TechCrunch Industry News

How we found TeaOnHer spilling users’ driver’s licenses in less than 10 minutes

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Exclusive: A dating gossip app for men exposed thousands of users' personal data, including scans of driver's licenses. CEO Xavier Lampkin won't say i...

How a once-tiny research lab helped Nvidia become a $4 trillion-dollar company

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Nvidia's research lab developed the technology that took the company from a video game GPU startup to a $4 trillion-dollar company. Learn more about y...

Anthropic takes aim at OpenAI, offers Claude to ‘all three branches of government’ for $1

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Anthropic’s escalation – a response to OpenAI’s attempt to undercut the competition – is a strategic play meant to broaden the company’s foo...

Ford throws out Henry Ford’s assembly line to make low-cost EVs in America

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The automaker is investing $2 billion into the Louisville Assembly Plant with a $30,000 EV pickup slated for 2027. Learn more about your ad choices. V...

Elon Musk confirms shutdown of Tesla Dojo, ‘an evolutionary dead end’  ... and more tech news

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“Once it became clear that all paths converged to AI6, I had to shut down Dojo and make some tough personnel choices, as Dojo 2 was now an evolution...

Trump administration stops illegal freeze of $5B EV charger funds after losing in court and more news

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Trump administration has finally issued new guidance that states can use to dole out $5 billion in funding for electric vehicle charging infrastru...

Rocket Lab eyes big defense opportunities with new acquisition, plus Openvibe combines news and social media in one app

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rocket Lab is taking the concept of an 'end-to-end' space company to new heights with a forthcoming acquisition. In other news, Openvibe, an app for t...

Researchers unmasked a prolific SMS scammer and then a new one emerged in its wake and Sam Altman addresses ‘bumpy’ GPT-5 rollout

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you, like practically anyone else with a cell phone in the U.S. and beyond, have received a scam text message about an unpaid toll or undelivered ...

Hubble Network plans a massive satellite upgrade to create global Bluetooth layer ... and more tech news

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hubble Network's satellite-enabled Bluetooth network is getting a boost from Muon's new XL satellite bus. Also, Truth Social’s AI search is powered ...

Google denies AI search features are killing website traffic

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Google denies AI is impacting search across the web, saying only "some" sites have suffered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.co...

Some people are defending Perplexity after Cloudflare ‘named and shamed’ it

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a debate likely to get louder as AI agent usage grows, some people say Perplexity crawling blocked websites isn't a simple matter. Learn more about...

OpenAI launches two ‘open’ AI reasoning models

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For the first time in more than five years, OpenAI is launching a new open language model that appears to be state-of-the-art. Learn more about your a...

Joby Aviation to buy Blade Air Mobility’s ride-share business, also Mastercard denies pressuring game platforms

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Joby is buying the Blade brand and the company's passenger business, which includes operations in the United States and Europe, for as much as $125 mi...

North Korean spies posing as remote workers have infiltrated hundreds of companies

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

North Korean IT workers are increasingly using generative AI to draft resumes and "deepfake" their appearances to make money for North Korea's sanctio...

A top designer was banned from Dribbble. Now he’s building his own competitor.

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dribbble is enforcing its terms of service that lets it take a cut of designers' work, and kicking out those who don't comply. One top designer has ha...

DeepMind revealed Genie 3 and SonicWall urges customers to disable SSLVPN

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Google DeepMind has revealed Genie 3, its latest foundation world model that the AI lab says presents a crucial stepping stone on the path to artifici...

Google rolls out Gemini Deep Think AI, a reasoning model that tests multiple ideas in parallel

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Google released its first publicly available "multi-agent" AI system, which uses more computational resources, but produces better answers. Learn more...

Apple plans to ‘significantly’ grow AI investments and is open to M&A

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Apple is open to M&A to accelerate its AI strategy, and says it's made seven acquisitions this year so far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit po...

Space Force bets on commercial entrants in $4B satcom contest; also Adobe adds new AI-powered image editing features to Photoshop

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Space Force is leveraging commercial competition for the next phase of its PTS program. Also, Adobe is adding an improved background removal tool ...

