Five social media CEOs were sworn in on Wednesday for what could have been the most eventful children’s online safety hearing yet. But even with some of tech’s most powerful figures under oath, the four-hour hearing was anti-climactic. The Senate subpoenaed recently appointed X CEO Linda Yaccarino, Discord’s Jason Citron and Snap’s Evan Spiegel to
Month: January 2024
The vastness of the ocean allows polluters to evade detection in all but the most egregious violations. SkyTruth aims to change that with Cerulean, an orbital monitoring platform for coastal waters that spots not just oil slicks but also the ships that produce them faster and with more certainty than ever before. The nonprofit organization
It’s Friday, February 2, 2024. Today is the day. You’ve been eyeing the Vision Pro since Tim Cook stepped onstage with the product at last year’s WWDC. Longer than that, really, if you factor in the years of rumors, leaks and renderings. The price wasn’t anywhere near what you had hoped, but it’s a first-gen product.
No one likes robocalls to begin with, but using AI-generated voices of people like President Biden makes them even worse. As such the FCC is proposing that using voice cloning tech in robocalls be ruled fundamentally illegal, making it easier to charge the operators of these frauds. You may ask why it’s necessary if robocalls
In its most recent quarter, Microsoft reported $62 billion worth of revenue, $27 billion worth of operating income, and $21.9 billion worth of net income. It also recently cut 1,900 jobs. Alphabet reported $86.3 billion worth of revenue, operating income worth $23.7 billion, net income of $20.7 billion, and an employee count that was down
2024: The Hot Takes that Will Shape the Digital Landscape Introduction In the ever-evolving world of social media, staying ahead of the trends is the key to success. As we look forward to exploring the Social Media Trends No One is Talking About in 2024; we must anticipate the shifts and changes that will drive
CEOs from some of the biggest social platforms will appear before Congress on Wednesday to defend their companies against mounting criticism that they have done too little to protect kids and teens online. The hearing, set to begin at 10 a.m. ET, is the latest in a long string of congressional tech hearings stretching back
Smart ring maker Oura is rolling out a few features called Resilience, which measures how much can users withstand stress. The company is measuring resilience using parameters like stress load during the daytime and recovery during the day and night (sleep). It doesn’t assign a score but categorizes resilience into five types: Limited, Adequate, Solid,
Julien Codorniou Contributor Julien Codorniou is a SaaS investor at Felix Capital in London, having previously worked for 11 years at Facebook and 6 years at Microsoft. He co-authored “The Kelkoo.com Success Story,” published by Pearson in 2005. Hospital nurses. Construction crews. Garbage collectors. Factory workers. Flight attendants. Restaurant servers. An estimated 2.7 billion people
Universal Music Group (UMG), the label representing artists including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Ariana Grande, says that it’ll pull its music from TikTok tomorrow at midnight after failing to reach a deal with the platform’s parent company, ByteDance, over royalties. UMG won’t seek to renew its current arrangement with TikTok, set to expire on
Meet BlueLayer, a new European startup that is building a software platform specifically designed for carbon project developers. In particular, BlueLayer wants to help these companies manage their carbon credits at scale. While the best way to prevent carbon emissions is by decarbonizing supply chains, carbon credits will also play a role in the coming
You know you’ve screwed up when you’ve simultaneously angered the White House, the TIME Person of the Year, and pop culture’s most rabid fanbase. That’s what happened last week to X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly called Twitter, when AI-generated, pornographic deepfake images of Taylor Swift went viral. One of the most widespread posts of
Despite record growth in the solar industry last year, software startup Aurora Solar has laid off 20% of its staff of about 500 people, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The company, which provides software to help solar installers manage their sales, project design and installation process, has missed its growth targets for the past year, a
OpenAI is pushing adoption of GPTs, third-party apps powered by its AI models, by enabling ChatGPT users to invoke them in any chat. Starting today, paid users of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI chatbot front end, can bring GPTs into a conversation by typing “@” and selecting a GPT from the list. The chosen GPT will have
Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed the company is testing a feature called Flipside — an experiment that would essentially turn users’ “finstas” — their separate, private and more personal accounts — into a new product feature. Flipside was first spotted in development last year, but Instagram said it was only an internal prototype at the
The residential solar industry has been a victim of its own success. People across the country have raced to install solar panels to take advantage of generous net metering rates, where utilities pay people a premium for their power. Meanwhile, big power producers have found themselves forced to shut off at what used to be
Masterclass rival Studio launched today its first AI-powered online school for musicians, songwriters and producers to learn from top artists in the industry, create new songs, get feedback from like-minded peers and access Studio’s AI coach that keeps them on track with personalized schedules and deadlines. The waitlist is officially open starting today. Studio offers
In the midst of a wave of tech industry layoffs, it’s heartening to see some startups succeeding despite the dour market outlook. Kore.ai, a company developing enterprise-focused conversational AI and GenAI products, today announced that it raised $150 million in a funding round led by FTV Capital, Nvidia, Vistara Growth, Sweetwater PE, NextEquity, Nicola and
A new Germany-based startup, Semron, is developing what it describes as “3D-scaled” chips to run AI models locally on smartphones, earbuds, VR headsets and other mobile devices Co-created by Kai-Uwe Demasius and Aron Kirschen, engineering graduates from the Dresden University of Technology, Semron’s chips use electrical fields to perform calculations instead of electrical currents —
Ahead of a major congressional hearing about children’s online safety, Meta has announced a collaboration with the Center for Open Science, a nonprofit dedicated to transparency in academic research. As part of this pilot program, Meta says it will share “privacy-preserving social media data” with select academic researchers who study well-being. “At Meta, we want
The collapse of Amazon’s proposed deal to buy iRobot highlights just how critical the IPO market is this year. With governments tightening the screws on Big Tech companies trying to buy smaller firms, a key exit avenue could be closed to startups in the near term. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it
There’s no shortage of health and fitness trackers — the list of suppliers is as long as my arm, ranging from the mainstream (Apple, Google, Samsung, Fitbit, Withings) to the more esoteric and specialized (Polar, Suunto, Garmin). The assumption underpinning each of those devices is that you’re more or less healthy, and wanting to get
Rebellions, a South Korean fabless AI chip startup, said today it has closed $124 million (165 billion KRW) in a Series B round of funding to develop its third AI chip, called Rebel. The startup will also use the new capital, oversubscribed with an initial target of $90 million, to ramp up production of its
While running a bar in Melbourne, Katy Barfield was taken aback by the large amount of ingredients thrown out at the end of each day. After doing some research, she realized that Australia produces about 7.6 million tonnes of food waste each year. Yume was created to tackle that problem by working with manufacturers like
In 2021, Oleg Klimov, Vlad Guber and Oleg Kiyasko set out to co-create a platform, Refact.ai, that could convince more companies to embrace GenAI for coding by affording users more customization — and control — over the experience. Klimov and Kiyasko had worked together for nearly a decade building AI-based systems for image recognition and
Just when you thought the hype about room-temperature superconductors was over, it’s not. A Swiss quantum algorithm startup, Terra Quantum, and a research lab at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil claim that they have discovered a form of graphite that superconducts at ambient temperature and pressure. Terra Quantum isn’t a small operation.
Alex Circei Contributor Alex Circei is the CEO and co-founder of Waydev, a development analytics tool that measures engineering teams’ performance. More posts by this contributor How engineering leaders can use AI to optimize performance Track the right metrics to improve your developers’ work experience Of all enterprise departments, product and engineering spend by far
Hey, folks, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering notable happenings in tech over the past few days. On the agenda for this edition is Disney’s innovative VR treadmill, OpenAI fixing its “lazy” AI and MIT’s high-capacity, fast-charging organic battery tech. We also cover Apple’s new stolen device protection feature, AI
Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. This week, some thoughts on AI aesthetics, the challenge of uninsurability, and how to pitch a biotech startup to non-experts. — Anna Too good
Losing stuff sucks. It’s even more frustrating when something isn’t really lost, but rather left behind in a location, like an airport or sports stadium, which makes it hard to get back. My friend Caitlin knows this all too well; she’s yet to be reunited with the phone she lost at Oktoberfest on September 27,
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