Thanks to the advent of cloud computing and distributed digital infrastructure, the one-person micro-enterprise is far from a novel concept. Cheap on-demand compute, remote collaboration, payment processing APIs, social media, and e-commerce marketplaces have all made it easier to “go it alone” as an entrepreneur. But what about scaling that one-person business into something meatier […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

India announced a new $1.15 billion Fund of Funds for startups on Saturday while unveiling sweeping regulatory reforms and an ambitious nuclear energy program, as New Delhi seeks to boost tech innovation and clean energy in the world’s fifth-largest economy. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, presenting the federal budget for 2025-26, said the fund builds on […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Tech companies developing self-driving vehicle technology have tapped the brakes on testing on California’s public roads, according to new data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. The agency reported Friday a total of 4.5 million autonomous vehicle test miles were logged in 2024, a 50% drop from the previous year. That figure covers two […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI used the subreddit, r/ChangeMyView, to create a test for measuring the persuasive abilities of its AI reasoning models. The company revealed this in a system card — a document outlining how an AI system works — that was released along with its new “reasoning” model, o3-mini, on Friday. Millions of Reddit users are members […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

To cap off a day of product releases, OpenAI researchers, engineers, and executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, answered questions in a wide-ranging Reddit AMA on Friday. OpenAI finds itself in a bit of a precarious position. It’s battling the perception that it’s ceding ground in the AI race to Chinese companies like DeepSeek, which […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Midha says R1 won't stop AI from spending billions.It means they will do more with the compute power they can obtain.

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

MLCommons, a nonprofit AI safety working group, has teamed up with AI dev platform Hugging Face to release one of the world’s largest collections of public domain voice recordings for AI research. The dataset, called Unsupervised People’s Speech, contains more than a million hours of audio spanning at least 89 languages. MLCommons says it was […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Some companies are blocking DeepSeek over concerns their data will end up with the Chinese government.

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

People working for, or with, Elon Musk are reportedly taking over the inner workings of multiple government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department, and the General Services Administration. The Washington Post reported Friday that the highest-ranking career official at Treasury is leaving the department after “a clash” with people working for […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

When in mid-2022 Sarah Guo left Greylock to launch her own AI-focused fund, Conviction Partners, she indicated that she was tagging the word “Partners” to the firm’s name because she would eventually bring on other GPs. Now, more than two years later, Guo is being joined by Mike Vernal, who was a partner at Sequoia […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is trying to avoid being deposed in a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, according to new court filings. In response, lawyers for the plaintiff — the Authors Guild — have filed a motion to compel testimony from Amodei and his Anthropic co-founder, Benjamin Mann. Authors Guild’s lawyers claim that Amodei and Mann, […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has hit U.K.-based remittance company Wise with about a $2 million fine for what it described as “a series of illegal actions.” Those actions include advertising inaccurate fees and failing to properly disclose exchange rates and other costs, the CFPB alleges. Specifically, the agency claims that the fintech company […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Apple has agreed to pay $20 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit over battery swelling on the Apple Watch. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2019, the suit alleges that the problem affected the first four Apple Watch models. Battery swelling is pretty much what it sounds like: […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The announcement comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg maintains the company’s ambitious AI strategy, which will require hefty capital investments in data centers.

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Five years ago, SpaceX launched Starlink, which has since grown into its biggest revenue driver, expanding to more than 100 countries. But as Starlink scaled, it faced a major hurdle: accepting payments in developing markets, where traditional banking infrastructure is unreliable, slow, and prone to blocking transactions. Many local banks across Africa, Latin America, and […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Investor, former GitHub CEO, and all-around Tech Guy™ Nat Friedman has posted a strangely enticing offer on X. His post reads, “Need volunteers to come to my office in Palo Alto today to construct a 5000 piece Lego set. Will provide pizza. Have to sign NDA. Please DM.” Thanks to the investigative reporting of my […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The lights dimmed as five actors took their places around a table on a makeshift stage in a New York City art gallery turned theater for the night. Wine and water flowed through the intimate space as the house — packed with media — sat to witness the premiere of “Doomers,” Matthew Gasda’s latest play […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI on Friday launched a new AI "reasoning" model, o3-mini, the latest in the company's o1 family of reasoning models.

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

What do you do if a web address you printed on a physical flyer contains a typo, and you send that flyer to more than 100,000 households? Well, if you’re the Swiss canton (“state”) of Basel-Stadt, you buy the domain that contains the typo, and create a redirect to the correct URL. As Swiss news […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Microsoft says that it’s creating a new unit, the Advanced Planning Unit (APU), within its Microsoft AI business division that will help the company understand the societal, health, and work implications of AI the company hopes to build. Microsoft AI, which encompasses Microsoft’s Copilot, Bing, and Edge products, is becoming core to Microsoft’s growth strategy […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.