TechCrunch Industry News

Mintlify offers a collection of documentation-authoring tools, including tools that can auto-generate docs from codebases. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Salesforce has acquired Own Company, a provider of data management and protection solutions, for $1.9 billion in cash. In a press release, Salesforce GM Steve Fisher said in a statement that Own “underscores [Salesforce’s] commitment to providing secure, end-to-end solutions that protect our customers’ most valuable data.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cowboy has closed funding of around $5.5 million. With this recent funding round, Cowboy is now valued at €40 million on a pre-money basis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some major consolidation is afoot in the world of internet communications — and it will have implications for competition and consumer internet access in U.S. On Thursday, Verizon announced that it would gobble up Frontier Communications for $20 billion — more than double Frontier’s market cap at the close of trading the night before; A long-running lawsuit over the Internet Archive’s “emergency” ebook lending practices during the COVID-19 pandemic has ended in a loss for the website and a victory for publishers. The lawsuit concerned the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library, a program it established at the beginning of the pandemic to allow wider access to some 1.3 million ebooks; These final maneuvers will bring to a close a troubled first crewed mission for the Boeing-made Starliner; The Cosmos Institute, a nonprofit whose founding fellows include Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and former Defense Department technologist Brendan McCord, has announced a venture program and research initiatives to — in the organization’s words — “cultivate a new generation of technologists and entrepreneurs equipped with deep philosophical thinking to navigate the uncharted territory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The American sports betting market produced $10.9 billion in revenue in 2023 for casinos, sportsbooks and iGaming, according to the American Gambling Association. One of the reasons this industry is so lucrative is because the majority of people who bet on sports lose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic is launching a new subscription plan for its AI chatbot, Claude, catered towards enterprise customers that want more administrative controls and increased security. Claude Enterprise will compete with OpenAI’s business-specific solution, ChatGPT Enterprise, released roughly a year ago. Claude Enterprise allows businesses to upload proprietary company knowledge into Anthropic’s AI chatbot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Flexible green methanol, which is made without fossil fuels, could rid carbon pollution from a range of industries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotter, the startup that provides financial solutions to content creators, announced Tuesday the launch of its new AI-powered creative suite. Dubbed Spotter Studio, the solution aims to support YouTubers throughout the creative process, such as helping them brainstorm video concepts, generate thumbnail and title ideas, plan projects, organize tasks, and collaborate with their team. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Home robots’ unfulfilled potential is neither because of lack of demand on the part of consumers nor lack of effort from manufacturers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Mac mini will be the next Apple device to say goodbye to USB-A, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Apple customers have probably gotten used to seeing the familiar, rectangular USB-A ports replaced with their thinner USB-C siblings. And while USB-C has its advantages, the transition can sometimes leave users confused and scrambling for adapters; TikTok is introducing a new “Manage Topics” feature that will give you more control over what you see on your For You feed, the company announced on Friday. The new feature is rolling out to users in the U.S. With the new tool, you can tailor your For You feed to show you more; a Brazilian court’s decision to ban X (formerly Twitter) seems to benefiting its rivals, especially Bluesky. The microblogging platform announced late Friday that it was seeing “all-time-highs for activity” with 500,000 new users joining in the previous two days. It’s also number one on the free iPhone app chart in Brazil today; In the latest twist in Bolt’s aggressive fundraising efforts, the fintech company’s CEO appears to have made a veiled threat of legal action against Silverbear Capital, the investment bank whose involvement in the deal remains in some dispute. “We believe there was some internal miscommunication at Silverbear Capital, one of our lead investors; No matter who powerful generative AI becomes, writer Ted Chiang says it will never create true art. Chiang is one of the most admired science fiction authors writing today, best known for the novella “Story Of Your Life” (which was adapted into the movie “Arrival”). But he’s also published terrific pieces for The New Yorker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jam & Tea Studios is the latest gaming startup implementing generative AI to transform the way players interact with non-playable characters (NPCs) in video games. Traditionally, video game NPCs are directed by predetermined scripts, which can feel repetitive, unrealistic, and boring Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Given everything you’ve already heard about AI, you may not be surprised to learn that Google is among other outfits beginning to use sound signals to predict early signs of disease. How? According to Bloomberg, Google has trained its foundation AI model with 300 million pieces of audio that included coughs, sniffles, and labored breathing; Nvidia and Apple are reportedly in talks to contribute to OpenAI’s next fundraising round — a round that could value the ChatGPT maker at $100 billion. Per its sources, the New York Times says earlier OpenAI investor Thrive Capital would lead the deal should it happen; It seems that the Ministry of Truth has been busy at Tesla. Some sharp-eyed folks, including reporters at Electrek, noticed that Tesla has deleted all of its blog posts prior to 2019; Gmail users on Android devices can now chat directly with Google’s AI assistant, Gemini, about their emails in the Gmail app. Google rolled out the new feature, Gmail Q&A, on Thursday to users who pay for Gemini, according to a blog post, and announced the feature would be coming to iOS devices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber is making a strategic investment into Wayve as an extension of the U.K.-born startup’s previously announced $1.05 billion Series C round. The partnership will also see the two companies work with automakers to integrate Wayve’s AI into consumer vehicles that will one day operate on the ride-hail giant’s platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, could be in talks to raise a massive tranche of cash. The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI may be close to closing a fundraising round led by Thrive Capital, a previous investor, that’d value the AI company at over $100 billion; One-click checkout tech company Bolt is still waiting to find out if shareholders will sign off on a proposed funding round with stipulations that founder Ryan Breslow would return as CEO; Apple released the new developer betas for iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS 15.1 Sequoia. With this update, the company is launching new Apple Intelligence features including the ability to remove objects from photos; New Enterprise Associates is getting back into the secondaries game. The Silicon Valley-based VC raised more than $468 million for NEA Secondary Opportunity Fund, according to an SEC filing. The fundraise closed on July 3, according to a source familiar with the matter, but hasn’t received much attention Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

