “open” AI models for drug discovery called TxGemma. The AI models, which Google said will be released through its Health AI Developer Foundations program later this month, can understand both “regular text” and the structures of different “therapeutic […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google on Tuesday announced new products and features aimed at healthcare use cases, including improved overviews in Google Search for health queries, medical records APIs, and new health-focused “open” AI models. In Search, Google says it’s using AI and ranking systems to expand “knowledge panel” answers on thousands of health-related topics, and adding support for […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

So-called “vibe coding” with LLM-driven tools like Cursor Composer — a term coined by renowned computer scientist Andrej Karpathy — describes a hands-off approach to writing code using Gen AI models, and it has really taken off recently. According to Y Combinator, one quarter of the startups in its latest batch relies on AI to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Being a staggeringly successful big tech company does have some downsides: Apple has lost an appeal against a special abuse control regime that Germany’s competition watchdog applied to it last year. The iPhone maker can expect to continue to face bespoke competition controls in a major European market, in addition to other similar laws (such […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google is making the biggest acquisition in its history. The company’s parent company Alphabet is acquiring Wiz, the cloud security startup, for $32 billion, our sources say. The deal will still need regulatory and other approvals before closing. From what we can see, Google and Wiz have yet to confirm anything official. Other outlets are […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Nerdio, a platform designed to simplify how companies deploy and manage Microsoft cloud technologies, has raised $500 million in a Series C round of funding. The Chicago-based startup says its valuation has now quadrupled since its Series B round two years ago, and is now firmly in unicorn territory — though the company wouldn’t reveal […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Y Combinator-backed Nigerian food procurement startup Vendease has changed its employee pay structure and is seeking fresh capital, TechCrunch has learned. This is after laying off 44% of its workforce — around 120 employees —last month, marking its second round of job cuts in five months. In the latest development, the startup has now replaced […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

U.S. President Trump’s wide-ranging tariff hikes are already resulting in growth forecasts being cut amid other uncertainty — actions that will inevitably impact the technology sector, too. Today, however, one food e-commerce startup, GrubMarket, is announcing a new equity round of $50 million on a raised valuation of over $3.5 billion — a signal of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

African businesses pay up to four times the global average to transport goods. Nairobi-based logistics SaaS provider Leta wants to change that. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Waymo has been given permission to map roadways at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) via a temporary permit — the first step in the Alphabet company’s bid to unlock a potentially lucrative use case for its robotaxis. The temporary permit, which was announced Monday evening by San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, kicked off March […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google’s parent company Alphabet is again in advanced talks to acquire cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz, a person familiar with the deal told TechCrunch. The two companies were close to securing a deal at a $23 billion valuation last summer, but the transaction failed to materialize.  This time, the price being discussed is higher, the person […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Liam Fedus, OpenAI’s VP of research for post-training, is leaving the company to found a materials science AI startup. The Information initially reported Fedus’ plans. In a statement on X, Fedus confirmed the report and added a few additional details. “My undergrad was in physics and I’m keen to apply this technology there,” Fedus said […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan seems ready to get right to work to turn around the struggling company.  The semiconductor giant’s new executive is considering sweeping changes for the company’s chip manufacturing and AI strategies, according to Reuters, including: cutting middle management staff and revamping the company’s approach to manufacturing chips. Tan reportedly told company […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It’s gloves off in one of the more tense rivalries in the world of startups. HR company Rippling Monday morning announced a lawsuit against Deel, another big player in the same space. The dramatic 50-page complaint alleges racketeering, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition, and aiding & abetting breach of fiduciary duty. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The world is bad sometimes, but it feels even worse if you can’t stop staring into the all-consuming abyss that is the 6-inch screen of a smartphone, following you through space and time. It taunts you with its compact, light build that’s small enough to slip into your pocket and take anywhere, and its siren […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

If you’ve ever spent way too long scrolling through endless feeds about nothing, you may have been advised to touch grass. It’s a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, basically telling you to log off and go outside. But one developer took the concept to the next level. Rhys Kentish launched an iOS app last week called Touch Grass, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The constellation will keep a close eye on wildfires, eventually imaging nearly all of the Earth’s surface once every 20 minutes. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

While the rapid pace of funding has slowed, many fintechs are continuing to see growth and expand their teams. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Users on social media have discovered a controversial use case for Google’s new Gemini AI model: removing watermarks from images, including from images published by Getty Images and other well-known stock media outfits. Last week, Google expanded access to its Gemini 2.0 Flash model’s image generation feature, which lets the model natively generate and edit […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Flexport accuses Freightmate of being the product of "theft, not ingenuity" in its lawsuit against the startup. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has acquired Hotshot, a startup working on AI-powered video generation tools along the lines of OpenAI’s Sora. Akash Sastry, Hotshot’s CEO and co-founder, announced the news in a post on X on Monday. “Over the past 2 years we’ve built 3 video foundation models as a small team — Hotshot-XL, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI will soon begin testing a way for business customers to connect apps like Slack and Google Drive to ChatGPT. OpenAI plans to start beta testing a new feature called ChatGPT Connectors, according to a document viewed by TechCrunch. ChatGPT Connectors will allow ChatGPT Team subscribers to link workspace Google Drive and Slack accounts to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

On the heels of its IPO filing, Swedish fintech giant Klarna announced on Monday that it will exclusively provide buy now, pay later loans for Walmart. The partnership with Walmart is one that rival Affirm had previously owned. Klarna will provide the loans to Walmart customers through OnePay, a fintech startup in which it owns […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Artificial intelligence continues stirring things up in chemistry. To wit: YC-backed Cambridge, U.K.-based ReactWise is using AI to speed up chemical manufacture — a key step in bringing new drugs to market. Once a promising drug has been identified in the lab, pharma firms need to be able to produce much larger amounts of the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The constellation will keep a close eye on wildfires, eventually imaging nearly all of the Earth’s surface once every 20 minutes. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Software developer Davis Lu was found guilty of sabotaging the company's systems. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, no longer has to stay in France. A source told AFP that the investigating judge in charge of Durov’s case has accepted a request to modify the conditions of his supervision. “As you may have heard, I’ve returned to Dubai after spending several months in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TikTok is introducing a new “Security Checkup” tool that allows users to quickly review and update their account’s security settings from a single screen, the company announced on Monday. The feature is similar to Security Checkup tools offered by TikTok rival Instagram and tech giant Google. Users can access the new tool from their profile […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Security researchers say that a threat actor it calls Mora_001 has ‘close ties’ to the Russia-linked hacking group © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

GTC, Nvidia’s biggest conference of the year, begins Monday and runs till Friday in San Jose, with the biggest announcements probably coming Tuesday. TechCrunch will be on the ground covering the news as it happens — and we’re expecting a healthy dose of announcements. And we’re making it easy for you to follow along. CEO […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.