TechCrunch Industry News

Diligent Robotics hired Cruise's former chief operating officer and former head of AI and robotics into c-suite positions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine announced on Friday that the publishing platform has remained profitable since August of last year, when it first achieved this milestone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google has launched a suite of its AI-powered advertising tools in India, which debuted in the U.S. in May, as the repeal of the so-called “Google tax” has made the South Asian market more attractive to global tech firms selling online a Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

LGND has raised $9 million to convert geographic data into vector embeddings to power AI models that understand the Earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mastodon, the open source, decentralized social network offering an alternative to Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads, is rolling out a number of updates with Tuesday’s release of Mastodon 4.4. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The independent online bookseller Bookshop.org took a swipe at Amazon to celebrate the start of Prime Day, Amazon’s annual sale (which, despite its name, is actually four days this year). Like many other retailers, Bookshop.org holds a sale to coincide with Amazon’s big event — it’s a way to lure away consumers. Also, Activision last week brought offline the Microsoft Store version of "Call of Duty: WWII" as the company was investigating “reports of an issue”; and Waymo has begun offering teen accounts for families in Phoenix as it works to expand more of its user base and entrench young riders in the autonomous life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Grok, the AI chatbot powered by Elon Musk's xAI company, is back with more antisemitic rants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Moonvalley's Marey AI video generation model is open to the public. The monthly subscription is available for $14.99, $34.99, or $149.99. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Arbor Energy's carbon-removing power plant is inspired by SpaceX's rocket engines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s a sad weekend over at Bluesky, where one of the best accounts has disappeared — though we can still hope for its resurrection. Also, TikTok is developing a new version of its app for U.S. users ahead of an expected sale of the app to a group of investors, according to a new report from The Information; Academics may be leaning on a novel strategy to influence peer review of their research papers — adding hidden prompts designed to coax AI tools to deliver positive feedback; and the European Union said it will stick to its timeline for rolling out its AI legislation, ignoring calls by tech companies to delay the bloc's AI rules. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While AI may be the catalyst behind the recent wave of data company M&A, the market was ripe for consolidation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google has pledged to use only carbon-free sources of electricity to power its operations, a task made more challenging by its breakneck pace of data center growth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The social platform X will pilot a feature that allows AI chatbots to generate Community Notes. Community Notes is a Twitter-era feature that Elon Musk has expanded under his ownership of the service, now called X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The financials are impressive and founder CEO Dylan Field already cashed out $20 million worth of shares last year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Legacy aerospace giants scored a win Tuesday when the U.S. Senate passed President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill that earmarks billions more for NASA’s flagship Artemis program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The car traveled around 15 miles on highways, surface streets, and even a roundabout. But many questions remain about the stunt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cloudflare, a cloud infrastructure provider that serves 20% of the web, announced Tuesday the launch of a new marketplace that reimagines the relationship between website owners and AI companies — ideally giving publishers greater control over their content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google is preparing to bring YouTube Create to iOS devices nearly two years after the video editing app launched exclusively on Android. Job listings reviewed by TechCrunch reveal the company is actively hiring engineers in India for the iOS development project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Researchers at Anthropic and AI safety company Andon Labs gave an instance of Claude Sonnet 3.7 an office vending machine to run. And hilarity ensued. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The United States Supreme Court ruled Friday to uphold a Texas law requiring websites with “sexual material harmful to minors” to verify the ages of all visitors. The Free Speech Coalition (FSC), a trade association for the adult industry, had brought the lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton challenging the state’s age verification law. Also, the Danish government is working to change copyright law to give its citizens a right to their own body, facial features, and voice. The landmark law is designed to strengthen protections against the creation and dissemination of deepfakes, reports The Guardian. And Meta has been on a renewable buying spree in recent months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Redwood Materials has launched a new business — taking old EV batteries to store energy and help power businesses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Offerwall lets publishers give their sites' readers a variety of ways to access their content, including through options like micro payments, taking surveys, watching ads, and more. Also, a report by Anthropic reveals that people rarely seek companionship from AI, and turn to AI for emotional support or advice only 2.9% of the time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A federal judge sided with Meta on Wednesday in a lawsuit brought against the company by 13 book authors, including Sarah Silverman, that alleged the company had illegally trained its AI models on their copyrighted works. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the moment OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stepped onstage, it was clear this was not going to be a normal interview. Altman and his chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, stood awkwardly toward the back of the stage at a jam-packed San Francisco venue that typically hosts jazz concerts. Hundreds of people filled steep theatre-style seating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wind power has run into some headwinds, and not the kind that spin its turbines. Recently, President Trump has decided to wage war against the technology, an unwelcome bit of friction that coincides with rising costs in recent years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kodiak Robotics has partnered with driverless car-sharing startup Vap to bring a remote-driving system into its self-driving trucks operation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Novoloop recently raised a $21 million Series B to begin building its first commercial scale plastic upcycling plant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eventual's data processing engine Daft was inspried by the founders' experience working on Lyft's autonomous vehicle project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Director Danny Boyle famously shot his post-apocalyptic classic “28 Days Later” on Canon digital cameras, making it easier for him to capture eerie scenes of an abandoned London, and giving the movie’s fast-moving zombies a terrifying immediacy. Also, LinkedIn users seem to have embraced AI, but there’s one area that’s seen less uptake than expected, according to CEO Ryan Roslansky: the AI-generated suggestions for polishing your LinkedIn posts; Google's adding a slew of AI features to the Chromebook Plus line, including a search and text capture tool, NotebookLM, and a tool for simplifying text; European governments may be reconsidering their use of American technology and services, according to a new report in The New York Times; a Republican effort to prevent states from enforcing their own AI regulations cleared a key procedural hurdle on Saturday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Finom, an Amsterdam-based challenger bank for SMBs that claims to have doubled its revenue in 2024, closed a €115 million Series C equity round (around $133 million). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If becoming a corporate spy sounds exciting, let this newest affidavit from confessed Rippling spy Keith O’Brien serve as a warning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Baiju Bhatt is building something the space industry has largely dismissed, and it might be more groundbreaking than anyone realizes. When Baiju Bhatt stepped away from his role as Chief Creative Officer at Robinhood last year, only those close to him could have predicted his next move: launching a space company built around tech Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frederik Hjelm, CEO of shared micromobility startup Voi, said he sees a path to acquiring the scooter and bike operations of Bolt, the European mobility super-app best known for ride-hailing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Across hundreds of thousands of years of human existence, an impossible question has befuddled our species: why is the baby crying?! Sam Altman, who is both the father of a three-month-old and CEO of OpenAI, hopped on OpenAI’s new podcast today to talk about how his company is impacting his experience with fatherhood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on something of a hiring spree lately, trying to staff up Meta’s new superintelligence team with top-tier AI researchers from competing labs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The contract could put the model maker in competition with the OpenAI services that Microsoft wants to sell to the DoD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The digital health startup says it secured the fresh capital to update its valuation and finance acquisitions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotify's Daniel Ek just led a €600 million investment in Helsing, a four-year-old, Munich-based defense tech company that is now valued at €12 billion, according to the Financial Times. The deal makes it one of Europe's most valuable privately held companies; it also highlights Europe's scramble to build its own military muscle as the world grows messier and the U.S. turns inward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Patreon is bumping its take fee from creators from 8% to 10%, but only for new signups; ChatGPT seems to have pushed some users towards delusional or conspiratorial thinking, according to a recent feature in The New York Times; Meta’s massive investment in Scale AI may be giving some of the startup’s biggest customers pause. Reuters reports that Google had planned to pay Scale AI $200 million this year but is now planning to cut ties with the startup and is having conversations with its competitors; Pornainen recently turned on a 100 MWh thermal battery filled with ground up soapstone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instagram users report that their accounts were banned even though they had not violated the company's terms of service or other policies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It sounds like the start of a 21st century horror film: Your browser history has been public all along, and you had no idea. That’s basically what it feels like right now on the new standalone Meta AI app, where swathes of people are publishing their ostensibly private conversations with the chatbot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon and Talen revised an existing deal to buy power from the Susquehanna nuclear power plant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new analysis done by ride-hailing aggregator Obi shows Waymos cost more especially on shorter trips. They also have longer wait times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Warp can't automate long-haul trucking or short-range delivery, so it's working on what it can potentially change: the workflows inside its warehouses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Lemony AI device can run large language models, AI agents and automated workflows locally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a new essay published Tuesday called “The Gentle Singularity,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared his latest vision for how AI will change the human experience over the next 15 years. The essay is a classic example of Altman’s futurism: hyping up the promise of AGI — and arguing that his company is quite close. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mistral released Magistral, its first family of reasoning models. Like other reasoning models — e.g. OpenAI's o3 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro — Magistral works through problems step-by-step for improved consistency and reliability across topics such as math and physics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Italian government claims that accepting Paragon’s help would have compromised national security and classified information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

PayPal is partnering with hotel payment provider Selfbook to let users search for and book hotels within the PayPal app. The company said that it will let users pay through PayPal at checkout and offer exclusive discounts to users within the app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Several Waymo robotaxis and Lime e-scooters were set ablaze this weekend as unrest in downtown Los Angeles continued. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices