A hacker has exploited a vulnerability in TeleMessage, which provides modded versions of encrypted messaging apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, to extract archived messages and other data relating to U.S. government officials and companies who used the tool, 404 Media reported. TeleMessage came into the spotlight last week after it was reported that []

Startups providing AI-powered coding tools are striking a positive chord with investors. Cursor, one of the most popular tools in the segment, has attracted $900 million in a fresh round of funding led by Thrive Capital, as per a report from the Financial Times. The FT noted that other top venture firms such as Andreessen []

While most African digital lenders depend on working capital to fuel growth, MoneyFellows has quietly done what few others have: lend billions of Egyptian pounds with almost no debt or balance sheet exposure. Now, after raising $13 million in a pre-Series C round led by Casablanca-based Al Mada Ventures and DPIs Nclude Fund, the Cairo-based []

Duolingo announced plans this week to replace contractors with AI and become an AI-first company a move that journalist Brian Merchant pointed to as a sign that the AI jobs crisis is here, now. In fact, Merchant spoke to a former Duolingo contractor who said this isnt even a new policy. The company cut []

President Donald Trump has already delayed a TikTok ban twice, and he said Sunday that hes willing to do it again. Axios reports that during an interview with NBCs Meet the Press, Trump said that if a deal isnt made to sell TikToks U.S. operations to American owners before the current June 19 deadline, he []

Elon Musks SpaceX is getting its own official company town. Residents of an area around SpaceXs Starbase launch site in southern Texas voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to incorporate as a city also named Starbase. According to results posted online by the Cameron County Elections Department, there were 212 votes in favor and only six []

While many tech companies are mandating that their employees return to their offices, and putting an emphasis on building in-person teams, they are also turning in droves to Latin America to find developer talent especially for post-training AI models. Revelo, a full-stack platform of vetted developers in Latin America, is seeing a new surge in []

Spotify generates the vast bulk of its income from ads and subscriptions, but for the past few years the music-streaming giant has also been quietly building out a developer tooling business. Backstage, a project it open-sourced in 2020, has been adopted by more than 2 million developers across 3,400 organizations, including Airbnb, LinkedIn, Twilio, and []

Chinese retailer Temu has shifted strategy in the face of U.S. tariffs. Through executive order, President Donald Trump has ended the so-called de minimis rule, which allowed goods worth $800 or less to enter the country without tariffs. Hes also increasing tariffs on Chinese goods by more than 100%, forcing both Chinese companies like Shein []

Legendary investor Warren Buffett announced today that he will ask the Berkshire Hathaway board to have Greg Abel replace him as CEO at the end of 2025. I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end, Buffett said at the end of the companys []

Welcome back to Week in Review! Weve got lots of news for you today: Amazon earnings, Apple earnings, ChatGPT sycophancy, Alibabas AI models, and much more. Lets get to it! Well? During Apples earnings call yesterday, Tim Cook revealed that the company paid $900 million in tariffs last quarter. But despite this, the CEO didnt []

Googles most expensive AI model seems to have crossed a major milestone: Beating a 29-year-old video game. Last night, Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted triumphantly on X, What a finish! Gemini 2.5 Pro just completed Pokmon Blue! To be clear, the Gemini Plays Pokemon livestream was created by (in his own words) a 30 year []

Like virtually every sector in the business world, the secondhand industry is grappling with the ramifications of President Donald Trumps tariffs. However, based on the comments made by eBay and Etsy earlier this week, both dont appear to be overly concerned. The companies recently reported Q1 2025 earnings results, both addressing the pressing topic of []

Riots anti-cheat artisan Phillip Koskinas explains how he and his team go after cheaters and cheat developers to protect the integrity of games, such as Valorant and League of Legends.

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says AI companies are trying too hard to juice engagement by pestering their users with follow-up questions, instead of providing actually useful insights. Systrom said the tactics represent a force thats hurting us, comparing them to those used by social media companies to expand aggressively. You can see some of these []

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free just click TechCrunch Mobility! Your usual host Kirsten has passed the reins to me, Rebecca Bellan, for the day, and I want to talk about Aurora Innovation and its last-minute save. []

Next week, Google will begin allowingkids under 13 who have parent-managed Google accounts to use its Gemini chatbot, according to The New York Times. The Times reports that Gemini will be available to kids whose parents useFamily Link, a Google service that enables families to opt into various Google services for their child. A Google []

A recently released Google AI model scores worse on certain safety tests than its predecessor, according to the companys internal benchmarking. In a technical report published this week, Google reveals that its Gemini 2.5 Flash model is more likely to generate text that violates its safety guidelines than Gemini 2.0 Flash. On two metrics, text-to-text []

Apple and Anthropic are teaming up to build a vibe-coding software platform that will use generative AI to write, edit, and test code for programmers, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The iPhone maker is planning to roll out the software internally, according to Bloomberg, but hasnt decided if it will launch it publicly. The system is []

Uber announced Friday yet another autonomous vehicle partnership as it leverages its dominant ride-hail and delivery position while relying on partners to supply the self-driving tech it isnt building in-house. Today, the lucky startup is Chinese self-driving firm Momenta. The tie-up comes a day after Uber added Ann Arbor-based May Mobility to its roster of []

The app claims it uses end-to-end encryption, but spilled its users' dating preferences and granular location data to the open web.

Welcome to Startups Weekly your weekly recap of everything you cant miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week was low on M&A and IPO news, but there was still some drama to follow, if thats your thing and more importantly, some worthy []

Ara Partners recently raised an $800 million infrastructure fund focused on reducing carbon emissions in industrial sectors.

OpenAI says itll make changes to the way it updates the AI models that power ChatGPT, following an incident that caused the platform to become overly sycophantic for many users. Last weekend, after OpenAI rolled out a tweakedGPT-4o the default model powering ChatGPT users on social media noted that ChatGPT began responding in []

Googles NotebookLM Android and iOS apps are expected to launch on May 20, according to app store listings. The apps are currently available for pre-order. Since its launch in 2023, the AI-based note-taking and research assistant has only been accessible via desktop. Google is now gearing up to make the service available on the go. []

Spotify said on Friday thatApple has approved its U.S. app update that will allow users to access pricing information and external payment links. The approval comes days after a U.S. judge ordered Apple to stop charging commissions on purchases through iPhone apps. In a victory for consumers, artists, creators, and authors, Apple has approved Spotifys []

Airbnb started rolling out an AI-powered customer service bot in the U.S. last month, CEO Brian Chesky said during the firms first-quarter conference call on Thursday. Chesky said 50% of Airbnbs U.S. users are already using the AI bot for customer service, adding that the company plans to roll out the feature to all its []

Apple has changed its App Store rules in the U.S. to let apps link users to their own websites so they can buy subscriptions or other digital goods. This change comes after a U.S. court ruled in favor of Epic Games in a case against the iPhone maker, ordering the latter not to prohibit apps []

Amazons upgraded digital assistant powered by generative AI, Alexa+, has rolled out to over 100,000 users, CEO Andy Jassy said on the companys earnings call Thursday. While thats a far cry from the 600 million Alexa devices out there, the company is making some progress on the rollout of Alexa+, which was first unveiled in []

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says there are two kinds of people who come to the social media platform: Scrollers and seekers. Scrollers are the ones who come to Reddits core product, which is community conversation and engaging about topics theyre passionate about, from r/sourdough to r/popculturechat. Then there are the Seekers; the people who might []

Apple CEO Tim Cook offered the companys first comments on the impact of President Trumps tariffs during Thursdays second-quarter earnings call with investors. While the iPhone maker saw only limited impact from tariffs in the March quarter, Cook said Apple couldnt forecast what that would mean for the coming quarter. However, if things remained the []

Three years ago, a group of TikTokers joined NBCUniversals new initiative aimed at transforming social media influencers into the next generation of TV show creators. Now, four of these creators are set to launch their original series on Peacock. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the shows set to premiere are The Warehouse Phase, developed by []

Mach Industries, the defense tech founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, is about to close a fresh $100 million in financing co-led by new investor Khosla and existing investor Bedrock Capital, a source familiar with the deal tells TechCrunch. The new round will value the company at around $470 million, according to the source. However, the []

Payments processing software provider Stripe is ready to help iOS app developers bypass Apples cut of App Store transactions. Following yesterdays ruling in the Apple-Epic antitrust trial, where Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers outright shamed Apple for not permitting external payment links in apps as she had previously ruled, Stripe shared documentation that shows iOS developers []

Dub, the copy-trading platform that says its transforming how Gen Z invests, has secured a $30 million Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to $47 million. The deal, which founder Steven Wang had previously hinted to TechCrunch was in the works, comes a year after its official launch. The 23-year-olds Harvard dropouts platform []

FutureHouse, an Eric Schmidt-backed nonprofit that aims to build an AI scientist within the next decade, has launched its first major product: a platform and API with AI-powered tools designed to support scientific work. Many, many startups are racing to develop AI research tools for the scientific domain, some with massive amounts of VC funding []

Bench, the accounting and tax startup that was bought in a fire sale last December, has conducted a round of significant layoffs, it confirmed to TechCrunch. Bench didnt specify how many people were affected, but one person who works there estimated that Bench was eliminating dozens of positions thats a big chunk of the []

Tis the week for small AI models, it seems. On Thursday, Ai2, the nonprofit AI research institute, released Olmo 2 1B, a 1-billion-parameter model that Ai2 claims beats similarly-sized models from Google, Meta, and Alibaba on several benchmarks. Parameters, sometimes referred to as weights, are the internal components of a model that guide its behavior. []

Nvidia clearly doesnt agree with Anthropics support for export controls on U.S.-made AI chips. On Wednesday, Anthropic doubled down on its support for the U.S. Department of Commerces Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, which would impose sweeping AI chip export restrictions starting May 15. The next day, Nvidia responded with a very different take on []

Startup May Mobility plans to deploy its autonomous vehicles on the Uber platform by the end of 2025, starting in Arlington, Texas, as part of a multi-year partnership. The tie-up with Uber offers May Mobility a chance to grow beyond offering shuttles within campuses and planned communities, while Uber adds May Mobility to its growing []

Epic Games is taking a victory lap. After notching a big win against Apple in a years-long legal dispute, Epic announced that its Epic Games Store will allow developers to open webshops, which can offer players out-of-app purchases to circumvent fees from Apple and Google. Epic has been in a long legal battle with Apple []

Anthropic on Thursday launched a new way to connect apps and tools to its AI chatbot Claude, as well as an expanded deep research capability that allows Claude to search the web, enterprise accounts, and more. The new app connection feature, called Integrations, and expanded deep research tool, dubbed Advanced Research, are available in beta []

After nearly 13 years in business, Fivetran will now be able to offer its customers an end-to-end data movement solution. Fivetran, which helps enterprises move data from a variety of sources into cloud databases, announced on Thursday it has acquired Census, a reverse extract, transform, and load (ETL) platform that enables companies to transfer data []

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is pissed off at Apple. Really, really pissed off. In Rogers newly released 80-page decision, she took Apple and its executives to task for defying the courts orders in its original case with Fortnite maker Epic Games. Though Apple largely won that round, as it was determined the tech giant was []

Google is expanding access to AI Mode, its experimental feature that allows users to ask complex, multi-part questions and follow-ups to dig deeper on a topic directly within Search. The tech giant is also adding more functionality to the feature, including the ability to pick up where you left off on a search. Google launched []

ChatGPT, OpenAIs text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership []

TechCrunch Sessions: AI is just over a month away! Were doing a last call for exceptional volunteers to join us in bringing this event to life. If youve ever wondered about the inner workings of tech events, nows your chance to get involved. Volunteer spots are limited, so dont miss out. Apply before the May []

Microsoft announced price increases on Thursday for its Xbox consoles, controllers, and some games. The affected consoles, which include Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S models, will increase in price between $80 and $100 each, depending on the console. These consoles were first released almost five years ago, with the basic Xbox Series S []

Grocery-delivery giant Instacart announced Thursday the acquisition of Wynshop, a provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions for grocers. The deal will help Instacart improve its enterprise solutions, enabling retailers to enhance their online experiences. The company didnt disclose deal terms. Wynshop launched its platform in 2020 and provides online storefronts for grocers, working with clients such []

Epic Games mega-popular Fortnite is returning to the US iOS App Store next week after a surprising ruling in a years-long legal battle with Apple. The dispute between Epic and Apple began in 2020, when Apple removed Epic Games from the iOS store. Because Apple takes 30% of all in-app purchases, Epic had introduced support []