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Google says hackers are calling financial firm employees to hack and extort victims
Groups of hackers are breaking into large U.S. financial firms to steal sensitive data and extort victims, Googles security researchers report.
China-linked LightSpy spyware caught targeting victims in 13 countries, including the US
Researchers linked the latest malicious activity to a Chinese company, after one of the spyware's operators placed an order with KFC using their real name and office address.
Defense tech Hadrian raises $1.37B at $8B valuation
Hadrian is building automated factories to mass-produce parts for defense vehicles like submarines. It's backed by a long list of well-known investors.
Ford needs another Taurus, and the $30K Fathom EV pickup isn
Ford's CEO has described the new Ford Fathom as a Model T moment for the company. But the EV pickup is unlikely to live up to lofty expectations, and maybe it doesn't have to.
Bumble teases a swipe-free future as it doubles down on IRL meetups
Bumble says its moving beyond swiping and deeper into real-world social experiences as it courts Gen Z users.
ChatGPT brings unlimited text chats to free users
OpenAI said that ChatGPT free and Go users are also getting a new think button for complex queries.
TikTok lays off 250 employees, shutters its Nashville office
The social media giant is shuttering an office that housed some members of TikToks content moderation team.
Google Wallet now lets parents set up secure balances for their kids
The tech giant says the new feature will allow parents to teach their kids healthy financial habits while maintaining oversight over their child's spending with built-in safeguards.
Gains From Unexercised ESOP Buybacks Taxable As Capital Gains: ITAT
The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) has ruled that gains arising from the repurchase of vested, unexercised employee stock options
Gen Z dating apps like Ditto ditch swiping in favor of AI matchmaking
This generation of twentysomethings is so disillusioned with swipe-based dating apps that they'll try literally anything else even an AI matchmaker.
Lok Sabha Passes Taxation Laws Amendment Bill, Clearing Path To Levy MDR On UPI Payments
The Lok Sabha on Thursday (August 6) passed the bill amending the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, to
Tesla and SpaceX will invest $16.8B to start building
After months of speculation, the companies formally announced the massive project will happen just north of Houston.
Newly filed court exhibits show OpenAIs legal strategy in Apples trade secrets lawsuit: argue that Apples own security and offboarding practices including allowing an Apple manager to access a former engineers iCloud account after he left the company undermine its claims that the allegedly stolen information was properly protected.
Fisdom Cofounders Set To Exit Groww A Year After $150 Mn Acquisition
Wealth management startup Fisdoms cofounders Subramanya SV and Anand Dalmia are set to exit Groww upon completing a one-year planned
Google Maps adds agentic features, including food ordering and hotel bookings
The launch of these new features reflects Googles ambitions to transform Google Maps from a navigation tool into an assistant that's capable of helping users complete real-world tasks.
Get up to $400 off your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass until Friday
Starting today, you can take anadditional$100 off your founder, investor, or attendee TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass, which is a nice bonus on top of our current discounted pricing.
Reddit aims to make karma less important for first-time posters with shift to AI moderation tools
Reddit is expanding its moderation tools and building stronger abuse prevention systems that it says could eventually reduce communities reliance on karma and account-age requirements, making it easier for legitimate newcomers to participate.
Lucid Motors just delayed its affordable EV. Now what?
The Cosmos EV is now slated for release in the second half of 2027. CEO Silvio Napoli said he's focused on getting the EV right, as well as its nearer-term robotaxi project with Uber and Nuro.
Meet the eight startups pitching at Startup Battlefield Australia
The applications are in, and the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield team made their decisions!
PSA: Apples Private Relay can leak your real IP address
A bug in how Apple implements its Private Relay feature, which in theory masks users IP addresses from the sites they visit, can reveal users real IP addresses.
Shopify says AI search is driving more traffic and sales, not replacing Google
Shopify says AI isnt cannibalizing search traffic the way it has for publishers. Instead, AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores tripled year over year in Q2.
Hark previews its browser use agent for completing tasks
Hark claims that its browser use agent is faster and cheaper than competition.
On our new Real World AI stage, well be focusing on the intersection between the digital and physical, and all the ways well continue to see a blending of the two.
As Gen Z reconsiders dating apps, Tinders IRL events expand to dozens more cities
Tinder is expanding its in-person events feature from an initial Los Angeles test to 26 cities worldwide by the end of September.
Trump EPA wrongly canceled $20B in climate funds, appeals court rules
Climate nonprofits can again access their federal funding more than a year after the Trump EPA ordered Citibank to freeze their accounts.
Anthropic is hiring an AI chip design team
Anthropic is building a team for designing its own custom AI chips. The Claude-maker said it would co-design hardware and models to help its technology run faster and more efficiently.
Disney+ looks to TikTok creators to bring fan content to its short-form video feed
As streamers compete with social media giants for viewer attention, Disney+ is partnering with TikTok to bring creator content to its app.
MacPaw taps Liquid AI to offer on-device inference to devs building for its app store
MacPaw is building a local version of its AI assistant Eney using Liquid AI's models.
Robinhood to list a fund that lets anyone back Y Combinator startups
Robinhood's latest financial instrument intends to let any retail investor feel like they, too, can make money by backing Y Combinator startups.
Indian EV startup River raises $120M Series C to scale production, launch more models
River plans to build a new factory, launch additional models from 2027, and target profitability as it scales production.
AI makes weather prediction better. Can WindBorne make it lucrative?
