timef 04/11/2025

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 […]

OpenAI will soon retire GPT-4, an AI model it launched over two years ago, from ChatGPT, the company announced in a changelog on Thursday. Effective April 30, GPT-4 will be “fully replaced” by GPT-4o, the current default model for ChatGPT, OpenAI said. However, GPT-4 will remain available in OpenAI’s API. “In head‑to‑head evaluations, [GPT-4o] consistently […]

TechCrunch Sessions: AI is fast approaching. So, what does that mean for you? It means exhibit tables are nearly gone — and now’s your chance to grab one before they’re all sold out. If you’ve got a game-changing product to showcase to the AI world, don’t keep it quiet. Exhibit your brand in front of […]

Dropbox’s chief customer officer, Eric Cox, plans to step down, according to a document filed with the SEC on Friday. Cox will remain in his current role for “a period of time” to help with the transition, per the filing, and then will continue as a “non-executive” employee through mid-August. Dropbox didn’t immediately respond to […]

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

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Startups aren’t isolated from the world. But this week, funding news felt positively uncorrelated from the overall news cycle, offering somewhat of a reprieve — or perhaps […]

The purchase covers 12 years of emissions from CO280’s first carbon capture project at a mill on the Gulf Coast.

Mark your calendar — StrictlyVC London is just around the corner on 13 May. Designed for founders, entrepreneurs, and investors, this exclusive gathering promises deep VC insight and high-value connections. We’re thrilled to welcome our first pair of confirmed speakers: Nazo Moosa, managing director of Paladin Capital Group, and Sonali De Rycker, partner of Accel […]

EV startup Lucid Motors has emerged as a surprise winner in the bankruptcy auction for electric trucking company Nikola’s Arizona factory and other assets, according a late Thursday court filing. Lucid committed around $30 million in cash and non-cash considerations in exchange for the factory, Nikola’s lease on its Phoenix headquarters, and “certain machinery, equipment […]

A growing number of Tesla owners are putting their used vehicles up for sale, as consumers react to Elon Musk’s political activities and the global protests they have fueled. In March, the number of used Tesla vehicles listed for sale on Autotrader.com skyrocketed, Sherwood News reported, citing data from Autotrader parent company Cox Automotive. The […]

Digital payments platform Stripe invites customers to join its management team meetings on a bi-weekly basis so it can get “candid feedback,” according to co-founder Patrick Collison. In an April 8 post on X, the fintech giant’s CEO said the company has a customer join for the first 30 minutes of the meeting, which is […]

A few years ago, Chef Robotics was hurting. But founder Rajat Bhageria turned it around by doing something that early-stage founders fear to do.

Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a “universal” checkout experience, was charged with defrauding investors on Wednesday, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Founded in 2018, Nate raised over $50 million from investors like Coatue and Forerunner Ventures, most recently raising […]

Several tech companies have scaled back public commitments to DEI amid a broader crackdown by the Trump administration.

In a recent appearance on “Possible,” a podcast co-hosted by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Google plans to eventually combine its Gemini AI models with its Veo video-generating models to improve the former’s understanding of the physical world. “We’ve always built Gemini, our foundation model, to be multimodal from the […]

In recent years, focus on career and delayed marriage age is driving some women to consider preserving their fertility through egg freezing. But the steep cost of the procedure, estimated at $10,000 to $15,000 per attempt, means many women can’t afford it during their most fertile years: 20s and early 30s. Cofertility, a startup founded […]

Thinking Machines Lab, the new AI startup from ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is reportedly attempting to close one of the largest seed rounds in history. Business Insider reported on Thursday that Thinking Machines Lab has doubled the target for its seed funding round to $2 billion. The round, should it close according to plan, would […]

Is the grass greener on the other side? We’re not sure, but the sky is most certainly bluer. It’s been over two years since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now X, leading people to set up shop on alternative platforms. Mastodon, Post, Pebble (two of which have already shuttered operations) and Spill have been presented as […]

AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other top AI labs are increasingly being used to assist with programming tasks. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in October that 25% of new code at the company is generated by AI, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed ambitions to widely deploy AI coding models within the social […]

