timef 03/25/2025

When Kat Abughazaleh got laid off from her job as an extremism researcher and video producer at Media Matters last year, Elon Musk personally chimed in on X to celebrate her misfortune. “Karma is real,” Musk said. But as Abughazaleh said in a video on Monday announcing her campaign for Congress, she’s not afraid of […]

Medina's new startup, called Paid, helps agentic startups profitably charge for their bots.

The premiere founder conference brought to you by TechCrunch is heading back to Boston on July 15. TC All Stage 2025 (formerly known as Early Stage) is our tentpole East Coast event that promises an agenda full of founder knowledge — for all stages — that will be passed along to you. What’s more, if […]

When Sam Weaver was vice president of product management at Unqork, he realized that the company needed a better way to manage its sprawling network of Kubernetes clusters — which are groups of computing nodes. When Unqork couldn’t find anything off the shelf, it assembled a 15-person team to build a Kubernetes management product. Despite […]

Apple said today it is opening up its catalog to let users build mix sets by integrating the platform with a number of tools. These tools include Algoriddim’s djay Pro software, hardware platforms AlphaTheta, Serato, inMusic’s Engine DJ, Denon DJ, Numark, and RANE DJ. This will possibly attract DJs to explore Apple Music’s catalog of over 100 million songs and also […]

EV owners of GM vehicles like the Chevrolet Silverado EV and Cadillac Lyriq will now officially have access to Tesla’s Superchargers.

Character AI, the startup that lets users create and chat with different characters, is today rolling out new parental insights features to increase user safety. This is after a string of lawsuits and criticism against the company over failing to protect children from harm. The new features primarily give a summary of teens’ activity on […]

Commonwealth Fusion Systems marked a major milestone Tuesday morning, announcing the installation of a key component of its Sparc demonstration reactor. The new part is a 24-foot wide, 75-ton stainless steel circle that forms the foundation of the tokamak, the doughnut-shaped heart of a fusion reactor that CFS hopes will be the first of its […]

Waymo said Tuesday it will begin offering robotaxi rides via the Waymo One app in  Washington D.C. in 2026. Before it can launch commercially, the company will have to up its lobbying game in the capitol, where autonomous vehicle permits still require a human behind the wheel.  The news from Waymo comes as the Alphabet-owned […]

French VC firm Daphni is announcing the first closing of its new fund, Daphni Blue. The firm has raised €200 million (around $215 million at current exchange rates). It expects to raise as much as €250 million ($270 million) by the end of the year. Some of Daphni’s most remarkable past investments include Back Market, […]

OpenAI released updates Monday for Advanced Voice Mode, its AI voice feature that enables real-time conversations in ChatGPT, to make the AI assistant more personable and interrupt users less frequently. Manuka Stratta, an OpenAI post-training researcher, announced the changes in a video posted Monday to the company’s official social media channels. OpenAI’s latest update aims […]

The Arc Prize Foundation, a nonprofit co-founded by prominent AI researcher François Chollet, announced in a blog post on Tuesday that it has created a new, challenging test to measure the general intelligence of leading AI models. So far, the new test, called ARC-AGI-2, has stumped most models. “Reasoning” AI models like OpenAI’s o1-pro and […]

Earlier this year, DeepSeek briefly crashed Nvidia’s stock because of speculation that its models require far fewer chips. Now, Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, which is backed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, is claiming a major AI breakthrough. Ant was able to use Chinese chips made by Alibaba and Huawei to create methods that cut […]

Last year, AI-powered sales automation startup 11x appeared to be on an explosive growth trajectory. However, nearly two dozen sources – including investors, current and former employees – tell TechCrunch that the company has experienced financial struggles, largely of its own making.  Numerous people in the U.S. and U.K. told TechCrunch that the situation has […]

Vertical farming company Plenty has filed for bankruptcy, the company said in a press release on Monday. In its statement, Plenty said it has received a commitment for $20.7 million in debtor-in-possession financing as part of a proposed restructuring plan. It plans to continue to operate a strawberry farm in Virginia and a plant science […]

Founders Future, a Paris-based VC firm with €300 million in assets under management (around $324 million at current exchange rates), is opening up the capital of the holding company that manages Founders Future’s funds and Sowefund. The company has sold a 25% stake in the holding company to MACSF, the Dassault family, CMA CGM Group […]

The Trump administration’s national security leaders accidentally included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, in a chat on Signal discussing confidential plans to attack Yemen’s Houthis. “I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans,” Goldberg wrote of the March 15 messages, which […]

Developer tooling is changing rapidly with AI. So companies that are making it easier to adopt AI in their workflows are seeing a boom of attention. After a startup called n8n (pronounced “enay-ten”) pivoted its workflow automation platform to become more AI-friendly in 2022, it said it saw its revenues increase 5X, doubling in the […]

Arcade, a generative AI marketplace for designing jewelry, is expanding its offerings to include home goods, starting with rugs. The company on Monday also introduced a new feature called “Match My Room,” which allows users to upload a photo of their room so that their design complements the existing colors and style. Alongside this expansion, […]

Tornado Cash was used to launder billions in stolen crypto, according to the Treasury.

Brooklyn-based electric vehicle charging infrastructure startup Revel on Monday launched its first fast-charging station in San Francisco, kicking off its plans to expand across the Bay Area over the next year.  “For years, Revel has operated the largest, fastest, and most reliable fast-charging network in New York City,” Frank Reig, co-founder and CEO of Revel, […]