The Def Con hacking conference banned hackers Pablos Holman and Vincenzo Iozzo, as well as former MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito, from attending the annual conference after their reported connections with Jeffrey Epstein.

Startup founders are being pushed to move faster than ever, using AI while facing tighter funding, rising infrastructure costs, and more pressure to show real traction early. Cloud credits, access to GPUs, and foundation models have made it easier to get started, but those early infrastructure choices can have unforeseen consequences once startups move beyond […]

Social network Bluesky now offers private messaging by integrating the startup Germ's E2E encrypted messenger natively in its app.

This is a strategic win for SeatGeek. With direct placement in the Spotify app, SeatGeek is positioned to reach millions of active music fans as they discover upcoming events, increasing the chances of converting listeners into ticket buyers.

Amazon said Blue Jay's core tech will be used for other robotics projects and the employees who worked on it were moved to other projects.

Mastodon is looking to grow its open source, decentralized social network with new features aimed at creators.

The Figure data breach allowed hackers to steal customer names, dates of birth, physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

The smartphone is available for preorder now with shipments starting March 5. It comes in Lavender, Berry, Fog, and Obsidian.

The feature will require customers to buy both versions of the title, but at a discounted price.

X's new immersive video player is designed to offer a more mobile-friendly experience, optimized especially for portrait-oriented videos.

The revenue milestone comes as Snap has added additional paid offerings outside of its core Snapchat+ subscription over the past year to diversify its revenue streams.

Users will be able to use text, images, and videos as a reference to generate music.

Kana, a new AI marketing startup from the founders of Rapt and Krux, has raised $15 million to build customizable, agent-based marketing tools.

Though crowded, the identity management market seems eager for new solutions, and Venice is finding traction.

Microsoft said the bug meant that its Copilot AI chatbot was reading and summarizing paying customers' confidential emails, bypassing data-protection policies.

OpenAI says its India education partnerships aim to reach more than 100,000 students, faculty, and staff over the next year.

The creative company's monthly active users increased 20%, growth that was partially propelled by adoption of its AI tools.

The partnership will see the two companies exploring how World Labs’ models can work alongside Autodesk’s tools, and vice versa, starting with a focus on entertainment use cases. 

The company is using edge models that take up only megabytes of space, can run on most phones with existing processors, and can work offline.

Tesla alumni Drew Baglino raises a large round to build a giga-scale factory, this time at his own startup.

The new lineup includes 30-billion- and 105-billion-parameter models; a text-to-speech model; a speech-to-text model; and a vision model to parse documents.

The startup is making solid-state transformers capable of intelligently aggregating power from a number of different sources before sending it to data center racks.

OpenAI has renamed its feature in Sora from "Cameo" to "Characters."

The decision comes a month after Tesla discontinued Autopilot, its basic driver-assistance system.

Amnesty International says it found evidence that a government customer of Intellexa, a sanctioned surveillance vendor, used its Predator spyware against a prominent journalist in Angola.

Jack Altman and Benchmark announced today that he would be joining the firm as a general partner. 

A combination of 3D-printed Lego-like parts, Formula 1 thinking, and a bounty program will help the company hit that target. The team, led by Tesla veteran Alan Clarke, is obsessed with efficiency.

An internal research study at Meta found that parental supervision may not help teens regulate their social media, and teens with trauma are more inclined to overuse social media.

As the AI hardware space heats up, the iPhone maker has multiple smart products in development.

Thrive Capital just raised $10 billion for its new fund -- nearly double the size of its last fund.

The new project, called Material Scale, will initially focus on climate tech startups in the apparel industry.

Anthropic has released a new version of its midsized Sonnet model, keeping pace with the company's four-month update cycle.

Mistral AI has agreed to buy Koyeb, a Paris-based startup that simplifies AI app deployment at scale and manages the infrastructure behind it.

Mesh aims to mass-produce optical transceivers for AI data centers.

When we talk about the cost of AI infrastructure, the focus is usually on Nvidia and GPUs -- but memory is an increasingly important part of the picture.

EU lawmakers found their government-issued devices were blocked from using the baked-in AI tools, amid fears that sensitive information could turn up on the U.S. servers of AI companies.

The feature is designed to work inside the website to understand its content and layout, allowing site owners to make changes with natural language commands. The WordPress AI assistant doesn't need precisely tailored prompts, either.

Australia was the first country to issue a ban in late 2025, aiming to reduce the pressures and risks that young users may face on social media, including cyberbullying, social media addiction, and exposure to predators.

Fire TV's new interface simplifies its layout and navigation and adds Alexa+.

By bringing an enhanced video podcast viewing experience to its app, Apple is aiming to keep users from turning to rival platforms to watch their favorite shows.

Three U.S.-based AI companies raised rounds larger than $1 billion so far in 2026, with 14 others raising rounds of $100 million or more.

India is ramping up shared AI compute, adding 20,000 GPUs as part of a broader push to attract global AI investment.

Snapchat will let creators set their monthly subscription price.

SpendRule, launched last summer, is an AI-powered platform that helps healthcare systems track their spending.

Indian vibe-coding platform Emergent was launched just eight months ago, and it now says it's generating annual recurring revenue of more than $100 million, thanks to surging demand by small businesses and non-technical users.

Adani's plan targets up to 5 gigawatts of capacity, with data centers planned alongside partnerships with Google, Microsoft, and Flipkart.

The feature allows users to cancel eligible bookings if there is a change of plans -- without losing money up front.

Under the partnership, Infosys plans to integrate Anthropic's Claude models into its Topaz AI platform to build so-called "agentic" systems.

Cohere's Tiny Aya models support over 70 langauges

According to a16z, it has eyes around the world in order to spot companies as early as local funds might.

The reason why this nascent startup had VCs lining up is the founders.They are so famed in the AI world, everyone tried to hire them.

"We're exploring a different set of tradeoffs."

"From an AI research perspective, this is nothing novel," one expert told TechCrunch.

As India's first AI company to IPO, Fractal Analytics didn't have a stellar first day on the public markets, as enthusiasm for the technology collided with jittery investors in the wake of a sell-off in Indian software stocks.

India is hosting a four-day AI Summit this week that will be attended by executives from major AI labs and Big Tech, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Cloudflare, as well as heads of state.

Terra Industries, the African defense company, announced Monday that it had secured an additional $22 million in funding to further expand the business. 

C2i has raised $15 million as it tests a grid-to-GPU approach to reducing power losses in AI data centers.

Neysa is targeting deployments of more than 20,000 GPUs over time as demand for local AI compute accelerates.

OpenAI said OpenClaw will live on as an open source project.

The longtime host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” is suing Google, alleging that the male podcast voice in the company’s NotebookLM tool is based on him.

The apparent issue: whether Claude can be used for mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says India has the largest number of student users of ChatGPT worldwide.

In this week's episode of the Equity podcast, Glean CEO Arvind Jain explains the company's shift from enterprise search tool to middleware layer for enterprise AI.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

Will the Epstein revelations lead to broader fallout in Silicon Valley?

Students are losing some interest in computer science broadly but gaining interest in AI-specific majors and courses.

The Department of Homeland Security has been increasing pressure on tech companies to identify the owners of accounts that criticize ICE.

Elon Musk is “actively” working to make xAI’s Grok chatbot “more unhinged, according to a former employee.

As much of Silicon Valley chases mega-rounds and buzzy AI deals, Stacy Brown-Philpot is running Cherryrock Capital like a throwback to venture capital's earlier days

This week, Alta unveiled its first integration collaboration, teaming up with Public School, a storied New York City brand.

Hollywood organizations are pushing back against a new AI video model called Seedance 2.0, which they say has quickly become a tool for “blatant” copyright infringement.

Designer Kate Barton teams up with Fiducia AI and IBM for a NYFW presentation.

India’s $1.1B fund-of-funds will invest through private VCs to support deep-tech and manufacturing startups.

The two-story location will sell products from Nothing and the more affordable, mass-market brand CMF.

A backend flaw in web admin dashboards used by one of India's largest pharmacy chains, exposed thousands of online pharmacy orders.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the company wants to increase its use of large language models for customer discovery, support and engineering.

Airbnb was poised to introduce an app that doesn't just search for you, but one that "knows you." CEO Brian Chesky said, "It will help guests plan their entire trip, help hosts better run their businesses, and help the company operate more efficiently at scale."

The company said hackers downloaded “a limited number of files” after breaking into an employee’s account. The hacking group ShinyHunters took responsibility for the breach.

AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the disbanding of its mission alignment team to the firing of a policy exec who opposed its “adult mode” feature.  Watch as TechCrunch’s Equity podcast hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony […]

The Japanese sex toy maker said a hacker broke into an employee's inbox and stole customer names, email addresses, and correspondence, including order details and customer service inquiries.

The model is known for its overly sycophantic nature and its role in several lawsuits involving users' unhealthy relationships with the chatbot.

The financial regulator revealed in a response to a TechCrunch records request that the probe was closed in September 2025.

India turns to Alibaba.com's B2B network of 50 million buyers in 200 countries to help businesses scale global exports.

The numbers suggest that Anthropic's Super Bowl commercials, combined with Anthropic's recent release of its new Opus 4.6 model, worked to drive attention to Claude's app and its key differentiator from ChatGPT.

Roku delivered an impressive Q4, posting net income of $80.5 million. The company also outlined plans for streaming bundles.

"Our matches convert to actual dates at about 10x the rate of Tinder," Weng told TechCrunch.

The Dutch phone giant Odido is the latest phone and internet company to be hacked in recent months, as governments and financially motivated hackers continue to steal highly confidential information about phone customers.

This news comes less than a week after Ring's Super Bowl commercial stoked controversy over the company's capacity for mass surveillance.

Cohere surpassed $240 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025, highlighting strong enterprise AI demand as the Canadian startup positions itself for a potential IPO amid intensifying competition from OpenAI and Anthropic.

The feature, internally known as “Name Tag,” would allow smart glasses wearers to identify people and get information about them via Meta's AI assistant.

Two years ago, a controversial dating app was launched and quickly shuttered: for people with good-to-excellent credit. Now, the founder is relaunching it, open to anyone.

Helion's Polaris device hit 150 million degrees C recently, a milestone that nudges the company toward its commercial power plant that will sell electricity to Microsoft.

If a passenger accidentally leaves a Waymo door open, the vehicle can get stuck in place.

The longevity-obsessed investor Bryan Johnson is charging $1 million to sign up for his "Immortals" program.

Pinterest's stock tumbles after an earnings miss, with higher-than-expected usage its only bright spot.

IBM plans to triple its entry-level hiring in the U.S. in 2026, but these jobs will have different tasks than in previous years.

The company's annual revenue was boosted by its technology joint venture with Volkswagen Group.

"I really want to see a mass driver on the moon that is shooting AI satellites into deep space."

Didero functions as an agentic AI layer that sits on top of a company’s existing ERP, acting as a coordinator that reads incoming communications and automatically executes the necessary updates and tasks.

The infusion of funding for the AI startup takes place as it is vying for customers and cultural attention with its competitor, OpenAI.

When Apple Vision Pro first came out two years ago, YouTube hesitated to release a dedicated app. Today is the day they officially launch one.

Emails published by the Justice Department revealed cybersecurity veteran Vincenzo Iozzo emailed, and arranged to meet, Jeffrey Epstein multiple times between 2014 and 2018.

The EPA's new rule seeks to undo a 2009 finding that allowed the federal government to regulate six greenhouse gases.

WP Engine claims Automattic was going to target more hosting companies with royalty fees.

Spotify credits Claude Code and its internal AI system Honk with speeding up development.

OpenAI calls the new coding tool the "first milestone" in its relationship with the chipmaker.

CEO Chris Urmson called it a “superhuman” moment, adding that Aurora’s trucks can now carry freight 1,000 miles in 15 hours — faster than what a human driver can legally accomplish.

Coupang’s massive data breach has sparked U.S. investor lawsuits against the South Korean government over alleged discrimination.

The show is expected to run for four seasons, with the possibility of spin-offs, a prequel, and foreign versions.

In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, FTC chair Andrew Ferguson cited reports from Media Research Center, a right-leaning think tank, which accused Apple of excluding right-leaning outlets from the top 20 articles in the Apple News feed.

The San Francisco-based startup says its AI-first approach has allowed it to scale faster.

On Wednesday, xAI took the rare step of publishing its full 45-minute all-hands presentation to the X platform, making it widely available.

General Catalyst is in talks to lead the round for the four-year-old startup, according to our sources.

The team's leader has been given a new role as OpenAI's chief futurist, while the other team members have been reassigned throughout the company.

While the new Siri was expected to launch with the upcoming iOS 26.4 update in March, now, the changes are expected to roll out more slowly over time, reportedly postponing some features until the May iOS update, or even until the release of iOS 27 in September.

Uber Eats launched a new AI feature, “Cart Assistant,” that can automatically add items to your cart based on text or image prompts.

Enterprise AI is shifting fast from chatbots that answer questions to systems that actually do the work across an organization. But who will own the AI layer that powers all of it?  Glean, which started as an enterprise search product, has evolved into what it calls an “AI work assistant,” aiming to sit underneath other AI […]

Critical security flaws targeting Windows and Office users allow hackers to take complete control of a victim's computer by clicking a malicious link or opening a file. Patch now.

TechCrunch spoke to a16z partner Joshua Lu for some tips on standing out for the Speedrun program.

The new feature allows users to share payment requests in a variety of digital settings.

A new device from eero will keep you online even if your ISP goes down.

Nominations for the 2026 Joseph C. Belden Innovation Award are open, inviting SMBs with groundbreaking innovation a chance to win scaling opportunities. Last day to apply is February 13.

An investment group is trying to sway Netflix shareholders to reject the WBD deal in favor of Paramount.

The former boss of the L3Harris-owned hacking and surveillance tools maker Trenchant faces nine years in prison for selling several exploits to a Russian broker, which counts the Russian government among its customers.

A 1 GW orbital data center would cost roughly $42.4 billion — almost three times its ground-bound equivalent.

The platform's new feature lets users tell Threads what they temporarily want to see more or less of in their feed.

Google is changing how developers get access to new APIs and features of the latest version.

Amanda Silver is a corporate vice president at Microsoft’s CoreAI division, where she works on tools for deploying apps and agentic systems within enterprises.

UpScrolled, a social network that surged in the wake of the U.S. TikTok deal, has seen an uptick in harmful content, including usernames and hashtags that contain racial slurs.

At least nine engineers, including two co-founders, have announced their exits from xAI in the past week, fueling online speculation and raising questions about stability at Musk’s AI company amid mounting controversy.

Inertia Enterprises will use the Series A investment to build one of the world's most powerful lasers, a key part of its power plant design.

The startup, Monaco, has come out of stealth as an AI-native all-in-one CRM plus more system backed by names like the Collison brothers and Garry Tan.

Upside Robotics builds autonomous solar-powered robots that can help farmers reduce their fertilizer use by 70%.

The expansion will cover customers in newly served states such as Idaho and Massachusetts.

Get an unmatched ROI by exhibiting your startup in front of 10,000 tech leaders and investors at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, October 13-15 in San Francisco. Book your table now before it's gone.

TikTok's new Local Feed will show you nearby shopping, dining, events, news, and more.

The round was led by FPV Ventures co-founder and managing partner Wesley Chan.

Complyance raised a $20 million Series A led by GV for its AI-native compliance platform.

Apptronik has raised another $520 million in a Series A extension to existing and new investors like Google and Mercedes-Benz.

A new company called Meridian.AI has emerged from stealth with an IDE-based approach to agentic financial modeling.

Samsung is going to launch the S26 lineup just before Mobile World Congress (MWC).

According to The New York Times, which reports that it heard the meeting, Musk told employees that xAI needs a lunar manufacturing facility, a factory on the moon that will build AI satellites and fling them into space via a giant catapult.

The executive has denied the allegation that she engaged in discrimination.

A new report claims the e-commerce giant is looking to create a pipeline of licensable content between media publishers and AI companies.

Czech ice dancers Katerina Mrazkova and Daniel Mrazek are learning the hard way that LLMs sometimes spit out straight-up plagiarism.

Robert Playter announcd he is leaving Boston Dynamics after 30 years at the company in various roles, including six years as CEO.

After numerous news reports documented Masha Bucher's close business and personal relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Bucher took to X to explain.

The tech giant handed over the personal information of a journalist and student who attended a pro-Palestinian protest in 2024. This is the latest example of ICE using its controversial subpoena powers to target people critical of the Trump administration.

Whatever the cause of the departures, the cumulative impact is alarming. There is a lot of work left to do at xAI, and an IPO will bring more scrutiny than the lab has ever faced before.

Rivian, along with other automakers, has been under pressure to make the manual door releases easier to access. The new R2 SUV does that — here's how.

Facebook's new AI features let users animate their profile pics, restyle their Stories and Memories, and add backgrounds to text posts.

The startup claims that it has developed a "hack-proof" chip that can't be bypassed by devices like Flipper Zero, a widely available hacking tool that can be used to tamper with wireless systems. These chips are linked with digital certificates to verify the authenticity of the products.

The Singaporean government said the China-backed hackers gained "limited access to critical systems" run by the country's top four telecommunication giants, but said they did not disrupt services or steal customers' data.

Vega Security raised $120 million, bringing its valuation to $700 million, in a round led by Accel. The company aims to rethink how enterprises detect cybersecurity threats.

Learn more about Netflix's acquisition of Warner Bros., considered the most historic megadeal in Hollywood, as it continues to develop.

Users will be able to more easily request the removal of results that include private information or non-consensual explicit imagery.

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin is reportedly expected to repeal the 2009 "endangerment finding" that underpins U.S. climate regulatory efforts.

YouTubers are no longer just creators, and in some cases, their side businesses are growing faster than their channels.

Hauler Hero has seen its customer base, revenue, and head count double since the company raised its seed round in 2024.

India’s new rules take effect February 20, tightening deepfake oversight and shrinking takedown windows to as little as two hours.

Thomas Dohmke's new startup offers an AI system to allow developers to better manage all the code AI agents produce.

Spotify credited a successful Wrapped campaign and new features in its free tier for its rapid user growth.

Primary Ventures has closed a $625 million fund focused on seed investing nationwide. It's a sizable accomplishment for a seed-stage VC firm.

Smart Bricks is an AI-powered proptech that helps investors find high-quality real estate investments.

Startup Runway has raised a $315 million round at a $5.3 billion valuation, funds it will use to expand beyond AI video generation and into world models.

YouTube Music is rolling out a new AI-powered playlist-generation feature that allows Premium users on iOS and Android to use text prompts to create playlists.

Because employees could do more, work began bleeding into lunch breaks and late evenings. The employees' to-do lists expanded to fill every hour that AI freed up, and then kept going.

Tem has built a transaction engine that relies on AI to cut costs. Lightspeed led the round to help the startup expand to the U.S. and Australia.

India's Aadhaar is moving into wallets and hotels and is policing through a new app. Critics say that amid the broader Aadhaar rollout, it's unclear how data shared through the new app would prevent breaches or leaks.

This is the typical next step before it launches a commercial service.

YouTube megastar MrBeast announced on Monday that his company, Beast Industries, is buying Step, a teen-focused banking app.

The move comes as Bluesky’s competitors, X and Threads, have long supported drafts.

AI isn't going to replace major SaaS apps with vibe-coded versions, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi believes. But it could give rise to competitors.

India's Anthropic Software has taken the U.S. AI giant to court over a name dispute.

