Applications are almost closed, and you have until 11:59 p.m. PT tonight to reserve your exhibitor table at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, our premiere industry event thats happening at UC Berkeleys Zellerbach Hall on June 5. Imagine walking into a room filled with 1,200+ investors, founders, enterprise leaders, and journalists all hunting for the next []

Josh Raffaelli, who has deep roots as a Silicon Valley investor and has backed a number of Elon Musk companies, is suing his former employer, the massive trillion-dollar AUM Brookfield Asset Management, reports The New York Times. Much of Raffaellis complaint concerns how Brookfield covered pandemic-related real estate losses and alleges the company fired him []

Microsoft employees arent allowed to use DeepSeek due to data security and propaganda concerns, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith said in a Senate hearing today. At Microsoft we dont allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app, Smith said, referring to DeepSeeks application service (which is available on both desktop and mobile.) Smith []

In April, South Koreas telco giant SK Telecom (SKT) was hit by a cyberattack that led to the theft of personal data on approximately 23 million customers, equivalent to almost half of the countrys 52 million residents. At a National Assembly hearing in Seoul on Thursday, SKT chief executive Young-sang Ryu said about 250,000 users []

In 2025, Aurora plans to operate fully driverless trucks at night, in poor weather, and beyond Houston and Dallas and into El Paso and Phoenix.

Sterling Anderson, a veteran of the nascent autonomous vehicle sector and co-founder of Aurora, is resigning just a week after the company launched its commercial self-driving truck service in Texas. Anderson held the chief product officer position at Aurora. The resignation was posted in a regulatory filing along with the companys first-quarter earnings report. His []

Over $10 billion thats how much revenue Apples U.S. App Store raked in last year, according to a new analysis by app intelligence provider Appfigures. The firms estimates indicate that U.S. App Store revenue from commissions more than doubled between 2020 and 2024. In 2020, Apples share of App Store commissions was approximately $4.76 []

OpenAI is enhancing its AI-powered deep research feature with the ability to analyze codebases on GitHub. On Thursday, OpenAI announced what its calling the first connector for ChatGPT deep research, the companys tool that searches across the web and other sources to compile thorough research reports on a topic. Now, ChatGPT deep research can link []

Sankaet Pathaks last startup, fintech Synapse, filed for bankruptcy in 2024 amid issues with partner Evolve Bank & Trust. Tens of millions of dollars in deposits made by consumers, mostly customers of fintechs that worked with Synapse, remain unaccounted for. Yet according to The Information, Pathak is reportedly moving full steam ahead on attempts to []

Social media startup Fizz is suing grocery delivery giant Instacart and party planning app Partiful for trademark infringement, the company announced on Thursday. Earlier this week, Instacart launched a new drinks and snack delivery app for parties calledFizz and announced that Partiful had integrated Fizz directly into its platform. Founded in 2020, Fizz is a []

Meta has chosen Robert Fergus to lead its Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab, according to Bloomberg. Fergus had been working at Google DeepMind as a research director for roughly five years, per his LinkedIn. Prior to Google, he worked as a researcher scientist at Meta. Metas FAIR, which has been around since 2013, has faced []

Google is rolling out a feature in its Gemini API that the company claims will make its latest AI models cheaper for third-party developers. Google calls the feature implicit caching and says it can deliver 75% savings on repetitive context passed to models via the Gemini API. It supports Googles Gemini 2.5 Pro and 2.5 []

Instagram Threads will begin testing video ads, Meta announced on Thursday. The test, which will make Threads look more like its competitor X, is an expansion of Threads advertising initiatives, which began last month with the opening up of ads to global advertisers. The news was announced at Metas presentation at the IAB NewFronts, where []

Schools in Toronto and North Carolina are reporting extortion attempts.

Google announced on Thursday that its rolling out new AI-powered defenses to help combat scams on Chrome. The tech giant will begin using Gemini Nano, its on-device large language model (LLM), on desktop to protect users against online scams. Its also launching new AI-powered warnings for Chrome on Android to help users be aware of []

China's Geely has offered to take its EV startup Zeekr private, one year after the company debuted on the NYSE.

If youve been waiting for the right moment to act, this is it. You have just 24 hours left to secure your exhibit table at TechCrunch Sessions: AI and position your brand at the center of the conversation shaping the future of the AI industry. TechCrunch Sessions: AI is bringing together the brightest builders, boldest []

Elon Musks Starlink has received anticipated state approval in India, opening the door to enter the worlds second-biggest internet market after China over three years after SpaceXs previous attempt to launch its satellite-based broadband in the country eventually failed. On Wednesday, the Indian Department of Telecommunications gave its nod to Starlink to start working toward []

It took seven years of hard work for Kareem Amin, co-founder and CEO of sales automation startup Clay, to see the companys product finally take off in 2022. Since then, the startup has experienced explosive growth, reached a valuation exceeding a billion dollars, and expanded its employee count from low double digits to over 200. []

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAIs ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the []

The Gates Foundation is expected to spend $200 billion over the next 20 years to support causes related to health and human development.

Dating app giant Match Group is laying off 13% of its staff as part of a reorganization that aims to reduce costs and simplify its organizational structure.

Amazon said Thursday it is releasing a new generative AI-powered tool to help merchants improve their listings with missing details or attributes. Sellers often have hundreds of products listed on Amazon, and they need to update information related to them from time to time, which can be a cumbersome task. The e-commerce tech giant wants []

Reddit on Thursday announced profile enhancements for businesses thatve joined Reddit Pro, the companys suite of tools designed to help brands discover, join, and contribute to the social networks communities and conversations. Now, Reddit will now generate suggested profile bios for businesses during Reddit Pro sign-up. Once businesses provide their website, they can choose from []

Turns out, telling an AI chatbot to be concise could make it hallucinate more than it otherwise would have. Thats according to a new study from Giskard, a Paris-based AI testing company developing a holistic benchmark for AI models. In a blog post detailing their findings, researchers at Giskard say prompts for shorter answers to []

The venture capital firm has over $90 billion in assets under management, including cybersecurity giants.

Hims & Hers, the telehealth and wellness company, has hired a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry as its next chief technology officer. The move, according to Hims & Hers co-founder and CEO, Andrew Dudum, was intentional. Hims & Hers on Thursday said its next CTO would be Mo Elshenawy, the former president and CTO []

Apple is trying to delay a court ruling that forces the company to let iOS app developers accept payments via non-Apple systems and avoid paying a cut.

The venture arm of Bosch has a new $270 million fund that will continue its tradition of investing in deep-tech startups. This time, however, Bosch Ventures plans to put more of its money into North American startups. Launched in 2007, Bosch Ventures is now on its sixth fund. And while the corporate VC is technically []

Simo, already a board member at OpenAI, will transition out of Instacart over the next few months and join the AI company full-time as Application CEO.

Tech giants like to boast about trillion-parameter AI models that require massive and expensive GPU clusters. But Fastino is taking a different approach. The Palo Alto-based startup says it has invented a new kind of AI model architecture thats intentionally small and task-specific. The models are so small theyre trained with low-end gaming GPUs worth []

Fintech giant Stripe announced Wednesday a slew of new product launches at its annual Stripe Sessions user event. The highlights include a new AI foundation model for payments; stablecoin-powered accounts; a new Orchestration offering, and a recent migration with chip behemoth Nvidia. Stripes payments foundation model has been trained on tens of billions of transactions, []

A complete list of all the known layoffs in tech, from Big Tech to startups, broken down by month throughout 2024.

