timef 04/04/2025

Nintendo is delaying preorders for the newly-announced Switch 2 in the U.S. due to concerns around President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Preorders will no longer begin on April 9. “Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions,” […]

After effectively cancelling the consumer release of its o3 reasoning model, OpenAI now says that it plans to release both o3 and a next-generation successor, o4-mini, in “a couple of weeks.” In a post on X on Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the change in roadmap is related to OpenAI’s upcoming GPT-5, which OpenAI […]

TechCrunch All Stage, our big event for founders of startups at all stages of funding (see what we did there?), is coming up July 15 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station. And it’s our pleasure to announce that Underscore VC’s investing partner Chris Gardner will join a loaded lineup of speakers by leading a breakout session […]

Tesla trade-ins in the U.S. are at an all time high as some owners become disillusioned with Elon Musk’s politics, and some just want to avoid their car getting keyed by Musk haters.  Automakers are pouncing on the opportunity. Polestar, Lucid Motors, Volvo, and Ford — which have long trailed Tesla in EV sales — […]

Haugh’s firing has seemingly caught senior lawmakers by surprise

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

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership […]

StrictlyVC is crossing the Atlantic! On 13 May, London will play host to an exclusive StrictlyVC evening, delivering the same high-caliber VC insider content that has made these events a must-attend for investors and startup leaders alike. If you’re a venture capitalist or founder looking to exchange insights with peers and dive into powerful, no-filter […]

Midjourney, one of the earliest AI image-generating services on the web, has released its first new AI image model in nearly a year. Dubbed V7, the model, which began rolling out in alpha around midnight Eastern on Friday, comes a week after OpenAI debuted a new image generator in ChatGPT that quickly went viral for […]

Amazon is starting to test a new AI shopping agent, a feature it calls “Buy for Me,” with a subset users, the company announced in a blog post Thursday. If Amazon doesn’t sell something that users are searching for, the Buy for Me feature will display products to users that other websites are selling. Then, […]

A federal judge ruled on Thursday that a lawsuit attempting to stop the Department of Government Efficiency from obtaining records on millions of Americans may proceed. In conjunction with privacy watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation and two labor unions, more than 100 current and former federal employees sued DOGE, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management […]

Amazon is introducing a new “Recaps” feature for Kindle users to help them recall plot points and character arcs before picking up the latest book in a series. While the company’s press release for the new feature doesn’t mention AI, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch that recaps are AI-generated. “We use technology, including GenAI and Amazon […]

Grace, an insurance company for luxury goods, announced a $6.4 million (€5.9 million) seed round led by FinTechCollective and Speedinvest.  Grace, an insurance company for luxury goods, works with luxury brands to protect purchased consumer goods. If an item is stolen or damaged, a consumer can create a claim through the Grace app. For the […]

OpenAI just co-led a $43 million Series A into deepfake defense startup Adaptive Security.

Semiconductor giants Intel and TSMC are reportedly teaming up. The two firms are said to have reached a tentative agreement to create a joint venture that will operate Intel’s chipmaking facilities, according to The Information. TSMC will have a 20% stake in the new venture. Instead of funding its stake with capital, TSMC will share […]

Ted Schlein's cybersecurity-focused Ballistic Ventures is raising $100 million for a new fund, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.

Zach Yadegari, the high school teen co-founder of Cal AI, is being hammered with comments on X after he revealed that out of 18 top colleges he applied to, he was rejected by 15. Yadegari says that he got a 4.0 GPA and nailed a 34 score on his ACT (above 31 is considered a […]

As TikTok’s fate in the United States remains uncertain, the tech giant has quietly started testing a new “TikTok for Artists” insights platform that is designed to help artists build their careers, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The platform will provide artists with tools to promote their songs, understand performance metrics, and engage with fans. […]

Cognition, the startup behind the viral AI programming tool Devin, has introduced a new low-cost plan to incentivize signups. When Cognition released Devin last year, the tool quickly blew up on social media for its ability to perform certain software development tasks autonomously. But it soon became apparent that Devin struggled with more complex coding […]

Microsoft has pulled back on data center projects around the world, Bloomberg reports, suggesting that the company is wary of expanding its cloud computing infrastructure too rapidly. Microsoft has halted talks for or delayed development sites of data centers in the U.K., Australia, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Illinois, per Bloomberg. A spokesperson told the publication […]

X’s plan to boost revenue by selling off dormant usernames on its service is starting to shape up. According to recent changes found in X’s web application, the company is setting up a “handle inquiry” process that will allow Verified Organizations — companies and other organizations that already have a $1,000 per month X subscription […]

When OpenAI debuted its image-generation feature in ChatGPT last week, social media exploded when users realized that they could make AI-generated images that looked like something out of an animated film from Studio Ghibli. Fans hoped that Studio Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki would take a stand, but the 84-year-old animator has remained silent. In the […]

Apple lost more than $250 billion in market value Thursday, with shares down as much as 8.5% as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariff spree.  The iPhone maker took one of the biggest hits on Wall Street, where tech stocks dropped as investors shifted money away from volatile assets. Tesla, Nvidia, and Meta were […]

More than two years after Google was caught flat-footed by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the company has dramatically picked up the pace. In late March, Google launched an AI reasoning model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, that leads the industry on several benchmarks measuring coding and math capabilities. That launch came just three months after the […]

As YouTube Shorts continues to compete with TikTok, the platform is announcing new upcoming features to help creators publish engaging short-form videos. Creators will get access to an improved video editor, the ability to generate AI stickers, a feature that syncs content to the beat of a song, enhanced templates, and more. The launch of […]

Elon Musk has long been credited with turning Tesla into a beacon of innovation, the visionary who pushed the world into an era of electrification. But his slide into politics – specifically his alignment with President Trump and activities within the federal government – has dragged Tesla into uncertainty.  For many would-be Tesla buyers, the […]