Save up to $300 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass until August 21
If you’ve been circling around Disrupt, then now’s the best time to lock in your pass and start getting ready to join the rest of the startup community gathering in San Francisco …
The first Ferrari Luce sold for $40mn, 36 times its estimate
The first production Ferrari Luce sold for $40mn at RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction, setting records for the most expensive new car, electric car and charity car sold at public auct…
Spotify’s new Playlist Notes let users and editors explain their song picks
Spotify launches a new feature that gives users a chance to explain the stories and reasoning behind their favorite music. Editors will be using the feature, too, on top playlists…
Higgsfield raises $400M Series B, quadrupling its valuation in 8 months to $5.4B
Higgsfield, founded by former Snap exec Alex Mashrabov, lets users create AI images and videos.
California’s first self-driving trucks are on the road, and the rules behind them are in court
California has issued its first permits to test autonomous trucks on public roads, to Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, with Kodiak already running vehicles around Mountain View. T…
Reddit begins testing a new audio and video experience, similar to popular TikTok videos
Reddit is beginning to test video and audio versions of popular posts, allowing users to watch or listen to Reddit stories instead of just reading them.
Sound-powered fire protection startup gets $15M to snuff out fires before they turn catastrophic
Sonic Fire Protection raised its new funding to help get its sound-powered fire protection system into everything from commercial kitchens to apartment buildings.
YouTube will now count a view as soon as a video starts playing
The change comes a year after YouTube applied the same approach to counting views on Shorts videos.
Feedly attributes weeklong slowdown to bug, not its AI pivot
Feedly says a bug is behind the performance issues that have made its web app nearly "unusable" for some users, while complaints about its mobile apps and customer support are add…
Synchrony wants your Amazon and Walmart store cards inside ChatGPT
Synchrony Financial, which issues store credit cards for Amazon, Walmart and Lowe’s, is working with OpenAI so shoppers can buy inside ChatGPT using those cards. Its chief strateg…
ByteDance signs a copyright pact with Hollywood’s MPA to rein in its Seedance AI video tool
The TikTok owner has agreed a pact with the Motion Picture Association, the trade body for the major US studios, to tighten copyright protections on its AI image and video generat…
Jeff Gundlach says making AI chips an asset class looks like a market top
Jeff Gundlach has criticised Nvidia’s plan with six asset managers to mobilise more than $500bn for AI infrastructure, asking why assets of unknown life are collateral for long-te…
Amazon, once an online bookseller, is destroying rare books to train AI models
Rare books are incredibly valuable for training LLMs, since these models have already trained on whatever's available online.
Groq closes $350M Series A at $3.5bn evaluation and Nvidia joins the round
Groq, the AI-inference chip company that spent the better part of a decade pitching itself as the scrappy alternative to Nvidia, has raised fresh money at a valuation that quietly…
Groq raises $350M to fuel its pivot from AI chips to neocloud
Groq raised $350 million at a $3.5 billion valuation as the former AI chipmaker pivots to a neocloud business and expands its Nvidia-powered data center footprint.
Deutsche Telekom buys Macquarie’s Polish fibre and TV assets in a €1bn bet on convergence
Deutsche Telekom has agreed to buy two of Poland’s best-known fibre businesses, Fiberhost and INEA, from the Australian investment group Macquarie, in a deal worth roughly €1bn an…
Azerbaijan wants to become a tech hub as its startups raised $2.6m last year
Every petrostate eventually discovers that the oil will not last forever, and Azerbaijan has reached the stage of the story where the government starts talking about technology. H…
Instagram blocked the search terms. Its algorithm serves the videos anyway
The genre is simple enough to describe. A man wearing camera glasses walks up to a woman in the street. He delivers a line and films her reaction without asking. The clip goes to …
The Supreme Court will not help Verizon recover $47mn over location data
The US Supreme Court has refused Verizon’s request to amend a June ruling so it could pursue a refund of the $47mn it paid over selling access to customer location data. AT&T, who…
Alphabet takes its AI debt spree Down Under with a first Australian dollar bond
Alphabet is preparing to sell its first bond denominated in Australian dollars, a modest-sounding piece of financial housekeeping that says a good deal about how the AI build-out …
Nvidia investing $1.5B in SoftBank data center developer behind OpenAI project
Nvidia's investment in SoftBank's data center developer will guarantee its chips power an OpenAI data center.
Unitree, China’s humanoid robot champion, lists in Shanghai on 19 August after record demand
Unitree Robotics, the Hangzhou company that has done more than anyone else to turn Chinese humanoid robots into a spectator sport, is due to begin trading on Shanghai’s STAR Marke…
Terra Industries closes $52M seed round to build defense infrastructure for the Global South
African defense tech company Terra Industries announced an additional $18 million in funding, bringing its seed round to $52 million.
The AI maths breakthroughs everyone quotes are counterexamples, not proofs
A counterexample and a proof are not the same kind of achievement. A proof shows that something is always true. A counterexample shows that something claimed to be always true is …