Spotify hints at a more chatty voice AI interface in the future, plus YouTube age estimation tech and TikTok parental controls

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Spotify says AI will allow for "much more interactive" consumer experiences in its app. Also, YouTube is introducing age detection technology to iden...

Elon Musk’s Boring Company to build Tesla tunnels under Nashville and Jack Dorsey’s Bluetooth messaging app Bitchat now on App Store

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Construction could start fast -- but that speed has edangered Boring Company workers in the past. Also, Jack Dorsey's Bitchat is now available on the ...

Golden Dome may not be the golden ticket Silicon Valley is hoping for

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Golden Dome, the White House's next-gen missile defense system, is a huge opportunity for startups that can successfully collaborate with incumbents. ...

U.K. starts enforcing online age check rules, DOGE has built an AI tool to slash federal regulations, and Itch.io cracks down on adult games

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A U.K. law requiring that pornography websites verify the age of their users took last week. Also, the Department of Government Efficiency has present...

India bans streaming apps you’ve never heard of — but millions watch

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

India has ordered the blocking of 25 streaming services — many with millions of viewers and even paying subscribers — for allegedly promoting "ob...

Amid increased momentum for defense, the NATO Innovation Fund refreshes its investment team, and Google is testing a vibe-coding app called Opal

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The NATO Innovation Fund is entering a new chapter, marked by the arrival of two new partners and the departure of its penultimate founding team partn...

Tesla is behind on its pledge to build 5,000 Optimus bots this year, Apple broadens App Store’s age rating system, and Meta will stop selling political ads in the EU

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tesla is behind on its goal to produce at least 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots by the end of 2025. Also, Apple has expanded its age rating system to i...

A new AI coding challenge just published its first results – and they aren’t pretty

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A new AI coding challenge has revealed its first winner — and set a new bar for AI-powered software engineers.  On Wednesday at 5pm PST, the nonpro...

Trump’s ‘anti-woke AI’ order could reshape how US tech companies train their models

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When DeepSeek, Alibaba, and other Chinese firms released their AI models, Western researchers quickly noticed they sidestepped questions critical of t...

Apple launches $19.99 monthly AppleCare One subscription, plus Snapchat's 'HomeSafe' feature

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Apple launches $19.99 monthly AppleCare One subscription with coverage for three devices Also, Snap Map's new "Home Safe" feature sends one-time alert...

Proton’s new privacy-first AI assistant encrypts all chats ... plus NetZeroNitrogen wants bacteria to replace synthetic fertilizer

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Proton's new AI assistant Lumo promises to keep user data private with zero-access encryption, no logging, and an incognito mode. In other news, NetZe...

21-year-old MIT dropouts raise $32M at $300M valuation led by Insight

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Karun Kaushik and Selin Kocalar weren’t planning to raise a Series A so soon. Their AI compliance startup, Delve, which announced a $3 million seed ...

Serial spyware founder Scott Zuckerman wants the FTC to unban him from the surveillance industry

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The spyware maker was banned from the surveillance industry in 2021, but was caught flouting the ban less than a year later. Now the founder wants the...

A surveillance vendor was caught exploiting a new SS7 attack to track people’s phone locations

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The new SS7 bypass-attack tricks phone operators into disclosing a cell subscriber's location, in some cases down to a few hundred meters. Learn more ...

Starbase injury rates outpace rivals as SpaceX chases its Mars moonshot

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

SpaceX has been moving at breakneck pace, rapid progress comes at a cost. Worker injury rates at its Starbase facility are almost six times higher tha...

OpenAI launches a general purpose agent in ChatGPT

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

OpenAI announced the launch of ChatGPT agent, which the company claims to be its most capable AI agent product yet. Learn more about your ad choices. ...

Hadrian raises $260M to build out automated factories for space and defense parts

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hadrian wants to revolutionize American manufacturing through automation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber partners with Nuro, invests $300M into Lucid to launch upscale robotaxi service

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uber is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Lucid and autonomous vehicle technology startup Nuro in a bid to launch its own robotaxi servi...

