Timef 02/28/2025

The early bird gets the worm and time is running out! You have less than 24 hours left to save up to $1,130 when purchasing passes to TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. If you want massive savings on Disrupt 2025 individual passes and up to 30% on group tickets, secure your low ticket rate today. These offers […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The AI revolution won’t wait — will you? Secure your seat at TechCrunch Sessions: AI before time runs out! You’ve got only three days left to save up to $325. The clock stops on March 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Don’t miss out on the lowest rates of the year! AI is transforming everything, and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Intel’s first chip fabrication plant in Ohio may not open until 2030 at the earliest. According to a report in The Columbus Dispatch, Intel has slowed the building of its promised $28 billion semiconductor project in central Ohio for the second time this year. Construction won’t be completed until 2030, the chipmaker told the publication, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

After kickstarting the market for making calls over the internet 23 years ago, Skype is closing down. Microsoft, which acquired the messaging and calling app 14 years ago, said it will be retiring it from active duty on May 5 to double down on Teams. Skype users have 10 weeks to decide what they want […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The hackers reportedly exploited a flaw in US cybersecurity firm Barracuda’s software to access VSSE's email server © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI is finally making its video generation model, Sora, available to users in the European Union, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. The company said on Friday that ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers in these regions will be able to create videos using the model. The AI startup first unveiled Sora in February 2024, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Almost two weeks after The New York Times reported that Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia had joined Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” Gebbia clarified his role on Thursday, announcing on X that as a starting point, he’ll be leveraging his design expertise as part of a broader effort to overhaul the government’s notoriously slow, paper-heavy […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Sequoia's Roelof Botha apparently sees another greed cycle brewing in venture capital where the least sophisticated investors could get hurt. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Confused about which AI model to use? Check out this comprehensive list of the most advanced models out there. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance on Thursday saying it does not view most meme coins, which are crypto tokens that originated from memes, as securities under United States federal law. As a result, the SEC says it does not believe people who purchase or hold meme coins are protected by federal securities law, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta reportedly plans to release a standalone app for its AI assistant, Meta AI, in a bid to better compete with AI-powered chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. According to CNBC, Meta could launch a standalone Meta AI app as soon as the company’s next fiscal quarter (April-June). Meta AI is currently only available […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Snowflake plans to expand its startup accelerator with $200 million in additional commitments, the tech giant that specializes in cloud-based data storage said Thursday. The new injection of capital follows a string of activity by Snowflake over the past several months that illustrates that company’s growth ambitions. The Snowflake Startup Accelerator, formerly known as the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta has fired “roughly” 20 employees for leaking confidential information, The Verge reports. “We tell employees when they join the company, and we offer periodic reminders, that it is against our policies to leak internal information, no matter the intent,” Meta told the publication. “We recently conducted an investigation that resulted in roughly 20 employees […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Waymo is logging more than 200,000 paid robotaxi rides every week, according to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who shared the stat about the tech giant’s subsidiary on X. Waymo commercially operates robotaxis in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. The 200,000-weekly trips milestone is notable for a company that was providing only 10,000 rides a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Twitch CEO Dan Clancy published an open letter on Thursday outlining the platform’s plans for 2025, which include upcoming features, updates to the mobile experience, as well as a significant change to its monetization policy.   Of note, Clancy revealed that Twitch is opening up subscriptions and “Bits,” the virtual items that viewers buy to cheer […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the company was forced to stagger the rollout of its newest model, GPT-4.5, because OpenAI is “out of GPUs.” In a post on X, Altman said that GPT-4.5, which he described as “giant” and “expensive,” will require “tens of thousands” more GPUs before additional ChatGPT users can gain access. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Another little-known phone monitoring outfit has quietly amassed half a million customers, whose email addresses are now in Have I Been Pwned. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI announced on Thursday it is launching GPT-4.5, the much-anticipated AI model code-named Orion. GPT-4.5 is OpenAI’s largest model to date, trained using more computing power and data than any of the company’s previous releases. Despite its size, OpenAI notes in a whitepaper that it does not consider GPT-4.5 to be a frontier model. Subscribers […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI’s next major AI model, GPT-4.5, is highly persuasive, according to the results of OpenAI’s internal benchmark evaluations. It’s particularly good at convincing another AI to give it cash. On Thursday, OpenAI published a white paper describing the capabilities of its GPT-4.5 model, code-named Orion, which was released Thursday. According to the paper, OpenAI tested […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TikTok is preparing to sunset its creator marketplace in favor of a new, more expanded experience, the company has informed businesses and creators via email. The online platform, which connects brands with creators for collaborating on ads and other sponsorships, will stop allowing creator invitations or the creation of new campaigns as of Saturday the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Quanta, founded by a former Affirm engineer, sells an AI-powered accounting platform to software companies. It has raised a seed round led by Accel. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Figure is planning to bring its humanoids into the home sooner than expected. CEO Brett Adcock confirmed on Thursday that the Bay Area robotics startup will begin “alpha testing” its Figure 02 robot in the home setting, starting later in 2025. The executive says the accelerated timeline is a product of the company’s “generalist” Vision-Language-Action […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Microsoft finally released a macOS app for Copilot, its free generative AI chatbot.  Similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI chatbots, Copilot enables users to ask questions and receive responses generated by AI. Copilot is designed to assist users in numerous tasks, such as drafting emails, summarizing documents, writing cover letters, and more. There’s also […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

