timef 04/16/2025

This is the first time representatives for the spyware maker have publicly named its government customers.

Last month, Deezer reported its first positive cash flow in 2024, marking a significant milestone in its history. As the music streaming platform nears profitability, it’s launching new features to differentiate itself in the highly competitive market. On Wednesday, Deezer announced several features aimed at providing listeners with a more personalized experience. These include a […]

TikTok is testing a new “Footnotes” feature that works similarly to Community Notes on X. The social network announced on Wednesday that Footnotes will allow users to add additional context and relevant information to videos to help others better understand certain content, starting in the United States. The company says Footnotes will complement its current […]

Deck, a startup that claims to be building “the Plaid for the rest of the internet,” has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round — about nine months after closing its seed financing, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. The new raise, led by Infinity Ventures, brings Montreal-based Deck’s total raised since its January 2024 […]

Kia debuted its 2026 EV4 sedan at the New York International Auto Show on Wednesday, its first global electric sedan and one designed for customers looking for an affordable EV. Whether U.S. customers will gravitate towards a sedan is an open question — and one Kia isn’t necessarily betting on. The company launched sales of […]

Ryan Breslow is officially back. While the founder of one-click checkout company Bolt re-assumed its helm as CEO in March, Breslow is unveiling Wednesday a new “superapp” that he hopes will formally mark his return as the fintech’s leader. He describes the new product as “one-click crypto and everyday payments” in a single platform, in […]

TechCrunch Sessions: AI is right around the corner — and the deadline to reserve your exhibit table is nearly gone. If you’ve got an AI innovation worth shouting about, now’s your moment. Don’t sit on the sidelines while others take the spotlight. Put your product where it belongs — in front of the leaders and […]

Capsule is upgrading its AI-powered video editing assistant for marketing, sales, and media teams following the close of a $12 million round of Series A funding, the company announced on Wednesday. The upgraded editor will include new features like AI suggestions and support for real-time collaboration. The new version of its studio software will feature […]

The ultimate founder summit returns — now bigger than ever! Formerly TechCrunch Early Stage, TC All Stage is bringing together founders and VCs from every stage, not just early stage. We’re thrilled to unveil the full breakout session lineup at TC All Stage. Packed with scaling pioneers and top-tier VCs, these sessions are designed for […]

Subaru is back with a new EV, and like its predecessor the Solterra, the all-electric Trailseeker SUV includes a bit of Toyota handiwork. Subaru of America revealed the 2026 Trailseeker SUV on Wednesday at the New York International Auto Show. The EV, the second in the Japanese automaker’s portfolio, looks familiar in a hey-that-looks-like-a-Subaru sort […]

Ride-hailing giant Lyft said it has agreed to acquire FREENOW, a German multi-mobility app with ride-hail at its core, from BMW and Mercedes-Benz Mobility for about $197 million in cash.  The acquisition opens up the European market to Lyft for the first time. The company has only operated in the U.S. and Canada since it […]

AMD says that the U.S. government’s license control requirement for exporting AI chips to China and certain other countries may impact its earnings materially. If AMD doesn’t successfully obtain a license, the company could be on the hook for roughly $800 million in inventory, purchase commitments, and related reserves charges, the company said in a […]

Patreon is finally experimenting with a native livestreaming, a new feature that could attract more creators and help them earn more money. The capability is rolling out to select testers this week and will become more widely available this summer.  Similar to other platforms, Patreon’s new livestream feature comes with a live chat where fans […]

A pseudonymous developer has created what they’re calling a “free speech eval,” SpeechMap, for the AI models powering chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and X’s Grok. The goal is to compare how different models treat sensitive and controversial subjects, the developer told TechCrunch, including political criticism and questions about civil rights and protest. AI companies have […]

X has not been fairing well in the U.K., previously a major source of revenue for the social network prior to Elon Musk’s arrival. Still named Twitter UK Ltd, revenues and profits for X’s UK entity collapsed by over 60% in the year after Musk took it over and changed its moderation controls, according to […]

Cosmic Robotics has developed a robotic assistant that does the heavy lifting on solar job sites.

