TechCrunch Industry News

A ransomware and extortion racket called Underground has claimed responsibility for the breach on its dark web leak site, which TechCrunch has seen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Interlagos, the venture capital firm started by former senior SpaceX leaders, is looking to raise $550 million for its first venture fund, according to regulatory filings and a confidential deck sent to prospective LPs and viewed by TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Social networking startup Bluesky is seizing the moment. Amid ongoing moderation issues affecting X rival Instagram Threads, the decentralized X competitor Bluesky has created an account on Meta’s newest platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI is spamming up job applications. 404 Media’s Jason Koebler writes about how he used a free tool, AI Hawk, to apply for 17 jobs in an hour while working a restaurant shift — only stopping when he’d reached 2,843; The Internet Archive, the nonprofit organization that digitizes and archives materials like web pages, came under attack Wednesday; The startup, which already monitors the climate impact of digital advertising, is expanding to include artificial intelligence; Opera browser has a new AI-powered feature that lets you take action on tabs through natural language queries. Things you can do include grouping, pinning, bookmarking and closing tabs with these commands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A multi-year competition challenge to Facebook (aka Meta), which saw Germany’s antitrust authority become a pioneering champion for privacy rights in 2019 after it sought to block the social media giant’s ‘superprofiling’ of users on the grounds that consentless cross-site tracking of users is an “exploitative abuse” of Facebook’s monopoly position, finally concluded Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even a category as hot as robotics is not immune from macroeconomic trends. According to figures from automation advocacy group, A3, the North American robotics market declined in the first half of 2024, both in terms of sales and revenue. The number of industrial robotics ordered in H1 declined 7.5% year-over-year to 15,705. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s been the stuff of science fiction for decades: to provide gigawatts of cheap, clean power anywhere on Earth, day or night, using satellites that collect and transmit solar energy directly on orbit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the engine powering the world’s digital artists, Adobe has a big responsibility to mitigate the rise of AI-driven deepfakes, misinformation, and content theft. In the first quarter of 2025, Adobe is launching its Content Authenticity web app in beta, allowing creators to apply content credentials to their work, certifying it as their own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Actress Emma Watson has made a previously undisclosed investment into the women’s health company Hertility, bringing its total funding to more than $14 million, the company told TechCrunch in an interview on Monday. Watson is known for her interest in the environment and supporting women-led initiatives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ultrasound is perhaps best known as the technology that enables non-invasive body scans, underwater communication, and to help us park our cars. A young startup called Sonair out of Norway wants to employ it for something else: 3D computer vision used in autonomous hardware applications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A woman in Ohio is being haunted by ghosts. Or, maybe she’s not. There’s a dead body buried underneath her house, rolled up inside a rug. Or, there’s actually no body at all, despite signals from cadaver dogs. This week’s biggest drama on TikTok tells the story of a woman from Ohio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rivian says it will build fewer vehicles this year than it did in 2023, the result of a supply chain problem that popped up in the third quarter that has “become more acute in recent weeks.” The company did not specify what specific component is impacted; Waymo has struck a deal with Hyundai to bring the IONIQ 5 EV to its robotaxi network, adding another autonomous vehicle option as it scales up its business. The autonomous vehicle company announced Friday that it expects to start on-road testing a Waymo-equipped IONIQ 5 by late 2025, with the AV becoming available to riders; YouTube on Thursday announced a series of updates for its short-form video product, YouTube Shorts. These include the ability for creators to upload videos up to three minutes in length. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you confused about artificial general intelligence, or AGI? It’s that thing OpenAI is obsessed with ultimately creating in a way that “benefits all of humanity.” You may want to take them seriously since they just raised $6.6 billion to get closer to that goal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The race is on for better chips and data center capacity to handle AI workloads, but all that activity comes with a catch. Heavy processing power means heat — a lot of it — and that has massive implications, both for how well servers operate and the environment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has closed the largest VC round of all time. The startup today announced that it raised $6.6 billion in a funding round that values OpenAI at $157 billion pre-money. Led by previous investor Thrive Capital, the new cash brings OpenAI’s total raised to $17.8 billion or so, per Crunchbase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ameba takes the unstructured data in a retailer’s supply chain systems, sprinkles in some generative AI, and makes the whole thing more efficient. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The past few years have seen the topic of women’s health thrown into the sociopolitical spotlight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evil Corp maintains a "privileged" relationship with the Kremlin, and was often tasked with launching cyberattacks on behalf of Russia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Microsoft has given its Copilot assistant on Windows a makeover — and a voice. Copilot can now read your screen, speak aloud, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed SB 1047, a high-profile bill that would have was regulated the development of AI. The bill was authored by State Senator Scott Wiener and would have made companies that develop the largest AI models liable for implementing safety protocols to prevent “critical harms.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