WindBorne Systems has raised $37 million Series B round to scale its weather balloons and AI forecasts.
Wispr Flow launches a Granola-styled meeting notetaker
Wispr Flow's new terms of service indicate it will introduce a notetaker that generates meeting summaries and action items.
Elon Musk repeatedly one-upped his execs on SpaceXs first earnings call
Musk kept inflating the already-big promises being made by SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen and Gwynne Shotwell on the company's first call.
Android app developers may be unwittingly sharing their users location data with advertisers
Developers may not realize they are sharing their users' location data with advertisers, per new research.
Open-weight AI models are catching up to the frontier. The safety gap remains.
A new SaferAI report finds Z.ai's open-weight GLM-5.2 approaches frontier AI capabilities while lacking key safety mitigations, renewing concerns that powerful open models could outpace governance and safeguards.
Anthropic signs $10B deal with AI cloud startup Volta
Anthropic has been on a cloud partnership spree in recent months, and its latest move is reportedly a $10 billion deal with AI cloud startup Volta.
Meet Wrinkles, an app that uncovers the hidden stories of the places around you
Wrinkles, available on both iOS and Android, essentially acts as an AI-powered audio tour guide that reveals hidden history and local stories.
Nvidia doesnt mess around: A week after open AI industry group formed, its already showing progress
The week-old Open Secure AI Alliance, spearheaded by Nvidia and grown to over 120 companies, already has proposals out for defending against AI agents.
Spotify expands AI remix and covers project with Merlin partnership
Spotify says Merlin, which represents more than 30,000 independent labels and distributors, has joined Universal Music Group in backing its upcoming AI-powered remix and covers product. The paid tool will let fans create AI-generated covers and remixes of participating artists music while ensuring artists opt in, receive credit, and are compensated.
Texas halts new data centers as governor calls for audits
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has paused new data center development until an audit has been completed.
Walmart completes its acquisition of TV advertising company Vibe.co
The acquisition, which was first announced in June, brings Vibe.co into Walmart Connect, Walmart's connected TV advertising platform.
Elon Musk spends half his time talking robots and AI on Tesla earnings calls
An analysis of the last seven years of Tesla earnings calls shows just little attention Musk pays to Tesla's car business.
Host a Side Event during TechCrunch Founder Summit Week in Boston
Want to tap into the energy of 1,100+ startup founders, investors, and tech leaders descending on Boston for the Founder Summit 2026 on June 9? Host your own Side Event during Founder Summit Week, happening June 4-10!
Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI
Apple says its trade secrets investigation into OpenAI has widened. In a new court filing, Apple claims additional former staff may have retained or accessed confidential information.
Spotify now has over 300M subscribers
Notably, the company saw its subscriber base swell by 9% in the second quarter despite raising prices in several regions this year.
India moves to give its instant payments network a business model
The legislation lays the groundwork for a potential overhaul of India's zero-merchant-discount-rate regime, under which businesses have not paid fees to accept UPI payments since 2020.
After killer quarter, Palantir CEO Alex Karp calls AI industry Marxist
After a quarter that delivered $1 billion in profit, Palantir CEO Alex Karp on Monday once again warned that AI frontier labs are too untrustworthy for enterprises.
Snap CEO sidesteps Specs pre-order questions on Q2 earnings call
When asked about product-market fit, Spiegel said he believes mass-market consumer adoption won't occur until the end of the decade.
AWS is helping vibe-coding startup Superblocks, and the implications are big
AWS now allows vibe coding tool Superblocks to be embedded into the private clouds of AWS customers. It's another step towards decoupling apps from models.
Whos legally to blame for Anthropic and OpenAIs autonomous AI hacks? Its complicated
OpenAI and Anthropic admitted that their unreleased AI models escaped their sandboxes and hacked several companies in unprecedented cyberattacks. Who is legally to blame? Should prosecutors charge the two AI frontier labs? Can victims sue them? We spoke to lawyers who specialize in computer hacking laws to find out.
DesignArena creators raise $7.9 million to bring taste to AI models
DesignArena is used by 5.3 million people around the world, providing critical human evaluations to frontier labs.
Influencers draw backlash for attending OpenAIs first luxury trip
OpenAIs first-ever influencer brand trip is sparking online backlash as tensions over the use of AI continue.
Apple challenges UK governments latest demand for iCloud backdoor: report
Apple has appealed a new legal demand by the U.K. government, which critics say could threaten the privacy rights of users all over the world.
Apple finally fixed Siri. So why does it feel anticlimactic?
Apples long-awaited AI overhaul finally makes Siri the assistant it was always supposed to be. But after years of delays, the launch lands in an AI landscape where chatbots have evolved into agents that can code, reason, create media, and complete complex tasks. Siri AI is genuinely useful, yet it arrives at a moment when simply being a capable AI assistant no longer feels revolutionary.
Horizon3 hits $2 billion valuation with $250M Series E as AI threats escalate
Cybersecurity startup Horizon3 raised $250 million at a $2 billion valuation as companies want continuous, AI-powered security validation instead of annual pentesting.
Samsung bans smart TV apps that share users internet connections with strangers
New security research offers a rare view inside residential proxy networks, which rely on apps that share a person's internet connection with someone else.
A Marc Benioff-backed startup thinks AI can solve the AI deployment problem
June emerged from stealth today with a $20 million pre-seed round to make AI adoption simpler.