Artificial intelligence services at their heart are massive data plays: you need data — a lot of it — to build the models, and then the models need efficient ways to ingest and output data to work.  A company called Hammerspace has built a system to help AI and other organisations tap into data troves […]

Google on Wednesday said it suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 — more than triple the number from the previous year — in its latest crackdown on ad fraud. By leveraging large language models (LLMs) and using signals such as business impersonation and illegitimate payment details, the search giant said it could suspend […]

When Visa invested in Nigerian fintech Moniepoint earlier this year, it didn’t just validate the newly minted unicorn — it signaled a bold new direction. As part of that deal, the Nigerian fintech best known for building one of Africa’s largest business banking platforms, hinted at plans to integrate with Visa Direct, a move that […]

Norway-based browser company Opera said today that it is making its AI assistant Aria available to Opera Mini users on Android. This move will help users with low-end devices and data constraints access better AI features. Aria AI can help users get the latest news and information on different topics, learn more about various subjects, and […]

StrictlyVC, the boutique brand powered by TechCrunch and known for evening events that invite headliners into smaller rooms to connect with live audiences, is headed back to London on May 13 — and its latest speaker lineup is one of its strongest yet. Joining the stage is TS Anil, CEO of Monzo Bank, the digital […]

Elon Musk says it’s his duty to “make new humans.” Now, a WSJ investigation suggests he may have fathered more than the 14 children already known, with sources claiming the real number could be significantly higher. The report also describes how Musk keeps those details under wraps. At the center of it all, per the […]

Grok, the chatbot from Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has gained a canvas-like feature for editing and creating documents and basic apps. Called Grok Studio, the feature was announced on X late Tuesday. It’s available for both free and paying Grok users on Grok.com “Grok can now generate documents, code, reports, and browser games,” wrote […]

Semiconductor giant Nvidia is facing unexpected new U.S. export controls on its H20 chips. In a filing Tuesday, Nvidia said it was informed by the U.S. government that it will need a license to export its H20 AI chips to China. This license will be required indefinitely, according to the filing — the U.S. government […]

Semiconductor giant Nvidia is facing unexpected new U.S. export controls on its H20 chips. In a filing Tuesday, Nvidia said it was informed by the U.S. government that it will need a license to export its H20 AI chips to China. This license will be required indefinitely, according to the filing — the U.S. government […]

Design software startup Figma announced Tuesday it has filed its confidential paperwork for an IPO. We won’t know more until that paperwork becomes public, which, best-case scenario would be in about a month. However, with the stock market in groundhog mode — seeing its shadow with every new gyration of the Trump Administration’s trade policies […]

Former Y Combinator startup telli is helping companies alleviate the bottleneck that occurs when a high-volume of customers try to, for example, book appointments. Its AI voice agents kick in and handle basic operations while handing off more-complex processes to human operators. The Berlin-based startup has now raised $3.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led […]

The update comes months after Apple pushed its own “inactivity reboot” feature.

As TikTok continues to build out its search experience, the social network is now surfacing reviews for select places right within the comments tab of a video. The new feature, which appears to be a test, eliminates the need to conduct a new search or open up Google when you come across a place on […]

You could say that TikTok is ruining our attention spans, and yet, viewers around the world are tuning in to watch a monotonous livestream from a Swedish TV station that they’ve probably never heard of. It’s time for the Great Moose Migration. For thousands of years, moose have crossed the Ångerman River each spring, trekking […]

In an update to its Preparedness Framework, the internal framework OpenAI uses to decide whether AI models are safe and what safeguards, if any, are needed during development and release, OpenAI said that it may “adjust” its requirements if a rival AI lab releases a “high-risk” system without comparable safeguards. The change reflects the increasing […]

India’s market regulator launched a probe Tuesday into Gensol Engineering after finding alleged misuse of electric vehicle loans. BluSmart, a ride-hailing startup connected to Gensol that was once seen as an emerging Uber rival in the South Asian market, has also been swept up into the investigation. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) […]

We may be witnessing the makings of a new tech industry feud between competitors. Figma has sent a cease-and-desist letter to popular no-code AI startup Lovable, Figma confirmed to TechCrunch.  The letter tells Lovable to stop using the term “Dev Mode” for a new product feature. Figma, which also has a feature called Dev Mode, […]

Context.ai, a startup building evaluations and analytics for AI models, announced Tuesday that its co-founders will join OpenAI.  Context.ai plans to wind down its products following the acqui-hire, per a message on the company’s website. When reached for comment, OpenAI declined to reveal the terms of the deal. “Evals are a requirement to building high-performing […]

Swedish company Baseload Capital is developing the project.

In a sign of Anthropic’s increasingly cozy relationship with Amazon, Anthropic has formed a new team to recruit AWS customers to use its AI products. The team, which Anthropic appears to have begun hiring for several months ago, aims to “accelerate” the adoption of Anthropic’s AI among AWS accounts by “building programs that […] scale […]

Publishing platform Medium says it’s still committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), even as many other U.S. tech companies have scaled back their efforts in this space to appease the Trump administration. In a blog post published on Monday, Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine backed the company’s diverse community, saying that businesses shouldn’t have to […]

Google is bringing its Veo 2 video-generating AI model to users who pay for Gemini Advanced, the company’s premium AI plan. The expansion comes as Google looks to deliver an answer to OpenAI’s Sora video generation platform, and as competition in the space grows fiercer. Two weeks ago, one of the more formidable synthetic media […]

Anthropic announced on Tuesday that its AI chatbot, Claude, now integrates with Google Workspace, allowing it to search and reference your emails in Gmail, scheduled events in Google Calendar, and documents in Google Docs. The integration is rolling out in beta first to subscribers to Anthropic’s Max, Team, Enterprise, and Pro plans. Administrators managing multi-user […]

The infamous website was taken down and working intermittently, while hackers leaked alleged data like moderators email addresses, and source code.

Rippling’s efforts to serve Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz have been significantly complicated by the fact that Bouaziz and his lawyer are now in Dubai, according to internal correspondence seen by TechCrunch. The UAE is a country with a reputation of being a safe haven for those wanting to avoid extradition. Rippling is trying to serve […]

Step into an extraordinary fireside chat featuring Ali Ghodsi, the visionary co-founder and CEO of Databricks, alongside Dario Amodei, the innovative co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. Discover how their groundbreaking partnership is set to accelerate the evolution of domain-specific AI agents. During this free, virtual event, you’ll also gain exclusive access to three additional sessions […]

OpenAI is building its own X-like social media network, according to a new report from The Verge. The project is still in the early stages, but there’s an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation that contains a social feed. The report states that it’s unknown if OpenAI plans to launch the social network as a […]

On Monday, OpenAI launched a new family of AI models, GPT-4.1, which the company said outperformed some of its existing models on certain tests, particularly benchmarks for programming. However, GPT-4.1 didn’t ship with the safety report that typically accompanies OpenAI’s model releases, known as a model or system card. As of Tuesday morning, OpenAI had […]

Tesla famously struggled to scale up production of the Model 3 sedan in 2018 — so much so that CEO Elon Musk said his company was weeks away from collapsing. That near-death experience helped spawn a whole new company called Atomic that’s built around using AI to streamline supply chains. Co-founded by former Tesla employees […]

Pacific Fusion also announced the hiring of a key executive from competitor Helion.

Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund has completed the raise of its third growth fund, according to an SEC filing. Beyond the sum — which is a big step up from its last previous $3.4 billion growth fund closed in early 2022 — there’s a couple of other interesting things to note about this raise. For one, it’s more […]