On February 18, 2024, Ian Laffey posted on X that he and two others he’d just met built a cheap drone at a hackathon that calculated its coordinates simply by using its camera and Google Maps. He and his colleagues, Sacha Lévy and Carl Schoeller, were all engineers under the age of 25. The tech […]

Expense management startup Ramp is being considered for a charge card pilot program by the U.S. government’s General Services Administration, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The government’s internal expense card program, dubbed SmartPay, is a $700 billion program. It is estimated that the charge card pilot program contract for which Ramp is being […]

In a bid to more aggressively compete with rival AI companies like Google, OpenAI is launching Flex processing, an API option that provides lower AI model usage prices in exchange for slower response times and “occasional resource unavailability.” Flex processing, which is available in beta for OpenAI’s recently released o3 and o4-mini reasoning models, is […]

The deal was executed through Oxy Low Carbon Ventures for an undisclosed amount.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have underscored the increasing geopolitical risk that almost all businesses now face. As the situation continues to shift with Trump’s unpredictable deal-making, it’s also becoming clear how challenging it is for companies, nonprofits, consultants, and lawyers to keep up with the rapid day-to-day changes. “We are drowning in trade updates every […]

The Chinese e-commerce marketplace app DHgate, which is now the No. 2 free iPhone app in the U.S., isn’t the only one that’s oddly benefiting from President Trump’s tariffs on U.S. imports from China. Another Chinese shopping app, Taobao, has now also entered the Top 5 as of Thursday. U.S. consumers began flocking to these […]

Geoff Ralston, known for his years at Y Combinator, has a new AI VC fund called SAIF. It is seeking AI startups focused on safety.

On Thursday, weeks after launching its most powerful AI model yet, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google published a technical report showing the results of its internal safety evaluations. However, the report is light on the details, experts say, making it difficult to determine which risks the model might pose. Technical reports provide useful — and unflattering, […]

China is cracking down on how automakers advertise driver-assistance features, banning terms like “autonomous driving,” “self-driving,” and “smart driving,” Reuters reported, citing a transcript of a meeting between the government and industry representatives. The updated rule will also prohibit automakers from rolling out improvements via software updates to advanced driver-assistance systems in vehicles already in […]

Chatbot Arena, the crowdsourced benchmarking project major AI labs rely on to test and market their AI models, is forming a company called Arena Intelligence Inc., reports Bloomberg. In a blog post published Thursday, Chatbot Arena said that the company will “give [it] the resources to improve [its platform] significantly over what it is today.” […]

A digital rights group blasted the Florida bill, but lawmakers voted to advanced the draft law.

Instagram on Thursday announced that it’s rolling out Blend, a new feature that lets you create a custom, personalized reels feed for you and your friends. Blends are invite-only and can be created with a singular friend or with a group chat. The custom feeds are refreshed with new content each day. The launch doesn’t […]

Stargate, a $500 billion project headed up by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to build AI data centers and other AI infrastructure in the U.S., is considering investments in the U.K. and elsewhere overseas, according to a Financial Times report.  While Stargate was initially launched as a way to boost U.S. AI infrastructure, the project is […]

There’s a somewhat concerning new trend going viral: People are using ChatGPT to figure out the location shown in pictures. This week, OpenAI released its newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, both of which can uniquely “reason” through uploaded images. In practice, the models can crop, rotate, and zoom in on photos — even blurry […]

A federal judge has found that Google violated antitrust laws by “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in the advertising technology market, rounding out a two-year saga after the U.S. and eight states filed its initial complaints against the Alphabet-owned company. The court will set a briefing schedule and hearing date to determine appropriate remedies […]

Want to tap into the energy of 1,000+ startup founders, investors, and tech leaders descending on Boston for TechCrunch All Stage on July 15? Host your own Side Event during “TC All Stage Week,” happening July 13-19! Whether it’s a networking mixer, workshop, morning run, fireside chat, or cocktail hour — you call the shots. […]

In Meta’s antitrust trial on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that TikTok’s success was a risk to Meta’s business, saying the short-form video app was a “top priority” and a “highly urgent” competitive threat when it arrived in 2018, according to Bloomberg and other outlets. The reports come from a packed first week of […]

Temu and Shein plan to raise prices for U.S. customers starting April 25, due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods shipped from China, the Associated Press reports. The 145% tariff on products made in China, along with Trump’s decision to end a customs exemption that had allowed goods under $800 to enter the U.S. […]

When Matija Šošić started working in web development, he was surprised by how hard it was to build a full-stack production-ready web application. One of the biggest hurdles Šošić faced was navigating the fragmented dev tooling landscape. Coding a web application required utilizing different tools for developing the front end versus the back end, and […]

New York City is one of those places in the world where you can get a dollar slice at 2 a.m. or have a burger delivered in less than 30 minutes, but you’ll still spend two hours crawling down the highway to catch a flight. Archer Aviation wants to change that with air taxis that […]