Google rolls out AI-powered business calling feature, brings Gemini 2.5 Pro to AI Mode

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The new business calling feature uses AI to call local businesses on your behalf, for information about availability and pricing. Learn more about you...

A former OpenAI engineer describes what it’s really like to work there

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A senior engineer describes the thrill, chaos, and exhaustion of working at OpenAI this past year while launching its coding agent Codex. Learn more a...

Chinese authorities are using a new tool to hack seized phones and extract data

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers warned that Chinese residents, and visitors to China, should be aware of the tool's existence and the risks it poses. Learn more about you...

ParadeDB takes on Elasticsearch as interest in Postgres explodes amid AI boom

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

ParadeDB built a Postgres extension that facilitates full-text search and analytics on Postgres without the need to transfer data. Learn more about yo...

Rivian taps Google to bring custom maps into its EVs and app

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Atmo will use its deep learning models to help Rainmaker identify clouds that have potential for seeding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc...

Can an ‘ethical’ spyware maker justify providing its tech to ICE?

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Analysis: In calling itself an ethical spyware vendor, Paragon has opened itself up to scrutiny of its government customers. Learn more about your ad ...

AI coding tools may not speed up every developer, study shows

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Software engineer workflows have been transformed in recent years by an influx of AI coding tools, but However, a new study calls into question the ex...

Diligent Robotics hires two notable Cruise alumni to its leadership team

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Diligent Robotics hired Cruise's former chief operating officer and former head of AI and robotics into c-suite positions. Learn more about your ad ch...

Medium’s CEO explains what it took to stop losing $2.6M monthly

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine announced on Friday that the publishing platform has remained profitable since August of last year, when it first achieved...

Google brings its AI-powered marketing tools to India after ‘Google tax’ repeal

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Google has launched a suite of its AI-powered advertising tools in India, which debuted in the U.S. in May, as the repeal of the so-called “Google t...

LGND wants to make ChatGPT for the Earth

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

LGND has raised $9 million to convert geographic data into vector embeddings to power AI models that understand the Earth. Learn more about your ad ch...

Mastodon’s latest update readies the app for Quote Posts, revamps design

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mastodon, the open source, decentralized social network offering an alternative to Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads, is rolling out a number of up...

Bookshop.org mocks Jeff Bezos wedding invite in anti-Prime Day promo,

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The independent online bookseller Bookshop.org took a swipe at Amazon to celebrate the start of Prime Day, Amazon’s annual sale (which, despite its ...

Grok is being antisemitic again and also the sky is blue

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Grok, the AI chatbot powered by Elon Musk's xAI company, is back with more antisemitic rants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.c...

Moonvalley’s ‘ethical’ AI video model for filmmakers is now publicly available

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Moonvalley's Marey AI video generation model is open to the public. The monthly subscription is available for $14.99, $34.99, or $149.99. Learn more a...

Frontier is helping Arbor build a “vegetarian rocket engine” to power data centers

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Arbor Energy's carbon-removing power plant is inspired by SpaceX's rocket engines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoice...

Ask not for whom the Louvre of Bluesky tolls, it tolls for thee ... plus TikTok's new app, Hidden AI prompts, and EU AI legislation

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a sad weekend over at Bluesky, where one of the best accounts has disappeared — though we can still hope for its resurrection. Also, TikTok i...

AI is forcing the data industry to consolidate — but that’s not the whole story

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While AI may be the catalyst behind the recent wave of data company M&A, the market was ripe for consolidation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

Google’s data center energy use doubled in 4 years

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Google has pledged to use only carbon-free sources of electricity to power its operations, a task made more challenging by its breakneck pace of data ...

X is piloting a program that lets AI chatbots generate Community Notes

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The social platform X will pilot a feature that allows AI chatbots to generate Community Notes. Community Notes is a Twitter-era feature that Elon Mus...

Figma moves closer to a blockbuster IPO that could raise $1.5B

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The financials are impressive and founder CEO Dylan Field already cashed out $20 million worth of shares last year. Learn more about your ad choices....

Congress just greenlit a NASA moon plan opposed by Musk and Isaacman

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Legacy aerospace giants scored a win Tuesday when the U.S. Senate passed President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill that earmarks billions more fo...

Tesla sends driverless Model Y from factory to customer to promote its robotaxi tech

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The car traveled around 15 miles on highways, surface streets, and even a roundabout. But many questions remain about the stunt. Learn more about your...

Cloudflare launches a marketplace that lets websites charge AI bots for scraping

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cloudflare, a cloud infrastructure provider that serves 20% of the web, announced Tuesday the launch of a new marketplace that reimagines the relation...

YouTube’s mobile video editor is coming to iOS

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Google is preparing to bring YouTube Create to iOS devices nearly two years after the video editing app launched exclusively on Android. Job listings ...

Anthropic’s Claude AI became a terrible business owner in experiment that got ‘weird’

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers at Anthropic and AI safety company Andon Labs gave an instance of Claude Sonnet 3.7 an office vending machine to run. And hilarity ensued...

SCOTUS porn ruling, Denmark clamps down on deepfakes, and Meta buys over 1 GW of renewables

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The United States Supreme Court ruled Friday to uphold a Texas law requiring websites with “sexual material harmful to minors” to verify the ages ...

Redwood Materials launches energy storage business and its first target is AI data centers

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Redwood Materials has launched a new business — taking old EV batteries to store energy and help power businesses. Learn more about your ad choices....

As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue, plus people use AI for companionship much less than we’re led to think

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Offerwall lets publishers give their sites' readers a variety of ways to access their content, including through options like micro payments, taking s...

Federal judge sides with Meta in lawsuit over training AI models on copyrighted books

28 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A federal judge sided with Meta on Wednesday in a lawsuit brought against the company by 13 book authors, including Sarah Silverman, that alleged the ...

Sam Altman comes out swinging at The New York Times

27 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the moment OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stepped onstage, it was clear this was not going to be a normal interview. Altman and his chief operating office...

Bill Gates-backed AirLoom begins building its first power plant

27 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wind power has run into some headwinds, and not the kind that spin its turbines.  Recently, President Trump has decided to wage war against the techn...

Kodiak is using Vay’s remote driving tech in its self-driving trucks

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kodiak Robotics has partnered with driverless car-sharing startup Vap to bring a remote-driving system into its self-driving trucks operation. Learn m...

Novoloop is making tons of upcycled plastic

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Novoloop recently raised a $21 million Series B to begin building its first commercial scale plastic upcycling plant. Learn more about your ad choices...

How a data processing problem at Lyft became the basis for Eventual

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Eventual's data processing engine Daft was inspried by the founders' experience working on Lyft's autonomous vehicle project. Learn more about your ad...

Why Danny Boyle shot ‘28 Years Later’ on iPhones ... and more tech news

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Director Danny Boyle famously shot his post-apocalyptic classic “28 Days Later” on Canon digital cameras, making it easier for him to capture eeri...

SMB-focused Finom closes €115M as European fintech heats up

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Finom, an Amsterdam-based challenger bank for SMBs that claims to have doubled its revenue in 2024, closed a €115 million Series C equity round (aro...

Rippling spy says men have been following him, and his wife is afraid

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If becoming a corporate spy sounds exciting, let this newest affidavit from confessed Rippling spy Keith O’Brien serve as a warning. Learn more abou...

The Robinhood founder who might just revolutionize energy, if he succeeds

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Baiju Bhatt is building something the space industry has largely dismissed, and it might be more groundbreaking than anyone realizes. When Baiju Bhatt...

Voi CEO says he’s open to acquiring Bolt’s micromobility business

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Frederik Hjelm, CEO of shared micromobility startup Voi, said he sees a path to acquiring the scooter and bike operations of Bolt, the European mobili...

‘Kid-pilled’ Sam Altman ‘constantly’ asked ChatGPT questions about his newborn

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Across hundreds of thousands of years of human existence, an impossible question has befuddled our species: why is the baby crying?! Sam Altman, who i...

Sam Altman says Meta tried and failed to poach OpenAI’s talent with $100M offers

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on something of a hiring spree lately, trying to staff up Meta’s new superintelligence team with top-tier AI resea...

OpenAI’s $200M DoD contract could squeeze frenemy Microsoft

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The contract could put the model maker in competition with the OpenAI services that Microsoft wants to sell to the DoD. Learn more about your ad choic...

Sword Health nabs $40M at $4B valuation, pushes IPO plans to at least 2028

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The digital health startup says it secured the fresh capital to update its valuation and finance acquisitions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Spotify’s Daniel Ek just bet bigger on Helsing, Europe’s defense tech darling

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 bi...

Patreon will increase the cut it takes from new creators ... and more

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Patreon is bumping its take fee from creators from 8% to 10%, but only for new signups; ChatGPT seems to have pushed some users towards delusional or ...

Instagram users complain of mass bans, pointing finger at AI

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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

The Meta AI app is a privacy disaster

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It sounds like the start of a 21st century horror film: Your browser history has been public all along, and you had no idea. That’s basically what i...

Amazon joins the big nuclear party, buying 1.92 GW for AWS

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Amazon and Talen revised an existing deal to buy power from the Susquehanna nuclear power plant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoice...

Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft — and people are paying anyway

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A new analysis done by ride-hailing aggregator Obi shows Waymos cost more especially on shorter trips. They also have longer wait times. Learn more ab...

How Warp is introducing robots to automate its network of warehouses

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Warp can't automate long-haul trucking or short-range delivery, so it's working on what it can potentially change: the workflows inside its warehouse...

Uptime Industries wants to boost localized AI usage with an ‘AI-in-a-box’ called Lemony AI

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Lemony AI device can run large language models, AI agents and automated workflows locally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....

Sam Altman thinks AI will have ‘novel insights’ next year

12 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a new essay published Tuesday called “The Gentle Singularity,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared his latest vision for how AI will change the human ...

Mistral releases a pair of AI reasoning models

12 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mistral released Magistral, its first family of reasoning models. Like other reasoning models — e.g. OpenAI's o3 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro — Mag...

Paragon says it cancelled contracts with Italy over government’s refusal to investigate spyware attack on journalist

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Italian government claims that accepting Paragon’s help would have compromised national security and classified information. Learn more about yo...

PayPal is adding hotel booking within its app, powered by Selfbook

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

PayPal is partnering with hotel payment provider Selfbook to let users search for and book hotels within the PayPal app. The company said that it will...

Waymo robotaxis, Lime e-scooters set ablaze during LA protests

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Several Waymo robotaxis and Lime e-scooters were set ablaze this weekend as unrest in downtown Los Angeles continued. Learn more about your ad choices...

Walmart and Wing expand drone delivery to five more U.S. cities

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Walmart and Wing are expanding their partnership and rolling out drone delivery to dozens of more stores in Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and ...

Bonfire’s new software lets users build their own social communities, free from platform control

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bonfire's mission is to build social software where people get to make the decisions, not big tech platform makers like Meta or Google. Learn more abo...

Reddit sues Anthropic for allegedly not paying for training data

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reddit is suing Anthropic for allegedly using the site’s data to train AI models without a proper licensing agreement, according to a complaint file...

Hugging Face says its new robotics model is so efficient it can run on a MacBook

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s becoming a little easier to build sophisticated robotics projects at home. AI dev platform Hugging Face released earlier this week an open AI m...

Reddit now lets you hide content, like posts and comments, from your user profile

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reddit announced a new feature that will offer its users more privacy when it comes to what’s shared on their user profiles. Learn more about your ...

Anthropic’s AI is writing its own blog — with human oversight

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Anthropic has given its AI a blog. A week ago, Anthropic quietly launched Claude Explains, a new page on its website that’s generated mostly by the ...