Teslas attempt to trademark the term Robotaxi in reference to its vehicles has been refused by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for being too generic, according to a new filing. Another application by Tesla to trademark the term Robotaxi for its upcoming ride-hailing service is still under examination by the office. In addition, applications []

OpenAI has met with officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to discuss the agencys use of AI to speed up drug evaluations, Wired reported on Wednesday. According to the report, OpenAI and the FDA have discussed a project called cderGPT, which seems to be an AI tool for the Center for Drug []

On YouTube, hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world are staring at an unmoving broadcast of the Sistine Chapel chimney. Occasionally, a seagull will swoop in and perch atop the roof for a few minutes. But for the most part, nothing happens. On Wednesday, the College of Cardinals started the process of picking the []

A game emulator called Delta is taking advantage of the recent court decision around Apples App Store to support its business by linking to its Patreon membership page. The update, approved Wednesday for release on the U.S. App Store, allows Delta users to join the Delta teams Patreon directly from the mobile app, without giving []

During his junior year study abroad, Max Morganroth, traveled to 30 countries, primarily flying in business and first class. His jet setting was funded almost entirely by airline points he collected through strategic credit card applications and miles redemptions. Morganroth told TechCrunch that just about everyone he knew was begging him to teach them how []

Teslas attempt to trademark the term Robotaxi in reference to its vehicles has been refused by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for being too generic, according to a new filing. Another application by Tesla to trademark the term Robotaxi for its upcoming ride-hailing service is still under examination by the office. The USPTO issued []

Anthropic is launching a new API that allows its Claude AI models to search across the web. Developers using it can build Claude-powered apps that deliver up-to-date info, the company said in a press release published Wednesday. The rollout of the API comes as AI companies look to augment their models in various ways that []

Snapchat announced on Wednesday that Snap Map now has more than 400 million monthly active users, a new milestone for one of the apps core features. Launched in 2017, Snap Map was originally a way for users to see their friends locations and browse public snaps from around the world. Overtime, the feature has evolved []

Lucid Motors has been working through some quality hiccups in the early stages of delivering its long-awaited electric SUV, according to interim CEO Marc Winterhoff. It is true that we had some technical issues that we had to overcome around software and the Gravitys heads-up display, Winterhoff said on a conference call Tuesday. There have []

SpaceXs satellite internet service, Starlink, is directly benefiting from the Trump administrations tariff trade war, according to leaked State Department memos obtained by the Washington Post. The memos show the U.S. pushing countries to adopt Starlink. Some show that countries believe that doing so could help lubricate their U.S. trade and tariff negotiations. One memo []

Amazon says that it has developed a new warehouse robot, Vulcan, that can feel some of the items it touches. The two-armed Vulcan, which can maneuver goods inside the storage compartments Amazon has in its warehouses, usesforce sensors to help it know when it makes contact with an object. One arm rearranges items in a []

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and other Meta execs thought that TikTok was beating Meta at its own game. Thats according to a new filing in the U.S. Federal Trade Commissions antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant, published on Monday. The document, dated February 2022, includes conversations among a number of Meta []

A group of investors are considering a plan to inject another $30 million into BluSmart in a bid to revive the Indian cab-hailing startup that abruptly halted operations last month, TechCrunch has learned. The proposal from these existing investors has a catch: its contingent on BluSmart co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi agreeing to resign. The proposed []

OpenAI is launching a program, OpenAI for Countries, that the company says will enable it to build out the local infrastructure needed to better serve international AI customers. As a part of the new program, OpenAI will partner with governments to assist with efforts like building out data center capacity and customizing OpenAIs products, including []

Enterprise workflow management platform ServiceNow on Wednesday announced its second AI-related acquisition this year. ServiceNow said that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Data.World, a cloud-native data catalog and data governance platform. Austin, Texas-based Data.World was founded in 2015 and previously raised more than $130 million in venture financing from firms such as []

Apple is looking to add AI search engines from OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic to Safari, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Eddy Cue, Apples Senior Vice President of Services, made the statement during his testimony in the U.S. Justice Departments lawsuit against Alphabet. Cues disclosure was part of his testimony regarding Apple and Googles estimated $20 billion-a-year []

Design company Figma today announced multiple features, including AI-powered site and web app creation, a way for marketers to create assets in bulk, and a new drawing tool. With this launch, the company is taking on other creative solutions such as Canva and Adobe, along with AI-powered website and prototype creators such as WordPress, Wix, []