20-Oct-26
TechCrunch [ 20-Oct-26 9:40pm ]
SpaceX's AI business is beating expectations [ 20-Oct-26 9:40pm ]
SpaceX hit profitably in the third-quarter, with net income of $4.4 billion. AI was the engine.
OpenAI acquires startup Orchestra Bio to beef up its biotech business [ 20-Oct-26 9:35pm ]
OpenAI says it's adding Orchestra's team and technology to work on Rosalind, its AI model for life sciences research, and to its related Rosalind Workbench tool, a harness that aims to help researchers plan experiments and analyze results.
Google is bringing a more personal version of its Gemini AI assistant to your car [ 20-Oct-26 9:00pm ]
Google is bringing Gemini's Personal Intelligence feature to cars, allowing its AI assistant to draw on information from Gmail, Calendar, Maps, YouTube, and other Google services to deliver more personalized responses while driving.
GM to close Detroit battery assembly plant, but not for reasons you might think [ 20-Oct-26 8:32pm ]
GM is shuttering the Brownstown Battery Assembly Plant, though the closure has nothing to do with the automaker's electrification strategy.
Google has joined Amazon in attacking Nvidia's stronghold with AI app developers [ 20-Oct-26 7:38pm ]
Google has joined Amazon in releasing a developer tool that makes it easy for PyTorch users to move their apps off Nvidia GPUs.
ChatGPT now lets you lock your chats [ 20-Oct-26 7:36pm ]
The company says the feature is designed for situations where users might be discussing something personal or planning a surprise and want to keep those conversations private when handing their device to friends or family to show them something in another chat.
Eric Schmidt reportedly owns about half as much of Anthropic as CEO Dario Amodei [ 20-Oct-26 6:55pm ]
The former Google CEO owns about 1% stake in the leading AI lab, Bloomberg reported.
Meta's Muse hits 10M U.S. downloads in 40 days, a milestone reached by only 11 other apps [ 20-Oct-26 6:12pm ]
Meta's AI companion Muse has surpassed 10 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days, joining an exclusive group of apps that includes Threads. New data also shows Muse is retaining users at higher rates than its AI rivals.
Ex-Nvidia-turned-VC Amulya Vishwanath: 'Physical AI is in it's LEGO era' [ 20-Oct-26 5:20pm ]
It's the moment everyone is waiting for — the ChatGPT moment for robotics, Amulya Vishwanath explained to TechCrunch's Equity.
Streaming guide JustWatch becomes a streamer itself [ 20-Oct-26 5:01pm ]
JustWatch, the popular streaming search guide used by 50 million people, is launching its own streaming service, offering free, ad-supported movies and shows alongside a $3.99-per-month ad-free tier and movie rentals.
Plants can speak using electricity, so this startup built an AI model to decipher their language [ 20-Oct-26 5:00pm ]
Electric Plant has built an AI-powered translator to help humans listen to what plants are saying with the subtle electricity coursing through their stems.
TikTok staff raised child safety concerns, but executives reportedly failed to act [ 20-Oct-26 4:03pm ]
Court documents show TikTok employees were frustrated with how executives responded to their concerns about risks to children.
Figma co-founder Dylan Field thinks MCP is not a perfect protocol [ 20-Oct-26 3:13pm ]
Figma said it plans to support as many standards as possible without exposing all of its data
SpaceX alum's aviation startup, Reliable Robotics, lands $115M, topping $1B valuation [ 20-Oct-26 2:17pm ]
Reliable Robotics extended its Series D round with $115 million in equity and $25 million in debt.
US orders federal agencies to remove China's DeepSeek AI from their systems [ 20-Oct-26 2:07pm ]
The US has ordered federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products and third-party services built using its technology, citing national security concerns.
Eka is worth $1.45B thanks to a physical AI model that has experts raving [ 20-Oct-26 2:00pm ]
Eka Robotics may be the first robotic arm that is actually good at picking a wide range of objects up, and it is so smooth and human-like, it is wowing the industry.
Inspired Capital closes $450M fourth fund as New York pushes back on Silicon Valley's gravitational pull [ 20-Oct-26 2:00pm ]
The raise comes as venture dollars pile up on the West Coast.