EV startup Canoo has been hit with two new lawsuits from suppliers linked to the drivetrains that power its electric vehicles, just weeks after the company kicked off a major reorganization that included the departure of its chief technology officer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For years, Silicon Valley and Wall Street have questioned Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to invest tens of billions of dollars into Reality Labs. This week, Meta’s wearables division unveiled a prototype of its Orion smart glasses, a form factor the company believes one day could replace the iPhone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new Dealroom report shows that VC investment in defense-related tech is outpacing any other type of investment across NATO member states and allies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new female-founded dating app called After is launching in Austin, Texas on Thursday with the mission of tackling ghosting and holding people accountable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The promise of blockchain to change the world hasn’t materialized. For the most part, the technology has instead enabled people to speculate on a new asset class. A big hurdle to realizing blockchain’s full potential, web3 proponents argue, is that decentralized services are incredibly hard to build. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The brouhaha in the WordPress community looks likely to escalate into a legal battle around trademarks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rivian has revealed the first $10 million worth of grants from the Rivian Foundation, just three years after promising to make the “natural world” a “stakeholder in our success.” The company launched a website for the foundation on Monday that details 41 grantees who will collectively receive just north of $10 million in funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Companies are eyeing nuclear power as a way to reconcile their breakneck data center growth with their commitments to hit net zero carbon emissions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A tough market seems to have put an end to Pure's ambitions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The IPO market has not roared back in 2024 as many investors hoped it would — not yet, at least. Elevated interest rates (this week’s 50 bps rate cut notwithstanding) and uncertainty related to the U.S. election have prompted many companies to stay private and wait for better market conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

California’s newest law could land social media users who post, or repost, AI deepfakes that deceive voters about upcoming elections in legal trouble. Governor Gavin Newsom suggests that AB 2839, which went into effect immediately after he signed it on Tuesday, could be used to reel in Elon Musk’s retweets, among others who spread deceptive messages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The team points to glass’ optical properties and its “infinite recyclability” as reasons for turning to the material; Also, test subjects were required to move a 30-pound kettlebell up and down a flight of stairs; a New York Times article Thursday highlighted a lucrative side hustle that is emblematic of the times we live in: gaming algorithms to earn money. In this case, folks figured out they could maximize the payout from Lyft’s Citibike “bike angels” program by taking advantage of a company algorithm used to meet its supply-and-demand needs; Indian filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma is ditching human musicians for artificial intelligence, saying he’ll use only AI-generated tunes in future projects, a move that underscores AI’s growing reach in creative industries; Cruise is returning to the streets of Sunnyvale and Mountain View for the first time since it paused operations in the Bay Area after a robotaxi struck a pedestrian in October 2023. The company said Thursday that it will put “several” vehicles driven by humans in the two cities that will initially perform mapping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Like its rival, Google, Amazon has launched an AI-powered video generator — but it’s only for advertisers at the moment, and somewhat limited in what it can do. Today at its Accelerate conference, Amazon unveiled Video generator, which turns a single product image into a few-seconds-long video clip after a few minutes of processing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Upchieve, the free, 24/7 online tutoring and college counseling app for low-income students, announced Thursday it’s giving teachers in Title 1 middle schools and high schools a new tool to ensure their students get the academic support they need. The new offering, called “Upchieve for Teachers,” allows teachers to offer 1:1 support to their students. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Tuesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed some of America’s toughest laws yet regulating the artificial intelligence sector. Three of these laws crack down on AI deepfakes that could influence elections, while two others prohibit Hollywood studios from creating an AI clone of an actor’s body or voice without their consent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

23andMe, the personal genomics company, went public in early 2021 via a merger with a blank check company that valued it at $3.5 billion. Then its fortunes began to sink. Fading interest in DNA kits – 23andMe’s main product – was one driver.; Investment powerhouse BlackRock is set to launch a massive AI-focused investment fund, exceeding $30 billion, in collaboration with Microsoft and the Abu Dhabi-backed investment outfit MGX, the FT reported today. According to the outlet, the fund — among Wall Street’s largest — will focus on creating data centers and funding energy infrastructure to support AI; Discord will now offer audio and video calls that even the company won't be able to listen in on; NASA wants to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, but right now, astronauts have to be in direct line of sight with Earth to phone home. The space agency is looking to change that with its developing Near Space Network; Every month, 400,000 free members upgrade to paid memberships, the company says. According to Patreon, Autopilot improved the rate of free-to-paid membership upgrades by an average of 19% in testing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The head of Slack, Denise Dresser, tells TechCrunch she is shifting the business chat platform into a “work operating system,” specifically by making Slack a hub for AI applications from Salesforce, Adobe, and Anthropic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instagram is introducing Teen Accounts to automatically enroll young users into an app experience with built-in protections. The company announced that starting on Tuesday, it will start placing all current and future accounts held by a teenager into a Teen Account. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

