A few years ago, several startups with a specific focus on digital avatars appeared because of all the metaverse buzz. While that buzz died down, generative AI has given a new life to avatars as it is easier to spin up different virtual identities. Companies...
If you want to amplify your brand to over 1,000 AI experts and innovators, there’s no better way than by hosting a Side Event during TechCrunch Sessions: AI Week. From June 1 to June 7, TechCrunch is looking for fun and thought-provoking events to coincide...
Several popular voice cloning tools on the market don’t have “meaningful” safeguards to prevent fraud or abuse, according to a new study from Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports probed voice cloning products from six companies — Descript, ElevenLabs, Lovo, PlayHT, Resemble AI, and Speechify — for...
On July 15, 1,200 founders and VCs across all stages will gather at SoWa Power Station in Boston for TechCrunch All Stage 2025 — the ultimate summit for startup founders. What does this mean for you? A golden opportunity to showcase your brand to a...
On June 5, 1,200 of the brightest minds in AI and VC leaders will converge in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley for TechCrunch Sessions: AI — the must-attend AI event of the year. What does this mean for your startup? A prime opportunity to showcase...
From October 27-29, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 will bring together over 10,000 startup pioneers, VC leaders, and tech enthusiasts at Moscone West in San Francisco—the epicenter of innovation set to reshape the future of technology. What’s in it for your startup? A golden opportunity to put...
Microsoft appears to be working on 3D gaming experiences for Copilot, its AI-powered chatbot platform, according to a new job listing. The listing, published this week, seeks a senior software engineer based in Beijing specializing in 3D rendering engines, particularly engines typically used to build...
ServiceNow said on Monday that it has agreed to acquire Moveworks, which develops enterprise-focused automation and AI tools. ServiceNow will pay $2.85 billion for Moveworks in a mix of cash and stock. The former expects the deal to close in the second half of 2025....
Manus, an “agentic” AI platform that launched in preview last week, is generating more hype than a Taylor Swift concert. The head of product at Hugging Face called Manus “the most impressive AI tool I’ve ever tried.” AI policy researcher Dean Ball described Manus as...
The CEO of Colossal, a startup that aims to use genetic editing techniques to bring back extinct species, including the wooly mammoth, assured audiences at SXSW that the company has no plans to create a real-life Jurassic Park — lest there was any doubt. “Modern...
Creatopy, a startup that uses AI to automate the creation of digital ads, has brought on a new CEO: Tammy H. Nam. Nam was previously COO and CMO at photo-editing startup PicsArt, and before that the CEO of video streamer Viki. She told TechCrunch via...
Apple announced this week that the “more personalized” version of Siri that it promised last year has been delayed — and according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, that’s also postponed the launch of the company’s planned smart home hub. In a statement, Apple said the upgraded...
Elon Musk lost the latest battle in his lawsuit against OpenAI this week, but a federal judge appears to have given Musk — and others who oppose OpenAI’s for-profit conversion — reasons to be hopeful. Musk’s suit against OpenAI, which also names Microsoft and OpenAI...
The US Department of Justice is still calling for Google to sell its web browser Chrome, according to a Friday court filing. The DOJ first proposed that Google should sell Chrome last year, under then-President Joe Biden, but it seems to be sticking with that...
Google has quietly updated the webpage for its Responsible AI and Human Centered Technology (RAI-HCT) team, the team charged with conducting research into AI safety, fairness, and explainability, to scrub mentions of “diversity” and “equity.” A previous version of the page used language such as...
A federal judge is allowing an AI-related copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward, although he dismissed part of the suit. In Kadrey vs. Meta, authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates have alleged that Meta has violated their intellectual property rights by...
Last year was a monumental year for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond. There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch. Three companies raised more than one “mega-round” last year, and...
As Tesla faces a global sales slump, and with shares down for the seventh consecutive week, could Elon Musk's antics really be to blame?...
Investor interest in AI coding assistants is exploding. Anysphere, the developer of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, is in talks with venture capitalists to raise capital at a valuation of nearly $10 billion, Bloomberg reported. The round, if it transpires, would come about three months after...
In its final proposed remedy filing in the Google antitrust case, the Department of Justice reiterated that Google should stop paying partners for search placement—and divest its dominant Chrome browser....
Elon Musk’s DOGE team is automating tasks as it continues its purge of the federal workforce....
TechCrunch will be on the ground at SXSW 2025 — the annual tech, music, comedy, and film conference that kicked off Friday in Austin — in search of the zeitgeist of this AI-centric era. The tech portion of the annual event kicked off Friday and will...
Microsoft is accelerating its push to compete with OpenAI, its longtime collaborator, by developing its own powerful AI models and exploring alternatives to power products like Microsoft’s Copilot bot. Microsoft has developed its own AI “reasoning” models comparable to models like OpenAI’s o1 and o3-mini,...
TechCrunch will be on the ground at SXSW 2025 — the annual tech, music, comedy, and film conference that kicked off Friday in Austin — in search of the zeitgeist of this AI-centric era. Yup, we’re one sentence in and AI has already made its...
Signal President Meredith Whittaker warned Friday that agentic AI could come with a risk to user privacy. Speaking on stage at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, the advocate for secure communications, referred to the use of AI agents as “putting your brain in a...
Just over two months into 2025, the number of pending AI bills in the U.S. has grown to 781, according to an online tracking tool. The tool, maintained by consulting firm MultiState, shows that the number of pending U.S. bills pertaining to AI now exceeds...
The architects of projects like Próspera are drafting legislation to create US cities that would be free from federal regulations....
Discord is in early stage discussions with bankers to IPO. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
Just weeks after Google said it would review its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the Google for Startups Founders Fund webpage is peppered with changes. Most notably Google is now using past tense to describe all of its fund programs for underrepresented founders. This is a...
Google on Friday added a new, experimental “embedding” model for text, Gemini Embedding, to its Gemini developer API. Embedding models translate text inputs like words and phrases into numerical representations, known as embeddings, that capture the semantic meaning of the text. Embeddings are used in...