Spotify launches paid podcast memberships with perks beyond bonus content [ 20-Oct-26 1:00pm ]
Spotify's new paid memberships let podcasters offer fans exclusive perks, including ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content, while keeping 90% of the revenue.
Oura adds new fitness metrics to show how workouts impact your body [ 20-Oct-26 1:00pm ]
While Oura has largely dominated the smart ring market for years, rivals like RingConn and Ultrahuman are emerging to dethrone it, putting pressure on the company to keep innovating. By launching more advanced workout metrics, Oura is looking to differentiate itself from competitors as the smart ring market gets more crowded.
Yelp can now call on your behalf to check wait times at a restaurant [ 20-Oct-26 12:00pm ]
Yelp is embedding numerous new AI features into its app that can do everything from call to check on restaurant wait times to create personalized recommendations that remember your preferences.
Otter.ai raises $320 million from General Catalyst's growth fund for its meeting tool [ 20-Oct-26 12:00pm ]
Meeting note-taking tool Otter.ai announced on Tuesday that it has raised $320 million from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund (CVF), which provides capital to startups without diluting equity and gets returns on the results of marketing spend. Otter.ai said that it will use these funds for enterprise growth, go-to-market strategy, international expansion, and product innovation. […]
Blackwall quadruples valuation to $2.2B as websites wrangle an increasingly crowded internet [ 20-Oct-26 8:01am ]
Blackwall has raised $100M at a $2.2B valuation to continue building security and filtering tools that help websites grapple with growing bot and AI traffic.
Walmart's Flipkart is quietly building a food delivery challenger in India [ 20-Oct-26 3:00am ]
Flipkart has expanded access to its food-delivery service to thousands of employees ahead of its public launch.
Mamdani says feds have abdicated on AI, urges New Yorkers to push back [ 20-Oct-26 2:27am ]
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday night that New Yorkers must resist the narrative that an AI takeover is inevitable and demand regulations that protect the public and put power back in their hands.
Nscale and Anthropic are reportedly in talks for yet another $45 billion compute deal [ 20-Oct-26 12:39am ]
In August, Nscale and Anthropic announced a $45 billion compute deal. The two companies are reportedly discussing yet another deal of the same magnitude.
19-Oct-26
Embedded AI evaluators won't be an easy solution, Hugging Face's policy chief says [ 19-Oct-26 11:49pm ]
AI labs have staked their reputations on model benchmarking — the supposedly neutral and accurate system of evaluations that are designed to measure whether one AI product is better than another. However, the methods behind these evaluations are complicated and still maturing, said Irene Solaiman, Hugging Face's chief policy officer, during a discussion at TechCrunch […]
Microsoft says AI agents are like insider threats as 'frontier models can't be trusted' [ 19-Oct-26 11:04pm ]
Microsoft wants enterprises to closely watch the agents employees use with systems not controlled by AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Amazon is taking its biggest shot at Nvidia yet with new TorchNeuron dev tool [ 19-Oct-26 9:09pm ]
Amazon wants to break Nvidia's hold on PyTorch, the free toolkit used to build most AI apps, so that more developers run their apps on alternative chips like its own.
Hackers hit AI coding tool OpenCode, running up charges on users' AI accounts [ 19-Oct-26 8:28pm ]
OpenCode is an open-source AI coding agent that's become a popular alternative to Claude Code and Cursor. But hackers got into part of its online platform and stole some users' API keys, and the AI tools it turned to for help kept refusing to look at the malicious code.
Tolan snags $30M for its AI companion that helps users navigate life [ 19-Oct-26 8:00pm ]
AI companion app Tolan has raised another $30 million after attracting more than 250,000 active users.
Replika's founder built the AI assistant she pitched at Disrupt 12 years ago [ 19-Oct-26 7:49pm ]
Eugenia Kuyda's newest startup Wabi is positioned to take advantage of an idea she had more than a decade ago. Wabi offers a personal AI assistant with a twist, free and downloadable to anyone today.
