TechCrunch

North Korean-backed hackers stole at least $659 million through multiple cryptocurrency heists in 2024, while also deploying IT workers to infiltrate blockchain companies as insider threats, according to Japan, South Korea and the United States in a rare joint statement (PDF) on Tuesday. The announcement provided the first official confirmation that North Korea was behind July’s $235 million hack of WazirX, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. The July 2024 breach forced WazirX to suspend trading and later restructure the firm. Other...

36 minutes ago

TechCrunch

U.K. public sector and critical infrastructure organizations could be banned from making ransom payments under new proposals from the U.K. government.  The U.K.’s Home Office launched a consultation on Tuesday that proposes a “targeted ban” on ransomware payments. Under the proposal, public sector bodies — including local councils, schools, and NHS trusts — would be banned from making payments to ransomware hackers, which the government says would “strike at the heart of the cybercriminal business model.”  This government proposal comes...

about 1 hour ago

TechCrunch

Alex Dewez, a partner at 20VC, just released its highly anticipated State of the French tech ecosystem report. This is a nice followup to Atomico’s State of European Tech report, with a more granular view on French startups in particular. As a reminder, the bottom line of Atomico’s report is that European startups raised $45 billion in 2024 compared to $47 billion in 2023. That number is only down by $2 billion, but it represents a 50%+ drop compared to...

about 2 hours ago

TechCrunch

The Competition and Markets Authority — the U.K.’s antitrust watchdog — is wasting no time in lodging its first official investigation of 2025 under its new rules that came into effect this month. It’s looking into the market dominance of Google in Search, including the new work it’s doing in AI search as well as its giant search advertising business, and what remedies it might impose to improve competition in the space.  Those interested in responding to the investigation will...

about 3 hours ago

TechCrunch

A fledgling French AI startup has raised $41 million to develop a foundational AI model for biology. Just as OpenAI’s ChatGPT has taken the world by storm for a super-smart generative AI tool capable of natural language conversation in text form, Bioptimus is taking that concept but training its model specifically for downstream biological applications — something that comes with its own unique set of challenges, given that the required clinical training data is inclined to be sensitive, and not...

about 4 hours ago

TechCrunch

For many emerging market economies, remittances have become a lifeline. Inflows surpassed $669 billion in 2023, according to World Bank research, and they now represent significant portions of GDP in these countries, often outpacing foreign direct investment as the primary source of foreign exchange.  Traditional banks and agents maintain a firm grip on the remittance market, with over 60% market share despite fierce competition from new tech challengers. Some of these challengers, like Remitly, have gone public, while others, such...

about 6 hours ago

TechCrunch

Toward the end of 2023, an Israeli security researcher from Tel Aviv said that he was approached on LinkedIn with an opportunity to work abroad with “good pay.” He said that the company’s HR department told him that it was a “legitimate” offensive security company that was starting from scratch in Barcelona, Spain.  But during the whole recruiting process, the researcher recounted to TechCrunch, things felt a bit off.  “The whole secrecy was very weird. Some employees that interviewed me...

about 7 hours ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 5:44 PM PST · January 13, 2025 Chinese government officials have reportedly discussed a scenario where ByteDance sells TikTok’s United States arm to Elon Musk, should the Supreme Court uphold the law banning the app on January 19th. Bloomberg reports that China would strongly prefer for TikTok to stay under ByteDance’s ownership, but says government officials have considered a sale to Musk as part of a broader plan to work with incoming president Donald Trump’s administration. In...

about 12 hours ago

TechCrunch

As a TikTok ban gets closer to becoming a reality in the United States, it might be time to start thinking about other platforms to adopt early in case you’re left to fill the void left by the popular app at some point in the future. On Wednesday, President Biden signed a bill that would ban TikTok if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, fails to sell the app within a year, bringing the possibility of TikTok ban closer than ever...

about 14 hours ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 2:57 PM PST · January 13, 2025 Robinhood has agreed to fork out $45 million to settle an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission over several alleged violations, reported the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The settlement is being made via two of Robinhood’s brokerage units. One of the violations relates to Robinhood’s November 2021 confirmation that it was hacked “with more than five million customer email addresses and two million customer names taken, as well...

about 15 hours ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 2:56 PM PST · January 13, 2025 Microsoft has created a new engineering org aimed at accelerating AI infrastructure and software development within the company. According to Bloomberg, Jay Parikh, previously VP and global head of engineering at Meta, will lead the new division. He’ll report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and oversee groups including the company’s AI platform and developer teams. Parikh worked on technical infrastructure and data center projects at Meta. Before joining Microsoft in...

about 15 hours ago

TechCrunch

In April 2022, the CIA decided to swipe right on Nand Mulchandani, appointing him as its first-ever Chief Technology Officer. It was a good look for the CIA. Mulchandani, who previously served as the CTO and acting director of the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, is something of a rare breed in Washington. Before becoming a government employee, he co-founded and was CEO at a string of Bay Area outfits with almost comically Silicon Valley-esque names: Oblix, Determina, OpenDNS,...

about 17 hours ago

TechCrunch

OpenAI on Monday published what it’s calling an “economic blueprint” for AI: a living document that lays out policies the company thinks it can build on with the U.S. government and its allies. The blueprint, which includes a forward from Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s VP of global affairs, asserts that the U.S. must act to attract billions in funding for the chips, data, energy, and talent necessary to “win on AI.” “Today, while some countries sideline AI and its economic potential,”...

about 17 hours ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 11:32 AM PST · January 13, 2025 Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have joined the ranks of those displeased with Meta’s changes to fact-checking and have released a statement saying that the changes “directly underminds free speech.”  “Meta’s changes to its ‘Hateful Content Policies’ do not protect free expression but instead foster an environment where abuse and hate speech silence and threaten the voices of whole communities who make up a healthy democracy,” they wrote.  They also...

about 18 hours ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 11:11 AM PST · January 13, 2025 Ben Lerer, managing partner of one of New York’s most prestigious seed-stage venture firms, Lerer Hippeau, shared some predictions with Fortune’s Leo Schwartz. He believes venture firms will continue to see a bifurcation as money pours mostly into top funds like Thrive and a16z, as well as into smaller more bespoke funds.  “Where you go to die is somewhere floating in the middle, managing a few billion dollars, and don’t...

about 19 hours ago

TechCrunch

The rise of NVIDIA has spurred renewed investor interest in AI chip startups. One of them, Blaize, founded by former Intel engineers, is set to go public on NASDAQ in a SPAC deal on Tuesday, it announced on Monday. Founded in 2010, Blaize has raised $335 million from investors like Samsung and Mercedes-Benz. Headquartered in El Dorado Hills, California, it focuses on manufacturing AI chips for edge applications. Rather than being mostly used in vast data centers (like NVIDIA’s), its...

about 19 hours ago

TechCrunch

As Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg continue to reshape the social media space, a group of international tech entrepreneurs and advocates has launched a campaign to protect social media from the control and influence of billionaires. The initiative, Free Our Feeds, aims to protect Bluesky’s underlying technology, the AT Protocol, and leverage it to create an open social media ecosystem that can’t be controlled by a single person or company, including Bluesky itself. The goal of the initiative is to...

about 20 hours ago

TechCrunch

The world of fashion is moving at a faster pace each year. Most retailers introduce new styles each season, and fast-fashion companies like Shein, H&M and Zara update their collections continuously.  To keep pace with the rapid demand for new styles, brands and manufacturers have been turning to tech to accelerate their design process. Raspberry AI, a startup founded two years ago, is one of the technological solutions that helps expedite product development by allowing designers to visualize and iterate...

about 21 hours ago

TechCrunch

At 24 years old, Pryce Yebesi already has one exit: selling his crypto invoicing company Utopia Labs to Coinbase for an undisclosed amount.  Some founders don’t just have one company in them. On Monday, Yebesi announced the launch of his new company, OpenLedger, which embeds automated accounting software into products enterprises and small businesses already use. He’s already raised $3 million in a round led by Kindred Ventures.  Yebesi said he thought of OpenLedger while still working at Uptoia Labs,...

about 21 hours ago

TechCrunch

Clearwater Analytics, a company developing accounting, compliance, and risk reporting tools for asset managers, said on Monday it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire investment management platform Enfusion for $1.5 billion. Clearwater, which says it has obtained an $800 million loan to fund the transaction, along with a $200 million revolving line of credit, will let Enfusion’s shareholders elect to receive cash, stock, or a mix. Clearwater expects to pay $760 million in cash, and issue between approximately...

about 21 hours ago

TechCrunch

With a week left in office, President Joe Biden introduced a new set of guidelines and restrictions for exporting U.S.-made AI chips. On Monday the administration announced its Interim Final Rule on AI diffusion. This ruling is meant to “provide clarity to allied and partner nations about how they can benefit from AI” and streamline licensing hurdles for chip orders, according to a White House press release. But these rules also introduce new chip sale restrictions on the majority of...

about 21 hours ago

TechCrunch

The Department of Transportation announced Friday another $636 million in funding that will be awarded to 49 applicants for electric vehicle charging infrastructure — and Tesla’s application for nearly $100 million to fund a big rig charging corridor was once again passed over. Tesla’s name was not among the list of recipients released, and its partner on the project, California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District, confirmed to TechCrunch the company had applied for this round. The snub comes as Tesla...

about 21 hours ago

TechCrunch

On the heels of TikTok’s looming shut down on January 19 over its ownership in the U.S. (unless the Supreme Court intervenes), it looks like another Chinese app is catching some attention. American users are flocking Chinese short-form video app Xiaohongshu (known as RedNote in English). The app today surged to the number-one spot for free apps on the U.S. App Store. It is also the top Social Networking app across all free iPhone apps.  Several TikTok creators are promoting...

about 22 hours ago

TechCrunch

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin postponed the inaugural launch of its first orbital rocket, New Glenn, early Monday morning after experiencing an unspecified issue with one of the vehicle’s subsystems. While delays like this happen all the time in spaceflight, this one once again puts the timing of the much-anticipated launch in question. According to Eric Berger at Ars Technica, the company got deep enough into the countdown that Blue Origin would likely need at least 48 hours to...

about 22 hours ago

TechCrunch

Financial services firm Moody’s announced on Monday that it has agreed to acquire Cape Analytics, a geospatial AI startup, for an undisclosed sum. The deal, which is expected to close in Q1, subject to customary closing conditions, will give Moody’s access to Cape’s geospatial AI analytics technology for insurance underwriting. With the tech, Moody’s plans to create a property database capable of delivering “address-specific” risk insights for its insurance clients, said Moody’s CEO Rob Fauber. “By combining our … risk...

about 23 hours ago

TechCrunch

E-commerce giant eBay has announced plans to acquire Caramel, a startup that helps car sellers and buyers complete the final steps of the transaction — including verification, financing, paperwork, ownership transfer, insurance, and more. Founded out of Los Angeles in 2021, Caramel formally launched last year with some $19 million in funding behind it, from backers including FJ Labs, Hearst Ventures, Zeev Ventures, and Primera Capital. Caramel can be used to complete sales initiated through independent dealerships or marketplaces, including...

about 23 hours ago

TechCrunch

Some changes at Sonos. Patrick Spence, the company’s chief executive officer (pictured above), is leaving the company after eight years in the job. Tom Conrad, the co-founder of Pandora and a Sonos board member, is stepping in as interim CEO starting today. 2024 has been a complicated year for the speaker manufacturer. The company released a major update to its software platform that was crippled with bugs and removed some long-standing features. While this could be problematic for any brand,...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

Float Financial, an expense management and corporate card startup focused on the Canadian market, has raised $48.5 million in a Series B funding round. The Toronto-based fintech likens itself to U.S.-based fintech giants Brex and Ramp but says it is different in that its sole focus is on Canadian SMBs, which CEO and co-founder Rob Khazzam said are “overlooked due to Canada’s banking monopoly and tough economic climate.” Goldman Sachs Growth Equity led the financing, which included participation from OMERS...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

A hack and data breach at location data broker Gravy Analytics is threatening the privacy of millions of people around the world, whose smartphone apps unwittingly revealed their location data collected by the data giant. The full scale of the data breach isn’t yet known, but the alleged hacker has already published a large sample of location data from top consumer phone apps — including fitness and health, dating, and transit apps, as well as popular games. The data represents...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 4:18 AM PST · January 13, 2025 Nominet, the U.K. domain registry that maintains .co.uk domains, has experienced a cybersecurity incident that it confirmed is linked to the recent exploitation of a new Ivanti VPN vulnerability. In an email to customers, seen by TechCrunch, Nominet warned of an “ongoing security incident” under investigation. Nominet said hackers accessed its systems via “third-party VPN software supplied by Ivanti,” adding that the intrusion “exploited a zero-day vulnerability,” giving Nominet no...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

Healthcare is proving to be one of the more lucrative industries when it comes to building AI solutions to speed up how work is carried out across clinical, research and administrative operations. Today comes one of the latest examples of how that is playing out in terms of venture funding. Qventus, a startup that builds AI-based tools to automate work across a range of healthcare scenarios — they include surgeries, hospital discharges, and inpatient/outpatient check-ups — has raised a Series...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

Coreweave, the $19 billion cloud computing company that provides companies with AI compute resources, has formally opened its first two data centers in the U.K. — its first outside its domestic U.S. market. CoreWeave opened its European headquarters in London last May, shortly after hitting a $19 billion valuation off the back of a $1.1. billion fundraise. At the same time, the company announced plans to open two data centers as part of a £1 billion ($1.25 billion) investment in...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

Decentralized social network organization Mastodon said Monday that it is planning to create a new non-profit organization in Europe and hand over ownership of entities responsible for key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components. This means one person won’t have control over the entire project. The organization is trying to differentiate itself from social networks controlled by CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. While exact details are yet to be finalized, this means that Mastodon’s current CEO and creator, Eugen...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

In 2023, the U.K. made a big song and dance about the need to consider the harms of AI, giving itself a leading role in the wider conversation around AI safety. Now, it’s whistling a very different tune: today, the government announced a sweeping plan and a big bet on AI investments to develop what it calls a “decade of national renewal.”  Included in the so-called “Plan for Change” will be a commitment to invest in AI to speed up...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

Groww, India’s largest retail stockbroker, is positioning itself to file for an IPO in 10-12 months and is seeking a valuation between $6 billion to $8 billion, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in what would be a landmark listing for the country’s fintech sector. The Bengaluru-headquartered’s listing would be the first IPO by a digital-age trading platform in India. The targeted valuation, which sources cautioned could change, is more than double the $3 billion value from its last...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

Around the world, public healthcare systems have struggled to reset post-pandemic, and in particular, the increasingly aged populations in Western countries are putting pressure on services, not least in the UK where ‘NHS in crisis’ is a regular headline in the media. As a result, private companies, many powered with technology, see a gap in the market. It’s with this background that Cera, a proprietary software platform and in-home healthcare provider in the UK, has raised a $150 million in a...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 1:45 PM PST · January 12, 2025 Fire-tracking app Watch Duty has become a crucial source of information for Los Angeles residents threatened by the ongoing wildfires.  As TechCrunch’s Maxwell Zeff explained, the app relies on a network of active and retired firefighters, first responders, official government reports, and volunteer reporters who monitor radio scanners to offer real-time updates on active wildfires. During this week’s fires, where the official alerts were could be buggy or inaccurate, Watch...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

Even before CES 2025 kicked off a few trends began to emerge — or more accurately, some gaps appeared.  All U.S. and some European automakers that have helped turn CES into an auto show were absent. Several Chinese automakers filled that void, notably Zeekr, the EV brand owned by China’s Geely Holdings. Wey, a premium brand under Great Wall Motor, and Xpeng also had booths.  The West Hall in the Las Vegas Convention Center, where the majority of vehicle and...

1 day ago

TechCrunch

After more than two years — and nearly 100 episodes — as a host of TechCrunch’s recently ended Found podcast, I have learned a lot about how founders approach building their startups. I’ve heard stories about how founders know when it is the right time to expand from their core product, to how startups approach hiring, to what got entrepreneurs to take the leap in the first place, and everything in between. While not a founder myself, some of the...

2 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 8:21 AM PST · January 12, 2025 Apple’s next major iPhone upgrade will include a new model called the iPhone 17 Air, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. This seems like an obvious way to expand the lineup, given Apple’s success with the Air moniker for thinner MacBooks and iPads (I’m currently typing these words on my MacBook Air), and could be more appealing than the iPhone Plus or mini. Gurman writes that the iPhone 17 Air would...

2 days ago

TechCrunch

With iOS 18, Apple rolled out Apple Intelligence, which includes an AI-powered feature for summarizing notifications. When you get a bunch of notifications from one app, the feature summarizes the content of all notifications in one card that appears on the lock screen. You can dismiss the stack after you have read the summary, or tap on it to check out individual notifications. However, the feature is not always accurate. Occasionally, it results in hilarious outcomes, and other times it...

2 days ago

TechCrunch

Open source makes the technology world go ’round, forming as much as 90% of the modern software stack via frameworks; libraries; databases; operating systems; and countless standalone applications. The benefits of open source software are well understood, promising greater control and transparency. However, there’s a perennial struggle between the open source and proprietary realms, leading many companies to retreat from open source to protect their commercial interests. At the heart of all this is the thorny issue of licensing. There...

2 days ago

TechCrunch

Social 8 seconds ago The world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. The core issue is the fight between WordPress… Image Credits: TechCrunch Transportation 44 mins ago Despite hydrogen’s challenges, BMW thinks the only way to actually achieve a shift to zero-emissions transportation is through a mix of BEVs and hydrogen vehicles. AI 46 mins ago Google’s NotebookLM has been updated with YouTube and audio files...

2 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 3:36 PM PST · January 11, 2025 Apple’s board of directors has come out in opposition to a proposal seeking to end the company’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.  In a proxy filing, the company said the National Center for Public Policy Research (a conservative think tank) is submitting a proposal for Apple to “consider abolishing its Inclusion & Diversity program, policies, department and goals.” The think tank’s proposal cites the recent Supreme Court ruling against...

3 days ago

TechCrunch

So-called reasoning AI models are becoming easier — and cheaper — to develop. On Friday, NovaSky, a team of researchers based out of UC Berkeley’s Sky Computing Lab, released Sky-T1-32B-Preview, a reasoning model that’s competitive with an earlier version of OpenAI’s o1 on a number of key benchmarks. Sky-T1 appears to be the first truly open source reasoning model in the sense that it can be replicated from scratch; the team released the data set they used to train it...

3 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 11:04 AM PST · January 11, 2025 Why does it cost some companies hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a popular video game? A couple weeks ago, The New York Times blamed the never-ending quest to deliver more photo-realistic graphics— and it suggested the industry is beginning to see diminishing returns, leading to layoffs and studio closures. However, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier argues this analysis is “a little bit off the mark.” He doesn’t deny that budgets...

3 days ago

TechCrunch

Welcome back to Week in Review. I missed you! This week, we’re diving into all the gadgets and announcements out of this year’s CES, Meta’s decision to roll back its fact-checking program, TikTok’s response to employees affected by the California wildfires, and more! Let’s do this. CES 2025 came and went this week. The event featured keynotes from the big players in tech like Nvidia, Samsung, Toyota, and more. In addition to that, there were, of course, the expected gadgets,...

3 days ago

TechCrunch

I did not go to CES 2025 with the goal of getting drenched by Lake Mead’s chilly January waters. But when I discovered Los Angeles-based boat startup Arc had brought its new sport boat to Las Vegas, I figured it was worth the risk. It was. The Arc Sport was a joy to drive, even for a 30-minute outing on a choppy lake. It maneuvered like a heavy jet ski — weight that helped it feel stable. I’ve driven plenty...

3 days ago

TechCrunch

Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, some of whom have been spearheading a push to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project. While community criticism of WordPress’s governance isn’t new, the latest brouhaha kicked off back in September when Mullenweg publicly chastised WP Engine, a commercial hosting company built atop WordPress, for profiteering without giving much back. Things soon escalated (read all about it here), with WP Engine...

3 days ago

TechCrunch

No company has capitalized on the AI revolution more dramatically than Nvidia. Its revenue, profitability, and cash reserves have skyrocketed since the introduction of ChatGPT a little over two years ago — and the many competitive generative AI services have launched since. And its stock price soared more than eightfold.  During that period, the world’s leading high-performance GPU maker has used its ballooning fortunes to significantly increase investments in all sorts of startups, but particularly in AI startups. The chip...

3 days ago

TechCrunch

It’s now broadly accepted that customers and employees who receive corporate gifts end up appreciating the brand much more, and for not a lot of outlay. The market for this has thus exploded. One market player, the New York-based Snappy, which has raised over $125 million to date, is now acquiring Covver, a corporate merchandise gifting platform. Terms were undisclosed, although TechCrunch understands the deal involved a mix of cash and shares.  Covver was previously backed by TLV Partners, based...

3 days ago

TechCrunch

Microsoft has taken legal action against a group the company claims intentionally developed and used tools to bypass the safety guardrails of its cloud AI products. According to a complaint filed by the company in December in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, a group of unnamed 10 defendants allegedly used stolen customer credentials and custom-designed software to break into the Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft’s fully managed service powered by ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s technologies. In the...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his decision to scale back Meta’s content moderation policies in a Friday appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Zuckerberg faced widespread criticism for the decision, including from employees inside his own company. “Probably depends on who you ask,” said Zuckerberg when asked how Meta’s updates have been received. The key updates Meta announced this week were that it was ending its independent fact checker program, and replacing it with a community notes program like X has....

4 days ago

TechCrunch

The white cane for the 21st century. While many tech companies have increasingly worked to make technology more accessible for the blind and visually impaired, canes haven’t benefitted much from these advances. London-born WeWalk takes a more traditional approach to the white cane. Beyond the bulkier handle, not much sets the company’s product apart visually from a standard folding cane. The company currently offers two models: the $850 Smartcane  2 and $1,150 Smartcane+ 2. The primarily distinction between the tiers...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 2:13 PM PST · January 10, 2025 Don’t fly your drone into an active wildfire. Although capturing video of the devastation can be tempting, it could stop firefighters from doing their job. That’s exactly what happened in Los Angeles on January 9 when a drone collided with a ‘Super Scooper’ firefighting plane, The L.A. Times reports.  This happened as L.A. fights its worst wildfire in history, burning thousands of homes and killing at least 10. The drone...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

After accounting startup Bench abruptly shut down on December 27 and was bought in a fire-sale by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning they can’t easily just take their financial data and leave.  And some are very unhappy about it, three customers told TechCrunch. To recap: When Bench, a startup based in Canada that raised $113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify, shuttered, it left thousands of businesses without access to their accounting and tax documents. Days...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 1:50 PM PST · January 10, 2025 Amazon is now the latest company to curb some of its DEI programs, Bloomberg reports, after Meta announced that it, too, is ending its diversity efforts earlier on Friday.  An internal memo that was sent to staffers said that the company was looking to wind down outdated programs and materials as part of a review of its current initiatives.  “Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

On Friday, the nation’s highest court heard arguments on whether to uphold or block a law that could effectively ban TikTok​ in the U.S. The bill, signed into law by President Biden in April 2024, gives TikTok’s parent company ByteDance until January 19 to divest its U.S. operations or face a ban in the country. The session, which came just nine days before the January 19 deadline, was TikTok’s last legal stand against the looming ban. TikTok’s lawyer stated that...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

OpenAI disbanded its robotics department. Then, it brought it back. Now, through a social media post from its hardware director and newly published job descriptions, OpenAI is revealing more about its plans for the revived team. In a post on X on Friday, Caitlin Kalinowski, who joined OpenAI to lead hardware last November from Meta’s AR glasses division, said that OpenAI will develop its own robots — complete with a custom sensor suite. In the post, Kalinowski spotlighted new OpenAI...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

On Saturday, Triplegangers CEO Oleksandr Tomchuk was alerted that his company’s ecommerce site was down. It looked to be some kind of distributed denial-of-service attack.  He soon discovered the culprit was a bot from OpenAI that was relentlessly attempting to scrape his entire, enormous site.  “We have over 65,000 products, each product has a page,” Tomchuk told TechCrunch. “Each page has at least three photos.”  OpenAI was sending “tens of thousands” of server requests trying to download all of it,...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

AI companies across the globe raised more than $100 billion in venture capital dollars in 2024, according to Crunchbase data, an increase of more than 80% compared to 2023. It encompasses nearly a third of the total VC dollars invested in 2024. That’s a lot of money funneling into a lot of AI companies. The AI industry has swelled so much in the last two years that it has become filled with overlapping companies, startups still using AI just in...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Large corporations aren’t known for taking risks. This is as true in the world of consumer hardware as anywhere. Annual updates are largely incremental, with small changes to things like screen resolution or image quality. It’s a phenomenon that Lenovo is more than happy to buck when it showcases the latest updates to its PC line every year. The offerings are generally some combination of product and concepts, the latter of which may well never see the light of day,...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

In the wake of Meta’s decision to remove its third-party fact-checking system and loosen content moderation policies, Google searches on how to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads have been on the rise. People who are angry with the decision accuse Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of cozying up to the incoming Trump administration at the expense of making the company’s social media platforms into more of a hotbed for misinformation and polarizing speech. Zuckerberg’s remarks that the company’s third-party fact checkers...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

A construction zone. A car crash. A double parked truck. A motorcycle cop with its red-white-and blues deployed.  My one-hour trip along the Las Vegas Strip in a custom-built Zoox robotaxi during CES 2025 wasn’t a dull one. A second, shorter ride the following evening, proved less eventful. And in both rides, the Zoox robotaxi handled the entire drive without incident — and primarily with ease.  And yet, the rides aren’t quite fully baked. It’s almost there, and to an...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Hugging Face, the AI developer platform, has settled a lawsuit against Korean AI startup FriendliAI, which had accused Hugging Face of infringing on one of its patents. Per a filing on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Delaware, FriendliAI reached a “confidential agreement” with Hugging Face on January 8, and has agreed to dismiss its suit “with prejudice,” meaning it can’t be brought back to court. “FriendliAI and Hugging Face hereby stipulate to dismissal …...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Of the cybersecurity risks facing the United States today, few loom larger than the potential sabotage capabilities posed by China-backed hackers, which top U.S. officials have described as an “epoch-defining threat.” In recent months, U.S. intelligence officials said Chinese government-backed hackers have been burrowing deep into the networks of U.S. critical infrastructure, including water, energy and transportation providers. The goal, officials say, is to lay the groundwork for potentially destructive cyberattacks in the event of a future conflict between China...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 10:43 AM PST · January 10, 2025 Shein is still looking to IPO, Reuters reports. The company is looking to list on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and could complete its IPO as early as April. The push for London comes after the company stopped trying to list in the U.S. as lawmakers raised concerns over the company’s connections to China and labor malpractices. Its foray into London is also not coming without concern: Reuters reports that a...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 10:38 AM PST · January 10, 2025 Axios reports that Meta is eliminating its biggest DEI efforts, effective immediately, including ones that focused on hiring a diverse workforce, training, and sourcing supplies from diverse-owned companies. Its DEI department will also be eliminated.   In a memo leaked to the outlet, Meta said it was making these changes because the “legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing.”  Meta is not...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

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. The second week of the year is usually a busy one for startup news, and 2025 is no exception. From CES product launches to M&As and funding rounds, here’s what you need to know. Image Credits:May Mobility Several startups launched new products at CES 2025: Full Nature Farms and its farm irrigation...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

The European Commission (EC) has given the greenlight for Synopsys to acquire Ansys, though the companies must sell-off various software products as part of the proposed remedies. Chip design software maker Synopsys revealed last January its plans to acquire Ansys, a simulation software developer that helps engineers model and analyze the physical behavior of products, such as chips, and evaluate their real-world performance. The $35 billion transaction, involving two publicly-traded companies, is the biggest such deal in the technology sector since Broadcom acquired...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Businesses dependent on the physical supply chain — the network of facilities and transportation systems used to move materials from one location to another — chain face a number of challenges, from staff shortages to increasing customer expectations. The pressures aren’t easing up. According to a survey from Prologis, a real estate investment trust, two-thirds of executives say that they’re losing sleep over supply chain-related problems. Barry Conlon and David Broe ran into some of these stressors themselves while founding...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

CES isn’t much of a gaming show. Every year, however, a few notable products slip through the news deluge. Created in collaboration with My Arcade, Gamestation Go fits the bill. The handheld sports a 7-inch display and comes preloaded with north of 200 titles from various Atari generations. Of course, simply being portable game emulator doesn’t amount to much in the era of smartphone games. Those things are a dime a dozen. The official Atari seal of approval — while...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

A lawyer for TikTok argued before the Supreme Court on Friday that a ban on the social network would violate TikTok’s and Americans’ First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court this morning heard arguments on whether to overturn or delay a law that could effectively ban TikTok​ in the U.S. The bill, officially titled the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, gives TikTok parent company ByteDance until January 19, 2025 to divest its U.S. operations or face a ban...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictments of Russian citizens Roman Vitalyevich Ostapenko, Alexander Evgenievich Oleynik, and Anton Vyachlavovich Tarasov, accusing them of operating services that helped criminals launder cryptocurrency. The three were allegedly involved in operating Bender.io and Sinbad.io, two cryptocurrency mixers “that served as safe havens for laundering criminally derived funds, including the proceeds of ransomware and wire fraud,” according to principal deputy assistant attorney general Brent Wible, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Chinese hackers have reportedly breached a key office within the U.S. Treasury tasked with reviewing foreign investments and transactions that could threaten U.S. national security. CNN reports, citing U.S. officials familiar with the incident, that the Chinese hackers targeted the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which can approve or deny deals that present national security risks, such as corporate mergers and takeovers or deals that involve sensitive U.S. information. Treasury officials confirmed to TechCrunch last...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Popular Los Angeles-based cannabis brand Stiiizy has confirmed that hackers accessed reams of sensitive customer data, including government-issued documents and medical cannabis cards, during a November cyberattack. In a data breach notice filed with California’s attorney general this week, Stiiizy said it was notified by its point-of-sale processing vendor that an “organized cybercrime group” had compromised the data from some of its retail locations. In a letter sent to affected customers, Stiiizy confirmed that the hackers acquired customer data processed...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Developers Max Brodeur-Urbas and Rahul Behal think that AI has the potential to automate lots of business-relevant tasks, but that many of the AI-powered automation tools on the market today are unreliable and costly. Part of the problem is that users expect too much of AI, Brodeur-Urbas told TechCrunch — for instance, they assume that it can handle highly specialized, niche workloads where precision matters. “If users ever want to use AI for enterprise purposes, the technology really has to...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

It’s a new year, but drama in the WordPress community keeps going. Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, said that it would reduce its contribution to WordPress core, the open-source project that acts as the backbone of most of Automattic’s products and ensures the longevity of WordPress as a technology and community. Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has been in a kerfuffle with WP Engine since September last year over the very issue of contribution to WordPress as...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Home renovation projects can be unpredictable for both customers and builders. Meanwhile, small contractors barely use modern software and home renovation giants, like IKEA, tend to trundle on with dated legacy software. UK startup Beams thinks it can solve this conundrum and has now raised a $9 million Series A funding round to crack the issues. That takes its total raised to $13.3 million to date. This latest round was led by ETF Partners, with participation from existing investors Giant...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

As global regulators increase their scrutiny on Visa and Mastercard over merchant fees, India has chosen a different path: creating rival payment networks that are increasingly sidelining international card networks. The strategy builds on India’s Unified Payments Interface, known as UPI, a nine-year-old system that now processes more than 13 billion real-time transactions monthly, or about 71% of all transactions in the world’s most populous nation. This payment system, which lets consumers and merchants bypass traditional card networks by connecting...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Elon Musk-owned social network X said today that it is rolling out labels for parody or satire accounts to differentiate them from other accounts. In the past, users, including news presenters, have mistaken posts from parody accounts as authentic statements made by real people or entities. The company’s safety account on the platform said that the label would be visible on both accounts and posts. “We’re rolling out profile labels for parody accounts to clearly distinguish these types of accounts...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

As wildfires rage for the third consecutive day through parts of Los Angeles, now including the Hollywood Hills, several neighborhoods have been forced to evacuate for safety purposes. But on Thursday afternoon, a wildfire evacuation alert was mistakenly sent to the smartphone of every resident in Los Angeles County, a region with more than 9 million people. “An evacuation order for residents near the Kenneth Fire currently burning in West Hills was mistakenly issued Countywide,” wrote LA County’s official account...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Doorbell cameras are standard fare these days. More and more people have invested in connected security systemss, as the technology has become both cheaper and more user friendly. There’s one important thing these system won’t do, however: shoot people and animals with paintballs. That is, however, pretty much the Eve PaintCam’s whole M.O. Carrying the somewhat misleading tagline “Safety Simplified,” there is a quartet of different models rigging on the same theme. After running both Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, Slovenian...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

Tesla has revealed a new-look Model Y meant for the Chinese and other Asian-Pacific markets, marking the first major update to the SUV since its launch in 2020. The redesign comes as Tesla finished 2024 having delivered fewer vehicles than it did in 2023. It was the first year-over-year drop since the company started selling mass market cars in 2012. The new Model Y is slated to start deliveries as early as March in China and some surrounding countries. It’s...

4 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 4:49 PM PST · January 9, 2025 Hippocratic AI, a startup building AI solutions that can handle non-diagnostic patient-facing tasks, secured a massive $141 million Series B at a valuation of $1.64 billion led by Kleiner Perkins, the company announced Thursday. The funding comes nine months after Hippocratic AI raised a $53 million round from General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz and five months after raising $17 million from Nvidia. The startup is less than two years old....

5 days ago

TechCrunch

Nvidia unveiled a prototype AI avatar at CES 2025 that lives on your PC’s desktop. The AI assistant, R2X, looks like a video game character, and it can help you navigate apps on your computer. The R2X avatar is rendered and animated using Nvidia’s AI models, and users can run the avatar on popular LLMs of their choice, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o or xAI’s Grok. Users can talk with R2X through text and voice, upload files to it for processing,...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

ICON Technologies Inc., which builds homes using 3D printing, is laying off 114 people, according to a WARN letter filed with the Texas Workforce Commission. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the news to TechCrunch, providing a statement that ICON had “recently made a difficult decision to re-align” its team and team size “to focus on our highest priorities and continue to invest in our best growth opportunities.” ICON was founded in late 2017 and launched during SXSW in March...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 3:41 PM PST · January 9, 2025 Defense tech startup Epirus is reportedly raising between $150 million and $200 million in a new funding round led by Joe Lonsdale’s venture firm 8VC, Bloomberg reports. The round could give the company, which develops technology to intercept drones, a valuation of about $1 billion. If that’s the final valuation, it would be a decrease from the company’s previous $1.35 billion valuation. (Epirus did not comment to Bloomberg.) Lonsdale co-founded the...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

CES 2025 has been a mixed bag for humanoid robots. The form factor had a watershed moment, as images of the top players flanked NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang during his Monday keynote. Of these, Agility’s Digit also showed up alongside a miniature conveyer belt at a closed access NVIDIA booth. It was a nice return for the bipedal robot, an older form of which appeared at CES 2020 as part of Ford’s showcase. Beyond this, humanoid representation has largely been...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

Wildfires are currently devastating the greater Los Angeles area, burning over 45 square miles, torching over 1,300 structures, and putting nearly 180,000 people under evacuation orders as of Thursday. And yet, TikTok’s LA-based employees are being told to either continue their work from home or use their personal/sick days if that’s not possible, while the company’s LA office remains closed due to power outages caused by high winds. Already, the Palisades Fire is close enough to TikTok’s office that smoke...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

OpenAI is introducing a new way for users to customize their interactions with ChatGPT, the company’s AI-powered chatbot. Some users on X on Thursday reported that ChatGPT’s existing custom instructions menu on the web has been revamped with new fields. Now, users can specify a preferred name or nickname, their profession, other things they’d like ChatGPT to know about them, and “traits” they’d like the chatbot to have. OpenAI suggests traits like “Chatty,” “Encouraging,” and “Gen Z.” “Introduce yourself to...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Hey hey, it’s a new year! I’ve missed you these past two weeks. But I’m back, and in Las Vegas for CES 2025. As always, announcements from the show came fast and furious — some more material than others.  My big takeaway: Autonomous vehicles are back, and the trough of disillusionment days...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

The old chestnut passed around by industry watchers for the past decade was that CES — one of the world’s largest consumer tech trade events — had turned into an auto show. Maybe even the most important auto show of the year. And there was ample evidence of that. GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra used the CES stage in 2016 to introduce the world to the all-electric Chevrolet Bolt. In 2022, Barra made another big splash at CES when...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

As it looks to accelerate the pace of its AI development, Google is further streamlining the teams building its AI services, platforms, and tools. On Thursday, Logan Kilpatrick, who leads product for Google’s AI Studio developer platform, said in a post on X that Google’s AI Studio team and the team developing the API for the company’s Gemini series of models will be moving under Google DeepMind. Google DeepMind, formed in 2023 from a merger of Google’s DeepMind team and...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

Scale AI relies on an army of workers it categorizes as contractors to do essential AI work like labeling images or rating LLM responses for Big Tech and others. But the AI startup, most recently valued at $13.8 billion, is facing mounting legal challenges over its labor practices On January 3, 2025, former Scale AI worker Amber Rogowicz filed a lawsuit alleging that Scale misclassified her and other workers as contractors instead of employees. The suit claims the company’s pay...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 10:53 AM PST · January 9, 2025 Between its mentors, alums, and private messaging board Bookface, Y Combinator is maybe only two-degrees of separation from anyone in tech. Even Google founder Larry Page. Page spoke at a YC event in December, Business Insider reports, where he talked about the early days of Google. Page went from one of the most visible tech billionaires to one of the most obscure, even before officially stepping down as CEO in...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

In Brief Posted: 10:47 AM PST · January 9, 2025 The Razzies, the Darwins — not all awards are good. Sure, CES is a time to celebrate the year’s weirdest and most wonderful consumer electronic, but thankfully we’ve got iFixit around to throw a little cold water on the fair. As we enter the penultimate day of the event, the repair stalwart presents its “Worst in Show.” Among the winners is the new Ultrahuman ring, which scored “Least Repairable.” That’s...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

Millions of packages stolen each year. DoorBox aims to change how packages are delivered with its smart package box that features a theft-proof design with live camera feeds and an alarm that activates automatically if the box is tampered with.  After selling 2,000 units of its initial version, which offered manual functionality, the startup unveiled its latest product at CES 2025: Smart DoorBox.ai. This new system utilizes an AI-powered automatic unlocking mechanism that detects when a package is being delivered,...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

Counsel for plaintiffs in a copyright lawsuit filed against Meta allege that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave the green light to the team behind the company’s Llama AI models to use a data set of pirated ebooks and articles for training. The case, Kadrey v. Meta, is one of many against tech giants developing AI that accuse the companies of training models on copyrighted works without permission. For the most part, defendants like Meta have asserted that they’re shielded by...

5 days ago

TechCrunch

In October 2024, security researcher Ben Sadeghipour was analyzing Facebook’s ad platform when he found a security vulnerability that allowed him to run commands on the internal Facebook server housing that platform, essentially giving him control of the server.   After he reported the vulnerability to Facebook’s owner Meta, which Sadeghipour said took just one hour to fix it, the social networking giant awarded him $100,000 in a bug bounty payout.  “My assumption is that it’s something you may want to...

5 days ago