Startups

Robotaxi companies refuse to say how often their AVs need remote help

Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox all refused to cough up a number during Senator Ed Markey's recent investigation.

OpenAI, not yet public, raises $3B from retail investors in monster $122B fund raise

OpenAI's latest funding round, led by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, values the AI lab at $852 billion as it nears an IPO.

Its not your imagination: AI seed startups are commanding higher valuations

Among the most recent Y Combinator cohort, many startups were commanding $40 million valuations. But with more money comes higher expectations.

Yupp.ai shuts down after raising $33M from a16z cryptos Chris Dixon

Less than a year after launching, with checks from some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, crowdsourced AI model feedback startup Yupp.ai is closing its business, the company said Tuesday.

Meta was finally held accountable for harming teens. Now what?

Meta faces thousands more court cases while Congress has proposed numerous bills addressing childrens online safety, some heavily criticized.

Go play this secret game in your TikTok DMs

The game is available globally and can be accessed in both one-on-one DM chats and in group chats.

Social gaming platform Rec Room, once valued at $3.5B, is shutting down

Rec Room, the social platform for user-generated games and virtual experiences, will shutter on June 1.

Alexa+ gets new food ordering experiences with Uber Eats and Grubhub

You can now order from Uber Eats and Grubhub using Alexa+, an experience Amazon says will be similar to chatting with a waiter at a restaurant or placing an order at a drive-thru.

Whoops valuation just tripled to $10 billion

The fitness tracking startup just closed a $575 million Series G with Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James among its investors. The obvious question looming over a round of this size at this valuation: Is an IPO coming?

Uber increases stake in WeRide as robotaxi partnership ramps up in Dubai

Uber and WeRide have launched robotaxi operations without a human safety operator in Dubai as part of a broader expansion in the Middle East.

Hacker hijacks Axios open-source project, used by millions, to push malware

A hacker inserted malware in Axios, an open-source web tool downloaded tens of millions of times weekly, in a widespread hack.

FedEx chooses partnerships over proprietary tech for its automation strategy

FedEx recently announced a partnership with Berkshire Gray as the company works with external players to develop its automation tech.

Nomadic raises $8.4 million to wrangle the data pouring off autonomous vehicles

The company turns footage from robots into structured, searchable datasets with a deep learning model.

Health data giant CareCloud says hackers accessed patients medical records

CareCloud, a major provider of medical records storage, said hackers accessed one of its repositories of patient data earlier in March. It provides technology for more than 45,000 providers covering millions of patients.

Roku launches a standalone app for Howdy, its $2.99 streaming service

With this new app, Roku says subscribers can access Howdy's library of content on the go.

Meta launches two new Ray-Ban glasses designed for prescription wearers

Meta says these glasses are the most comfortable ones it has ever designed, as they're made for all-day comfort.

Exclusive: Runway launches $10M fund, Builders program to support early stage AI startups

Runway is launching a $10 million fund and startup program to back companies building with its AI video models, as it pushes toward interactive, real-time video intelligence applications.

The company behind ClassPass and Mindbody just got a lot bigger with a $7.5B merger

The merger is a sign that the fitness industry is continuing to move toward consolidation to compete at a larger scale. Recent moves include MyFitnessPal acquiring Cal AI, an AI calorie counting app, and Strava buying two apps: cycling app The Breakaway and running app Runna.

Waymo starts robotaxi services at San Antonio International Airport

It's the fourth airport Waymo is serving, adding to Phoenix Sky Harbor, San Francisco, and San Jose International airports.

Speechifys Windows app uses local models for transcription and dictation

Speechify just launched a native Windows app that employs locally stored models to enable dictation and transcription across apps.

With its new app store, Ring bets on AI to go beyond home security

Ring's app store will allow the company to target broader use cases beyond security, like elder care or business needs.

Google is now letting users in the US change their Gmail address

Users will be able to change their username only once every 12 months. Plus, they won't be able to delete their new email address for that period of time.

The Silicon Valley congressional race is getting ugly

The primary isnt until early June, but the CA-17 race between five-term incumbent Ro Khanna and tech founder Ethan Agarwal is already getting nasty. Agarwal entered the race in March, backed by a roster of prominent tech billionaires largely in response to Khannas public support for a proposed California ballot measure that would impose a []

Allbirds is selling for $39 million. It raised nearly 10 times that amount in its IPO.

The collapse of the brand, which was originally venture-backed and that went public in 2021, has been well-documented.

15% of Americans say theyd be willing to work for an AI boss, according to new poll

According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 15% of Americans say they'd be willing to have a job where their direct supervisor was an AI program that assigned tasks and set schedules.

Popular AI gateway startup LiteLLM ditches controversial startup Delve

LiteLLM had obtained two security compliance certifications via Delve and fell victim to some horrific credential-stealing malware last week.

Former Coatue partner raiseshuge $65M seedforenterpriseAI agentstartup

A few thingsturned investors' heads and drew them to participate in such a big roundout of the gate.

As more Americans adopt AI tools, fewer say they can trust the results

AI adoption is rising in the U.S., but trust remains low, with most Americans concerned about transparency, regulation, and the technologys broader societal impact, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

What were looking for in Startup Battlefield 2026 and how to put your best application forward

Here's what we're looking for in your Startup Battlefield 200 application and how to make sure your application reflects it.

Apple will hide your email address from apps and websites, but not cops

Demands for Apple customer records by federal agents in recent months underscore the privacy limitations of email.

ScaleOps raises $130M to improve computing efficiency amid AI demand

ScaleOps just raised $130M to tackle GPU shortages and soaring AI cloud costs by automating infrastructure in real time.

AI chip startup Rebellions raises $400 million at $2.3B valuation in pre-IPO round

The startup, which is planning to go public later this year, designs chips specifically for AI inference, another challenger to Nvidia's dominance.

Mistral AI raises $830M in debt to set up a data center near Paris

Mistral aims to start operating the data center by the second quarter of 2026.

Qodo raises $70M for code verification as AI coding scales

As AI floods software development with code, Qodo is betting the real challenge is making sure it actually works.

Starcloud raises $170 million Series Ato build data centers in space

Starcloud becomes the fastest Y Combinator startup to reach unicorn status, just 17 months after demo day.

Why OpenAI really shut down Sora

OpenAI's decision last week to shut down Sora, its AI video-generation tool, just six months after releasing it to the public raised immediate suspicions. The app had invited users to upload their own faces so was this some kind of elaborate data grab?

The Pixel 10a doesnt have a camera bump, and its great

The Google Pixel 10a can lay flat on a table, but otherwise the company hasn't brought a ton of upgrades to its newest budget smartphone.

YouTube CEO says the best YouTubers will never leave their home

CEO Neal Mohan insisted that he isnt worried about Netflix luring away YouTube's most popular creators.

TechCrunch Mobility: When a robotaxi has to call 911

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

SXSW rebounds as a top networking, ideas festival for founders and VCs

SXSW made some changes this year, but some founders loved it all the same.

Bluesky leans into AI with Attie, an app for building custom feeds

Blueskys new app Attie uses AI to help people build custom feeds the open social networking protocol atproto.

Mark Zuckerberg texted Elon Musk to offer help with DOGE

While the relationship was once thorny enough that Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cagefight, things seem to have warmed up by the early days of the second Trump administration.

Stanford study outlines dangers of asking AI chatbots for personal advice

While theres been plenty of debate about AI sycophancy, a new study by Stanford computer scientists attempts to measure how harmful that tendency might be.

Elon Musks last co-founder reportedly leaves xAI

All but two of Musk's 11 xAI co-founders departed before this week.

These iPad apps will make you wish you had more free time

Weve compiled a list of some of the best iPad apps for creativity that are available on the App Store.

Anthropics Claude popularity with paying consumers is skyrocketing

Estimates for total Claude consumer users are all over the map (we've seen figures ranging from 18 million to 30 million). Anthropic hasn't disclosed this data, but a spokesperson did tell TechCrunch that Claude paid subscriptions have more than doubled this year.

Lets take a look at the retro tech making a comeback

Boomboxes, instant cameras, and even landlines are making a comeback. Here are the coolest retro-inspired devices available.

From Moon hotels to cattle herding: 8 startups investors chased at YC Demo Day

We polled nearly a dozen VCs to find out which W26 startups are the sought after in the batch.

Whoop has LeBron now it wants your mom

Whoop founder Will Ahmed has spent 14 years building a health wearable beloved by elite athletes, and is now racing Oura and the FDA, and the limits of consumer medicine to turn it into something that could one day save your life.