Here are the 5 Startup Battlefield finalists at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

The time has finally come to announce the five finalists of the Startup Battlefield. It all started earlier this year when the TechCrunch editorial team selected 200 companies from thousands that applied. From there, the team then chose the 20 finalists who pitched this week…Read More

Tony Fadell takes a shot at Sam Altman in TechCrunch Disrupt interview

iPod creator, Nest Labs founder, and investor Tony Fadell took a shot at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday during a spirited interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco. Speaking about his understanding of the longer history of AI development before the LLM craze and…Read More

MDC is building a surgical robot that operates inside an MRI

MRIs are an indispensable tool for surgeons, though the technology certainly has its limitations. Take, for instance, surgeons using the machines to guide their procedures. The current process entails putting the patient into a machine to get an image, before pulling them out to advance…Read More

Hollywood’s Olivia Wilde launches a VC firm

Actress Olivia Wilde, famous for her roles in “Tron: Legacy” and “Don’t Worry Darling,” quietly launched venture firm Proximity Ventures late last year, according to Bloomberg. She launched the early- and growth-stage investment fund with Neil Sirni, formerly of Roc Nation’s venture division Arrive; J…Read More

Amazon brings its Rufus AI shopping assistant to more international markets

Amazon is extending the availability of its AI-enabled shopping assistant, Rufus, to more markets in Europe and the Americas. The ecommerce giant has been widely considered to be playing catchup with its Big Tech brethren in the AI sphere, particularly against the…Read More

MoneyGram replaces CEO weeks after massive customer data breach

The CEO’s removal comes soon after the company confirmed it had lost an unspecified amount of personal customer information in an earlier September cyberattack.
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Threads is testing the ‘trending now’ view in Japan

After rolling out the trending topics feature in the U.S. earlier this year, Threads is now testing out the feature in Japan. “Lots of folks outside the US have been asking for the “Trending Now” feature, and we’re working on bringing it to more countries. This week, we’ll begin testing the…Read More

Infraspeak raises $19.5M to bring collaboration to facilities management

It might not be the sexiest of subjects, but facilities management is central to any business that has a physical premises — the bigger that footprint becomes, the more complex it gets. Portuguese startup Infraspeak has set out to address that with an all-in-one platform t…Read More

Krafton backs IMM Investment’s maiden India fund

The India unit of gaming firm Krafton has backed IMM Investment’s maiden India fund as an anchor limited partner as the battle royale BGMI-maker broadens its investment bets in the South Asian market. Seoul-based IMM Investment, an early backer of Krafton and roughly half of South Korea’s unicorn s…Read More

Despite risks, Vinod Khosla is optimistic about AI

Vinod Khosla has no doubts that humanity’s future with AI is bright. The Sun Microsystems co-founder turned prominent investor predicts that “the need to work will go away” almost entirely thanks to AI.   “Almost all expertise, it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about primary care…Read More

This veteran couldn’t share 3D scans of a burnt naval ship, so he created a startup that can

In the summer of 2020, a fire broke out onboard a naval ship docked in San Diego Bay. For more than four days, the USS Bonhomme Richard burned as helicopters dropped buckets of water from above, boats spewed water from below, and firefighters rushed o…Read More

Former Disney star Bridgit Mendler talks scaling connectivity and resilience for space

Former Disney Channel star and singer Bridgit Mendler took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday to detail how her startup, Northwood Space, is investing in a forgotten part of the space industry: ground infrastructure. Ground stations are the critical…Read More

Google expands AI Overviews in Search to more than 100 countries

Google Search’s AI Overviews, which display a snapshot of information at the top of the results page, are beginning to roll out in more than 100 countries and territories, the company announced on Monday. Google first launched the feature in the United States in May before slowly…Read More

What are AI ‘world models,’ and why do they matter?

World models, also known as world simulators, are being touted by some as the next big thing in AI. AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs has raised $230 million to build “large world models,” and DeepMind hired one of the creators of OpenAI’s video generator, Sora, to work on “world sim…Read More

xAI adds image understanding capabilities to Grok

Elon Musk-owned xAI has added image-understanding capabilities to its Grok AI model. With that, paid users on X social platform can upload an image and ask the AI chatbot questions about it. One of the xAI employees and the official Grok handle posted about this update on X. In a separate post,…Read More