timef 04/23/2025

You’re not the only one thinking about where AI is headed. So why come alone? From now through May 4, buy your Early Bird ticket to TechCrunch Sessions: AI and save up to $210—plus get 50% off a second ticket for your colleague, co-founder, collaborator, friend, or whoever you want to bring. It’s your opportunity […]

A new venture firm aims to prove that the most successful startup ideas don’t have to be born or scaled in Silicon Valley. Fluent Ventures, a global early-stage fund, is backing founders replicating proven business models from Western markets in fintech, digital health, and commerce across emerging markets. The more cynical might describe this as […]

Months after first testing ads in select markets, including the U.S., Meta on Wednesday announced that its Instagram Threads app would now expand ads to all advertisers worldwide. The expansion will allow eligible advertisers to reach Threads’ over 320 million monthly active users, and it will include access to an inventory filter to control the sensitivity level […]

Amazon’s Project Kuiper, the company’s initiative to launch a fleet of satellites into low-Earth orbit and beam internet connection to users, is struggling to ramp up production, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The competitor to Elon Musk’s Starlink has completed only a few dozen satellites, according to the report. The venture reportedly needs to quadruple its […]

Khosla Ventures-backed Fireflies.ai, an AI-powered note-taking app, on Wednesday released a set of domain-specific “mini apps” to extract insights from meeting transcripts automatically. With the widespread availability of automatic speech recognition models and generative AI, meeting intelligence startups like Otter, Read AI, Circleback, Krisp, and Granola have registered impressive growth. Fireflies, similarly, has seen 8x […]

WhatsApp announced on Wednesday it’s launching a new feature that will allow users to add an extra layer of privacy to chats. The new “Advanced Chat Privacy” setting prevents you and the people you’re chatting with from exporting chats and auto-downloading media to their phone. The setting also prevents users from mentioning Meta AI in […]

The European Union has fined Apple €500 million (about $568 million) and Meta €200 million (about $227 million) for allegedly breaching the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, according to The Wall Street Journal. The EU has accused Apple of failing to comply with an obligation to allow app developers to inform customers of alternative ways to […]

Mining companies spend billions on exploration. Durin thinks it can slash costs.

The health insurance giant is notifying at least 4.7 million patients of the security lapse.

Linktree is launching a set of new features aimed at helping creators earn more money directly from its platform. The new tools include the ability to sell courses and digital products, earn from brand-sponsored links, and build shoppable storefronts. The launch of the new monetization features will help Linktree stand out among other similar platforms […]

AI-generated code is no doubt changing how software is built, but it’s also introducing new security challenges. More than 50% of organizations encounter security issues with AI-produced code sometimes or frequently, according to a late 2023 survey by developer security platform Synk. For Endor Labs, that opportunity proved alluring enough that it chose to change […]

YouTube said on Wednesday that it will launch a redesign of YouTube TV’s user interface this summer. On the books are easier navigation, playback and quality tweaks, as well as better access to comments, channel info, and subscribing. The company didn’t provide any further details about the redesign, but we’ve asked for a peek at […]

Cloud monitoring and security platform Datadog on Wednesday announced that it has acquired Metaplane, an AI-powered data observability startup, for an undisclosed amount. In a press release, Datadog said that the deal “accelerates” its expansion into data observability, building on the launch of related products. Metaplane will continue supporting existing and new customers through a […]

Alpaca said on Wednesday it has raised a $52M Series C round to expand into more foreign markets, including the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Xerion says it has a new technique to produce highly refined cobalt in a single step.

Small and medium businesses are the newest targets for cybersecurity attacks, with 1 in 3 breached last year. SMBs are becoming more proactive in detecting and stopping these threats, and today a startup called Cynomi is announcing $37 million in funding to meet that demand. Insight Partners and Entrée Capital are co-leading the round, with previous backers […]

Swedish Fintech startup Froda has secured a $22.7 million (€20m) Series B round led by Incore Invest, also based in Sweden. The move bucks the trend of a slight slowdown in investments into fintech, plus a further confirmation of the long-term trend towards the ’embedded finance’ model.  Largely operating in northern European countries from Finland […]

Mati Carbon walked away with the $50 million grand prize for its enhanced rock weathering program that locks carbon in soils for thousands of years.

StrictlyVC is turning up the heat in 2025 — and we’re going international! First stop: Athens, May 8. Get ready for sharp, unfiltered conversations onstage — and your chance to jump into the dialogue. This isn’t just an event; it’s a forum where every attendee has a voice with some of Europe’s most influential tech […]

StrictlyVC is heading to London on May 13, uniting top investors and entrepreneurs to spark meaningful connections and drive forward innovation. We’re thrilled to welcome industry leaders like Nazo Moosa, general partner at Paladin Capital Group; Sonali De Rycker, partner at Accel; and TS Anil, CEO of Monzo Bank, to the stage. Paladin is proud […]

Back in 2020, Xayn was a privacy-based, on-device AI startup designed specifically for smartphones. But that early experience eventually saw the company pivot into developing sovereign AI for the legal sphere. Now Xayn has rebranded as Noxtua and raised a $92.2 million (roughly €81.2 million) Series B round. The round was led by strategic investor […]

