New Zealand joins the global push to keep under-16s off social media
New Zealand will introduce a bill requiring platforms to verify users are over 16, though two of three coalition partners oppose it and no vote will happen before November’s elect…
SoftBank plans record $6.3bn retail bond sale in Japan
SoftBank plans a record 1 trillion yen retail bond sale, about $6.3bn, the largest by any issuer in Japan, to fund investment commitments to OpenAI. Analysts say banks were reluct…
Claude outage hits multiple models again
Anthropic’s Claude AI is showing signs of overload again. On Monday morning, users trying to work with Claude encountered failed requests and a “529 Overloaded” error. The message…
Galbot Robots complete 100 consecutive rallies against a tennis champion
Galbot says its robot completed more than 100 consecutive autonomous tennis rallies against former world number 15 Zheng Jie at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. The rall…
Who’s behind the new ‘stealth model’ Ox Alpha?
A mysterious new AI model called Ox Alpha has driven certain corners of the internet into a frenzy of speculation.
Employers are quietly rehiring the people AI replaced, and paying them less to come back
Forrester reports that 55% of employers regret laying off workers for AI and expects half of AI-attributed layoffs to be quietly reversed, with jobs returning offshore or at signi…
Uber faces fine of nearly $1B over automated driver suspensions
The Dutch Data Protection Authority is fining Uber €825 million in the second largest penalty issued under Europe’s GDPR.
Linkdaze’s smart calendar is built to run a household, not just track a schedule
Linkdaze's smart digital calendar stands out for not putting its features behind a paywall, including an AI meal planner tool.
TechCrunch Mobility: The custom chip driving Waymo’s robotaxi ambitions
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.
Flock CEO calls for ‘compromise’ as surveillance company faces growing backlash
Flock Safety faces a growing public outcry over concerns that its surveillance technology could be misused.
Is it legal to train AI models on copyrighted books? It’s complicated
Most published authors have, without their knowledge or consent, contributed to the development of the same AI tools that threaten to undermine their livelihoods. That seems illeg…
A humanoid robot just beat Usain Bolt’s 100m record, and roboticists are unimpressed for good reason
A robot built by Beijing’s X-Humanoid ran 100 metres in 9.39 seconds at the World Humanoid Robot Games, beating Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second record. Roboticists point out that speed o…
ChatGPT for iPhone now grabs your recent photos with a long press
OpenAI has added a shortcut that surfaces your four most recent photos when you long press the plus button in ChatGPT on iPhone. It lands while Apple’s own camera and visual assis…
Harvey’s first in-house model for legal work is here
Harvey has launched Tenet, its first proprietary model for legal work, post-trained on Kimi K3, the open-weight model from Chinese startup Moonshot. The company is backed by OpenA…
Alibaba is raising $10.2bn and spending all of it on AI
Alibaba is placing HK$80bn, about $10.2bn, of new shares in Hong Kong and says all net proceeds will go to AI infrastructure and capabilities. It comes days after the company repo…
A lawsuit says Oura’s sleep stages are AI guesses with a coin flip’s odds
A proposed class action filed in San Francisco alleges Oura’s sleep staging is generated by AI estimates rather than measurement, and names Finnish parent Oura Health Oy as a defe…
Two years after launch, Walmart’s Flipkart is closing in on India’s quick-commerce leaders
Flipkart's quick-commerce venture is delivering 1.1 million to 1.2 million orders a day, nearly triple its November volume.
A free AI model is winning over developers. And nobody knows whose servers it runs on
An anonymous model called Ox Alpha appeared on OpenRouter last week, free to use with a million-token context window, and developers have been impressed. OpenRouter’s own listing …
Harvard’s $699 startup bootcamp offers AI avatars of its instructors
In the HBS Foundry program, AI avatars provide feedback during practice pitches and board meetings.
Nvidia AI server prices are rising more than 15% from early next year
Nvidia’s largest customers have been notified that servers containing its AI chips will rise in price by more than 15% in many cases from early next year, driven by memory costs. …
Will the DOJ’s investigation into a16z spook other VCs?
On the latest episode of Equity, we wonder why the DOJ is investigating startup board seats.
Inherent, founded by DeepMind alumni, says its AI ‘teammate’ just outperformed Anthropic and OpenAI at replicating research
Built by DeepMind alumni, British AI lab Inherent released Faraday, an AI agent whose ability to replicate scientific papers could be a stepping stone for innovation.
Apollo finds AI is hitting paychecks rather than payrolls
An Apollo analysis of 321 occupations found that wages in jobs highly exposed to AI grew 6.7% more slowly after 2023, with no statistically significant employment effect. The gap …
China’s AI and chip firms are handing out shares to keep their engineers
Chinese chip companies are running unusually broad equity schemes to keep engineers, with Cambricon covering 85.3% of its workforce and AMEC more than 97%. Europe’s semiconductor …