Tenstorrent hits $6.2B valuation to scale open-weight AI chips [ 19-Oct-26 7:37pm ]
After drawing acquisition interest earlier this year, the Nvidia challenger raised $1.5 billion to remain independent.
AI assistant startup Town nabs unicorn valuation four months after launch [ 19-Oct-26 7:00pm ]
AI assistant startup Town nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B round co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures.
Rivian's CEO says autonomy will enable 'dramatically different' vehicle designs [ 19-Oct-26 6:39pm ]
His vision will culminate with the R4 vehicle.
Amazon to fund 12 small nuclear reactors at former Indiana coal plant [ 19-Oct-26 5:55pm ]
Amazon and X-energy have inked another deal to deploy nuclear power to the grid. This one will generate nearly 1 gigawatt of electricity.
People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again [ 19-Oct-26 5:13pm ]
Fed up with ads, tracking and sluggish interfaces, some smart TV owners are turning to AI agents to strip away bloatware and take back control of their TVs.
Nvidia launches new open models to run agents in the enterprise and on PCs [ 19-Oct-26 4:37pm ]
Nvidia is leaning hard into the trend of enterprise companies wanting to run their own open models in their own data centers and also trying to make on-device, private AI agents a thing.
Apple updates guidelines to ban nudify apps masquerading as regular apps to pass review [ 19-Oct-26 1:56pm ]
Apple said that it will ban AI apps that don't moderate offensive content.
Musk pledges to give 'every kid in America' one of his SpaceX shares [ 19-Oct-26 1:42pm ]
That's more than $10 billion in shares, or around 1% of Musk's current net worth.
Khosla Ventures doubles down on Even Healthcare to challenge India's hospital economics [ 19-Oct-26 8:30am ]
Even Healthcare reaches a $300 million valuation in a Khosla Ventures-led round as it plans to expand its hospital network in India.
18-Oct-26
No agenda, no rush, no leaving San Francisco: Benchmark's partners on investing in a frenzied market [ 18-Oct-26 10:00pm ]
Benchmark may have grown its funds and swapped out some partners, but onstage the five who are left sounded like friends who just happen to be running one of the Valley's most storied firms
Anthropic says it's committing 5% of its shares to a 'public benefit fund' [ 18-Oct-26 9:37pm ]
Anthropic said that it will commit 5% of its shares to the fund.
Everyone's watching the Elizabeth Holmes documentary 'You Can See Everything' [ 18-Oct-26 8:03pm ]
"You Can See Everything" is having the second biggest opening weekend ever for a documentary film.
Disney agrees to hire the majority of Character.AI's workforce [ 18-Oct-26 5:30pm ]
After chatbot startup Character.AI filed for bankruptcy earlier this week, many of its employees will have the opportunity to take jobs at Disney. Character.AI's former CEO Karandeep Anand recently became the entertainment giant's first CTO, and the startup previously said that Disney had agreed to acquire some of its assets for $20 million. A legal […]
TechCrunch Mobility: Rivian's next act [ 18-Oct-26 5:05pm ]
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it.
17-Oct-26
Meta removes language that raised scraping and AI training concerns [ 17-Oct-26 10:31pm ]
A Meta spokesperson insisted that the updated terms did not reflect a change in the way Meta crawls the web.
TikTok permanently bans 'Musk' documentary advertising account [ 17-Oct-26 9:55pm ]
A four-hour documentary about Elon Musk continues to meet resistance from social media platforms.
Anthropic says its workforce has become less junior and is spending more time in meetings [ 17-Oct-26 9:21pm ]
The composition of Anthropic's workforce and the type of work getting done have changed significantly in the past year.
Ember's new temperature-controlled mug makes my nightly tea ritual even better [ 17-Oct-26 4:30pm ]
The biggest change about Ember's new mug is that you no longer have to open the app to adjust your drink's temperature.
Mark Wahlberg wants to take on the longevity-startup crowd with an affordable gym concept [ 17-Oct-26 3:36am ]
Mark Wahlberg, who once sank money into a gym chain that got kicked off the NYSE, is now building his own, and he promises you'll get a cold plunge, a blood panel and a protein muffin without needing a trust fund.