IBM today launched the Qiskit Functions Catalog, a new set of services that aims to make programming quantum computers easier by abstracting away many of the complexities of working with these machines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This latest round of government sanctions land months after Intellexa's founder Tal Dilian was sanctioned for selling the Predator spyware. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) on Wednesday night, new technology allowed fans to shop their favorite artist’s styles as they appeared on the screen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber riders in Austin and Atlanta will be able to hail a Waymo robotaxi through the app in early 2025 as part of an expanded partnership between the two companies. Waymo’s autonomous vehicles have been available on the Uber app in Phoenix since October 2023; Following the moves of other tech giants, Spotify announced on Friday it’s introducing in-app parental controls in the form of “managed accounts” for listeners under the age of 13. The new feature will initially be offered as a pilot program for parents or guardians on a Family plan in select markets, including Denmark, New Zealand and others; making the AI info label harder to find, it might be easier for users to be deceived by content that was edited with AI, especially as editing tools become more and more advanced; It was a matter of time, but Apple is going to allow third-party app stores on the iPad starting next week, on September 16. This change will occur with the next major release of iPadOS, the operating system specifically designed for the iPad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

iFixit, everyone’s favorite gadget repair gadfly, is launching a portable soldering iron. The gadget is designed to make component repair more accessible for home users. The timing of the announcement isn’t lost on anyone, dropping the same week as Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The FDA on Thursday announced that it has granted what it calls “the first over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid software device, Hearing Aid Feature.”; DeepMind employed a new learning platform, ALOHA Unleashed, paired with its simulation program, DemoStart, to teach robots by watching humans; Google Wallet will test a feature that turns your US passport into a digital ID; The White House has announced that several major AI vendors, including OpenAI and Microsoft, have committed to taking steps to combat nonconsensual deepfakes and child sexual abuse material. Adobe, Cohere, Microsoft, OpenAI and data provider Common Crawl said that they’ll “responsibly” source and safeguard the datasets they create and use to train AI from image-based Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX has put on its most public and aggressive offensive against regulators to date, with a blog post published Tuesday urging more expeditious launch licensing — lest the country lose its place as the leader in the global space race. Orbital launch is a tightly regulated industry governed chiefly by the Federal Aviation Administration, though Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A group of Democratic senators is urging the FTC and Justice Department to investigate whether AI tools that summarize and regurgitate online content like news and recipes may amount to anti-competitive practices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple Intelligence, the iPhone maker’s new set of AI capabilities arriving in iOS 18, is laying the groundwork for a new way to use apps. Today, the dated App Store model is under constant regulatory attack. Meanwhile, users can accomplish a lot of tasks with fairly simple questions to an AI assistant like ChatGPT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bumble is increasing its investments in AI and branching out with new features to stay relevant amid a generational shift in dating behavior among younger users. During Goldman Sachs’ annual technology conference on Monday, Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones unveiled more details about the app’s upcoming AI capabilities, including a photo selection tool as well as features to help with conversations and profile creation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Apple unveiled its AI plans at WWDC in June, analysts suggested the feature could put the iPhone 16 on track for another “supercycle.” Like the addition of 5G before it, industry watchers believed that Apple Intelligence’s arrival might convince holdouts to bite the bullet and upgrade their device. Also, Bluesky keeps growing: The company announced that as of Friday morning, it had added 3 million new users, bringing its total user count to more than 9 million. In other words, the social platform’s user base has grown by around 50 percent in the week or so since a Brazilian court banned X (formerly Twitter). And the car rental giant says personal information, credit card information, and driver's license numbers were stolen in the August cyberattack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After a rough couple years, YouTube creators The Try Guys said they’re on-track to reach profitability, with subscriptions to their three-month-old, ad-free service 2nd Try now accounting for 20% of the company’s revenue. Of course, those numbers also mean The Try Guys remain reliant on other revenue streams, including YouTube advertising. Also, Italy-based app company Bending Spoons, which owns Evernote and Meetup, is planning to lay off 75% of the staff of file transfer service WeTransfer, TechCrunch has learned. Bending Spoons acquired the Dutch company in July for an undisclosed amount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices