timef 06/17/2025

Chatbots are increasingly looking to keep people chatting, using familiar tactics that we’ve already seen lead to negative consequences. Sycophancy can make AI chatbots respond in a way that’s overly agreeable or flattering. And while having a digital hype person might not seem like a dangerous thing, it is actually a tactic used by tech […]

Elon Musk's xAI company is looking to raise $4.3 billion in equity funding, adding onto the $5 billion it's seeking in debt funding.

TechCrunch All Stage, our founder-focused summit, is gearing up to return to Boston on July 15! We’re doing a last call for exceptional volunteers to join us in bringing this event to life. If you’ve ever wondered about the inner workings of tech events, now’s your chance to get involved. Volunteer spots are limited, so […]

Own is the latest alternative to TikTok to emerge in the market, featuring blockchain technology and a token economy.

The Senate Finance Committee’s language would take a sledgehammer to some parts of the renewable-friendly Inflation Reduction Act while sparing others. 

Social networks are bolstering their terms of service against scrapers and bots that crawl the website to train AI models. Days after Elon Musk-owned X updated its terms to explicitly prohibit AI model training, decentralized social network Mastodon today updated its own rules to bar any kind of model training, as well. “We explicitly prohibit […]

The digital health startup says it secured the fresh capital to update its valuation and finance acquisitions.

UNFI has not yet described the nature of the cyberattack, though it told investors last week that it had shut down its entire network to contain the incident. The ongoing outage is preventing the company from fulfilling and distributing customer orders at scale.

The ICO said over 150,000 U.K. residents had data stolen in the breach.

Amazon has revealed that Prime Day 2025 will take place on July 8-11, extending the annual sale event to four days this year. Amazon notes that consumers will be able to shop for “pantry staples and snacks for summer gatherings to home-improvement must-haves, back-to-school supplies, health and personal care finds, family-favorite toys, best-selling books, pet […]

Rising-star defense tech Mach Industries has announced a new $100 million round from Khosla, Bedrock and Sequoia.

Adobe is launching its Firefly mobile app on iOS and Android for consumers to create AI-powered media

Honda will supply last-mile delivery companies with the Fastport eQuad.

The lawsuit alleges Apple violates competition laws by forcing users of its devices to back up critical files and device settings on iCloud.

The tech industry talks a lot about how AI is going to transform work. Legal startup Crosby, which just came out of stealth, is an extreme example.

Coralogix, an Israeli startup offering a full-stack observability and security platform, has raised $115 million at a pre-money valuation of over $1 billion, almost doubling in three years from its last round in 2022. With the influx of cash, the startup is looking to expand its engineering base in India and develop its AI agent. […]

Endeavor Catalyst, the co-investment fund affiliated with global entrepreneurial network Endeavor Global, is raising a new $300 million fund, its fifth and largest fund yet, as it looks to deepen its bet on high-growth startups across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, TechCrunch has learned. The new fund, according to sources, is […]

Google has unveiled its Safety Charter in India, which will expand its AI-led developments for fraud detection and combating scams across the country, the company’s largest market outside the United States. Digital fraud in India is rising. Fraud related to the Indian government’s instant payment system UPI grew 85% year-over-year to nearly 11 billion Indian […]

Spotify's Daniel Ek just led a €600 million investment in Helsing, a four-year-old, Munich-based defense tech company that is now valued at €12 billion, according to the Financial Times. The deal makes it one of Europe's most valuable privately held companies; it also highlights Europe's scramble to build its own military muscle as the world grows messier and the U.S. turns inward.

Tinder launched a new Double Date feature, which allows users to team up with friends and chat with potential matches together.

OpenAI and Microsoft have an increasingly strained relationship, according to a recent WSJ report.

Pornainen recently turned on a 100 MWh thermal battery filled with ground up soapstone.

Instagram is testing the ability for users to repost posts, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday.

Instagram users report that their accounts were banned even though they had not violated the company's terms of service or other policies.

Battle it out in front of 10,000+ startup leaders, investors, and media at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. It’s your moment to be seen, funded, and remembered — and maybe even walk away with $100,000 in equity-free funding.

Threads, Meta’s microblogging platform, is testing spoiler text, according to a post from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Spoiler text refers to words (or images) that are greyed out in a post and only become readable if you manually click to see them. As the name suggests, spoiler text is often used on platforms like Discord […]

Patreon is bumping its take fee from creators from 8% to 10%, but only for new signups.