Intel is set to cut over 21,000 people, or roughly 20% of its workforce, with an announcement due this week, according to a Bloomberg report.  The news comes ahead of Intel’s Q1 earnings call helmed by recently appointed CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who replaced longtime chief Pat Gelsinger last year.  With the layoffs, Tan aims to […]

Meta’s Oversight Board, the independent group created to help Meta with content moderation decisions, on Tuesday issued its response to the social media company’s new hate speech policies announced in January. The Board says that Meta’s new policies were “announced hastily, in a departure from regular procedure,” and called on the company to provide more […]

StrictlyVC is turning up the heat in 2025 — and we’re going international! First stop: Athens, May 8. Get ready for sharp, unfiltered conversations onstage — and your chance to jump into the dialogue. This isn’t just an event; it’s a forum where every attendee has a voice with some of Europe’s most influential tech […]

xAI’s Grok chatbot can now answer questions about what’s in view of your smartphone’s camera, similar to real-time vision features available for Google’s Gemini and ChatGPT. On Tuesday, xAI announced the launch of Grok Vision, which lets users point their phone at objects like products, signs, and documents and ask questions about them. Grok Vision […]

Anysphere, maker of AI coding assistant Cursor, is growing so quickly, it’s not in the market to be sold, even to OpenAI, a source close to the company tells TechCrunch. It’s been a hot target. Cursor is one of the most popular AI-powered coding tools and its revenue has been growing astronomically – doubling on […]

OpenAI and The Washington Post just announced a new content partnership which will see ChatGPT summarize and link to the Post’s original reporting in its answers. This is OpenAI’s latest media partnership, with the AI giant inking deals with over 20 news publishers so far, including outlets like The Guardian and Axios. The Washington Post […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says he may keep doing work with the Department of Government Efficiency through the remainder of President Donald Trump’s second term, amid calls for him to step away from politics. Musk said he plans to reduce his role with DOGE to a “day or two” per week starting next month, “or […]

An OpenAI exec said during Google’s antitrust trial this week that OpenAI would be interested in buying Google’s Chrome browser, were it made available for sale. The executive, ChatGPT chief Nick Turley, said in a court hearing Tuesday that acquiring Chrome would allow OpenAI to “offer a really incredible experience” and “introduce users into what […]

Tesla’s flailing sales figures have put the company closer to the red than it has been in years, according to financial results released Tuesday, threatening one of its biggest advantages over other EV players. The electric automaker reported $409 million in net income on $19.3 billion in revenue after delivering almost 337,000 EVs in the […]

A China-based startup, Sand AI, has released an openly licensed video-generating AI model that’s garnered praise from entrepreneurs like Microsoft Research Asia founding director Kai-Fu Lee. But Sand AI appears to be censoring images that might raise the ire of Chinese regulators from the hosted version of the model, according to TechCrunch’s testing. Earlier this […]

This might be the most hyped Tesla earnings in recent memory. And not for all the right reasons. Tesla has taken many hits this year as its CEO Elon Musk leans further into right-wing politics and oversees DOGE, the advisory body that President Trump has bestowed the power to slash federal spending.  For Tesla, that […]

Khloe Kardashian has formerly launched her new food company, Khloud, and its first product, a protein popcorn, set to hit Target starting April 29th.  Back in December, TechCrunch reported that Kardashian and her mother, Kris Jenner, were looking to raise at least $10 million for a business called Khloud. Jessica Bixby, an associate partner at […]

In 2020, when open source database Supabase was founded, its New Zealand-based CEO, Paul Copplestone, couldn’t have imagined it would be sitting in the sweet spot for 2025’s biggest trend: vibe coding.  But on Tuesday, the fruits of that became evident when it announced a $200 million series D at a $2 billion post-money valuation […]

Character.AI, a leading platform for chatting and roleplaying with AI-generated characters, unveiled its forthcoming video generation model, AvatarFX, on Tuesday. Available in closed beta, the model animates the platform’s characters in a variety of styles and voices, from human-like characters to 2D animal cartoons. AvatarFX distinguishes itself from competitors like OpenAI’s Sora because it isn’t […]

Bluesky’s launch of a verification system has raised a slew of questions among its user base from who will be picked — and why — to what outside organizations might be involved and whether the self-verification process will end? TechCrunch has some answers. After a leak last week, Bluesky officially announced Monday the arrival of […]

Meta announced on Tuesday that it’s officially launching Edits, its CapCut-like video creation app. Releasing globally, Edits will allow creators to do things like keep track of video ideas, get inspiration for new content, and create videos with effects and AI tools. The app is available on iOS and Android. All of the app’s features […]

As an AI engineer at Meta, Boris Valkov helped build PyTorch, one of the world’s largest machine learning libraries. During his time there, Valkov realized that artificial intelligence “was about to unlock capabilities…in the application layer in the software stack.” He left Meta in late 2021 to start Lace AI, a startup that has developed […]