It’s time for BeReal to get real — it’s difficult to turn a profit on a social photo sharing app without selling ads or memberships. Now, after its €500 million exit to French mobile publisher Voodoo, BeReal is rolling out advertising in the U.S. Its initial products include in-feed ads in the app’s same dual-camera […]

Social network Bluesky is rolling out a new version of its software, which adopts some of the features former X users have missed. Nope, it’s not an edit button! Instead, the open social network is adding support for chat reactions in its direct messages feature and is revamping its search page as “Explore,” directing users […]

Just one day after TechCrunch revealed that Jeff Bezos is backing a secretive EV startup called Slate Auto, an early version of the company’s low-cost electric pickup truck was spotted in the wild. Reddit user u/discostranger09 posted a photo to the r/whatisthiscar subreddit on Wednesday of a small, dark gray two-seater pickup truck on a […]

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon attended the ASU+GSV Summit this week, where experts in education and technology gathered to discuss how AI will impact learning. While speaking on a panel about AI in the workforce, McMahon repeatedly referred to AI as “A1,” like the steak sauce. “You know, AI development — I mean, how […]

Season 7 of “Black Mirror” premiered on Thursday, introducing a new mobile game connected to one of its episodes. The game, titled “Thronglets,” from Netflix’s own Night School Studio, serves as a companion to the episode called “Plaything.” Players interact with virtual yellow pets and strive to keep them alive. If players are successful in […]

Jobandtalent, an AI-based “workforce as a service” marketplace that connects people with companies looking for hourly workers, announced it has raised €92 million ($103 million).  The Series F — which includes participation from Atomico, BlackRock, DN Capital, Hercules, Infravia, Kibo, and Kinnevik — values the Madrid, Spain-based company at €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) post-money.  On the surface, […]

A challenge for many tech companies is delivering high-bandwidth, multimodal data — for example, simultaneous audio and video — to users in real time without interruptions. Some firms build solutions in-house, but these often require a lot of upkeep and maintenance. To ease the burden, Russ d’Sa and David Zhao created LiveKit, an open-source software […]

Although there has been significant pushback from artists regarding the proliferation of AI design tools and the content used to train generative models, the companies making the software for creative work are nevertheless building AI into their toolkits. It’s a signal of just how quickly AI has gained importance — regardless of what their customers […]

OpenAI announced on Thursday that it’s starting to roll out a new memory feature in ChatGPT that allow the chatbot to tailor its answers to users based on the contents of their previous conversations. OpenAI says the feature, which appears in ChatGPT’s settings as “reference saved memories,” aims to make conversations with ChatGPT more relevant […]

Meghan is stepping further into the world of business and entrepreneurship.  In an interview with Fortune, Meghan revealed that she is an angel investor in the healthcare company Midi, which provides a virtual platform to help treat women experiencing menopause and other health-related concerns.  She joined the company’s $63 million Series B round last March, […]

Glossier is reportedly fundraising again, aiming to raise $100 million with a valuation “south of a billion dollars,” according to Puck.  Glossier, still one of the more popular beauty brands, was last valued at $1.8 billion nearly four years ago but has struggled with profitability and scale these past few years. Glossier did not immediately […]

Symphonic Capital announced today in a blog post that it raised $13.5 million for its inaugural fund to invest in early-stage companies.  Sydney Thomas launched the firm in 2022 after leaving Charles Hudson’s Percursor Ventures, where she was the first hire.  Thomas said her fund will focus on founders outside of the Bay who are […]

YouTube is launching a new feature that will allow creators to use AI technology to generate instrumental backing music that can be added to their videos. In an update published to its Creator Insider channel this week, the company shared that it’s beginning to roll out an update to its Creator Music marketplace that will […]

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy thinks companies should invest “aggressively” in AI now to reap the full financial rewards in the future. In his annual letter to Amazon shareholders published Thursday, Jassy said “substantial capital” is required to keep up with the pace of AI innovation and customer demand for AI products. He added that Amazon, […]

The reboot of early-internet social news site Digg is underway. Original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have launched an early-access community for some of the first people who signed up after last month’s announcement that the pair had bought Digg and planned to relaunch it as something new. The early-access program is […]