CoinSwitch, a prominent Indian cryptocurrency exchange, is suing rival platform WazirX to recover trapped funds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tinder removed the U.S. military ads, saying the campaign violated the company's policies; Elon Musk’s X has already declared it aims to compete with LinkedIn for job listings and PayPal for payments. Now, it wants to take on the likes of Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams with a video conferencing tool; Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander failed to reach the moon because of a problem with a single valve in the propulsion system, according to a report on the mission released Tuesday. Company leadership said in a press conference that engineers have redesigned the valve and introduced additional redundancy into the propulsion system of its next lander. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meta and Spotify are exploring deeper music integration in Meta’s Instagram app. New findings indicate the companies are testing a feature that would allow users to continuously share what music they’re listening to through Instagram’s Notes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ride-hailing platform Uber has been fined €290 million — around $324 million at current exchanges rates — by the Netherlands’ privacy watchdog for breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple will be unveiling new products on September 10, with the announced phones going on sale on September 20, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. That lineup will reportedly include the iPhone 16, with larger screens on the Pro models and a new button just for taking pictures.; RealPage, which makes property management software, was sued Friday by the U.S. Justice Department and eight attorneys general for allegedly helping apartment and building managers around the country collude to drive up unit prices; Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, was arrested on Saturday evening at France’s Bourget airport, according to French television network TF1. Neither Telegram nor a spokesperson for France’s national anti-fraud office ONAF immediately responded to a request for comment; Disappearing posts on social networks are handy if you have a habit of deleting them through third-party tools or the context of those posts is short-lived. Earlier this month, Threads said it is testing ephemeral posts only as an internal prototype; Boeing’s Starliner mission is coming back to Earth — empty. After months of data analysis and internal deliberation, NASA leadership announced today that Starliner will be coming back to Earth in September, without a crew. Meanwhile, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams will remain on-board the International Space Station until February; Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The pellets can be stored in piles or silos, moved around using conveyor belts, and transported via rail cars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Soon, parents in range of Waymo robotaxis might not have to worry about picking up their kids from after-school activities — or anytime, really. The San Francisco Standard reports that Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary, is considering a subscription program that would let teens hail one of its cars solo and send pickup and drop-off alerts; Tesla is hiring individuals standing between 5’7 and 5’11 to carry up to 30 pounds for seven hours a day to train its Optimus robot; Citing a crowded market and profit concerns, Mineral ceased operation and pivoted to technology licensing; At least 200 workers at DeepMind, Google’s AI R&D division, are displeased with Google’s reported defense contracts — and according to Time, they circulated a letter internally back in May to say as much. The letter, dated May 16, says the undersigned are concerned by “Google’s contracts with military organizations,” citing articles about the tech Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For some businesses, there is a clear path to growth that doesn’t involve acquiring other companies or expanding organically: franchising. The U.S. has more than 800,000 franchise businesses, according to Statista, and that number is predicted to keep growing year over year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A firmware update is delivering multi-user audio sharing, allowing music to be streamed to multiple headphones at once; also Microsoft demonstrated its leadership in accessible gaming hardware again on Wednesday with the announcement of a new one-handed joystick controller for Xbox and PC. The Xbox Adaptive Joystick works with the company’s already robust accessibility hardware stack, and even includes support for custom 3D-printed parts; early this year, AI-powered fake audio of President Biden reached voters in New Hampshire. The FCC struck back swiftly, identifying the perpetrator as the Texas-based Life Corporation, which has been behind similar scams over the years, and whacked them and an associated individual with a $6 million fine; At around $2,000, the Fit Bike places the system between Peloton’s entry-level Bike ($1,500) and Bike+ ($2,500). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first vehicle that will be built on the low-cost EV platform Ford’s been developing in secret will be a mid-size pickup due out in 2027, the automaker announced Wednesday morning. The news comes as part of a much larger rewriting of Ford’s electrification plans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