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! Lucid Motors delivered a surprise this week when it announced that CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson was resigning. Speculation about the departure, which includes vacating a board […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

In its annual letter released Thursday, payments giant Stripe declared that it was “seeing an AI boom” with its data revealing that artificial intelligence startups are growing more rapidly than traditional SaaS companies have historically. In a chart, Stripe showed that the top 100 AI companies (by revenue) were able to achieve $5 million in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A group of AI researchers has discovered a curious — and troubling — phenomenon: Models say some pretty toxic stuff after being fine-tuned on unsecured code. In a recently published paper, the group explained that training models, including OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Alibaba’s Qwen2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct, on code that contains vulnerabilities leads the models to give dangerous advice, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Using stalkerware is creepy, unethical, potentially illegal, and puts your data and that of your loved ones in danger. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple on Thursday announced a range of new initiatives designed to help parents and developers create a safer experience for kids and teens using Apple devices. In addition to easier setup of child accounts, parents will now be able to share information about their kids’ ages, which can then be accessed by app developers to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple on Thursday announced a range of new initiatives designed to help parents and developers create a safer experience for kids and teens using Apple devices. In addition to easier setup of child accounts, parents will now be able to share information about their kids’ ages, which can then be accessed by app developers to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta has unveiled the next generation of its Project Aria augmented reality glasses for research: Aria Gen 2. Aria Gen 2, which arrives roughly five years after the first-generation Aria device, adds new capabilities to the platform, including an upgraded sensor suite and Meta’s custom silicon. Aria Gen 2 has a PPG sensor for measuring […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

When it comes to AI software, you can build something clever, but that’s not always the same as building something that is secure. With so much software now getting written by AI, having a window into its security can be a challenge. That’s the premise of Archipelo, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup that is today […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, announced the crew for its next mission on Thursday, which can only mean one thing: more random rich people are going to space. The crew most notably includes popstar Katy Perry and broadcast journalist Gayle King. They will be joined by two scientists — Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The founders created military-grade night vision with AI software that began as a smartphone app. And now the military is a customer. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

AI has the power to transform how people work, but getting tangible value out of AI isn’t as easy as throwing any AI application at any workflow. It can be hard for enterprises to figure out which AI applications help their business and which are just hype. Workhelix wants to solve that problem. Workhelix is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta has fixed an error that caused some users to see a flood of graphic and violent videos in their Instagram Reels feed. The fix comes after some users saw horrific and violent content despite having Instagram’s “Sensitive Content Control” enabled. “We have fixed an error that caused some users to see content in their […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

ResilienceVC, a new seed-stage fintech venture capital firm based out of Washington, D.C., is announcing its $56 million debut fund, the firm shared exclusively with TechCrunch. Founded by Tahira Dosani and Vikas Raj in 2023, ResilienceVC’s mission is a straightforward one: to back fintech companies dedicated to helping Americans find financial stability. It’s writing checks […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.