timef 03/26/2025

Amazon started the Alexa Fund in 2015 to back early-stage voice startups. With the advent of large language models and Amazon launching Gen AI-powered Alexa+ along with a family of multimodal AI models, the fund now wants to broaden its scope and invest more in AI startups. In a blog post Amazon shared with TechCrunch […]

It’s getting easier to build new applications on ATProto, the protocol that powers Bluesky’s social network and a growing number of other apps. At ATmosphere, the ATProto community conference held over the weekend in Seattle, Bluesky CTO Paul Frazee offered attendees a glimpse of what’s ahead for the protocol’s development and how those will help […]

Audio startup Krisp on Wednesday said it is launching a new feature that uses AI to change a user’s accent during calls. The company is initially rolling out support for changing Indian English accents to U.S. English. The startup says the accent conversion process preserves the speaker’s voice and only switches phonemes to match American […]

Americans’ support for a TikTok ban is declining, according to a study from the Pew Research Center. This survey of over 5,000 U.S. adults found that just 34% of respondents supported banning the short form video app. When Pew ran a similar study in 2023, 50% of adults supported the TikTok ban. Over the same […]

Amazon continues to infuse AI into its shopping tools to encourage customers to make more purchases. The company announced on Wednesday a new feature called “Interests,” aimed at creating a more personalized and conversational search experience.  With the new feature, customers can enter tailored prompts in the search bar, reflecting their interests, preferences, and even […]

The clock is ticking — less than a week left until TechCrunch All Stage ticket prices go up! Save over $300 on founder and investor passes before March 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Founders, accelerate your path. Investors, empower their rise. On July 15, join 1,200 founders and VCs at SoWa Power Station in Boston, […]

Kaspersky attributed the hacks to an espionage campaign targeting journalists and employees at educational institutions.

Before RJ Scaringe founded Rivian in 2009, he had micromobility on his mind. More than a decade later, his musings took root in a small skunkworks program inside Rivian that set out to answer one question: Could the company’s technology be condensed down into something smaller and more affordable than its electric vans, trucks, and SUVs? […]

A trio of cloud industry leaders have launched a new company with the mission of modernizing software configuration data management. Emerging from stealth today with $4 million in funding, ConfigHub is the handiwork of CEO Alexis Richardson, founder of cloud-native container management platform Weaveworks; CTO Brian Grant, former Google software engineer and original lead architect […]

It’s virtually impossible today to determine when a student’s writing has been composed using ChatGPT or another GenAI tool, and it can be a nightmare to disprove incorrect accusations. An AI edtech startup called Brisk has built a tool that could at least help teachers identify some of the telltale signs, and it’s now announcing […]

A complete list of all the known layoffs in tech, from Big Tech to startups, broken down by month throughout 2024.

Microsoft is introducing a “deep research” AI-powered tool in Microsoft 365 Copilot, its AI chatbot app. There’s been a raft of deep research agents launched recently across chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok. Powering them are so-called reasoning AI models, which posses the ability to think through problems and fact-check themselves — […]

Block just laid off 931 employees. Read the email from its co-founder Jack Dorsey for more details on why.

Block just laid off 931 employees. Read the email from its co-founder Jack Dorsey for more details on why.

This is a guide on how to check whether someone compromised your online accounts.

Emergence Capital has closed its $1 billion seventh fund, it reported on Tuesday It’s the firm’s first raise in nearly four years. In May 2021, the San Mateo, California-based venture firm rounded up nearly a billion dollars in capital commitments across two funds.  At that time, it closed its sixth early-stage fund with $575 million; […]

The startup uses AI to quickly search for minerals over wide areas, identifying promising potential deposits for exploration.

Instagram on Tuesday announced a new school partnership program aimed at expediting the handling of moderation reports submitted by verified school accounts. The program is currently available to all middle and high schools in the U.S. It allows schools to report posts or student accounts that may violate the app’s guidelines directly to Instagram. These […]

During a livestream on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the first major upgrade to ChatGPT’s image-generation capabilities in over a year. ChatGPT can now leverage the company’s GPT-4o model to natively create and modify images and photos. GPT-4o has long underpinned the AI-powered chatbot platform, but until now, the model has been able to […]

Apple has announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will kick off on June 9 and run through June 13. The tech giant’s event is where it offers a look at its upcoming versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, as well as new tools for its developers. As in past years, the […]

Apple has announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will kick off on June 9 and run through June 13. The tech giant’s event is where it offers a look at its upcoming versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, as well as new tools for its developers. As in past years, the […]

23andMe holds millions of customers' genetic information. Here's what you can do to protect your data.

On Tuesday, Google unveiled Gemini 2.5, a new family of AI reasoning models that pauses to “think” before answering a question. To kick off the new family of models, Google is launching Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, a multimodal, reasoning AI model that the company claims is its most intelligent model yet. This model will be […]

Poe, Quora’s chatbot app, launched one of its most affordable subscription options on Monday, priced at just $5 per month.  In addition, the company introduced its highest-priced plan at $250 per month, designed for users who need to send a large volume of messages on Poe. Poe allows users to utilize several AI-powered bots– including […]

AI chipmaking company Cerebras Systems’ IPO is delayed again as the public listing’s national security review drags on. Cerebras, which originally filed its intent to IPO in September 2024, thought the incoming Trump administration would help it breeze through its national security review, according to Reuters. That hasn’t been the case. The White House has […]

The first in-person gathering devoted to those building with the AT Protocol — which powers Bluesky — was held in Seattle.

Discord announced on Tuesday that it rebuilt its Overlay feature from the ground up. The new Overlay makes streaming games on Discord more user-friendly on the streamer’s end. In its legacy form, streamers could toggle the Overlay display to use Discord while playing games, but this would bring up the entire Discord client in the […]