OpenAI faced a backlash late last year when it tested app suggestions that looked like unwanted ads. Still, the AI company needs to generate revenue from its popular chatbot to cover the costs of developing its technology and growing the business.

Ouster is paying $35 million along with 1.8 million shares.

Is Musicboard shutting down? Company says no, but users are worried.

After announcing $190 million in ARR in December, Harvey may be raising again.

Bhusri said in a statement that the company's next chapter would be focused on AI.

The new Lyft service comes with a number of guardrails. Only a parent or guardian can create a teen account and drivers who are matched with these underage passengers must meet additional criteria and pass yearly background checks.

According to TechCrunch’s ongoing tally, including the most recent data spill involving uMobix, there have been at least 27 stalkerware companies since 2017 that are known to have been hacked, or leaked customer and victims’ data online. 

The company raised $13 billion in equity funding just five months ago, but intense competition between frontier labs and the ongoing cost of compute have made them eager to raise as quickly as possible.

Founded by former Google Japan leaders, InfiniMind is building enterprise AI to turn vast, unused video archives into searchable, actionable business intelligence.

With its new "Arrival Notifications," users can now set one-time or recurring alerts for locations beyond their home, providing an automatic way to share when they’ve arrived at their destination.

More than half-a-million people who bought access to phone surveillance and social media snooping apps had their email address and partial payment card numbers published online.

YouTube TV is offering new, less expensive plans that can be customized around topics like sports, news, and entertainment.

All users will be put into a "teen-appropriate experience" by default unless they prove that they are adults.

The deal will see Uber paying $335 million at the outset to purchase Getir's food delivery business. Uber will also pay $100 million for a 15% stake in Getir's grocery, retail, and water delivery business.

Submit to speak at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 to lead a roundtable. Share scaling insights with 1,100 founders on June 23 in Boston.

Calling Pre-Series A founders: nominations for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 are open. Compete in the world’s most iconic pitch competition at Disrupt 2026 from October 13 - 15.

Gather AI has closed funding from former Salesforce CEO's firm Smith Point Capital. Its warehouse AI system doesn't just scan. It seeks out specific data.

After a better-than-expected opening weekend in theaters, box office sales for Amazon’s “Melania” fell 67%.

The purchase rewrites the domain record books -- not that the crypto industry has ever been accused of restraint when it comes to spending.

But this is still a bad idea.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

A march supporting California’s billionaires didn’t exactly draw a huge crowd on Saturday.

India is adjusting startup rules to help more of its deep tech startups with funding and long-term success.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan is expected to be there. Apple's Tim Cook, too.

Antetokounmpo is the first NBA player to directly invest in Kalshi.

Although the bill’s prospects are uncertain, New York is at least the sixth state to consider pausing construction of new data centers.

Benchmark Capital has been an investor in the Nvidia rival since 2016.

The organizer of the event swears it's not a joke.

This latest season of the TV show Industry takes a look at the world of money and power through the eyes of a fintech baron.

Apple engineers are working to support AI chatbot apps over the next few months.

From the first AI-generated Big Game ad courtesy of Svedka to Anthropic's beef with OpenAI, here are the biggest ads from Super Bowl LX.

WordPress users can now leverage Claude to analyze web traffic or find information about other internal site metrics.

The mysterious businessman pitched Jeffrey Epstein on numerous mobility startups in an era when the sector was white hot, according to TechCrunch's review of hundreds of documents released by the Department of Justice.

The acquisition could mark the beginning of consolidation in the carbon-removal market since removal costs remain higher than buyers would like to pay.

This week's release of Opus 4.6 shook up the agentic AI leaderboards.

Elon Musk has merged SpaceX and xAI, creating what might be the blueprint for a new Silicon Valley power structure. With his $800 billion net worth already rivaling historic conglomerate GE’s peak market cap, and Musk being vocal about his view that “tech victory is decided by velocity of innovation,” the question isn’t whether a personal conglomerate can be built, but rather how far Musk himself is […]

Reddit said during earnings it's looking to buy 'capabilities' and 'companies.'