Last week, prediction market startup Kalshi sued New Jersey and Nevada after they tried to shut down its recently launched sports trading operation. In the lawsuit, Kalshi claimed that, since they’re a federally regulated platform, state gaming commissions don’t have the authority to set rules...
A study went viral several months ago for implying that, as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, it develops “value systems” — systems that lead it to, for example, prioritize its own well-being over humans. A more recent paper out of MIT pours cold water on that...
YouTube on Wednesday announced an expansion of its pilot program designed to identify and manage AI-generated content that features the “likeness,” including the face, of creators, artists, and other famous or influential figures. The company is also publicly declaring its support for the legislation known...
Zico Kolter, a Carnegie Mellon professor and board member at OpenAI, tells WIRED about the dangers of AI agents interacting with one another—and why models need to be more resistant to attacks....
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) may have to pay a fine of $1 billion or more to resolve a U.S. export control investigation related to a chip it made that was used in a Huawei AI processor, according to a report by Reuters. TSMC did...
Doing laundry can be a chore. It takes time and is tedious. Few of us like to do it. So it’s no surprise that startups have emerged to take that load off your back — literally. And investors are lining up to fund new and...
It’s been a tough but exciting year for 24-year-old Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, founder and CEO of AI sales agent startup Artisan. Artisan just raised a $25 million Series A led by Glade Brook Capital, Carmichael-Jack exclusively tells TechCrunch. Y Combinator, Day One Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, Oliver...
Hosting platform WordPress.com on Wednesday launched a new AI website builder that allows anyone to create a functioning website using an AI chat-style interface. The feature, which is being made available to WordPress users for free, is targeted at entrepreneurs, freelancers, bloggers, and others who...
After months of hearty marketing efforts and large-scale technology demos across the U.S., Nuro has secured $106 million in fresh funding to help scale its autonomous driving technology and advance commercial partnerships. The Series E round brings Nuro’s total funding raised to $2.2 billion and...
It’s been a couple of years since our last topic-focused, one-day event — but with AI transforming the tech landscape, we couldn’t miss the chance to gather 1,200 founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, and anyone shaping the future of AI for a deep dive into what’s...
Tessell, a startup developing a multi-cloud database-as-a-service, has raised $60 million in a new funding round led by WestBridge Capital ahead of its plans to expand its market presence and launch an AI-powered conversational database management service. As data becomes more critical than ever, many...
Google is releasing a new AI model designed to deliver strong performance with a focus on efficiency. The model, Gemini 2.5 Flash, will soon launch in Vertex AI, Google’s AI development platform. The company says it offers “dynamic and controllable” computing, allowing developers to adjust...
Samsung said on Wednesday that it’s adding Google’s Gemini AI to its home robot Ballie through a partnership with Google Cloud. Users will be able to ask the robot different queries to get answers from Gemini, said the companies. Samsung aims to tap into Gemini’s...
During its Cloud Next conference this week, Google unveiled the latest generation of its TPU AI accelerator chip. The new chip, called Ironwood, is Google’s seventh-generation TPU and is the first optimized for inference — that is, running AI models. Scheduled to launch sometime later...
Google is upgrading Workspace, its suite of cloud-based productivity tools, with new AI capabilities. The suite is gaining Workspace Flows, a tool designed to automate multi-step processes such as updating spreadsheets and digging through documents for information. Flows can tap Gems, Google’s brand of custom...
Gemini Code Assist, Google’s AI coding assistant, is gaining new “agentic” capabilities in preview. During its Cloud Next conference on Wednesday, Google said Code Assist can now deploy new AI “agents” that can take multiple steps to accomplish complex programming tasks. These agents can create...
Reddit Answers, the platform’s conversational AI search tool, gets an upgrade through an integration with Google Gemini. This comes over a year after Reddit expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to access its Vertex AI platform to build AI agents. Google and Reddit announced the update...
On Wednesday, Google rolled out updates to several of its first-party media-generating AI models available through its Vertex AI cloud platform. Lyria, Google’s text-to-music model, is now available in preview for select customers, and the company’s Veo 2 video creation model has been enhanced with...
If you ever call 911 from an area that’s hard to get to, you might hear the buzz of a drone well before a police cruiser pulls up. And there’s a good chance that it will be one made by Brinc Drones, a Seattle-based startup...
A new company, Deep Cogito, has emerged from stealth with a family of openly available AI models that can be switched between “reasoning” and non-reasoning modes. Reasoning models like OpenAI’s o1 have shown great promise in domains like math and physics, thanks to their ability...
On Monday, the “de-extinction” startup Colossal Biosciences announced its most ambitious results to date: the dire wolf. These are creatures that have been extinct for more than 12,000 years made famous by the HBO show Game of Thrones. These white, fluffy animals live on a...
Tech giants like Microsoft might be touting AI “agents” as profit-boosting tools for corporations, but a nonprofit is trying to prove that agents can be a force for good, too. Sage Future, a 501(c)(3) backed by Open Philanthropy, launched an experiment earlier this month tasking...
If you’re reading this, consider it your signal: the opportunity to influence the future of tech is here. TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is now accepting speaker applications. Join us on stage this October 27–29 at Moscone West in San Francisco and share your ideas with 10,000+...
Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous vehicle unit, is deploying a small fleet of retrofitted test vehicles on the streets of Los Angeles starting Tuesday – a modest, yet meaningful step as the company inches toward offering public rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco later this year. ...
Rain, a startup offering an employer-integrated earned wage access (EWA) app coupled with financial-wellness features like overdraft alerts and spending trends, has raised $75 million in an all-equity Series B round. The round was led by Prosus at a post-money valuation of $340 million. Rain...
Founders, the battlefield is calling! Startup Battlefield 200 applications are now live — and the race has begun. If you’ve got a groundbreaking idea and the guts to pitch it to the world, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is your arena. You’ll face elite VC judges. You’ll...
An executive order will direct the federal government to list coal as a critical mineral and force some coal-fired power plants to keep generating electricity....
Join us for an unforgettable opportunity at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, happening at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on June 5! We’re on the lookout for enthusiastic volunteers to be part of this exciting event. If you’ve ever wondered what goes into the making of tech gatherings,...
You voted. They rose to the top! Meet the two Audience Choice winners who’ll take the breakout stage at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley to share their insights with 1,200 AI leaders and enthusiasts. We sifted through hundreds...
Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s new AI venture, Thinking Machines Lab, has gained two new prominent advisors: Bob McGrew, previously OpenAI’s chief research officer, and Alec Radford, a former OpenAI researcher behind many of the company’s more transformative innovations. Thinking Machines Lab’s website was quietly updated...