X looks like a pretty bad investment right about now. As readers might recall, billionaire Elon Musk borrowed $13 billion from Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and five other major banks to help finance the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, as it was then called; OpenAI signs deal to train on Condé Nast content, surface stories in ChatGPT; WeTransfer’s expiry dates haven’t gone away, but you can at least extend them; Is your company AI-washing? Rippling founder Parker Conrad thinks it might be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As TikTok Shop gains traction, YouTube is expanding its partnership with Shopify to onboard more brands for its YouTube Shopping affiliate program, the company announced on Tuesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The United States Department of Justice filed a major lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster in May, arguing that the entertainment giant is acting as a monopoly. An additional 10 state attorneys general joined the suit this week, bringing the total to 39 states and the District of Columbia; also, Zoom on Monday announced a new single-user webinar feature that caps out at 1 million attendees. The addition comes less than a month after the #WinWithBlackWomen fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris peaked at 44,000 users before crashing; and Waymo disclosed Tuesday it’s now giving more than 100,000 paid robotaxi rides every week across its three main commercial markets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. Those figures were shared by Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana in a social media post on X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Root helps food and beverage companies collect primary data on their agricultural supply chains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

General Motors is cutting around 1,000 software workers around the world in a bid to focus on more “high-priority” initiatives like improving its Super Cruise driver assistance system, the quality of its infotainment platform and exploring the use of AI. The job cuts are not about cost cutting or individual performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Rivian camp kitchen attracted buzz from almost the moment it appeared as a prototype in 2019 at Overland Expo West. Despite interest in the accessory, Rivian never actually sold the camp kitchen, which was kind of massive and designed to slide into the R1T pickup truck’s trademark gear tunnel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts linked to an Iranian influence operation that was generating content about the U.S. presidential election, according to a blog post on Friday. The company says the operation created AI-generated articles and social media posts, though it doesn’t seem that it reached much of an audience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Journalists, researchers, and politicians are mourning Meta’s shutdown of CrowdTangle, which they used to track the spread of disinformation on Facebook and Instagram. In CrowdTangle’s place, Meta is offering its Content Library – but is limiting usage to people from “qualified academic or nonprofit institutions who are pursuing scientific or public interest research.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Prytek had already been a big investor in TipRanks since 2017, most recently leading a $77 million round in the company in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For many companies, this also means that now is the time to start implementing these algorithms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been top of mind for brands for more than a decade to ensure their websites and products capture as many eyeballs as possible by ranking high up on search results pages. But search is changing, and as consumers increasingly turn to AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Music streaming service SoundCloud has launched a merch marketplace called SoundCloud Store. The store will sell SoundCloud-themed items, but will also act as a service for artists to put out their own designs. The first edition of the store features designs from Wiz Khalifa, Denzel Curry, wolfacejoeyy, Bk The Rula, and Armani White. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The irony was not lost on her. Growing up the daughter of a racing car enthusiast father, Danielle Walsh had become — in her late 20s — the head of HSBC’s ‘Future Cities’ project, the global banking giant’s effort to serve clients’ climate change mandates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While Amazon has continued releasing Echo devices, including an upgraded Spot announced last month, the company has taken its foot off the gas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Avi Schiffmann, the founder and CEO of Friend, told TechCrunch over email that the purchase has already paid for itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rocket Lab surpassed $100 million in quarterly revenue for the first time, a 71% increase from the same quarter of last year. This is just one of several shiny accomplishments executives showed off to investors on Thursday — and a good omen for the space company’s medium-term ambitious plans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Count Spotify and Epic Games among the Apple critics who are not happy with the iPhone maker’s newly revised compliance plan for the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Shortly after Apple announced the updated version on Tuesday, including loosened restrictions along with the addition of two more fees, Spotify shared a statement with TechCrunch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has confirmed that it’s carrying out a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon’s ties with Anthropic, after Amazon recently completed a $4 billion investment into the AI startup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky suggested on Tuesday’s Q2 earnings call with investors that the company will soon expand into new products and services, including co-hosting, a relaunch of Airbnb’s “experiences,” guest services, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ride-hail giant Lyft will pilot a new feature called Price Lock that will let a rider purchase a monthly subscription “that caps the price for a specific route at a specific time,” according to CEO David Risher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Figure 02 is outfitted with speakers and microphones to speak and listen to people at work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber reported strong second-quarter results, with gross bookings and net profit both up decently. But the company has chosen to highlight the success of its autonomous vehicle effort, likely to assuage investors concerned about incoming competition from Tesla, which aims to reveal its first robotaxi in October. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When a company is the size of Amazon, a lot of bad actors will come after it and its customers, which makes defending the network a monster job. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A scathing rebuke by the U.K. data protection watchdog reveals what led to the compromise of tens of millions of U.K. voters' information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In spite of a drop for the quarter, iPhone remained Apple’s most important category by a wide margin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following the recent lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against music generation startups Udio and Suno, Suno admitted in a court filing on Thursday that it did, in fact, train its AI model using copyrighted songs. But it claimed that doing so was legal under the fair-use doctrine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices